Defense Mission Discipline: The Right Tool for the Job

The recent event Digital Extremes implemented in Warframe this weekend seems like a success.  Whether I was duoing with my battle-wife as our Rhino/Frost pair, going solo as my newly re-finished Ash, or offering my services to Region chat to help finish off Artifact Defense missions; I rarely found myself failing at the event.

But I certainly did feel the strain from other people.

Bringing a Heat Dagger to a Snipetron Fight

There are so many weapons available to players in Warframe that it can be difficult to get a solid grasp of what you are supposed to do.  What is the difference between the Strun, Boar, and Hek?  How do I know if I should bring a Boltor over a Grakata?  What use is the Burston when compared top the Braton and Gorgon?  Why does everyone seem to always have a Paris or Dread for missions?

That last statement is important; we're going to have a birds-and-the-bees talk about it by the closing paragraph.

One of the biggest struggles is the "correct" use of weapons in Warframe.  Making sure to bring the appropriate weapon to the appropriate content isn't something a lot of people playing in Online games will really concern themselves with.  On a Raid or Spy mission there is no real concern beyond cutting a bloody swath through the enemy.  Your Tenno cell (what a group of players is called in the setting) gets to the objective and gets out.  You move on to the next mission.

Unless you're playing on an Endless Defense or Mobile Defense mission.  Then you need to be mindful of a few things.

Rectitude and Respect

A Tenno must be mindful of the other Tenno in their cell, when working together towards a goal.  The objective is the single most important thing you have in a mission, but your fellow Tenno are as much a means to completing the objective as you are.  You must Respect both of these factors in a Defense mission.  We're back to the basics of Bushido to best describe Defense Mission Discipline, as it helps put into perspective the problems and solutions at hand.

Using the right weapon in a Defense mission is important because it allows you to carry your own weight.  While certainly some weapons are enjoyable to use and other weapons have a pleasing aesthetic which matches your Warframe, the three other people in the mission with you will not appreciate it as much as they will appreciate a solid performance.  Carry your weight, and show your fellow Tenno Respect.

From Respect we must move on to Rectitude, and what it means to your arsenal.  In short, you must accept that you will have to play a certain role and be able to perform certain actions in a Defense mission.  You will be required to kill a great many foes with various strengths and weaknesses.  A Vulkar sniper rifle can kill a Corpus Shield Osprey with a single blow or cripple a Grineer Heavy Gunner, but so can a Latron or even a Braton with the application of a handful of bullets and the correct Mods.  These weapons can then be turned on a different foe without an impact on their time to kill (TTK).  This is where the idea of Rectitude comes in to play; to strike when it is right to strike.  And with the right tool for the right difficulty.

Difficulty?

Difficulty.  A Tier 1 Endless Defense mission is a cake-walk, as anything under level 15 can be mindlessly slaughtered without consideration to the threats they normally would hold at higher levels.  But reaching these higher levels in an Endless Defense mission is where the greater rewards and greater risks lay, and thus where teamwork and cooperation (the Respect towards your fellow Tenno) is required.

We will primarily be discussing the difficulty of Tier 3 encounters and the foes which you will face there, as this is where the most difficulty and misunderstanding of ones role comes in to play.  The easiest Tier 3 Endless Defense missions to complete to Wave 5 are Ceres-Casta and Ceres-Varro, while the highest is the infamous Pluto-Outer Terminus.  Casta and Varro start at level 25 and approach level 30 quickly, while Outer Terminus starts at level 39 and increases in difficulty.  Varro is the easier of the two Ceres Endless Defense missions, as it is located in the storage hold of a Grineer galleon; Casta is located in the infamously annoying asteroid cavern.

We'll start with levels, and work our way up.

Levels, Effective Levels, and Potatos

My Rhino is Rank 30 and has a Potato in it; an Orokin Catalyst which doubles the Mod Capacity of my Warframe.  Without a Potato, we can consider my Rhino to be able to perform as a Level 30 Warframe, with maximum Mod Capacity.  With a Potato, we can consider my Rhino to be able to perform as a level 60 Warframe, with maximum Mod Capacity.  But mine does not currently have the max Mod Capacity in use; it is only using 50 of the 60 Mod Capacity available.  The same applies to weapons, with the issue being further muddled with the application of Forma and Polarizing Mod slots.

This can act as a good indication of how well-prepared you are for an encounter and how well you can handle certain difficulties of Defense missions.  The same applies to weapons; more Mod Capacity allows higher-rank Serration or Point Blank Mods.  Higher-rank damage mods gain greater effect from Speed Trigger and Shotgun Spazz, as well as elemental damage Mods.

My high-level Redirection and Vitality combined with Iron Skin help to buy a great deal of time when wielding my Fragor to crowd-control Ancients, as an example.  Even in Wave 30+ or dealing with level 60 foes, the crowd-control of a fast-swinging Fragor with North Wind and Shocking Touch can lock anything down indefinitely.  It may not deal massive amounts of damage, but it serves to allow my fellow Tenno to safely dispatch the wave.

We'll Always Have Paris (and other Dreadful Puns)

A great many Tenno I encounter doing Defense missions make use of a Paris or Dread as their primary weapon, without understanding how they work or their place in the Tenno arsenal.  Bows are difficult weapons to use due to a combination of required skill and required mods.  Elemental effects will remove the ability to send a corpse flying in most cases, forcing a high Serration Mod and Piercing Hit.  As we briefly looked at, Serration acts as an aspect of your weapons strength and level as much as the functional rank which is displayed in-game.  A Rank 30 Hek without Mods installed can deal fair damage, but with Point Blank will deal 90% more.  Almost doubling the output of a weapon for 9 Mod Capacity.  9 levels, in essence.

Landing an arrow in a target requires leading and precision.  Endless Defense missions are not the environment for careful, precise shots.  Using a bow requires a solid grasp of damage values and high-rank Mods to perform against increasingly difficult foes; high-level Endless Defense missions are not the environment where someone should experiment with weapons they haven't put the effort into Modding correctly or completely.

Next Up?

Now that we're done with the bow-rant (I'm sure I'll see some grief for it too!), what comes next?

I don't have the experience in extremely high-level Endless Defense missions which TCPI has, as an example.  But we can go over the application of certain weapons and practices in various maps which can benefit a player.  Better understanding the behavior of Grineer in the asteroid cavern compared to the Grineer galleon, or the effect of establishing threat on Infected and herding them along specific kill corridors.

And a better view of what Warframes can fill which roles, and why you shouldn't rush into a crowd to use Mag Crush.