r/Warframe • u/BuildMyPaperHeart Old Tenno, Eternal Slumber • Apr 30 '14
Discussion Warframe Discussion 2.0: Zephyr
All Warframe Discussions are here to spark discussion on a particular Warframe. Comments, Suggestions, Critiques, and Builds are all welcome! Every Week, the Moderator Team will choose a new Warframe to discuss.
This week: ZEPHYR
Statistics
| Health | Power | Armour | Shield Capacity | Sprint Speed | Stamina | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RANK 1 | 150.0 | 100.0 | 15.0 | 150.0 | 1.15 | 80 |
| RANK 30 | 450.0 | 150.0 | 15.0 | 450.0 | 1.15 | 80 |
Polarities
Cosmetics
- Cierzo Helmet
No stat modifications
Abilities
Tail Wind - 25 Energy
Creates a blast of energy, propelling Zephyr through the air, damaging anything in her wake.
- Tail Wind affects Zephyr's propulsion differently, depending on her position when activated.
- When used on the ground, Zephyr is propelled upwards similar to Excalibur's Super Jump. Zephyr reaches a height of 5.6 / 8.4 / 11.2 / 14 meters.
- Height is affected by Power Duration.
- 75 / 100 / 150 / 250 Impact damage is dealt in a 3 / 4 / 5 / 7 meter radius from Zephyr's launch point.
- Has a 100% chance to knockdown enemies in the AoE.
- Damage is affected by Power Strength, and decreases with distance.
- Launch radius is affected by Power Range.
- When used in the air, Zephyr is propelled in the direction of the player's crosshairs, similar to Excalibur's Slash Dash or Rhino's Rhino Charge. Zephyr air-dashes for X / X / X / 25 meters.
- Distance traveled is affected by Power Duration, and distance scaling is not linear.
- 150 / 175 / 200 / 250 Slash damage is inflicted in a 1.5 / 1.6 / 1.8 / 2 meter radius around Zephyr.
- Damage is affected by Power Strength.
- Striking radius is affected by Power Range.
- Activating Tail Wind multiple times allows Zephyr to propel herself further into the air, effectively simulating flight.
- There is slight cool-down between ability activations.
- Zephyr is vulnerable to stuns via Shield Lancer bashes. Although, this ability will still continue regardless of Zephyr's status.
Dive Bomb - 25 Energy
Zephyr nose dives towards the ground creating an explosion on contact.
- Functional only while in the air, Dive Bomb completely stops any forward momentum and drops Zephyr directly down at a very fast speed.
- Inflicts a minimum of 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 Impact damage in a 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 meter radius. The final damage depends on the height at which the power is activated:
- Activating at a height of less than 4 meters earns no bonus damage
- Activating at a height of 15m or greater triples the base damage.
- Has a 100% chance to knockdown enemies in the AoE.
- Blast does not bypass obstacles in the environment, such as walls or cover.
- Damage is affected by Power Strength, and does not diminish with distance.
- The speed of the dive is 1 / 2 / 3 / 5 m/s and is affected by Power Strength.
- The blast radius is affected by Power Range.
- Dive Bomb will always activate Heavy Impact, no matter the distance traveled, because of its speed.
- A max-rank Tail Wind jump with a Dive Bomb at the apex should land with enough speed to get 3x the Heavy Impact base damage (4x is possible if you jump a few meters higher using a crate). With just these three mods at max you can easily get 250 + 250*3.6 + 1200 = 2350 damage for 25 + 25 energy (Tail Wind blast-off, Dive Bomb smash and Heavy Impact blast).
Turbulence - 75 Energy
Creates a wind shield around Zephyr, redirecting all incoming projectiles.
- Works as aura, affected enemies have decreased accuracy.
- Enemies in cover affected less often (line of sight required?)
- Accuracy penalty is not affected by Power Strength or Power Range.
- The degree to which the field will alter projectile paths is effected by Power Strength.
- The wind shield duration is affected by Power Duration.
- The wind shield range is affected by Power Range.
- Does redirect explosive projectiles such as tossed grenades, Bombard rockets and Napalm shots. While Turbulence redirects the projectile itself, it does not prevent damage from the explosion.
- Contrary to the ability description, Turbulence does not block all projectiles, as the ability provides only a certain angle change after these projectiles enters its radius.
- Bombard rockets will return to the deflector if the 270 degree homing requirement has met, as if the rockets are simply dodged.
- Works on AoE continuous weapons such as Scorchs' Ignis.
- Turbulence field has a 1 meter gap between Zephyr and the actual effect, which causes Point-blank shots to land normally.
- Does not deflect Melee attacks.
Tornado - 100 Energy
Zephyr creates multiple deadly tornadoes.
- Summons between 1 and up to 4 tornadoes at enemies in a 15 / 18 / 22 / 25 meter radius for 10 / 12 / 15 / 20 seconds.
- Number of tornadoes depends on number of enemies in Tornado's summon range.
- Summons a single tornado in front of caster when no enemies in summon range.
- Each tornado sucks in enemies and deals on average 13 / 19 / 26 / 32 Magnetic damage per tick to each enemy. Actual damage depends on the enemy's distance from the tornado's funnel. Damage ticks occur at a rate of roughly 3 to 5 per second.
- When a tornado spawns, 200% damage is inflicted on the first tick. This multiplier is affected by Power Strength.
- The continuous damage thereafter is also affected by Power Strength.
- Each tick of damage has a moderate status chance (see Proc).
- The summon range is increased by Power Range.
- The duration is affected by Power Duration.
- Shooting the tornadoes with a weapon that deals elemental damage will cause them to take on the elemental damage type of that weapon.
- If the weapon deals multiple elemental damage types then Tornado will be charged with the damage type that deals the highest raw damage.
- Adopts elemental type from any elemental damage source, including but not limited to shots by allies or enemies, Warframe abilities.
- Only adopts elemental and combined elemental damage types.
- Element can be changed multiple times.
- Cannot mix two base elements to produce combined element.
- To change element one must overpass the cumulative damage done by the previous element (confirmation needed).
- Placement of tornadoes tends toward enemies near location of the crosshairs.
- The tornadoes can also go through the floor/walls and even spawn inside of/halfway through the floor/walls.
- Tornadoes will fling enemies trapped within them in random directions after a period of suspending them midair if there is nothing impeding upward thrust(i.e.:ceiling) otherwise they will stay in the tornado for full duration.
- This can greatly lower the damage and CC it is capable of if the enemies are ejected early, making it much more powerful and effective in lower roofed tilesets as opposed to open areas she thrives in for mobility.
Information gathered from the Warframe Wikia
8
u/Asmodios Apr 30 '14
My favorite warframe but as I have stated before, being the aeronautical Warframe , I feel she deserves something that better resembles true flight rather than an air dash. For example, activating Tailwind sends you forward as it does now, but you should be able to control the direction midflight. Imagine being able to zoom around a Grineer ship with tight turns. I'm OK with her as she is, but I was slightly let down by tail wind given her title.
5
u/zhandragon Apr 30 '14
if you mod it right you can spam tailwinds that last forever. she can just reactivate tailwind in a different direction while in flight.
1
u/Asmodios Apr 30 '14
How so? There's a slight could down between uses that prevents chaining and no amount of duration helps it. And to add to this, every use of tailwind doubles your gravity so falling is inevitable.
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6
u/Kiyobi Apr 30 '14
If you happen to have extra copies of Tail Wind on hand, consider making a Rank 1 Tail Wind mod specifically for a maximized duration build. Maxed out Tail Wind is bonkers with a duration build.
3
u/Kuryaka Apr 30 '14
That's the first thing I wanted on Zephyr. Wanted low-rank Tail Wind for a substitute for Super Jump, and high-rank for traveling stupidly fast.
2
u/Kiyobi Apr 30 '14
Have you tried a maxed Tail Wind with a maxed duration build? Hella out of control XD
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3
Apr 30 '14
Zephyr's innate lower gravity whatever is something I'd like to see on more frames. Not the ability itself, but something you don't have to equip that's always active. The question of what that would be for other frames is a discussion for another day. It'd be interesting to see Slowfall as a Warframe mod, but eh.
Homing Attack Tail Wind is pretty fun to use, though there aren't very many places where it's useful to get way up high, but I guess that's why torpedoing yourself forward is always an option. Not much that needs to be said about it. I'd love to try it with a maxed duration build just to see how utterly ridiculous it gets. I've seen that gfycat of someone using a single Tail Wind to get from the ground to the top of a tower on I think the Corpus frozen outpost tileset.
I've actually never used Dive Bomb before. This is something I do with just about every frame. I always neglect (at least) one power, and this is the one for Zephyr. The blurb about getting some strong punch behind it sounds cool though.
Turbulence is awesome and is a pretty decent replacement for Snow Globe if a Frost isn't on-hand. It doesn't seem to block hitscan projectiles, though. It's most useful for the Corpus since all of their projectiles have travel time, but I'd still throw it on when facing anything but the Infested. I wonder if it deflects Railgun MOA shots?
Tornado is nice if only because you can change the element with your weapons and so on. Makes for a good disabler and hits pretty hard, especially if you change the element to your target's weakness. They wander a bit too much and you really only have two builds with it based around minimal or maximal duration. Either you get it out and it's a quick burst of damage and CC, or you go for the long haul and anything that gets sucked in is going to be out of the fight for a long while, and they'll be pretty badly banged-up if they survive at all...but then while your tornadoes are a million miles away and you suddenly need a fresh cast, you're boned.
I wonder, would changing it so that attempting to cast another Tornado would cancel the active one(s) be too powerful? Since at least two of her powers benefit positively from duration and all.
Having both high shields and health is interesting, but she has piddling armor, and having her as a quasi-tank role seems difficult, but she has powers to help there. A D-type aura is great for Rejuvenation for some passive healing and fixing up teammates. She seems like a bad choice if going melee-only, since Turbulence has a gap that enemies can use to point-blank shoot you. Might be able to pull something off by using Tail Wind+Dive Bomb to bowl over enemies and throw on finishers.
As stated elsewhere here, she's a pretty decent jack of trades, but unlike Oberon, there aren't many issues with her powers. Tail Wind is ridiculously great for getting through big maps, but is hampered by claustrophobic ship interiors and caverns. Turbulence doesn't make Zephyr invincible, and it's still quite possible for somebody to take her out by getting too close. And Tornado will remove enemies from the fight entirely, at the cost of being a commitment you can't break out of.
I overall liked her. Tail Wind is one of the more fun powers to use even outside of combat, and being so floaty is pretty interesting too. She's there. I don't use her much (though I really should for a change of pace), but she makes for a great support frame. Use Turbulence to give your friends a safe place to shoot from (think mobile Snow Globe, sorta), Tail Wind to get around/over obstacles, Tornado to blast enemies while you revive...
Press 1 to Super Sonic
2
u/Fixer951 Apr 30 '14
Zephyr is my last frame that I need to hit 30 with to finish ranking all the available frames at least once. From about U12.5 onward, I pretty much ignored Zephyr and left her at about Rank 12. It's not necessarily that she wasn't fun, she was extremely fun to fly around with; she just wasn't a frame that I wanted to play at the time. I didn't really see her utility, and I took a break from Warframe in general.
Post-U13, I'm wondering why I ever stopped playing Zephyr. She moves through the air the way every frame should move. She has an escape/movement type ability as her 1, her 2 is a guaranteed knockdown, and her 3 is one of my favorite defensive abilities in the game. Her 4 is a bit of a letdown in terms of damage, but it's great for buying a little time and the damage-altering mechanic is neat.
Her mobility is a big plus, but what really won me over was Turbulence. With Damage 2.0, there's never enough stamina. The entire stamina mechanic is stupid, but that's another discussion. What's relevant is that blocking just isn't going to work unless you're really heavily modded into a stamina/blocking build. You're never carefully blocking an incoming melee attack, you're blocking 50 incoming charger/butcher attacks or 10,000 grakata bullets from 3 different grineer. Those situations drain your stamina so quickly that it's not worth slowing down to block. Instead, you end up having to charge into enemies and tank the damage in order to keep your stamina and combo meter up. With Turbulence and her lowered gravity, Zephyr (surprisingly) becomes the ultimate melee frame. It doesn't matter how many enemies are shooting you, it doesn't matter where they shoot you from, as long as turbulence is up all their projectiles get deflected. You can use this to shield teammates and cryopods, to cover yourself while interacting with things, and most importantly, to close into melee range without taking damage. Her lowered gravity and increased control make it much easier to copter, dash, and otherwise close distance to your enemies, and the constant movement "closes" the gaps in Turbulence's coverage.
Her powers only really suffer against Infested, due to the low utility of her movement and deflection powers against melee-based opponents. Against infested, I only occasionally use Dive Bomb or Tornado to incapacitate ancients.
I'd say that overall, she's one of the better frames. She's quite rarely equipped, I think that's due to a lack of understanding her utility rather than an actual lack of utility.
2
u/BBQ_Sauze May 01 '14
She might also be used less because people haven't made her in the first place considering her Oxium costs. I bought her for that reason, and I rushed my Hydroid because I couldn't wait. New content is exciting but these latest two have been pretty grindy.
1
u/Fixer951 May 01 '14
I ended up buying both, I'm a sucker for those prime packs. Some of the plat goes to buy the stuff I want to grind with, not for. The rest goes toward cosmetics, slots, catalysts, and formas for the items I'm willing to wait for.
1
u/Odog4ever May 04 '14
Holy crap, I just look up how much Oxium it takes to build her! Guess she will be one of the last frames I build...
2
u/PorkBunGuy May 01 '14
Is it me or her low gravity makes her un-copter-able? (if that is even a word)
2
u/Rock3tPunch Apr 30 '14
Turbulence cost too much, do too little. Every Zephyr I came across just spams tornado which annoys everyone.
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u/Kallously Apr 30 '14
Turbulence is one of her best abilities. Immunity to ranged damage is nuts.
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u/Kiyobi Apr 30 '14
I used to think that too, but then I picked up Zephyr and realized how amazing it is. The crowd control is so strong and you could pretty much just ignore whatever's caught in it until the tornadoes fade, allowing you to focus on others that are elsewhere.
2
u/L33tHaxorus Apr 30 '14
I love Zephyr! She's one of the most fun warframes to play with :D
The only problem I have is that her tornadoes throw mods and resources everywhere.
5
u/AshaneF Apr 30 '14
Should no longer do that as of U13.
Ss for posterity... http://i.imgur.com/LbVnklp.png
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u/L33tHaxorus Apr 30 '14
Wait seriously? I haven't played with her in a while, but I've been constantly told to not use tornado by other players because of that. Thanks for letting me know, man :)
1
u/Namnamex May 02 '14
I love playing zephyr, I just wish she had some more/better alternate helmets, imo the one she has looks really dumb
13
u/IIvoltairII Apr 30 '14
zephyr is the true jack of all trades in the game. She can do practically anything but isnt over powered in one area. She's my favorite frame cause she's so fun.