Warframe has many different frames to choose and farm for, each with a unique skill set that plays to a specific power fantasy with the game’s visceral combat system. Some Warframes are powerful and have a lot of utility, even up to the late Steel Path star map nodes. Others have fallen off the meta and have seen many balance updates and complete overhauls to their skills. With a variety of Warframes to pick from, it can be difficult to find one to spend hours to find their blueprints and materials to craft them.
Whether you’re a new or experienced player, this article will list down Warframes based on how versatile they are, from being useful in all content to extremely niche and situational and explain their roles in the current meta.
S-Tier
Wisp / Wisp Prime
- Wisp is one of the best support Warframes currently in the game. Her first skill, Reservoirs, gives attack speed, health regen, and passive Stun aura buffs to her teammates as well as herself, which is always welcome in a 4-man squad. This one skill is the main reason why players bring her along since her buffs are always relevant in any game mode.
Saryn / Saryn Prime
- Saryn can clear out an entire room of mobs with her Spores and Miasma abilities. All she needs to do is inflict one enemy with Spores, hit the pustule on them, and cast Miasma to spread the spore effect. Not only that, the damage of Spores scales to the duration that the skill is active, which will easily deal with scaling enemies on Steel Path. She is also one of the best Warframes to run Sanctuary Onslaught with for her ability to efficiently and effortlessly clear rooms of enemies.
Octavia / Octavia Prime
- Despite Octavia seeming like a support Warframe, she also has the same mob killing power as Saryn with her Mallet, Resonator, and Amp skills. What makes her powerful is that when enemies shoot at her Mallet, it deals more damage. Pair this with her Resonator ball that actively seeks out enemies and forces them to shoot at the ball, Octavia players can play the game without firing a single shot due to the sheer power of these two skills. Her Metronome also provides her team with great invisibility, melee damage, and multishot buffs.
Mesa / Mesa Prime
- Mesa is the only Warframe that has a legal aimbot as part of her kit. Her whole skillset involves gun damage and negating ranged damage, which makes her an already solid pick for Steel Path. Her real power comes from her Peacemaker ability, which lets her automatically hit enemies within a wide cone. As she fires her Peacemakers, this auto-aim cone shrinks but also exponentially increases the rate of fire of her Peacemakers, making her a veritable DPS machine.
A-Tier
Khora / Khora Prime
- Khora has a powerful crowd control ability with her Strangledome ability. She is also one of the big three farming Warframe with her Pilfering Strangledome augment, which causes enemies to drop extra loot. While her crowd control is amazing, her damage isn’t as great and her kit forces her to be stationary. Still, she is great for defense-oriented missions.
Nekros / Nekros Prime
- Like Khora, he is one of the top 3 farming Warframes, as his Desecrate ability converts enemy corpses (which you will make a lot) to health and re-rolls the loot table of that enemy and the planetary material table that the mission is situated in. He also has solid crowd control and armor strip with his Terrify ability and Shadows of the Dead ability that draws enemy aggro away from your team.
Kullervo
- Kullervo is a fun melee-oriented Warframe with a long of fun synergies with the Heavy Attack mechanic system. His Recompense ability gives him an element of risk and reward as he will gain health and Overguard when hitting enemies but receive self-damage if he whiffs this ability. He has a lot of potential for melee DPS if you maintain your melee combo counter with him.
Revenant / Revenant Prime
- Revenant is one of the best tank Warframes in the game with his Mesmer Skin ability, which ignores enemy damage entirely. While he does have some crowd control abilities, his ability damage is lacking. Revenant excels at the niches he occupies but can’t do much beyond his intended use.
Volt / Volt Prime
- Volt is one of the starter Warframes and is a fairly competent caster, as well as being the original speedster Warframe. His Electric Shield is an impenetrable barrier that can be shot through by another allied Tenno and can even be picked up by Volt as a personal front-facing shield. He can give his team and himself a massive movement speed buff that will make speed-running missions easy.
Dagath
- A lich-based Warframe, Dagath has some abilities that are effective but also really fun to play around with. He can deal True damage with his Doom skill to enemies and can even give himself a bonus crit chance buff. Dagath can melt bosses easily with his high burst damage but isn’t as effective with room clearing as the other Warframes.
Gauss
- Gauss does extremely well in open-world content like Plains of Eidolon, Orb Vallis, Cambion Drift, and Duviri, as he is currently the fastest Warframe in the game. Against tileset missions, he struggles a bit due to the small level design in many tilesets. Gauss is still viable in tilesets, but he won’t be as useful as he is on the open-world maps.
Citrine
- Citrine plays as a classic caster with offensive abilities that deal elemental damage and Status Effect procs. She synergies with other weapons that also have a high Status Effect chance and is a great primer for dealing extra damage to targets inflicted with status.
Protea
- Protea has a lot of survivability thanks to her Shield Satellites, which can quickly return shields to her and her allies. Her other ability Blaze Artillery also does scaling multiplying damage that can automatically deal with mobs and Temporal Anchor to get out of sticky situations.
Wukong / Wukong Prime
- Wukong is a highly versatile Warframe that is slightly more powerful than a jack of all trades. His Cloud Walker and Defy skills give him loads of survivability and Primal Fury to clear out rooms of mobs with damage that can be scaled well. He does not specialize in a role, but he’s still capable of clearing the Steel Path content.
Mirage / Mirage Prime
- Mirage is a bit of a glass cannon but can make up for her fragility with the illusions she can cast. Her clones can draw aggro away while also adding to the projectile count of all weapons, as her clones can copy all her moves. She is a fun Warframe that can deal a lot of weapon damage and sow chaos in the battlefield, provided you can maintain her Energy upkeep.
Nova / Nova Prime
- Nova is one of the original nuke Warframes and rightfully so. While her abilities can do a lot of damage and can clear an entire room of mobs, the setup required to make that happen could dissuade newer players from picking her up when other alternatives like Saryn are present. Despite the slight complexity of her abilities, Nova remains a powerful mob killer and still has a place in the current meta.
Nidus / Nidus Prime
- One of the few Warframes with no shields, Nidus instead has high base health and armor with intrinsic health regen. He is an excellent tank frame that fills the role of regen tanking and comes with a stacking damage mechanic that gives him plenty of staying power in long-form missions, especially with Survival missions.
Rhino / Rhino Prime
- Part of the original Warframes in the game, Rhino is the original tank Warframe as his Iron Skin gives him a layer of armor that takes damage instead of his health and shields and a simple damage buff with his Roar ability.
Xaku
- Xaku can easily strip the armor of most opponents, has high evasion due to his 4th ability, and steals their weapons to deal extra damage that can scale with Void damage. Xaku is a great choice for solo play for Steel Path missions.
Baruuk
- Baruuk is an easy Steel Path Warframe due to the scaling of his damage and resistances. His overall melee-centric toolkit scales up to endgame, and his evasion ability keeps him alive for a long while, making him a viable option for solo play.
Harrow / Harrow Prime
- Harrow’s crit chance boosting skills make him a powerful offensive support character that can enable red crits to occur. He can bestow Energy gains to his teammates and himself. Harrow is very reliable, even when playing solo.
Mag / Mag Prime
- Belonging to the original Warframe roster, Mag is a nightmare for enemies using shields thanks to her Magnetic-based abilities. Corpus shields and even armor are stripped from the enemy with her Polarize ability, which helps kill endgame mobs quicker due to the scaling shields and armor values.
Trinity / Trinity Prime
- Trinity is the only pure healing support Warframe in the game and she excels on that front. If you’re facing harder difficulty missions, bringing Trinity along will keep everyone in the squad alive even when facing level 100+ mobs.
Sevagoth
- Sevagoth’s one skill, Gloom, is the main reason why players use the Helminth system, as it slows enemies and allows lifesteal. It is the ideal survival tool to replace less useful skills with. By himself, Sevagoth is a fun DPS Warframe with plenty of room clear and has an engaging combat loop with his Exalted Shadow ability that bestows 4 new abilities.
Vauban / Vauban Prime
- Vauban is the king of crowd control, with all his abilities centered around locking enemies in place. The Warframe can hold chokepoints extremely well with his Bastille ability and is highly versatile for many situations in the game.
Hildryn / Hildryn Prime
- Hildryn has the highest Shield amount in the game and uses said Shields as an ability resource instead of the traditional Energy meter. She can sap the shields adn armor from other enemies to add them as her Overshields. If played right, Hildryn will survive for a long time as long as she keeps her shields up with the Pillage ability.
Ivara / Ivara Prime
- Thanks to her high uptime on invisibility and maneuverability tools, Ivara is the best stealth Warframe in the game. She can easily clear Spy missions as her entire kit revolves around stealth, but she can just as well handle Steel Path missions with ease if one masters her skillset.
Chroma / Chroma Prime
- He is the premier boss killing Warframe, even considered a mandatory Warframe for Eidolon and Profit Taker runs. His Vex Armor grants him an absurd amount of weapon damage and durability.
Titania / Titania Prime
- She is fast, hard to hit, and outputs massive bleed procs. Titania is the ideal mission speedrunner as she flies around like an Archwing while reducing her hitbox significantly.
Lavos
- Lavos has no energy consumption and instead opts for ability cooldowns, making him incredibly fun to play. He can combine different abilities to catalyze new abilities. He is an engaging and cerebral Warframe to bring, especially on Steel Path.
Zephyr / Zephyr Prime
- Zephyr covers both weapon damage buffs and hard CC that will always remain relevant in the endgame. Airburst and Tornados will lock down enemies for a long while, and her aerial gameplay turns Zephyr into an offensive powerhouse.
Ember / Ember Prime
- This Warframe used to be on the lower tiers, but Ember has become a solid caster frame thanks to a recent rework. She can output serious Fire damage with armor strip capabilities now and has some viable defensive options that will keep her alive in Steel Path content.
Equinox / Equinox Prime
- A highly complex Warframe, Equinox has two forms that make their abilities function differently. They occupy all niches for damage, tanking, and support, making them a powerful Warframe for those who understand the complexity of Equinox’s toolkit.
B-Tier
Ash / Ash Prime
- Ash is the equivalent of a Space Ninja with his shurikens, shadow clones, and smoke screen invisibility. Ash is a strong solo stealth Warframe with some of the best bleed-based abilities in the game. He can deal with the toughest enemies using bleed procs that practically ignore armor. While Ash’s invisibility doesn’t last as long, Ash is still a decent stealth and DPS Warframe with fun abilities, but there are better alternatives.
Atlas / Atlas Prime
- Atlas is a good tank and CC Warframe that can make good use of Blast based weapons thanks to his knockdown resistance passive. He can passively increase his armor and gain healing by using his crowd control abilities like Petrify and Landslide. What he severely lacks in damage, he makes up for with survivability.
Limbo / Limbo Prime
- A difficult Warframe to master, Limbo requires way more active thinking than most other Warframes. While his Stasis and Cataclysm ability combo is great in defense missions, he struggles to do any other mission type.
Excalibur / Excalibur Umbra
- The iconic Warframe displayed front and center in the game, Excalibur is a solid starter frame with good performance and utility. Despite being in the B Tier, Excalibur still stands well on his own, but since we are comparing him to other Warframes who can do his role better, he is placed in this tier.
Valkyr / Valkyr Prime
- While Valkyr may seem powerful with her 4th skill giving her invulnerability, the ramping cost of Energy can be very costly, and her other 3 abilities aren't as good. You will need multiple mods pertaining to Energy regen to make her viable in Steel Path.
Frost / Frost Prime
- Frost’s only niche is that he excels in Defense missions with his Snow Globe ability. Beyond that, there isn’t much he can do, especially when reaching the endgame.
Loki / Loki Prime
- Loki belongs to the original roster of Warframes and was, for a time, a starter frame. His abilities may seem useful, but most players only play him for his powerful cloaking ability. Other than that skill, there isn’t much else he can do on Steel Path missions.
Banshee / Banshee Prime
- This Warframe is centered around the manipulation of sound, and her Sonar ability can enable some truly massive damage. She excels at boss killing as Sonar highlights body parts that aren’t the head, and certain bosses have limbs as weakspots, which can also be highlighted by Banshee. Her other abilities are not as useful in the endgame.
Oberon / Oberon Prime
- Oberon is a solid support Warframe with his Consecrated Ground ability that heals all allies standing on the affected ground. Renewal grants a burst of healing while Reckoning CCs enemies, which makes them drop Health orbs. However, there are other more viable Warframes that can fulfill his role easily.
Inaros / Inaros Prime
- Inaros has the best survivability in the game but has very lackluster damage and utility overall. There isn’t much else he excels at other than not dying, but that makes for a boring play style. He will receive a rework soon, hopefully making him more engaging to play. Until then, there are better tank Warframes to play.
C-Tier
Nyx / Nyx Prime
- Nyx’s abilities have fallen off hard in the current meta. Other Warframes on this list can do the things Nyx can but better, like Revenant or Mag and the myriad of armor reduction Warframes. Sadly, Nyx doesn’t offer much in the way of viability and remains a relic of the old Warframe ability design idea.
Yareli
- This Warframe is centered around the usage of the K-Drive, and while her rework has made her a little bit more viable, it takes some serious build crafting to make Yareli’s abilities useful. Since K-Drives are very difficult to use inside tileset missions, she is better off in open-world content.
