The Helminth system in Warframe allows players to replace abilities on their Warframes with ones from other frames, opening up a wide array of powerful ability combinations. But with so many abilities to choose from, which ones are actually worth investing in? In this ultimate tier list guide, we analyze the top meta picks all the way down to the useless niche abilities.
Introduction to the Helminth System
For those unfamiliar, the Helminth is an Infested organism that lets you replace an ability on any Warframe with one from another frame. This gives you the flexibility to customize builds and create some incredibly strong ability synergies.
The catch is that you need to sacrifice a frame to be able to subsume their abilities for Helminth use. So while choice abounds, resources are limited. You‘ll want to focus on the most potent, broadly applicable abilities for your daily drivers.
When ranking Helminth abilities, you need to assess not just their standalone strength, but their versatility across frames and content. An ability might be strong on its native frame, but have niche uses elsewhere. On the other hand, some abilities scale exponentially in effectiveness when combined with certain frames.
We‘ve painstakingly evaluated each ability by these criteria to bring you only the best of the best for Helminth in 2023.
Video summarizing Helminth ability tier rankings for 2023 (credit: Kyaii)
S-Tier: Top Meta Abilities
These are the cream of the crop when it comes to Helminth abilities. They bring unmatched damage, defense, and utility that supercharge just about any frame. Prioritize subsume these as soon as possible.
Eclipse
Eclipse empowers your Warframe with both increased damage and damage resistance for a short duration. The buffs apply to your weapons too, multiplying your overall damage output. While the buffs are randomized between day and night versions each cast, even the lowest values are powerful.
With cunning ability timing, you can ensure the high value buffs when it counts. Eclipse works on any frame and any build, though buffer/tank frames tend to make the best use of it. An ubiquitous damage multiplicator that‘s always welcome.
Roar
Similar to Eclipse, Roar provides a flat damage buff to your Warframe and weapons for a duration. Though you‘ll usually achieve higher values from a well-timed Eclipse, Roar has better uptime.
Being able to activate and refresh Roar more frequently offsets the lower buff values. And there‘s no randomness to deal with. Roar may not reach the peak damage potential of Eclipse, but it provides steadier DPS increases overall.
Dispensary
An unlimited source of health/energy/ammo restoration in the form of floating orbs? Yes please! Dispensary ensures you‘ll almost never run empty in prolonged missions. The orbs even provide buffs like instant reload and holster speed.
Reliable access to ammo and energy translates directly into higher damage and ability uptime. And the handy buff orbs add even more utility. Dispensary works on any frame to turn you into an offensive powerhouse. The only trick is collecting the orbs before they expire!
A-Tier: Underrated Gems
While not as universally applicable as S-tiers, these abilities are extremely potent in the right hands. Their specialized mechanics can enable some powerful builds that few players are capitalizing on currently.
Shooting Gallery
This ability arms specters with weapons that directly scale with multiple key stats on your build. This means that a properly modded Shooting Gallery inflicts massive damage in addition to disorienting enemies. Against certain factions and content, it can surpass top tier abilities.
Shooting Gallery does require more effort to optimize for top performance. But in the right situations, its damage and crowd control competes with S-tiers. One of the most underrated abilities that more are finally recognizing lately.
Thermal Sunder
Best known on Gauss to armor strip, Thermal Sunder projects a frontal wave that inflicts Heat and Blast status along with inflicting damage. But when subsumed, Thermal Sunder scales heavily with Ability Strength.
On frames that can stack high strength, it reaches devastating damage levels able to wipe out Steel Path enemies. The wide cone area of effect also allows it to mulch entire rooms rapidly. Don‘t sleep on Sunder as a lethal room nuke!
Gloom
Gloom taps into a unique mechanic that siphons a percentage of damage dealt toward repairing health and shields. At high ability strength, this produces absurd levels of effective health and sustain. That innate tankiness couples with slowing enemies who enter the radius.
In the right situations, Gloom provides nigh-invincibility. Even squishy frames become formidable tanks with it. The one catch is that slowing enemies can reduce DPS against isolated targets. You‘ll need weapons or abilities that damage within the aura. When built around, Gloom enables some tanky caster loadouts.
B-Tier: Good Crowd Control
When it comes to battlefield manipulation, these abilities shine. Their powerful crowd control effects group up enemies, disable them, or even turn them against each other with mind control abilities.
Ensnare
This conjures a pulsing orb that tethers enemies in place around it. Ensnare sports very high base range, enabling it to capture whole rooms of enemies at once. Once grouped up, they can be exterminated easily with damaging abilities or weapons.
Solid crowd control made even better by the augment Ensnare Boost that adds armor reduction. And since Ensnare immobilizes rather than ragdolling foes, headshots stay easy. An excellent way to trap whole groups for quick deletion.
Terrify
Terrify does what its name implies – terrifying enemies into panicking while fleeing from Nekros. Their armor gets stripped every few seconds too. This combines disarray and vulnerability into an excellent crowd control for melee Nekros builds.
By paralyzing enemies with fear while increasing their squishiness, Terrify gives melee Nekros complete domination over groups. The armor strip even lets you demolish tankier enemies over time as their armor evaporates. Savage and effective.
Spectrosiphon
Unique to Gara, Spectrosiphon creates glass shards that orbit at range. Each shard drains energy and health from enemies nearby to restore Gara‘s own energy and provide a 90% damage reduction buff. This fuels her offensive powers while making her nearly invincible.
The shards move around erratically, slashing enemies who wander too close. This disruptive effect combines with the intense durability buff to enable some tank caster builds for Gara. One of her signature abilities that offers great survivability.
C-Tier: Niche Picks
Here lie abilities with clear strengths but limited versatility. They may excel at one or two particular mechanics, but prove lackluster or redundant across other frames and content types.
Elemental Ward
An amalgam of different buffs to shields, armor, health, and energy depending on your chosen element for the ward. In concept, this degree of customization seems great. In practice, the buff values are too diluted across each category to have big impact.
Elemental Ward isn‘t bad per se, but it tries to do too much at once. You‘ll get better results using dedicated buffing abilities from Helminth that focus on one defense category and do it better. Elemental Ward is a jack of all trades, master of none.
Petrify
Petrify hard crowd controls enemies by encasing them in stone while also boosting Atlas‘ armor. Like Terrify, fantastic for amplifying Atlas‘ bruiser playstyle. But other frames have better CC options that don‘t demand being so close to enemies.
Outside of melee roles, Petrify‘s short range makes it inconvenient compared to alternatives that can lock down whole rooms. Nice for boosting Atlas, but skip it on other frames.
Airburst
When it comes to nuking, Zephyr‘s specialty is large groups rather than heavy units. Airburst discharges explosive projectiles that knock enemies away – and frequently, off the map for instakills. Big area denial potential.
But Airburst lacks punch against tankier enemies not vulnerable to its environmental deaths. It also creates disruption via ragdolling that many builds don‘t want. Best used judiciously where map terrain allows environmental kills rather than a general damage ability.
D-Tier: Lackluster Abilities
These abilities either have disappointing mechanical issues or apply such narrow benefits that they are largely disqualified from Helminth viability. Most players are better off choosing more broadly effective options.
Decoy
Loki‘s iconic distraction tool now faces heavy limitations when used via Helminth. Namely, you can only have one active Decoy out at a time. And recast toggles the Decoy off rather than repositioning it.
These constraints severely hamper Decoy‘s usefulness on frames other than Loki Prime with his extra Decoy capacity. Generally more trouble than it‘s worth trying to enable fragile and short-lived Decoys compared to better crowd control abilities.
Defy
Wukong‘s signature cheat death ability now only works at rank 3, gimping its use via Helminth. And even when active, Defy only triggers upon taking lethal damage. It fails against enemies capable of killing you from above revival health thresholds.
Once a god mode enabler, Defy suffers too many limits now to justify outside of mobile Wukong builds. Other abilities grant better survivability. Focus on those instead.
Polarize
Mag‘s Polarize remains deadly against Corpus robots. But much of the game‘s meaningful content is dominated by Grineer, Corrupted, and Infested factions. Its poor scaling into steel path and arbitration deficits keep Polarize firmly in niche usage territory.
Against the right faction, Polarize still wrecks. But it lacks the versatility needed for a generalist Helminth ability compared to picks that damage everything effectively. Bring it for Corpus sorties and that‘s about it.
Conclusion
Hopefully this breakdown gives you a better sense of which Warframe abilities truly dominate and enable the most powerful builds via Helminth. Choosing the right abilities for your favorite frames empowers you to crush any content the game throws your way.
Of course if you still love those C and D-tier picks for fun or theme, don‘t let tiers stop you! Play how you enjoy. But if you‘re looking to truly optimize, consider the S and A-tier abilties as your top priorities for experimentation.
Did we get the tiers and rankings right? Let us know your thoughts and what abilities have been overperforming or underperforming for you lately! The Helminth meta is always shifting.