Not Feeling the Speed – More Thoughts on Gauss

I’ve been playing Gauss, leveling him up for both mastery and the more obvious reasons of getting him to level 30, but I’ll be honest, I’ve been struggling. I’m just not feeling Gauss and his speedy ways. I find myself not really enjoying playing as Gauss.

While that might not be surprising to you, it feels somewhat surprising to me. Because normally I like speedy Warframes. I mean, my favourite Warframe is Volt, the original speedy Warframe, and he’s followed by frames like Nehza, Khora and Rhino, two of whom have speed boosts and one of which has a charge attack that’s more often used as an extra jump or dash than for ramming into enemies. Really, Gauss, who is mainly focused on speed and GOING FAST should be a really enjoyable Warframe for me. But he isn’t.

The problem is, the more I play with Gauss, the less I know why I don’t like him. And it’s definitely not because of any perceived threat to Volt. If anything, Volt is more of a threat to Gauss. Volt has better killing and crowd control abilities and his speed is way more controllable. I mean, you can turn with Volt’s speed boost.

But I don’t think the whole Volt VS Gauss thing is why I don’t like Gauss. It’s not a bias thing because, aside from speed, the two frames do different things. Volt’s a “Jack of all Trades” sort of thing where Gauss is “SPEEDSPEEDSPEED!” That being said, I have already grown weary of all the Volt VS Gauss memes and images already. Maybe that’s just me though.

I suppose part of the issue is the constant crashing into walls. Sure, Gauss was made with crashing into walls in mind, but I feel like I spend all of my time crashed into walls. There’s supposed to be a shock wave and enemies are supposed to get knocked away and all that but it doesn’t feel that useful, and frankly, hitting enemies head on just isn’t satisfying. The only real satisfaction when it comes to Gauss is the whole going fast thing but most Warframe missions don’t have the room for you to speed around. It’s very nice out on the Plains of Eidolon, which are somewhat flat, but that’s about it. Even then, you can’t really hold down Mach Rush and go for a long run.

Alright, fine, I’ll admit that Gauss can be insanely fast. And sure, Gauss can theoretically be faster than an Itzal teleport (it’s not really a teleport to be honest, not like Nova’s Wormholes, because Itzal does have a travel time) if you manage to get 7 other frames to properly buff you in all the right ways, but even then, there’s nowhere for Gauss to go. You just crash into everything.

It doesn’t help that Gauss is a more selfish frame. None of his abilities are useful to other players. Kinetic Plating only affects Gauss himself. Redline is a buff to Gauss’s other abilities and to himself. Thermal Sunder could be considered crowd control, I guess, but it affects a small area and is outdone by most other forms of crowd control.

The more I think about it though, the more I feel that Gauss is just… a variant of Zephyr. Both frames have a dash ability, both have a defensive crowd control ability, both have an ability that reduces or blocks damage. Gauss is a better version of what Zephyr kinda should have been.

But even then, Gauss isn’t that… useful. Unless you like crashing into literally everything.