“You're not supposed to be in here! You're going to ruin the surprise!”
The following article/section contains spoilers.
Archons, also known as Sentient Beasts, are Sentient creations of Erra hybridized with Warframes, each with special powers including the ability to raise dead Sentients. Their Sentient cores take the form of shards embedded in their necks. They serve as Narmer's bosses during The New War and Archon Hunts.
Originally created on Tau, the Sentient Beasts were modeled after animals of old Earth: Boreal the Owl, Amar the Wolf, Nira the Snake, and Pazuul the Ram. With the Ram acting as the de facto leader, the Beasts served as peacekeepers as the Sentients terraformed the system.
After fighting and dying during The Old War, they were resurrected by Erra, grafting their heads onto fallen Warframes and later serving as Narmer's Archons. The Beasts, however, deemed this act shameful, blaming both the Tenno and the Sentients and grew vengeful against both parties.
Boreal, Amar, and Nira were subsequently killed by the Drifter/Operator, with the help of Hunhow and the Stalker, in hopes to use their shards to revive the Lotus.
After Erra sacrifices himself to aid the Tenno following his defection from Narmer, Pazuul grafts itself onto Erra's corpse. The Ram, acting as a parasite that keeps Erra's consciousness suppressed, becomes the new leader of Narmer and revives the other Archons.
Archons fought during Archon Hunts possess DR that scales depending on your weapon's DPS.[1] There are three layers of damage reduction. The first layer is a flat 20% damage reduction that is applied before the other damage reduction stages are applied. The second layer is a static damage reduction (unchanging over time) that scales each damage instance, and is determined based on the following weapon characteristics:
,
“Theoretical Damage” is the damage instance that would be seen in-game if there were no layer 2 or layer 3 damage reductions. This value includes the layer 1 flat damage reduction, it includes criticals, and it is calculated per damage instance. This stage will effectively limit damage per trigger pull to 460,000.
The third layer is a dynamic damage reduction (changes over time) that is calculated per game tick. This stage will only activate if the Archon’s health is reduced by more than approximately 495,000 within a window of 0.6 seconds. After this damage trigger has been reached, on the next game tick a changing damage reduction is applied that will respond to how much damage is dealt over time.
