Defense Mission Discipline: You Are Not Your Job

This won't take long, since the message is fairly simple in today's Discipline. So we're going to talk about it from the three perspectives of the Tenno.

The Role of the Tenno and the Pod

It is a very simple hierarchy for how objectives in a Defense mission should be managed. There are multiple layers of importance and different approaches to each, but they tend to follow the same formula.

• The safety of the Cryopod or Reactor is the primary objective; losing it loses the mission and your progress.
• The safety of your fellow Tenno is below the primary objective; you must not do things which will lead to their death.
• Your own safety is important; a wasted life is worthless.

You Are Not Your Job

It is very easy to fall into the false assumption that you, the Tenno, are not going to be the focus of the Defense Mission. The assumption tends to follow this thought process; you join a Defe the enemy to your presence in a Defense Mission. While they are already aware of other targets in the Defense Mission, they are not focused on the Tenno until the Tenno give them reason to be.

Shoot them.

As soon as a foe comes into view, fire at them. It does not matter which Warframe you are, you can manage the "threat" (or intent which a foe wishes to target you first) of the Defense Mission in two locations and three viewpoints with great ease. Using this understanding of how your enemy will move in a Defense mission helps enormously.

As we will be touching on both lower-level foes and higher waves of Endless Defense, our discussion will revolve around Tileset C, as defined on the Warframe Wiki's "Endless Defense" page.

First is the catwalk, which funnels foes into a straight line. It is important that you dispatch foes here quickly, but not pursue them down the catwalk and engage them further. While acceptable when alone or fighting lower-level foes, the damage and lack of cover from the forward position will kill you.

The catwalk will allow a melee-focused Tenno to hold Infested back should they be equipped with the proper Mods for their melee weapon, allowing allies to dispatch the group without fear of reprisal.

Second comes the main ramp, which has two separate points to cover from a single position.

Left of the main ramp is a collection of boxes which allow Tenno cover from enemy fire while bottle-necking enemies as they exit the large spawn points. This position overlaps some of the catwalk, and this is acceptable. Ensuring an entire wave does not clump in a single location is vital; splitting the wave into two parts allows a group of Tenno to better dispatch foes without wasted shots going into already-defeated enemies.

Right of the main ramp is a more open-air path to the primary objective, with spawns coming from the ground-floor and second-floor. This location sees somewhat less activity than the previous two, but spawns foes which come from multiple locations. Firing on your foes as they exit both doors on both levels ensures that they come either straight down the path leading from the bottom-floor doorway, or straight along the raised platform across from the primary objective.

You Are Not The Car You Drive

Any Warframe can fill the role of generating aggro in lower- and higher-level encounters, but not every Warframe is tailored to handle that aggro when it breaks your initial line. The Nyx can stop foes in their tracks while your allies finish them. The Frost can halt them in their tracks and slow their advance to a crawl. The Ember can lay down an area of flame which will weaken them as they attempt to advance. The Loki can distract and redirect the advance of your foes completely with a well-placed Decoy, or Radial Disarm to force your foes out of cover.

There are MANY different approaches, but after a certain point even the most unbalanced, God-tier Warframe will require backup and cover to do their job. This is why correct positioning is key as your enemy increases in difficulty. The best-Modded Mag in the game will still be overrun when they reach the limit of targets they can Crush.

You Are Not Your Fucking Khakis.

Weapons are important, but it is a broad-ranging subject that could take days to best analyze. The short of it can best be summed up by a concept in many First-Person Shooters; Time-To-Kill.

All weapons have this Time-To-Kill, or TTK. TTK represents the amount of shots a weapon can put out, the damage of these shots, and the reliability of these shots. Should the size of your weapons clip be less than the required shots to slay a foe, the TTK increases.

A Paris has a great deal of damage potential, but a single shot per clip limits it. Unmodded the Paris takes 86 seconds of reloading alone to fire 72 arrows with a base damage of 45. Compare this to the 27.6 seconds of reloading with a standard Braton that puts out 20 damage a shot with 45 shots per clip and a max ammo of 540, and the performance issues become impossible to ignore.

But Mods will improve this. They won't make the problem go away, but they can offer a crutch to weapons which do not perform general roles well. A Paris modded properly to one-shot anything from a Heavy Gunner to Corpus Tech and even a Toxic Ancient is going to perform better than a Braton for the same role. But the Braton will have a clear advantage in multiple targets due to a baseline superior TTK. And Endless Defense is very much about multiple targets. This is why many people streaming high-level Endless Defense missions use the Ogris; it is second-to-none in TTK for multiple targets.

Closing Thoughts

I can hear the rabble beginning; every time I mention what the Paris can't do, I get replies subtly or not-so-subtly stating that I'm just doing it wrong. This is why you are not your fucking Khakis, Tenno. Do not cling to a single weapon as the salvation of your gameplay. The Hek was nerfed. The Kunai and Despair will see nerfs as well. Diversity is the key to handling the multiple encounters and roles in Warframe. And as time goes on and new content is implemented (like the MAS!) we will see each play-style and each favored weapon shine.

And now for the entire quote, from Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club.

“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”

I mean really, who doesn't like soap?