Nikana Prime Builds Guide

Since the end of 2017 the Nikana Prime is sealed in the Prime Vault, making it really hard to obtain the different parts needed to craft the great melee weapon.

You can still buy sets or parts from players ingame, but farming it on your own isn’t possible at the moment. But there is a high probability that Digital Extreme will at one point unvault the primed version of Nikana for a short amount of time, so keep your eyes open!

If you were lucky enough to get yourself a Nikana Prime you should really try to use the weapon, since it does have the highest base damage of all one-handed melee weapons, making it one of the best swords in the game.

If you are looking for a good build, you’ve come to the right place!

Pros

Pros

• Highest base damage (one-handed melee)
• Good critical chance
• High Slash damage
• Good status chance
• Comes with 2 polarities
• Fast attack speed

Cons

Cons

• Short radius
• Low Impact and Puncture damage

The Best Nikana Prime Builds

A good amount of base critical chance and base status chance means that you want to use mods that support those stats.

As in almost every melee build you should always use Primed Pressure Point (or the normal version) with the Nikana Prime and combine it with Primed Fury (if you don’t have it yet, choosing the normal Fury mod is good as well!).

As for the preferred stance: Going with either Blind Justice or Tranquil Cleave is fine and depends on your own play style and preferences. So give both a try and pick the stance you like the most!

Tip: If you want to know more about the Nikana Prime and its abilities, feel free to take a look at the wikia page!

Nikana Prime Combo Multiplier Build

This build uses a combination of Weeping Wounds and Relentless Combination to increase your combo multiplier, while Drifting Contact helps you keep those stacks.

Then you use Blood Rush and a fast attack speed to deal a lot of damage. Since this build is somewhat reliant on you finding a lot of enemies to keep up those combo multiplier stacks you usually don’t want to use it in mission types with short rounds, low enemy density or long pauses – e.g. defense, hijack or rescue.

It can however really shine in high density environments like survival, ESO and all the other endless mission types. Don’t forget that it will take some time to build up your melee stacks and that you should pick a Warframe that can survive getting into people’s faces, given that the Nikana Prime does have a quite short radius.

Nikana Prime Status Chance Build

This build uses Buzz Kill and two status mods (you should always choose those depending on the enemies you are going to encounter!) to quickly deal a good amount of damage, while Drifting Contact and Blood Rush will give you a late game capacity.

So if you plan on doing higher level content or just longer runs those two mods will make sure that your damage doesn’t fall off.

This build is really great for early and mid game content, but while it is viable in late game missions you generally rather have the combo multiplier build for those situations.

So pick this build if you plan on fighting enemies up to level 50 (or if you want to try something different to your usual build), but switch to another variant if you are going into high level content.

Conclusion

The Nikana Prime is one of the best melee weapons currently in the game and quickly slashes trough large groups of enemies.

Sadly, the weapon is currently in the Prime Vault, but if you ever get your fingers on the required parts, go ahead and craft this sword!

It will carry you through almost every content and combos well with different Warframes. Just try it out, have fun playing and carry yourself (and your team of course) to victory!