One of the most popular styles of play in Warframe is using melee. With that popular playstyle comes a few handfuls of different builds. It is widely agreed that melee is consistently one of the strongest styles of weapon and form of play in the game throughout the years. Blood Rush Warframe builds have had their place over the past year. Yet, after the nerf in the Sisters of Parvos update, is the Blood Rush Warframe build style still good?
Normal Blood Rush
Blood Rush increases the critical chance of a melee weapon by 40%. It also stacks with the Combo Multiplier, which the average weapon can achieve 12x combo. Without a Combo Counter going Blood Rush gives no bonus to crit chance. In that case, it only starts applying its buffs once you are already in the middle of a fight.
There are three stages of critical damage in Warframe with yellow, orange, and red critical hits that can only be achieved with an extremely high critical chance. A weapon with a starting average of around 30% critical chance with no other mods can start to attain yellow crits around the maximum Combo Counter quickly. However, without any additional enhancements, buffs, or Arcanes, usually the maximum critical chance can only be achieved at around 200% with high base critical weapons such as Reaper Prime.
Gladiator Mods
A better way to help boost the damage of blood rush is to continue to add more crit chance and more damage; an easy way to achieve this is through Gladiator mods. While these mods aren’t the greatest and often aren’t fully utilized, the set bonus is why most players tend to use at least a few out of the entire set.
The total Gladiator Set is six mods, with three equipped on your melee weapon and three on your Warframe. The bonus for using one mod increased your critical chance of Combo Multiplier by 10%. This increase in crit chance is up to 60% for using the entire set. This is a great blood rush multiplier.
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Great Mods for Your Blood Rush Warframe
The mods for your Warframe include:
- Gladiator Aegis gives 45% Armor.
- The Gladiator Resolve grants 180% Health.
- Gladiator Finesse drains energy to stop lethal damage within 60% efficiency.
And mods that are equipped for your melee weapon are:
- Gladiator Rush gives you an additional 6 seconds of Combo Duration
- The Gladiator Vice increases your attack speed by 30%.
- Gladiator Might increase your critical damage.
The entire Gladiator set can be farmed by completing bounties on the Plains of Eidolon. It can also sometimes drop from Aerial Commander within the same region. However, to use this entire set is a bit taxing to commit a total of 6 mod slots on your build to get an additional 60% crit chance and isn’t worth the trouble after Sister of Parvos nerf.
Before the Blood Rush, nerfs could achieve red critical hits with a weapon that averaged around 30% standard base critical chance. After the nerfs, we can only obtain consistent orange critical hits with this Blood Rush Warframe setup. Except for Reaper Prime, it can occasionally get a red critical hit here and there, but with no consistency.
Using Helios as a Stat Stick
A small way around this problem is to use Helios, who comes pre-equipped with the Deconstructor as its base weapon. The reason for picking Helios is their primary weapon is treated like a throwing melee weapon. This allows us to equip melee mods and throwing mods. Using Helios lessens the load by shifting half of the melee mods to Helios. This still gives us the set bonus for extra critical chance even if the Sentinel dies.
More Power
Within this build so far, at max Combo Counter Orange, critical hits are guaranteed to be consistent, but we will need additional firepower to push it further. Adding True Steel to increase the critical chance further by 120% is a given standard. However, if you have the extra mod capacity in your weapon, I recommend using Sacrificial Steel instead for 220% critical chance and 33% additional damage to Sentients as a bonus.
Another buff you can give yourself that will help you push the damage of this Blood Rush build, and your guns is to use the Arcane Avenger. Using this arcane whenever you take damage will give you a 21% chance to provide yourself with a further increase of 45% critical chance for twelve seconds.
If you happen to have a Kavat, they also have a mod named Cat’s Eye. This mod grants a 60% critical chance for 10 seconds to all allies within 25 meters every 20 seconds. However, if you bring a Kavat, you cannot use Helios to use some of your Gladiator mods, so perhaps have a friend get one. However, two or more Kavat’s is complete overkill since the buff does not stack.
The Covenant Ability
While the Blood Rush build can be applied to any Warframe, some can carry this build in slightly different ways that are worth pointing out. Harrow has the ability to increase everyone’s critical chance by absorbing damage with his Covenant ability. This great ability makes him an awesome Blood Rush Warframe.
Covenant can stack up to 50% critical chance for 12 seconds after preventing tons of damage for himself and his allies. Ash is also fun for using his Rising Storm Augment mod for his Blade Storm ability to increase the Melee Counter by four and give an extra 10 seconds of Combo Duration. Additionally, Blade Storms’ damage increases with the power and stats of whatever melee weapon Ash is currently using.
Final Remarks on Blood Rush Warframe Builds
Is using Blood Rush still good enough to use? This setup can still achieve high amounts of damage and consistent orange to red critical hits. Yet, it takes more to get the ball rolling after the Sister of Parvos nerfs. If you like high critical numbers, this build still certainly does just that! Moreover, it still has competitive damage output in Steel Path.
