Frost was added during the beta and is part of the original crew. Primed variant Frost Prime was released few months later in May 2013.
Even though he is pretty old nowadays, he is still one of the most used Warframes in the game.
One of the reasons for that is his capability of providing a lot of defense to himself and his team mates and also the fact that he can be farmed relatively easy on Exta, Ceres.
The fight against Captain Vor and Lieutenant Lech Kril might not be easy for newer Tenno’s, but with some trial-and-error you will quickly get the hang of it.
Another great advantage is that you don’t really need a lot of Forma to use him in mid and even end game missions.
But if you ever get around to slap a few Forma on him, he will really exceed the expectations.
Fun fact: Frost (or at least his skill set) was developed from Digital Extreme to be used on an enemy boss from DE’s other game (Dark Sector), but made it into Warframe!
- Very strong defense capabilities
- Good crowd control
- Interesting theme
- Only needs few Forma to shine
- Great Warframe for newer player
- Can be used in almost every mission
- Low energy pool
- Builds are somewhat situational
The Best Frost Prime Builds
Frost can fill a lot of different roles, which is why picking the right aura slot isn’t that easy and really depends on what you want to do with your Warframe.
Corrosive Projection, Energy Siphon and Rejuvenation are good picks, but even Steel Charge or one of the amp auras might be useful, depending on your build.
Going for Corrosive Projection for late game missions is probably the best choice at some point, but you can still do really good and useful stuff with either aura.
Frost Prime Snow Globe Build
The main reason why Frost has this huge popularity among players is because of his third ability: Snow Globe casts a protective sphere around the Warframe, shielding everything inside it from outside shots.
That is super helpful in defense and mobile defense missions or excavation, but can also be used to shield a group during survival missions.
To be honest, you can probably use this build in every mission type that requires you and your team mates to stand around for a least a few seconds.
Are you planing on doing nightmare missions? Pick a Frost. Planing to do certain boss fights? A globe might help you! Do you need to quickly help a downed team mate? Snow Globe it up!
Even in Interception this build will help you, but don’t forget that you and your team can’t shoot through the globe from the outside. So don’t just place your snow globes randomly and don’t annoy your allies with it.
There are a few other things you should know about. You can remove and detonate your snow globes by simply using your first ability on it from the outside.
That is super useful to remove unwanted or useless spheres. It will also just disappear if a nullifier sphere touches it, so make sure to kill those mobs as fast as possible.
You can also have up to four snow globes at a time, but if you cast another one the oldest globe will disappear.
And last but not least: You can recast your third ability inside your snowball and those extra globes won’t count towards your four snow spheres. But the health of your globe can’t exceed 1.000.000 life points – so if you use this build you need to cast it five times to get the maximum health pool.
The build itself is pretty self-explanatory, since you just stack ability strength and extra armor to get a lot of Snow Globe health.
Stretch is usually enough range to cover up Excavators, defense targets or your team mates. But sometimes you need extra range, so switching in Overextended for Stretch (or for Augur Secrets if you need a lot of range).
Putting in the augmented mod Chilling Globe isn’t worth it, since you only freeze 50% of the incoming enemies. The only exception are missions against the infested – it’s not super effective, but still okay.
If you ever need to cast more globes or generally have problems with your energy management, switching out Augur Secrets or Redirection for Primed Flow or Fleeting Expertise will help you in that endeavor.
Frost Prime Crowd Control Build
Your ultimate ability Avalanche doesn’t only deal good area-of-effect damage, but can also freeze every enemy in range for a certain amount of time.
You do want a good amount of duration and range to freeze them for as long as possible and hit as many enemies as you can. Intensify isn’t really needed and only helps with dealing a bit more damage, while Redirection and Hunter Adrenaline are your survivability strategy (more energy = more freezes).
You can change this build up so it will be appropriate for your missions and just use Streamline for better efficiency or Narrow Minded if you rather have more duration than range.
Icy Avalanche does look like a useful mod on paper, but to be honest you usually can’t abuse its power, since frozen enemies aren’t shooting at you or your team mates.
This build is really useful if you want to try to solo harder missions (Sorties, Axi fissure missions, etc.) or if you find yourself in a group that can profit from your crowd control.
Just try it out and you’ll be surprised how often you will benefit from freezing your enemies for some time!
The Damage Build
Last but not least you can build your Frost Warframe to deal a good amount of damage.
You can still use this build to cast a giant snow globe if needed, but generally speaking you want to spend your energy on your Ice Wave skill and if you do have a lot of energy income (thanks to a Trinity, team energy restores or a lot of energy sphere drops) you can also frequently cast Avalanche and kill everything.
You do want to combine range with strength to kill everything in your front and use Fleeting Expertise to cast as many skills as you need.
Redirection is your survivability mod in this build and can be switched for Vitality (especially against a lot of slash or toxic damage) or for Streamline if you plan to fight against lower level enemies.
You can play this build very successful in low and mid level missions and even deal a good amount of damage against higher level enemies, but you will need more energy on higher levels.
Playing it on Sortie or ESO isn’t recommended, since your damage output will quickly fall off on that niveau, but other than that feel free to try it out on different missions!
Conclusion
To this day Frost is still one of the all-time-favorites in Warframe and rightfully has a place on this list.
He is very versatile and even without any Forma you can use him in a lot of scenarios. Feel free to play around with the different builds and find the mod load out that will satisfy your needs.
Don’t forget that your first ability also slows boss enemies, so you often can just slow them down and kill them without any trouble!
So just try out the different ideas, have fun while doing so and enjoy your Frost.
Why would you go for shields and Hunter Adrenaline? You need to take damage on Health to get any energy back. I don’t understand why every build uses Redirection.
That’s a poor globe build…
1. You’re weakening your globe, by boosting your power range. Decreasing the globe’s base health, armor multiplier, explosion damage, and blocking about 25% of the room.
2. Duration offsets “Transient Fortitude”, but also decreases your globe to a manageable size. Meaning, your globe fits over the object without blocking firing lines.
3. Having a power strength of at least 200 – 210%, is more than enough. Casting multiple bubbles is the trick…
4. Which you can’t do, with an efficiency under 75%.
5. I rather use “Stand United” and “Coaction Drift” for my aura and exilus slots. Armor makes your bubble harder to pop, your teammates tougher, and toughens up any companion with the “Link Armor” mod.
6. And, yes, you do need the “Chilling Globe” augment. Your globe only freezes enemies when cast, by default. Having a 50% chance in continuing to freeze mobs, is invaluable when you’re pushing for 30 mins or carrying new players through the planets.
7. Switch out “Redirection” for “Vitality”. Frost is a tank, and shields are pretty much useless in Warframe now — unless you have a Harrow or a Hildryn.
Someone needs to go over this Frost page, while reading the official Warframe wiki. The base mechanics for Frost, weren’t clearly understood.
Cont.
Almost forgot… It wouldn’t hurt to use the umbral mods for Intensify and Steel Fiber. Their maxed out % is higher than their base mods, and then they’re boosted by the umbral passive.
Sure, but you probably need to invest the Umbra Forma for that. If you want to do that, that is more than fine and will give you a great boost. But if you don’t want to do that (or if you can’t fit in both mods), using the normal mod versions is still fine.
Oh boi, I really wished people would think before posting.
1. What? Why would you weaken your Globe by using Stretch? That makes absolutely zero sense.
2. Why would you need Duration for your Globe? It’s not based on time, but has health instead.
3. Sure, but having a high amount of ability strength will make sure you don’t need a lot of casts to reach the maximum amount of Globe health. And if you are at the start of the mission you rather have a single cast due to the low amount of energy. You also shouldn’t have any trouble to get more energy for later casts.
4. Again, you don’t need to cast the Globe a lot of you already have a high strength amount.
5. That’s fair, but in the end it really depends on the mission and personal preferences. I rather have the armor reduction to kill enemies faster.
6. Nope. Chilling Globe only works if your enemies walk inside your Globe. Most Grineer and Corpus units will rather shoot at your Globe than walk in it, so Chilling Globe is most useful against the Infestation. Especially if you have a low range Globe (with only Stretch in your build) you don’t gain a lot of beneftis from using the augmented mod – you basically sacrifice a mod slot of a mod that will only affect very few enemies.
7. Why would you do that? Redirection gives you ~1.300 shield points. Combine that with Guardian on your sentinel and it is doubled, giving you EHP of nearly 3.000. Health is only better if you need to fight high level enemies with lots of damage type procs.
Not sure why you would think the stuff you think, but you cleary don’t play Frost a lot. Maybe try and gain some experience first? 🙂
This needs to be updated to support the ability augments, also it needs to address that his ultimate needs 250% strength to remove all armor from an enemy. Umbral mods and other new additions also render this very outdated.
Fun fact, you actually just need 167% ability strength to remove all their armor. And for the ability augment, Icy Avalanche is a way better mod than any other augment frost has.
You need one more frost build.
No one know how powerful Icy Avalanche is. With that one augment, you can surpass everything that Gara can do. Here how it works.
For each enemy you hit with with your 4 ability, it grants everyone(including you) 60 rhino shields. So if you hit 20 enemies with this ability, you would get about 1200 rhino shields. Why is this so powerful? Well now there is something called helminth abilities. If you use a single rank 3 “Empower” combined with 128% duration, 235% range, and 154% strength, combined with the mod Growing Power(+25% ability power), here are the results of using a single 4 can do:
1. CC(freeze) all enemies hit for 10.4 seconds
2. Deal the total of 2310(cold)+616(explosion)= 2926 damage to all enemies hit.
3. Reduce 60-100% of the enemy armor while frozen
4. Give 60*(1.54+0.50+0.25)=137.4 REFRESHABLE rhino shield per enemy hit for you and your entire team(I have given my team about 6000 rhino shield before)
5. Status Immunity to you and your entire team thanks to Icy Avalanche
6. Knockdown Immunity to you and your entire team thanks to Icy Avalanche
Here is the build I used:
Aura: Growing Power
Exilus: Power Drift
Boreal Hatred
Streamline
Icy Avalanche
Prime Continuity
Overextended
Stretch
Umbral Intensify
Transient Fortitude
(And remember to replace your 2 ability for Empower)
You get all 6 of these powerful effects just by pressing 4 and having Icy Avalanche. You now not only play frost defensively but aggressively. You will be able to clear rooms and leave the entire game with your whole team with 0% damage received. It’s really good for steel path missions because enemies will have a lot of armor and will swarm at least 3 times faster than normal. You will need the CC, tankiness and armor reduction. A single toxic damage can spell life or death if you don’t bring any health mods.
Long story short, you will be:
1. Super tanky(along with your team)
2. Immune to knockdown(along with your team)
3. Immune to Status(along with your team)
4. Have massive AOE damage
5. A powerful CC weapon that last long and has long range.
6. And you can strip all the enemy armor.