If you like warframe-builder.com and would like to support me, give me a hand or return the favor for the five years I worked on this app (not sure it's a good way to say it, I've always been bad for asking help), please consider trying my kinetic novel, available on Steam.
Warframe is the type of game where you go on missions, shoot things and get loot. This opens up to some preconceptions for the people that first start to play the game. Most games like this have what we call “Class” (Classes), which is basically a type of character that has certain abilities and follows a stereotype, like Rogue or Mage. Before we get into the Warframe Classes for Damage, Survivability, Crowd Control, and Utility, let’s start with the basics.
Are they Warframes or Classes?
While Warframe “technically” has some sort of Classes, it works in a completely different way from the usual. In Warframe, everything revolves around your equipment and how you customize it. This goes from the weapons you equip to your own power suit, which is called a Warframe (and now you know where the name of the game came from).
Your Warframe comes with its own stats and four abilities you unlock as you level it. This is the concept of Classes that Digital Extremes (Warframe’s Developer) took. It’s a piece of equipment that you can change at your own discretion, provided you crafted it.
Now you may ask since Warframes are like Classes, which one would the “Best Warframe Class” or “Frame”? It’s a question without a clear answer, especially in Warframe where there are more than 20 frames, each with their own set of unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Additionally – and one of Warframe’s best features – you aren’t stuck with just one frame for your character, you can switch them without problems between missions and it really boils down to personal preference.
Now, if you REALLY must know because you want to be the very best no one ever was, I can give you some advice about which frame to use for certain situations; since Warframes have such unique abilities, some of them are better suited for one type of mission than others. As an example, if you’re going on a spy mission you could take Loki with you.
I’m going to divide the Warframe’s into four categories: Damage, Survivability, Crowd Control, and Utility.
For more Warframe, check this out: Warframe Farming Credits Are Here to Stay
Which is the best Warframe for Damage?
Damage is self-explanatory. It’s basically how good a frame is if all you want to do is using its abilities to kill tons of enemies. If this is your approach, I recommend you to get a frame like Banshee or Mesa. Banshee has astounding Area of Effect damage via its fourth ability, capable of clearing areas of enemies very quickly whilst Mesa is more of a single target damage dealer that can kill a single target very, VERY quickly. These two are kind of hard to get, though, so if you’re a beginner you can take Excalibur as a starting frame, which is pretty easy to use and can get you some great damage numbers.
How about the best Warframe for Survivability?
Survivability is how durable a Warframe is or how much damage it can receive. For this category I recommend you to get Nidus, who can auto-revive itself and become invulnerable with its passive ability, or Inaros, whose massive health pool, damage reduction, and healing powers can keep you alive for a very long time. Again, these two frames are behind some hard missions, so if you want something easier to get, you can aim for Rhino, which has an excellent armor ability capable of reducing damage to negligible numbers as long as it’s active.
Warframe Damage Reduction
What’s the best Warframe for Crowd Control?
For Crowd Control, or the ability to make enemies not shoot you, you can’t go wrong with either Vauban or Frost. Vauban has a fantastic immobilizing ability (AoE) that suspends enemies inside it, and a vacuum ability that pulls everything to it. Frost, on the other hand, can slow or freeze enemies, and frozen enemies can’t move and have reduced armor. These two frames aren’t too hard to get, the most difficult to get is Vauban since its parts are rewards from random alerts.
For more Warframe, check this out: How to Get Ivara Warframe Properly
Warframe Damage Block
Which Warframe is the best for Utility?
Finally, we have Utility Warframes. These frames are the best when it comes to giving buffs, healing and other nice things for the team. One of the best ones in this area is Trinity, because of its area healing and shield regeneration, and its energy restoring ability. These skills are fantastic to keep your team going. The other one is Octavia, giving all the buffs you will ever need, and then some. She also restores energy to nearby allies. An honorable mention goes toOberon, which should be technically easier to get since its parts drop from Eximus enemies, and you can find them in pretty much any mission you go into.
It’s a Wrap
If you have trouble picking up a Warframe, contemplate choosing an easy to play one if you happen to be a beginner. I always recommend starting with Excalibur, a great frame with great possibilities when it comes to both early and end game.
Warframe Damage 2.5
Of course, there are many other Warframes that can work for each of these categories. However, the ones I mentioned are what I consider the “best in slot” for each approach. But don’t just take my word for it, go and test them in game, or try out the other Warframe Classes and find which one is the best for you.
For more Warframe, check this out: Top Methods for Warframe Plastids Farming
- This information is still up to date as of current patches.
The purpose of this guide is to give a simple straight forward cheat sheet for the “Best” damage combinations in Warframe given your group and the faction you’re hunting.
Information in this guide was formed by a consensus of various Warframe forum posts and damage combo theory crafting discussions on Reddit. The end result below, are the most widely agreed upon effective combinations to use.
This guide will assume you already know about basic damage combinations within Warframe. (Example: Cold + Toxin = Viral, etc.) If you are not at all familiar with the basics at all, I included a couple of quick references below to help you get caught up to speed. If you’re already knowledgeable about basic damage combos within Warframe, you can skip ahead to the next section.
This guide also takes into account if your team is using “Corrosive Projection” Aura on 4 players or not. Corrosive Projection (aka: CP) at max level reduces enemy armor by 30% and each player using this stacks with each other. A full team of players using Corrosive Projection lowers enemy armor completely! This is why you always want to run your high wave groups with people who all use this aura. (Note: Raids which can have up to 8 players only need 4 players using CP)
Therefore, damage combos vary depending on whether or not your team will be using this aura. In groups where no one uses the aura, you need to reduce armor on certain types of enemies with your corrosive damage type (ex. high level Grineer, Infested & Corrupted).
In groups where 4 people use CP aura, you can focus specifically on damaging the vitality of mobs, since using corrosive to reduce armor is no longer even needed. At this point, you will completely replace corrosive with viral when using it against Grineer and Corrupted mobs.
The reason Viral takes precedence over other vitality damaging types; is due to the fact it is a percentage based damage dealer. It scales no matter what level the target is. Also, by freeing up the toxin mod required to create corrosive (electricity + toxin), you can now form Viral combo (cold + toxin). It should be noted that Corrosive is more useful over Viral if you “have to” reduce armor to mitigate damage reduction. However, if your team uses CP there is no need.
Warframe Damage Mods
Keep in mind, Viral is not an ideal vitality damaging type for every mob in game, even if you’re using team wide CP. Example, infested has a strong resistance against Viral. Also, in cases of Tenno and Corpus pure Toxin is better since it can directly bypass shields (Viral is still very useful on their vitality, but since they have shields it nice to instantly bypass the shield).
Please refer to the lists below to see when to use it.