MarvWeb

Helminth Usefulness: High

Return to Helminth Full List

Great on certain Warframes or good on most Warframes

Atlas: Petrify

Augmented Petrify is the only Helminth ability that increases loot. If you can’t think of anything else to put on a Warframe, increased loot is always good. Unfortunately, it is the worst of the loot increase abilities, but it does stack with all other loot abilities. If you already have a Nekros, Khora, or Hydroid farming build, this ability will be a great addition.

Chroma: Elemental Ward

Elemental Ward has four different effects, based on your energy color. It also buffs nearby allies.

Elemental Ward: Heat increase base health by a percentage. This will give a huge health increase to Warframes like Inaros and Nidus.

Elemental Ward: Electric gives a base shield percentage increase. Similar to Heat, this provides a huge buff to Warframes with large shield pools like Hildryn. It’s damage component also scales with enemy damage.

Elemental Ward: Cold increases base armor by a percentage. This ability is great on high armor Warframes like Valkyr but also Warframes that benefit in other ways from the increased armor like Frost’s Snow Globe or Rhino’s Iron Skin.

Elemental Ward: Toxin is the least useful of the four, but could be helpful if you want to add Toxin procs to your Condition Overload builds.

Ember: Fire Blast

Fire Blast is a great way to strip armor on many enemies at once. Its a bit energy expensive, so it works best on frames that have good energy restore or high efficiency builds. Its augment adds some healing as well, which is good for frames that don’t otherwise have access to healing.

Put Fire Blast on a Hunter Adrenaline modded Inaros or Nidus and you’ll be able to consistently strip armor from everything.

Equinox: Rest & Rage

Unlike a real Equinox, you will not be able to swap this ability mid mission. Which one you have is determined by your energy color. Its augment allows it to spread to nearby enemies on death, limiting the number of times you will need to cast it.

Rest is a great wide range and cheap CC that allows Equinox to farm affinity with stealth kills. It is also great for perfect captures of Conservation animals.

Rage increases enemy speed while also making them more vulnerable. This serves much the same purpose as a Nova modded for negative ability strength (Speedva). I’ll have to test this on live, but I believe these two abilities stack, making this a great choice for your Speedva build.

Hildryn: Pillage

Unlike a real Hildryn, Pillage will cost 50 energy, not shields, on other Warframes. Despite this, Pillage is still a great way to transform excess energy to shields. It is most effective on high shield Warframes like Harrow, but with shield gating it can be used effectively on nearly any build. When you hit your shield gate, cast Pillage and get it all back.

Ivara: Quiver

Unfortunately, the Helminth version of Quiver only comes with two of the four arrows: Cloak Arrow and Noise Arrow

Cloak Arrow can give permanent stealth to allies, including Rescue targets (not other defense targets though). It stick to entities it is shot into, keeping them stealthed as they move. If shot into the ground, you can also stand in it yourself and keep yourself cloaked too. The Augment also makes you immune to status procs while in its effect. Bring this to an Eidolon hunt and completely negate the Magnetic proc on any Warframe.

Noise Arrow is pretty much worthless. It can attract enemies to a certain location when playing stealthily.

Nidus: Larva

Larva is one of the best ways to group enemies up for concentrated AoE damage. A weapon with decent punch through will hit every enemy balled up in the Larva. Hit the stack with an Amprex and watch its chain damage shine. Explosive weapons Like Ogris or Penta are also very good at taking out stacked enemies. With such a low cost, this wide range hard CC will be a good addition to any Warframe.

Nova: Null Star

Null Star is a great damage mitigation, allowing for up to 90% reduced damage. The only issue with it is that it slowly loses this effectiveness as it attacks enemies. Since the damage is not that great, this ability will shine best on a Warframe that is already building for minimal ability range and high ability duration. This will keep the particles on you, as they will not attack enemies unless you get very close. That proximity weakness also means that this ability works well on builds that plan to stay far away from enemies.

Octavia: Resonator

Resonator is a great distraction. Upgrade it with ability range and it will keep the enemies interested in it instead of you or your defense targets. With its augment, you can make sure it doesn’t wander off too far.

Titania: Spellbind

Spellbind is a decent CC, but where this ability really shines is with its augment. Spellbound Harvest gives you 50 energy back if you hit more than four targets. This can serve as a battery for energy starved Warframes.

Trinity: Well of Life

Well of Life is a decent party heal, making it helpful for Warframes that don’t have healing. It has never been great on Trinity because it has always been outclassed by Blessing.

What has me really stoked about this ability though is using your well of life target as a Spore carrier for Saryn. You can pick one target out of a group and save them until the next group arrives without letting Spores drop. It will also pulse healing as the target takes damage from Spores.

A Despoil Desecrate Nekros can also this to keep himself topped off without the need to pick up orbs.

Valkyr: Warcry

This ability is an attack speed increase and an armor buff. Its augment allows you to cast it once and keep it up, provided you are killing quickly.

The melee speed increase stacks with similar buffs, potentially making your melee weapons swing faster than you can press the button. For those of you out there still running the spinning top Maiming Strike macro despite its nerf, this ability will make you spin even faster. Give it to your Volt and buff yourself with both it and Speed and you’ll be spinning right past Guass.

The armor buff is also great for Warframes that benefit from armor like Frost’s Snow Globe and Rhino’s Iron Skin.

Xaku: Xata’s Whisper

Xata’s whisper is currently the only way to add void damage to weapons. Note that this added void damage does not affect Eidolons.

Void damage’s status proc casts Bullet Attractor on the enemy, drawing in nearby projectiles. Its unlikely that void damage will be all that great, but if you need another proc for Condition Overload, this is better than going into Operator.

Yareli: Aquablades

Aquablades is a simple but effective ability. While it doesn’t have much use in high level content due to its low damage potential, it can rip through groups of low level enemies.

It has a guaranteed slash proc, making it an great choice for Nekros as the slash proc will create more bodies to Desecrate. It can also be fun to use on frames that move quickly through the mission, like Titania or Wukong, killing enemies you would otherwise skip.

MarvWeb