Five Weirdly Good Subsumed Abilities from your Hungry Helminth
Subsuming abilities can be very hit and miss. Most newer Warframes have abilities that work alongside each other, so you can’t really swap an ability out. However, older Warframes have more room to move things around. But the bigger issue is just finding something that synergizes well with your Warframe’s existing abilities. Or perhaps just adding an ability that your Warframe feels like it’s missing. In today’s article, we’ll look at a few subsume-able abilities that can give surprising buffs to your Warframes.
The Weird Energy Regeneration – Spectrosiphon Spectrorage
Gara isn’t the first frame you think of when it comes to energy regeneration. Especially when it comes to Spectrorage, Gara’s least used ability. Spectrorage on its own is kinda lame. It creates a bunch of glass mirrors that confuse enemies and explodes. However, the augment Spectrosiphon gives enemies a 50% chance to drop orbs on death. When it comes to energy orb chances, 50% is ludicrously high.
And with Gara Prime just being released, all our old Garas can be subsumed. Although if you’re sentimental like me, or have heavily forma’d a Gara, you might just want to farm a new one. 100,000 Simaris standing can be expensive. The additional mod slot required can also be a pain too, but at least it allows you to use a different Focus School for a change.
The Ability Ash should have had – Marked For Death
When it comes to the default Helminth abilities, none of them are… very impressive. If you’re looking to make a fast frame faster, then Infested Mobility might be useful, but its duration isn’t great. The only other useful ability is Marked for Death, which spreads damage done from the marked target to all enemies around it. Since Ash does great single target damage, you can pair Marked for Death with something like Fatal Teleport and really spread that fatality around.
This ability is also good for spreading various status effects, working a bit like Saryn. If paired with something like a Nukor and a Condition Overload weapon, you can do huge amounts of damage quickly.
However Marked for Death does have downsides. Most notably, it will only do as much damage as the target has health and shields. So you want to target something hefty like a Nox for maximum effect.
The Damage Buff that gets Forgotten – Eclipse
When Helminth was revealed, most people went straight to Rhino’s Roar as a damage buff. However, Mirage’s Eclipse actually provides a bigger buff, and for longer, with less power strength. The downside is that the buff isn’t consistent, as Eclipse is based on the light levels of a mission. That being said, the intangibility that Eclipse gives in shadows can also be useful at times.
Luckily, you get normal Mirage from a quest, and Mirage Prime is still relatively common from relics. So, while getting your hands on Eclipse isn’t as easy as Roar from Rhino, it’s not that much more effort.
Weirdly Nuke-y – Thermal Sunder
I never realised how much damage Gauss’s Thermal Sunder did until I took him to Sanctuary Onslaught. Sure, it was the normal version, not the elite version. But somehow my unforma’d Gauss was NUKING rooms with ease. Oddly, Thermal Sunder is also Gauss’s subsume-able ability, meaning you can add some good damage to more supportive frames. For some cheap and easy damage, as well as free heat and cold procs, you can’t really complain.
Gauss is also generally quite easy to farm. His parts all drop on a specific Disruption node, with quite high chances after the third round.
Crowd Control for everyone – Gloom
I’m not a fan of Sevagoth at all. He requires way too much work, and is honestly just a worse Valkyr. However, his one single good ability, Gloom, is also Sevagoth’s subsume-ble ability! Gloom provides an aura of slowing, but this aura stacks with other slows. Sure, there are better crowd control abilities out there, but Gloom is a very low-cost ability and its drain is barely noticeable.
Sevagoth does require a 100,000 Simaris standing blueprint, but, frankly, Sevagoth isn’t that good, so you can just level him up and subsume him right away.
Bonus: The Super Niche Cheese – Banish
The fact that Banish is Limbo’s Helminth ability is odd but it kinda makes sense. Nothing else in Limbo’s kit really works. Sure, Stasis is cool, but Stasis only works on beings in the Rift. But you need Cataclysm or Banish to put people in the Rift in the first place. At the same time, Banish on its own seems useless.
Or is it? Because you can do some pretty cool but niche cheesy things with Banish. Most importantly, you can banish Operatives, whether you’re in Defense or Rescue missions. this can make sortie defense missions in particular a cakewalk, as long as you don’t banish anyone else alongside the operative.
The great thing about Helminth though is experimentation. It’s worth trying out all sorts of different abilities, because you never know what might work for you.