Just made this achievement, every Way-Bound talent is unbound and my main Focus School is maxed out.
The Drifter/Operator actually feels quite powerful with all or even most of it and a good amp.
Unbinding the Operator’s waybounds is huge; grinding Eidolons for it was well worth it.
I like to run Magus Cadence so I can cross large distances with my Operator even faster.
It’s a tall ask but, a lot of the people who don’t like the operator haven’t really leveled them.
Yeah. I’ll admit that the Operator can be unpleasantly inept to begin with and until the Zariman you have to have a particular set of skills to make the grind not just truly horrible or take until the 20th anniversary. But, once you can do Void Cascade (or just do Circuit if you don’t care 'bout the drops) the grind becomes much more acceptable. With a good build you can max out daily Focus with ease.
From there I’d say to get the most bang for your buck do the Schools in the following order:
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Zenurik; The Operator is like a Warframe, it’s a lot worse when it’s out of juice. Importantly for the Operator some of the best Arcanes require you do things that use energy to activate. It also gives a great perk for minimal Operator users: making Wellsprings if it’s you active school & that ability is unlocked.
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Unaru; Unaru’s main appeal is their Way-Bound. It allows any Tenno to self-revive by killing 3 enemies with the Operator (this is prevented by Warframe-specific self-resses and death-restricted mission types). This is the biggest effect I feel in general gameplay, that a somewhat squishy frame isn’t punishing anymore.
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Varzarin: You will fail to self-res using Unaru with some degree of frequency due to the Operator’s squishiness. Varzarin fixes this. Now you have an appreciable amount of armor, enough HP to make the armor matter, and a slow perpetual heal. This really unlocks spending appreciable amounts of time as the Operator if you’re so inclined and makes the self-ressing more consistent.
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Madurai; My main school… honestly isn’t good outside of Eidolon Hunts without support. You can hunt Eidolons just fine with just Madurai but normal enemies will be able to bounce you back into the Warframe too consistently to use it much in normal missions. With Varzarin you’re now powerful as the Operator, with Unaru you can now self-res in Steel Path.
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Naramon: Honestly… I can see people maining Naramon if they really love melee but if you don’t or need a different school’s powers more then the Way-Bounds from this school are least-impactful. The extra Sling range is nice but you can chain slings and with more pool & regen from Zenurik you functionally get that with more versatility from that school… the extra walk speed is OK but it’s a minor buff.
Further using your Arcane slots really helps, I’ve found there’s three that are most meaningful: Magus Replenish; from Quill Onko. This gives you a burst-heal when you sling. You can sling aiming down to heal and stay in place or sling away from the damage source and be healed. Emergence Renewed; from the Zariman (killing Angels & Thrax or buy from Cavalero). Strong energy regen boost when you run dry. Either makes for a cheap fix for missing Void Siphon until you Unbind it or lets you be even more devestating with Madurai’s active powers. Magus Husk; Also from Onko. Percentile armor buff stacks with Varzarin to give you better armor than a majority of Warframes.
Can you explain why void cascade is good for grinding operator?
Every Thrax enemy is worth 2500 Focus, In Cascade Thrax-possessed ‘Exilizers’ spawn regularly, in addition to the randomly spawned Thrax that are part of the Zariman enemy pool. By purging exilizers and killing the possessing Thrax you’re getting good flow of Focus.
Thanks! Why’s circuit good for focus?
As Dystopia said Thrax are also present in Circuit, but there’s a few differences; Zariman Thrax become ghostly when their bodies are defeated and must be finished off with the Operator/Drifter. Circuit Thrax just die. However in my experience the Circuit, while reasonably consistent, is slower than Void Cascade because you’re banking on random spawns of Thrax verses guaranteed spawns from Exilizers.
I’ll also clarify that when I was doing this grind I didn’t do bounties. I generally did it solo using Styanax + Felarx. This is because longer runs, at least felt like they, were a better use of my time than several shorter runs. I think Exilizers start spawning faster in later rotations. The gameplay for Cascade gets pretty frantic going into rotation C while IME Cascade can be a more chilled experience on normal (or if you’ve got great options for the rotation even on SP) and PUGs seem much more willing to go the duration in Circuit than Cascade.
There doesn’t seem to be a rate difference for doing either in SP over standard so do whichever you enjoy more.
Excellent advice, thank you. I never tried Circuit so I didn’t know you can choose your warframe and weapons in it
The Circuit also has Thrax in their spawn pool, it’s just an alternative to running Zaramin Bounties.
Enemies also scale very fast in the Circuit (at least on Steel Path), which makes it easier to grind focus if you have a Focus Lens installed.
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