Warframe - Tenno (Warframes N-Z) / Characters

The Warframes the Tenno use, from Nekros to Zephyr.

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Nekros

^{Click to see Prime form.}

Fear is a weed, snaking in the dark. It vines within the mind, corrupting it. It germinates within tribes, dividing them. Your graces, we who are beyond death, have forgotten the simple power of fear. Let us now remember. You will find no greater power than the simple thought of your own name, inscribed upon a grave.
Our harbinger. Our Terror. Nekros.

— Ballas, Warframe: Nekros Prime

Rising up alongside Mag Prime with Update 10.0 in 2013, the Necromancy-themed Nekros was the runner-up for the first Design Council Warframe, though his abilities were chosen without player input. He uses dark magic such as damaging his enemies' souls, striking fear into their hearts and reviving their dead under his control.

Nekros Prime arose from the dead with "Hotfix: The Silver Grove 3" in 2016 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Hotfix 23.0.3 in 2018.

Animate Dead: Shadows of the Dead allows him to summon vanquished enemies to fight for him
Arachnid Appearance and Attire: His 'ribs' and Syandana give the appearance of spider legs, while his Raknis alternate helmet gives him the extra eyes. "Raknis" even sounds like arachnid.
Badass Cape: His exclusive Mortos Syandana, which gives him shroud-like tassels across the back of his shoulders and hood. His Prime variant also has its own, fully-attached.
Boring, but Practical: Desecrate doesn't cause enemies to combust, but it can make their corpses give much-needed health orbs and ammo. It's all but required for high-level Survival missions to get enough life support off of enemies, and the ability to double-dip in loot tables make farming for mods and resources much faster.
Cast from Hit Points: The "Despoil" mod makes Desecrate consume health instead of energy when cast. Desecrate has a very high chance of spawning health orbs in the first place, so it's not a bad trade-off since it lets Nekros drop some efficiency in favor of mods to help his other powers out.
Chained by Fashion: His Irkalla deluxe skin has a matching set of binds that chain his wrists to his back. Of course, they're long enough not to actually impede him.
Clone Degeneration: Minions summoned by Shadows of the Dead lose a percentage of their health over time, rather than having a maximum duration. Nekros can heal the minions by recasting the ability, extending their lifespan if he cares to keep them around.
Creepy Crows: Nekros Prime includes a built-in shroud that tapers off in the effect of sharp, bird-like wings. Given his naturally black color scheme...
Creepy Long Fingers: Nekros Prime has a tassel connected to each pinky, giving them this effect.
Desecrating the Dead: Nekros' Desecrate burns corpses to smoke as he pilfers more loot off of them.
Fake Longevity: No longer the case, as there are no restrictions or requirements to fight Lephantis and getting Nekros' components, but in past versions, getting him would require one to farm multiple different nodes, the first Warframe to ask that of players. You first needed to farm up Nav Coordinates to build a key to access the Orokin Derelicts, then had to farm those Derelicts for Lephantis Nav Coordinates. Each key was single-use, so this could end up consuming a lot of time.
The Grim Reaper: An obvious inspiration for his design. His "favored" weapon is even a scythe. Nekros Prime takes this even further by giving him a shroud shaped like crow wings.
In the Hood: His basic helmet gives this impression.
Loot-Making Attack: The Desecrate ability is able to force fallen enemies to drop more loot.
The Minion Master: Shadows of the Dead resurrects a group of fallen enemies who fight for Nekros. Recasting the ability will summon any active Shadows to you, top off their health and fill out the remainder of their ranks if any died between casts.
The Red Mage: Comes with the first health restoration alternative to Trinity's skills, and his other 3 skills draw heavily from the Black Mage. However, he also shares his polarities and most of his stats with Excalibur — making him a caster with the energy capacity of a melee.
Soul Power: Soul Punch turns enemy souls into projectiles.
Squishy Wizard: Zigzagged. Nekros has 65 Armor and average Health and Shields at max rank—with Nekros Prime only being somewhat better in the Shields department. However, with 214% Ability Strength and the Shield of Shadows, Despoil, Health Conversion, and Equilibrium mods, he becomes extremely difficult to kill.^note
Status Effects: Terrify combines Fear and Curse, debuffing enemies to reduce their armor and otherwise being Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
Superhero Speciation: He shares a similar death and reaper theme with Sevagoth. But while Nekros manipulates the bodies of the dead to obtain extra loot and raise the dead to fight for him, Sevagoth consumes the souls of his opponents to power his Shadow.
Useless Useful Skill: Terrify, which strips enemy armor and prevents them from attacking, but also makes those enemies run away, making them harder to hit. Its primary use is as crowd control to protect an objective.
Weapon-Based Characterization: Fittingly for his Grim Reaper theme, he is typically depicted with the Ether Reaper (scythe).

Nezha

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Nezha, the protector, the quick.
Feel the heat, Tenno. Nezha is a burning thing, and he makes a fiery ring.

— The Lotus

A fire-based Warframe. Unlike Ember, Nezha focuses on the defensive and utilitarian properties of fire. Like Wukong, Nezha is another Warframe originally released in China then blazing a trail to the global build in Update 18.1 in 2016. Don't be fooled by his small size, as Nezha is a real powerhouse capable of both dishing out and taking huge amounts of damage, leaving behind a trail of flames as he rushes into the fray, absorbing enemy fire before mowing them down with his Chakram.

Nezha Prime slid in on burning winds with Update 29.0.3 in October 2020.

Ability Mixing: Hitting an enemy impaled by Divine Spears with a Blazing Chakram will spawn a second chakram that bounces off to hit another enemy. If that one's also speared, it, in turn, will spawn another chakram, and so on.
Boring, but Practical: None of his abilities are especially flashy or hard to use aside from the bouncing mechanics of Burning Chakram and most of them don't even need to be aimed, but they come together to make him a fast and tough Warframe who can output serious damage in the right circumstances.
Charged Attack: Blazing Chakram can be charged to greatly increase its damage and exchange its bouncing effect for punch-through.
Barrier Warrior: Warding Halo produces a bubble around Nezha that reduces all incoming damage by 90% and protects him from status effects while it's active. The Safeguard augment lets him cast it on allies and even objectives like excavators and defense targets to protect them as well.
Child Soldiers: His Leverian revolves around a cult of child soldiers that worshipped his warrior ways and defended the Corpus-owned factory farm, Reshantur, emulating his syandana and spears with crude versions they had built on their own. When a hostile takeover from rival Corpus came a-knocking, the kids bravely took up arms and marched to what they believed to be their inevitable deaths. And while the fight that happened afterward was known as the "Massacre of Reshantur", the reason for that is because Nezha swooped in as the Corpus were taking aim, engaged the Corpus, and, shall we say, cleaned house.
Curb-Stomp Battle: His Leverian story details the "Massacre of Reshantur" in which Nezha arrived and intervened in a battle between a hostile Corpus security squad and an army of Child Soldiers. The battle is known as a "massacre," not because the child soldiers were harmed, but because Nezha managed to destroy the entire Corpus squad without them getting a single shot off, and proceeded to salt the earth of the factory farm with the bodies of every last Corpus that had shown up to participate in the "hostile takeover." His arrival saved the lives of every last one of the child defenders of the farm, as well.
Damage-Increasing Debuff: Enemies tagged by Blazing Chakram take more damage from all sources, in addition to dropping health and possibly energy orbs upon death.
Decomposite Character: Gameplay-wise, his abilities to spread fire to a large area and incorporate durability with said fire once belonged to Ember. The former two were the old World On Fire, retooled to a much smaller, subtler Fire Walk, and Overheat as Warding Halo.
Dude Looks Like a Lady: Nezha is male, but his small, waifish build has caused many players and even some of the developers to mistake him for a female frame. This is true to his namesake, who is depicted as an androgynous youth and often gender flipped in fiction.
Elemental Speed: Nezha is a highly mobile Warframe strongly associated with fire. This is especially evident in his Fire Walker ability, which boosts his sprint speed while leaving a trail of flames wherever he runs or slides.
Fake Longevity: Originally, Nezha's component blueprints dropped as rewards from Sorties, quests comprised of a chain of three high-level missions in a row, which can only be completed once per day and feature a heavily-diluted, rotating reward pool that at the time consisted mainly of weapon parts, Focus lenses, and other equipment. The only reprieve was that his parts were the only non-Prime Warframe components to be tradeable. When Update 19 locked Sorties away behind The War Within quest, Nezha's parts were moved to Clan Research, avoiding this trope entirely.
Fire Purifies: Contact with Fire Walker's trail of flames purges status ailments from allies, and Blazing Chakram causes affected enemies to produce orbs to heal allies.
Foreshadowing: Nezha's Leverian ends with Drusus wondering why Nezha chose to side with the young defenders of Reshantur and what a Tenno warrior with their Warframes would ever have in common with an ordinary child. He concludes that the answer would likely forever remain a riddle; a riddle that would be answered with The Second Dream's reveal that Tenno Operators are Child Soldiers, too.
Friction Burn: Combined with Slippery Skid is a common tactic for Nezha, with Fire Walker, to spread a crowd-controlling trail of fire which stuns enemies on contact.
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Divine Spears summons rising spears to impale all enemies in range, suspending them helplessly in midair for its duration. Recasting it before it expires has Nezha slam the unfortunate victims into the ground.
Instant Armor: Warding Halo functions like this, and has the neat benefit of inflicting damage on anyone who can get close to Nezha. Enemies killed by Warding Halo are sliced in half.
Jack of All Stats: Nezha isn't the most damaging Warframe, but his Burning Chakram can open up foes to serious amounts of punishment. He isn't the fastest Warframe, getting outpaced by speedsters like Loki, Volt, and Gauss, but he still gets around speedily thanks to Fire Walker and his passive, Frictionless. He isn't the tankiest Warframe, as Rhino and Inaros can take more hurt than Nezha can. But he's still a solid mix of all of these abilities and can easily slot into any team because of his overall versatility.
Lightning Bruiser: Nezha is one of the most agile Warframes; on top of a fairly high base movement speed, his passive enables him to slide great distances and Fire Walker further boosts his speed while it's active. At the same time, he has respectable health and armor, Warding Halo absorbs a massive 90% of all damage he takes, and Blazing Chakram can supply him with plenty of health orbs to keep him going while also dealing considerable damage to crowds of enemies. All told, Nezha is equal parts fast and tanky.
Meaningful Name: Named after the deity Nezha in Chinese lore, who was titled the Third Lotus Prince.
Mercy Invincibility: Warding Halo provides a second of invulnerability upon expiring, during which it can be recast without risk.
Pinball Projectile: An uncharged Blazing Chakram will bounce between enemies in range. It can't hit the same foe more than once, though.
Playing with Fire: He can run fast enough to leave a trail of flames and sets enemies ablaze with his bouncing Flaming Chakram.
Pretty Boy: His physique has such a build, closely resembling Nova as a Distaff Counterpart.
Rings of Death: His main weapon is a big chakram on his back. He can throw it for damage, or even teleport to wherever it lands.
Slippery Skid: His passive ability reduces his ground friction, enabling him to slide longer and faster than other Warframes.
Spear Counterpart: Pun aside, he is one to Ember as another Heat-element specialist. Both have a balance of personal survivability and mass crowd control elements, but Ember has greater nuke potential while Nezha has increased mobility and baseline party support. Their augments work to make them meet in the middle; Ember's augments give her supportive aspects of Nezha's toolkit (energy orb creation, healing, and status reduction), while Nezha's give his toolkit offensive aspects of Ember's (increased damage and wide-area status affliction).
Spectacular Spinning: All of Nezha's abilities involve a spinning maneuver, including an expanding wheel that rips through enemies when thrown as a Spin Attack.
Storm of Blades: Divine Spears is basically Radial Javelin but vertically aligned.
Stronger Than They Look: Nezha's slender, almost child-like build suggests a Fragile Speedster, but don't let looks deceive you: he's one tanky Warframe, thanks to Warding Halo giving him a huge amount of damage reduction and some invincibility time.
Teleporters and Transporters: Deactivating Blazing Chakram while it's in flight will cause Nezha to teleport to its location.
War God: He was worshipped by a cult of child soldiers defending the Corpus-owned fields of Reshantur. To them, he was their guardian deity, and they crafted crude spears and syandanas in imitation of him.

Nidus

We cast our shining child adrift on strange seas. For with time, these starless currents black as mourning may work a sea-change. And if, one grisly dawn, the skies should hurl you, herald-like, back to Earth, remind us, foundling, of what we immaculate ones have lost. What succulent richness disease's kiss may bring. My festering demigod. My Nidus.

— Ballas, Warframe: Nidus Prime

An Infested-themed Warframe whose strain developed with Update 19.5 in 2016. Nidus is unique in that he grows in power over the course of the mission, by spreading the Technocyte Plague to enemies through his abilities. Like Inaros, Nidus has no shields; unlike Inaros, none of his abilities leech health. To compensate, he has innate health regeneration, stronger armor, and powers that focus on crowd control.

Nidus' Prime variant first mutated in Update 30.7 in 2021.

Body Horror: Nidus is the deepest gradient of fleshy horror in Warframe by far. He gets even creepier once his Mutation stacks are at their maximum.
Combat Tentacles: Done in terrifying methods by Larva and Parasitic Link. It is also a rare supportive example to Parasitic Link that increases allies' damage to whom Nidus connects to.
Eaten Alive: Almost all of his abilities other than Parasitic Link involves slowly eating away your enemies while supplying Nidus the nutrients to evolve.
Eyes Do Not Belong There: His Phryke Deluxe skin has several moving eyes in both of his pauldrons. The Nosos, Phryke's signature Syandana, also has a very large eye directly in its center.
Expy: The crossed arms motif across the chest, and the bronze-colored plates of his Phryke Deluxe skin resembles Knight Lautrec's armor, particularly when fully-armored up.
Fashionable Asymmetry: Much like the feral Infested, Nidus's body is covered in asymmetric growths. This is emphasized with Nidus Prime, as his left side is covered in gold-colored flesh while his right side is mostly the underlying grey flesh, and his evolved form has dark tendrils overtaking everything on him that's not already gold plated.
Foreshadowing: Nidus foreshadows the true nature of the Warframes; essentially he's what you get if you take a 'frame and strip off the armor 'skin' covering the Infested flesh beneath.
The Juggernaut: Not in the sense of moving forward, but in terms of gaining strength: Nidus becomes nigh-unstoppable and nigh-unkillable as it builds up mutations. In fact, Nidus actually requires a repeated NPC Dog Pile of Doom in order to reach his full strength.
- His first ability, Virulence costs energy, but regains energy on successful hits and builds mutation stacks, which in turn increase Virulence's damage; this creates a unique feedback loop that allows Nidus to modulate his damage and stacks to the challenge level of the mission at hand. If his stacks are too high, Virulence will kill enemies too quickly, making it harder to build up stacks; conversely, if his stacks are too low, he'll be able to keep spamming Virulence on the same cluster of enemies to quickly build up more stacks.
- His third ability, Parasitic Link, allows him to link with an enemy and shunt all sustained damage to it for the duration of the link, further increasing Nidus's unkillable status. The linked enemy will also cast a second instance of Virulence alongside Nidus, allowing him to build up even more stacks.
- His final ability, Ravenous, might cost mutation stacks, but will also generate them with kills and provides an Area of Effect health regeneration boost to boot.
- Nidus can resurrect at the cost of 15 mutation stacks. Because he can regain these stacks so quickly using Virulence and Ravenous, he's literally unkillable so long as the player continues to use those abilities in a target-rich environment.
- The only real upper limit to Nidus's abilities is to the damage he can do at 100 mutation stacks, not counting weapons or augment mods. Most mission designs in the game that revolve around infinite waves of enemies require players to protect a target or gather resources to prevent a countdown clock from reaching zero. Without these artificial restrictions, Nidus could potentially fight off waves of increasingly powerful mooks forever.
  - With his Abundant Mutation augment mod, he can very easily reach 200 mutation stacks if it's been maxed out.
MacGuffin: Despite being the Old War relic that gave Nef Anyo a pair of wide eyes, his only involvement in the plot is to be an attractive bet to lure the Triuna out of Anyo's hands.
Magikarp Power: He starts out with a minuscule regeneration and is unable to cast his third and fourth abilities since both those abilities consume Mutation stacks instead of energy. At full Mutation, he is, health-wise, tougher than Valkyr, has the ability to regenerate health as fast he can take damage, has impressive crowd control abilities and, if taken fatal damage, can recover a portion of his health on the spot.
Meaningful Name: Among other things, the word nidus can refer to the point of origin of an infection or a place where organisms such as bacteria gather and breed.
Mechanically Unusual Class: While he has no shields like Inaros and is nowhere near his health sink, Nidus regenerates his health constantly and is dependent on his Mutation stacks to keep himself bulked up. He's also the first Warframe to experiment with level-up bonuses other than increases to health, shields, and energy. His "Mutation" passive also gives him uniquely scaling damage.
Meat Moss: Virulence and Ravenous spread a Zerg-esque creep in a large surface area (the latter at the expense of Mutation stacks), which kills off anything that was unfortunate enough to stand on the ravenous meat moss.
Non-Indicative Name: Judging by the name, you'd probably expect Nidus to be the only one benefiting from Parasitic Link. However, casting the power on a teammate will grant both parties a bonus to power strength with no downsides for either.
No-Sell: If he has at least 15 Mutation stacks he can sacrifice them to shrug off a killing blow, instantly regaining half his health and becoming invulnerable for a few seconds.
Power Copying: A variation. Casting Virulence under the effects of Parasitic Link will cause a wave to be emitted from the target as if they cast it simultaneously, but Nidus will still reap all of the benefits of casting for the purposes of Mutation.
Regenerating Health: While other Warframes can achieve the effect through various means, he's the first to have it as an innate, permanently-active trait. Ravenous allows him to amplify this while standing within the area affected by Ravenous, as well as extend it to allies.
The Symbiote: Parasitic Link allows Nidus to boost damage to allies he links up with. It weaponizes itself as a defensive ability, similar to Trinity's Link, if it manages to hit enemies, on the other hand.
Spear Counterpart: To Saryn. Both Warframes have themes involving illness and disease and excel in crowd control with their abilities scaling in damage with large groups of enemies. While Saryn deals with toxins and contagion to weaken the armor and health of enemies, Nidus is more akin to a virus adapting its DNA to overwhelm everything in its path.
The Virus: The infection that Nidus was injected with by the orbiter, Helminth, provides a cyst that spreads to all nearby Warframes. Growing this alien zit in an Incubator will turn it into an Infested companion.
Token Heroic Orc: While the Helminth downplays this as it only works with the Tenno because it's subservient to Nidus and otherwise regards them as demons, Nidus himself is loyal to the Tenno, making him one of the only Infested to be good. This is downplayed with the reveal that all the Warframes are Infested beneath their metallic flesh, but Nidus' brand of it is far different to the Warframes mostly just being granted superhuman abilities and powers, as he is specifically themed around the Technocyte Virus as a whole.
Walking Wasteland: A motif of all of his powers is that Nidus spreads the Technocyte Virus through the environment in order to evolve. Virulence briefly creates a corridor of Infested growths in a path in front of himself, while Ravenous blights an area for an extended period.
Zerg Rush: Ravenous behaves this way; in a large area, maggots surround the amassed victims inside it, draining their health.

Nova

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Nova, wildly unpredictable.
Nova's presence on the battlefield is complex and deadly. Handle with care, Tenno.

— The Lotus

Detonating with Update 9.0 in 2013, the antimatter-themed Nova bears the distinction of being the first Warframe whose design was influenced by player feedback via the Design Council. She is a Glass Cannon through and through, specializing in dishing out ridiculous amounts of damage at medium-to-long range and falling quickly if she gets cornered without Energy.

Nova Prime first exploded onto the scene with Update 15.7 in 2014 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Hotfix 19.0.7 in 2016.

Antimatter: What her abilities use to deal out damage.
Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Her Prime outfit is heavily inspired by Hindu deities, especially the blue-skinned Vishnu, god of protection and preservation of good forces.
- Given her nuclear and antimatter themes, this could also be a reference to J. Robert Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita after he invented the atomic bomb- ”Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Combat Stilettos: Less notable than on Saryn, since they're more like platform shoes.
Damage-Increasing Debuff: Molecular Prime doubles the amount of damage affected enemies take and slows them to a crawl to make them easy pickings. It also primes them to explode, allowing for a chain reaction of kills in the right circumstances.
Fashionable Asymmetry: The fibrous sleeve on Nova's left arm extends further up her arm than the right, while her left breast can also receive a different color option from the rest of her torso.
Girlish Pigtails: Her Design Council-approved helmet (Slipstream) has these, and are even more evident with her longer Primed variant.
Glass Cannon: In both playstyle and theme. The developers wanted to give her a very "porcelain" look and succeeded. Compared to Loki, she has slightly higher base health and slightly lower sprint speed, tying the two with Vauban for second-lowest shields (after Valkyr). Her only defensive tools are Neutron Star's damage reduction (which is unreliable at best due to its tendency to fly away to hit nearby enemies) and the slow on Molecular Prime; however, Antimatter Drop and Molecular Prime are functional nukes in the right hands.
Hartman Hips: Nova's hips are particularly noticeable, compared to the hips of other female Warframes.
Having a Blast: Her specialty. Antimatter Drop fires a bomb that absorbs damage and deals it to everyone caught in range when it detonates. Molecular Prime makes afflicted enemies explode on death, allowing for chain reactions against low-level enemies. And the augment for Null Star lets her recast the ability to detonate the stars and damage everything near her.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Inflicted this on her opponent in her Leverian story. He planned for her to breach her built-in antimatter container and use herself as a catalyst for an antimatter reactor, which would allow a ship full of innocent people to survive but kill Nova in the process. Instead, Nova used a series of wormholes to escape the reactor chamber, reach the man who arranged the situation, charge him with her Molecular Prime, and toss him through the same series of wormholes back into the reactor chamber, turning him into the reactor catalyst and inflicting on him the fate he planned for her.
Homing Projectile: Nova's Antimatter Drop can be guided in the air by the player who fired it. Shooting bullets into the bomb will make its eventual explosion more powerful.
Made of Explodium: Her ultimate ability, Molecular Prime, can cause nearby enemies to create chains of explosions when they die. It also conveniently slows them down and makes them take double damage for the long duration of the ability which makes boss fights where mooks swarm around the boss easier than most missions.
Not the Intended Use:
- Molecular Prime's Slow effect holds an interesting property that subjects Power Strength in-between the default percentage of a hundred percent. Due to the way the Power Strength stat scales, players found that reducing it would allow Molecular Prime to increase the speed of enemies, making missions on large maps run much faster. The developers liked it so much they kept it in.
- The Neutron Star Augment allows Nova to detonate all of her remaining Null Star particles at once for some extra damage and crowd control. While the intended effects are still extremely weak, it does let Nova quickly reset Null Star so that she can regain its full damage reduction should enemies aggro too many of the particles.
Orbiting Particle Shield: A literal example. As long as the Null Star particles do not chase after enemies, they give Nova a straight up damage resistance against any enemy that tries to shoot her down.
Our Fairies Are Different: Nova Prime has back pylons that open up to be shaped like pixie wings, as do the flaps on her helmet.
Reverse Shrapnel: Null Star summons antimatter particles around Nova which seek out and slice open nearby enemies; While they orbit her, they offer damage reduction to her health, greatly improving her survivability.
Sadistic Choice: Was presented with one in her Leverian entry - either let a spacecraft with ten thousand innocents aboard crash, or give her life to redirect it. She picked a third option instead.
Squishy Wizard: Second only to Loki in squishiness but lacks his built-in evasion mechanics. On the plus side, Nova has some of the best abilities for locking enemies down and depopulating a level. Her fragility is an acceptable price for the joy of seeing a swarm of 60-70 plus mooks explode violently in a chain reaction with a single button press. This makes Nova very popular for Defense or Survival missions where the goal is "Keep the Nova alive long enough for her to clear the mission area".
Teleporters and Transporters: Wormhole allows her to create one-way portals between her target location and her current one. This can be used by her allies to reach new areas of the map or to redirect enemies to whom it's invisible.

Nyx

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nyxnewlookedit_8361.jpg

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Nyx, manipulator of minds.
On her own or with a group, Nyx can turn the tide of battle in her favor.

— The Lotus

Nyx is a psychic Warframe who is infamous for her sheer utility in missions with large groups of enemies that would swamp other characters. She achieves this by causing her targets to fight each other for long periods of time and kill or heavily damage themselves in the process.

Nyx was first projected alongside Frost with Update 6.0 in 2013, while Nyx Prime was summoned with Update 14.8 in 2014 before retiring to the Prime Vault with "Hotfix: The Silver Grove 3" in 2016. Nyx Prime and all of her associated equipment was later permanently unvaulted with Update 29.10 in 2021, and can be found in derelicts from Pluto and Veil Proxima Corpus Railjack missions.

Animal Eyes: Her Vespa helmet gives her compound insect eyes. Her Prime helmet includes an eye-shaped gold plate in the middle of her face.
Attack Reflector: Her ultimate ability Absorb plays a variation when activated, as damage isn't dealt to enemies until the effect ends.
Distaff Counterpart: Her suit is designed to be a female version of the Excalibur, with the only difference (aside from physique) being her helmet. The developers have taken to calling her Excalibur's sister.
Eye Motifs: Nyx Prime has what looks like golden eye designs accenting her body, with a large eye on her face. It references her Psychic Powers.
Healing Shiv: Her rework gives her a variation on this, where after Mind Controlling an enemy any damage she deals to the unit will boost their damage output.
Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Her passive ability gives enemies an accuracy debuff when trying to attack her.
Magic Missile Storm: Her Psychic Bolts ability lets loose a swarm of energy blades that attempt to home in on targets and removes their armor.
Meditation Powerup: Can sit down in the Lotus position to absorb damage attacks, then reflect them back to enemies. In fact, friendly fire can boost the eventual output. The augment for Absorb grants her the ability to move while using it, making her look like a Terminator with certain weapons equipped.
Mind Manipulation: Her Mind Control and Chaos powers are especially effective, the former making the target a temporary ally, and the latter making all enemies perceive each other to be enemies of greater threat to them than the Tenno. Mind-controlled enemies will use their abilities against their former allies or to the benefit of the Tenno (Ancient Healers heal you, Seekers throw Latchers at other Grineer, etc.). Bosses are generally immune to Mind Control though.
Mind over Matter: Her Psychic Bolts are made of psychokinetic energy, and are guided to her enemies psychokinesis.
Psychic Powers: Mostly focused around Mind Control, but also involves reflecting incoming attacks and launching damaging psychic bolts.
Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Chaos causes this to happen, although enemies will still attempt to attack the Tenno if they make themselves too noticeable.

Oberon

^{Click to see Prime form.}

"Greed and denial will seduce any destruction... even our own. We're blind to future consequence, casting our debts on those to come. But what if now, the Gray Mother sought revenge? A brutal thorn... piercing the gushing ulcers of waste and industry. A new green... sown upon sanguine ground.
Fertilized... with the blood and bone of its defilers. Oberon."

— Ballas, Warframe: Oberon Prime

Oberon is a paladin Warframe who came to light with Update 11.5 in 2013. Unlike Trinity, he is built with a balance of healing and damaging skills.

Oberon Prime's light shone forth with Hotfix 20.6.2 in 2017 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Hotfix 24.5.8 in 2019.

Animal Motifs: Bovids (primarily goats), as his body has twisted satyr-like legs, cloven feet, semi-spiraling horns, thin limbs, wide torso, and elongated faceplate.
The Beastmaster: His current passive allows him to amplify his animal companions health, shields, and armor. Originally, his passive allowed him to mind control wildlife and even domesticated animals by proximity.
Chess Motifs: Oberon Prime possesses several stylistic features that bring multiple chess pieces to mind. For instance, his helmet bears a neck frill resembling the Knight's horse, while his feet, hands and shoulder plates bear semi-circular plates ridged like the merlons on the Rook.
Crown of Horns: His default helm.
Fauns and Satyrs: Draws some inspiration from it, leading the developers to state he might be druidic rather than a paladin.
Green Thumb: Hallowed Ground creates a field of grass (or ferns when using his Prime variant) that cures status ailments for any allies standing on it, while granting an armor bonus to those affected by Renewal.
Healing Hands: Special mention goes to Renewal, which is a non-ultimate direct-healing Warframe ability. An augment for Renewal allows him to instantly revive himself or teammates from fatal damage, with a cooldown for each target. With the augment and addition of the Iron Renewal armor buff, he can be one of the strongest healers in the game, but doesn't have Trinity's energy economy to sustain it.
Holy Hand Grenade Smite's secondary projectiles are one of the very few Warframe attacks in the game whose damage scales with enemy health. This means that spamming Smite can continue killing enemies even at extremely high levels. For an added bonus, enemies hit by Smite are knocked down and given radiation proc, effectively taking them out of the fight for a brief time and making them more vulnerable to his other abilities.
Immune to Flinching: Hallowed Ground provides immunity to flinching and knockdown to any allies standing on it.
Jack of All Trades: He can maintain a periodic healing aura, deal damage that scales to enemy health, shatter enemy armor, bolster his and allies' armor and status resistance, mass-stun enemies or turn enemies against each other. He can do a little bit of everything, but as a consequence, he consumes a lot of energy and requires different stats for each task. He's best built to specialize in one role or other.
Knight in Shining Armor: Quite literally- his design invokes a knight's armor while his default colors are white, yellow and light blue to invoke holy imagery.
Knightly Sword and Shield: Oberon is The Paladin and his Prime variant is associated with Silva and Aegis Prime, an angelic sword and shield weapon.
Light 'em Up: His abilities focus on using light, which is interpreted as Radiation damage, as light is a form of radiation.
Meaningful Name: After the king of fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's fitting if you consider his semi-druidic design and his title as "the mystic", but non-indicative of his role as a healer and judgment-bringer.
The Paladin: His primary theme, with radiation/light as his main element and a kit focused on directly damaging enemies and protecting and healing allies.
Sword Plant: Does a handle-down variant when casting Renewal; it works well with heavy weapons (such as his "favorite" mace, the Magistar), but can be jarring with one-handed weapons.

Octavia

When ape pounded flint on flint, some watched the sparks. Others merely danced. Our haunted creations will need drum beats to drown out the throb of Helminth blood. Songs to harmonize the long scream. Anthems to elevate their butchery. But they are owed their struggle, as we are owed entertainment.
Our grand finale. Octavia.

— Ballas, Warframe: Octavia Prime

A bard-themed Warframe whose beat dropped with Update 20.0 in 2017. While she and Banshee each use sound as a primary weapon, Octavia focuses on using music to enhance her allies and enchant her enemies. Her main blueprint is obtained from the "Octavia's Anthem" quest offered by Cephalon Suda.

Octavia Prime's symphony was first performed with Update 29.9 in 2021.

Attack Reflector: Mallet taunts enemies into attacking it, absorbs any damage dealt to it, and dishes it back out with each drumbeat.
Big Good: Downplayed, but during the Tenno rebellion against the Orokin, she was the one to coordinate and rally the Tenno with her music.
Combat Stilettos: Octavia has one of the most elongated and sharpest pair presented in Warframe.
Dance Battler: Her idle animations were motion-capped from dances, and her Metronome ability buffs the entire party for fighting in-sync with her music.
Drone Deployer: Resonator summons her own version of the infamous Grineer Roller enemy. Her Rollers are perfectly harmless... until they pick up her Mallets.
Foil: To Titania, fitting since the respective syndicates that provide their quests are on opposite sides:
- Titania's Spellbind grants status immunity to allies and deals crowd control to enemies while Mallet creates a target that deals more damage to enemies the more it's shot at.
- Tribute and Metronome both give buffs but are given in different ways; Tribute requires a certain enemy type to give one of its 4 buffs, while Metronome requires doing certain actions to the beat of the music, all while giving an armor buff while active.
- Lantern and Resonator both charms enemies while dealing damage to them, but Lantern requires an enemy to use it on and makes said enemy invincible while Resonator needs no prerequisites but can be strengthened by Mallet.
- Razorwing and Amp have synergy with their other abilities. Titania being able to cast her other abilities while in Razorwing mode, and Octavia's Amp increasing the damage and range of Mallet if it's in Amp's area of effect.
Instrumental Weapon: Her abilities are deployed from her Mandachord, and are infused with the song that she is playing. With some practice, cooperation, and knowhow, a band of Octavias and produce surprisingly complex music.
Irony: Ballas designed Octavia "to harmonize the long scream", provide "anthems to elevate [the Tenno's] butchery", and as "our grand finale" for the Orokin's entertainment. She did all of those things when she initiated the slaughter of the Orokin and coordinated it to the beat of her anthem.
Jack of All Trades: While she's the best at buffing her entire party, Mallet allows her to draw away enemy aggro and deal infinitely scaling damage at the same time.
Magic Music: Her abilities are derived from her Mandachord, itself based off of a step sequencer. She can play songs to coordinate allies, hypnotize enemies, or even deal damage.
Meaningful Name: Her name, her alternate helmet, her abilities, and her buffs all take their cues from musical terminology.
Mechanically Unusual Class: Her abilities are fairly standard in-mission, but the ability to write compositions on her Mandachord has added a new mini-game for players between missions.
Musical Assassin: While bards are traditionally support classes, Octavia was considered one of the most effective damage-dealers in the game at the time of her release due to the scaling damage from her Mallets, and the enhancements they receive from her other abilities.
The Music Meister: Resonator is a Pied Piper-inspired ability that forces enemies to follow the source of the music as it rolls past.
One-Man Band: Using her first three abilities makes her into one.
The Red Mage: Octavia is Warframe's undisputed queen of party buffs, providing huge bonuses to movement speed, damage, armor, and multishot as well as invisibility, assuming her allies can move in time with the beat of her drum. She can also deal infinitely scaling damage with her Mallet ability and draw away enemy aggro with her Resonator ability. But she lacks the healing utility of other buffers like Harrow and Trinity as well as the mobility and range of other damage-dealers like Ash and Titania.
Small Role, Big Impact: She used her musical abilities to signal the start and coordinate Tenno efforts when they slaughtered the Orokin.
Support Party Member: Amusingly for her archetype, she shoves all of her buffing into one ability, Metronome, which allows her and her party members to act in time with the Mandachord's rhythm to get buffs. Crouching grants Nocturne, making a Tenno invisible, jumping grants Vivace which speeds the recipiant up and meleeing and firing grant Forte for melee damage and Opera for multishot respectively.
With Catlike Tread: Her Metronome can grant the Nocturne buff if you crouch in time with the music, and will make her and any other ally that does so invisible. Since her song somehow doesn't count as noise for the sake of alerting enemies, this ironically makes the bombastic bard frame one of the best for stealth.

Protea

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/img_0778.png

Armed for deadly encounters, she is tactical and timely. This is Protea, the protector, the enforcer.
Protea is the method to the madness. When you face her, it's already too late.

— Lotus

Protea is a Combat Engineer Warframe similar to Vauban deployed with "The Deadlock Protocol" in 2020. Her versatile arsenal can both support allies and destroy enemies, and she can even manipulate time to prevent death.

Bodyguard Babes: She's based on an odalisque, or a Turkish chambermaid. She was built to guard Parvos Granum, the Corpus founder, as part of a deal he cut with the Orokin.
Deflector Shield: The Shield Satellite function of Grenade Fan allows Protea to temporarily supercharge her shields and the shields of any allies. In addition, they detonate themselves to provide two seconds of additional invulnerability once the shield breaks, allowing Protea to essentially render herself and her allies immortal so long as she redeploys her Shield Satellites before the invulnerability period is up.
Emergency Temporal Shift: Protea's Temporal Shift ability allows her to place a temporal anchor that she can activate at any time during the duration of the ability or when she takes fatal damage. In either case, Protea is rewound back to her previous position and her health, energy, and ammo stores are reset to how they were when she casted the ability. During her boss battle in The Deadlock Protocol, this makes her functionally invincible until you obtain the Xoris to slowly disable this ability to end the fight.
The Engineer: Her abilities are comprised of offensive (Blaze Artillery), defensive (Grenade Fan) and supportive tools (Dispensary) that can be called on depending on the mission.
Expy: Not necessarily Protea herself but rather her abilities can bring to mind Team Fortress 2's Engineer, the Trope Namer; Blaze Artilery creates a sentry that can serve as an extra gun for Protea and fellow squadmates, Grenade Fan's shield satelite rapidly repairs shields like Engie's dispenser for health and speaking of dispensers, Dispensary can restore everything else (Ammo, Energy and Health.) and finally Temporal Anchor is more subtle case for Engie's Teleporters as just like them, it can teleport Protea back to the point of activation but with the unique bonus of restoring any Ammo, Shields, Health or Energy used or lost after it's activation.
Gathering Steam: Blaze Artillery gains power with every shot the artillery units fire over the course of its duration. While its initial damage is mediocre, the damage can get nasty with the maximum number of artillery units deployed.
Insistent Terminology: The developers and in-game descriptions refer to her Blaze Artillery as "artillery units" rather than Sentry Guns in an attempt to divorce her concept from another engineer.
Item Caddy: In a sense, her Dispensary can provide supplies for her or the squad.
Sentry Gun: Her Blaze Artillery deploys a temporary turret that automatically fires at enemies, gaining more power for each enemy hit before it ends.
Time Rewind Mechanic: Her Temporal Anchor can lock her state of deployment and reset back to that state once the ability expires. This can be absolutely abused to go nuts on the battlefield, since it resets her ammo and energy when it releases. She's also functionally immortal while it's active, as it will automatically release if she takes fatal damage, resetting her health.
- When the Corpus Board attempted to assassinate Parvos Granum by overcharging the Void engines on his ship, Protea attempted to use this power to undo the damage and keep him alive. Unfortunately the Void jump overloaded this, leaving her as nothing more than an idle Specter and creating the Granum Void as a prison for them both. Scanning the Tenno allows her to reawaken at Parvos' command.
- Her Specter also uses this mechanic to remove Tenno from the Granum Void, sending them back to the moment before they entered. While the Tenno's recall is seemingly unaffected, the only evidence of this for anyone else is video logs sent back with the Tenno from their time inside.
- Her boss fight also abuses this mechanic, giving herself immunity phases during which she regenerates by rewinding to an earlier state. Luckily the Tenno came outfitted with a Xoris glaive that can disrupt it, if fully charged before then.
Trick Bomb: Grenade Fan can deploy two different grenade types: Shrapnel Vortexes that shred enemies with cutting debris, or Shield Satellites that supercharge allies' shield regeneration and damage gating.
Undying Loyalty: It’s unknown if Protea’s desire to protect Parvos from being stranded into the Void was a choice of the Tenno piloting her or it was Protea’s own decision, but she surely cared enough for Parvos and her mission assigned to save him from the assassination attempt.
Utility Belt: Her gadgets are equipped to her belt before deployment, and they actually vanish from the belt when in use.

Qorvex

Tenno, the Warframe Qorvex was designed by my Albrecht's own hand, to protect the chosen Operator from the hazards of his laboratory. This design is yours by right.

— Loid

A highly-durable Warframe made of brutalist concrete surrounding a radioactive Crucible Core, created to keep the Chosen Operator safe inside Albrecht Entrati's laboratory. Qorvex wields these powers to irradiate enemies, slow them, or summon a bulwark to defend allies.

Qorvex was first constructed in the "Whispers in the Walls" update in December 2023.

Atomic Superpower: Qorvex is themed around a nuclear reactor, and he can unleash radioactive attacks against enemies. Chyrinka Pillar creates radioactive pulses that slow enemies, Containtment Wall blasts enemies with radiation before crushing them, and Crucible Blast is a powerful beam that causes an explosion when striking enemies affected by radiation, potentially causing a chain reaction.
BFG: Qorvex's signature weapon is a heavy weapon known as the Mandonel, which shares his brutalist, concrete-laden aesthetic in combination with the gold fittings and motifs one would associate with Entrati weapons.
Dishing Out Dirt: Qorvex's body is surrounded by a concrete shell, and he can manipulate the material for offense and defense. Containment Wall crushes enemies between concrete walls, and Disometric Guard grants allies protective barriers that nullify a number of status effects.
Gameplay and Story Integration: Qorvex is described as having been designed to protect its user from the dangers within Albrecht Entrati's laboratory. The Murmur enemies found in that area have the "Indifferent Facade" health type, which is weak to the Radiation element that Qorvex specializes in inflicting.
Herd-Hitting Attack: Crucible Blast fires a radioactive beam which causes enemies struck to explode, with this explosion also causing affected enemies to explode themselves, and so on. Against a single target, it's nothing to write home about, but if you have a large amount of enemies affected by the Radiation effect, this will create a chain reaction that leads to extreme amounts of Stuff Blowing Up.
Kryptonite Factor: As described in Gameplay and Story Integration above, Qorvex's main tactic is to apply Radiation damage, the greatest weakness of the Murmur infesting Albrecht's labs.
Non-Standard Character Design: Unlike every other Warframe, who are mostly sleek and organic in design, Qorvex is more explicitly mechanical with concrete being a part of him, resembling a humanoid Necramech. Fitting, since he was not made primarily or partially by Ballas, being mostly an Albrecht creation.
One-Hit Polykill: Qorvex's passive ability increases the punch-through of his weapons, letting them hit multiple targets per shot. This effect has good synergy with Containment Wall, which groups enemies in a straight line.
Stuff Blowing Up: Enemies struck by Crucible Blast while afflicted by radiation status effects (which most of Qorvex's abilities inflict) will explode. This explosion can itself trigger explosions in other irradiated enemies, potentially leading to a chain reaction.
Super-Toughness: As you'd expect from a warrior made of solid cement, Qorvex is one of the tankiest Warframes in the game, boasting an absurd 875 base armor (the highest in the game at the time of his release), a very strong 600 base health (the sixth-highest), and built-in status immunity through Disometric Guard. His shields are very poor at only 200, but treating shields as a Dump Stat can actually improve survivability if paired with the Catalyzing Shields mod, thanks to shield-gating.
The Walls Are Closing In: Weaponized by Containment Wall: Qorvex uses his concrete manipulation to form two parallels walls in front of himself, then slams them together, crushing enemies like sandwich fillings.
Wave-Motion Gun: Crucible Blast has Qorvex fire a massive laser from his chest which deals high Radiation damage.

Revenant

What fatherless aberration is this? Who brings the wicked gift of an unknown mask this Naberus night? Seething with the Void, mocking me and causality alike! And what strange cruelty named him, to know and defy his death? This shadow of ill omen. This grim harbinger.
This... Revenant.

— Ballas, Warframe: Revenant Prime

A Sentient Eidolon themed Warframe whom arose from his grave in Update 23.5 The Mask of Revenant in 2018. Revenant's abilities theme around converting and spreading control over his enemies and siphoning their life to help him and his allies. His main blueprint drops after completing Mask of the Revenant, with part blueprints dropping from Cetus bounties.

Revenant Prime was reborn in October 5, 2022.

Adaptive Ability: His Danse Macabre can change damage type to what his enemies are most vulnerable to.
Attack Reflector: When a Mesmer Skin stack is consumed, the enemy that damaged Revenant will have the attack reflected back at them, stunning them for several seconds.
Bad Boss: Enforced. Revenant can enthrall enemies to be his servants for a limited amount of time, just like Nyx. However, unlike Nyx, Revenant gets more use out of his abilities if he tosses away his thralls for health or because a stronger enemy was available to take over when he'd otherwise run out of space.
Beam Spam: Danse Macabre has Revenant levitate and spin around while blasting everything around him with a barrage of lasers in all directions.
Charm Person: His Enthrall implies this theme of Vampires Are Sex Gods, moreso with enemies stunned by his Mesmer Skin giving free casts of his Enthrall without additional energy.
Elemental Shapeshifter: Revenant can turn into dense energy fog with his Reave ability.
Fog of Doom: Reave has Revenant turn into fog that inflicts a Percent Damage Attack on enemies he passes through.
Gameplay and Story Segregation: As a Warframe that has been hybridized to contain Sentient parts thanks to his interaction with the Eidolon, Revenant should be susceptible to void damage, but he is not any weaker to it than any other Warframe.
Gratuitous French: Danse Macabre means "Dance of Death".
Hunter of His Own Kind: Possibly, given that he draws power from Sentients as well as having special passives that make him more resilient during Eidolon hunts.
Life Drain: Part of his Reave ability allows him to steal health from enemies he passes through.
Meaningful Name: His name is rooted from the French word "revenir" meaning "coming back". His name is the noun of "a person who returned, seemingly back from death."
Mercy Invincibility: When a stack of Mesmer Skin is consumed, Revenant becomes invulnerable to nearly all damage for one second, during which no more stacks are used up.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: How did Revenant meet his end and become The Lost One on the Plains of Eidolon? He stopped constantly cutting down the fragmented Sentient and attempted to make a connection with it, which ultimately caused him to get dragged down and corrupted, becoming exactly like the Eidolons he once hunted.
No-Sell:
- While Mesmer Skin is active, whatever damage Revenant would suffer from an attack is completely negated and stuns the attacker. He then gains one second of Mercy Invincibility.
- His passive allows him to be immune to the Magnetic waters in the Plains of Eidolon during the night.
Our Vampires Are Different: His kit is loosely based on classical vampires, including Dracula. Enthralling individuals, draining their life, and turning into mist are all in his repertoire. And while there's no impalement involved in his kit, his design draws cues from the portrait of Vlad Tepes III.
Percent Damage Attack: Reave does damage based on the enemy's maximum health, meaning that it is equally effective regardless of how tanky the target is. Enthralling an enemy or inflicting Viral stacks on them, along with increasing Revenant's strength, makes it possible to inflict a One-Hit Kill on almost any enemy in the game!
Revenant Zombie: His theme and background. In his quest, Nakak tells the player that Revenant hunted the Eidolons ever since the original Gara killed the Sentient after the Unum. Revenant was captured and trapped by the Eidolons until the Tenno sought out and freed him.
Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: His basic skill allows him to Enthrall an enemy to fight for him. Said foe also draws fire from enemies.
Spin Attack: Danse Macabre has Revenant spin around while firing laser beams all over the place.
Status Buff: Mesmer Shield grants five extra Mesmer Skin stacks to himself and his allies, allowing them too to benefit from its invulnerability.
Took a Level in Badass: Whatever Revenant's abilities were before, they most certainly pale to what they are now.

Rhino

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Rhino, an immovable force and highly resilient.
Rhino can survive alone or become the cornerstone of any squad, Tenno. The choice is yours.

— The Lotus

Rhino is one of the heaviest Warframes in appearance, mobility and stats. He is a textbook Mighty Glacier who is an offensive juggernaut who can give just as much as he gets. His skills are focused on crowd control and he can buff the damage output of his teammates to help them clean up afterwards. Until Chroma, he was the only Warframe to be EXP-locked.

Rhino was one of the first eight Warframes to be released with the game's "Vanilla" version in 2012; and Rhino Prime stampeded onto the scene with Update 12.4 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Update 15.7 in 2014.

Animal Motif: Gue ss.
The Big Guy: Rhino's entire kit revolves around his sheer strength and resilience.
Bling of War: It doesn't get more glamorous than coating yourself in gold as a shield, but Rhino Prime's Iron Skin does exactly this. Its color changes to match Rhino's accent color, as well.
Boring, but Practical: Rhino does not have any ability that wipes enemies out with massive area damage. Rhino does not have complex abilities. Rhino does not even have a useful passive or particularly high base stats. What Rhino does have, is one of, if not the highest effective health pools in the game when used right, the hardest scaling and most universal damage buff, and a big ol' stun. Rhino doesn't do anything anyone else doesn't. He's just really good at making your normal combat better and is widely considered one of, if not the best frames in the game because of it.
Extra-ore-dinary: His Iron Skin coats his armor with even more armor^noteor in gold when Primed, that will act as his secondary shield, increasing his durability further.
Foe-Tossing Charge: Performs one of these as his very first ability, and can charge into someone hard enough to instagib them. Any mook that survives (even the big ones) are sent flying. Players often use Rhino Charge just to overcome Rhino's mobility issues or escape from combat.
Gag Penis: Players and developers alike have chuckled at his armor's generous codpiece. This can be especially distracting when another Warframe's idle animations are used, particularly the undulating pelvic thrusts from Limbo's Agile stance.
Goomba Stomp: This can happen to enemies because of his passive ability; all he has to do is fall from high enough, and he adds a Shockwave Stomp to the mix.
Implacable Man: He is the toughest of all the frames, and his Iron Skin skill allows him to No-Sell knockdown or staggering attacks.
Instant Armor: Iron Skin adds a layer of metallic armor over Rhino, which takes a lot of damage before breaking.
Lightning Bruiser:
- Rhino Prime is effectively this from the get-go, with a higher base speed compared to Rhino. A Rhino Prime with the Vanguard helmet has an unmodded sprint speed of 1.25 - the same speed as Loki - coupled with his already very mobile Rhino Charge.
- Became more straightforward with the buff to Rhino Charge. It costs basically nothing to chain it and dash straight across the entire map, sending enemies flying and buffing Rhino's armor all the while.
Made of Iron: His ''Iron Skin'' appears to coat him in a layer of iron, and his Prime variant exchanges this for gold. This grants him Overguard, scaling with both his armor and how much damage he would have taken during the brief invulnerability, allowing him to have some of the highest effective health in the game when used right (i.e. thrown into the crossfire of massive damage and Iron Skinning before he can get too banged up.) As a bonus, Overguard allows him to ignore most status effects as well.
Mighty Glacier: He naturally has a slower base speed than most other Warframes in exchange for his incredible tanking abilities. That said, see Lightning Bruiser above on how he can subvert this.
No-Sell: The main effect of Iron Skin, which makes Rhino immune to almost all types of Crowd Control until it absorbs a certain amount of damage. The only exceptions are the slowing effect of ice damage as well as the projectile vomit of the Nauseous Crawler.
One Stat to Rule Them All: Power Strength once he has Iron Shrapnel and Ironclad Charge. Ironclad Charge's armor bonus per target hit is increased by power strength. Power strength also increases the armor-to-health ratio of Iron Skin, and Roar's damage boost, which affects Iron Shrapnel, which itself is based on Iron Skin's health.
Pec Flex: His Noble idle animation. He even has pecs on his armor.
Shockwave Stomp: His ultimate skill, Rhino Stomp, which distorts time from the sheer force of the stomp. He also has a passive ability that enables him to do this; all he has to do is fall from a certain height, and he can potentially add a Goomba Stomp to the mix.
Simple, yet Awesome: Similar to Excalibur, his abilities revolve around augmenting answers to mundane situations which are crowd control, dealing damage and escape certain death. His kit is mundane enough that any weapon equipped to him are good enough on any mission he attends to, as abilities like Roar and Iron Skin help compensate said weapons' lack of damage and/or utility.
Status Buff: Roar plays it the straightest of any example in the game, directly increasing all forms of allied damage output.
Spam Attack: Rhino Charge gets its cost cut in half every consecutive use, up to a quarter of its starting cost, on top of being the cheapest skill to begin with. At low levels, Rhino can plow through small armies, and at high levels, he can still turn the room into a demented bouncy castle and build up obscene armor through Ironclad Charge.
Use Your Head: Rhino leads with his head when using Rhino Charge. Tellingly enough, all of his helmet options look something like the business end of a hammer.

Saryn

^{Click to see Prime form.}

"Margulis, from your wilted ashes has sprung a field of flowers. Conceived by me. Germinated for deadly purpose. You used to dream of old Earth didn't you? Bathed in gold and solemn blue. I intend to reclaim it now, from the Spores and the Ruin. It came to me, like a proverb: Fight poison with poison.
Cure this sick horde with the greatest of plagues. I will call her... Saryn."

— Ballas, Warframe: Saryn Prime

One of the heaviest female Warframes, Saryn is a close combat beast with good defensive stats, a poison buff for her melee weapons and an instant-cast decoy ability to lose enemy attention if things get too hairy. She is also deadly against armored targets with her ability to inject them with highly corrosive toxins that bypass all their defenses.

Saryn blossomed alongside Banshee with Update 7.0 in 2013; while Saryn Prime's poisons first dripped with Hotfix 18.4.2 in 2016 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Update 22.7 in 2017.

Ability Mixing:
- Spores of a host explode when the host itself is hit with an attack amped by Toxic Lash, or dies under the effects of her other abilities. This infects any of the host's nearby allies with more Spores.
- Miasma's damage is multiplied if a victim is also covered with Spores.
Animal Motifs: Snakes, from poisoning targets she strikes to shedding her skin.
Body Horror: Her armor appears to be stitched together from a combination of fungi and tumorous tissues not unlike those found amongst the Infested.
Close-Range Combatant: Zigzagged. Toxic Lash offers a massive chunk of Toxin damage to Saryn's melee weapons, encouraging her to destroy her foes in close combat with a Condition Overload-equipped weapon. But her spores can spread across large distances if modded for it, allowing her to play at range if she wants to.
Combat Stilettos: Like Mirage, her feet are distinctly shaped like a pair of heels.
Damage Over Time: Her specialty - Saryn has multiple methods of gradually sapping away her opponent' health, allowing her to slowly (relatively speaking) disintegrate her opponents into nothingness.
Death of a Thousand Cuts: She specializes in dealing massive amounts of damage over time. Spore inflicts a permanent damage over time debuff that strips away armor with corrosive damage that spreads once the targets die or if the spore is shot. Toxic Lash poisons her foes to deal even more damage over time and expedites the proliferation of her spores. Finally, Miasma slashes the health of all nearby enemies with viral procs and deals quadruple its normal damage if the victim is already infected with spores.
Defeat Equals Explosion: Her Spores and Molt play this trope straight. The former coats the target with corrosive bulbs that explode upon the death of their host and spread to everyone else around it, while Molt simply explodes upon death or at the end of its duration.
Doppleganger Attack: Her Molt acts as her illusion skill, forcing enemies to focus on it instead of her. Though it doesn't attack directly, it leaves a toxic explosion upon expiration.
Fashionable Asymmetry: Notably, her right leg has heavier armor than her left, while the pod on her Chlora alternate helmet tips toward the right as well.
Festering Fungus: Spores rapidly eat away their host and corrode their armor, forming on the target instantly and growing in severity the longer they remain active. Popping one of the bulbs just causes it to spread to any enemy nearby, and killing the host will just make the problem bigger.
Flower Motifs: a running theme is having her compared with beautiful-but-toxic plants like Foxgloves. Made even more explicit by her Orphid alt skin.
Lady of War: Her design and noble stance certainly makes her fit the bill.
Herd-Hitting Attack: She specializes in decimating tightly-packed crowds with her poisons. This makes her especially sought after for Elite Sanctuary Onslaught, as she is one of the only Warframes who can wipe out enemies as quickly as they spawn to keep the efficiency meter up.
Made of Iron: Saryn is one of the only frames that can passively take serious hits due to her above average health, good armor and a very large energy pool.
Mighty Glacier: Saryn has below-average movement speed, but take on against powerful attacks done by her opponents and return a good amount of damage through Toxin, Viral and Corrosive attacks. However, she gains a brief burst of speed after activating her Molt skill, and Saryn Prime has a normal base movement speed, which makes her a borderline Lightning Bruiser instead.
Ms. Fanservice: Despite all the aspects of Body Horror in her design, Saryn is one of the (if not THE) bustiest among the female warframes, and her overall design is attractively curvaceous and full-bodied; features which are often emphasised further through her Deluxe and Tennogen skins.
Ninja Log: Her Molt leaves copies of her skin that resembles her last move before the skill is applied, giving a distinct illusion of being still there. Too bad for stubborn enemies who are trying to kill it.
Non-Indicative Name: For a very long time, the names of her first and third powers seemed more appropriate the other way around: Venom caused Viral damage which can be spread from enemy to enemy, while Contagion poisoned enemies on a melee strike. Her rework during 17.10 eliminated the issue - Venom became Spore, while Contagion became Toxic Lash.
Not the Intended Use: Saryn has always been intended by the devs as a frame that causes damage over time by spreading devastating plague-themed debuffs to entire crowds. Originally, however, the only build the player base considered viable for any level of play was exploiting a quirk of her Miasma's damage algorithm, dropping her "Power Duration" to less than a second, and dealing 10,000 damage in two ticks every time you pressed the 4 key. This culminated in a radical rework in Update 17 that made the gradual poisoning process both more deadly and less gradual.
Plague Master: The damage dealt to victims of her Spores increases over time based on the number of targets she infects at once, encouraging her to spread them far and wide using her Toxic Lash, then melt the victims with her Miasma — which will spread the Spores even further if it kills infected targets.
Poisonous Person: Her entire motif. Her name comes from a real-life poison.
Punny Name: A modified version of sarin, the chemical weapon.
Showgirl Skirt: The organic material/carapace below her waist on her Orphid skin, which (just barely) covers her butt and hips and does not cover the front.
Spell Blade: Toxic Lash infuses her melee weapon with toxins and near guarantees a Toxic proc on enemies. A later rework allowed it to affect her guns as well, but the effect is slightly weaker.
Status Effects: While Spores act like the standard Poison-type debuff, shooting one of the spores it produces causes the damage to splash to nearby enemies.
Start X to Stop X: The rationale in her creation, as quoted above; she was designed to fight off the Infestation with a deadly disease of her own.
Technicolor Toxin: Her basic energy color is a vibrant purple. While Corrosive and Toxin damage typically presents itself as different shades of Sickly Green Glow, the spores of her Spore glow with energy.
Universal Poison: Her skills affect near everything that moves, from flesh to machines, though Infested are naturally resistant to these effects.

Sevagoth

He is the reason to fear the darkness, where his ethereal presence shakes loose the mortal coil. This is Sevagoth, the reaper, the specter of death.
Do not seek death, Tenno, for Sevagoth may find you. Will you live to tell his tale?

— The Lotus

A ghost-like Warframe that was initially a fanmade concept by community artist-turned-Digital Extremes employee Liger Inuzuka. Sevagoth set sail from the Void in Update 30, Call of the Tempestarii, on April 13th, 2021. His abilities reap the souls from enemies to fill up the Death Well, allowing him to unleash his Shadow to shred through the opposition in melee combat when full.

Ace Custom: His ship, the Tempestarii, was this even before it was caught in the Void and turned into a literal Ghost Ship, if its unique model was any indication. Afterwards, well... Having guns that fire pure Void energy that can home in on enemies automatically, a missile launcher that can rip open rifts into the Void, and being wreathed in Void energies just adds to the awesomeness.
And Now for Someone Completely Different: Near the end of "Call of the Tempestarii", when the Tenno is knocked out cold by Vala, you suddenly end up in a Disney Acid Sequence controlling Sevagoth's Shadow as he slaughters countless Crewmen and Errant Specters. The boarders stood no chance against him.
Animal Motifs: His "Glaukus" deluxe skin has two. First off, the namesake of the skin is a genus of sea slug that is known to be toxic due to its diet of Portuguese man o' wars. Ironically enough, Portuguese man o' wars show up quite a bit on the skin, primarily as part of the Shadow's design in the deluxe armor.
Ascended Fanon: Even moreso than the likes of Xaku, Wisp and Equinox, being a Warframe that initially started off as fanart. His signature weapon, the Epitaph, is also this.
Back from the Dead: When Sevagoth runs out of HP, he is petrified instead of going into the bleedout phase, summoning his Shadow for the player to control. Using Consume on five enemies will allow Sevagoth to revive himself.
Background Music Override: Sevagoth's Glaukus skin has a feature where, upon activating his Exalted Shadow, the background music will be replaced by "Sevagoth's Lullaby", a more intense instrumental version of "Sleeping in the Cold Below".
Berserk Button: Like all Tenno, Sevagoth despises the Orokin. When the Tempestarii hails the Tenno Railjack and asks "Who Waits for the Shadow?", Cy's use of the Orokin reply code "Your Golden Masters" causes the Tempestarii to go berserk and attack the other Railjack.
Burial in Space: Once he's finally put to rest, Cy gives the original Sevagoth one of these, firing his lifepod into space with the Archwing's slingshot.
Critical Hit Class: Sevagoth's Exalted Shadow's claws have the highest critical multiplier of all Exalted Weapons as well as a high 38% critical chance. His personal weapon, Epitaph, also deals bonus headshot damage in his hands.
- The "Shadow Haze" augment for his ability Reap also amplifies the chance of inflicting critical hits on affected enemies.
Dark Is Not Evil: He's a darkness-themed frame with a Living Shadow who reaps the souls of his victims. The original Sevagoth was the captain of a rescue ship that saved 2017 people during the Old War, and his shadow spent centuries trying to rescue him. While the Tempestarii is a nightmare to Corpus, the shadow instantly powers down weapons and lends you the ship when you confirm you are not Orokin or Corpus.
Don't Fear the Reaper: He's referred as "the reaper, the specter of death", who steals his enemy's souls and uses them to feed and unleash his Shadow. But the innocent have nothing to fear from Sevagoth and he actively rescued people from untimely ends as the captain of the Tempestarii.
The Ferryman: His primary theme, with his status as "The Reaper" gathering enemy souls and his Ghost Ship Tempestarii which served to rescue thousands of people during the Old War and deliver them to salvation.
Foreshadowing: Sevagoth forces himself to keep existing until his goals are complete. Rell does the same thing to survive until the events of the "Chains of Harrow".
Friendly Sniper: Sevagoth's personal weapon, the Epitaph, rewards him with bonus damage for headshots. He was also the captain of a rescue ship that saved more than 2,000 lives during the Old War.
Ghost Pirate: Given his association with the Tempestarii, and the Eyepatch of Power on his alternate helmet.
Ghost Ship: He is the captain of one, the Tempestarii, which was lost while trying to rescue him from the Void; his visuals also evoke this, with his default helmet resembling the prow of an ancient sailing ship.
Limit Break: Exalted Shadow can only be used when the Death's Well has been filled up to at least 75%, with its duration being greater if you fill it up more.
Meaningful Name: The name of his ship, the Tempestarii, is derived from the word "tempest", a violent storm with severe winds. Tempestarii are also a sort of magician in medieval lore, singularly referred to as a "tempestarius," who can raise and banish storms. The ship's ultimate weapon is the ability to create a Void Storm on command, sucking any ship caught in it into the Void.
Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Sevagoth's Exalted Shadow is unique among Exalted Weapons as it gives him an entirely new set of abilities to use while it's in effect. It's also completely moddable like other Exalted Weapons, making it almost like playing two Warframes at once.
Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Along with Hydroid, Sevagoth is the most literal example in the game.
One-Hit Kill: When Tombstone is activated, Consume will instantly kill any non-boss it affects to expedite the process of collecting souls and reviving him.
Our Ghosts Are Different: He is a Warframe themed after ghosts, complete with Unfinished Business.
Purple Is Powerful: As a Tenno-operated Warframe, Sevagoth is a One-Man Army, and his primary colors are purple and white.
Superhero Speciation: He shares a similar death and reaper theme with Nekros. But while Nekros manipulates the bodies of the dead to obtain extra loot and raise the dead to fight for him, Sevagoth consumes the souls of his opponents to power his Shadow.
- Also with Hydroid, as they both share (mainly cosmetic) piracy themes. However, Hydroid's water powers draw from the open sea and the terrors that live within it, while Sevagoth's shadow and life-draining powers represent ghost stories and curses.
Unfinished Business: Sevagoth was the target of the final mission of the Tempestarii, but the ship got lost within a Void Storm while trying to retrieve him. The end of the Call of the Tempestarii sees the Tenno finally putting him to rest by retrieving his cryopod and giving him a proper funeral.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Sevagoth destroyed the Lucretia Platform while trying to return the Tempestarii to the Origin System, killing Vala's sisters and leaving her overwhelmed with grief that turned into a burning desire for revenge against him and his ship. This would eventually result in Vala being in a position to help create the Sisters of Parvos.
Viking Funeral: His funeral is posed similarly to one, as the pod containing his body is jettisoned into space with the Railjack's Archwing slingshot. Given his pirate theming, it's not hard to see it as an astral equivalent.
Xtreme Kool Letterz: His in-development name Wraithe ends with the letter "E" to distinguish himself from the Wraith series of upgraded weapons.
Your Soul Is Mine!: Sevagoth can only unleash his Exalted Shadow by slaying his opponents with his abilities to collect their souls. Once his Soul Well is full, Sevagoth's Shadow will be ready to haunt and slaughter everyone in your path.

Styanax

Legends speak of a wandering warrior-king among Warframes. He would answer the call of the loyal and the worthy, a brief spear-shaft of light in the darkness, before moving on.
Now Styanax has returned, the fiftieth, the prodigal.

— The Lotus

Styanax is a Warframe themed after the warriors of old, who made his stand in Update 32, "Veilbreaker" on September 7th, 2022. Wielding his trusty shield and spear, Styanax rallies his allies as they head into combat, backed by an army of hoplites.

Anti-Armor: Tharros Strike will shred the shields and armor of all enemies struck. With enough power strength, he can remove all of the target's shields and armor with a single cast.
Anti-Frustration Feature: Due to the absolutely monumental requirements to access him (obtaining his blueprint requires Kahl's Garrison to be at maximum rank; said syndicate has many prerequisite quests needed to unlock it, and can only gain one rank per week once you do access it, and even from there one needs a lot of ranks for other syndicates to get blueprints for his components, then mining most of the materials for those components), anyone who logged in during the first two weeks of the release of Veilbreaker received him completed for free.
Attack! Attack! Attack!: Rally Point grants Styanax and his allies additional shields for every enemy they kill while under its effects. This encourages them to constantly remain on the offensive to keep their shields up. Styanax himself is especially incentivized to do so since his passive grants him additional Critical Chance for every 40 points of shielding he has.
Critical Hit Class: Styanax's passive ability enables him to get an extra 1% crit chance for every 40 points of shields he's got; this is doubled whenever he is wielding a Speargun.
David Versus Goliath: His debut anime and Leverian exhibit have him fighting the Leviathan, an enormous infested monstrosity made from the bodies of those taken in by the Philanthropist, with the latter fusing with the beast in an effort to kill Styanax. The Philanthropist is ultimately killed when Styanax uses ''Rally Point'' to awaken the minds of those who compromise the Leviathan, causing them to start tearing the monster apart and giving Styanax an opening to finish it off with Final Stand.
Doppleganger Attack: Last Stand has Styanax rise into the air while conjuring ethereal warriors next to him to hurl an enormous number of spears toward the player's targeting reticule. These spears deal a large amount of Blast and Slash damage while forcing Slash procs, ripping through armor-reliant enemies with relative ease.
Draw Aggro: His third ability Rally Point draws all enemy attention on him.
Fake Longevity: First, you need to get 270 Stock and max Kahl's Garrison, which can only happen over the span of 5 weeks, to purchase all of his blueprints. Then, if you haven't already, you need to reach rank 4 with the Ostrons to buy the blueprints to Radian Sentrium. After that, you need to mine the materials for 40 Purged Dagonic, 60 Hespazym Alloy, 20 Star Crimzian and 5 Radian Sentrium. Alongside those, you need 400 Thrax Plasm, 15 Voidplume Quills, 5 Entrati Lanthorns and 5 Norg Brains, although these ones can be easier than the mining if you know where to farm. Once you have all of those, just wait the standard 3 and a half days for Styanax's parts to build and you've got him. Even DE was aware of the extreme grind, so they gave out a free Styanax to everybody who logged in early after the release of Veilbreaker.
Gameplay and Story Segregation: Styanax uses his signature spear gun, Afentis, in melee during the Ascension Day anime short. As a primary weapon, Afentis cannot be used for melee in any capacity in-game.
Irony: Tharros Strike summons a shield in Styanax's offhand, and if subsumed, will do the same for any other 'frame. Not only is it not very defensive, at most healing its user when it hits an enemy, it's an Anti-Armor attack that permanently shreds shields and armor on its targets.
Javelin Thrower: Axios Javelin will command Styanax to throw a javelin at a target, pulling enemies away.
Regenerating Mana: One effect of Rally Point is that Styanax and nearby allies will receive a buff that restores their energy over time.
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Based upon his hoplite motif, he's likely named after Astyanax, son of Hector from The Trojan Cycle.
Shield Bash: Tharros Strike summons a round shield in Styanax's offhand, knocking them back while shredding their shields and armor, and giving him Life Drain for each enemy he hits. This also briefly opens enemies to finisher attacks.
Storm of Blades: Final Stand has Styanax hover in the air while summoning an army of ghostly warriors who bombard a large area with spears.
Unrealistic Black Hole: Axios Javelin creates a gravity well effect at the point of impact that drags all nearby enemies toward it. This can be quickly comboed into Tharros Strike to clump up enemies and render them defenseless.
Weapon-Based Characterization: Being that he's based heavily on Greek Hoplites, it's no surprise that his skills involve spears and a shield.

Titania

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Titania, the pixie, the unseen.
Titania is a deadly and mischievous addition to any squad, but don't take my word for it, Tenno.

— The Lotus

Titania is a fairy-themed Warframe, fluttering in during the third of four lead-in updates to Update 19.0 in 2016, "Update: The Silver Grove". A support-oriented combatant, her skillset can lock enemies down, manipulate their aggro, and uses their 'souls' to provide various debuffs that help increase the survivability of herself and allies alike. However, she can prove to be a devastating combatant herself as well, shrinking down into a flying Archwing-like form that mows down foes with shockingly powerful dual submachine guns and swords.

Titania Prime graced her presence in Hotfix 27.3.6 in 2020.

Animal Motifs: Moths and butterflies. Her body is covered in swarms of detachable butterflies, her base helmet has moth-like feathered antennae, her third ability is stated to be based on the concept of "moths to a flame", and she can summon a set of wings.
Applied Phlebotinum: Since her Razorwing ability is efficiently turning into Archwing mode, all of her parts require Tellurium, the Archwing-only resource.
Awesome, but Impractical: Her One-Handed Zweihänder looks cool and lets you dart from one enemy to another while cutting them to ribbons... but you'll be stunned if you bump into a wall in the process and the damage output is far less impressive than her Dex Pixia.
BFS: Relatively speaking. When she activates Razorwing, she gets access to a Heavy Blade known as Diwata which she uses as an Arch-Melee.
Distaff Counterpart: Fittingly with Oberon. Thematically, both are nature-themed Warframes with crowd control abilities (Titania with Spellbind and Lantern and Oberon with Smite and Reckoning causing Radiation procs), area of effect status immunity (Spellbind and Hallowed Ground) and buffs for the squad (Tribute and Iron Renewal). However their attack styles are polar opposites, Oberon is a Mighty Glacier with his light-based abilities being direct and impactful, while Titania is more of a Glass Cannon with light-based abilities more to entrance and deceive enemies.
Foil: See Octavia's entry.
Fragile Speedster: Titania is the fastest Warframe without the use of teleportation abilities and is easily able to break the sound barrier. She is even faster than the Itzal Archwing.
Girlish Pigtails: Her helmet prominently shows them more in a stretched out form.
Glass Cannon:
- Titania has tremendous damage output with her Dex Pixia, but she has an abysmal health pool and no real armor to speak of. Her survivability depends upon staying in her Razorwing form, which gives her a fifty percent dodge chance on top of being hard for enemies to land hits on due to her size and speed.
- However, later updates have made her lean toward a Lightning Bruiser, as mods like Aerodynamic and Aviator grant her constant damage reduction so long as she remains in her Razorwing mode. Combine that with the Thorns, and she can have the maximum level of damage reduction, allowing her to absorb damage as well as Nezha, Frost, or Rhino.
Guns Akimbo: The "Dex Pixia" are her Exalted Weapons while using Razorwing that she carries akimbo.
Guardian Entity: For the Silver Grove, and Silvana. The Orphid, Knave, and Feyarch Specters serve as such in her stead.
Homing Projectile: Titania's butterflies mostly behave like this, usually tracking targeted enemies by her following abilities.
Hyperspace Arsenal: The Archwing summoned by Razorwing includes a unique bramble sword and a pair of thorn-shooting rifles. While her Archwing is formed from Titania's skirt, the weapons are nowhere to be found before she shrinks or after she reverts to her full size.
Killer Rabbit: Already possessed of a notably cute design (by Warframe standards at least), Titania's Razorwing turns her into an adorable little warframe pixie, small enough to stand on the palm of your hand, floating around on cute little wings, blowing huge gaping holes in the enemy with her guns and slicing them in half with her sword.
Long Neck: Her neck stalk stands out more than a Primed Nova.
Loot-Making Attack: The Tribute ability turns enemies into collectible buffs and debuffs.
Meaningful Name:
- Titania, like Oberon, draws her name from fairy royalty of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Fittingly, several fairy-themed Warframe Specters protect the Silver Grove in her absence, with the Feyarch Oberon Specter as her final protector.
- The weapons she summons during Razorwing are named "Dex Pixia" and "Diwata" (a Philippine term for a fairy).
- Her "Aurai" alternate helmet is named after the air nymphs of Greek mythology.
The Minion Master: The butterflies summoned by Razorwing can damage enemies and draw their own threat.
Nature Hero: Her creator Archimedian Silvana was one among the Orokin. Titania protected her after Silvana's Somatic Link permanently transferred her mind into a tree.
No Gravity for You: Spellbind causes enemies to float in the air and drift helplessly. Lantern can do this as well, but only to one target at a time.
One-Handed Zweihänder: Normally, the massive size of Archwing weapons compared to their users is justified by them being weightless in space, allowing the Tenno to swing them effortlessly. However, Razorwing can summon weapons of equivalent size (comparatively), and Titania has no problem swinging her BFS Diwata with gravity turned on.
Our Fairies Are Different: She is themed after fairies and pixies.
Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Razorwing makes Titania incredibly tiny, but the damage of her Dex Pixia guns and Diwata blade can still tear enemies asunder just as easily as her normal weapons, if not more so.
Power Floats: Aside from being able to fly with one of her powers, her unique idle animations cause her to float while her butterflies orbit her. Her passive increases her distance covered with Le Parkour and leaves behind pixie dust to spread the benefit to allies.
Power Up Letdown: Razorwing features two unique Exalted Weapons: Dex Pixia and Diwata. While Dex Pixia is fully capable of shredding bosses and crowds of enemies alike, Diwata is... not. Diwata's adherence to the clumsy Archwing melee weapon attack animations, mediocre damage, critical hit, and status chance mean that it's difficult to kill anything with it. In fact, you're more likely to injure yourself with it than the enemy, as the Archwing animations are bound to have you ram into walls repeatedly. To add insult to injury, continued changes to melee mean that many of the most popular standard melee options like the Orthos and Gram Prime have all-around superior stats as well as the ability to benefit from stance multipliers and forced status procs for even more damage. You'll be hard-pressed to find a player using Diwata over Dex Pixia any time soon.
Pretty Butterflies: Has dozens of them growing from her appendages, can surround herself in them during her idle animations, and can release swarms of them to attack.
Razor Wings: Played straight with every butterfly that spawns from her, but subverted on her ultimate ability where she summons actual blades on her arms instead of using wings to deal damage.
Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Lantern is an interesting variation: She turns one enemy into a beacon that all enemies are compelled to investigate and attack. While they can't damage that target, they'll be pelted by a swarm of razor butterflies orbiting the target, until that target explodes.
Sizeshifter: Razorwing uses Archwing mechanics to shrink her down to pixie-size, increasing her Evasion.
What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Silvana hated the weapon of war her research was used to create — that is until Titania died protecting her and the Silver Grove.
Stationary Wings: Her Showgirl Skirt Razorwing behaves similarly to what Archwings normally do. Granted, Razorwing mechanics simply copy the basis of the Archwing system, which also includes shrinking yourself down to size.
Variant Power Copying: Tribute allows her to steal power-ups from enemies, based on the types of enemies struck.
Winged Humanoid: Razorwing grants Titania a unique Archwing that she can use in standard missions.

Trinity

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Trinity, the healer, the equalizer.
Trinity is a must for any high-stakes mission. She'll save your life, Tenno.

— The Lotus

Trinity is an archetypal healer with a vampiric twist. Her skillset is completely defensive and allows allies to drain both health and energy from targets or avoid damage by redirecting it back onto an enemy.

Trinity was one of the first eight Warframes to be released with the game's "Vanilla" version in 2012; and Trinity Prime was converted with Update 17.6 in 2015 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Update 21.6 in 2017.

Attack Reflector: Link heavily slashes the damage Trinity takes while sending all of the damage she would have taken back to nearby enemies.
Boring, but Practical: Her kit is relatively basic, but the team support she offers is immensely powerful. Whatever mission you're running and whatever your squad looks like, Trinity is almost always welcome.
Combat Medic: She might have no offensive powers, but she's as heavily armed as any Warframe.
Healing Hands: Her ultimate skill, Blessing, averts the trend set by her other abilities - it doesn't require you to drain life from a target, but instead fully heals (and re-shields) the party, and grants temporary damage reduction to all affected.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Properly used, Link can let you kill an enemy by making the damage they deal be transferred to them instead.
Lady of War: One of the most heavily-armored female frames in terms of appearance (stat-wise, not so much). Her Meridian alternate helmet notably resembles a knight helmet, at least from the front, and her Knightess TennoGen skin takes this further by making her look like an actual knight in armour.
Life Drain: Well of Life levitates the target helplessly into the air and causes allies to regenerate health when damaging the targeted enemy. However, the target's maximum health is also increased for the duration, so targets who resist its crowd control effects are actually buffed, taking significantly less damage until it ends.
Mana Drain: Energy Vampire allows Trinity to continuously stun and drain an enemy's life force to receive energy. It's something of a game-breaking ability, as it returns more energy than it costs to the Trinity (and can be modded for an even bigger gap), and has very little risk to use as the target can discharge its remaining energy upon death. Energy Vampire's periodic damage scales with the target's maximum health at the time of casting, which can instantly kill an enemy if timed to cast as Well of Life is wearing off.
The Medic: She has two healing skills, her passive allows her to revive allies faster, and she's one of the few Warframes able to provide her allies with energy.
Mid-Season Upgrade: Unlike most Prime variants where their armor/helmet components are replaced, Trinity dons both her original armor and more bits of Primed armor all over her suit.
Not the Intended Use: Link can be used as an improvised early warning system, alerting the player to nearby enemies.
Simple, yet Awesome: Her skills require little aiming and have extremely simplistic effects, but they make her one of the strongest Warframes in the game, able to provide a nearly endless well of energy to her allies while keeping them topped up and stunning specific targets to be quickly gunned down.
Squishy Wizard: Zigzagged. Trinity possesses a paltry 15 armor, ensuring that any hits she takes unguarded are going to hurt, especially with her relatively low health and shield values. But the damage resistance buffs from Link and Blessing dramatically increase her durability, allowing her to withstand concentrated fire long enough to heal herself back to full.
The Symbiote: Her third skill, Link, invokes this by allowing her to transfer damage taken to someone else, usually a nearby enemy.
Useless Useful Spell: Well of Life turns an enemy into a beacon that heals nearby allies with periodic pulses. That's fine and dandy, but it also gives the target 10x more health and can only restore so much health before expiring. Meanwhile, Trinity's other healing ability Blessing, heals her and all allies near her for a percentage of their maximum health and shields on top of dropping a powerful defense bonus, making it always useful. Best of all, the animation is nearly instant, so it's far more convenient than Well of Life.
White Magician Girl: She can give teammates damage mitigation buffs and restore their energy. "The Profit Trailer shows her as a staff chick, too.

Valkyr

^{Click to see Prime form.}

"Our long deathless winter has left us numb. Our wasted animal within, ugly and gaunt, hibernates beneath our shimmering beauty. Why do these Warframes stir us so? They burn with our lost desires, lost instincts. Tenno tamed, but only just. Cast and hunted as game. Trapped and tortured, yet they remain... animals. Less than their human seed, gnawing their limbs from the snare, devouring a banquet of suffering, obese with heat and acid... and rage.
That is why they will destroy us."

— Ballas, Warframe: Valkyr Prime

A berserker Warframe uncaged alongside Ember Prime in Update 11.0 in 2013. She is said to be an escapee from the Corpus's Zanuka Project, having been tortured into a fearsome berserker who now uses her talons to tear through entire armies with no regard to pain.

Valkyr Prime tore herself from her chains with Hotfix 19.0.7 in 2016 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Update 23.9 in 2018. Following Update 29.10 in 2021, Valkyr Prime and all of her associated equipment was permanently unvaulted, with the corresponding relics found as Rare Random Drops in Corpus missions within Pluto and Veil Proxima.

Animal Motifs: Cats, most notably with some of her alternate helmets. Her Agile animation set is very feline, and she has both normal claws on her fingers and "retractable" claws that come out during Hysteria.
Armor Is Useless: Subverted. Despite her small size and lack of visible armor, Valkyr's got the fifth-highest armor stat in the game behind a max. level Kullervo (though Valkyr Prime has the second-highest) and can become completely invincible during Hysteria.
Attack! Attack! Attack!: Fitting for The Berserker, Valkyr's kit encourages the player to be hyper aggressive with their melee and keep slicing apart any one who dare opposes her..
The Berserker: All of her abilities are based around fury and primal screaming. Paralysis and Warcry both let off intense howls, while Hysteria creates a mad rage that turns unlucky nearby enemies to mush while also rendering her almost completely to invincible to damage and status effects. The damage starts taking once the Hysteria effect ends.
Body Horror: It's no coincidence that "the tortured" Warframe looks like her skin was flayed and peeled. The default red streaks on her armor even look like exposed muscle. To top it off, the Corpus restraints on her arms have bolts that go through her bones. The Gersemi Skin for Valkyr is actually her Pre-Corpus Skin. It's telling that this skin highly resembles Zanuka's.
Cat Girl: With the Bastet alternate helmet, she becomes a variant of this. Her Gersemi skin, which portrays her original form before Alad V's experiments, also makes this trope even more blatant. As of 17.5, her passive ability prevents her from having a heavy landing, and increases her knockdown recovery — the cat always lands on her feet.
Chained by Fashion: Her exclusive syandana, Valkyr's Bonds, uses the wire-like restraints she was bound within captivity.
Delayed Reaction: Her Hysteria invokes this if she takes a surmountable amount of damage from enemies within its range^note. Taking about fifty thousand points or more^notedisplayed in your hud and then turning Hysteria off will deliver a portion of those points straight to her as damage.
Distaff Counterpart: Of Rhino. In terms of abilities and passive, both heavily armored Warframes have a movement/gap closer (Ripline and Rhino Charge), buff (Warcry and Roar), AOE stun (Paralysis and Rhino Stomp) and invulnerability (Hysteria and Iron Skin) based ability. Their passives are opposites in terms of drop weight, Rhino being heavy enough to cause knockdown and Valkyr being light on her feet to recover from knockdown.
Fashionable Asymmetry: Her base helmet is cracked open on the left side. Her exclusive "Valkyr's Bonds" syandana dangles one chain off her right arm and two off the left.
Gameplay and Story Integration: With her origins heavily tied to the Corpus, Valkyr Prime's permanent relics are located in Corpus Railjack missions, requiring the player to fish them out of side objectives that reward extra items.
Grappling-Hook Pistol: Rip Line generates an energy tether that can be used for this, or You Will Not Evade Me - notable in that it can pull allies to her as well as enemies.
Kryptonite Is Everywhere: While using Hysteria is made to turn tides of a fight to Valkyr's favor, there is an increasing amount of Demonic Spiders whose auras can nullify pretty much every ability buff/debuff made by any Warframe. Nullifier globes, in particular, are extremely dangerous to her.
Life Drain: Her Talons have innate life-steal.
Lightning Bruiser: Her kit revolves around dishing out her hatred to enemies at close range with great mobility, while boasting a wad of armor that makes Rhino's Iron Skin look like paper.
No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Hysteria makes her launch into a violent, enemy-slicing frenzy that would make Wolverine proud.
No-Sell: Hysteria renders Valkyr completely invulnerable to damage at the cost of using only melee attacks rather than whatever weapon she carries.
Not the Intended Use: Despite the intended name, her ultimate ability allows her to traverse through sections of a fight without taking damage from enemies, giving Valkyr time to revive allies, hack consoles, and reach objectives with abandon. Ironically, this makes Valkyr, the screaming, enraged, berserker Warframe, one of the best options for Infiltration missions targeting the Corpus, since she can just run straight through tripwires, slam Ciphers into the terminals, and run.
Primal Stance: While sprinting under the effects of Hysteria, she spreads her arms out in a rather disturbing backdrop. This is also her default stance with her Agile animation set.
Screaming Warrior: All of her abilities outside of Rip Line involve furious screams of rage.
Unstoppable Rage: Literally with Hysteria, as she's invincible to all damage and status effects unless she runs through something that nullifies her powers.
Valkyries: The inspiration for her name, though she has little to do with them directly save perhaps that berserkers occur alongside them in Norse Mythology. Her Kara alternate helmet takes its name from a Valkyrie; the Nordic translation is "the wild, stormy one."
Waif-Fu: Looking at Valkyr's slender silhouette, you'd probably assume that she's about as fragile as squishy female casters such as Mag, Nova, Banshee, or Mirage. While her shields are the lowest in the game (barring Kullervo, Inaros and Nidus, who don't have any), her armor value is the second highest, giving her immense damage reduction. Her kit is designed around a melee-focused berserker playstyle that encourages ripping enemies to shreds with a lightning-fast blitz.
Wolverine Claws: Hysteria summons a pair of energy claws.

Vauban

^{Click to see Prime form.}

"Lust was my sin. But greed is the blight that weakens our steel. These industrialists... gorged on the harvest of our long war. Their mind-drones, their mechanizations, toil in foundries remote. For what purpose? We must set watch upon them, baiting our snares with the worms of profit. Those who kneel at the altar of commerce will be returned to the Void.
For your consideration... Vauban."

— Ballas, Warframe: Vauban Prime

The Combat Engineer Warframe deployed with Update 8.0 in 2013, Vauban has the unique twist of deploying his abilities through specialized grenades. This gives him a longer reach than most of his compatriots and allows him to fortify multiple sections of a map at once. He is currently considered the most effective of the utility-centric Warframes. His kit received an overhaul in Update 26.0.

Vauban Prime was drafted with Update 18.12 in 2016 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Hotfix 22.16.4 in 2018.

Badass Longcoat: Vauban Prime's armor looks more like a coat taken from Baro Ki'teer's closet.
Barrier Warrior: His Bastille ability creates a barrier that lifts enemies who cross it into the air, rendering them helpless. It can be activated again to collapse the field into a Vortex, dealing constant magnetic damage.
Combat Pragmatist: His passive encourages this by giving him 25% extra damage to immobilized enemies.
Composite Character: Each of his old abilities has been accused of being a grenade form of another Warframe's: Tesla is similar to Volt's Shock, Bounce resembles Excalibur's now-retired Super Jump, Concuss shares properties of Banshee's Silence, Bastille halts enemies like Rhino's Rhino Stomp and Vortex shares the attractive attributes of Mag's Pull.
Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: His Vortex primarily deals Magnetic damage. Great against Corpus, okay against Grineer, downright useless against Infested.
The Engineer: His name is a shout-out to military marshal Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, and his kit revolves around the Corpus' common abilities that manipulate players on the fly.
Fake Longevity:
- When Nightwave replaced alerts, Vauban's parts became permanent fixtures in the Nightwave offerings. However, the currency to purchase said parts is doled out rather infrequently, so players seeking to farm him from scratch will need to wait a few weeks for the privilege.
- For Vauban Prime, all of his blueprints are rare drops, making "radshares" (a squad of 4 players, each of them having the same relic upgraded to Radiant) the only viable option to farm them. He also requires high amounts of rare resources to craft each part, extending the grind even further.
Flechette Storm: His Flechette Orb ability puts out a grenade that fires spikes that deal puncture damage in a fairly sizable radius around it.
Gag Penis: Vauban Prime has a giant gold ingot over his crotch.
Gravity Screw: Early on, Vauban's Vortex had this effect on players, causing them to jump higher and have more airtime if they jumped into it, but also causing them to drift helplessly and uncontrollably if they moved through it any other way. Part of this controversial side-effect was officially patched out in 9.8, though it's still possible for players to be catapulted into the sky by doing a jump kick near a vortex.
Grenade Spam: This is his entire modus operandi, and for good reason - all of his powers are grenades with different effects.
Luck-Based Mission: Prior to the introduction of Nightwave, obtaining him was this, for players who were unwilling or unable to shell out the Platinum. Unlike any other Warframe, his parts were only available through random alerts. Said alerts were rare, typically only lasted for an hour or so, and could be at any time of day. To make matters worse, there were separate alerts for each of his three parts, so there was a good chance of catching an alert for the wrong part. It usually took players months to build him.
Meaningful Name: Named after the prominent French military engineer, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban.
Mechanically Unusual Class: Unlike the other Warframes, Vauban's powers all take the form of grenades that he tosses. These grenades cannot penetrate the Snow Globes generated by Frost or Arctic Eximus units.
Mythology Gag: Post-rework, his animation for deploying his Photon Strike and Bastille abilities mid-air are taken directly from the Vauban Prime trailer.
Nitro Boost: His Vector Pad mines are of the Dash Pad variety.
Not Quite Flight: Activating some of his abilities in mid-air will cause him to stall in it in order to thrown down the grenade, before resuming normal motion.
Orbital Bombardment: His Photon Strike is essentially him summoning an orbital beam that blasts enemies in its radius.
Spring Jump: One application of Bounce. Alternately, it can be used to rocket foes into the stratosphere, stunning them temporarily.
Squishy Wizard: Has the second-lowest armor and ties with Loki and Nova for the second-lowest shield capacity of all Warframes (after Valkyr).
Status Buff: His Overdriver mine applies a damage bonus to any Warframe it attaches to.
Sticky Bomb: His old Bounce would stick to whatever surface it's attached to, regardless of which direction the pad faces. Tesla did much the same, as well as attaching to enemies and allies alike to deal additional damage over time. In his current setup, Overdriver will attach to the nearest Warframe when thrown.
Trap Master: His grenades are best used as traps used to hold down a territory.
When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Vauban's only tools are grenades, so his answer to every problem is "grenade." And he uses them to great effect.

Volt

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Volt, a versatile warrior.
Volt's arsenal is powerful and electrifying. Handle with care, Tenno.

— The Lotus

A nimble ability-oriented Warframe with the power to generate and control powerful electric currents. He is exceptionally devastating against the Corpus and their robotic proxies but while he tends to feel a bit lackluster against the other factions (which have some resistance to electric damage) his skills nevertheless offer a balanced range of utility. Volt was originally a starting Warframe before being replaced by Mag in Update 7.0, but returned to the roster in Update 14.0 replacing Loki.

Volt was one of the first eight Warframes to be released with the game's "Vanilla" version in 2012, and Volt Prime bolted onto the field with Update 16.1 in 2015 before retiring to the Prime Vault with Hotfix 19.11.5 in 2017.

Barrier Warrior: His Electric Shield blocks incoming fire and supercharges allied projectiles and bullets fired through it. This not only adds bonus Electrical and critical damage to attacks, but increases their range, velocity, and penetrating power as well. Volt is also able to pick up his shield and carry it in front of himself, at which point Volt can run directly into enemies with his shield to ragdoll them.
- Volt also has two different augment mods for his shields, one of which allows allies to manipulate them at no cost to themselves while also adding damage absorbed by the shields to Volt's passive damage buff, and the other causes shields to restore the shields of his allies when they pass through it, allowing Volt to either set up static recharge barriers or bring shielding in both senses of the word to his allies.
Chain Lightning: His first ability, Shock, fires a bolt of lightning that arcs between enemies. Each of those targets then receives the Electrified proc, causing them to chain damage to their allies as well, making it a cheap and effective way to stun whole crowds. Discharge electrifies the ground, causing electricity to arc between enemies.
Deflector Shield: His third ability is Electric Shield, a barrier that blocks enemy fire, though not enemies themselves.
Elemental Barrier: His Electric Shield can block enemy fire, and has the added bonus of electrifying his bullets when he fires through it. Casting Shock on a shield will also charge up the shield itself, dealing stunning damage to enemies who try to pass through.
Lightning Bruiser: Incredibly effective against machines at high speeds, and definitely played literally.
Lightning Can Do Anything: Including granting super-speed and making barriers out of thin air.
Magic Knight: While ostensibly a caster with his Shock attack, his Speed ability greatly enhances mobility and melee damage while his Electric Shield can be picked up to create a mobile ramming shield to supplement his low defenses. Amongst the starter Warframes in particular, his abilities offer the most compromise between the melee-heavy Excalibur and the more CC-focused Mag.
Man in a Kilt: In an interesting variation, his kilt is open in the front, reaching up into his chestguard at about waist-height.
Power Floats: When he uses his ultimate, he jumps in the air and defies gravity for a split second before unleashing a wave of electricity. He used to float for the entire duration of the ability until it was patched for practicality.
Shield Bash: Charging through an enemy while carrying Electric Shield can ragdoll them.
Shock and Awe: All his powers are electrically-based, but special mention has to go to Discharge, which really fits the bill. It's so powerful that it can clear the entire map with a single usage with excessive stacking of power range and power damage mods.
Starter Equipment: One of the three Warframes offered to new players during the "Awakening" quest, alongside Excalibur and Mag. His powerful damaging skills make him a good pick for players who want to make heavy use of abilities rather than mostly focusing on weapons.
Static Electricity: His passive ability causes him to build up an electrical charge as he moves across the ground that is added as bonus damage to his next attack.
Super-Speed: One of his abilities gives a short burst of speed to himself and any teammates around him, making them run incredibly fast and swing their melee weapons quicker.
Tron Lines: While most Warframes have this, Volt's are quite prominently displayed whenever he casts Discharge.

Voruna

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/img_0224.png

”Four beasts, one heart. Voruna's loyal wolf pack makes for a deadly combination of strength and stealth. Beware the monstrous howl that heralds fangs of vengeance.“

A lupine huntress once responsible for protecting the Circulus temple on Lua, where high-ranking Orokin once performed Continuity. She can switch between four different passive abilities, making her a highly versatile Warframe.

Voruna's howl was first heard in Update 32.2.0, "Lua's Prey," on November 30th, 2022.

1-Up: The passive for Ulfrun's Descent has Ulfrun sacrifice himself when Voruna dies, bringing her back to life with Mercy Invincibility. This effect has a one-minute cooldown.
Anti-Debuff: The passive for Fangs of Raksh makes her completely immune to status effects.
Anti-Frustration Feature: Voruna's component parts and weapons are drops from the Conjunction Survival game mode added in "Lua's Prey". However, her components can also be purchased from Archimedian Yonta with the Lua Thrax Plasm that drops at regular intervals during the mission, providing a safety net for bad RNG. The option to both farm for and buy mission rewards hasn't been available since the Orphix Venom event, and this is the first time it is used as a permanent feature.
The Atoner: Implied in her Leverian: Voruna was once responsible for ensuring that the Orokin elites' Continuity ritual went smoothly, allowing them to obtain immortality via Body Surfing. During her career, she allowed countless Yuvan^* to have their souls erased. When the Tenno rebelled against the Orokin, she killed the Orokin Clerisy who used Continuity, and appears to have adopted the child whose body Tuvul was intending to use.
Back Stab: Shroud of Dynar hides Voruna and grants her melee attacks increased critical damage, status chance, and a guaranteed Bleed effect. Performing any weapon attack will break the invisibility, so she only gets one swing with these buffs active; if that one swing successfully lands, however, the melee boost will continue for a brief period after the invisibility ends.
Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Her "wolves" happen to have six eyes.
Dash Attack: While more of a "pounce" than a "dash", she comes with two varieties:
- Fangs of Raksh causes Voruna to lunge to a single enemy, afflicting them with 10 stacks of 5 random Status Effects. If the affected enemy dies, these effects are spread to other nearby foes.
- Ulfrun's Descent causes Voruna to go on a rampage, granting 5 charges of a leap attack that mauls the target and damages enemies near the impact. Victims take more damage from this attack if already afflicted by status effects, and subsequent charges will deal more damage for each victim killed in the rampage. Shroud of Dynar further amplifies the critical damage of each leap.
Diagonal Cut: Ulfrun's Descent is somewhat unusual in that it inflicts a Slash Damage Over Time effect ^note. The result is that if an enemy dies from this, the killing blow is a Slash hit, which can result in gore and dismemberment effects occuring. This gives the impression of falling apart several seconds after receiving a Clean Cut.
Fusion Dance: Just as Tuvul went to finish his Continuity, Voruna seized his primed Kuva bowl, drenching herself and her wolves' heads, and unified with them.
Howl of Sorrow: After the Void entities slaughtered her wolves, Voruna let out a mournful howl.
Drusus: Gentle-eyed Raksh was the first to fall to the scything blades. They killed Lycath next, then Dynar, and Ulfrun last of all. Voruna had howled many times before, in hunger, in anger, and in triumph, but now for the first time, she howled in grief.
Invisibility: Shroud of Dynar turns Voruna invisible for a duration. Weapon attacks will break this invisibility immediately; however, attacking foes with her other abilities will not break it.
Loot-Making Attack: Lycath's Hunt gives enemies an increased chance of dropping orbs when killed in certain ways: health orbs for melee kills, and energy for headshots.
Losing Your Head: Voruna is adorned with the still-living heads of what were once her lupine companions. Though they had died, Voruna severed their heads, then doused them and herself in Kuva, causing a Fusion Dance that reanimated them and merged them with her.
Mama Bear: Drusus notes a sort of recognition between Voruna and the child in one of the images he salvaged from Void-corrupted datamasses, and finds it curious when another image shows her cradling the child as she returned to her ship.
Meaningful Name: Her name is derived from Žvorūna, a Lithuanian forest goddess depicted as a huntress accompanied by a pack of wolves.
Sprint Shoes: The passive for Shroud of Dynar increases the velocity of her parkour maneuvers.
Stance System: Downplayed. Each of the heads of her wolves comes with its own associated passive ability, but she can only have one of the four active at a time, compelling her to cycle between them. Using the Helminth system to replace one of her abilities will also lock her out of access to the associated passive.
- Shroud of Dynar grants Voruna increased parkour velocity. This pairs with the speed boost from the main ability to make her one of the most mobile Warframes available.
- Fangs of Raksh makes Voruna immune to status effect applications. However, it will not cleanse status effects that are already on her when it's activated.
- Lycath's Hunt improves Voruna's heavy attack efficiency. This makes it easier to collect health orbs from the main ability's melee bonus.
- Ulfrun's Descent instantly revives Voruna if she is downed with this passive selected, with a one-minute cooldown between revivals. However, switching to another passive will also activate this cooldown.
Status Infliction Attack: Fangs of Raksh inflicts 10 stacks of 5 random status effects on an enemy, with these effects then spreading to other nearby enemies if it dies. Priming enemies with this can supercharge weapons modded with Galvanized Aptitude/Shot/Savvy or Condition Overload, boost the damage of Ulfrun's Descent, and extend the duration of Lycath's Hunt.
Super-Speed: Shroud of Dynar grants a significant boost to her running speed while she's invisible. Combined with her Dash Attack skills, she is extremely difficult to outrun.
Wolf Man: Voruna's design theme is entirely based on wolves. Shroud of Dynar lets her stalk her prey, Fangs of Raksh and Ulfrun's Descent let her pounce on and maul her foes, and Lycath's Hunt has her feast on her kills.

Wisp

^{Click to see Prime form.}

"In languid dreams a vision came, of new heaven, new Earth. I breathed life into its custodian. A subtle sprite, to seed life. Yet as I reached for my savage warden, she... slipped from me. So now... I cast her in flesh. Yours. Let her be real. Incandescent. This fugitive form.
This... Wisp."

— Ballas, Warframe: Wisp Prime

A will-o'-the-wisp inspired Warframe that flickered to life with Update 25.0 "Jovian Concord" in 2019. Offering a variety of support, damage, and utility, Wisp stands out as a valuable asset on any team.

Wisp Prime flared bright in Update 33.6 on July 27, 2023.

Death from Above: Her passive making her invisible while airborne encourages this if you're using silent weapons.
Flower Motif: Waterlilies. Her Reservoir motes resemble the seed pods of the plant used for medicinal purposes.
Homing Projectile: Breach Surge seeks out targets, blinds, and makes enemies more susceptible to damage.
Jack of All Trades: With her abilities being great for both support and damage, as well as being decently bulky and fast, she fits the bill.
Magical Barefooter: She doesn't really have feet to begin with. Not that it's a problem, though.
Meaningful Name: After the will-o'-the-wisp, glowing malevolent spirits that are said to allure their victims to their death.
Ms. Fanservice: Like with Mesa Prime, players were quick to notice Wisp's rather... shapely rear that is arguably even more ample than Mesa Prime's! She even sways her hips as she floats if one uses the Wisp Noble animation set.
Power Floats: She is the first Warframe that has a walking animation that exclusively floats. Her passive even turns her invisible as long as she stays in the air.
Power of the Sun: Her Sol Gate unleashes a streaming blast of energy that draws powers from the sun itself.
Scarf of Asskicking: She sports one in both her default appearance and with her alternate helmet.
Teleporters and Transporters: Using her Breach Surge on her Reservoir pods lets her teleport to them as long as they are within line of sight. She can also teleport to the location of Wil-O-Wisp's decoy by activating the ability a second time, or by holding down the button on the initial cast.
Thinking Up Portals: She can use her space-warping abilities to open a portal to the Sun with Sol Gate.
Treacherous Spirit Chase: Can use Wil-O-Wisp to this effect.
Wave-Motion Gun: The result of opening a portal to the Sun with her Sol Gate.
Will-o'-the-Wisp: Her theme and powers are inspired by them.

Wukong

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Wukong, the enduring, the swift.
Everybody's got something to hide, Tenno. Except Wukong.

— The Lotus

A melee-focused Warframe inspired by Sun Wukong of Journey to the West fame. Fights with trickster powers much like his namesake. Got an early release in the Chinese version before journeying over to the main build with Update 17.12 in 2015, and getting a rework in Update 25.2.0 in 2019.

Wukong Prime reached enlightenment with Update 25.3 in 2019.

Ace Custom: Wukong has a unique Exalted staff known as the Iron Staff that's only accessible when Wukong activates his Primal Fury ability.
Attack Reflector: Defy has him strike a pose that allows him to absorb incoming fire while remaining completely invulnerable. Once the duration ends, he swings his staff around to knock aside all nearby enemies, dealing damage proportional to the amount of damage he absorbed. In addition, he temporarily gains up to 1,500 armor based on the damage he took while using Defy.
Bigger Stick: Weaponized and taken literally. Prior to his rework, his Iron Staff would get longer and longer as his combo counter goes up. Even after the changes, the Iron Staff is still the most powerful staff in the game, only kept in check by its inability to equip Acolyte Mods like Blood Rush.
Blue Is Heroic: He's mostly bright blue and a Warframe.
Combo: Prior to his rework, Wukong's passive ability extended his melee combo timer from 3 seconds to 5, making it easier to maintain the combo multiplier bonus, and Primal Fury became more powerful and grew in range as the combo counter increased.
Death Is Cheap: His old Defy let him revive himself from death indefinitely for as long as he has energy. His new passive, Five Methods to Immortality, allows him to cheat death three times a mission, gaining a random buff each time.
Immortality: Wukong's passive mimics his mythical origins by giving him five ways in which he can evade death. He gets three per mission at random, and when he would die, he gets one of five random buffs
Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When his rework was released, Ordis sent everyone who owned him three free Forma with an accompanying message that Wukong had undergone an "Evolution" of some form.
Lightning Bruiser: Much like Excalibur and Valkyr before him, Wukong is designated to deal damage as taking as much as he can. Cloud Walker lets him traverse long distances quickly and heal himself up between fights while Defy lets him take ludicrous amounts of punishment. Meanwhile, Primal Fury gives him access to the Iron Staff, an incredibly far-reaching and powerful melee weapon.
Martial Arts Staff: Wukong's Ace Custom Iron Staff, boasting the highest attack power of all melee weapons next to Excalibur's Exalted Blade, Valkyr's Talons and Baruuk's Desert Wind.
Me's a Crowd: Can create a duplicate of himself using his Celestial Twin ability. The duplicate uses melee when he uses firearms and vice-versa.
Monkey King Lite: He's designed with monkey motifs, can summon a Telescoping Staff, and even has the ability to turn into a cloud. His fiery, rocklike "Samadhi" ^note Deluxe skin is a reference to Journey to the West the True Samadhi Fire used by Red Boy in an attempt to kill Wukong.
No-Sell:
- Defy allows Wukong to aggro enemies while he and his clone turn invulnerable and store damage, before releasing all of that damage back in a long-range staff attack. After the spin is executed, he and his clone get an armor buff.
- Cloud Walker also makes Wukong invulnerable while active, doesn't trigger laser traps, and heals him and his clone, with the caveat that it also prevents him from attacking.
Super Smoke: Cloud Walker has Wukong dissolve into a cloud of mist that's invulnerable to harm and effectively invisible to cameras and traps. In addition, he and his clone rapidly heal themselves so long as they keep moving while in this state.

Xaku

^{Click to see Xaku's skeletal form.}

Forged from the remnants of lost Warframes, they channel spirits of the void. This is Xaku, the fragmented, the restored.
In the concert of mayhem, Xaku is a law unto themselves, Tenno.

— The Lotus

A Warframe made from the parts of other Warframes scavenged at TennoCon 2020 and reborn in Update 29.0 on August 25th, 2020.

Ascended Fanon: Much like Nova and Equinox, Xaku's theme was the winner of a design contest.
Frankenstein's Monster: In a sense. This Warframe is made from other Warframes and the only reason they don't fall apart is through Void energy.
Lovecraftian Superpower: Grasp of Lohk and Gaze create ethereal tendrils that grapple enemies.
Meaningful Name: Xaku is derived from "zako" (雑魚), a Japanese word meaning "inferior fish" (or more colloquially, "small fry"), used to describe Mooks. From an Orokin perspective, Xaku is an amalgam of "disposable" footsoldiers.
Obvious Rule Patch: Their Void damage cannot be used to harm Eidolons, as that would allow them to cheese all three encounters by removing the need for investment in the Operator and Amps.
Power of the Void: At time of release, Xaku is the only Warframe able to innately deal Void damage, with all of their powers. Deny even resets Sentient resistances, while The Vast Untime increases enemy vulnerability to Void damage from sources like Amps.
Powers Do the Fighting: Grasp of Lohk steals the weapons of enemies, which float alongside Xaku and automatically target and shoot at nearby enemies. At least against unarmored enemies, this means that Xaku can do a lot of damage just by walking through a mission, without needing to actually fire their own weapon (with armored targets, they may need to use Gaze to strip defenses).
Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Accuse tears open a Void fissure. As with other Void fissures, enemies nearby are corrupted and turn against their original faction members.
Shed Armor, Gain Speed: The Vast Untime increases Xaku's mobility and evasion by blowing off all of their armor to expose their Void skeleton. Played with, however; unlike Chroma, shedding their physical armor has no negative effect on their vulnerability to damage, and in fact increases their resistance to area-effect attacks.
Shout-Out: Xaku's name is a reference to the "Zaku" units from Mobile Suit Gundam.
Time Stands Still: A variation. Unlike Limbo who can freeze enemies in time, Xaku's ultimate allows them to freeze their own ability timers, allowing them to sustain their buffs and debuffs as long as they can keep their ultimate up.
Undead Abomination: Xaku has heavy undead themes, from being constructed entirely out of dead Warframes down to becoming a skeleton with their ultimate.
Unusable Enemy Equipment: Defied by Grasp of Lohk, which steals the firearms from nearby enemies and turns them against their former wielders.

Yareli

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/img_0223_8.png

She is the one to give hope to the hopeless, defeating her enemies with an aquatic grace. This is Yareli, the selfless, the wave rider.
Yareli fights for those who need it most, and strikes fear into those who oppress. Do you dream of water, Tenno?

— The Lotus

A surfer-themed Warframe announced in Devstream 154. She will ride the waves in the Sisters of Parvos update.

Ascended Fanon: Much like Sevagoth, Yareli originated from fan-art, but from Matias Tapia.
Bubble Gun: Her signature pistol, Kompressa, is one!
Critical Hit Class: Her passive ability increases her Critical Chance with Sidearms as long as she's moving while firing. This plays into her second ability, which increases her movement speed but deactivates her Primary weapon and is canceled by Melee attacks.
Cute Clumsy Girl: One of her idle animations has her Hover Board despawn under her, causing her to land on her rear. She chuckles playfully afterward.
Distaff Counterpart: To Hydroid, with both being water-elemental Warframes both visually themed after and capable of summoning sea creatures. The Community Director believes they're siblings.
- Also to Nezha, who is also a counterpart to another elemental frame, whose skillset also emphasizes a balance of survival and mobility, and whose unique animations emphasize their childlike qualities. Furthering this parallel, both Nezha's Leverian and the Waverider #1 graphica tell stories of them protecting or liberating child workers, and both became direct inspirations to groups of oppressed children.
Floating in a Bubble: A hostile example. Her Sea Snares power allows her to toss a fan of bubble-mines that will seek out and latch onto enemies, wrapping around them and crushing them over time.
Friend to All Children: The Ventkids look up to her as an inspiration, for being the first K-Driver and liberating child slaves during her lifetime.
Hover Board: Merulina allows her to summon a coral-like aquatic animal to ride upon using K-Drive mechanics, giving her a massive speed and survival boost while playing into her sidearm-enhancing passive.
- Her Warframe Profile explains she was the inspiration for the K-Drives used by the Ventkids.
Killer Rabbit: Has been described by the dev team as the cutest Warframe they've put out to date; one of her idle animations includes her summoning hearts out of water bubbles, or hugging the Merulina like a stuffed animal. She is, of course, still a Warframe.
Magical Girl: One of her themes in her original design.
Making a Splash: Similar to Hydroid in this regard. However, while Hydroid's abilities play into fears of the open sea and are catered to point-defense missions, Yareli's are more appropriate to open spaces and weaponize the beauty and fun of water for a more laid-back and tropical, but equally deadly, approach to the element.
Meaningful Name: Her name is derived from the Native American name meaning "water lady" or "small butterfly".
Orbiting Particle Shield: Aquablades creates water buzzsaws that circle around herself for a duration, dicing up enemies who venture too close (or who she rides past on her Hover Board).
Shout-Out: Yareli's design comes from a series by a community artist depicting Sailor Moon characters as Warframes. Specifically, Yareli invokes Sailor Neptune, with her Deep Aqua Mirror inspiring Merulina.
Tornado Move: Her ultimate ability, Riptide, creates a cyclone that draws enemies in for a duration. Unlike Zephyr's Tornado ultimate, only one vortex is summoned per cast and it's stationary by default, but it explodes at the end of its duration to deal bonus damage for each enemy caught within.

Zephyr

^{Click to see Prime form.}

This is Zephyr, light, yet deceivingly lethal.
Zephyr brings graceful destruction to the battlefield. Look up, Tenno.

— The Lotus

An avian-themed Warframe with wind powers who soared with Update 12.0 in 2014. She is noted for her high mobility, as well as her air-support potential.

Zephyr Prime took flight with Hotfix 22.16.4 in 2018.

Air-Aided Acrobatics: She's naturally lighter than other Warframes, allowing her to jump higher and giving her more airtime. In addition, Tail Wind allows her to propel herself into and through the air — the most potent travel skill of its cost.
Animal Motifs: Birds, specifically hawks, according to the Design Council poll that originally spawned her. Her design invokes a beak, feathers, and even a swallow-like tail, while her first two powers involve getting into the air and slamming down on enemies.
Applied Phlebotinum: The use of Oxium in her recipe accounts for her lighter weight and reduced falling speed compared to other Warframes.
Ascended Fanon: Like Nova, Nekros, and Valkyr, Zephyr owes her theme to a Design Council poll full of options submitted by players. The frame's name, design, and even several abilities are also frequently attributed to a popular fan art thread which Warframe's Design Director stated was "very inspiring". Said fan artist, Liger Inuzuka, was later hired by Digital Extremes as a concept artist.
Barrier Warrior: Turbulence allows her to protect nearby allies from enemy gunfire, and can make her nearly invulnerable when she keeps out of range of enemies (such as while airborne). Its augment, Jet Stream, can further this by increase the team's movement speed and projectile speed.
Blow You Away: Her elemental theme is wind. She can control air currents to fly, create a vortex that sucks in enemies or blows them away, manipulate the wind to deflect bullets, and summon tornadoes.
Color-Coded Elements: Primarily white, blue, and irremovable grays.
Cool Shades: Her Cierzo alternate helmet gives her a visor - appropriate for the aviator Warframe.
Critical Hit Class: Zephyr's passive gives her a 150% Critical Chance bonus while she's in the air, letting nearly any primary or secondary weapon crit far more often and potentially putting melee heavy attacks in red crit territory.
Death from Above: As the "Hawk" frame, Zephyr's kit is designed to allow her to stay out of reach as long as possible while she provides air support for her allies. Her passive ability also increases her Critical Chance with weapons while airborne, her first two abilities also have a reduced cost in the air, and her Tail Wind can be used to Dive Bomb the ground to knock aside everyone near her landing point.
- The Target Fixation mod for Tail Wind brings this up to eleven. While equipped, each enemy hit by Tail Wind increases the damage of all subsequent casts by an additional 100%, which stacks infinitely, unless she stands on the ground for at least 2 seconds to reset it. In addition to encouraging flyby attacks, since "each enemy hit" includes those hit by its Dive Bomb component, each slam with it will both build the multiplier and directly benefit from it. The grace period is long enough that as long as Zephyr has the energy and isn't forcibly knocked down, she can maintain a high multiplier indefinitely with the Hover component or by simply tapping a jump between Dive Bombs.
Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: Tornado allows her to trap enemies inside whirlwinds that patrol the battlefield. Shooting into a whirlwind will change its elemental damage type, and charge up its damage output against enemies trapped inside. Airburst can also be used to briefly suction enemies toward a location, gathering them up for a Dive Bomb or dragging them towards a Tornado.
Easter Egg: When modifying a Warframe's appearance, there is a row of three buttons in the top left that let you make appearance presets and swap between them, but Zephyr also has a fourth Z button that lets you play as her in a game of Flappy Bird. Because why not?
Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The twisters generated by Tornado normally deal Impact, Puncture, and Slash damage, but will match the elemental affinity of any weapon fired into them. So Zephyr can deal with the Grineer by trapping them in tornadoes before pumping a Corrosive weapon into it to shred their armor. This is especially noticeable with the Funnel Cloud augment, which doubles the number of tornadoes to make armor-stripping or gas-making even more useful at the cost of not rendering her foes helpless.
Ground Pound: Aiming Tail Wind downward causes Zephyr to enter a Dive Bomb, rapidly surging toward the ground and releasing a shockwave on impact that deals damage based on the drop distance.
Immune to Bullets: Turbulence generates a spherical barrier around Zephyr that deflects incoming projectiles harmlessly to the side, allowing her to stand in front of an entire crowd of enemies and laugh off their attempts to kill her with More Dakka. However, it does not affect explosions, melee attacks, or shockwaves, meaning that Zephyr is in for a brutal surprise should an enemy sneak up behind her or if she walks too close to a grenade her shield deflected.
Lightning Bruiser: Fast, plenty of shields and plenty of health, add in abilities that focus on dashing around hammering enemies and an ultimate that abuses Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors like no other and the result is a very fast and very tough frame with plenty of firepower.
Meaningful Name: A zephyr refers to a light wind from the west (named after a Greek deity), while a cierzo is a Spanish term for a dry, cold wind from the north.
No-Sell: Turbulence generates a bubble of air around her that redirects oncoming projectiles away from her, effectively rendering her Immune to Bullets. It also works on grenades and beam attacks, but it won't work on AoEs, melee attacks, or explosions (i.e. from the aforementioned grenades). Using Tail Wind to keep her off the ground in open spaces can make her all but completely unkillable. Power Range mods can expand this bubble into a larger one that can protect nearby allies, while the Jet Stream augment mod will improve their projectile speed and movement speed.
Not Quite Flight: She has a natural resistance to gravity, while Tail Wind allows her to jump off the ground and propel herself in the air. Hold-casting it while airborne will also allow her to toggle a Hover state for as long as she has energy, but unlike Titania, her aerial movement in this state is sluggish.
Power Floats: Tail Wind can be charged from the ground to propel Zephyr upward and put her into a hover mode.
Razor Wings: Zephyr Prime's arm blades extend whenever she is airborne, giving this impression.
Tengu: Her second alternate helmet is not only named after such but also invokes the long nose-like beak associated with them.
Tornado Move: Turbulence allows her to create a tornado barrier to deflect projectiles, while Tornado lets her summon roaming vortexes to entrap enemies.
Wind from Beneath My Wings: Airburst flaps her arms to fire a line of wind grenades, which can either vacuum or fling enemies away on contact.

Characters / Warframe - Tenno (Warframes N-Z)

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Characters / Warframe - Tenno (Warframes N-Z)

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