Must-have Weapons in Warframe

Must-have Weapons in Warframe

  • Primary:
    • (Telos) Boltor (prime) –  mastery rank 2 required(!)
      • Strong puncture rifle, good vs. Heavy armor enemy units like Grineer or Void.
      • Boltor prime is currently being “vaulted” which means it cannot be farmed anymore.
      • Telos Boltor can be obtained from: Arbiters of Hexis syndicate for 125k(!) standing (or trade with other players).
    • Soma (prime)mastery rank 6 required(!)
      • Good rapid-fire crit rifle with massive magazine of 200 ammo(!).
    • Ignis – mastery rank 4 required(!)
      • Best beam rifle (in my opinion) – good range, beam width and damage.
      • Very good to drain corpus shields when modded Gas and magnetic, or melting infested.
      • Obtained from: Chem lab, Clan Dojo.
    • (Synoid) simulor – mastery rank of 12 required(!)
      • One of strongest elemental weapons in Warframe, it can adapt damage to 3 elemental combo types(!) (regular weapons can do 2 max).
      • Synoid Simulor can be obtained from: Cephalon Suda syndicate for 125k(!) standing (or trade with other players).
    • (Vaykor) Hek – mastery rank of 4 required(!)
      • Strong and effective shotgun (there is a syndicate mod to make regular Hek even stronger).
      • Vaykor Hek can be obtained from: Steel meridian syndicate for 125k(!) standing (or trade with other players).
    • Amprex – mastery rank 5 required(!)
      • Nice electric crit beam rifle.
      • Obtained from: Energy lab, Clan Dojo.
  • Secondary:
    • Atomos – mastery rank 4 required(!)
      • “Bouncing” beam weapon.
    • Hikou (prime) – mastery rank 2 required(!)
      • Fast throwing stars with lots of damage and noneexistent reload-speed (its instantaneous).
    • (Telos) Akbolto – mastery rank 0 required
      • Strong puncture pistols with good syndicate AoE damage effect.
      • Telos Akbolto can be obtained from: Arbiters of Hexis syndicate for 100k standing.
    • Stug –  mastery rank 2 required(!)
      • Fun corrosive weapon – melts through armored units(!), literally.
    • Azima – mastery rank 5 required(!)
      • Nice huge-magazine rapid-fire dual pistols.
      • Comes with its own Weapon slot and Pre-installed Orokin catalyst(!).
      • Obtained from: “Daily tribute”/login-reward – after having logged in 100 days.
  • Melee:
    • Galatine (prime)mastery rank 3 required(!)
      • Massive sword with good damage and nice stance mods to go with it.
    • Nikana (prime)mastery rank 4 required(!)
      • Good crit melee.
    • War mastery rank 10 required(!)
      • A rare heavy sword with Massive Impact damage(!).
      • Obtained from: This has a rare chance of being dropped from Shadow Stalker or it can be bought for 516(!) platinum in market as part of a “bundle”.

The parts in parentheses () is the upgraded versions that you want to have when you can get them – all upgraded versions have increased base-stats and are stronger than the regular versions.

OBS: If “Obtained from:” is not listed, that means can be obtained from market(!).

Note: More weapons might be added in future as we keep trying weapons out or get tips from readers to complement this list- but for the moment, these are the ones we have done extensive testing on (especially the primarys).

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8 thoughts on “Must-have Weapons in Warframe

  1. Hi, I am new to Warframe and was wondering if I should buy the Hek or Sobek blueprint when I reach Mastery 4.

    I have the Strun now and I like it a lot.

    1. Hi there :D Love that you commented on the site for advice, personally I would go for the Hek, it can easily achieve massive amounts of damage :)

      Also – Sobek seem to require Mastery Rank 7 (just looked it up :P)

      But for a more thorough layout for you after having taken a quick peek at warframe wiki to refresh my memory for each aspect of each weapon, this is the “formal” comparison between the two:
      Strun has a fire-rate of 2.5 rounds per sec, Hek got 2.17 rounds per sec.
      Hek has more than double the accuracy (9.1 vs. 4) compared to Strun.
      Strun has 6 rounds per magazine while Hek got 4.
      They have same total max ammo.
      Strun reloads 0.6s per round (3.75s total) while Hek have 2s reload time always.
      Strun has 165 impact dmg, 45 puncture dmg, 90 slash dmg (300 total dmg 55% impact) while Hek got 79 impact dmg, 341 puncture, 105 slash (525 total base dmg 65% puncture dmg).
      Strun shoots 12 shotgun pellets – 25 dmg per pellet, Hek shoots 7 pellets but has 75 dmg per pellet(!).
      Strun got 7.5% crit chance, Hek got 10%.
      Strun got 1.5x crit multiplier, Hek got 2x crit multiplier.
      Strun = 20% status chance, Hek = 25% status chance.
      Strun have full dmg output up to a distance fo 12meters, minimum dmg at 25meters (40% is max dmg reduction), while Hek has full dmg up to a distance of 10meters, minimum dmg at 20meters (80% max dmg reduction).

      But Hek also offers quite the insane Augmentation mod: Scattered Justice that you can buy from warframe.market or Steel meridian, what it will do is when maxed give you +200% multishot for your Hek (basically tripple your dmg), and also add a “Justice effect” to your Hek – which means every 1000 affinity your weapon gets when in mission (the more killing the weapon does – the more affinity it gets – even if max lvl), the “justice effect” will proc – dealing 1000 Blast dmg in a 25meter radius all around you, enemies hit will also be CC’d for a short while and the effect also restores 25% of your max health and provides base armor boost of +25% for 30 seconds to improve your survivability even further :)!

      I always loved Hek as shotgun alternative, a lot of people also favor the Tigris shotgun – I personally don’t like this one as much because of the constant need to reload (2 rounds per magazine) – tigris is also Mastery rank 7 btw :P

    1. Hi there! Good question.
      The thing is, I am not as active a warframe player as I used to be, and I am aware that there has been some changes to weapons in Warframe lately if thats what you’re referring to.
      Also this list is written some time ago if you check publishing date, and so – I am not yet very familiar with all of these changes, and the list when first written was a reflection of weapons that I personally have tried out and gotten a liking for, and sadly Latron was not one of them, it simply didn’t fit my playstyle at all and felt sluggish, weak and just “worse” in comparison to many other alternatives – Prime or no prime.
      So I am aware that the title of this post might be a bit misleading with “Must-have weapons” since it’s a bit biased towards my personal preferences, if/when I get more invested in Warframe in the future, I might revise some of these articles to be more of an “overall must-have” where I try out various weps and get a feel for them and try to keep it objective. But back in the day when I did actually try out Latron it was a very weak option, to be fair though – back then Synoid Simulor was one of the top Best weapons in the game, and I am aware that this fact is not true today as well sadly, so yes.. The list is a bit outdated, and I apologize for that, but many of the options on this list – however biased it was written initially – are still very viable and strong options for players today :) Hope that helps :)

  2. Hi, I have just read the comment that you have not been playing Warframe for a long time. Thought you should know that Anorexia now require MR10 to replicate.

    1. Don’t even recognize the name “Anorexia” for a weapon, so either it’s new or I might have missed it before ;o But thank you for the input :)
      Am working on a post which in detail gives all information for crafting all weapons from market as well as dojo complete with resources required, mastery rank requirement and credit cost for blueprint purchase. Thinking it could be a good resource for new players – as well as more advanced ones to have all that information gathered in one place easily accessible and to get an overview of. So might add your piece of information to that article then :) Thanks again for the info!

  3. Another good recommendation – especially for newbies – is quickly level up your standing with ‘New Loka’ syndicate and on reaching rank *Pure* you select the weapon augment mod ‘Winds of Purity’ (https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Winds_of_Purity). Then get yourself a Furis and slot it with this awesome mod that heals your character while shooting enemies. This great combination allowed me to run and survive during high level missions (lvl 100-120) even on early and mid game.

    1. Thanks for this valuable and helpful feedback! Take care and Good luck with future endeavours in Warframe :D!

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