Reddit community and fansite for the free-to-play third-person co-op action shooter, Warframe. The game is currently in open beta on PC, PlayStation 4|5, Xbox One/Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and iOS!
Index Frames
Hey yall. So I'm fairly new to this game and my friend and I have been doing some index recently to get my credits up to standard. When I looked it up and asked people, it seems a team comp of 1-2 point carriers and 2-3 damage dealers.
The damage dealers seem to be fairly easy to understand since anybody can deal damage with their weapons, so the frame doesn't matter that much. Of course some are better than others but whatever.
The point carrier thing is confusing. Everyone recommends a frame with an invulnerable ability like rhino, revenant, and nezha. As I am much newer to the game my friend chose to be the point carrier and just let me and our AI teammates do the damaging. My friend however uses Khora, who has no defensive abilities. When I asked my friend about her, he said that she is the only frame that has access to a vacuum without needing energy and thus she can run by points and they'll automatically get picked up, speeding up the process since he can just zoom by. He had died like 2 times in the 30ish rounds we did but we have always managed to get his dropped points back and have never lost a round yet. Our runs have also been far faster than when I enter public lobbies where there is always at least 1 rhino/revenant/nezha. Many of these people are True Masters 1 or 2 so I don't get it.
So I guess my questions after all this rambling are 1: Is the sole reason our runs are so much faster because we are in call together? People in public lobbies ping dropped points to alert the point carriers so I don't really think that's the case since there's nothing else to communicate. 2: Is the tankiness really necessary? My friend had explained the concept of shield gating to me and that sounds like enough defenses. I don't have rolling guard yet since I didn't want him to just buy one for me as I want to earn it myself later on so of course I'll probably find a tanky frame until then (or have him continue being the point carrier since he seems to enjoy it).
Edit: Should mention I run wukong and xaku. I realized that xaku probably helps the survivability aspect for him since I steal guns? but a majority of the time I use wukong who should only do damage right? (Also made questions into new paragraph to spread apart wall of text)
What I do if I'm the point grabber is use limbo. Can't kill me if I'm in a different plane of existence
Ooo thats quick smart. But yeah at that point its probably better to just play an invincible frame unfortunately.
I FORGOT ABOUT LIMBO OMG
I just run Rhino with Iron Skin augment and a 60% Radiation/Magnetic Tenet Arca Plasmor. I solo 3 rounds casually, and reset. You don't really need a team since the "new" galvanized mods and primary and secondary arcanes help you scale better to the first rounds of Index. Hit me up in-game if you need more info c: same username from reddit.
Yeah I'm beginning to think that going into public lobbies is the problem and I should just play a safe tanky frame solo (or with people I can communicate with in voice call). I'll have to farm up rhino and get my hands on a tenet arca plasmor then. Maybe i'll hit you up once I have them. Thanks!
I do realised running in a squad less than 4 persons tend to be faster, I’m thinking it might be the bots on our team tend to die more frequently compared to players and YAY more greenies dropped. Considering you can kill all without them depositing any points, theoretically it should go faster. I didn’t do any experiment or testing tho.
As carrier, rhino is always my go to. Go all strength and slightly efficiency with the recastable iron skin augment. You should do fine as a carrier, with a monster weapon you can even be damage dealer and carrier.
Wukong tank build. Make twin use a status Kuva Nukor, use cond. overload build on melee and high index is a cakewalk. Limbo for base protect and yah that’s pretty much Al you need.
When I used to do index I think I used mostly rhino until revy came out & then I used him... idk about the whole vacuum bit (I'm guessing he has vacuum on venari) but I honestly don't remember that ever being a problem, in fact I would hit ~ 15 fairly quickly & spend most of my time running between banks. Also you never die. The problem with relying solely on shield gating is #1 as someone else already said, certain enemy abilities are weird in there & you can get your shields disabled or nullified &/or smoked through your shield. #2, energy is severely limited & is going to be used for the most part by the damage dealers, also after carrying a certain amount of tokens your energy drains faster than you can use it, so you'd only have access to half of a shield gating setup, breif respite &/or augur mods can't be used on demand & you have to rely mostly on rolling guard... In some ways adaptation/guardian might actually be better, the enemies don't get to that high of a level until a few rounds in anyway. The reason it's probably going slowly for you in pubs is both the lack of defined roles & the fact that it's mostly new people, after a while most folks switch over to doing profit taker for credits as it's much, much faster & more efficient... If you try getting into a group off recruiting with set roles, depending on the group I'd bet it's just as fast, if not faster.
Having a team that is communicating with each other is huge. If everyone jumps in at random and runs around, the enemy spawns are more sporadic and it actually makes them harder to find/kill and the game take longer. It also means people are depositing points in batches of 5-15 vs having a dedicated carrier to drop 20+ at once, giving a larger bonus and ending the game earlier*
*eta: there is some debate on the actual efficiency of that method but if you’re playing low risk index then you can make one or two big dumps and be done, which is what I assume is happening for OP.
As far as tanking goes, index enemies are.... weird. I’ve been oneshot before even with shieldgating. Many (not all) tactics like that also require ability casting and energy is rationed so rhino is honestly a solid “cast and forget” type of frame. Hildryn is also fun in the index once you unlock her.
This is bad information. The game ends faster if you turn in 15 shards than if you turn in 20+. 15 shards has the best shard to bonus shard ratio. If you wait until you have 20 you gain less bonus shards relatively speaking, and you'll need more overall shards to hit 100 points. If you collect more than 20 you are making it worse and worse, since you don't get any extra bonus shards after the 20th normal shard.
All those people with 50+++ shards are actively sabotaging your time. By a noticeable amount.