It’s time for the bird queen herself - Zephyr!
Release date: 2014-02-05
Passive: Striking from the skies above, Zephyr is significantly lighter in comparison to other Warframes, dramatically altering her airborne physics. While airborne, Zephyr’s equipped weapons gain a 150% Critical Chance bonus.
Tail Wind - From the ground, charge and release to launch Zephyr into an airborne hover. From the air, tap to dash forward, or aim down to dive bomb enemies below.
Airburst - Launch a burst of massively dense air. Hold to send enemies flying, tap to pull them toward the burst. Damage increases per enemy hit.
Turbulence - Creates a wind shield around Zephyr, redirecting all incoming projectiles.
Tornado - Create deadly tornadoes that seek out and engulf enemies. Tornadoes deal the elemental damage type they absorb the most. Shoot enemies engulfed in Tornadoes to do additional damage.
Acquisition: Zephyr’s blueprints can be researched from the Tenno Lab in the dojo.
My nr.1 pick for most underrated frame in the game. It’s crazy how strong Zephyr is post her most recent rework yet I absolutely never see anyone play her! She’s so easy to get too, all of her parts being available in the Dojo! This is the frame I would recommend every new players aims for after getting themselves Rhino.
Tail Wind is your subsume slot, if you even use one on her at all. I like to keep this ability cause hovering around is fun and it makes keeping her passive active that much easier.
Airburst is one of the best grouping abilities in the game, likely rivaled only by the newly buffed Pull. It’s also dirt cheap when cast in the air.
Turbulence coupled with shield gating is absolute immortality. Stay in the air so those pesky melee enemies are not a problem and just make sure to cast something to refresh your shield gate whenever an AoE attack happens to hit you. This is Mesa’s Shatter Shield but with 100% of DR rather than 95%. This ability also lets you defend objectives with it as the bullet redirection aura covers an area around you. Insanely good ability.
Tornadoes are the main reason you want to group your enemies up together as Zephyr. Always hold cast it to get the stationary version. The tornadoes do a very good job of holding enemies in a neat little ball for you to Arca Plasmor away, while multiplying your hit damage and buffing your crit damage! They also absorb the element they’ve been hit with and keep ticking it onto enemies so if you use Viral, every enemy inside of them should have 10 stacks waiting by the time you get around to killing them. The only downside this ability has is that it’s not very useful during run-and-gun missions, that’s about the only bad thing you can say about it.
Zephyr’s modding is incredibly easy and cheap too. She doesn’t need any survivability barring an Augur mod or two (and Brief Respite if you have it) and power strength is absolutely worthless to her. Max out range and duration, get some efficiency if you feel like it and you’re good to go! You could feasibly play Zephyr at her max power without even filling out all of your mod slots!
Steel path viable without a reactor or forma
Completely agree, while I don’t use her much myself I have build zephyr and she’s a fantastically powerful and durable warframe.
I put breach surge on her and use an amprex. Hitting the enemies that cause the chain effects with each bolt hitting the tornado and hitting the tornadoes is a lot of instances of damage to spawn sparks. It’s probably not necessary, probably not the best for her, but it looks so cool seeing the sparks fly.
