Khora – The Queen of All Trades
Ever since Khora came out, I’ve been saying that Khora is a strong frame. Alright, for the first few days, she was really lackluster. But after an initial round of buffs, Khora turned into a really good frame. So good in fact that she’s now considered one of the nest nuke frames around, closer to Mesa and Saryn than anyone else. But Khora has something that those two don’t – the ability to be a jack of all trades. Really, Khora has it all. She’s probably one of the strongest frames in Warframe right now. Especially with a nuke build.
Wait, what? When did that happen?
It turns out, I’ve kinda been playing Khora wrong for, well, ages. I always built Khora as a maximum crowd control beast. High range, high duration. My build has always been that enemies can’t kill me if they’re trapped inside a cage of death and their allies are shooting at them. This makes the many defense missions in Warframe a lot easier. Even against Corpus, because of how Strange Dome reacts to Nullifiers.
But that’s just me playing a utility build. There’s a big wave of Khora being played as a nuker lately.
It’s all because of Whipclaw.
Whipclaw is one of those abilities that’s not quite an exalted weapon. Exalted weapons like Valkyr’s Hysteria work as if they were their own weapons. They have their own entire modding section, but have their own limitations. You can forma an exalted weapon, but you can’t change its stance mod and get less capacity compared to a normal weapon.
Whipclaw on the other hand is an ability that borrows from your equipped melee weapon. Its stats are based on not just your ability strength, but the mods on your melee weapon as well. This includes all basic mods like damage and status chance, as well as Acolyte mods like Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds. Both your current combo counter AND Riven Mods are ALSO included in Whipclaw’s damage. With so many stats coming from so many mods, you can get huge amounts of damage.
And that’s on top of Whipclaw’s somewhat impressive base stats, creating a 5m explosion where it strikes.
Amusingly, exalted weapons actually used to work in the same way, until they were changed to be their own, separate, moddable weapons.
Basically, you have a whip with a bomb on the end of it.
A very spam-able whip. That also has a lot of synergy as well. When used against enemies affected by Ensnare, Whipclaw does even more damage. And there’s an amazing augment, Accumulating Whipclaw, that adds EVEN MORE DAMAGE should you hit multiple enemies in one strike.
Combining Whipclaw with some mods and some combo duration increases and you have a spammy attack that’s really easy to use. You don’t even need to go over the top with stat-stick melee weapons either. Just take a strong weapon and have Whipclaw use that weapon to become even stronger.
But Khora is still the Queen of all Trades.
You don’t need much to make Whipclaw good, which means that you also have room to keep the rest of Khora good. Okay, sure, you can’t build a max-range Khora build without messing up her Power Strength. But you don’t really need huge amounts of range either. Unlike, say, Chroma, you don’t need to sacrifice Ensnare, Venari or Strangle Dome to be able to use Whipclaw as a nuke.
Well, you can sacrifice them with lower duration, but since you’re nuking everything, does that really matter?
Really, the only thing stopping Khora is the grind to get her.
Not only do you need to spend a lot of time doing Sanctuary Onslaught, getting the basic rewards, but you need cat components too. So even when you manage to get that insane 8-11% drop chance on each of her components, you… need to scan Kavats too. Or buy them for 5 platinum each in the market.
In fact, that seems to stop most of the more powerful frames. If Saryn, Chroma and Mesa were all as easy to get as Mag or Excalibur, well, Warframe would be even more… nuke-y…