The necromancer, master of the dark arts, the original loot frame - Nekros!
Passive: Nekros and his Companions regenerates 5 Health when an enemy dies within 10 meters of him.
Soul Punch - A blow so powerful, it turns the enemy’s very soul into a deadly projectile, damaging all in its path.
Terrify - Casts fear into the hearts of nearby enemies, causing them to run away in terror.
Desecrate - Forces fallen enemies around you to drop additional loot.
Shadows of the Dead - Summons shadow versions of vanquished enemies to fight alongside you for a short period of time.
Acquisition: Main blueprint can be purchased from the Market. Component blueprints can be obtained from defeating Lephantis on Magnacidium, Deimos.
The loot frame! Not much else to say about Nekros, he’s known for his Desecrate and that’s pretty much the only thing keeping him relevant, the rest of his kit is middling at best. His Shadows are only useful for the purposes of soaking damage for Nekros with the Shield of Shadows augment. Terrify is a passable armor strip and Soul Punch is an ability that exists. It’s a good thing this is a grindy game with a ton of resources that drop from enemies or else poor Nekros would be warming the bench along with Chroma, Loki and Limbo.
Is chroma really worthy of being lumped in with the other two? I like my funny weapons platform guy with triple jumps and infested mobility.
edit: this might actually just be me coping for buying his deluxe skin for the big slab of a greatsword. I liked how its whorls vaguely looked like they fit with the zariman angel and equinox deluxe whorls.
I love how this post turned into a Chroma thread, lmao.
Rhino might be simpler and more effective, but Chroma looks cooler and makes the game more interesting imo. That’s the lifeblood of endgame for me.
He’s far an away the worst weapons platform frame in the game. Is he playable? Of course, Warframe is an easy game! But you would be far better served by playing even a basic Rhino compared to Chroma. Base damage increases are just not really that valuable with gun arcanes providing you more than enough. A Revenant with max power strength and Roar subsumed is completely invincible and has over 100% multiplicative damage multiplier that double dips on DoTs. Wisp can prime enemies with Breach Surge while also buffing your fire rate and can easily run Roar as her 4 as well. Nezha goes fast, has a multiplicative damage multiplier in Chakram and can spread DoTs from weapons across a massive area with Divine Spears. Compared to those, Chroma just falls off completely, not to mention 2 of his abilities are boring buffs that could easily be merged into one and the others do absolutely nothing. He looks really cool, his theme of a knight that wears the pelt of a slain Sentient dragon is awesome but the frame itself just sucks.
My other counterpoint to this perspective is that, when I’ve had the absolute joy of playing with range Chromas, having Vex Armour buffs on is fun. He’s an easy Circuit pick for me, because like Banshee he directly makes the game more fun for everyone. Vex Armor also outscales Roar until 700% power strength, and outscales Roar forever on glaive maths and MultiCO projectile melees. (Ignoring certain triple dipping Roar mechanics, such as Blastfluence.)
Nah, Chroma rules. Guardian Armour gives him free access to Arcane Avenger without sacrificing Worthy Comradery, so he has access to builds that Rhino and Mirage don’t. Like Mirage he’s also a high power glaive user since Vex Armour (and Eclipse) self-multiply in the glaive damage calculation. Which is great, since the new Pathocyst is right around the corner. Guardian Armour also blankets your party in a warm 50% DR on top of the armour buffs, so he’s actually legit as a support frame.
Also underappreciated, but Tox Ward’s reload boost is both a nice QoL boost and a really big sustained DPS boost, and sustain is usually the gate on your KPM unless you’re Influence nuking. I’m gonna disagree with Keegen, and say that if you’re Influence nuking, all frames are now equal, since your KPM is now limited by how far away the enemies spawn.
Edit: certain weapons with MultiCO also have MultiShiver, so Chroma can make some really eccentric off-meta weapons into Cold monsters, like the Cyanex and Hystrix. Or he can just do a Shiver Laetum and laugh his way to the bank.