Warframe - Tenno (Warframes A-M) / Characters

The Warframes the Tenno use, from Ash to Mirage.

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Ash

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ashnewlookedit_392.jpg

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Ash, lethal and elusive.
Ash can remain unseen, but his effects on the battlefield can be felt by all. Keep an eye out, Tenno.

— The Lotus

With a design directly based on the popular image of a Ninja, Ash is a well-rounded stealth Warframe. His abilities allow him to reach key targets and assassinate them with incredible burst damage or lockdown groups of enemies while his stats make him highly agile and also surprisingly durable when he is caught without enough Energy to activate his invisibility.

Ash was one of the first eight Warframes to be released with the game's "Vanilla" version in 2012, and Ash Prime emerged from the shadows with Update 16.11 in 2015 then retired to the Prime Vault with Hotfix 20.6.2 in 2017.

Animal Motifs: His helmets have a notable insectoid theme; his primary helmet is chitinous with small pincers, while the other two are also named "Scorpion" and "Locust".
Anti-Armor: His Seeking Shuriken augment at maximum rank removes between 28% and 100% of an enemy's armor, depending on ability strength, for several seconds from all enemies affected by his shurikens.
Armor-Piercing Attack: His Blade Storm ability inflicts Finisher damage, which not only ignores defenses but deals more damage to armored targets. His damage abilities also inflict a guaranteed Slash proc that deals damage ignoring armor (but not shields). This ability is immensely useful against Sentient scouts and Shadow Stalker, since it completely bypasses their damage resistance.
Ashes to Ashes: He uses ash in his Teleport ability as well as his Blade Storm ability, Teleport Spamming via ash to stab enemies with elaborate animations and ethereal wrist blades.
Assassins Are Always Betrayed: During the age of the Orokin he was a central figurehead to the Scoria assassin cult, the leadership of whom he ruthlessly exterminated during the fall of the Orokin.
Badass Arm-Fold: His Noble idle animation.
Big Damn Heroes: In "The Call", he arrives with Nyx and Frost to protect a newly-awakened Excalibur from being captured by the Grineer, until he is ready to fight on his own.
Blade Below the Shoulder: Keeps a pair of ethereal wrist blades that materialize when he activates Blade Storm. If you look closely, they can be seen within the smoke of his idle animations. His "Koga" deluxe skin has two forearm-mounted blades. These blades replace his standard retractable wrist blades and also extend past his hands during Blade Storm
Boring, but Practical: Shuriken just tosses one or two shuriken to deal slash damage to one or two enemies. It deals a relatively low amount of damage but its homing properties make it easy to aim. Far from his flashiest ability, it's potentially his most powerful in super high-level content, as its augment, Seeking Shuriken, lets him instantly strip the armor off a heavily-armored target, rendering an incredibly durable bullet sponge vulnerable to getting destroyed by your weapons.
Close-Range Combatant: The Rising Storm augment encourages this, adding 10 additional seconds to Combo Duration and allowing Ash to quickly rack up Combo Multiplier by using Blade Storm on en entire crowd of enemies. Combined with Smoke Bomb, he can quickly massacre an entire group with melee weapons with the help of stealth multipliers and his elevated Combo Counter. Rising Storm also allows more freedom in light attack melee builds - the extra Combo Duration frees up a mod slot on a melee weapon, assuming a lack of the Naramon focus school to preserve Melee Combo.
Combat Pragmatist: Stabs targets in the back and face, sweeps their legs out from under them and stabs 'em while they're down during Blade Storm.
Doppelgänger Attack: Blade Storm creates shadow copies of himself to take out his marked targets.
Fake Longevity: Update 17 changed his parts' drop locations from mission rewards for killing Tyl Regor on Uranus to randomly dropping from a certain kind of enemy, like Oberon before him, in order to make room for the Warframe Equinox. However, while Oberon's parts drop from the widespread and only mildly-threatening Eximus units, Ash's parts drop from the Grineer Manics: high-level enemies that are fairly rare, extremely tough to kill, and have notoriously low drop rates for their unique loot (or any loot at all, for that matter).
- Believe it or not, the grind for Ash’s parts got even worse, as they now exclusively drop from Corpus Railjack missions. And since there’s plenty of other loot that has a higher chance of getting dropped, it’s going to take a while before you even see a part.
Flash Step: His Teleport skill allows him to move within range of allies, enemies, and targetable mission objectives.
Foil: To Loki. Both are fast stealth frames with displacement crowd control abilities, but while Loki focuses on confusion and misdirection, Ash causes extensive damage and leaves no witnesses alive.
Foreshadowing: Ash's Leverian entry ends with him removing the black gem brainwashing Pilio and allowing him and Dom to escape with their lost father despite being failures and traitors to the Scoria order that revered Ash as the epitome of their ideology. Leverian himself wonders what Ash saw in the boys that made him do this rather than following through with the Scoria's doctrine. The Second Dream reveals that Ash and the rest of the Tenno are all unwilling Child Soldiers, meaning that Ash empathized with the Pilio and Dom and returned them to the family they still had.
Gathering Steam: Blade Storm increases in power in tandem with his Combo Multiplier, dealing up to 3.75 times more damage at max, or 4 times more damage when used with Venka Prime's increase to the Combo Multiplier limit. Using it at a low combo multiplier with deal heavy damage to crowds. Using it with a maxed multiplier will slaughter almost anything short of long-duration endless enemies.
Improbable Aiming Skills: His Shuriken will seek out targets, ricocheting off walls and cutting through other enemies if need be to headshot and impale their intended target. All through Ash's natural abilities.
Lightning Bruiser: Significantly increased run speed, among the highest health in the game (both he and his prime rank at a respectable 8th in health), fair armor, and good shields. Top it off with a Teleport, invisibility that makes your melee attacks hit 4x harder, and a Teleport Spam and you have an abundance of both lightning and bruiser.
Meaningful Name: "Ash" refers to the powdery residue left behind when something burns. While he doesn't have fire powers, it likely refers to his combat philosophy: Leave no one alive.
Non-Elemental: Notable in that his Blade Storm is one of the only abilities that can ignore enemy defenses, but also their weaknesses. His abilities can inflict Bleeding statuses with the same effectiveness.
Ninja: Even among Warframes, Ash embodies the ninja concept the most among them, between his Smoke Bomb, the Doppleganger Attack from Blade Storm, and throwing shuriken as one of his standard abilities.
Patron Saint: Ash was revered by the Orokin school of political assassination, Scoria, as its patron saint. All of its assassins wore a smoky black jewel on their face in emulation of him as utterly devoted assassins. He single-handedly slaughtered the entire order once the Tenno began their rebellion against the Orokin.
Samurai Ponytail: Gains one with his Scorpion alternate helmet. Ash Prime has an absolutely colossal, fleshy one as part of his helmet.
Shout-Out: Ash's default body design bears a great resemblance to Gray Fox. One of his alternate helmets is an unmistakeable reference to Sam Fisher.
Smoke Out: His Smoke Screen ability, which renders him invisible and staggers enemies caught in the blast.
Stock Ninja Weaponry: Has access to a supply of armor-piercing Shuriken.
Teleport Spam: Could be done with the combination of his aforementioned Teleport and marked enemies from his Blade Storm.

Atlas

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Atlas, the brawler, the strong.
Moving mountains is no easy task, Tenno. Atlas endures.

— The Lotus

Atlas was dug up with Update 17.5 in 2015. A brawler and earth-based Warframe whose kit centers around both incapacitating foes with stone attacks and punching them in the face.

Atlas Prime avalanched into the scene with Update 25.8 in 2019.

Bare-Fisted Monk: While he visually fits the motif and specializes in using martial arts to attack, he enhances his body and attacks by covering himself with rock, effectively giving him the most visible armor of any Warframe.
Boxing Battler: His idle animations draw to mind an image of a boxer, and his signature weapons are the Tekko Power Fists.
The Big Guy: While MANY Warframes could be labeled as this, none have been given a more certifying feat than punching an asteroid to bits.
Colony Drop: His Leverian reveals that an Atlas was once deployed to destroy an asteroid directed at Earth by cultists. He did this by literally punching it in into rubble with the help of his Rumblers.
Color-Coded Elements: Stony gray, sandy yellow and muddy brown.
Combos: His first ability starts as a lunging punch, but if you can cast it several times with proper timing it chains several more punches all at reduced energy cost.
Dishing Out Dirt: Atlas weaponizes stone and rock with his abilities.
Elemental Barrier: Tectonics can create a wall of rocks to defend against attacks.
Elemental Punch: Landslide covers his fist in stone, which shatters on impact.
Good Old Fisticuffs: His theme, according to developers. His idle stance resembles a boxer's stance, and his first ability is a sliding punch attack, and that's before you get to his signature weapon, a pair of serrated knuckle dusters.
Literally Shattered Lives: If he kills a petrified enemy (particularly by using Landslide), or if one of his Rumblers breaks, then he can use their remains as additional armor.
Made of Iron: Pun aside, collecting shattered enemies that became rocks with his Petrify will heal Atlas and give him over-armor that decays over time, allowing him to take more hits than usual at maximum armor buff.
Meaningful Name: Atlas was a Titan whose punishment was to stand at the edge of the earth and hold up the sky. He's often portrayed in art, sculpture, and cinema as holding up the planet. Naturally, most of his powers are earth/rock-based.
Mighty Glacier: At 0.9 speed, Atlas is the slowest of all Warframes, and he boasts knockback immunity and very high armor that he can reinforce even further through his abilities.
Muscles Are Meaningful: His abs gives him the second highest armor compared to all-male Warframes by far, only to be topped by Qorvex.
No-Neck Chump: His pyramidal musculature on his shoulders hides the fact that he has an absurdly thick neck.
Immune to Flinching: Being in contact with the ground makes him immune to knockdown effects.
One Riot, One Ranger: When a cult threw an asteroid at Earth, the Orokin could have stopped it any number of ways. They sent Atlas and only Atlas to prove a point.
Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Using this ability multiple times in succession will cause it to chain, reducing its cost while increasing its damage.
Spikes of Villainy: Inverted; he's a playable Warframe that has spikes on both forearms, likely for combat purposes.
Status Effects: Petrify.
Summon Magic: Rumblers summons two rock golems to fight at his side.
Taken for Granite: Petrify instantly turns enemies in front of him into stone.
Throwing Your Shield Always Works: He can summon a wall of rocks to defend himself, or pull the rocks together into a boulder to launch at enemies.
Top-Heavy Guy: His shoulders are the size of Rhino Prime's pauldrons. Combined with his rather small helmet and massive trapezii, he was the target of jokes insinuating he had no head, just a neck stump.
Walking Shirtless Scene: His design evokes elements of this trope; the upper half of his body resembles a heavily muscled man with huge shoulders, and exposed chest and abdominal muscles.

Banshee

^{Click to see Prime form.}

"These like-faced savages, these earth-worn mules, a vast violent ocean at our command. Yet they wither. Mired in massed steel and flesh, casting these hordes from gene molds and flock minds, we inspire nothing. Our demons of void womb must be different. Unusual. Singular. Crafted without caste, wrought of the finest ore, slender and queer. Sight without eye. Wrath without sound. Not a soldier, but a myth.
Not a warrior... a spirit. Banshee."

— Ballas, Warframe: Banshee Prime

Banshee is a sound-oriented Warframe whose sound-based abilities can stall large groups of enemies, vastly improve her team's damage output and grant a measure of stealth to herself and other Warframes who do not naturally have that ability.

Banshee made her debut alongside Saryn with Update 7.0 in 2013, while Banshee Prime made herself heard with Hotfix 19.11.5 in 2017 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Hotfix 24.2.2 in 2018.

Attack Its Weak Point: Why look for weak spots, when her Sonar can find (read: create) new ones! All damage applied to a Sonar weak spot is multiplied by 500%!^* Doesn't apply, however, against enemies whose selected "weak points" remain armored, i.e. bosses such as Kril, Ruk, Jackal, etc. However, if the user is very lucky, the weak spots created by Sonar can stack with the target's natural weaknesses. Boom, Headshot! indeed. With the Resonance Augment, the weak points spread to nearby enemies when an afflicted enemy is killed. These can stack with each other for ludicrous amounts of damage.
Big Damn Heroes: In "The Profit", she infiltrates Alad V's stronghold with Volt, Rhino, and Trinity to rescue Mag, who is held captive and nearly subjected to dismemberment.
Changing Gameplay Priorities: In low-level survival and defense missions, Sound Quake is an extremely potent ability, easily capable of wiping out every enemy on the map in a few seconds. Meanwhile, her Sonar and Silence are not very useful, as enemies die too quickly for the damage boost and stun to matter. This gets flipped around in higher-level missions, where Sound Quake's pathetic damage will fail to so much as make a dent in the rapidly expanding enemy health bars, meaning that stunning enemies and multiplying the damage they take is much more valuable. Likewise, her Sonic Boom becomes useful less for its damage, and more for its armor strip with the Sonic Fracture augment.
Damage-Increasing Debuff:
- Sonar exposes weak points on enemies, increasing the damage they take when targeting that spot.
- The "Sonic Fracture" mod for Sonic Boom makes it strip enemies of armor. This can easily reach 100% armor strip with just a few Strength-boosting mods.
Earthquake Machine: Sound Quake lets her shake the ground by channeling the power of her voice into the earth.
Enemy Scan: Her Sonar ability sends out a radial sonic ping. Any enemy touched by it temporarily gains an orange glow on some part of their body. It also causes the positions of enemies to show up on the team's maps which is very useful if your teammates aren't equipped with the Enemy Sense mod or Enemy Radar aura.
Fashionable Asymmetry: By way of a single Shoulder of Doom.
Glass Cannon: Sonar allows her to reliably gib enemies many times over with a single well-placed shot, but she is among the squishiest of Warframes; while she has a respectable base 100 health and 100 shields, she has almost no armor (15) and both Sonic Boom and Sound Quake are relatively short-ranged abilities, putting her in the crossfire.
Harp of Femininity: Her "Chorus" helmet turns her head into a cross between this and a crossbow.
Knockback: Sonic Boom sends enemies flying away when used.
Make Some Noise: Banshee can render her weapons and the surrounding area silent to disorient her foes and pick them off one by one. Her Sonar ability uses echolocation to expose weak points on her enemies' bodies.
Meaningful Name: Named after the banshee, a female spirit that lets out mourning cries when death occurs. The Banshee Warframe has sound-based powers that damage enemies and affect their hearing. Ballas even calls her "a spirit" in her Prime trailer.
Perception Filter: Silence, which deafens enemies to make them less reactive to Banshee and her allies (e.g. firing a shotgun or murdering one of their companions 5 feet away)... provided the Tenno stay out of line of sight. Functionally, it's a stealth-aid rather than an actual stealth technique. In her Prime trailer, it shows how unnerving it is in practice; enemies are rendered completely unaware of Banshee's presence as their allies suddenly die right under their noses until it's too late.
Super-Scream: Comes in two forms: a sonic boom that bowls enemies in front of her over (and causes weaker ones to explode), and a more powerful version where she crouches down on the ground and blasts out a constant flow of room-shaking, high-damaging shockwaves.

Baruuk

This is Baruuk, the reluctant warrior.
War is the enemy that lies deep within Baruuk, but can you make it your ally Tenno?

— The Lotus

Baruuk is a monk Warframe that unleashed his tranquil fury with Fortuna's Profit-Taker Update 24.2 in 2018. Baruuk is themed around pacifism and described as the reluctant warrior who is still a very lethal combatant when pushed: while his abilities mostly focus on non-lethally incapacitating enemies and keeping Baruuk alive, his restraint gradually erodes, allowing him to unleash the powerful Desert Wind to blow away anything before him.

Baruuk Prime has reached enlightenment as of December 14, 2022.

Adaptive Ability: When equipped with the Reactive Storm augment mod, Baruuk's Desert Wind changes its element based on the enemy's weakness.
Animal Motif: Baboons, it is more pronounced with his default helm and signature syandana.
Bare-Fisted Monk: While Serene Storm is active, he uses his empowered fists and feet as Exalted Sparring Weapons called Desert Wind, causing powerful shockwaves to knock enemies back, pull them towards himself, or launch them into the air.
Blasting It Out of Their Hands: In the case of Desolate Hands, he uses daggers to disarm his enemies from a distance with its range doubled with Elude.
Blow You Away: Baruuk's Desert Wind is so powerful, each punch or kick creates a blast of air that allows him to damage enemies in an area much wider than melee range.
Critical Hit Class: Baruuk's Exalted Weapon boasts a whopping 50% crit chance, allowing him to crit on every hit should True Steel be equipped and reaching up to 160% crit chance with a maxed Sacrificial Steel. Its power is mitigated by both his Restraint meter and its low status chance, the latter of which can be remedied with the Reactive Storm augment.
Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The Reactive Storm augment greatly ups Desert Wind's status chance and allows it to automatically switch to the damage type most effective against the enemy Baruuk is currently clobbering.
Expy: The Devs have compared him to John Wick, being a reluctant but still extremely lethal warrior.
Forced Sleep: His second ability Lull creates an AOE that will slow and put enemies who enter it to sleep.
Immune to Bullets: Elude makes him intangible to projectiles as long as he doesn't attack.
Intangibility: While using Elude attacks coming at Baruuk from the front will phase through him negating the damage. But only if Baruuk is not attacking. Upping his range enough will give him full 360-degree coverage, giving him Nigh-Invulnerability to nearly every attack in the game.
Martial Pacifist: Baruuk is unique among the Warframes in that he dislikes and wishes to avoid violence with most of his kit composed of non-damaging abilities, but will still fight and kill like any other.
Punched Across the Room: Baruuk's unique Exalted Weapon, Desert Wind, comes with numerous forced Impact procs as well as powerful waves that blow his victims across the room.
Rage Breaking Point: As a gameplay mechanic. Baruuk possesses a unique resource called Restraint representing his suppressed fury and how close he is to unleashing it. The lower it is the longer his ultimate ability Serene Storm can remain active.
Sarashi: The cloths wrapped around his lower torso strongly resemble one.
Spin Attack: Desert Wind' dash attack has Baruuk spin on the ground while rushing forward, knocking enemies into the air.
Storm of Blades: Desolate Hands summons a bevy of daggers to fly at enemies, destroying their weapons.
Willfully Weak: Baruuk is just as deadly as any other Warframe, but chooses to act with restraint. His ultimate ability Serene Storm shows just how powerful he truly is, as he lays waste to the enemy with nothing but his fists.
You Will Not Evade Me: While using Serene Storm guard-attacks will pull enemies towards him.

Caliban

"A twisted hybrid of Warframe and Sentient, he is raised in the wreckage of the Old War. This is Caliban, the survivor, the adaptive."
"Once a weapon consigned by Erra after the Old War, Caliban is yours to sow vengeance in the New."

— The Lotus

Caliban is a Sentient-hybridized warframe whose amalgamation completed in Update 31, The New War, in December 2021. Caliban wields both the Sentient's adaptive technology and the Tenno's Void-based powers in tandem to destroy his enemies and protect his allies.

Adaptive Ability: Just like his Sentient progenitors, Caliban is capable of adapting to any damage inflicted upon him as a passive ability, and shares this resistance with allies in affinity range of him.
- His minions can also adapt to damage like enemy Sentients, making them extremely durable.
Ambiguously Evil: He's a Sentient Warframe made by Erra, so logically it would be created to oppose the Orokin and the Tenno themselves, but as of currently, it is unknown what actions Caliban took for sure, or even if he was deployed against the Tenno before the Sentients' defeat in the Old War.
Body Horror: Not only does Caliban look like he was made from a Sentient and Tenno who were cut in half and had the different halves sewn together, but Caliban's left half (the Sentient one) has limb and body designs that would not be comfortable for any organism on Earth.
Breaking Old Trends:
- Caliban is the first Warframe who explicitly was not designed to protect and serve the Orokin, with his description stating he was designed by Erra during the Old War.
- Unlike prior Warframes acquired from bounties, Caliban's blueprint can be purchased directly via the market.
Ditto Fighter: All of his abilities are copies of abilities available to various Sentient enemies: Razor Gyre is based on the Conculysts' Spin Attack, Sentient Wrath is the Eidolons' Shockwave Stomp, Lethal Progeny copies various Enemy Summoners like Oculysts and Summulysts, and Fusion Strike is the Ropalolyst's Wave-Motion Gun. This is on top of his Adaptive Ability passive common among Sentient fighters.
Eyeless Face: A notable exception — while his base helmet plays this trope straight, his Cranion alternate helment has visible eyes on it.
Fashionable Asymmetry: Caliban's right half is explicitly Tenno while his left half has a Sentient aesthetic.
Frankenstein's Monster: To a greater extent than Xaku - Caliban looks as if someone (Erra, to be specific) took the right half of a Warframe, stitched it to the left half of a Sentient, and animated the resulting body.
Gameplay and Story Segregation: As a Warframe that has been hybridized to contain Sentient parts, Caliban should be susceptible to void damage, but he is not any weaker to it than any other Warframe.
Good Counterpart: To the Archons — while the Archons are monstrous servants of Erra who were created by combining Warframes and Sentients in a very slap-dash manner and look like Amalgams, Caliban is a Tenno controlled entity who has a more gradual fusion of Warframe and Sentient parts and has less Body Horror in his design. Additionally, while the Archons have power sets mostly geared toward fighting on their own, Caliban has skills that can support others.
Hybrid Power: In addition to all of the benefits of being a Sentient construct, he has the Void-based powers of the Tenno and lacks the Sentients' Abnormal Allergy to the Void.
Meaningful Name: Caliban is named after a monster from The Tempest, who is portrayed as half human and half monster.
The Minion Master: Caliban's third ability, Lethal Progeny, allows him to summon a trio of Conculysts who distract and attack enemies, and restore Caliban's shields while active.
Sinister Scythe: His signature weapon is Venato, a scythe made with the severed limb of an Eidolon.
Super Prototype: It's implied that Caliban was created before the Archons, and he definitely is superior to them, due to, among other things, actually having shields, being able to use his minions for tasks beyond damage, and retaining the Adaptive Ability that all Sentients possess.
Token Good Teammate: While his allegiance during The Old War is unknown, Caliban can certainly be called this in comparison to his Archon successors. The Conculysts that heed Caliban's call could also fall into this.
Torso with a View: Much like the Sentient drone enemies, Caliban is vertically bisected from the neck down to fit the aesthetic.

Chroma

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/b0036c241b697a95fb393ffca7dbad25.png

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Chroma, an ancient legend, master of the elements.
When all the land is in ruins, Tenno, only Chroma will remain.

— The Lotus

Chroma, a dragon-themed Warframe awakened with Update 16.0 in 2015, has the unique trait of being able to determine the starting elemental attribute of his abilities by changing his emissive color. His skillset encourages in-your-face combat, converting any damage taken into self buffs and using various elemental boosts to help nearby allies.

Chroma Prime first spread his wings with Update 23.9 in 2018.

Adaptive Armor: Scorn behaves in a variation. Taking Shield damage will significantly improve Chroma's total armor, so long as the Shields are up to take a hit, rendering him extremely resilient once his Shields are down and before Fury kicks in.
Ascended Fanon: The description for the effect of Vex Armor was lifted verbatim from a popular dragon-based fan concept. In fact, the first hint the developers gave toward Chroma's theme and identity was that it was based on a fan request.
Attack Drone: His dragon-like "pelt" can be shed with the Effigy ability, assisting Chroma by attacking enemies independently, at the cost of Chroma having reduced armor.
Breath Weapon: Spectral Scream is Chroma's personal version, while his Effigy also maintains its own.
Color-Coded Elements: The player's input emissive color will change the starting elemental attribute of his Spectral Scream and Effigy, as well as the effects of his Elemental Ward. Lately however, he's gained the ability to switch them on the fly in the same manner Vauban or Ivara would for their mines and arrows respectively.
- Red gives Chroma fire breath, and when used in Elemental Ward, gives allies additional health and deals extra damage to enemies.
- Green gives Chroma poison breath, and when used in Elemental Ward, boosts allies' reload speed and holster rate and has a chance to poison enemies.
- Blue gives Chroma lightning breath, and when used in Elemental Ward, gives allies additional shields and powers attacks with each hit taken.
- White gives Chroma ice breath, and when used in Elemental Ward, provides additional armor and deflects bullets.
Critical Status Buff: Once Fury, a component of Vex Armor, has reached its maximum^note, Chroma can do more damage with his weapons than most of the other Warframes can boost theirs in the game.
Death or Glory Attack: Vex Armor is designed in such a way that taking damage is the only legitimate way to receive its effects. The ability will increase Chroma's armour and weapon damage when he receives damage to his shields and health, respectively. However, Chroma is allowed to heal himself while it's active and still retain its effects.
Detachment Combat: Chroma's ultimate, Effigy, prompts his pelt to become alive and attack enemies independently with elemental powers.
Drone Deployer: In Chroma's case, his pelt is the drone; when shed, it attacks enemies independently.
Difficult, but Awesome: Chroma receives a reputation of being a niche tank that blends through the environment with elemental coloring. Older, more experienced players see him as the "Veterans' Rhino", due to his versatility as a Tank-DPS kit that requires taking hits in order to do serious damage. His abilities provide players with the option of choosing ability builds over survival builds, letting Chroma roam around with the heaviest armor in his kit while dealing high damage.
Dragon Knight: His Prime version is likely a homage to Final Fantasy Dragoons.
Dual Mode Unit: In addition to the changing effects of his Elemental Ward, his ultimate can designate what mode he is: Activating Effigy sacrifices a large amount of his armor for a small movement speed buff, and without Effigy, he's closer to Stone Wall, giving a stronger benefit to his Vex Armor.
Meaningful Name:
- Chroma means "Color" in Greek, which refers to his emissive color-changing ability.
- His "Drac" alternate helmet is derived from the Latin Draco, meaning Dragon.
Mechanically Unusual Class: Chroma's emissive color affects the element and effects of his powers.
Mix-and-Match Man: Chroma's blueprints require parts from Frost, Ember, Saryn, and Volt, which explains where his varied elemental arsenal and his ability to shed part of himself came from.
Money Multiplier: Enemies killed by Effigy have a chance of dropping more credits.
Nemean Skinning: The pelt that his Effigy is made of.
Not the Intended Use: The damaging properties of Elemental Ward and Spectral Scream extends even to destructible items like explosive barrels, loot chests, and even resource deposits; mod Chroma for max. range and duration and pair him with a companion that can attract items, and you effectively have a walking vacuum cleaner so long as Chroma has the energy to maintain the combo of both Spectral Scream and Elemental Ward.
Power Gives You Wings: When using Effigy, Chroma's pelt gains elemental wings that let it hover in the air, but Chroma himself does not. Outside of that, he also gains them temporarily whenever he does a Double Jump; fittingly enough, he's also the only Warframe that can Bullet Jump twice in a row, and gets an extra step to his Double Jump, allowing him to Triple Jump!
Red Is Heroic: His color scheme is predominately red, and he's a playable Warframe.
The Turret Master: When using Effigy, the pelt simply stays in the place the ability was cast attacking anyone that gets close, which makes Chroma a very good choice on Defense missions. Giving him the Guided Effigy Augment however, allows him to command the pelt to move, dealing damage to anyone in the way while also repositioning it to defend another location.
Shed Armor, Gain Speed: Effigy sacrifices Chroma's armor for the duration of the effect, making his health more vulnerable, but also making him faster.
Status Buff: Elemental Ward gives Chroma a party-buffing aura, with its benefits changing based on the user's elemental attunement. Vex Armor increases Chroma's survivability and damage as he receives damage from enemies.
Squishy Wizard: Inverted. Chroma dishes out elemental damage, but he's a Mighty Glacier with very high base armor, and two of his four abilities are geared towards tanking damage. Even with Effigy active, Chroma's armor is merely average.
Wreathed in Flames: Elemental Ward allows this, as well as ice, lightning and poison variants.

Citrine

Citrine is a geode-themed Warframe who once sacrificed herself to preserve her masters on Deimos. Her abilities focus mainly on support, sharing potent buffs and spreading status effects while keeping allies' health topped off.

Citrine was unearthed in Update 32.3, Citrine's Last Wish, in February 15, 2023.

Ambiguously Bi: While Belric and Rania are confirmed to have been husband and wife, Citrine is a little bit more ambiguous, as while it is undeniably the warframe had a deep love of some sort towards the two to sacrifice herself to ensure they could have some sort of peace in death. While it's never explicit, the fact that her story came out on Valentine's Day implies romantic feelings of some sort.
Attack Its Weak Point: Crystallize causes a large crystal to protrude from affected enemies. Shooting that crystal guarantees a red Critical Hit.
The Blank: Most of the Warframes don't really have traditional faces, but Citrine goes even further by seemingly having her face cut off, exposing the crystal structure within.
Foil To Dagath. Both are Ambiguously Bi The Faceless frames that were ultimately put with a couple of lovers. Dagath however, was treated like a pet and never really an equal, and the Corphel and Irilia discarded her as soon as the main draw to her was no longer there and tried to have her killed only to be killed in revenge, while Citrine was loyal and presumably loved by Belric and Rania enough to the point she sacrificed her body to ensure they wouldn't be mutated by the bio bomb about to detonate. Dagath's abilities revolve around death and disease, spreading viral to whomever she fights. Citrine is about supporting others and protecting them, enabling teammates to do more damage or ensuring they take less damage. They even have opposite passives, Dagath picks up energy and health orbs and amplifies it for herself, Citrine heals herself and others whenever she picks up a health orb.
Gemstone Assault: Citrine's abilities all revolve around crystal manipulation. Fractured Blast sends out crystal shards that stagger and lacerate enemies, Preserving Shell gives allies a defensive coat of crystal that reduces damage, Prismatic Gem summons a crystal that fires lasers at enemies, and Crystallize sends out a fractal crystalline wave that seeks out enemies and causes a large crystalline weak spot to appear on the bodies of affected targets.
Gradual Regeneration: Her Geoluminesence passive provides a regeneration effect to herself and allies within 50 meters. While it starts at a mere 5 hit points per second, it grows with each health orb she picks up.
Heroic Sacrifice: Citrine was assigned as Belric and Rania's guardian Warframe. When a bio-bomb turned Deimos into an Infested hellscape, she decided not to flee, but instead used up the last of her energy to preserve them in crystal, allowing them to be Together in Death.
Item Amplifier: Picking up health orbs increases her Geoluminesence passive's healing rate by 0.1 points for the rest of the mission, up to a maximum of 25 points per second.
Mix-and-Match Weapon: Corufell, her signature Heavy Scythe that transforms into rifle and shoots powerful blasts of energy on heavy attacks.
Status Buff: Citrine can grant three flavors of buffs to her allies: constant health regeneration with her passive, up to 90% damage reduction with Preserving Shell, and increased status chance and status duration with Prismatic Gem.
Support Party Member: All of Citrine's abilities have a supportive element to them:
- Her passive gives Gradual Regeneration to nearby allies.
- Enemies struck by Fractured Blast have an increased chance of dropping health and energy orbs.
- Preserving Shell gives allies damage reduction.
- Prismatic Gem boosts allies' status chance and status duration.
- Crystallize petrifies enemies and causes crystalline growths to protrude from them; these growths can be shot to deal a Critical Hit.
Taken for Granite: Downplayed by her Crystallize ability, which only partially encases enemies in crystal. The result is still that they're immobilized, despite part of their body still being exposed.

Dagath

A Warframe inspired by the legend of the Headless Horseman, and the subject of an Orokin legend. Her abilities doom her enemies, dealing large amounts of damage and bringing her back from the dead.

Dagath rode into battle in the Abyss of Dagath update in October 2023.

1-Up: If Dagath dies while under the effect of Grave Spirit, she will come back to life, invulnerable for a few seconds, but the ability will also go on cooldown, preventing her from continuously recasting it to stay perpetually invincible.
Ambiguously Bi: Corphel and Irilia are always referred together, no gendered pronouns are ever given in their tale, but their (presumably, at least at first) mutual attraction with Dagath when she was a Dax implies this trope is in play.
Be Careful What You Wish For: Corphel and Irilia screwed themselves over a lot in regards to Dagath, and it always ended to their detriment. They gave her a Kaithe under the condition she didn't name it, but she did anyway and loved it more than them. They tried to kill Rakhali, but accidentally killed their lover as well. They had her revived as a Warframe, but then the taboo that came with her being a Dax disappeared and they grew tired of her very quickly. They tried to execute her via dissolution beam, but all it did was encourage her to kill them in return.
Critical Hit Class: Her Grave Spirit ability gives her increased critical damage, encouraging the use of weapons with high critical chance and damage.
The Dog Bites Back: As a Dax, Dagath had been mistreated by her Orokin "lovers", who loved her in a shallow, yet possessive way while demanding total submission from her in return. They killed her beloved Kaithe, Rakhali, out of jealousy, and later had her killed when they grew bored with the relationship, ordering her to lie down on the device that would burn a hole through her skull. Having survived this, Dagath thought of the betrayals she'd suffered at the hands of Corphel and Iliria, and returned to them that night, killing them and leaving them faceless just as they did to her.
Doomy Dooms of Doom: Doom is the name of one of her abilities. Its primary effect (other than its interactions with her other abilities) is to store damage enemies take, then deal it again after a delay, which can result in a case of You Are Already Dead.
Emergency Transformation: The Dax that became Dagath was fatally injured by her lovers' attempt at killing her beloved horse. In a bid to save her, her lovers brought her to a certain expert implied to be Ballas and had her converted into a Warframe to save her life.
The Faceless: As part of her Headless Horseman inspiration, Dagath has a big hole where her face should be. This is due to her "lovers" trying to have her put to death via a dissolution beam to the face which burned right through her skull but failed to truly kill her.
Foil To Citrine. Both are Ambiguously Bi The Faceless frames that were ultimately put with a couple of lovers. Dagath however, was treated like a pet and never really an equal, and the Corphel and Irilia discarded her as soon as the main draw to her was no longer there and tried to have her killed only to be killed in revenge, while Citrine was loyal and presumably loved by Belric and Rania enough to the point she sacrificed her body to ensure they wouldn't be mutated by the bio bomb about to detonate. Dagath's abilities revolve around death and disease, spreading viral to whomever she fights. Citrine is about supporting others and protecting them, enabling teammates to do more damage or ensuring they take less damage. They even have opposite passives, Dagath picks up energy and health orbs and amplifies it for herself, Citrine heals herself and others whenever she picks up a health orb.
Forbidden Fruit: In her backstory, she was once a Dax who was part of a polycule with two Orokin, who loved her in part due to the taboo of a lowly servant being in a relationship with higher-ranked individuals. Following her conversion into a Warframe, the relationship was no longer seen as taboo anymore, which caused them to grow bored with her.
Headless Horseman: The Dullahan is her inspiration, as she rides on a spectral horse, demanding offerings from travellers who encounter her and reflecting sins upon the guilty. While she does have a head, she's The Faceless, having a big hole straight through her skull as a result of her Orokin lovers trying to kill her when they grew tired of her.
Hellish Horse: Her steed, Rakhali, is a spectral Kaithe. It was once a normal Kaithe, but Corphel and Irilia had it killed out of jealousy when she came to love it more than them, and she later used her Warframe powers to bring it back as a ghost. Dagath can summon a whole stampede of ghostly Kaithes with Rakhali's Cavalry.
Losing Your Head: It's specifically noted in her backstory that, after becoming a Warframe, she had a creepy, doll-like face, unlike any other frame. When her lovers grew tired of her, the luster of the taboo disappearing with her "promotion" from Dax, they had her executed with a dissolution beam through the face... but it didn't take.
Meaningful Rename: Dagath wasn't her original name. In fact, she was Never Given a Name, until one night, where she encountered the Entrati Grandmother, the original Dagath. As this Warframe demanded an offering from her, and the Grandmother had nothing on hand, she instead offered her name, which means "the mirror that accuses", thus giving her a new purpose: roaming the land, reflecting sins back upon the wicked before punishing them.
Never Given a Name: As a Dax, her lovers never used her name, always calling her pet names, reflecting how they didn't see her as an equal. After her death and conversion to a Warframe, she was never named by the couple or Ballas. She remained nameless until she happened upon Dagath Entrati, who gave her name to the Warframe as the only possession she had at the time, being forever known only as Grandmother.
Number of the Beast: Dagath has 666 base health, and her signature melee weapon, the Dorrclave, does 666 damage with its slam attack.
Polyamory: In her backstory, she was once part of a polycule with two Orokin, Corphel and Iliria. The relationship was very imbalanced, with Corphel and Iliria showing very little concern for Dagath while demanding complete obedience, subservience, and dedication from her in return.
Sinister Scythe: Fitting with her creepy theme, Dagath's abilities involve scythes. Wyrd Scythes summons a swarm of scythes which orbit around Dagath. Doom also causes scythes to appear above afflicted enemies, striking them after a delay to inflict part of the damage they've taken.
Stealth Pun: Dagath's Ganceann Helmet gives her a horn which, combined with her equestrian theming, makes her look like a unicorn. In polyamory, a "unicorn" is someone (usually a woman) who gets invited to join a pre-existing couple, where they're usually regarded as the "lesser" member of the polycule, treated less as a person and more as a sex object, and often end up being discarded when the novelty wears off. This definition almost perfectly describes her backstory.

Dante

A Warframe inspired by wizards and scribes, the sagely Dante was both a weapon and a researcher. With his exalted tome in hand, his abilities craft both lethal and protective stories through the combination of different verses.

Dante's new tale began in the Dante Unbound update in March 2024.

Animal Motifs: Owls, as per his facial features. Whether or not he's an Ominous Owl is subjective, but he most certainly invokes The Owl-Knowing One.
Badass Bookworm: According to Word of God, Dante once served as scribe and historian to the Orokin Empire. In-game, it's shown he was the loyal servant of Drusus Leverian and the Entrati, a historian and a scholar family respectively. You can also find his study in-game, which was a massive personal library complete with lectern and secret passages.
Bling-Bling-BANG!: His signature weapon is the Ruvox, a pair of Power Fists with the amount of bling one would expect from an Entrati-affiliated weapon. It is also a case of Breaking Old Trends, as it is also the first signature weapon to be an Incarnon weapon.
Enemy Scan: His passive ability allows Noctua and Wordwarden to scan targets he kills, adding their weaknesses to the user's Codex. Fully-scanned enemies are then afflicted with the Chronicler's Mark, making them more vulnerable to status effects inflicted by Dante's weapons, including the Noctua.
Familiar: Has two types, thanks to Final Verse:
- Wordwarden turns his Spell Book into one, granting copies of it to nearby allies that will attack as they do.
- Pageflight conjures a parliament of spectral Paragrimms to distract and swarm enemies, making them more vulnerable to his status effects on hit.
Femme Fatalons: A gender-flipped example that keeps with his owl motif, he has two talons on his left hand that he uses for flipping through his tomes.
Gameplay and Story Segregation: Dante was capable of sane thought before his destruction and rebuilding in the hands of the Tenno, but like Kullervo before him who should also be capable of movement on his own akin to Excalibur Umbra, he becomes inert when the Operator isn't controlling him.
Gentleman and a Scholar: According to Loid, he published a number of research studies and archaeological findings before the fall of the Empire, which experts at the time refused to believe could have been written by a Warframe.
Go Mad from the Revelation: Dante's final fate, according to Drusus: he found a book in the Entrati libraries that the Indifference used in an attempt to possess Dante. Dante fought back against its influence and almost won, but allowed himself to fail and be taken by it so as to keep the eldritch knowledge of that book forever secret. Since it refused to let him die, Dante fled somewhere far among the stars.
In the Hood: His base helmet features an angular hood that flares in the back. His "Cantist" alternate helmet swaps it for something more akin to a Robe and Wizard Hat.
Magical Library: In his life, Dante owned a private study within Albrecht's labs, which you can occasionally visit during runs on the tileset. It took the form of a grandiose, two-story personal library, dotted with functional Vosphene glyphs connected to a lectern and secret passage.
Mundane Solution: Dante got around the physical inability for Warframes to speak by simply... writing his thoughts instead. The main reason he was the only Warframe to figure this out was because all of the others either had no need to or were driven completely insane.
Named After Someone Famous: His name calls to mind Dante Alighieri, the author of The Divine Comedy.
Nice Guy: Dante was never controlled by a Tenno, but somehow kept his sanity after becoming a Warframe up until his initial destruction, and was described by everyone who knew him as a well-mannered and charitable man. According to Loid, he was apparently so charismatic that he is single-handedly the reason historical records (particularly Drusus's) don't bother to differentiate between the Warframes and the Tenno in their actions.
Power Floats: Dante's unique animation sets each allow him to hover while idle and float as he moves, even Air-Dashing in lieu of rolling. His weapon idle animations also allow him to maneuver them telekinetically.
The Red Mage: Light Verse and Triumph allow him to heal allies and grant them a significant amount of Overguard to protect them. Dark Verse and Tragedy allow him to inflict bleeds on nearby enemies and detonate them for massive damage. Pageflight balances these, creating decoys that also make enemies more vulnerable to his status effects.
Spell Book: His Exalted Weapon is a Tome by the name of Noctua, which has the unique ability to equip as many Canticle and Invocation mods as you have access to. His Wordwarden ability allows him to create copies of it that will cast additional attacks independently of him.
Spooky Silent Library: His old library will occasionally generate in runs within Albrecht's laboratories. It's still in pristine condition, but it's generally not safe to linger, what with the whole problem Albrecht had with Void contamination down there. It may be stil worth examining if you hear the buzz of a Voca underneath the floorboards, though.
Squishy Wizard: Averted. While he has all the damage of a traditional Glass Cannon wizard thanks to his ability to inflict numerous Bleeds then detonate them, his Overguard-granting abilities provide him and his party exceptional defenses.
The Storyteller: One of his themes, which is fitting given that he was once a scribe and historian in the Orokin Empire.
Wizard Beard: A feature of his base helmet is a long tassel from his chin that gives this appearance.
Yin-Yang Bomb: The casting and combination of both Light Verse and Dark Verse is central to the use of his Final Verse ability.

Ember

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Ember, destructive and deadly.
Ember's presence on the battlefield is devastating. Mind the heat, Tenno.

— The Lotus

Ember is a highly specialized fire-based Warframe whose abilities focus on dishing out huge amounts of heat damage to groups of enemies.

Ember was one of the first eight Warframes to be released with the game's "Vanilla" version in 2012, and Ember Prime was ignited alongside Valkyr with Update 11.0 in 2013 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Update 17.6 in 2015.

Burn the Undead: Heat is best against the Infested, making her a living weapon against them.
Charged Attack: Fireball can be charged to increase both its damage and blast radius. Immolate can also be charged or discharged with her other abilities; at maximum "heat" however, Ember will start hemorrhaging energy.
Color-Coded Elements: While they're customizable to the player's liking, her default colors include mostly shades between amber and red-orange.
Convection, Schmonvection: Her former ultimate, World On Fire, superheated her body to the degree the ground around her cracked and melted, and everyone near her burst into flames. Of course, anything just outside the area of effect was entirely untouched, and after Update 22.12, that area got progressively smaller the longer it remained active.
- Averted with her Fire Blast skill, however, which emits a massive ring of flames to throw back enemies, while burning them and melting their armor.
Crippling Overspecialization: In past versions, Ember was absolutely devastating against Infested; everything the Infested have is either neutral or weak to fire, and the melee-centric Infested love to clump up for her splash damage to nab them all. However, the fixed damage caps on her attacks prevented her from scaling properly at higher levels, especially against other factions with armor (like Grineer) or Heat resistance (like Corpus). As a result, many players elected to ignore the damage aspect of her kit in favor of maximizing its crowd-control potential, simply using World on Fire and its augment to repeatedly stun enemies. Also, the burning status effect she afflicts enemies with initially didn't stack, meaning while at one point all of her abilities could inflict or amplify a Damage Over Time effect, they would overwrite each other so it was best to only use her strongest source of the proc. This was fixed in Update 26, The Old Blood, which gives her more utility against the Grineer by allowing her flames (and Heat based damage in general) to melt armor, whilst also allowing her Heat status effects to stack their damage and her first ability to deal extra damage to enemies already on fire.
Death from Above: Inferno drops meteors from the sky onto all enemies in Ember's line of sight, dealing Impact damage and setting them all ablaze.
Early-Installment Weirdness: Ember was originally male◊ in the closed beta.
Fanservice: Her idle animation for the noble stance◊.
Fireballs: Her first skill, natch.
Flaming Hair: Her Prime helmet invokes this, being the first helmet to utilize elemental particle effects.
Flaming Meteor: Her updated fourth ability, Inferno, summons flaming meteors on everyone in a fairly substantial radius, does a big chunk of heat based damage, inflicts the burning status effect, and boosts the charge rate of her Immolation flame armor. This includes meteors falling on people who are indoors, or underwater.
Hartman Hips: Her leg armor is designed after jodhpurs, giving this impression, but they're also hollow and reveal the standard-width legs beneath.
Heal It With Fire: Both of Fire Blast's augments specialize in recovery, allowing Ember to cauterize her wounds for each enemy hit or cleanse toxic status effects from allies.
Kill It with Fire: The most effective Warframe for dispatching the space zombie Infested.
Playing with Fire: A fire-based Warframe with a completely fire-based skillset.
Pyromaniac: Her only skill that can't set enemies on fire outright, instead sets her on fire... to improve the strength of the flames she throws. No other Warframe has as much dedication to their element.
Squishy Wizard: Zig-zagged. Initially Ember had the Overheat ability, which was one of the first reliable forms of damage mitigation in the game and made her one of the tankiest Warframes; the skill made her effective at rescuing teammates from a horde of Infested, as it gave her immunity to Toxin Ancients while setting nearby enemies^note on fire. After Update 11.5, Overheat was removed to make way for a new debuff, Accelerant, intended to make her more in line with this by trading mitigation for increased Heat damage and crowd-control effectiveness. Several reworks and armor bumps later, Update 26.0 once again defied this by introducing her Immolate skill, which returned the mitigation of Overheat while integrating the damage boost from Accelerant.
Status Effects: Burn. Every single one of her skills either inflicts it or facilitates it.
Technicolor Fire: Customizing her energy color can change her flames from red to blue to hot pink to pitch black.
Useless Useful Skill: Fire Fright, the former augment to Fire Blast, which increased the status chance of its lingering ring of flames to guarantee a Heat proc on every tick. On paper, the augment should have caused enemies to suffer permanent Stun Lock when attempting to enter the ring, which would have made it a useful obstruction to keep them away from defense objectives. In practice, even with 100% status chance, many enemies can ignore the Heat status effect's initial stun with the right attack animations, and due to reaction delays and the narrow damage area of Fire Blast's ring, even those vulnerable could retain enough momentum from simply sprinting to slide into the safe area before coming to a stop. What's more, the enemy AI seemed to be programmed to path around the ring of flames whenever they had the option, which made it pointless in open areas. For the final nails in the coffin, Fire Blast knocks back enemies in a wide radius on-cast (so even if you had an enemy caught in the ring, you would push them out on successive casts) and aside from refreshing the stun, there was no advantage to stacking Heat procs until after Fire Fright was removed (unlike Poison or Bleed status effects, whose effects would multiply).
Wreathed in Flames: Immolate sets her on fire, growing in intensity with its heat level.

Equinox

^{Click to see Day form.}

^{Click to see Night form.}

^{Click to see Prime form.}

^{Click to see Prime Day form.}

^{Click to see Prime Night form.}

This is Equinox, a deadly duality.
A true Tenno must master the divide between night and day. Do you have what it takes?

— The Lotus

Equinox, dawning with Update 17.0 in 2015, is the first Warframe able to switch between two modes, a day mode and a night mode. Equinox's Yin & Yang theme was suggested by the Design Council, like Nova before.

Equinox Prime came to bring balance with Update 24.5.8 in 2019.

Battle Ballgown: Equinox Prime's Night Form is very elegant.
Combat Medic: Although each form offers more emphasis on "Combat" or "Medic", the Night Form's Mend has some overlap in healing players based on the damage the effect has stored.
Chunky Salsa Rule: Equinox's Maim invokes this trope, en masse, forcing enemies around her to slowly bleed until their deaths, then their bodies are sequentially blown up to pieces, due to the main slash damage forcing limbs to split apart at terrifying speed.
Dark Is Not Evil: While Equinox's Night Form is black with white accents, it's part of the duality theme, and it focuses on the White Mage route.
Dual Mode Unit: Able to swap between two power sets using Metamorphosis, granting decaying stat buffs upon doing so. Mastering Equinox entails knowing how to balance the benefits of both forms:
- Night Form: Grants Equinox mostly supportive abilities, with a boost to armor.
- Day Form: Grants Equinox mostly damage-increasing abilities, with a boost to personal movement speed and damage.
Fake Longevity: On paper, obtaining Equinox is fairly standard — kill a boss, get parts and craft, with the only real gate being the Archwing prerequisite to explore Uranus. Of course, Equinox has a unique twist in that you must craft two Warframes (one for each form) and combine them; this entails killing the boss enough times for 8 different parts including blueprints, where most players have trouble getting 3 different ones; it is not unheard of for players to run the mission several dozen times for the final piece. Thankfully, her Prime version averts this, requiring the standard number of parts.
Fashionable Asymmetry: In Day or Night Form, the only asymmetric piece of her design is the "split" helmet. In the combined form, both halves flip between opposing white and black. This isn't quite as apparent with her alternative skins and cosmetics.
Forced Sleep: Rest puts enemies near her target to sleep for a duration, immobilizing them, causing them to forget any Tenno they've seen, and potentially opening them to stealth finishers. This effect can be broken if the target receives too much damage, however.
Herd-Hitting Attack: Maim slowly bleeds nearby enemies to death with slash procs. When enemies within her effective radius are killed, the damage dealt to them is stored. Upon deactivating the ability, everyone in range range will be struck with a violent burst of force equal to the stored damage. This, combined with a handful of speedily killing weapons, makes Equinox one of the fastest room clearers in the game and one of the few Warframes who can keep up with the enemy spawn rate in Elite Sanctuary Onslaught.
Lady of War: The cloth dangling off the arms of the Night and combined forms, with the clear skirt, gives the impression of a kimono or other formal dress gown.
Light Is Good: Equinox's Day Form is white with black accents, and serves as the offensive part of the Warframe.
Lunacy: Equinox's Night Form is more feminine-looking and deals with healing and defense buffs, reflecting how the moon is a symbol of femininity and magic.
Meaningful Name: An equinox is one of the two dates a year where the length of the day and night are equal.
- The deluxe Antonym skin swaps the visual aspects between her two forms.
Mechanically Unusual Class: The first Warframe who breaks the strict "4 powers only" rule by literally swapping out her kit at-will. Her first power, Metamorphosis, changes her between her Day and Night forms, which have different but complementary powers in the remaining three slots.
The Power of the Sun: Equinox's Day Form is more masculine-looking and focuses on damages and speed buffs, which refers to how the sun is a symbol of masculinity and power.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: Equinox takes inspiration from "Anima and Animus" of Jungian psychology fame, two anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind that represent the feminine aspects of a man and the masculine aspects of a woman. It also helps that her base colors have red and blue accents for her day and night forms, albeit reversed.
- Day form represents the Animus or masculinity, having increased movement speed and damage output, and designed around heavy offense with abilities that increase the damage enemies will take.
- Night form represents the Anima or femininity, having increased defensive stats and healing attributes, and serves a support/medic role with debuffs in Rest and Pacify; and potent healing in Mend.
Solar and Lunar: Zig-zagged. She evokes the same symbolism and her Metamorphosis transitions her between "Day Form" and "Night Form." The powers in each form relate to either the destructive heat of daytime or the protective darkness of night.
Status Effects:
- Day Form's Maim can inflict Bleed, while Night Form's Rest puts targets to Sleep.
- Day Form's Rage can inflict a variant of Berserk: Targets gain increased speed, but receive more damage.
- Day Form's Provoke is the can alter nearby Warframes' abilities, increasing their Power Strength directly but costing Equinox energy for each ability cast while active.
Useless Useful Skill: Due to her design including seven abilities, some of them are toned down to bring her in line with other frames.
- Metamorphosis provides a temporary stat buff to Equinox whenever it is cast, increasing either her defense or her speed; supposedly this is to justify swapping often, in order to maintain the buff. However, the actual buffs provided are quite weak (as justification for only requiring 25 energy) and diminish over time. The only reason to really use it is to switch between Day and Night forms, but most players tend to focus on one form's abilities over another (particularly Rest and Maim).
- Pacify protects the Tenno by debuffing enemies within a certain range of Equinox, making it one of the least effective forms of mitigation in the game; it has little use against ranged factions (particularly as its effects diminish with range by up to half), it encourages her to stay near her enemies rather than her allies (in direct contrast to Mend), and some enemies are simply immune to debuffs like it. It also consumes energy every second for every enemy affected at once (with the same cost for enemies who are only partially affected), which can quickly burn out an Equinox's energy supply owing to the hordes of enemies thrown at her.
- Mend, like its counterpart, needs to be charged by killing nearby enemies in order to use it, which encourages players to carry a charge as long as necessary. Unlike its counterpart, Mend provides no other benefits besides the burst of radial healing when it is deactivated; the problem therein is that it can very easily overheal players by the order of several magnitudes, providing little incentive to keep it up for long periods.
Weapon-Based Characterization: Equinox Prime is given the Stradavar Prime, a violin styled rifle that can fire both semi and full auto, and the Tipedo Prime, a double-ended glaive. Both embody the dual-nature style of Equinox in different ways.
Yin-Yang Bomb: Visually invokes the taijitu in her combined form, with the different forms focusing on one aspect over the other. This was, of course, the theme that was voted on for her.
- Day Mode reflects the Yang, having a white body, black accent marks, and a sky blue gradient as its base color scheme. Day Form wears masculine armor (with broad shoulders and a codpiece), and has powers heavily focused on working actively (movement speed and damage-dealing), including Rage and Provoke.
- Night Mode reflects the Yin, having a dark body, white accent marks, and an ecliptic red gradient as its base color scheme. Night Form wears a feminine garb (with a slight build and a cloth robe including a full skirt), and has powers associated with passivity (personal defense and party support), including Rest and Pacify.

Excalibur

^{Click to see Prime form.}

"[...] We took the twisted few that had returned from that place. We built a frame around them, a conduit of their affliction. Gave them the weapons of the old ways. Gun and blade. A new warrior, a new code was born. These rejects, these Tenno, became our saviors. Warrior-Gods cast in steel and fury striking our enemies in a way they could never comprehend.
Excalibur was the first."

— Orokin 'Warframe' Archives

One of the three starting Warframes, Excalibur has a balanced set of abilities. His damaging Dash Attack, blinding crowd control, ethereal longsword, and high damage remain viable at most stages of play while his stats give him the perfect mix of mobility and durability to ease a new player into the game.

Excalibur was one of the first eight Warframes to be released with the game's "Vanilla" version in 2012, and Excalibur Prime was exclusively unsheathed with Update 5.0 in 2012 to players who bought at least a "Hunter"-tier Founders' Pack. It's unlikely that Excalibur Prime will ever see a public release.

For information on Excalibur Umbra, see here.

An Arm and a Leg: "The Profit" Trailer instantly becomes a Downer Beginning when a modified Excalibur gets his limbs sliced off in one of Alad's transactions before Mag is threatened with an identical fate.
Armor-Piercing Attack: The Sword Beams of Exalted Blade all have the "Punch-Through" characteristic. This means that it doesn't matter what you put in front of it. Whether it's a deployable cover, a physical shield, or another enemy in front: if it has HP and is not standing behind permanent terrain, it's going to get hit. The only things that can stop these beams are sufficiently thick permanent terrain, projectile nullification fields (like those of Arctic Eximus and Frost), and the attacks' own range limit.
Blinded by the Light: Radial Blind causes a reflection from off of his sword that stuns and temporarily blinds nearby enemies. Used against a fellow player, their screen and UI will completely turn white, preventing them from seeing where they are or the state of their health and ammo. All slide attacks with Exalted Blade will perform a shorter version and less energy-intensive version of this with decreased range.
Cool Sword: His Exalted Blade is a sword made of pure energy that boasts the highest raw damage of any melee weapon in the game, only tied by Wukong's Iron Staff, Valkyr's Valkyr Talons, and Baruuk's Desert Wind. It shoots Sword Beams with every swing that punch through all foes in their path, can achieve 100% status chance when used with the Chromatic Blade augment, and can stun all nearby enemies with a mini version of Radial Blind while using a slide attack.
Crutch Character: Excalibur is meant to be used by new players. All his abilities are easy to use but hard to master at higher levels, with each capable of dealing against typical instances.
Dash Attack: His first ability (and most commonly used) is a charge across the room with his blade drawn, slicing all in his path. With perfect aim, he can wipe the floor of a line of enemies without spamming Slash Dash.
Distressed Dude: In the "The Call" trailer, Captain Vor and his squad of Grineer release Excalibur from his long sleep, leaving the Warframe incredibly weakened and vulnerable to capture. Ash, Nyx, and Frost arrive and protect him until Excalibur is strong enough to fight on his own.
Elemental Weapon: With the Chromatic Blade mod, Excalibur's Exalted Blade gains extra status and can take on one of the game's four singular elements, based your chosen energy color.
Herd-Hitting Attack: Exalted Blade's Sword Beams will pass through and slice apart all enemies in range. This makes it ideal for fighting in chokepoints and hallways, as the tightly huddled enemies will all but cut to ribbons as they can't scatter enough to dodge the attacks.
Heroes Prefer Swords: Excalibur favours most sword types given to him, which ties in with his passive wherein if he does carry one, it gets damage and speed buffs. This doesn't apply to heavy blades and Odachi-sized katanas (known in-game as two-handed nikanas), for whatever reason.
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Enemies on the receiving end of Radial Javelin.
In a Single Bound: Excalibur originally possessed an ability called Super Jump, which did exactly what you'd expect. This was removed during his first rework to make room for Exalted Blade since it had always felt somewhat out of place and was about to be made redundant by the impending release of Parkour 2.0.
Jack of All Stats: Intended as this, being the most beginner-friendly Warframe and poster-child of the game. His abilities are designed to emphasize his mobility, adding on decent crowd control, fair damage output, the best effective health of the starter Warframes and even stealth potential.
Laser Blade: All of his powers involve summoning one or more energy swords for various purposes.
Laser-Guided Karma: The giver of this trope in the "The Call" trailer; when Captain Vor tries to capture him, Excalibur is the one to inflict the final blow after his Warframe buddies save him from the Grineer.
Lightning Bruiser: Exalted Blade turns him into one. A powerful melee weapon in the game, with nearly double the base damage of the strongest heavy melee (before Power Strength, which can up to triple that), the ability to copy your melee weapon's equipped mods, and higher speed to boot. The low upkeep of the ability is offset by it locking you out of firearms for the duration, but the wide, long-ranged Sword Beam attacks can make up for that. To top it off, the ability can enhance his Slash Dash, benefits from the finisher openings created by his Radial Blind, and passively blocks any bullets or melee attacks from the front when he's not attacking.
Master Swordsman: His passive gives him a bonus to damage and attack speed with all swords (and other sword-like weapons). While he does not have an official weapon, the trailers indicate he prefers to use the Skana — not only is Excalibur almost guranteed to use the blade if he appears (alive and fighting) in a trailer, but his Exalted Blade resembles a Skana, while his prime version's blade looks like a Skana Prime.
Mythology Gag: Excalibur is visually identical to the armor acquired late into darkSector. Hayden Tenno's armor from that game was added as a skin for Excalibur available for purchase for one week following Warframe's first anniversary in beta. It made reappearances around a few more anniversaries before finally becoming a permanent store offer in 2015.
Palette Swap: He has the unceremonious distinction to have no differences in his appearance between his Prime self and his modernized self beyond a chance in helmet, something shared with Frost Prime. Unlike Frost however, a variant of Excalibur called "Umbra" exists and looks quite different than his counterparts.
Pure Energy: Exalted Blade is described as a weapon made of "pure light".
Series Mascot: The first Warframe ever presented in the game, with every particular instance Warframe is presented, he is almost always first in line.
Skill Gate Characters: Excalibur is easy to pick up and play, but harder to take into high-level content. He has no natural survivability tools aside from the stun provided by Radial Blind, so diving into enemy lines expecting to cut everything ribbons will just get you killed in Sorties or long Endless missions. But with proper positioning, situational awareness, and micromanagement, he can tear through everything from Mooks to some bosses with ease.
Stab the Sky: The cast animation for Radial Blind, reflecting sunbeams off the weapon.
Status Effects: Radial Blind casts a blinding effect on enemies nearby, plus leaving the affected targets open for a Stealth Critical. With an augment mod, Radiant Finish, the bonus damage granted from this state is jacked up immensely.
Starter Equipment: One of three possible starter Warframes, with his straightforward, balanced abilities making him easy to pick up for new players.
Storm of Blades: His third ability, Radial Javelin, in which Excalibur does a Sword Plant and multiple blades shoot from it to impale his enemies.
Sword Beam: Waves of sword strikes are formed when striking with Excalibur's Exalted Blade.
Temporary Online Content: Excalibur Prime, alongside the Lato Prime and Skana Prime, are the only prime items that will never be made publically available, as they were rewards for backing the game during its initial start. In the Chinese version, this is Excalibur Umbra Prime instead. Eventually, Excalibur Umbra would be released as a substitute, and unlocked via the main quest at that.
Weapon Specialization: While Excalibur is a Master Swordsman, his appearances in promotional material have him wielding several of the starter weapons (either the Braton or Paris as primary, the Lato or Kunai as secondary, and a Skana for melee), emphasizing the Master of All nature of Tenno and weaponry alongside his status as the "tutorial" Warframe.

Frost

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Frost, colder and deadlier than space itself.
Frost can protect or punish, the decision is yours.

— The Lotus

One of the heaviest and most durable Warframes, the ice-manipulating Frost is a team-oriented defensive powerhouse whose signature Snowglobe can completely negate all ranged damage within its radius while also slowing down enemies that wise up and stop wasting their ammo. His other skills offer a mix of defensive utility and damage.

Frost stormed in with Update 6.0 in 2012, while Frost Prime was sculpted with Update 7.10 in 2013 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Update 16.1 in 2015.

Barrier Warrior: Snow Globe puts up a spherical barrier that shuts out all incoming and outgoing projectiles inside of it while pushing away nearby enemies.
Big Damn Heroes: In "The Call", he arrives with Ash and Nyx to protect a newly-awakened Excalibur from the Grineer until he's ready to fight on his own.
Color-Coded Elements: His un-Primed default colors are primarily white and blue, reflecting his ice powers.
Crippling Overspecialization: Frost doesn't see a lot of use in most mission types. His kit excels at locking down a small portion of the map and absolutely stonewalling anything that dares to enter - which is why he's virtually useless on high-paced missions like Sabotage, Capture, Exterminate, and Spy, where all of the action will rapidly outpace him. This is also exactly why he's virtually indespensible for Defense, Mobile Defense, Excavation, and Kuva Survival missions, where his Snow Globe is often the only thing capable of keeping the objective safe from the hordes of enemies the game throws your way.
Elemental Barrier: Snow Globe is a spherical shield that prevents shots, and slows down enemies who enter. It will block all projectile-based attacks from entering, including rockets and landmine deployment. On the other hand, it also affects the weapons of fellow Tenno and doesn't affect radial or direct-targeted skills, so enemies like Grineer heavy units or the Shockwave MOA (capable of knocking Tenno out of the barrier from the outside, then entering and opening fire) become a major issue, especially on Defense missions.
Harmless Freezing: While the act of freezing an enemy solid deals damage to it. The state of being frozen solid does not incur any further damage and actually prevents the target from being affected by any other status effects.
Instant Ice: Just Add Cold!: Most of his abilities freeze enemies in place, regardless of how much moisture is in the air.
Literally Shattered Lives: Avalanche will freeze and then shatter enemies who entered Frost's kill range during the cast animation, even causing their broken shards to damage nearby enemies.
An Ice Person: All of his abilities are based around ice and dealing cold damage.
Mighty Glacier: Frost is one of the slowest frames in the game, and among them, one of the few that doesn't have any movement abilities to make up for it. However, he also has one of the best defensive toolkits. In particular, Snow Globe can be pushed to a direction where Frost and existing Snow Globe intersect, causing the globe to reappear a few meters away from its position while increasing its previous health to the new one and putting everything else in the new globe to ice. Avalanche expands Freeze's specific stunning capability into crowd control, allowing him and/or his teammates to finish them off.
Non-Indicative Name: Avalanche does not involve burying leagues of enemies with snow, despite its name.
Palette Swap: He has the unceremonious distinction to have no differences in his appearance between his Prime self and his modernized self beyond a chance in helmet, something shared with Excalibur Prime.
Skill Gate Characters: His "Snowglobe" skill is a pretty powerful tool for defending stationary objectives, and his other 3 skills are pretty straight forward to use. However, as seen under Crippling Overspecialization, his kit isn't very good for non-defensive objectives. Beyond that, Snowglobe has an annoying caveat that Tenno cannot shoot through it from the outside, which means one must enter the bubble to attack any enemies inside, and otherwise a poorly placed bubble can essentially end up helping the enemies more than allies due to this. And while his other skills are solid, they fall off in damage later in the game. And later on, other frames have skills that can be considered more useful versions of Snowglobe (such as Gara, whose Snowglobe equivalent doesn't affect allied gunfire at all or Limbo, whose ultimate makes all enemy fire from outside the created field pass harmlessly through the target and all enemies within the field take constant damage while also being subject to his other abilities such as his timestop skill), thus making Frost's usefulness fall off.
Space Is Cold: Described as such in Frost's flavor text.
Status Effects: Freeze and Avalanche both inflict the Frozen status on enemies; the former has a much longer effect, while the latter affects more targets per cast and deals more damage.
Steven Ulysses Perhero: Is named "Frost", and is an ice-themed Warframe with ice powers.
Stone Wall: His specialty. Frost compensates for his lacklustre mobility and ability damage by having one of the only defensive abilities that can cover objects. You'll very rarely ever see a Defense mission at higher levels of play that doesn't have a Frost babysitting the objectives. He also has a storied history of being integral to farming strategies, despite DE's best efforts to the contrary.
Throwing Your Sword Always Works: In "The Call", after Excalibur recovers from being forcibly awakened, Frost throws his sword at him so he could defend himself. Excalibur catches it and wipes out the rest of Captain Vor's squad with Radial Javelin.

Gara

"Of all our sleek gargoyles, our void-born masquerade, how to honor the one who volunteered willingly, knowing the truth? Whose little act of courage, twinkled like a petty Ayatan, before our golden indifference? And Nihil cried: "Glass her, for her presumption!" Until the arches rang with laughter. So be it. I shall encase you in crystal most fine. That the purity of your stigmatization might shard the sunlight itself. The unbroken. Gara."

— Ballas, Warframe: Gara Prime

A glass-based Warframe who crystallized with Update 22.0 in 2017. Gara's kit is well rounded in offense and defense with her abilities causing buffs and debuffs as well as crowd control abilities that draw damage and absorb health and shields to empower her defensive perimeter.

Her blueprint drops from the quest "Saya's Vigil" in the Ostron colony of Cetus, while blueprints for her assorted parts are rewards from Ostron bounties.

Gara Prime has shined as of May 25, 2021.

Ambiguously Gay: The original Gara was hinted to be in a relationship with the Unum, a female intelligence that resides in the tower in Cetus. While the Unum is referred to as "friend" in one entry, she is also referred to as the one Gara "loved most" in another entry. Then there's the fact that Gara refused to abandon the Unum when Lotus and the rest of the Tenno abandoned Unum, Gara refused and would eventually sacrifice herself for her.
Barrier Warrior: Most of her kit is dedicated to personal or group defense. Mass Vitrify allows her to shape an expanding wall of molten glass around her, which hardens at her desired area in order to create a physical obstacle for enemies. However, the wall only covers things around her, and is open overhead, allowing flying enemies to shoot down into the circle.
Blinded by the Light: While standing in a brightly lit area, her passive grants her a chance to activate a miniature version of Excalibur's Radial Blind.
Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Her idle animations are heavily influenced by rap music. Notably the standard animation for her noble set has her dust dirt off her shoulders.
Distaff Counterpart:
- Her armor design and color theme scream Rhino, of all things. While contrasting Rhino's "heavy smasher" theme with Gara's own "light slasher" composition, she is more affiliated to crowd control than providing direct support like Rhino's Roar or Stomp.
- Meanwhile, many of her abilities echo Frost, particularly as her ultimate Mass Vitrify is a mixture between Snow Globe and Avalanche, even sharing the same interaction with her Shattered Lash as Snow Globe does with Freeze.
Dramatic Shattering: All of her abilities.
- Splinter Storm shatters the glass attachments on her armor, causing it to orbit around her or allowing her to attach the cloud of shards to an ally or enemy.
- Spectrorage causes all summoned mirrors to detonate once enough of them are destroyed.
- Using Shattered Lash on the wall created by Mass Vitrify will unleash a radial blast of glass shards.
Exact Words: The story behind her creation: when a woman asked Ballas to turn her into a Warframe, Nihil demanded that she be "glassed". Glassing refers to turning someone into a Cephalon, but Ballas decided to interpret this literally and made her into a glass-based Warframe.
Glass Cannon: Ironically subverted thanks to Splinter Storm, which can easily become an "Instant Death" Radius along with giving her up to 90% damage resistance.
Glass Weapon: Her specialty is creating these. Shattered Lash allows her to swing a glass sword (which inherits melee damage mods much like Atlas' Landslide or Excalibur's Exalted Blade), or fire it to impale foes. Her signature weapons released alongside her include a glass hammer, glass throwing knives and a shotgun that fires explosive glass slugs.
Harmless Freezing: A variation. Despite covering enemies in molten glass during Mass Vitrify, they receive no damage from this and are instead slowly "frozen" as the glass hardens over them. At worst, they're debuffed to suffer greater damage from attacks.
Heroic Sacrifice: The original Gara died in a Self-Destructive Charge defending the Unum's tower at Cetus from the massive Sentient that became the Eidolons. It was a Mutual Kill, as that Gara was carrying a bomb that shattered the Sentient's core.
- As Ballas himself mentions, Gara became a Warframe willingly, knowing everything that entailed.
Immune to Flinching: Mass Vitrify covers Gara in a glass shell that prevents incoming damage or status effects so long as she's channeling the ring.
Lightning Bruiser: She has the same running speed as Nezha, can give herself and allies 90% damage reduction with Splinter Storm, and can put out massive damage across a wide area with judicious use of Mass Vitrify and Shattered Lash.
Magikarp Power: Splinter Storm does little damage initially, but grows in power every time Gara shatters the wall produced by Mass Vitrify with Shattered Lash. Gara can potentially be doing millions of damage per second to all foes around her if she keeps this up long enough.
Meaningful Name: Her name is derived from ガラス (garasu), the rōmaji for "Glass".
The Mirror Shows Your True Self: Flavor text for the Spectrorage attack claims that affected enemies are shown visions of their true selves, causing them to attack in rage and self-denial.
Orbiting Particle Shield: Splinter Storm can cause glass shards to orbit Gara or one of her targets. When used on herself or an ally, it will grant mitigation to the target while damaging and pushing away nearby enemies. When used on an enemy, it continues to deal damage (even to the affected target) and push enemies, while also increasing the target's damage taken.
The Power of Glass: As the "Glass Warrior," Gara is a manipulator of glass who sunders her foes with adamantine shards, reflects enemy attacks through enchanted mirrors, and reshapes the landscape with molten crystal.
Prop Recycling: Gara's Splinter Storm bears many striking similarities in effect to the Dummied Out Overheat ability previously available to Ember, with the exception that it can be cast on allies or enemies.
Rage Against the Reflection: The flavor text of Spectrorage claims that affected enemies are compelled to attack "visions of their true selves" shown in the mirrors.
Taking You with Me: The original Gara allowed a Sentient to devour her so she could blow it up from within, using a special bomb designed by the Unum.

Garuda

This is Garuda, the gore queen. Cleansed by the blood of her enemies, she draws strength from vulnerability.
When you understand the nature of Garuda, you'll know what she's capable of.

— The Lotus

A blood-themed Warframe who slashed her way in with Update 24, Fortuna in 2018. Garuda's versatile kit can both dish out huge amounts of damage and support allies with healing.
Her blueprint drops from the quest "Vox Solaris" in the Solaris colony of Fortuna, while blueprints for her assorted parts are rewards from Orb Vallis bounties.

Her Prime variant has been taking offerings since March 28, 2022.

Ability Mixing: Seeking Talons leaves enemies susceptible to bleeding, giving every hit a chance (guaranteed with enough strength) to inflict a Damage Over Time effect whose damage is based on the strength of the hit. When charged, Dread Mirror inflicts a single massive hit of Impact damage in a large Area of Effect. Launching Dread Mirror onto a group of enemies marked by Seeking Talons will result in them taking a massive amount of armor-ignoring damage over time a second later.
Animal Motif: Kite birds, referencing the bird the Hindu Garuda's form was based off. Though given the fact that she has access to Blood Altar, she also has hints of shrikes as well.
Blood Bath: Blood Altar has Garuda impale an enemy, causing their blood to spill out and heal nearby allies.
Bloody Murder: Her abilities are all about goring the enemy and using their blood to obliterate them.
Blood-Splattered Warrior: Despite the gratuitous amounts of blood the Tenno produce while using bladed and piercing weapons, Garuda is the only Warframe who can actually be visually splattered with blood as part of her gore theme. As she slaughters her foes, she draws power from the blood that splashes onto her, increasing her damage output.
Cast From Hitpoints: Her Bloodletting ability draws from her health to convert it to energy.
Charged Attack: Dread Mirror accumulates the damage it absorbs into the Dread Heart, which can then be fired at enemies to create a large explosion. If its damage isn't enough, Garuda can also charge it further by expending energy.
Combat Medic: On top of having enemies Impaled with Extreme Prejudice and taking them out of the fight temporarily, Blood Altar has the bonus effect of healing anyone within range of the impaled enemy. While very likely intended to keep her health reserves topped up for her to use Bloodletting, it still allows Garuda to play this role in her team.
Composite Character: Has many similarities to Valkyr, while her connection to Fortuna seems to be taken from the original plans for Khora.
Critical Status Buff: In previous versions, Garuda's passive increased her damage the lower her health was.
Damage Over Time: Fittingly for a blood-themed Warframe, Garuda can make her enemies bleed. Seeking Talons marks enemies, giving any damage taken a chance to deal a Bleed status effect, which deals armor-ignoring damage over time.
Death from Above: The attack animation for Dread Mirror has Garuda sweep down on an enemy before draining their blood.
Distaff Counterpart: With Revenant. Both Warframes have kits that involve different aspects of the vampire mythos. Revenant with the classical aspects of Dracula and Garuda with the myths surrounding Elizabeth Báthory. Ability wise, the two are opposites. Revenant is a crowd control frame with means to shrug off damage and release powerful beams of adaptive energy, while Garuda is a damaging frame with a Death-or-Glory playstyle that encourages her to inflict bleeding procs and killing her enemies herself.
Finishing Move: Dread Mirror rips the target's life force out, dealing a bit of damage normally, but instantly killing the enemy if their health is below 40%.
Foil: To Valkyr. While both Warframes are focused on decimating their foes, Valkyr plays the role of The Berserker, rushing towards her enemies and slashing them to ribbons, while Garuda's executions have some elegance to them.
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Blood Altar has Garuda impale an enemy to siphon blood to restore health while Seeking Talons has her shoot out bladed talons to kill or cause bleed procs.
Meaningful Name:
- She shares her name with the eagle-like deity depicted to serve as the Hindu god Vishnu's mount.
- Her "Bathory" alternate helmet is a reference to the infamous Countess Elizabeth Báthory, known for her Blood Baths. Garuda herself is a Blood-Splattered Warrior who bleeds her enemies to heal.
Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Lotus calls her the "gore queen" in her profile video.
Our Vampires Are Different: Like Revenant, Garuda has a kit referencing the more brutal and bloody depictions of vampires. Vampires' missing reflection on mirrors, hunger for blood, as well as Vlad Tepes III's impalements.
Storm of Blades: While channeling, Seeking Talons has metal blades swarming around her before targeting enemies in its area.
Wolverine Claws: Has four claws on each arm that curves backward. When she doesn't have a melee weapon equipped, she curves them forward to serve as one.

Gauss

^{Click to see Prime form.}

We... are not done. Our gourmet, Grendel, demands a gallant equal. Lightning to his gastric thunder. A livid energy. Meteoric as messenger of long-forgotten gods. Between these two, the unspeakable, and the inescapable, there must be no more talk of defeat. For thankless eyes shall be seared blind in the heat of his passing. Gauss.

— Ballas, Warframe: Gauss Prime

A kinetic-based Warframe who rushed in with Update 26.7, "Saint of Altra" in 2019. Gauss relies on his Kinetic Battery, which is charged by movement, to deal high damage, buff himself, and move at incredible speeds.

Gauss Prime sped into the game with update 35.0.9 in 2024.

An Ice Person: Thermal Sunder can rapidly drain kinetic energy from Gauss' surroundings to flash-freeze his enemies.
Attack Speed Buff: When Redline is active, Gauss gains increased fire rate, reload speed, casting speed, and melee attack speed, with the buffs scaling based on how full his battery is. The melee speed in particular is useful when combined with Kinetic Plating, which charges the battery when hitting enemies with melee attacks.
Badass Boast:
- In his Prime trailer, Gauss makes charades at the camera of the Corpus Tech he knows is watching, wordlessly promising to knock the Tech on his ass when he reaches him. Gauss makes good on this threat even as the terrified Corpus try to barricade themselves behind blast doors, blowing the Tech and everyone else away with a Finger Poke of Doom.
- "Gauss: Redline" is all about how proud Gauss is of his lethality and how feared he is by his enemies, the lyrics consisting of various threats screamed out to heavy drum-and-bass.
  All my enemies are living in fear!
  Stone cold killer in the atmosphere!
  Flash-freeze enemies and disappear!
  
  You'll be living in fear!
Battle Amongst the Flames: Thermal Sunder upscales Ember's discarded Fire Blast, creating a ring of flames or frost that can damage enemies while charging or discharging his battery. Casting it again will change the effect of the blast depending on what status effects enemies have: combining Heat and Cold will deal Blast damage to ragdoll enemies while breaking their armor, Cold with Cold will freeze enemies outright, and Heat with Heat will deal damage with a stacking multiplier. Running through the rings with Mach Rush will also add elemental damage to Gauss' eventual impact.
Bash Brothers: While it was stated Grendel and Gauss were close friends, the Grendel and Gauss Prime trailers shows this in action, where the two are deployed on a mission with one another, and Gauss takes the time to give Grendel a friendly acknowledgement.
Best Friend: With Grendel. Leverian even mentions in Grendel's entry how a fragment of what appears to be Gauss' helmet was found at the ruins of the Executor's estate, leading him to surmise it was Gauss lending Grendel a hand with the assault. You even see Grendel speeding by on a K-Drive at the end of Gauss's profile.
Blue Is Heroic: Is colored blue and gold and is revered as the Saint of Altra for rescuing people trapped in a mountain fortress.
Brick Joke: Long ago, Mag got a helmet dubbed the "Mag Gauss Helmet" before Gauss was even concieved. Thus, it makes only sense that Gauss gets a "Gauss Mag Helmet" in turn.
Bullet Time: When Gauss is running during Mach Rush, the world blurs around him as he moves fast enough to create sonic booms and blow away anything caught in his wake. In his Prime trailer, he shoots from his Acceltra Prime before casually running after those same rockets just so he can play around with them and redirect the rockets toward the hapless Corpus.
Cutscene Power to the Max: His Prime Access trailer shows Gauss Prime as being able to outrun the missiles from his own the Acceltra Prime and change their trajectory.
Difficult, but Awesome: Getting the most out of Thermal Sunder requires you to keep track of how much battery charge you have, ensure you have the energy to refill your battery and cast this ability twice, while remembering to keep recasting Redline. If your charge drops (for example, due to taking damage with Kinetic Plating on) if Redline runs out, or if you lack the energy to double-cast it, then its effectiveness will be greatly diminished. But when all the conditions are met, this ability can armor-strip a large crowd of enemies and deal huge amounts of damage.
Dynamic Entry: Gauss makes his entry in his Prime trailer by shoulder tackling a Corpus board member fleeing from Grendel. The Corpus can be heard screaming in pain before crashing through glass as he's hurled off screen..
Elemental Fusion: Thermal Sunder can do either Cold or Heat damage. If the ability is used on an enemy who's already afflicted by the opposite status effect, the elements will combine into Blast, causing an explosion.
Energy Absorption: Kinetic Plating lets Gauss absorb a portion of kinetic damage to be converted into energy, as well as making him immune to staggering or knockdown.
Fat and Skinny: He's the slim and speedy guy to the lumbering and armored Grendel.
Finger Poke of Doom: In his Prime trailer, Gauss limbers up before sprinting into a narrow crevice between closing blast doors. He then taps a terrified Corpus on the nose, blowing the man and everyone else nearby away with the shockwave from his arrival catching up.
Foil: To Grendel. Both have mobility enhancing powers, focus their kits around their primary abilities, have all of their parts acquired through special, high-level missions, possess Leverian entries, and have names that start with G. Gauss, however, is a frame primarily focused around speed, with his primary ability allowing him to attack too fast for his enemies to keep up, while Grendel instead focuses on eating enemies and using those within him to gain additional benefits. Gauss's signature weapons, the Acceltra and Akarius, are primary and secondary weapons that are most effective while sprinting, while Grendel's signature weapon, the Masseter, grants him immunity to crowd control when performing heavy attacks, allowing him to maintain a slow but inexorable onslaught. It's also implied that they were created for the same reason, to spite everybody who told Ballas the 'frames were too genteel, but Grendel achieves this by being a horrific, gluttonous cannibal that devours his enemies by the masses, while Gauss pulls it off by being a cocky and egotistical trickster who plays games with his prey while butchering them wholesale.
Fire, Ice, Lightning: Gauss' Thermal Sunder allows him to either embue an area with heat or absorb the heat of an area, which respectively result in blasts of Heat and Cold, followed with lingering fields of the respective element. Meanwhile, Redline makes electric sparks dance out from him, eventually exploding all at once when the ability ends.
Heroic Comedic Sociopath: As much as he openly relishes in the gory mass destruction his Super-Speed and Thermal Sunder can inflict, it's entirely played for laughs and is always shown as being directed towards the worst of the Corpus.
Image Song: "Gauss: Redline," a loud drum-and-bass song with lyrics from Gauss's perspective boasting about the sheer terror induced by him and his abilities.
Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better:
- He is the kinetic weapon in question. His Mach Rush has him doing small but noticeable damage to any enemy he might run into, but that damage increases drastically if he hits an object, creating a powerful shockwave. Another ability, Redline, enhances his weapons' overall firing, holster, and reload speed to great effect.
- His weapons of choice, the Acceltra and the Akarius, are handheld missile launchers that let you perform a Macross Missile Massacre at any time and have have excellent crit and status stats respectively. However, their ammo reserves are among the lowest in the game with only two spare magazines apiece, and their reload speed is incredibly long unless you keep running while using it, encouraging Gauss' movement heavy playstyle.
Lightning Bruiser: One of the fastest Warframes in the game, only truly beaten by Wukong or Titania while they're using their Cloud Walker and Razorwing respectively. Kinetic Plating effectively renders him immune to any kind of kinetic damage^note and Redline drastically ups his weapons' reload speed, fire rate, holster speed, and attack speed to carve a swath through the enemy.
Limit Break: Gauss' battery is normally capped at 80%, the standard redline of most batteries. ''Redline'' allows him to ignore this cap, and spending enough time above it results in his battery becoming infinite for the remainder of the ability's timer.
Macross Missile Massacre: His signature rifle, the Acceltra, fires micro missiles at a respectable rate.
Mercury's Wings: His default helmet on his Prime evokes this, with ear-like protrusions sticking out from the top. Ballas even compares him to Hermes/Mercury, saying that he is "meteoric as [the] messenger of long-forgotten gods."
Odd Friendship: Gauss Prime's trailer reveals that Gauss and Grendel are designed as compliments to one another: Grendel was made to terrify the Orokin's foes as a lumbering juggernaut with an insatiable appetite while Gauss was to be an inescapable menace who could easily take down anyone fleeing Grendel's rampage. Given Gauss' salute toward Grendel at the start of the trailer, it's clear they have a mutual respect for each other.
Overclocking Attack: Redline increases Gauss' weapon speeds with the additional effect of releasing an explosion after it ends. Unusually, this overclocking doesn't hurt the user.
Playing with Fire: Thermal Sunder can expel the energy from Gauss' battery into his surroundings to ignite anything in his vicinity.
Red Baron: The "Saint of Altra". Gauss singlehandedly broke a siege - with hostages - of what is heavily implied to be Orokin remnants... by outrunning a minefield's explosions and using himself as the kinetic weapon that breached the mountain fortress' walls.
Sadist: If his Image Song is anything to go by, Gauss really enjoys the sheer brutality of his abilities and the fact that he's feared by many for what happens to anyone on the receiving end.
Spear Counterpart: His default appearance basically looks like a male Mag. To the degree that either Warframe has an alternate helmet with the other's name.
Super Mode: While using Redline, Gauss becomes even faster, and his other abilities get augmented as well.
Super-Speed: His entire theme. Gauss has the fastest base speed of any Warframe, his 1.4 base sprint speed dwarfing Loki's 1.25, and Mach Rush lets him go into a burst or sustained sprint.
Troll: The Gauss Prime trailer characterizes him as this, as he does charades to taunt the Corpus crewman he's pursuing, before subduing him with a supersonic boop on the nose.
Walk on Water: His Mach Rush is fast enough for him to run on water.
Yin-Yang Bomb: Thermal Sunder can be used to either absorb thermal energy from the environment, charging Gauss' battery while doing Cold damage to enemies in the area, or release the thermal energy, draining the battery and doing Heat damage. If an enemy is already afflicted by a Heat or Cold status effect, being hit by the opposite element of Thermal Sunder will cause an explosion that deals high damage, removes their armor (if Redline is active), and either blows them away or pulls them towards you (depending on the order in which the effects were applied).

Grendel

^{Click to see Prime form.}

We are losing this war, you say. You whisper that my Warframes are too genteel. Very well. Away with chivalry. Let us have monsters. The law of club and belly, hunger and smoke. Beasts of cave and glut. I spread for you a cannibal feast. A toast, to the valor of mere appetite! You tremble, but the drool is on your chins. For you birthed him, in all his innocent obscenity. This... is what you ordered. Grendel.

— Ballas, Warframe: Grendel Prime

An insatiable Warframe themed around eating his foes, Grendel began his feast with Update 26.0 "The Old Blood" in 2019.

Grendel Prime's gluttony became unleashed with the Abyss of Dagath update in October 2023.

Acrofatic: A heavy, bulky, rotund warframe with a massive appetite. Still a warframe, and thus still capable of the awe-inspiring acrobatic feats that all the others can perform.
Balloon Belly: His belly model visibly deforms when he eats enemies, mildly at first but growing more rotund and jiggly as he continues to feed.
Bash Brothers: While it was stated Grendel and Gauss were close friends, the Grendel and Gauss Prime trailers shows this in action, where the two are deployed on a mission with one another, and Gauss takes the time to give Grendel a friendly acknowledgement.
Best Friend: With Gauss. One entry in the Leverian describes how wherever Grendel's presence was recorded, evidence of Gauss can also be found.
Belly Mouth: In addition to having a mouth in the normal place on his head (a first for Warframes!), Grendel has an enormous jagged maw in his torso.
Be the Ball: Pulverize turns Grendel into a giant misshapen sphere of metal and allows him to roll around to bowl over and crush enemies.
Big Eater: Grendel literally eats his opponents alive, and can use them to generate extra armor, fire them as projectiles, digest them for team buffs, or use them as fuel for Pulverize.
Black-Hole Belly: Up to five enemies can live in Grendel's gut. At one time he had no practical limit to the number of "passengers" he could contain, but this was changed as part of his soft rework.
Bouncing Battler: Grendel can activate Nourish while in his Pulverize mode to receive a speed buff as he ricochets off walls, floors, and enemies, and with his Catapult augment, he can also launch himself at distressingly high speeds while in ball mode. Notably, Catapult prevents Grendel from slowing down if he hits a wall, ceiling, or unlucky victim—he'll just bounce off and keep going.
Eaten Alive: Any enemy unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of Feast suffers this. Escape is impossible unless Grendel is exposed to a nullifier field or chooses to vomit them out.
Eating Solves Everything: In Warframe, the problem is usually enemies, and Grendel can solve all but a small handful of those problems by devouring them. Even powerful Eximus units are suitable for a light snack once their immunity shield is stripped away.
Eating the Enemy: This is literally his primary mode of attack.
Eat the Rich: Both literally and figuratively in his lore. In the Europan city Riddha, the impoverished population starved while a gluttonous Orokin Executor named Karishh hoarded all the food for himself, even getting artificial stomachs grafted onto him so he could eat twelve times as much as a normal man. Grendel (accompanied by Gauss) stormed Karishh's mansion, devoured the corrupt guards, then used Nourish to revitalize the citizens who went on to storm the manse and eat their fill for the first time in ages. It's implied that Karishh was later literally eaten by Grendel when he tried to flee into the mountains.
Extreme Omnivore: Pretty much like Inaros, Grendel can eat both organic and mechanical enemies and digest them. He can also eat Sentients.
Fake Longevity: Acquiring Grendel requires completing Arbitration Missions to gain the keys needed to unlock the missions that reward his parts. This wouldn't sound too bad, except that in order to unlock Arbitrations, you have to complete literally every other mission in the game, which can take many, many hours. Mitigated by the fact that you can have other people get the keys for the missions for you, but that still requires someone doing the dirty work for you. Downplayed by the fact Grendel's missions nullify all equipped mods except for companion precepts and Warframe augments, prevent gear items from being used, take away access to Operator forms, and the enemies at minimum, level 30, and at maximum, 45.
Fat and Skinny: The Fat to Gauss' skinny. Notably, the Leverian notes that traces of Gauss are always found near places where evidence of Grendel is uncovered.
Foil: To Gauss. Both have mobility enhancing powers, focus their kits around their primary abilities, have all of their parts acquired through special, high-level missions, possess Leverian entries, and have names that start with G. Gauss, however, is a frame primarily focused around speed, with his primary ability allowing him to attack too fast for his enemies to keep up, while Grendel instead focuses on eating enemies and using those within him to gain additional benefits. Gauss's signature weapons, the Acceltra and Akarius, are primary and secondary weapons that are most effective while sprinting, while Grendel's signature weapon, the Masseter, allows him immunity to crowd control when performing heavy attacks, allowing him to maintain a slow but inexorable onslaught. It's also implied that they were created for the same reason, to spite everybody who told Ballas the 'frames were too genteel, but Grendel achieves this by being a horrific, gluttonous cannibal that devours his enemies by the masses, while Gauss pulls it off by being a cocky and egotistical trickster who plays games with his prey while butchering them wholesale.
Gonk: Compared to the elegant designs of most Warframes, Grendel is stout and his texture is malformed. And he spits out liquids from his Belly Mouth.
Grievous Harm with a Body: A Fastball Special variation, where Grendel can eject some or all of the enemies in his gut to attack other enemies. Regurgitate turns Grendel into a semi-automatic toxin cannon by ejecting one enemy at a time after soaking them in explosive bile, while the vomit function of Feast turns him into a living shotgun by ejecting all of the enemies inside him and having them deal Collision Damage to each other on the way out, along with anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the spray when he ejects a mass of traumatized Mooks.
Horrifying Hero: Make no mistake, at the end of the day Grendel is heroic, his Leverian entry describing how he saved a city in Europa from starvation while devouring the elites who hoarded all of the food, but at the same time he eats people whole and two of his abilities let him fire off enemies in his gut as projectiles soaked in digestive fluids. It's implied by Ballas' narration of the Grendel Prime Access trailer that he was intentionally designed to spite suggestions that his previous Warframes were too refined and elegant by creating a straight-up monster.
Jiggle Physics: Yes really. The more he eats, the more his belly wobbles about.
Laser-Guided Karma: Inflicted this to an Orokin who survived the purge initiated by the rest of the Tenno. Said Orokin Executor lorded over a city in Europa, hosting extravagant feasts for himself and his hangers-on, whilst the average citizens were forced to try and make do with his scraps. Then Grendel showed up, devoured the guards, used his powers to empower the citizens, and then launch an assault on the Executor's fortress. The executor was last seen running into the hills with Grendel in pursuit, and based upon the fact that the legend ends with the people hearing 'a satisfied belch', it's implied Grendel ate the Orokin.
Meaningful Name: 'Grendel' was the first monster faced by the titular protagonist of Beowulf, and was described as a ferocious man-eating monster. Fittingly, Grendel is defined by his ability to devour his foes.
Odd Friendship: Gauss Prime's trailer reveals that Gauss and Grendel are designed as compliments to one another: Grendel was made to terrify the Orokin's foes as a lumbering juggernaut with an insatiable appetite while Gauss was to be an inescapable menace who could easily take down anyone fleeing Grendel's rampage. Given Gauss' salute toward Grendel at the start of the trailer, it's clear they have a mutual respect for each other.
Pay Evil unto Evil: Cannibalism may be the most horrifying thing any Warframe has done, but Grendel only eats those who threaten the innocent. In his backstory, he devours a corrupt Orokin Executor and his equally-corrupt guards, who hoarded a town's food supply, only to empower the starving people to raid what's left of the place and take back the food they desired.
Power Nullifier: Ironically, to Nullifer Crewmen. If their Beehive Barrier goes down, Grendel can inhale them just like any other foe and there's nothing they can do to stop him—enemies in his gut can't use their powers, so the Nullifer's annoying ability-cancelling bubbles can't be generated, which is often a great help to teammates.
Sumo Wrestling: Grendel's design, idle animations, and his gluttonous nature all seem to take cues from this.
Swallowed Whole: Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Grendel is not only that he eats his foes, they are still alive once he does so, and are doomed to either be digested or used as projectiles afterwards.
Terror Hero: According to the Grendel Prime Access trailer, Grendel was designed to be a horrifying monstrosity of a Warframe. The trailer depicts a Mook Horror Show, with Grendel Prime slaughtering and devouring a group of Corpus while a Treasurer cowers and hides from him.
Vacuum Mouth: Grendel's main power is inhaling people into his jagged belly-maw from a distance. His base range is 25 meters and can be modded to be almost 75 meters, meaning that he can eat people across entire map sections.

Gyre

"Gyre embodies elegant theory. Annihilate enemies with the conductivity of coils and transmitters."

— Codex Entry

A tesla-themed Warframe who twirled with grace through void-tainted halls with the Angels of the Zariman update in April 2022. Gyre's deadly electric attacks allow her to unleash Chain Lightning to electrocute large groups of foes at once.

Attack! Attack! Attack!: Cathode Grace is a powerful crit and energy regen buff that has an initially short duration and a very long cooldown. However, its duration is extended with each kill Gyre personally reaps (with a ceiling on how far it can be extended at any time), incentivizing an extremely aggressive playstyle just to keep it from running out.
Battle Ballgown: Her attire looks like an armored ballgown, and as a Warframe, she can wipe out any foe she encounters.
Body Horror: Her skull has a hole that makes her brain visible.
Chain Lightning: Her fourth ability, Rotorswell, causes any critical hits she inflicts to deal an additional discharge to enemies near the target. Since the discharge deals a fixed amount of damage (rather than scaling off the initial hit), it favors continuous sources of critical hits, regardless of their actual potency.
Critical Hit Class: Gyre's passive gives her abilities 10% Critical Chance for each active Electricity status proc on enemies to deal 2.0x Critical Damage. When combining it with Cathode Grace, her abilities can gain up to 300% critical chance.
Dance Battler: She's designed to have the grace of a ballerina, often striking actual ballet poses in her idle animations. Her custom dodge animation even has her disperse into energy while performing a pirouette. Rotor Swell reflects this by giving her an aura of electrical damage, encouraging her to keep on the move and chase down enemies.
Distaff Counterpart: To Volt, both being electricity-based casters with the potential to increase critical damage. However, where Volt's toolkit brings a balance of defensive and mobility skills, Gyre's focuses strictly on damaging effects that thrive in target-rich environments.
Explosive Decompression: Coil Horizon tosses out a rolling grenade that implodes when remotely detonated, dealing a burst of hefty damage while immediately vacuuming all enemies and loot towards it.
Finger Poke of Doom: Her first ability, Arcsphere, is less notable for its damage output over time than for its ability to build up continuous, guaranteed electrical status effects on wide numbers of enemies to amplify Gyre's passive. Its own damage is also supplemented by Rotorswell's arcs, which chain a fixed amount of damage each time they activate; the resulting feedback loop of the two is the electrical equivalent of Death of a Thousand Cuts.
Glass Cannon: Gyre possesses no defensive abilities aside from the paralyzing effects of her electricity-based attacks. But her powerful self-buffs and Chain Lightning effects make her a maestra of mayhem once she gets going.
Shock and Awe: All of Gyre's abilities are themed around tesla coils. Whereas Volt shocks enemies directly, Gyre throws Gyratory Spheres that unleash explosive bursts of lightning on impact. Her fourth ability, Rotorswell, electrifies Gyre herself, producing an electric field that shocks enemies with Chain Lightning.

Harrow

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Harrow, the monastic, the ritualist.
Harrow is suffragan to the Void. Will you believe, Tenno?

— The Lotus^note

The Dark Priest Warframe unchained with Update 21.0 in 2017, available from the aptly-titled "Chains of Harrow" quest. A unique take on the support archetype, Harrow's kit is built around setting up and reaping bonuses from accurate shooting.

Harrow Prime has been delivering his sermons as of December 15, 2021

A Taste of the Lash: Done to Harrow himself to remove his shields when using Penance.
And I Must Scream: Harrow's inability to speak, like all Warframes, cost Rell what little sanity he had left after his mother was gone. The effects of sociological enclosure resolved into a catastrophic outcome.
Badass Preacher: Designed to look like a clergyman, has standard priestly powers such as Healing Hands, and even forms crosses with his pistols.
Barrier Maiden: As he stored Rell's soul via Transference, Harrow was the one thing keeping Rell alive for as long as he was, making Harrow one of these by proxy as Rell is the one thing keeping the Man in the Wall sealed away. The Tenno is forced to unchain and release Harrow and Rell regardless to quell Rell's rampaging spirit.
Barrier Warrior: Restores and consumes shields with his abilities, while Covenant absorbs damage for allies and converts it into a damage buff.
Cast from Hit Points: Played with via Penance, which consumes Harrow's shields in order to heal him (specifically, by increasing the duration of the damage and Life Drain buff it gives).
Chain Pain: Condemn fires a wave of chains at enemies, completely incapacitating them and restoring Harrow's shields. However, this deals no damage to the targets; in fact, he causes more damage to himself with his chains than to enemies.
Church Militant: Despite his priestly attire, most of Harrow's abilities emphasize and enhance gunplay.
Critical Hit Class: Harrow's abilities boost critical damage output, and are enhanced by achieving headshots. Condemn exists in order to make it easier to achieve headshots; Harrow's signature weapons are a Sniper Pistol that gains a bonus on headshots, and a Boom Stick that can place bullet attractor fields on enemy heads when thrown.
Deflector Shields: Unlike Trinity, Harrow focuses on generating and consuming shields as a primary defense; his passive even allows him to store more Overshields than any other Warframe.
Difficult, but Awesome:
- Harrow probably has one of the highest player skill thresholds to be used effectively out of all frames, only beaten by Limbo. You need to be keenly aware of the battlefield situation and your teammates' positions to pick the right time to use his abilities, or risk wasting energy and/or putting yourself in an extremely vulnerable position. Plus, as his abilities rely on and reward precision shooting, you actually need to be good at hitting small targets (landing headshots). When used and modded properly, Harrow can restore the team's energy faster than Energy Vampire-focused Trinity, and improve the team's damage output by magnitudes.
- This extends to his signature Sniper Pistol, the Knell. It has a pitiful single-shot magazine, increased to a whole two if Harrow himself is using it, and takes a terribly long time to reload. However, on a headshot, it gains increased critical chance and unlimited ammunition for a brief period, the former of which can stack consecutively. As a result, it's very powerful if you can consistently and quickly land headshots; otherwise, it's next to useless, though making use of his signature Boom Stick Scourge should make that a little easier as when thrown, it creates a bullet attractor on the heads of enemies that are near the impact zone, making headshots a lot easier.
Epic Flail: While he doesn't use it as a weapon against enemies, his Thurible is used both to lash his own shields, and to charge up an energy restoration buff.
Fake Longevity: His Systems drops from rotation C of the wildly-unpopular Defection mission type, while his Neuroptics drops from the third vault in Kuva Fortress Spy missions. Thankfully, his Chassis can drop from any Corrupted enemy in any Void Fissure mission, making it almost trivial to get, and you can now farm his Systems and Neuroptics in rotation C of Kuva Survival missions.
Gas Mask, Longcoat: His Prime variation has this effect going, with his face resembling a gas mask.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Covenant causes all party members to absorb incoming damage and convert it into a critical strike multiplier.
Life Drain: Similarly to Trinity's Well of Life, Penance restores health to Harrow's team based on his weapon damage dealt for a period after the effect is cast. Likewise, Thurible does the latter for energy, with a bonus for headshots.
Mage Marksman: Most of Harrow's abilities are built to assist his weapons in accord, either boosting critical damage, give additional energy or increase overall damage via headshots. The more accurate the player is, the more powerful both parties become.
Meaningful Name:
- His Condemn does harrow his enemies by chaining them. He also chains himself as part of Covenant, to a lesser extent. However, Rell's binding to him eventually caused him to go mad, thus harrowing (or distressing) Rell. Second, through Rell, he harrows the stars (the Void), preventing the Tenno from being possessed.
- "The Harrowing of Hell" is an event in Christian Apocrypha wherein the soul of Christ entered Hell after the crucifixion to bring salvation to righteous souls within. Following the Crucifixion-like binding of his Warframe, Rell's soul remained dedicated to the salvation of the Tenno from "The Man in the Wall".
- Penance is a religious term for an action done for the atonement of sins, like prayer, fasting, or self-flaggelation. When used, Harrow strikes himself twice with his flail before granting health regeneration based on damage intake, at the cost of lowered shields.
Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Unlike other Warframes, his Codex entry plays ambient sounds from his quest such as banging and screeching, culminating in silence as Rell's voice repeats "Rap, tap, tap." The same voice can be heard when casting each of his abilities.
No Immortal Inertia: Once the eponymous chains that bound Harrow in the Red Veil temple are broken, Harrow's body steadily rusts away up to his very components before he disappears completely.
Our Gods Are Different: Unlike Inaros, Harrow is actively a worship vessel for Rell by the Red Veil.
Reverse Arm-Fold: His noble animation set which has an idle that enacts it.
Soul Jar: Turned out to be one for Rell, a corrupted Tenno, in the Chains of Harrow. The Red Veil used him as a permanent vessel when Rell was about to die out of old age.

Hildryn

^{Click to see Prime form.}

You have faced our worst. But one I have kept back to guard against enemies within. She has sent many weeping on their way. This skyborne bastion of the sagas. So hear me well, Hunhow, when you despoil the reservoir, spare only her. My stalwart. My shieldmaiden. Hildryn.

— Ballas, Warframe: Hildryn Prime

A shield-based Warframe fortifying her way with Update 24.4 in 2019. Uniquely, all of Hildryn's abilities draw power from her shields rather than energy: she can fire powerful explosive energy from her Balefire Chargers, reinforce her allies, fly with a jetpack, then drain her enemies' defenses to keep her shields charged up.

Hildryn Prime flexes her muscles for the first time in March 15, 2023.

Achilles' Heel: As her kit is entirely reliant on her shields (and on Pillage specifically to refill said shields), Hildryn struggles against Infested enemies which generally tend to have neither armor nor shields for her to steal. Augments can mitigate this problem, but at the cost of precious mod slots.
Arm Cannon: Balefire visually appears more as knuckledusters than true arm-covering weapons. Nevertheless, they do considerable amounts of electric damage.
Awesome, but Impractical: Aegis Storm lets you fly around in a jetpack while suspending enemies in a gravitational field and raining Death from Above with Akimbo Balefire Chargers! However, it has many, many downsides. The ability continuously drains your shields, you can only go 10 meters into the air, and your flying speed is extremely slow. You can air-dash, but this drains your shields even faster. While Hildryn holds two Balefire Chargers when using this ability, this is purely cosmetic and doesn't improve their rate of fire or anything else about them, and you can't use any other weapons in this state. You also can't use Haven or Pillage. The only real upside to this that can't be replicated by just bullet-jumping and aim-gliding is the lifting effect, but enemies with Overguard are immune to it, as with all other forms of crowd control.
Barrier Warrior: The entirety of her kit revolves around expending her Deflector Shields in order to support her allies or deal damage to her enemies.
BFG: Her signature weapon is the Larkspur, a massive Archwing gun that either shoots a plasma beam that latches onto to multiple targets to shred them or a piercing, charged orb of death.
The Big Gal: Hildryn is easily the most muscular Warframe, even superseding the more muscular male frames such as Rhino and Atlas. She frequently flexes in her idle animations to showcase how extremely built she is.
Bodyguard Babes: Her Prime trailer implies she was designed as the personal guard for Ballas himself, against threats within the Orokin empire.
Brawn Hilda: She's a big, beefy woman and her Asuron alternate helmet has extensions from the back that resemble braided pigtails, invoking traditional uses of this trope.
Death from Above: The intent of Aegis Storm, which allows her to hover and rain electrifying death with her Balefire Chargers.
Deflector Shields: Emphasized more than any other Warframe in the game due to having her abilities work off her shields as a resource and her ability to "shield gate" damage that would otherwise prove lethal.
Hand Cannon: Her Balefire Chargers are a pair of horseshoe-shaped, handheld cannons that shoot powerful electric bolts that explode on impact. Their raw offensive potential is kept in check by their projectiles' travel time and being the slowest-firing secondary weapons in the game.
Helicopter Pack: Aegis Storm puts her into one, using her shield-based wings to lift her slowly off the ground while suspending nearby enemies in mid-air.
Heroic Build: She's the most obviously beefy Warframe in the game, ahead of similarly well-built Warframes like Atlas and Rhino. Her muscles are so big that they completely hide a Helminth cyst while she's flexing.
Mechanically Unusual Class: While others have experimented with alternate resources, Hildryn is the first Warframe to lack an energy pool entirely. Her abilities instead draw directly from her shields, which are significantly greater than any other frame's. Collecting energy orbs directly refills her shields. This means she is all but immune to the Magnetic debuffs used by certain enemies and traps; having no energy to be drained, she only suffers the HUD disruption.
Mercy Invincibility: Hildryn's passive grants her stronger shield gating, affording her a full three seconds of invulnerability after her shields deplete over the 1.3 seconds of other frames. This benefit is also granted to allies under the effect of Haven.
Mighty Glacier: Her ability to constantly recharge her shields while blasting away with her Balefire Chargers makes her a walking tank who can strip away her foes' defenses before mowing them down. As a consequence, she lacks mobility options beyond parkour and Aegis Storm leaves her moving at a slow pace. Her Balefire Chargers also have extremely high base damage that's kept in check by their slow firing speed and travel time.
Obvious Rule Patch: Clever players would equip a Decaying Dragon Key and stack as many shield-recharge-rate-boosting-mods as possible on the day of her release. The result is a nearly invincible Warframe whose shields would recharge while she's temporarily invincible from her shield gating mechanic to repeat the process again, making her nearly impossible to kill. Naturally, this was quickly taken out in a later patch.
Purple Is Powerful: A tanky, powerful Warframe that specializes in buffing her allies shields and obliterating foes with electrical blasts.

Hydroid

^{Click to see Prime form.}

"Fear... is the greatest of faith. While our immortal vines have left us distant from our baser selves, consider our subjects: Those who gaze upon our cloud-swept towers, with simmering, violent envy, they hold still the old fears. Depth and darkness... The windless embrace...We will give to fear a form and yet none a vague hydra, a load monstrosity, surging from the unfathomable... reminding them who their gods are. Hydroid."

— Ballas, Warframe: Hydroid Prime

A pirate-like water elemental Warframe who splashed forth with Update 13.0 in 2014. His abilities use the sea's salty water to rust away enemy armor and deal large amounts of damage to many targets.

Hydroid Prime emerged from the depths with Update 21.6 in 2017 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Update 25.3 in 2019.

Animal Motifs: Cephalopods, based on both his ultimate and his base helmet's dangling tentacles.
Balance Buff: Once considered one of the weakest Warframes in the game, the "Abyss of Dagath" update brought a major rework to his kit that made him much stronger, more cohesive, and less finnicky, completely replacing some of his weakest abilities (namely his tentacle-summoning passive and slow-moving and slow-killing Undertow) while buffing his others. His abilities now do Corrosive damage, with his reworked passive boosting their effectiveness so they can fully strip enemy armor, Tempest Barrage and Tentacle Swarm now have their fully-charged effect without actually needing to be charged, and Undertow was replaced with Plunder, which grants Hydroid large amounts of extra armor and Corrosive damage. Tempest Barrage and Tidal Surge now no longer knock enemies all over the place, and Tentacle Swarm now simply holds targets in place instead of waving them around, a set of changes that makes foes easier to aim at. This gives him a thematic, synergistic kit revolving around Corrosive damage, armor stripping, and crowd control.
Charged Attack: In previous versions, Hydroid could charge two of his abilities by holding down the cast button and expending additional energy: charging Tempest Barrage would increase its blast damage and duration, and charging Tentacle Swarm would increase its radius and number of tentacles summoned. However, he eventually received a Balance Buff as part of his rework, removing this mechanic and just making the charged effect happen instantly.
Color-Coded Elements: His body is mostly colored a bluish-green, and his water powers are blue.
Combat Tentacles:
- Tentacle Swarm summons tentacles to repeatedly strike enemies near their spawn locations.
- Before his rework, Hydroid's old Undertow ability would let him use tentacles to drag distant enemies into the puddle.
Elemental Shapeshifter:
- Tidal Surge turns him into a tidal wave that pushes all enemies in his path.
- His old Undertow ability (which has since been replaced by Plunder) let him turn into a puddle, dragging enemies in to drown them.
Evil Laugh: A short, silent one in his dual-pistol idle animation.
Eyepatch of Power: Has what can best be described as a metallic barnacle covering his upper right "eye" on his base helmet.
Herd-Hitting Attack: Tempest Barrage rains down explosive water cannonballs, doing huge damage in a large area.
Homing Projectile: As part of his rework, Tentacle Barrage's tentacles will now seek out targets, rather then flailing about in the hope of hitting something.
Kraken and Leviathan: His ultimate skill, Tentacle Swarm, calls up a sea creature to smash enemies with its tentacles.
Life Drain: In a sense. The Rousing Plunder augment allows him to restore health by leeching from the corrosive procs he inflicts on enemies.
Loot-Making Attack: The Pilfering Tentacles augment allows the tentacles he summons to boost the amount of loot dropped by enemies in their grasp.
Macross Missile Massacre: His first skill, Tempest Barrage, commands his ship to fire its cannons on the target area. This ship being in space, of course.
Making a Splash: His primary theme is water-elemental attacks. Because Warframe doesn't actually have a water element, however, his abilities instead do Corrosive damage, representing the corroding power of sea water.
Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: He is an ambiguously robotic space ninja Davy Jones. The reveal that Warframes are Infested makes him live up to the trope name completely.
Odd Name Out: Breaks the trend of elemental frame names by naming a stage in the life cycle of jellyfish. One would not be blamed for believing it was just a made up combination of "hydro" and "droid".
Pirate: His design evokes a fancy pirate coat with buckled cuffs and folded-top boots, and aesthetically, his first ability calls down a cannon barrage, his ultimate summons a kraken, and his signature weapon is a cutlass. His alternate "Triton" helmet makes this more obvious, giving him the appearance of wearing a tricorne hat and a bushy pirate beard. His Prime model is an outright Shout-Out to Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean.
Water Is Blue: His water powers are depicted blue in their default coloration.

Inaros

This is Inaros, the savior, king of the desert.
Whether denizens of the sky or the earth, Tenno, the fear of Inaros is within.

— The Lotus

A mummy Warframe that emerged from his tomb with Update 18.5 in 2016. His powers combine weaponizing the sands of Mars^notewas Phobos with the ability to drain life and stave off death.

Inaros Prime swarms with the desert sands with Update 28.2 in 2020.

Animal Motifs: Jackals. One Redditor pointed out◊ that the themes of Anubis give him the body-shape of a jackal, as well as jackal head adornments.
Animate Dead: Devour resurrects slain enemies as sand golems.
Cast from Hit Points: Scarab Swarm consumes hitpoints instead of energy.
Comeback Mechanic: Killing him only puts him in a sarcophagus that is still capable of killing enemies nearby. Once enough damage is dealt, he gets revived on the spot. The only way to really kill him off is ridding the entire area of targets he is capable of absorbing during his bleed-out time. The draining attack he channels while bleeding out only revives him by 1% for every 2% of maximum health damage dealt to the target while he's channeling, meaning he must completely drain at least two enemies (or allies) before the bleed-out timer runs out. High-level enemies are significantly harder to kill with this attack; however, allies can kill enemies while Inaros is draining them to rapidly contribute to his recovery. Ironically enough, Inaros' sarcophagus passive completely overrides the extremely useful Last Gasp operator ability which would also allow you to revive yourself through killing enemies, which is far more effective at killing enemies than Inaros' sarcophagus is.
Crutch Character: Inaros is easy to obtain if you've been playing for more than two weeks, as Baro always sells the quest to unlock him, and thanks to his absolutely absurd health pool, he can easily tank almost anything outside of the Steel Path with just a few basic mods. However, his lack of shields means that shield-gating, which exploits the Mercy Invincibility you get when your shields run out, doesn't work on him, making Inaros unable to use the most powerful defensive tactic in the game, making it much harder to survive in very high-level content. On top of this, his abilities are all quite weak, meaning that you'll be relying almost exclusively on your weapons, which any other Warframe can do too.
Dishing Out Dirt: Unlike Atlas who uses the traditional dirt and stone, his abilities focus primarily on sand and dust.
Eaten Alive: Being actively Devour-ed by Inaros gives you a glimpse of how completely horrified your victim is while you hold your Use key. This lasts longer with a higher power duration and on a tougher enemy. Any of your allies can also "use" the enemy as long as the ability is still active.
Extreme Omnivore: Inaros can eat anything, even mechanical foes, in order to restore health with his Devour ability. Anyone he ate gets converted into a sand minion afterward.
A Handful for an Eye: Desiccation fires a blast of sand that blinds enemies.
Instant Gravestone: As mentioned above in Comeback Mechanic, Inaros ends up in a sarcophagus once he's killed. This serves to let him recover, as long as there are enemies nearby to absorb.
Life Drain: The focus of three of his powers. His passive ability lets him drain health from finisher attacks, and he can summon a sarcophagus when he's near death that will drain health from enemies to revive himself. Devour allows other players to cannibalize enemies for health.
Made of Iron: Despite lacking any energy shields, Inaros has an absurd amount of health and a good level of armor that can passively sponge off a lot of damage.
Mechanically Unusual Class: Inaros has no shields whatsoever, but has so much health and so many ways to get it back he probably doesn't need them. He also has a unique KO state involving a sarcophagus wherein he can revive himself if enough enemies are nearby.
Mummy: Designed to look like a colorful pharaoh's sarcophagus. He also carries around/summons a much larger, more tomb-shaped sarcophagus for reviving himself should he get overwhelmed.
Named After Someone Famous: Inaros was the name used by two famous Egyptians, first a Pharaoh who rebelled against the Assyrians, then a rebel leader who led his people against the Persians. The Warframe Inaros also rebelled against the Orokin.
Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Meatier and more well-rounded than his death-themed counterpart, he comes with a ghoul stance animation as well.
Quicksand Sucks: Devour traps enemies in quicksand.
Rebuilt Pedestal: To Baro Ki'Teer. It was previously shattered when Baro's mother was shot dead before Inaros could do anything about it. After realizing Inaros' servitude on Mars, Baro wants him back for the sake of his mother's sacrifice. If you visit Baro while wearing Inaros, he'll have special dialog praising his God.
Scarab Power: Scarab Swarm creates a swarm of scarabs that can increase his armor, attack his enemies and heal his allies based on how much of his health he charges them with. With the Negation Swarm Augment, they can also protect him from status effects.
Spin Attack: Sandstorm turns him into a dust devil, during which he can vacuum up nearby enemies and fling them when it ends.
Stone Wall: He's in the running for the tankiest Warframe in the game. With Arcane Grace and Adaptation equipped, it's entirely possible for him to simply stand in a swarm of enemies and not die because he's regenerating health faster than he's taking damage. However, his abilities do piddling damage and he struggles to handle crowds on his own unless he brings a crowd-clearing weapon like an Ignis or a melee weapon that can hit multiple targets.
Summon Magic: The Scarabs created by Scarab Swarm orbit around Inaros, damaging anything that gets too close. Anything Devoured completely by Inaros gets turned into a sand minion under his will.
You Will Not Evade Me: Devour can pull affected enemies toward you. Additionally, his sarcophagus form can pull enemies as he drains them.

Ivara

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Ivara, the huntress, the thief.
Don't roam around the forest looking for a fight, Tenno. Ivara is always on guard.

— The Lotus

An archer frame, first nocked with Update 18.0 in 2016, Ivara specializes in stealth and silent ranged takedowns thanks to her selection of Trick Arrows.

Ivara Prime stole her way with Hotfix 27.0.4 in 2019.

Animal Motifs: As stated in her announcement, her design was based on poison tree frogs, with the idea being that the quiver in her arm would be full of toxins. While the poison aspect was removed from the final product, the visual elements remained. Her Prime variant, on the other hand, is modeled on jellyfish.
Boom, Headshot!: Her Prowl ability gives her a bonus to headshot damage.
Fake Longevity: While you're guaranteed one Warframe parts drop from a boss nowadays since Ivara's parts are obtained from Spy missions you better hope the RNG is on your side (as well as being good enough to get all three databases for maximum chance). To make matters worse, while the Systems and Chassis blueprints are found in Easy and Medium-level Spy missions respectively, both the main BP and the Neuroptics BP are found in Hard missions, meaning you have to be twice as lucky to get both! If you're lucky enough to get the parts, you'll still have to farm for the Nitain and Argon Crystals to build them.
Five-Finger Discount: Prowl allows her to pickpocket foes (one at a time) before killing them.
Fragile Speedster: Her defensive stats are very low, but her sprint speed is top-notch.
Forced Sleep: Sleep arrows from her Quiver function similarly to Equinox's Rest ability.
Glass Cannon: She can dish out more than her fair share of damage thanks to her powers, but she can't take much herself due to her weak defensive stats.
Improvised Zipline: Dashwire arrows create zip lines that allow Ivara to travel to wherever she wants.
Invisibility Cloak: The purpose of cloak arrows is to create fields of invisibility when shot, turning other Warframes invisible to enemies as long as they remain within. It can function as a Sticky Bomb for other players, who can cloak allies while staying mobile.
Invisibility with Drawbacks: She can turn invisible using her Prowl ability, during which time she can pick enemies' pockets. However, it reduces her movement speed significantly, costs extra to perform melee attacks (including stealth finishers), and is momentarily broken if she makes any noise.
Lady of War: Ivara Prime goes for a more regal approach and is off course even deadlier than the normal version.
Master Archer: The only frame with dedicated archery powers, and one of the few frames designed for stealth over raw power, designed around the legends of Robin Hood. Her exalted Artemis Bow is one of the most powerful bows in the game thanks to its high multishot and explosive headshots.
Meaningful Name: A feminized form of "Ívarr", Old Norse for "bow of the warrior".
Multishot: Her ultimate ability, the Artemis Bow, shoots out spreads of arrows.
Player-Guided Missile: Her second ability, Navigator, lets her guide the next projectile she fires or a projectile presently in transit, whether it be from her Quiver or her weapon.
Secret Test of Character: She was on the receiving end of one. A mysterious Myrmidon was killing warframes—permanently, at that. Ivara defeated him and stripped him of his armor, but discovered that he was something like an Orokin underneath. Rather than kill him anyway, she brought him to the ruling council, and was informed the whole thing had been a test of strength and loyalty.
Stealth Expert: Prowl allows her to stay invisible almost indefinitely, making her one of the best Warframes for stealth missions alongside Loki.
Throwing the Distraction: Noise arrows attract enemies when shot, distracting them from approaching Warframes.
Trick Arrow: Her modus operandi, via her versatile Quiver:
- Dashwire arrows create ziplines between her feet and wherever the arrow lands.
- Cloak arrows create fields that turn Warframes invisible as long as they remain within. Functions as a Sticky Bomb, as the field emanates from any entity or surface the arrow strikes, including other players.
- Noise arrows will call enemies to the location they land in without alerting them.
- Sleep arrows will knock out enemies in an area around where they strike, similar to Equinox's Rest effect.
Tranquilizer Dart: Sleep arrows knock out enemy targets.
Utility Belt: Her Quiver wraps around her left tricep instead of hanging off her back.

Khora

^{Click to see Venari}

"None of them truly understands how much I lost, when I lost her. Nor by what subtle art my dead love now lives, within another's gleaming skull. So tonight, we shall celebrate. In her honor, and mine, I shall unveil a new creation, a harmony of mistress... and monster. An apex predator, a deathless companion. Unsurpassed. Blood-raw in whip, claw and fang. Khora."

— Ballas, Warframe: Khora Prime

Khora and Venari pounced with Update 22.18 "Beasts of the Sanctuary" in 2018. As The Beastmaster archetype, her skill-set revolves around on ensnaring enemies while keeping them in disarray with the help of her personal Kavat, Venari.

Khora Prime started spinning her web as of July 16, 2022.

Arachnid Appearance and Attire: Her visual design is based on the orb-weaver spider. Her abilities use chains like spider's silk, with Ensnare cocooning a single target and Strangledome creating a larger web.
The Beastmaster: Her passive gives her a sprint boost when her metal Kavat "Venari" is active, as well as Khora's third ability to switch Venari's attack, disarm, and heal stances whenever is needed.
Beyond the Impossible: After the original blueprints and schematics for Khora had been discovered by Quills on Plains of Eidolon and given to Cephalon Simaris, he used them to build a digital construct of her and put her into his Sanctuary, similarly to what happens to targets Tenno synthesize for him. However, very soon Khora hid herself, somehow completely evading from his view and surveillance, and now even Simaris can't find her in his Sanctuary. To reiterate — Sanctuary is a virtual simulated environment under constant complete control by Simaris, who shapes its interior and content at his will, and who is omniscient within its boundaries, yet Khora's imprint still somehow managed to hide away from his eye. Even Simaris is flabbergasted by this.
Bond Creature: Venari, her Loyal Animal Companion, is inseparable from Khora, only seen apart when one of them is dead, and the codex description for Khora describes them as "one will in two bodies".
Boobs-and-Butt Pose: Khora displays this prominently in the banner◊ for the "Beasts of the Sanctuary" update. She will also do this while idle in her noble animation set.
Caught in a Snare: Not only Ensnare can render the victim disabled for a longer period, anyone who gets too close to the victim also gets entrapped by the metal bonds.
Chain Pain: Like Harrow, her second and fourth abilities manipulate metal chains to entrap enemies:
- Ensnare wraps one enemy in chains and drags others within range toward the target, making all affected more vulnerable to her Whipclaw.
- Strangledome is essentially Ensnare on steroids, able to create a spherical net of chains around Khora that strangulate any enemy they entangle.
Chrome Champion: Most of Khora's abilities include Living Metal as her element, mostly used to pin her enemies down.
Combos: The Accumulating Whipclaw augment for her Whipclaw increases its power each time she hits at least 3 enemies with it, up to a maximum of 350% additional damage.
Cruel and Unusual Death: Strangledome creates a dome that gives targets slow, agonizing deaths by strangling and cutting them with serrated chains, leaving their bodies hanging. The attack is also considered this in-universe by enemies who kill their allies to make their deaths quicker
Distaff Counterpart: Of Vauban and Oberon. Her Ensnare and Strangledome abilities are seen as re-scaled variations on Vauban's Vortex and Bastille, respectively. Functionally, her passive is opposite of Oberon, while Oberon's "Beastmaster" buffs the health, shields and armor of the pets as well as revive it instantly once a mission, Khora's "Beast Tamer" has Venari increase Khora's sprint, as well as letting Khora order her to attack, disarm, and heal on command.
Dominatrix: Her design scheme and abilities lie heavily on how she whittles down her opponents while leaving them completely helpless to react, and as if Strangledome was any subtler for this trope.
Extra-ore-dinary: Khora's abilities were originally intended to manipulate metal into fluid shapes. While her design has changed many times, she retained her ability to create and manipulate chains, as well as a metal companion.
Fake Longevity: Khora's parts (including her main blueprint) drop exclusively from Sanctuary Onslaught missions, and their drop rates are not particularly high — simulations show an average of thirty hours of continuous play to get all four parts. Furthermore, each of her parts requires Kavat Genetic Codes to build, which notoriously suffer from their own, as a single code is estimated to have a 15% chance to be attained per scan.
Impossible Hour Glass Figure: Given when her theme is heavily built around the appearance of an arachnid.
Jack of All Trades: Khora is capable of dealing high damage, crowd control, setting up defensive perimeters around areas of importance, healing her allies and disarming enemies of their weapons while also being capable of taking a hit due to her relatively high health pool, along with being a little bit faster than most other Warframes thanks to her passive.
Meaningful Name: "Venari" is a Latin verb meaning "to hunt, seek, or pursue." The word also has a related etymology to Venus, likely as a nod to early plans to release Khora with the Solaris United colony.
Mechanically Unusual Class: As The Beastmaster, Khora can directly mod the Kavat summoned by her Venari ability and issue commands to it. This has a few effects on gameplay.
- Since Venari is technically an 'Exalted' piece of equipment, similar to Ivara's Artemis Bow or Excalibur's '"Exalted Blade'', Khora can have a second companion equipped in addition to Venari. Venari is also the only companion to lack unique Precept mods, such as the Smeeta Kavat's Charm.
- She has access to the effects of companion mods such as Fetch and Animal Instinct in areas where companions are normally restricted, such as the Index and Duviri.
- Unlike other Exalted equipment, Venari gives Mastery Rank progress. This means that Khora and her Prime variant give double the normal mastery rank progress of any other Warfarme.
Mercy Kill: Her Strangledome ability creates a dome of serrated chains that ensnare, strangle, and cut any enemies caught in it; apparently dying this way is gruesome enough in-universe that the allies of anyone caught in the web will try to hasten their deaths.
Stance System: Venari can switch between Attack, Disarm and Heal modes. The shape of the metal spikes on Khora's own body also changes in relation to these stances.
Undying Loyalty: Even after her "death", Venari stuck around looking for ways to get back to her until presumably, Onkko gave Khora's blueprints to Cephalon Simaris. Venari accepted her fate by letting one of Simaris' drones synthetsize her so she could successfully reunite with Khora in the Sanctuary.
Whip of Dominance: Khora can command living metal like a whip, which serves to symbolically reinforce her command over her Kavat companion Venari and her own Dominatrix-motif as she uses her living whips to both attack enemies with her Whipclaw ability and restrain them with Ensnare.

Kullervo

A betrayed, dagger-wielding Warframe, imprisoned within Duviri for his seven crimes. Kullervo can deal great damage to both single targets and large groups, and excels at heavy melee attacks.

Kullervo broke free with the Seven Crimes of Kullervo update in June 2023.

Ambiguous Situation: How much of Kullervo's crimes were actually committed and how much of what is recalled is simply another act of Ballas (or the Warden in his case), once again twisting things in his favor? We may never know.
And I Must Scream: As punishment for his seven crimes, Kullervo suffers eternally in a Duviri prison, tormented daily by its warden, with daggers stuck in his body causing him constant pain throughout his centuries of imprisonment.
Assassination Attempt: Kullervo's seventh crime is attempted regicide: during the fall of the Orokin empire, Kullervo tried to kill an Executor^noteImplied to be Ballas who he particularly despised. The Executor survived this attempt and sentenced Kullervo to eternal punishment.
Breaking Old Trends:
- Previously, all frames that had pure health but no shields had some sort of way to mitigate reduce their chances of going down either via heavy damage mitigation or a way to save themselves from going down at all. Kullervo has no such ability, but instead relies on his mobility, heavy damage and high base armor to get by.
- He is the first, and so far only, frame to have his signature melee weapon be a cosmetic skin, the Vaenn for heavy blades.
Close-Range Combatant: Fittingly enough, given his Thrax Dax theme, Kullervo's passive gives him a bonus 75% Heavy Attack efficiency and a 100% Heavy Attack Windup Speed to all melee weapons, on top of the fact that his combo counter is affected by his abilities. Wrathful Advance also lets him teleport to enemies before hitting them with a heavy attack.
Combos: All of Kullervo's abilities, except his first ability, passively increase his melee combo counter, which fits considering that all heavy attacks deal more damage the higher the combo counter is, and Kullervo's passive actively encourages a heavy attack build for melees. Even his signature weapon Rauta allows its wielder to build up combo stacks for every pellet that hits, though in Kullervo's hands, it gives his melee weapon an extra 7 seconds of combo duration.
Critical Hit Class: Wrathful Advance gives Kullervo a large bonus to his melee critical chance.
Devious Daggers: Kullervo is full of daggers which he uses for his Recompense and Storm of Ukko abilities. That said, they represent not only Kullervo's own treachery, but also the fact that he was betrayed himself, hence why he looks like he's been stabbed with them.
Disc-One Nuke: Kullervo is extremely easy to access, as a result of the fact his blueprints are obtained through a currency one obtains simply through fighting him in his arena after the Orowyrm during the Fear, Anger and Sorrow spirals, of which there are roughly 4 of each every day. Once they're all obtained, all it takes to build him is several Duviri resources, which are extremely easy to gather compared to other region resources due to the absence of a standing system for Duviri. Your reward for this is a frame whose melee damage numbers can outpace any other frame in the game even with no Forma, and surprisingly strong survivability, especially early on, thanks to player Overguard's rebalance shortly before the Abyss of Dagath update.
Gameplay and Story Segregation: Kullervo should, according to the lore we're provided, be a proto-frame ala Umbra, which would include higher stats and move around and act on his own when not being used by an Operator. But in-game, he looks and appears to be a modernized, weaker frame.
Glass Cannon: Downplayed. Kullervo can deal massive melee critical hits with Wrathful Advance, spread tons of bleed effects with Storm of Ukko, and share all that damage to multiple enemies with Collective Curse. However, he has no innate shields, which means he has no shield gating. And unlike other shield-less Warframes, he lacks powerful defensive abilities: Inaros boasts an extraordinarily high health pool and can boost his armor, while Nidus has built-in damage redirection and an Auto-Revive passive; meanwhile, Kullervo only gains a small amount of Overguard from his Recompense, which only has a tiny amount of Mercy Invincibility when it runs out. Aside from that, he must rely on his innate armor, which is admittedly pretty good (just below Lavos for fourth highest base armor at max. rank, or fifth if he is unranked), but armor doesn't affect Overguard. This means that while Kullervo's durability is fine in most missions, he may die in a fraction of a second in high-level Steel Path missions where most other Warframes can survive by exploiting shield gating.
Human Pincushion: Kullervo is stabbed full of daggers. He wields them for Recompense and Storm of Ukko; in the case of the former, missing with a dagger will cause it to return to him and deal self-damage. They're actually a special cosmetic unique to him, and you can choose to hide them if you don't like how they look.
Mini-Boss: Serves as such for Duviri, as Kullervo is a unique fighter compared to the rest of the enemies found, but can easily be overwhelmed much faster than the Orowyrm of the three spirals he occurs in.
Ironic Nursery Rhyme: Kullervo is the subject of several rhymes, which child NPCs around Kullervo's hold can he heard reciting. These rhymes, whose first and last lines start with "Kullervo, Kullervo", describe his tragic and violent lore.
Murder by Mistake: Kullervo accidentally killed Archimedean Ainikki, a maternal figure to him, while fighting off an army of Dax sent to capture him.
Redemption Demotion: Zigzagged. On one hand, Kullervo as a boss displays abilities and health gating he'd never have once he's built and "redeemed" by the Tenno, but he can be modded to be far more effective and dangerous than he ever was as a boss.
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Kullervo's name comes from The Kalevala, an epic poem from Finnish Mythology. The mythical Kullervo was enslaved after his clan was slaughtered. After many tragedies, he became consumed by revenge, slaughtering those responsible for his misery before commiting suicide. In the myth, Kullervo also had a connection to the god Ukko, and the Storm of Ukko ability implies that the Warframe has a connection to the Ukko region of the Void.
Self-Inflicted Hell: Acrithis alleges that Kullervo fled to Duviri, and confirms the prison island arrived with him. The Warden calls himself Kullervo's guilt given the form of his greatest persecutor; thanks to Conceptual Embodiment, he's being very literal about this.
Storm of Blades: Storm of Ukko causes a rain of daggers to fall over an area and lacerate enemies. Each hit also increases Kullervo's combo counter as if it was a melee attack.
Synchronization: Collective Curse links enemies together, causing damage taken by one to be shared with all of them. This effectively turns single-target damage, like that from Wrathful Advance, into AoE.
Turncoat: Three of Kullervo's seven crimes consist of espionage and two charges of treason. He rebelled against the Orokin and played a role in inciting the Tenno to turn against them.
With Us or Against Us: Kullervo's second crime is cowardice, which he was sentenced with due to him not actively participating in the termination of the Warframe prototypes. To the Orokin, this was a form of betrayal.
Worthy Opponent: Kullervo respectfully kneels before the Tenno when defeated in his Duviri hold, something which his warden despises.

Lavos

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lvs.png

Manipulating the laws of the physical realm, his prowess permeates the battlefield. This is Lavos, the transmuter, the Elemental craftsman.
Lavos harnesses the secret of invention, Tenno. Experimentation is the beauty of science.

—The Lotus

An alchemist-themed Warframe who was revealed alongside Xaku and the then-upcoming Sevagoth. Lavos first transmuted with Operation: Orphix Venom. A Warframe with a highly unorthodox fighting style, Lavos does not use energy, instead having cooldowns limiting how often he can cast his abilities. Said abilities are themed around the game's four elements of Toxin, Cold, Electricity, and Heat, and he can imbue his abilities with these elements to further increase their power.

Ability Mixing: His schtick: Each of Lavos' abilities has a different base element, and can infuse their element into his next ability cast, allowing him to "mix" elements on the fly so each attack has multiple damage types and inflicts a variety of status effects.
Alchemy Is Magic: His Leverian entry notes that even the Orokin regarded alchemy as a type of forbidden science or Black Magic. As practitioners of "the Vain Faith", they weren't worried about being cursed so much as the power of transmutation allowing someone to change their social station, turning peasant garbage into Orokin-level opulence and vice versa, which would have upturned their caste-based society.
Animal Motif: He has heavy snake aesthetics, but unlike Saryn, this seems to be leaning more towards Ouroboros or Asclepius. Two snakes are coiled around his arms, which travel up his body during his unique idle animations; he even idly regards one of them in his Noble animation, as if they were silently speaking to each other. That snake is what became of his teacher, Javi. His first ability, Ophidian Bite, allows him to lash at enemies in front of him with these snakes, inflicting Toxic and elemental damage to heal himself.
The Apprentice: Lavos became one to his assigned "prisoner", Archimedian Javi.
Black Magic: Deconstructed. The Orokin viewed the practice of alchemy as evil and socially destructive... because anyone could use it, posing a great risk to their Fantastic Caste System. It is a forbidden and dangerous science, but for entirely selfish and myopic reasons rather than any fear of it being misused.
Bottomless Magazines: Downplayed in the sense that while reloads and cooldowns still have to be taken into consideration, it's extremely difficult, if not downright impossible, for Lavos to run out of ammo. That's because of Transmutation Probe's ability to transmute all ammo pickups into universal ammo pickups, which will top up every gun on Lavos's person...yes, even Arch-Guns! That, and Cedo being Lavos's signature weapon has a weak Shotgun Mutation effect if wielded by Lavos... meaning he'll never run out of ammo even for that gun.
The Brute: The original Lavos was an Orokin prison warden and enforcer. He was dreaded by his charges for his incredibly brutal actions, routinely beating them to within an inch of their lives for the smallest infractions. Then, one day, he met Javi.
Cluster Bomb: His second power, Vial Rush, has his snakes toss dozens of elemental potions and concoctions in all directions, allowing him to slide on the sludge toward his destination while leaving patches of Cold and other elemental hazards in his wake.
Elemental Fusion: Lavos' abilities are each associated with one of the four primary elements. By hold-casting an ability, Lavos will imbue the next ability he uses with an additional element. While this extra element doesn't combine with the ability's normal element, the imbuing process can be done twice to create one of the secondary elements.
Elemental Powers: Each of Lavos' abilities is associated with one of the four primary elements: Toxin for Ophidian Bite, Cold for Vial Rush, Electric for Transmutation Probe, and Fire for Catalyze. On top of these abilities' innate elements, Lavos can also increase their power by imbuing them with an additional element, or two elements to produce a secondary element.
Good Angel, Bad Angel: Lore says his two snakes contain the minds a General Ripper and Javi, urging him towards brutal efficiency and scholarly kindness, respectively.
Heavy Equipment Class: Crossing over a bit with Not the Intended Use, Lavos's Transmutation Probe transmutes all ammo pickups into universal ammo pickups, meaning that even Arch-Guns can be topped off. This makes Lavos ideal for long stretches of Arch-Gun usage on foot, which in turn means he can very easily be turned into Warframe's answer to the Heavy.
Heel–Face Turn: Initially a dreaded, brutal prison warden who dished out daily beatings with the same regularity as he did food and water. Studying with Javi taught him both empathy and the art of transmutation.
Life Drain: Ophidian Bite gives Lavos some sustain in that it gives him back HP for each enemy he hits.
Lightning Can Do Anything: Including perform acts of Transmutation below.
Mechanically Unusual Class: Lavos is the second Warframe not to use Energy as a resource (after Hildryn), and the first to instead manage cooldowns on all of his abilities. His armor increases with level in place of energy capacity; the Ability Efficiency stat instead accelerates the cooldown reduction effect of his Transmutation Probe; and energy (or universal) orb pickups allow him to temporarily resist status effects. As a result, he's one of the only Warframes who is not affected by Energy Leech Eximus or Ancient Disruptor enemies.
Mix-and-Match Weapon: His signature weapon, the Cedo, is one of these. Its primary fire is a bullpup automatic shotgun that gains increased damage for every status effect afflicting a target. The secondary fire fires out an elemental glaive from a launcher mounted on top of the gun which can rebound and home in on enemies, spreading large numbers of status effects with every bounce^note. When in Lavos' hands, the Cedo gains a weak Ammo Mutation effect.
Named After Someone Famous: Word of God states that his name was inspired by French chemist Antoine Lavoisier.
Shout-Out: Word of God is that his early codename during production was "Edward".
- His regular name is one to Chrono Trigger.
Snake Whip: Appropriately, his Ophidian Bite lashes at all enemies in front of him with the serpents on both of his arms, siphoning health from each enemy poisoned by them. With the Swift Bite augment, they'll even accelerate the cooldowns of his abilities if he lashes a large enough crowd.
Status Effects: Has a unique interaction with elemental status effects — not only can each of his abilities inflict multiple statuses, but his Ability Duration stat affects the duration of elemental status effects he inflicts, while his Cedo shotgun and Catalyze ultimate increase in damage for each elemental status effect on affected enemies.
This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Due to Lavos' ability design incorporating cooldowns rather than Energy, he is by far the best general purpose Warframe for Railjack missions, with his only competition for the crown being Hildryn. The Sisters of Parvos rework changing Railjack abilities to use Warframe energy makes it so that Lavos can use Railjack powers repeatedly without the worry of energy management. In particular, a crew of Lavos in the gunner and pilot seats can spam Seeker Volleys reasonably fast to clear out fighters and deal huge damage to Crewships. And, as he can transmute all ammo pickups into universal ammo pickups, he's a very good choice for heavy Arch-Gun usage, particularly in areas where you cannot summon a Necramech.
Took a Level in Kindness: Lavos was originally made to be a jailer for a Venusian prison, Dabaoth-Kra; among his duties was administering corporal punishment to the prisoners of the Orokin, and he was regarded as a monster by prisoner records. His studies under Javi taught him not just alchemy, but empathy for the prisoners, putting a stop to the beatings. It's implied that after rescuing Javi, he destroyed the prison and the entire mountainside it was built into, and the only remaining accounts are from a former prisoner.
Transmutation: His third ability, Transmutation Probe, can change all orb or ammo pickups into their "universal" forms to increase their value for teammates. When wielding his signature shotgun, Cedo, he can also transmute any ammo pickup into compatible ammunition.
- He was gifted the power of cellular reconfiguration by the Orokin in order to execute the alchemist Javi, who they feared to be otherwise immortal. Having been taught the art of transmutation beforehand, however, Lavos instead turned Javi into one of his pet snakes before going on a rampage against his masters. In general, the Orokin feared alchemy because any one person who knew it, no matter their status, could turn peasantry into Executor-esque opulence, toppling the caste system in one fell swoop.

Limbo

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Limbo, master of the Rift.
In a land of both shadow and substance, Limbo is both nowhere and everywhere.

— The Lotus

A magician-themed Warframe who appeared from the Rift with Update 15.0 in 2014, Limbo manipulates multiple planes of reality at once. His skills allow him to transport himself or others to a "Rift plane" to avoid or divert harm. Following Mirage's example, he can be obtained from The Limbo Theorem questline.

Limbo Prime premiered with Hotfix 23.0.3 in 2018.

Achilles' Heel: More so than most Warframes, Limbo is severely hampered by the existence of Nullifiers, as they can instantly dispel Cataclysm upon contact with the edge, take him out of the Rift, and are effectively immune to Banish unless you pop the bubble first.
- Eximus units, as of Eximus 2.0. Their abilities affect Limbo through the Rift, and while their overguard is up, they are immune to the effects of Stasis. However, they can still be Banished and are unable to damage Limbo with their weapons while on opposite sides of the Rift.
Animal Motifs: Clams and mussels — the inside of his coat has a Mother of Pearl surface, while his helmets "open" to reveal a hidden gem structure. His helmets even look like clams if you remove the crown of the hat, and close examination of the back of his helmets shows they almost have a "hinge" built-in.
Anti-Magic: The Rift acts as a functional counter to Eximus enemies, whose abilities cannot affect enemies or allies within the Rift. Some Eximus auras are even shut down completely within.
- Less so as of Eximus 2.0, as they are no longer affected by Stasis and can use their abilities on players on the other side of the Rift.
Badass in a Nice Suit: It even has a tailcoat.
Boring, but Practical: What is Limbo's most useful ability? Rift Walk. A unique ability that is not part of the standard Warframe power set, Rift Walk costs zero energy and allows Limbo (and other players, for a limited time) to enter the Rift Plane, which prevents Limbo and anyone else from taking damage from enemy forces while inside it, which is perfect for almost any mission.
Dashingly Dapper Derby: One of the smashingly classy alternate helmets available takes the shape of a derby hat with a strange cycloptic 'monocole' in the middle of its face.
Death Dealer: His Limina deluxe skin comes with the Tarock thrown blade skin, which resembles sentient-looking cards.
Difficult, but Awesome: Easily has the highest skill ceiling of any Warframe in the game. To give you an idea of how complex he is, he has an entire wiki page dedicated to explaining his Rift mechanic. All of his abilities require knowledge and awareness of many factors, including which plane you're on, which plane enemies are on, which plane your teammates are on... As well, you need to take into account various timers as ALL his abilities run on a timer. Failure to take note of all these factors means that you'll end up as literal dead weight, or in the worst case, an active detriment to your team. When mastered, however, Limbo can easily turn the tides of a battle on his own and can make specific missions an absolute breeze, especially against the Grineer or Infested, who do not possess many abilities that can affect him or his allies in the Rift.
- It's telling that Limbo is difficult to master when one of his abilities are Difficult, but Awesome on their own. Specifically, his third ability, Rift Surge, which at first glance seems to be a useless ability: It tags all enemies around you that are in the Rift with a Surge debuff, which activates when either the debuff expires or when the enemy exits the Rift (either through Banish expiring or by reapplying Banish to enemies currently in the Rift). The debuff forces the enemies back into the Rift, which seems to be almost useless considering you can do that with Banish...until you realize the many applications Rift Surge can bring. For one, any enemies outside of the Rift that are near an enemy tagged with the Surge debuff will also be taken into the Rift, which allows you to safely bring enemies into the Rift without poking your head out and risk dying. It can also be used in conjunction with Cataclysm to tag a group of enemies, Surge them, then remove Cataclysm, allowing you a pseudo-room clear which can allow you to do Rescue or Spy missions without worrying about patrolling enemies. Rift Surge, if used improperly, can earn your team's ire and frustrate everyone but rewards anyone willing to work with it with a plethora of utility that can turn a decent Limbo into a god-like Limbo.
Earn Your Happy Ending: Meta example. His quest is often thought to be one of the most difficult (or at least, tedious) in the game. The Excavation missions have hordes of high level enemies, weak drills and you need to do at least 3 of them. So, if you want a Limbo, you better have great weapons and powerful teammates to go with you.
Formulaic Magic: The entirety of The Limbo Theorem revolves around using the proofs of his work to locate parts to assemble the Warframe.
Gentleman Wizard: A custom animation to accompany his passive causes him to jump back and tip his hat when the player inputs a backflip.
Intangibility: Played with, as the main focus of his skillset. His passive plays this straight for enemies in the material plane, but Limbo can still be damaged by foes he has Banished into the Rift with him. Cataclysm creates a bubble in which enemies or allies on one side cannot affect those on the other, allowing bullets fired from the outside to completely pass through.
Mad Mathematician: Ordis believes him to be an idiot at first, due to all of the "half-written proofs, unfinished equations" and nonsensical allusions to imaginary concepts in his theorem. Upon realizing Limbo is Talking through Technique, Ordis begins reading his theorem more like poetry.
Magicians Are Wizards: Or at least, pseudo-scientist ninjas with void-based powers and psychic abilities.
Meaningful Name: "Limbo" is one of the potential afterlives in Catholicism - a world outside of Heaven and Hell. It also describes a delaying stage marked by inactivity, much like he puts his enemies into. His "Aristeas" alternate helmet is named after an ancient Greek miracle-worker.
Mechanically Unusual Class:
- His entire kit revolves around the Rift mechanic introduced alongside him. The Rift itself creates unique opportunities to battle enemies one-on-one, which runs as a hard counter to most Zerg Rush enemy tactics.
- Due to the way he triggers his Rift, which is by slide-dashing, it can throw a lot of people off their game as this is one of the primary ways to run faster in the game.
Mind over Matter: While it doesn't in his attacks, his animations are full of small touches where he exhibits telekinesis, such as twirling his guns without touching them or levitating his hat.
Misplaced a Decimal Point: Apparently Limbo overestimated his teleporting abilities, so when he tried to enter the Rift, he literally ended up everywhere.
Not the Intended Use:
- His ability to send allies and enemies into the Rift with Banish is intended to allow for some hard crowd-control on enemies or unique survival boosts for allies, even buffing allies with increased energy generation. However, Limbo's allies cannot attack anything on the opposite side of the Rift from them, interact with consoles or terminals, or pick up items while they are in the Rift, and have no control over who is Banished or for how long, making Limbo an ideal Trolling Warframe simply by swapping focus on which side is being isolated or kept alive. Players were given the ability to cancel Banish via rolling soon after his release, but as there is no mention of how in the game proper, most are unaware of it.
- Complicating matters is the rework he received in Update 20, which made Limbo players capable of Trolling each other. Exiting or ending Cataclysm will remove any entity caught within from the Rift, including those affected by Limbo's passive. Stasis can also freeze up to 300 projectiles within the Rift, rendering allies' non-melee weapons entirely useless until the effect ends, and can be used by any Limbo in the party to affect the Rift across all Limbos in the party. Stasis was eventually modified so that it would no longer freeze allied projectiles, removing a significant amount of frustration.
- His Cataclysm, when modded for max range, is a good way to break containers. Because of this, you'll often find people recommend using him for Sabotage missions or any mission that involves searching for hidden objects in the environment. Popping his Cataclysm with Loot Radar mods makes it incredibly easy to pick out the important stuff from everything else and cuts down on searching every nook and cranny. Just be sure you have enough energy to spam his Cataclysm and that you're careful with it in Corpus Ships...
Power Floats: Limbo hovers for a moment while casting Cataclysm. His hat will also float when he's casting certain skills.
Power of the Void: His abilities use void energy to manipulate and damage foes whenever they enter the Rift.
Regenerating Mana: A Tenno in the Rift regenerates energy at a fairly rapid pace, although at a lower rate than a Trinity or Harrow can restore it. Limbo's passive ability also allows him to accelerate his regeneration whenever an enemy dies within the Rift.
Space Master: Cataclysm creates a pocket of Rift within the area; any enemy in the area is essentially under his command. His passive ability also allows him to tear open portals for allies to enter the Rift through.
Stage Magician: His visual theme. He even has telekinesis, which real magicians often try to replicate in their acts. His Speargun idle animation gives the motif a further nod by having him make it disappear into thin air.
Squishy Wizard: Zig-zagged. His rework in Update 20 made him a Glass Cannon class, while he has always supplemented his low survival stats with high potential for crowd control. On the other hand, he's arguably one of the tankiest Warframes in the game owing to his selective invulnerability.
Talking through Technique: The Limbo Theorem is his biography in numbers, and only Ordis can read it.
Teleporter Accident: According to his final proof, his last attempt to enter the Rift couldn't have gone over well. There's a reason you pick up his pieces all over the solar system.
Time Stands Still: Stasis allows him to freeze enemies caught within the Rift, as well as a limited number of projectiles fired within. This pairs well with his Cataclysm ability to freeze an entire area at a time.
Videogame Dashing: Update 20 gave him a new Rift Walk passive to toggle his Rift state by dodging, which included new animations to his dodge maneuvers. Rolling causes him to simply dash forward or to the side, leaving a portal behind. In place of a backflip, Limbo simply slides backward while tipping his hat at attackers.

Loki

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Loki, the trickster, the deceiver.
Whether you prefer to go into battle alone or with a team, Tenno, Loki will adapt to any style.

— The Lotus

Loki is primarily known for having both the best stealth ability in the game and one of the best aggro management tools, which more than compensate for his lack of direct damage abilities. His skill set allows him to redirect enemy attention (not to mention their firepower) and shape the flow of any battle to his advantage, but players who run out of Energy will quickly learn why he is recommended for advanced users. Before Update 14.0 he was one of the three starting Warframes, but he was replaced by Volt.

Loki was one of the first eight Warframes to be released with the game's "Vanilla" version in 2012, and Loki Prime decloaked with Update 13.7 in 2014 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Update 18.12 in 2016.

Boring, but Practical: All of his skills are rather modest, and deal no damage. However, because they're purely utility, they are always effective regardless of the enemy's level.
Difficult, but Awesome: A fact that led to him being removed from the roster of starter frames in favor of other, more beginner-friendly ones.
Close-Range Combatant: Aside from Switch Teleport, Loki's abilities have fairly low range even when modded for it. However, his ability to get stealth multipliers on all of his melee attacks with Invisibility encourages him to cloak himself before cutting a bloody swathe through the enemy while they're wondering where he is.
Fashionable Asymmetry: Loki's only symmetrical bits are his helmet and lower arms. His legs, in particular, look like they came from two separate Warframes.
Foil: To Ash. Both are fast stealth frames with abilities to displace themselves, as well as a means to crowd control. While Ash's kit encourages to cause extensive damage and leave no witnesses alive, Loki's kit is to misdirect and confuse enemies with no direct damaging effects.
- Also to Mirage, his Distaff Counterpart. While both are described as being the trickster, Loki favors stealth and misdirection, whereas Mirage uses vibrant optical illusions to deal massive damage.
Fragile Speedster: Had the highest base movement speed of any Warframe before Gauss' release, as well as the lowest starting health and third-lowest shield capacity (beaten only by Valkyr and Grendel).
Glass Cannon: A Loki with active Invisibility can deal apocalyptic amounts of damage (+400%) with melee weapons, but can be gibbed by cross-fire and explosives even while invisible. If Invisibility drops in the middle of combat, so does the Loki.
Invisibility with Drawbacks: Has a longer duration than the Smoke Screen power Ash has, but no initial stun.
Magikarp Power: Level one - the weakest Warframe, with little armor, low shields, low HP, an ineffectual Decoy that dies in two seconds, an Invisibility power that's way too short to be useful, a Radial Disarm with a tiny radius, and zero direct damage abilities. Fast forwards twenty levels, and properly modded, you have a Lightning Bruiser who can distract entire hordes of enemies with a damage sponge decoy, turn invisible and run around bisecting enemies like Gray Fox, and rip away the weapons of anything in sight with a disarm attack that literally disarms the Infested. His lack of damaging effects lets him ignore enemy scaling completely, making him no less effective against high-level enemies.
Meaningful Name: Named after Loki, the god of trickery of mischief. His skillset relies on misdirection and confusion.
Not the Intended Use: Switch Teleport was most certainly not intended to get other players stuck in terrain, drop datamasses in unreachable locations, nor plant teammates in herds of Toxic Ancients/in the paths of attacking bosses, but that sure didn't stop players from doing any of those things. It was also most likely not intended to teleport bosses into places they would get stuck in. Players would use it on Raptor in particular, to trap him inside the storehouse he spawns on before it was patched out.
Starter Equipment: In older versions, Loki was one of the three Warframes offered to new players, though he was eventually replaced with Volt due to his playstyle being Difficult, but Awesome, making him unsuitable for beginners.
Stealth Expert: Loki is one of the best 'frames for Rescue and Spy missions thanks to his prolonged invisibility.
Swap Teleportation: Switch Teleport allows to switch position with a friend, foe or his own decoys. Allows a wide variety of tactics, like quickly bypassing long hallways or stealth-related traps, helping stuck teammates, teleporting downed teammates towards safe positions, removing stronger foes from a pack or annoying your teammates.
Troll:
- In the eyes of the fan base, he surely lives up to his namesake. For example, Switch Teleport's effect on allies have lead many to use him this way. There are also the possible in-universe applications of his "Decoy".
- His Radial Disarm causes all firearms to be replaced by Prova electric batons. When used on most Grineer or Corpus crewmen, it makes sense to replace their guns with melee weapons; when used on Corpus MOAs, the baton is simply placed on top of their guns like a horn◊, since they don't exactly have hands to hold anything.
Useless Useful Spell: Decoy is intended to divert enemy attention to allow Loki to attack them while enemy fire is pointed elsewhere. In practice, its health is so low that it barely offers any real utility aside from being a target for Switch Teleport to get through security traps.
Weak, but Skilled: Loki has low defense and no damage abilities, but makes up for it with utility. Which includes, a decoy, teleport, prolonged invisibility, and disarming all nearby enemies.

Mag

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/magnewlookedit_1866.jpg

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Mag, a force to be reckoned with.
Mag is a team player, Tenno, and a worthy addition to any squad.

— The Lotus

The third starting Warframe since Update 7.0, Mag is the option for players wanting to rely less on weapons. She can manipulate magnetism to move and stun enemies, lower their defenses, redirect allied firepower onto them or kill them outright.

Mag was one of the first eight Warframes to be released with the game's "Vanilla" version in 2012, and Mag Prime was first polarized with Update 10.0 in 2013 alongside Nekros before she was retired to the Prime Vault with Update 16.11 in 2015.

Armor Is Useless: Invoked with Polarize, which literally rips away armor from any enemies that pass through its expanding field. While its flat armor removal isn't as potent as some other armor-shredding abilities, the resulting debris it creates will act as additional projectiles when pulled into a Magnetize field.
Awesome, but Impractical:
- Zig-zagged for Crush. Prior to Update 11, a single Pull was able to out-damage Crush at double the range, for a quarter of the cost, with the same stun period per cast. Since Update 11, Pull does less damage than Crush, but is still more cost-efficient - however, Crush can also hit through walls, while Pull has been limited to line-of-sight.
Badass in Distress: In "The Profit" Trailer, she has been captured by Alad V and needs to be freed by her fellow Tenno.^* Once this is accomplished, she hurls her kidnapper straight through a glass window to plummet into the depths of a gas giant.
Barrier Warrior: Mag's Magnetize functions like an inverted version of Frost's Snow Globe. Shield Polarize can restore shields to allies or Defense mission objectives, and do the reverse to enemy targets in an explosive display of force.
Cool Helmet: Her basic glassy face-plate looks like something out of a Super Sentai series.
Defeat Equals Explosion: Enemies who die under the effects of Magnetize will release a delayed blast (depending on how much of the duration was left) after they die.
Dual Wielding: Three of Mag's major abilities can be used offhandedly, allowing Mag to shoot through a horde of enemies whilst reducing their defensive capabilities as conveniently as possible.
Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Her Polarize can do amazing amounts of damage as it strips armor Grineer armor and decimates Corpus shields... but the Infested have neither of those things, so the ability is essentially a waste of energy.
Explosive Stupidity: Magnetize can enforce this rule, by letting enemies themselves shoot at the bubbles made by Mag. The more damage the magnetic bubbles take, the more powerful the explosion it becomes on death.
Gameplay and Story Integration: Two notable cases —
- First in the trailer "The Profit", Mag telekinetically lifted and tossed Alad V out of a window behind herself following her rescue. At the time Mag could not do this, as Pull would knock down and rapidly drag enemies across the floor to deposit them in a neat pile at Mag's feet. This trailer came with the announcement that Pull would be converted to a ragdoll effect, allowing for exactly this phenomenon against nearby enemies.^*
- Second in the "Awakening" trailer (part of the new player experience of Update 29), Mag is depicted being able to create a magnetic barrier in front of herself to catch bullets (a la Nyx's Absorb) and railgun fire them back at enemies. Because she wasn't able to do this in-game but the devs thought it was an awesome visual, this function was added to Magnetize in the same update.
Good Wings, Evil Wings: The original Mag Prime, mounted with an Odonata Prime, is depicted like an angel in the codex.
Hoist by Their Own Petard:
- Can magnetize enemies with Magnetize, making their own (and their allies') bullets fly into them.
- Polarize also comes to mind, in that not only does the radial damage it deals scale with the strongest shields of affected enemies, making it a very effective counter against Shield Ospreys who ensure that enemies have more shields than usual, but also removes armor from enemies and turns said armor into shards that are affected by Magnetize just like other bullets.
Impossibly Cool Clothes: Mag Prime has shoulder pads and hip holsters that hover a fixed distance away from her. Justified by her element, of course. Her Pneuma deluxe skin extends this to her hip holsters, collar, and the front plate of her helmet, as well as the arms, each one cutting off at both the shoulder and elbow and being held together by magnetism.
Magnetism Manipulation: Her elemental forte. Oddly, this makes her powers strong against the Corpus not because she can disrupt their robotic proxies, but because she can dampen their shields.
Meaningful Name: Her name is literally just her elemental theme, shortened to one syllable. On the other hand, her alternate helmets refer to the coilgun (also known as a Gauss gun), which fires projectiles using magnetism.
Mighty Glacier: While limited health and mediocre armor slightly subvert this, her high shields and defensive skillset that support her anti/support barrier effects still qualify for this trope.
Not the Intended Use: Magnetize is primarily a damage and accuracy boost against an enemy, but it can also be used to create emergency cover.
Orbiting Particle Shield: The debris shards created by Polarize will automatically orbit Mag when she comes close enough to them or grabs them with her Pull ability, automatically shredding enemies who come to close to her and allowing her to transport the shards to nearby Magnetize fields.
Return to Shooter: The target of Magnetize will receive a magnetic field that pulls shots fired from all sources directly to the victim, including shots fired from its own gun. Shots that are orbiting around the victim in a form of a globe, even in death, will continue to harm anyone around the center except for allies until it leaves a powerful explosion equal to the amount of damage that it received. Hold-casting Magnetize will also allow Mag to create a magnetic field in front of herself to catch incoming projectiles, then release them as a short-range cone attack.
Selective Magnetism: Pull especially, since it affects enemies, but not the environment; an enemy standing behind a metallic crate will be pulled over the crate, but the crate itself remains.
Shout-Out: Mag's semi-Gothic Pneuma Deluxe skin is heavily inspired by A2 in NieR: Automata.
Small Girl, Big Gun: Mag is the shortest (and the least decorated female) Warframe by far and having her carrying a rocket launcher, an over-sized pistol and a gigantic hammer is not slowing her down.
Starter Equipment: One of the three Warframes offered to new players during the Awakening quest, alongside Excalibur and Volt. She is a good pick for players who would like to focus more on crowd control.
You Will Not Evade Me:
- Mag's Pull ability, which does Exactly What It Says on the Tin to distant enemies but is unique in that it can affect whole rooms of occupants, provided no obstacles are in the way to catch them on the way. Enemies are ragdolled and flung towards Mag; those who make it all the way to her are then caught in a brief vortex to keep from flying past her. Usually.
- To a lesser extent, Magnetize also qualifies as it will root the primary target in place while causing any other enemy caught in the field to drift towards its center. Its radius and pull velocity are significantly less than Pull's, but its vortex lasts significantly longer, allowing it to act as a net to collect any herds Pull grabs.

Mesa

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Mesa, the vagabond, the outcast.
Do you feel lucky, Tenno? Mesa's got the fastest guns in the stars.

— The Lotus

A gunslinger-themed Warframe that moseyed into town one day with Update 15.5 in 2014. Her aforementioned skill in gunplay is composed of a kinetically powered shot, a bullet defection aura, and crowd control by jamming firearms in an area as well as area clear.

Mesa Prime's shots first rang out at High Noon with Hotfix 24.2.2 in 2018.

Animal Motifs: Her "Longhorn" alternate helmet gives her bovine motifs. This makes her a literal cowgirl.
Badass Long Coat: Both her regular and Prime variants have one. Mesa Prime's is much more pronounced and ornate, and comes with an integrated Scarf of Asskicking.
Blind Weaponmaster: She wears a blindfold over her ocular sensors because it wouldn't be a challenge otherwise. Her other helmets generally have something that covers her eyes, either horns or a cowboy hat.
Body Horror: The end of the "Patient Zero" questline has you fight against Mesa, who has been successfully infested by Alad V.
Coat, Hat, Mask: Mesa Prime's default hat evokes this trope, with what looks like a mask drawn up over her face and a cowboy hat tilted over her eyes. The general effect is evocative of Old Western gunslingers or outlaws.
Combat Stilettos: With shiny spurs!
Convenient Misfire: Shooting Gallery invokes this on command, jamming the weapons of up to three nearby enemies, forcing them to stand in place and try to unjam them while Mesa mows them down.
Cowboy: Her motif, making her a sci-fi ninja cowgirl.
Deflector Shields: Shatter Shield allows her to reflect up to 95% of all incoming damage.
Face–Monster Turn: Mesa is converted to the side of the Infested by Mutalist Alad V in "Patient Zero", forcing the player to battle her.
Fake Longevity: On release, Mesa was one of the most difficult Warframes to unlock due to how much grind was needed to acquire her:
1. First you had to be online when an Infested Invasion occurs. Then you have to hope that a single Mutalist Alad V Nav Coordinate will be an invasion reward. Then you've got to do three missions against Infested, hoping that you've found the invasion early enough so that you can finish the three missions you need to before all the other Tenno descend on the mission and pick it dry because they all need the Coordinate also.
2. You do this three times - the key needs 3 coordinates, each from different invasions, for 9 total missions - then craft an Infested Alad V key, do the boss fight and get a random one of the three parts you need to make it, so you better pray you're lucky here also.
3. Once you're done killing the boss, you also need Argon Crystals, which decay over time and start to disappear between 24 and 48 hours after picking up your first one. Thankfully once Mesa's parts start building the Argon Crystals are effectively "banked".
- For an incredibly lucky solo player, or someone without a dedicated invasion team, this is at least 27 missions that are incredibly easy to miss, have a chance of simply not having the right reward or that can payout with the wrong part. Step 1 was eventually made less grueling as if there aren't any active invasions, you can try running Orokin Derelict missions for a low but repeatable chance at finding more Coordinates. Later still, the number of Coordinates required to craft the key was reduced to 1.
Fastest Gun in the West: Called the "fastest gun in the stars" in her profile video.
Finger Firearms: Played with. The barrels of her "Regulator" pistols are strapped to her arms at all times, and attach to her fingers while Peacemaker is active; her thumbs become the hammers. One of the idle animations for the "Agile" animation set features her making this gesture at an invisible target and "shooting" it.
Glass Cannon: She is one of the hardest-hitting Warframes in terms of straight-up damage, but she has absolutely no armor to speak of, underwhelming shields, and only moderate health. While mods can keep your shields and health pool scaled so that you won't be in immediate danger of being flattened by high-level enemies, playing as Mesa pretty much requires being quick on the gun and making good use of her "Shatter Shield" and "Shooting Gallery" abilities to keep foes on the backfoot, since getting caught in a damage spiral almost guarantees certain death.
Gun Fu: She rapidly transitions between a number of poses during Peacemaker.
Guns Akimbo: Her ultimate, Peacemaker, has her whip out two custom-made revolvers and go to town. She also has a passive buff to her reload speed when using dual guns.
The Gunslinger: To the point of passively having unique bonuses with sidearms, and a health boost for not bringing a melee weapon.
Herd-Hitting Attack: Peacemaker will lock onto and mow down every enemy within Mesa's targeting reticle, which grows with range mods.
Immune to Bullets: Her Shatter Shield not only makes her immune to them, but it also reflects them.
Improbable Aiming Skills: Peacemaker automatically takes aim at enemies within its targeting reticule.
Long-Range Fighter: She's a gunslinger by nature and her passive encourages her to eschew melee entirely by giving her bonus health when she doesn't have a melee weapon equipped.
More Dakka: Mesa is the game's queen of dakka. Her passive grants her 15% improved fire rate while using dual-wielded pistols and Peacemaker has her gun down everything in her sights with a hail of bullets. The pistols themselves can be (and often are) modded for even more fire rate to up their dakka. They're also backed by Bottomless Magazines that will only run dry when Mesa's energy stores do. A properly-modded Peacemaker can become the ultimate anti-Sentient weapon, as its absolutely unholy rate of fire and DPS can completely overwhelm the Sentients' damage-nullifying adaptations.
Ms. Fanservice: Players noticed Mesa Prime's... rather ample behind when she was first showcased, to the point that DE patched it to be even more Fanservice-y once players noticed its changes. Even the base Mesa has a rather form-fitting shape, which leaves little of her build to the imagination.
Nothing Up My Sleeve: The barrels of her "Regulator" pistols are always strapped to her arms, and fold onto her hands when in use.
Ominous Walk: With the Mesa's Waltz augment, Mesa can walk very slowly during Peacemaker. She can still dodge roll though.

Mirage

^{Click to see Prime form.}

"Oh, how you suffered to become this beast. Yet you laughed at me. Others writhed and raged in the vice. But you...you played the fool. And so it was that you distorted my design. A sanguine trick. A murderous comedy. But no one is laughing anymore. Except you.
The mere vapours of your life... shimmering still. Mirage."

— Ballas, Warframe: Mirage Prime

First unveiled with Update 14.0 in 2014, Mirage is a jester-themed Warframe. Unlike her fellow light-elemental Oberon, she utilizes purely photokinetic abilities that allow her to create illusions of herself or weaponize lightwaves. Notable for being the first Warframe to be obtained via the questing system; reassembling her is the focus of the Hidden Messages chain.

Mirage Prime was exposed with Update 22.7 in 2017 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Update 25.8 in 2019.

Awesome, but Impractical:
- Sleight of Hand in early versions, as many rooms don't even have targetable objects to work with, or spread out objects far enough that enemies won't approach them. The most common things she can trap are Corpus laser doors and ammo pickups, to make them explode. This is pretty practical in Defense, where spare ammo is all over the place, but it'll stop working so reliably after wave 20 or so. One of its most practical uses is to prevent enemies from using access panels in stealth runs — blinding them to interrupt the alert sequence — but the traps created only work once. It was later reworked to include dropping a gem that dazzles nearby enemies that also synergizes with Hall of Mirrors, giving it far more utility.
- Prism is another, as it does light damage that is spread across the floor, walls, and ceiling and doesn't stay in the same spot, and can easily move out of effective range if it bounces at the wrong angle. Its blind ability, however, is somewhat more useful.
Beam Spam: Prism fires lasers out every-which-way. Unfortunately, it's so bouncy that it'll likely fly off if you aim it wrong, turning a rain of light into a light rain.
Blinded by the Light: Prism and Sleight of Hand can each cause detonations that blind any nearby enemies.
Boring, but Practical: Two of her four spells, Hall of Mirrors and Eclipse are just self buffs, but while those buffs are active she deals OBSCENE damage and can turn any weapon, especially those with a blast radius and/or punch through, into a monster. In addition, one of Sleight of Hand's most practical uses is its ability to temporarily disarm Corpus laser traps during speed runs. These doors also serve to temporarily halt enemies as well as doing light damage, which is useful for controlling the numbers of units going through doors.
- The Prism augment Prism Guard just makes the ability stay with Mirage, albeit with a reduced timer. This allows you to better control where it goes, possibly killing more enemies if Mirage is fast enough.
Commedia dell'Arte: While her Prime more resembles a jester, base Mirage seems to be based on Arlecchino from the commedia dell'arte
Deadly Prank: Sleight of Hand causes every possible one (short of guns jamming) within range of her, typically involving Stuff Blowing Up, and going so far as to take control of nearby cameras, arc traps and turrets to set them against enemies. When used on the trap-heavy Corpus, this usually results in entire squads of crewmen dashing out of the room to escape their own haywire turrets and getting stun locked by their own electrified laser doorways (and the one crewman trying to activate the alarm having his console blow up in his face).
Difficult, but Awesome: She has to be keenly aware of her surroundings to avoid being gunned down thanks to her fragility and limited defensive options. But she puts out nearly unparalleled amounts of damage and can devastate entire rooms with Hall of Mirrors while waltzing through traps with Sleight of Hand.
Distaff Counterpart: To Loki. While both are described as being tricksters their abilities and play styles are complete opposites. Loki being adept at stealth and misdirection with no damaging abilities, while Mirage uses optical illusions in the open with massive damage potential.
Doppelgänger Spin: Hall of Mirrors, which creates one to four fake copies of Mirage, all capable of doing (reduced) damage to the original's target on top of drawing enemy fire away from the real one.
Energy Weapon: Her ultimate ability, Prism, fires at nearby enemies as it flies.
Fashionable Asymmetry: Her standard skin can allow her torso to have two separate colors split straight down the middle. Given her inspiration, this is something of an Enforced Trope.
Gemstone Assault: Prism summons a bouncing crystal that fires lasers at enemies as it flies.
Glass Cannon: Has the second-lowest base shield and health of any Warframe at 80 each but is capable of dealing immense damage output with Hall of Mirrors and Prism which can be further increased with Eclipse and standing in the light.
Hard Light: Zigzagged. Though intangible, her light-illusions are still damaging.
Light 'em Up: Like Oberon, Prism deals radiation damage, as light is radiation.
Master of Illusion: Best exemplified by her Hall of Mirrors ability, which summons intangible clones of Mirage that will draw enemy fire. Each one of them can copy her weapon attacks, dealing partial damage. This leads to interesting combinations with wide-spread weapons.
Ms. Fanservice: Mirage Prime, which has much less-distorted proportions than the original, as well as much larger hips and bust.
Posthumous Character: The original Mirage died in the Old War, captured and executed by the Sentients. All Mirages today are copies of her design.
Power Crystal: One of these is a component in her Prism ability, firing lasers at nearby enemies as it flies. After being reworked, Sleight of Hand places one as a booby trap that can either damage enemies or blind them depending on the lighting conditions.
Sexy Jester: Designed to invoke one — even naming her alternate helmet Harlequin, or noting in the Codex that she is a natural prankster. Fittingly, her base helmet also confuses some players into thinking she's Grineer-themed, as she wears it in mockery of them. Mirage Prime is even more intentionally sexy.
Shout-Out: Mirage Prime looks similarly like an overly ornate NiGHTS.

Characters / Warframe - Tenno (Warframes A-M)

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Characters / Warframe - Tenno (Warframes A-M)

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