Quick Thoughts on Gauss

I’m naughty. I rushed Gauss. I actually managed to get all of Gauss’s parts pretty easily. But that does mean I can give some few quick thoughts about Warframe’s newest, uh, Warframe.

First off, the farm. The farm is easy. Gauss’s Neuroptics, Chassis and Systems blueprints all drop from the C rotation of Disruption on Kelpie, Sedna. Not Ceres, like the nice guy in the Levarian suggests. This means that, aside from the first round, you have a chance at getting a Gauss part if you successfully defend all four conduits. And after the fourth round, you have a chance at getting Gauss parts if you successfully defend three or four conduits. The chances are about 30% for any Gauss part, which means it’s easy to get unlucky and get the same part over and over. As for me, I got somewhat lucky and got all four parts in two missions, but in those missions, we did go to round 10 both times. The resources needed for Gauss aren’t too bad either… if you have the Fortuna gem cutter and the blueprints for the ‘Eidolon’ and rare Orb Vallis gems. You need all the cut rare gems from both the Plains of Eidolon and the Orb Vallis. And you’ll need an Argon Crystal for the Neuroptics. For anyone who has been playing for a while, really, acquiring Gauss isn’t that difficult.

When it comes to using Gauss though? I’m… not really sure?

I mean, his first ability, Mach Rush is basically a ground-based version of Zephyr’s first ability. You run really fast and if you hold it down you’ll continue to run really fast. Sure, you can run over water and coolant gel, which is pretty neat, but you won’t be doing that in most missions. Slamming into things and knocking enemies out of the way are nice as well. This is tied to a ‘battery’ that Gauss fills while moving around, a bit like Volt’s static passive. Crashing into walls is considered to be a good thing as you’ll blast enemies out of the way (literally) and come to a complete halt. Personally though I’ve enjoyed using Mach Rush as a cheap sped up bullet jump since you can use it while you’re jumping. There are two issues though – turning is nigh impossible and you need a darker energy colour because otherwise you blind yourself every time you dash.

Kinetic Plating is a sort of shield-like ability that gives you damage resistance from Impact, Puncture, Slash, Heat, Cold and Blast damage types, based on your power strength and how full your battery is, with damage blocked draining from your battery. The physical damage resistances are nice but the heat and cold procs are a little niche. In theory, Kinetic Plating is a good ability but there are cheaper damage resistance abilities to maintain.

Thermal Sunder is another weird ability. It just makes circles of cold energy that slow nearby enemies down and adds to the battery. Or you can hold it to make a circle of heat energy that sets enemies on fire and drains from your battery. Or you combine the two for a blast proc. But the area feels a bit too small and the ability doesn’t seem to do enough damage or crowd control for it to be particularly viable.

Redline, Gauss’s last ability, is pretty cool though, it’s basically a boost to all his other abilities. Gauss feels at his best while using Redline, and once that goes away, everything feels weirdly slow, made worse that you have to keep Redline filled otherwise your ‘battery’ drains away completely when Redline ends.

But Gauss gets a huge amount of points on how he looks and feels. He 100% looks like a speedster frame. Frankly, he looks like a cross between a Tennogen skin and a deluxe skin for Volt. Gauss is very shiny and metallic (which makes colouring him a little bit tricky) but he feels like he should be. Gauss’s animation sets really do finish the look off though and are one of my favourite parts about him.

Thing is, I like Gauss, he look and feels pretty damn cool, but he plays a bit like a slightly worse Volt. Sure, you can go faster but you can’t turn on a dime, you can’t deal with lots of enemies as well and Volt’s shields block far more than Kinetic Plating could ever hope to block, even if Volt’s shields are mostly stationary. I don’t want to say that Gauss is a bad frame, he really isn’t, but he’s also somewhat… niche, I guess? Aside from the whole GOTTA GO FAST thing which a lot of frames do easily anyway.

I don’t see Gauss being used that much in the future though, so Volt, Loki, Nova, Nezha and Zephyr players can rest easy for now.