History GameBreaker / Warframe

* While she might look complicated and gimmicky at first glance, [[QuirkyBard Octavia's]] kit is absolutely insane in the right hands. To elaborate, her first ability, [[AttackReflector Mallet]], is a deploy-able that can pull aggro to it and then [[HoistbyHisOwnPetard sends the damage dealt to it back at the enemy]] at a multiplied rate on every percussion beat, which can lock down hallways and large rooms fast at high levels. Furthermore, since its damage is dependent on incoming damage, it infinitely scales with the level of the enemies. Her second ability, Resonator, deploys a roller ball that charms enemies and deals light damage, but has the added bonus of being able to pick up the Mallet, which allows it to collect more damage even faster. Her third ability is [[DanceBattler Metronome]], which grants numerous different buffs based on doing various actions in time to the beat, the best of which is invisibility, which can be refreshed so long as 'Metronome' is still active. Her ultimate is Amp, which increases damage in an area and also doubles the range and damage of any Mallet that is in the area. Combine all of these, and you get a permanently invisible frame that buffs allies and deals infinitely scaling AOE damage to all enemies in range.

* Zephyr after her rework has become this. Her tornadoes can now be cast to remain stationary, turning them into a great crowd control tool, while hitting said tornadoes distributes the damage amongst all the caught enemies, turning powerful single target weapons into AoE nukes. Her second skill can pull in enemies, not only acting as further crowd control, but also as a way to get them caught in the tornadoes, while her third skill not only makes her completely invincible to ranged damage, it does so by redirecting all incoming projectiles with a bubble around her. With enough range, this bubble can get big enough to encompass defense targets, allowing her to shield them from all ranged attacks. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking And as a cherry on top]], [[CriticalHitClass she has a extra 150% base critical chance for all weapons when she's in the air]].

* Practically all Glaives are extremely powerful, thanks to the Volatile Quick Return mod allowing them to explode when thrown, and then still being able to detonated again with a heavy-attack on the way back to cause staggering AoE damage, but special mention has to be made of the Glaive Prime. The reason is simple: its heavy attack explosion has forced bleed procs, on top of its already heavy Slash focused damage profile. It will kill ninety percent of enemies in one shot, even on Steel Path, and the remaining ten percent is guaranteed to die a few seconds later anyway.

[[folder:Warframes]]

[[folder:Weapons]]

[[folder:Mods]]

[[folder:Augments]]

[[folder:The Helminth System]]

[[folder:Legacy]]

* Shield-gating is the go-to meta for late-game survivability. Shield-gating refers to the brief period of MercyInvincibility you get when your shields run out. When your shields fully refill, shield-gating lasts for 1.3 seconds, and only 0.3 seconds if they were only partially charged. In order to abuse this mechanic, a method to instantly refill your shields is needed: common picks are the Augur SetBonus or Brief Respite Aura, which convert energy spent on abilities into shields. You also need to [[DumpStat make your shield pool as small as possible]], which means removing all shield mods and [[NotTheIntendedUse equipping a Decaying Dragon Key]]. Some may also opt to use Rolling Guard to add another 3 seconds of invincibility. If you keep refilling your shields during the invincibility period, you become nearly invincible, with only Toxin damage being able to bypass your shields. The best part is, the only Warframes that ''can't'' abuse this are the rare few who don't have shields. As a result, even SquishyWizard and GlassCannon Warframes can gain impenetrable defensive capabilities.
** The ''Abyss of Dagath'' update altered shield-gating to instead grant longer invincibility periods for larger shield pools, meaning that the old strategy of treating shield pools as a DumpStat reduces the invincibility period. That being said, a new Corrupted Mod, Catalyzing Shields, [[AscendedGlitch heavily reduces your shield pool in exchange for giving the default shield-gate period]], reviving the old strategy.

* Styanax's Intrepid Stand gives him and all allies Overguard every time he hits an enemy with his fourth ability, which in turn gives everyone status immunity and an extra layer of damage gating.

* Ivara's Infiltrate allows her to walk through laser barriers in Spy missions that would normally sound the alarms when passed through even with the invisibility other Warframe's possess, making it even more simple to stroll in and out of a data vault.
* Excalibur's Chromatic Blade makes his already really powerful 4th even more broken by applying elemental damage based on emissive color ''and'' grants it large amounts of status chance.
* Nezha's Reaping Chakram makes his Chakrams even deadlier and causes enemies to drop health orbs more frequently, to the point enemies will be dropping several health orbs on death.

* Inaros' Negation Swarm makes him even tankier, as well as immune to status procs
* Loki's Irradiating Disarm not only strips away all affected enemies ranged weapons, it confuses them all causing them to immediately drop what they're doing and start beating each other up.
* Banshee's Resonance makes her damage booster infectious and her Resonating Quake makes her able to swipe entire rooms clean of enemies in one cast.

* Hydroid's Pilfering Swarm and Khora's Pilfering Strangledome makes enemies caught in their respective abilities drop additional loot, which will additionally stack alongside Nekros' desecrate, allowing these 'Frames in tandem to generate large amounts of loot.
* Nekros's Despoil makes his Desecrate use health instead of energy to spawn additional loot from dead enemies, which includes a guaranteed health orb with every successful desecration, which when combined with the right mods and arcanes, Nekros can become stupidly tanky and have basically infinite energy for his other abilities too.
* Gara's Spectrosiphon gives all enemies who die within range of the mirrors a flat 50% chance of dropping energy orbs on death, allowing her (and anyone else using the ability through Helminth for that matter) to crowd control enemies and generate large amounts of energy orbs at their leisure.

* Nova's Molecular Fission gives lets her replenish her Null Stars and more easily maintain the damage reduction granted by them.

* Modding, in general, is the source of the game's balance issues since its inceptions. The difference between the damage output of an unmodded weapon and a fully modded one, with maximum leveled mods, is not additive, or multiplicative, but quadratic, and it allows even the most memetically terrible weapons, such as the Stug, to clear the star chart missions.
* Due to how critical damage calculations work, certain critical builds can lead to runaway results. If a weapon with 100 damage has a 100% crit chance and a 3x multiplier, it will deal 300 damage. If it has more crit chance, it has a chance for an "orange crit", which would deal 900 damage. Consequently, if they had a 200+% crit chance, they could get "red crits", which would deal 2700 damage. This not only results in huge damage numbers, but since the damage over time effects of certain status procs are dependent on the attack that inflicted them, the two systems work in tandem to take down even the tankiest of foes in th game.
* While there are many damage types and status effects in the game, there are generally only five of them that are worth a mention here:
** Slash/Bleed procs are by far the most powerful in the game, dealing damage over time directly on the health of the enemy, ignoring armor, based on the damage instance that inflicted them. They can also be stacked infinitely. Furthermore, there are several mods dedicated to allow weapons that otherwise couldn't inflict Slash procs naturally to do so anyway, and some melee weapon types and combos have ways to force them, especially on heavy attacks.
** Heat procs are similar to Slash procs, in that they deal damage directly to enemy health while ignoring armor. However, they also temporarily reduce enemy armor, provide some crowd control, and while there are no ways to force the procs, they are much easier to inflict naturally by using elemental mods and weapons with high status chance.
** Viral causes no damage on its own, but instead it amplifies the damage other procs do. It can only have ten stacks, but at that point, it increases the damage of Slash/Heat/Toxin/etc. proc damage by 325%.
** Corrosive procs lower enemy armor, but can't fully strip it. However, the reason why the element is still widely used is because the tankiest faction, the Grineer, take extra damage from the element, making it the best suited for raw damage builds, and if the enemy survives the first shot, the reduced armor means they have much less chance to survive the second.
** Radiation procs make enemies temporarily attack each other. While the damage type is not very useful in general gameplay, outside of exploiting the extra damage it deals to Eidolons, the proc is a great source of crowd control, and thus abilities and gimmics that inflict it are valued highly.
* Shield-gating is the go-to meta for late-game survivability. Shield-gating refers to the one second of MercyInvincibility you get when your shields run out. When your shields fully refill, shield-gating lasts for 1.3 seconds, and only 0.3 seconds if they were only partially charged. In order to abuse this mechanic, a method to instantly refill your shields is needed: common picks are the Augur SetBonus or Brief Respite Aura, which convert energy spent on abilities into shields. You also need to [[DumpStat make your shield pool as small as possible]], which means removing all shield mods and [[NotTheIntendedUse equipping a Decaying Dragon Key]]. Some may also opt to use Rolling Guard to add another 3 seconds of invincibility. If you keep refilling your shields during the invincibility period, you become nearly invincible, with only Toxin damage being able to bypass your shields. The best part is, the only Warframes that ''can't'' abuse this are Nidus and Inaros, due to them not having any shields. As a result, even SquishyWizard and GlassCannon Warframes can gain impenetrable defensive capabilities.

* Arcanes are high-value, conditionally triggering modifications that can be applied to many aspects of the game, and the best of them completely redefine how one plays the game.
** Arcane Energize gives the Frame and allies in range to recover 150 extra energy whenever they pick up an energy orb. It not only single-handedly supercharges the player's energy economy, it is also the only external source of energy that works even while a channeled ability is active. Due to this, it remains the most universal Arcane, even after it was nerfed to have a fifteen seconds long cooldown between activations.
** Arcane Grace has a chance to regenerates a percentage of a Frame's health whenever they are damaged. While not particularly useful on most Frames, ones with high health and armor can greatly benefit from it, and it specifically allows a well-built Inaros to remain completely unkillable even at base Steel Path levels.
** The three basic Merciless/Dexterity/Deadhead weapon Arcanes for primary and secondary weapons redefined the meta for a reason, providing 360% extra damage on fairly easily activate conditionals, either allowing to mod weapons without base damage mods, or to supercharge their damage even further.
** Special mention for Cascadia Flare, a secondary weapon Arcane that provides a higher damage boost that the basic damage arcanes, while only requiring the player to inflict Heat procs by any means, making it the fastest ramping and best Arcane for any status-heavy secondaries, such as the Kuva Nukor or the Tenec Cycron.
** Magus Repair and Magus Elevate are Operator Arcanes that allow the player to heal their frames whenever they want. Repair gives a percentage based healing, making it more useful for tanky frames with lots of health, while Elevate gives a flat 300 health per transfer, making it better for squishier frames with lower maximum health.
** Magus Lockgdown causes the Operator to deploy tether mines on Void Sling, disabling several enemies in range for free, and serving as the best emergency crowd control ability in the game.
* Archon Shards, while only providing small buffs, and are in limited supply, can allow one to push their favorite Frames into even more broken waters, or to create previously unfeasible builds, pushing the ceiling on the players' power level even further.

* As much as Inaros is derided for being a boring tank Frame with three useless abilities and a detrimental passive, there's no denying that he's ''the'' boring tank Frame. He has a mountain of health and armor, status immunity, and with the right build, he can face tank entire rooms of Steel Path enemies without losing health. When one simply wants to get something done without having to worry about survival, energy economy, or even dodging, Inaros remains the way to go to this day.
* While only available in Duviri if you max out opportunity intrinsics, the Stalker is finally playable and he's an incredibly reliable pick if your mains aren't available. His kit isn't super flashy and you can't customize him in any way, but his abilities are effective and you don't need to tinker with his mods at all. Two of his abilities are literally just Ash's Teleport (with the Lethal Teleport augment for free) and Smoke Screen, enabling instant finishers on most enemies (which kill non-Eximus enemies pretty much nine times out of ten) and constant invisibility, with the latter having the added bonus of automatically enabling the Stalker's passive, which gives him ''300% critical chance'' when attacking enemies whom can't see him. Marked is literally just a better version of the Helminth's Marked For Death ability, allowing him to stun enemies and allow himself or his teammates to kill marked enemies to damage other foes nearby. And Punishment is basically Wukong's Defy, but with a horizontal wave of projectiles, and is quite effective if you build up enough damage from enemy attacks. All in all, you can't really go wrong with the Stalker if he's available.

Augments are special mods that, instead of granting extra stats or gimmicks, directly modify one of the Warfame's abilities. Most of them can be considered little more than minor buffs, yet others completely redefine the Frame's gameplay and can lead to new ways the players can break the game.

* Ivara's Infiltrate allows her to ignore spy vault defenses, effectively trivializing the game mode.

* Nezha's Reaping Chakram makes his Chakrams even deadlier and also free health dispensers.
* Rhino's Ironclad Charge makes him able to supercharge his already game-breaking Iron Skin ability.

* Loki's Irradiating Disarm makes his fourth skill into one of the game's best CrowdControl abilities
* Banshee's Resonance makes her damage booster infectious and her Resonating Quake makes her able to swipe entire rooms clean of enemies in one cast
* Hydroid's Pilfering Swarm and Khora's Pilfering Strangledome makes enemies caught in their abilites drop additional loot.
* Nekros's Despoil makes his Desecrate use health instead of energy to spawn additional loot from dead enemies, enabling his Steel Path compatible builds
* Gara's Spectrosyphon makes her third ability into an energy orb generion engine
* Grendel's Gourmand causes his first ability to use health instead of energy to devour enemies, but in exchange, provides up to 750 extra armor to him
* Nova's Molecular Fission gives lets her replenish her Null Stars and maintain her 90% damage reduction
* Styanax's Intrepid Stand gives him and all allies Overguard every time he hits an enemy with his fourth ability, which in turn gives everyone status immunity and an extra layer of damage gating

Since ''Warframe'' is a FreeToPlay game with lots of grinding, players are naturally incentivized to do said grinding as efficiently as possible. This, of course, leads to experimentation, min-maxing, and can and do result in absolutely broken builds, frequent developer patches be damned. That said, while with enough dedication, and some luck, any weapon and frame can be turned into an absolute powerhouse, some are still obvious superior to the point where they seem to throw game balance out the window. Here are just a few of them:

[[folder:Frames]]

* While she might look complicated and gimmicky at first glance, [[QuirkyBard Octavia's]] kit is absolutely insane in the right hands. To elaborate, her first ability, [[AttackReflector Mallet]], is a deploy-able that can pull aggro to it and then [[HoistbyHisOwnPetard sends the damage dealt to it back at the enemy]] at a multiplied rate on every percussion beat, which can lock down hallways and large rooms fast at high levels. Furthermore, since its damage is dependent on incoming damage, it infinitely scales with the level of the enemies. Her second ability, Resonator, deploys a roller ball that charms enemies like Titania's 'Lantern' and deals light damage, but has the added bonus of being able to pick up the Mallet, which can cause widespread death to enemies. Her third ability is [[DanceBattler Metronome]], which grants an initial armor buff and can grant other buffs based on doing various actions in time to the beat, the best of which is Nocturne, which grants invisibility for a good amount of time, but unlike Loki's invisibility, it can be refreshed at any time so long as 'Metronome' is still active. Her ultimate is Amp, which increases damage in an area and also double's the range and damage of any Mallet that is in the area, making it even stronger and can create choke points out of entire rooms with enough range. Combine all of these, and you get a permanently invisible frame that buffs allies and deals infinitely scaling AOE damage to all enemies in range.
* Speaking of infinitely scaling, Saryn is the new queen of the niche after patch 22.20. She was a bit of a game breaker before, as when modded right, she could clear entire maps by simply throwing her Spores onto her Molt and then bursting them, spreading them over to all the enemies in range, who then spread them further, resulting in stacking damage over time effects. After the rework, said strategy no longer works, but instead her Spores now scale in damage infinitely based on how long they have been active and how many enemies are infected. Even after later patched toned this back a little, she can still easily reach thousands of corrosive damage per tick.
* Gara's second ability, Splinter Storm, makes her into an incredibly tough tornado of death by using and abusing her skill synergies. First, her ability can provide 90% damage reduction than acts on shields, making her incredibly tanky. It also deals a bit of damage on enemies in a sphere around her. Furthermore, casting her fourth ability refreshes the duration of her Splinter Storm. Then comes the crazy part: By moving outside of the wall her 4th ability creates and hitting it with her 1st ability, the wall is shattered and deals a good bit of damage to surrounding enemies, but more importantly, 50% of said damage is permanently added to the damage over time effect of her Splinter Storm. Repeating the process enough times can result in Gara being able to kill level 100+ enemies just by running past them while she herself can take their attacks without a care in the world.
** While her 3rd ability, which also is the ability that she grants through the Helminth system, Spectrorage isn't that great considering what it does, it's Augment Spectrosyphon is a godsend on longer missions, as enemies who die in it's range will have a 50% chance to drop energy orbs. This basically makes the energy economy get thrown out the window, and since this is her infused ability, you can give it to other frames with grouping abilities like Zephyr and Khora and allow them to keep their energy up for longer survival runs.
* Ivara is one of the hardest frames to get, but she is also one of the most broken by far. Her Quiver has four different types of arrows that allows her to put enemies to sleep, distract them, make wire paths to circumvent parkour challenges and she can even make things invisible, including rescue targets. Her second ability allows her to guide projectiles even to the point of hitting targets from around corners. Her third ability makes her invisible and allows her to pickpocket enemies, allowing her to steal energy orbs and remain permanently stealthed, while her last ability summons a bow that deals staggering amounts of damage. However, while all of these would make her a top grade warframe, the thing that makes her unquestionably a game breaker is her Prowl augment, Infiltrator, as it completely trivializes spy missions by making her undetectable by all the various defensive lasers and scanners in the data vaults, allowing her to just casually walk in through the heavily watched laser fences and crack the vaults without having to go through the usual process, essentially breaking the entire mission type.
* Mesa, the gunslinger frame, is pretty much a tanky murderous aim-bot on legs. Her Shatter Shield can provide a patently insane 95% damage reduction to projectiles, while her Peacemaker ability makes it so that by holding down the fire-button she rapidly murders everything in her sights with her built in dual pistols, ''including [[AdaptiveAbility Sentients]]'', who can literally just be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of [[MoreDakka Dakka]] pouring out of her to the point that their damage nullifiers barely have an effect.
* Revenant is an incredibly powerful Warframe, capable of both becoming immortal and inflicting a OneHitKill regardless of level.
** His second ability, ''Mesmer Skin'', gives Revenant a number of charges. When Revenant takes damage, one charge is instead consumed, the damage is reflected back at the attacker, and he becomes completely invulnerable for one second. With a base of 5 charges multiplied by your strength, each cast gives you several seconds of total invincibility. The ability can also be recast, so all you have to do is use it again when your charges are low. Even if you do run out of charges, the shield-gating mechanics will give you an extra second of MercyInvincibility anyway. The only downside is the long casting animation, but that can be remedied with Natural Talent and/or Amber Archon Shards.
** ''Reave'' is a PercentDamageAttack, a rarity in this game, meaning that unlike other damaging abilities, it scales very well even in very high level missions. Thralls (enemies affected by Revenant's first ability, which, by the way, is free to cast on targets stunned by ''Mesmer Skin'') take increased damage from this ability, so with sufficient strength, you can dish out a OneHitKill on almost any enemy, even level-cap Steel Path foes. If you prime the target with Viral stacks first, Enthralling them isn't even necessary!

** Breach Surge is another ludicrous damage-boosting and crowd control ability. Enemies in a large area are blinded, and when they're damaged, they have a chance to release a surge spark that targets another enemy, doing Radiation damage equal to the hit that summoned it and ''doubling'' all damage the target takes. Wisp killing an enemy herself guarantees a surge spark. Yes, this does double the damage dealt to an enemy every time it procs. This can also be subsumed with the Helminth system, making it available to ''every other Warframe''.

* Chroma's Vex Armor is considered to be ''the'' damage buff in the game. Vex Armor increases Chroma's Armor and damage depending on how much shield and health damage he takes. While the amount of damage he needs to take to reach the maximum is capped, the potential buff is not and is only capped by how much Power Strength Chroma is modded up with. A Chroma modded exclusively for Power Strength could buff everyone's damage by as much as 1500%, albeit at the expense of costing a boatload of energy and only lasting for about 10 seconds (although it can be refreshed). In addition, this ability can buff other nearby players depending on your range, potentially allowing your entire party benefiting from it if they're coordinated enough. Parties that embark on Eidolon Hunts and Orb Heists often include a single Chroma for this reason so they can one shot the otherwise very tanky bosses.
* Zephyr after her rework has become this, as her new 2nd ability, Airburst, pulls in enemies into a pile or can be held to do the reverse and knock enemies away. This ability by it self is good, but pairing it with her Tornado ability means that Zephyr players can pull more targets into the funnels. Add in the fact that now she can drop down tornadoes that don't move, and any area is now locked down by Zephyr so long as she has the energy to do so, and as mentioned above, can be given Gara's Spectrorage through the Helminth system to use Spectrosyphon to make sure that, outside of certain instances, she'll always have enough energy to use her combo, which is very good when farming for the weapon arcanes on the Steel Path, especially when paired with a good [=AoE=] weapon. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking And as a cherry on top]], [[CriticalHitClass she has a extra 150% base critical chance for all weapons when she’s in the air]].

* All beam weapons after their 2018 February rework have became incredibly powerful, but the four biggest winners are [[LightningGun Amprex]], which is a high-crit chance weapon firing ChainLightning that can melt entire rooms in seconds, the Atomos, which is pretty much just a tiny Amprex that fires fire beams and does the same as its bigger cousin, the [[FireBreathingWeapon Ignis and its Wraith variant]], which is a flamethrower that can also melt entire rooms in a slightly different manner, and finally the Synoid Gammacor, which is a pinpoint-accurate laser that not only deals ridiculous damage, but its syndicate proc also replenishes the user's Energy reserves.
* Almost every polearm or whip, utilized in the infamous "spin to win" setup. Even after they added a nerf preventing melee from hitting through walls and obstacles, when properly modded they can still tear through enemies like tissue paper, so long as the player can stomach constantly spamming slide attacks like a carousel.
** While the tactic is not as overwhelmingly powerful as it used to be before update 26, it is still perfectly viable after the nerfs.

* The Kuva Variant weapons, obtained from Liches, range in quality from bad to average, but are helped by the fact that there's a way to choose what the base element is. There are a few standouts in this category:

** The Kuva Chakkhurr, a flintlock rifle (yes, seriously) that has the highest base damage of all semi-automatic rifles, with a base status chance of 27% and a base critical chance of ''50%'', which can get boosted up to 150% even without Rivens, deals extra damage on headshots. It was also (prior to Update 27.2) one of the only weapons that dealt Blast damage that didn't kill its user if they hit something that was too close to it, yet it ''still counted as a launcher!'' The only things really holding the weapon back are the below-average ammo maximum, the fact that it uses the uncommon sniper ammo type, and its abysmal three-second reload time.

* The Redeemer Prime. It had its ups and down, starting out as a 100% status chance shotgun (which was a melee weapon with infinite ammo) that could exploit exponential scaling with pre-nerfed Condition Overload, then after Melee 3.0 it became a status/crit hybrid, and then once the shotgun status nerf hit the scene, the weapon became a heavy-attack crit nuke instead, and it was the go-to weapon for bursting down the tanky Condrix bosses in the Scarlet Spear event. No matter what happens to the meta, the Redeemer Prime just trucks along as one of the heaviest hitters anyway.
* With Operation Orphix Venom comes the newest addition to Warframe's weaponry, the Cedo shotgun, the signature weapon of Lavos, this can only be described as a monster of a weapon due to having effects reminiscent of Lavos himself; First off is while its primary fire deals a decent amount of damage even when unmodded, it also deals extra damage to enemies for each status effect they're afflicted similarly to Condition Overload which is complemented by its secondary fire, which fires off a ricocheting, homing glaive for no ammo that explodes on contact with surfaces and enemies, while being able to proc all four primary elemental status effects, a trait unique to it. Throw mods into the mix including bonuses to status, crit chance/multiplier and extra elemental effects means that even high-level heavy enemies such as Bombards, Juggernauts, and even most bosses are going to be ripped apart frighteningly fast by the Cedo's primary fire.
* The Corpus answer to Liches, Sisters of Parvos, also come with their own brand of weaponry, Tenet variants. While some of the weapons vary in quality, there are some standouts.

* Necramechs absolutely trivialize all open-world content.
** The Voidrig is the more overpowered Necramech, despite being the easiest one to obtain, thanks to its Guard Mode ability. In Guard Mode, the Voidrig enters an AnchoredAttackStance, equipping its Exalted Weapon, the Arquebex, which fires RIDICULOUSLY powerful explosive projectiles. With just a few basic Arch-gun mods installed, you will be doing hundreds of thousands of damage per shot, letting you easily shoot down enemy dropships before the {{Mook}}s within have time to jump out.
** Making things more ridiculous, Necramechs come with the Mausolon Arch-gun equipped by default. This heavy automatic cannon fires extremely powerful HitScan projectiles which explode to damage multiple foes at once, making it one of the strongest Arch-guns in the game despite its ease of acquisition, making it an excellent substitute for the Kuva Ayanga. You can even bring it on Archwing missions, too, though its main problem outside of its open world use is that it struggles with hitting targets directly, which can be an issue when using it with an Archwing.

* Hunter Munitions and Hunter Adrenaline, easily acquirable from the periodic Ghoul Purge event. The former gives a 30% chance to inflict a Slash proc on a critical hit. This, combined with a high-fire rate, high crit chance weapon can allow the player to kill level 120+ enemies via DeathOfAThousandCuts by piling armor-ignoring bleed effects on them. The latter converts 45% of incoming damage to the frame's health into energy. This might sound bad at first, but there are quite a number of frames (Saryn, Inaros, Nidus, etc.) who either don't have shields to begin with, or have ways to quickly heal back damage, allowing them to quickly gather Energy and use and abuse their abilities with impunity.
** And this isn't mentioning the other sources of healing available
* Adaptation is a mod that can make almost any frame, baring the absolute squishiest, borderline immortal. It gives stacking damage reduction based on the damage that you are taking, up to a staggering ''90%''. It's only available from Arbitrations, but anyone who owns it can tell you it's well worth it.

* Certain Augments certainly fit this category. Ivara's Infiltrate (allows her to ignore spy vault defenses), Excalibur's Chromatic Blade (makes his already really powerful 4th even more broken by applying elemental damage based on emissive color ''and'' grants it large amounts of status chance), Nezha's Reaping Chakram (makes his Chakrams even deadlier and also free health dispensers), Rhino's Ironclad Charge (makes him able to supercharge his already game-breaking Iron Skin ability), Ash's Fatal Teleport (with a Covert Lethality Dagger, he can automatically one-shot everything not immune to the effect), Inaros' Negation Swarm (makes them practically immune to status procs) Loki's Irradiating Disarm (makes his disarm into one of the game's best CrowdControl abilities), Banshee's Resonance (makes her damage booster infectious) and Resonating Quake (makes her able to swipe entire rooms clean of enemies in one cast), Hydroid's Pilfering Swarm (makes enemies drop additional loot) are just some of the more glaring examples.

** In particular, Riven Mods for melee weapons can roll "critical chance on slide attack". This allows you to effectively have two copies of Maiming Strike on the same weapon.

[[folder:Other game mechanics]]
* Some focus schools offer ways to break the game if you take the time to farm up the focus points required to level them up:
** The Zenurik focus tree is specialized in energy recovery, which often makes it the first school people unlock. In particular, the Wellspring ability gives a massive 150 energy over 30 seconds, allowing most frames to abuse their abilities to their heart's content.
** Following the Angels of the Zariman update, Unairu has become viewed as ''the'' most broken focus school thanks to its two abilities, Caustic Strike and Magnetic Flare. When fully ranked up, these two abilities instantly remove ''all'' of an enemy's armor and shields, respectively. Caustic Strike in particular is viewed as rendering all other forms of armor reduction obsolete.
** Madurai's Void Strike ability costs all of your energy to use, but it then briefly boosts your damage by up to 10% for each 1% of energy drained. If your energy meter was full when you used it (and remember, Operator energy quickly regenerates on its own), that's a ''1000%'' damage increase. That's right, you do 11 times more damage per shot for a few seconds with this ability. Nearly every enemy in the game, even big ones like Eidolons, will melt in less than a second under that kind of damage. The only downside is that it has a rather lengthy cooldown, but that's not a big deal during the Eidolon fights where you use Operator mode the most, since the phases are separated by an Energy Spike during which the Eidolon is invulnerable so you'll be waiting out that time regardless. You can even ''solo Tridolons while using the'' ''[[StarterEquipment Mote Amp]]'' with Void Strike.
* Due to the way status chance calculations work, reaching 100% status chance on a shotgun, before multi-shot mods, allows each individual shotgun pellet to proc a status effect with 100% certainty. Depending on the build, this can be easily abused to strip enemy armor, pile slash procs on them, infect them with Viral to temporarily halve their maximum HP, [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill or all of the above.]] This was heavily nerfed in early 2020, but some shotguns are still capable of it.
* The critical damage calculations can also lead to runaway results. If a weapon with 100 damage has a 100% crit chance and a 3x multiplier, it will deal 300 damage. If it has more crit chance, it has a chance for an "orange crit", which would deal 900 damage. Consequently, if they had a 200+% crit chance, they could get "red crits", which would deal 2700 damage.
** Sadly, due to the melee changes brought by update 26, reaching high enough critical chance for such damage numbers became much harder, but since the underlying calculations remained the same, with Rivens and certain mod and ability combinations, abusing the system is still entirely viable.
* The Conservation mechanic can make getting standing with Solaris United stupidly easy, especially at higher ranks-- completely botching the capture of a Kubrodon still rewards 1,000 standing. This is even easier on Cetus, where echo-lures aren't locked behind rank.
* The Helminth system allows Tenno to replace an ability on any warframe with a different ability, some exclusive to Helminth, some from other Warframes.
** Out of all of them, Rhino's Roar is the most popular since it boosts ''all'' damage. Despite the lowered power, infused Roar can allow many frames to do insanely high amounts of damage.
** Another fairly popular Helminth ability is Sevagoth’s Gloom, combining a decently strong enemy slowdown over a large radius around the user with a LifeDrain affect for any damage done in the radius by the user and their allies, lasting as long as until energy reserves run out. Its only flaw is the lack of a Death Well to fill, a moot point on all other frames, as well as [[MechanicallyUnusualClass Lavos]] only being able to use it for ten seconds before a twelve second cool down. While universally decent, it proves very powerful in the hands of certain frames, such as [[TheGunslinger Mesa]] gaining health from enemies shot down via Peacemaker and [[BloodMagic Garuda]] gaining an infinite health to energy feedback loop via use of her [[CastFromHitPoints Bloodletting]] ability.
* Shield-gating is the go-to meta for late-game survivability. Shield-gating refers to the one second of MercyInvincibility you get when your shields run out. When your shields fully refill, shield-gating lasts for 1.3 seconds, and only 0.3 seconds if they were only partially charged. In order to abuse this mechanic, a method to instantly refill your shields is needed: common picks are the Augur SetBonus or Brief Respite Aura, which convert energy spent on abilities into shields. You also need to [[DumpStat make your shield pool as small as possible]], which means removing all shield mods and [[NotTheIntendedUse equipping a Decaying Dragon Key]]. Some may also opt to use Rolling Guard to add another 3 seconds of invincibility. If you keep refilling your shields during the invincibility period, you become nearly invincible, with only Toxin damage being able to bypass your shields. The best part is, the only Warframes that ''can't'' abuse this are Nidus and Inaros, due to them not having any shields. As a result, even SquishyWizard and GlassCannon Warframes can gain impenetrable defensive capabilities.
* In Kahl's Break Narmer missions, the simple act of recruiting Grineer or Corpus squadmates by either breaking veils or freeing them in the Murex makes combat so, so much easier for the most part, aside from certain bosses. Allies are tanky and easy to revive, can take fire and will easily overwhelm enemies with their own gunfire. This makes it much easier to deal with objectives and just leave standard enemies to your squadmates. So basically, recruiting everyone you come across makes Kahl's missions a lot easier.
* The Duviri Paradox has Decrees, which can not only be built up a ''ton'' over the course of a standard run, but also there are some which are pretty busted by themselves or even as a category:
** Fleet-Footed boosts your movement speed by 10% for every decree. Even on a "Lone Story" run, you can get 60% more movement speed, but in the full experience the number of decrees you can get are so numerous that the only reason you'd need a horse is to either fly or drop a significant height that'd kill you on foot, because you'll easily be faster.
** Easily-activated or constantly active status effects can add up very fast, especially when doubled ''and'' spreading amongst nearby enemies as well. And you can potentially ''increase'' your base damage just by inflicting status effects.
** Want to play as Saryn in Duviri? Well, now you can, with the Close Contagion decree, which has a 50% chance of spreading status effects to nearby enemies when a status effect is inflicted. It works with ''any'' status effect. Heat? Viral? Slash? It's getting spread around.
** Majestic Strike is simple but effective: melee attacks hit twice. While useful in the overworld, it can be devastating in the Undercroft on a frame with an Exalted melee weapon, like Wukong, Excalibur, Valkyr or Sevagoth's Shadow.
* The Skaut landing craft has a very specific Air Support Charge effect, "Kahl Beacon", that can be ridiculously useful, especially when playing solo - it summons Kahl and two other allied units, all of whom are level-scaled to that specific mission. Kahl himself brings a Grattler and incendiary grenades as well, giving him quite a lot of firepower, and any Corpus Techs can summon Shield Ospreys. They'll stick around for only five minutes, but if you have even just the second Railjack Engineering Intrinsics level, that's not a problem because you can just immediately summon them again. Your teammates can even utilize their own Kahl Beacons to not only reset the timer, but also add ''another'' allied unit to Kahl's squad, meaning you can have a minimum of three NPC allies or up to ''six'' fighting alongside you and drawing fire away from you as well. Sure, Specters can potentially be more powerful, but they're harder to get and build, and most importantly, can't be used on Archon Hunts, unlike Air Support Charges, making the Kahl Beacon significantly more useful.

* [[SupportPartyMember Trinity]] used to practically be mandatory in any endless mission due to her ability to keep her allies (and the defense objective) healthy, giving out almost unlimited energy, and granting her whole squad a potent damage reduction buff. After many nerfs, a shifting metagame, and the introduction of more versatile Warframes and other options (such as the Zenurik Focus school giving free energy regeneration to any player), she's no longer the top support choice due to having fallen into CripplingOverspecialization, though she remains a popular pick for Eidolon hunts thanks to her ability to heal the lures.
* Loki used practically unkillable due to a single ability: {{Invisibility}}. A properly modded Loki with Zenurik focus could regenerate more energy while invisible than what it cost to cast it, meaning he could stay permanently stealthed, and while it didn't necessarily make him invincible, in the hands of a skilled player, it might as well do. Unfortunately for him, changes to the meta and tweaks to the invisibility mechanics made Loki slowly become obsolete, with other frames being able to do everything he can, without being saddled with two mostly useless abilities.

** The Kuva Ayanga is a contender for possibly the best Archgun in the game. Like the Mausolon listed below that was introduced later on, it's an explosive hitscan weapon that can damage multiple enemies simultaneously, has an excellent fire rate and fantastic damage (it basically makes Steel Path Archwing missions almost comically easy). While it has a much smaller magazine than the Mausolon, its quick recharge time renders this issue almost moot, and its firing spread is much more effective at hitting targets directly without having to rely on splash damage, which the Mausolon struggles with when used with an Archwing.

** The Lex is an unremarkable semi-auto pistol. Its Incarnon form is a laser HandCannon to surpass the likes of the Arca Plasmor and Catchmoon, fully capable of wiping out crowds with every shot. Not only can it easily exceed 100% crit chance ''and'' status chance, the shots inflict guaranteed Impact procs. Not particularly exciting... unless you have the Hemorrhage mod, which grants Impact procs a chance to also inflict a Slash proc (which is doubled on weapons with low fire rate, and this one is very slow). With that, anything that doesn't die to its incredible raw damage can be safely expected to bleed out in short order.

** Now as of ''The Duviri Paradox'', a whole bunch of older weapons now can be upgraded with Incarnon adapters, including some weapons that used to be incredibly good back in the day, such as the Soma, Dread, etc. Oh, and these can be applied to the non-standard variants of these weapons, including Prime, Vandal, Wraith, etc.

** Throwing secondary weapons are often overlooked due to having low magazine capacities and less damage than traditional firearms. The Kunai's incarnon, however, turns them into knives of death that multiply your multishot value and always seek the head for headshots.

* In Kahl's missions, the simple act of recruiting Grineer or Corpus squadmates by either breaking veils or freeing them in the Murex makes combat so, so much easier for the most part, aside from certain bosses. Allies are tanky and easy to revive, can take fire and will easily overwhelm enemies with their own gunfire. This makes it much easier to deal with objectives and just leave standard enemies to your squadmates. So basically, recruiting everyone you come across makes Kahl's missions a lot easier.

* A properly-modded Tonkor was once able to''annihilate'' anything in explosive range. The build started off with the basic Serration, Point Strike, Vital Sense, Split Chamber and Hammer Shot mods, followed with Bladed Rounds or Heavy Caliber. After that, the last two mod slots would vary depending on the enemy faction: Corrosive for Grineer, Toxic to bypass Corpus shields, and max Blast for Infested, mixed enemy types and everything else. This fell off when the Tonkor's friendly fire damage was increased, and even after that mechanic was replaced with self-stagger, the availability of more powerful alternatives meant that most players only use it for nostalgia anymore.

* The Duvuri Paradox has Decrees, which can not only be built up a ''ton'' over the course of a standard run, but also there are some which are pretty busted by themselves or even as a category: