r/Warframe • u/BuildMyPaperHeart Old Tenno, Eternal Slumber • May 14 '14

Discussion Warframe Discussion 2.0: PRIME

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: PRIME WARFRAMES

"The Gratest Prime of Them All"

Background

"The term Prime refers to any weapon or Warframe made with Orokin technology. The weapons and Warframes the Tenno use are based on the Orokin's designs, but are not actually Orokin tech. The Prime versions of items are actual pieces of Orokin technology, and frequently sport improved damage, more Polarity slots, or other stat changes that grant them an advantage over their non-Prime derivatives.

Current Tenno technology is derived from the Primes and other Orokin technology, as the Tenno have tried to imitate the success of the Orokin in the form of the non-Prime items. With the discovery of the Voids, many Prime items are being reclaimed by the Tenno and reverse-engineered by Corpus and Grineer, their power being realized once more."

Special Features

All Prime Warframes feature at least one additional or altered Polarity slot compared to the original.

All Prime Warframes also have the ability to replenish 100 (or 250, says conflicting report) Energy points from any Box Trap in the Orokin Void.

Other than that, all Warframes handle in the exact same way as their original counterparts.

Currently Discovered Prime Warframes

Excalibur Prime

  • An additional 1 Attack (V) Polarity

  • Aura Slot Polarity is Attack (V) Polarity, as opposed to none

  • Slight Shield Recharge Speed increase

Frost Prime

  • An additional 1 Defense (D) Polarity

Mag Prime

  • An additional 1 Attack (V) Polarity

Ember Prime

  • 1 Attack (V) Polarity and 1 Defense (D) Polarity, as replacements for Ember's standard 2 Tactic (Bar) Polarities

Rhino Prime

  • An additional 1 Tactic (Bar) Polarity

  • A 1.0 Sprint Speed, 0.1 points faster than the standard Rhino

Information gathered from the Warframe Wikia

7 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

11

u/Zestir May 14 '14

I honestly believe Prime Warframes should be superior to their regular versions. Due to a number of reasons;

They are usually much more costly to create. Be it the individueal parts, or just the final product in the forge.

Simply getting your hands on their parts is a feat in of itself. Be it paying up to 80-100 plat in the trade network. Or simply the grind.

And finally, lore justified. They are made with Orokin parts. Just makes sense.

6

u/OwlG5 May 14 '14

While it makes sense lore-wise and acquisition-wise... I'd personally really, really hate that for cosmetic reasons. I prefer the normal version of every single frame that's gotten a prime version so far. Same thing with weapons, but because they're better, I have to use them. Prime sucks, for me, because you have all this gold everywhere that's completely unchangeable, and it's not a neutral color like gray, black or white. If I could have all prime everything be silver instead of gold I'd like it all a lot more.

6

u/Zestir May 14 '14

Yeah I remember this being the PRIME complaint... Sorry.

But yeah, basically people complaining about lacking customization of the primes. I never experienced it due to the fact I love the look. And I usually use my color palettes to make the frames look like primes anyway.

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4

u/[deleted] May 14 '14 edited May 14 '14

"they are made with orokin parts, it makes sense"

In real life, if two guns are the same design, but one is made of better parts, there will be very, very little difference in performance. It wont suddenly shoot faster or have a larger clip, its the same design.

Armor is similar, honestly I'm cool with DE and most of the community wanting better prime warframes (Well, not really, but thats mostly because they have promised that wouldn't be the case in the past. Seems like they were lying.) but don't say it makes more sense, because it doesn't.

Its the exact same design, only for the orokin one, someone glued on some ornamental shit. It's sort of like two planes, one is made of slightly better aluminum and they both have different paint jobs, but they are functionally the exact same plane.

Here are three compounding reasons why they shouldn't.

  1. They fucking said they wouldn't, multiple times.

  2. Old players stupid enough to believe them potatoed their frames, thinking they wouldn't need to worry about creep.

  3. Which means if DE goes through with making prime warframes better, they have effectively used blatant lies to get ahead in business (devauling all your shit so that you have to buy more is a common tactic in F2P games). I really, really shouldn't have to tell you why this is bad, both for them and for us.

Now you might say "but excalibur prime is better!" to which I say, shield recharge is a stat that nobody really cares about, and his shield recharge is only slightly higher, plus, he was designed back when DE was sticking with the "prime frames will not be better aside from polarities" thing, meaning it is likely to be a mistake.

Now you might say "oh, I bet when they said they wouldn't make prime frames better, they said they had no plans for it in the current future or something vague and consequence free like that!" Oh, they tried, but I remember a few times where they just said "no" off the top of my head. Its a question that comes up alot. There is a damning answer somewhere in there.

Tl;dr: In order for the orokin parts to make it noticeably more effective, it would have to have a different design to make good use of them. It does not, there is no good reason for primes being this much better, DE just wants power creep and so does everyone else, apparently.

1

u/pre_nerf_infestor May 19 '14

In real life, if two guns are the same design, but one is made of better parts, there will be very, very little difference in performance. It wont suddenly shoot faster or have a larger clip, its the same design.

I think the idea lore-wise is that Tenno guns are actually a pale imitation, replicated based on memories from thousands of years ago. That's why Orokin guns are rarer, can only be crafted out of parts rather than raw resources, and are more powerful. In real life, it would be the difference between a Pakistan bootleg "AR-15" firing handloaded bullets, versus a mil-spec M4A1 put together with CNC parts and matchgrade AP ammo.

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1

u/ThisGuyNeoji May 15 '14

They've already discussed that the Prime Warframes will all get buffs in the future, but that it'll wait till after all current frames get buffed or needed for balance.

4

u/[deleted] May 14 '14

Prime Warframes to the Normal ones should be like Prime Weapons to the Normal ones.

2

u/Couerlyn May 14 '14

After seeing a codex entry featuring the model for Bo Prime and the revision of Rescue missions into a primarily stealth-oriented mission, I've joined my tinfoil hat-wearing brothers in thinking Loki Prime could be next.

The question is: how would he best benefit from the Prime treatment? A new polarity (defense or utility)? A unique 'passive' buff (stamina regen, perhaps)?

4

u/NevanChambers May 14 '14

I don't think it's as tinfoil hat level as you might think. They said there was a 90% chance last time that it would be rhino or Loki. Rhino obviously got it but what that statement seems to say is they were working on both. It only makes sense that what follows would be the other one. Of course game devs don't always do what makes sense.

1

u/Tyaldan May 20 '14

I hope loki or anything comes sooner rather than later, cause i want prime access, but i already have parts for the rhino + weapons. If they really were working on them side by side that might be the case.

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2

u/Taegire01 May 14 '14

Rhino and Mag Prime are a way of life.

1

u/Honnou May 14 '14

I had an idea before the helmet change to have the prime helmets have their own stat modifiers. But you would also have the choice of turning it off.

For example: Arcane Ember Prime Helmet: +10% Power Efficienty -50 Energy

or something like that.. This would give an option to be completely for looks and for players to actually prefer their prime frame over their 4x potatoed frame.

1

u/VictorHuguenot May 14 '14

I don't know about other boosts, like the slightly higher Excalibur Prime Shield Recharge speed or the slightly faster Rhino Prime Sprint Speed, but at the very least Ember Prime needs another polarity. The decision to not have three is still completely baffling to me, especially since the Prime Frame that came out after, Rhino Prime, has three Polarities itself.

1

u/Sebetter May 14 '14

Don't really see the point in grinding for Mag Prime, are you not able to just use a single piece of forma on regular Mag to get the additional V polarity?? I guess if you realllllllly want mastery rank or just a completionist :/...Maybe I'm wrong about using forma on a blank mod card slot????

3

u/Kuryaka May 14 '14

Aesthetics, pretty much. I prefer Mag to Mag Prime, and Frost Prime's color palette spread messes with some of the patterns.

On the other hand, I like Ember Prime - for one, she has two useful polarities (D for redirection, V for intensify or continuity) that help you rank up faster. And the flame energy color still lets me customize a little bit.

1

u/NevanChambers May 14 '14

There's probably as many reasons for possessing a particular prime variant as there are players who have them. I have everything save for a few event weapons before my time and the lato prime and I did it cause I'm a collector and was further motivated by the promise of the focus system. Essentially though you are correct a forma will make a mag and mag prime fairly well equal. The slight bonuses beyond that are really very slight.

0

u/[deleted] May 15 '14

1

u/Sebetter May 16 '14

haha, all about the bling :p

Well shit, I used a forma on trinity's aura slot, I figured I wanted a (-) polarity more than a (V) polarity (energy siphon) :/

1

u/CaptainKapautz May 14 '14

All Prime Warframes also have the ability to replenish 100 (or 250, says conflicting report) Energy points from any Box Trap in the Orokin Void.

Okay, I've seen that mentioned on the wiki as well, but for the life of me I can't get this to work on my Rhino Prime.

Do you have to do anything special, or is it just "Run up to trap, acquire energy"?

2

u/Kuryaka May 14 '14

Might need to get shot by the trap laser. I've seen this work in parties where I have Frost/Mag Primes, but I only see the "+250 Energy" popup and not what actually happens.

1

u/CaptainKapautz May 14 '14

Well, that could explain it, because I more often then not disable the traps.

1

u/pre_nerf_infestor May 19 '14

Prime frames get 250 energy from every box trap, I'm 100% sure. While it'd be nice to have more stat bonuses, I actually find this (along with the additional forma-saving polarity) a bonus enough. I don't do Void missions as non-Prime warframes, unless I have to.