Angry Monk Frame

It took me long enough but I finally managed to obtain and start leveling up Baruuk, the new Warframe released alongside the Fortuna Part 2 update before the holidays. Baruuk is supposedly some sort of peaceful frame that loses his restraint before murdering everything with his fists, but it feels like there’s something missing.

As to where Baruuk came from, there’s no lore about him yet. Like Garuda, he was plonked into the new Venus areas and basically left there, just sitting in the inventory of a grumpy bitch hiding out in a backroom in Fortuna. All we have so far is that Baruuk doesn’t/didn’t like violence and tries to ignore it by bottling up his rage, before eventually releasing it in a flurry of punches and kicks. That’s it.

Obtaining Baruuk isn’t easy either! If you want Baruuk, you need to first get to max rank with Solaris United. Then you need to get to rank 3 with Vox Solaris, who deal with the massive Orb fights. You have to grind out those Profit-Taker bounties in order to get the various parts you need to level up. And then you need 20,000 more standing to BUY the four blueprints from Little Duck. In the process, you’ll need a FUCKTON of Toroids. Three of each of the smaller Toroids (obtained from the Enrichment Center, Space Port and Temple of Profit) to build Baruuk plus all the ones needed to level up. You don’t need to fight the Profit-Taker Orb repeatedly to get the various Corpus parts, you can just do the first three missions, but you’ll be doing them a lot.

Like Garuda, Baruuk is probably an easier farm than Khora or Ivara, who rely on sheer luck and repeating missions to get the parts you need, but it’s heavily time-gated by maximum syndicate earnings per day. Worse than Garuda though, whose parts are common in the first three Solaris United bounties, you’ll find yourself doing the same mission over and over and over trying to get the Corpus parts needed to level up.

Playing Baruuk though is odd. He’s like a mixture of Wukong and Equinox with a hint of Zephyr. His first three abilities are mostly non-damaging, while his fourth ability is an exalted weapon, more specifically exalted fists. Baruuk has a ‘Restraint’ meter that fills up as he uses his first three abilities and drains as he uses his Serene Storm magical fists.

Ellude is basically Zephyr’s Slip Stream ability, but in a 180 degree angle in front of Baruuk. In exchange for not being able to attack, Ellude blocks all projectiles in that 180 degree area, and each projectile blocked reduces Baruuk’s restraint.

Lull is basically a fart cloud that creates a field around Baruuk that slowly puts enemies to sleep. Enemies can be woken up by shooting them, but Lull has a somewhat unique effect in that it resets enemy alertness, allowing you to do stealth kills on affected enemies. Like Ellude, enemies affected by Lull decrease Baruuk’s restraint.

Desolate Hands summons little daggers that give 10% damage resistance each. The daggers don’t linger for long though, as they jump to nearby enemies’ weapons, disarming them and dealing a little bit of damage. You don’t have much control on these daggers though as they tend to jump from you to nearby players or all instantly jump to nearby enemies and destroy themselves. Just like Ellude and Lull, Desolate Hands decreases Baruuk’s restraint whenever an enemy is affected by it.

Serene Storm, a bit of an Oxymoron, is Baruuk’s last ability. Basically, he gets Sonicor Hands. Baruuk gets access to exalted fist weapons, and all his melee attacks using Serene Storm get a huge amount of knockback. Rather than draining energy though, Serene Storm increases the Restraint meter. So basically the Restraint meter acts like a reverse energy meter, meaning you can use Serene Storm until the Restraint meter is full.

Overall, Baruuk is… an interesting frame, but playing him, he kinda doesn’t feel very useful. Baruuk has a lot of tanky abilities and some nice utility, but all that utility works incredibly slowly. Sure, Baruuk can put enemies to sleep in a wide radius but Equinox and Ivara do that more quickly. Sure, Baruuk can avoid damage from the front, but Zephyr can avoid similar damage from all angles, and you can only get similar protection if you have extreme range on your Baruuk build. There’s actually a lot of damage reduction in Baruuk’s kit, but it’s not constant, reliable damage reduction the way Inaros, Rhino or even Oberon have.

That being said, Serene Storm is amazingly fun, especially for an exalted weapon. It’s like the Sonicor before the Sonicor got nerfed, and actually does pretty good damage too. The question is, can people be bothered to farm up two different syndicates in order to be able to try Baruuk?

Considering how many Baruuk players I have seen, especially in comparison with Garuda and Khora, I don’t think so…