My Least Favourite Warframe Mission Types
Warframe has a lot of mission types, from your basic exterminate missions to complicated messes like Alchemy and Void Cascade. However, some missions are definitely not as good as others. Here are some of the… more annoying ones.
Archon Hunt Spy
Spy missions in general are slightly slower paced than most. The puzzles themselves aren’t that bad, even if the AI can get to you at times, but there’s often massive stretches of nothingness between each Spy vault you need to access. Archon Hunt Spy missions are made worse in two ways. Firstly, there’s only three tile sets available for Archon Hunt missions (Grineer Ships, Grineer Earth Bases and Gas City) and Gas City in particular is absolutely massive. All these missions are longer than normal Spy missions. But also, they use Narmer consoles and you can’t use Ciphers. Narmer hacks are different to normal consoles and there’s no way to reliably practice them. In fact, outside of Archon Hunts, you probably only ever do like 3 total, all of them within the New War or via Kahl missions.
To make matters worse, sneaking in is harder since all the enemies are alert. While the enemy faction is Narmer, the maps themselves are still Corpus or Grineer, meaning that they set off the traps constantly, and all Nullifiers are active with their bubbles extended. It’s just a pain in the butt.
Void Fissure Excavation
Now, Excavation isn’t too bad. Okay, sure, the Lotus could send down the drills fully charged, but the missions themselves are quick and simple. Still not the best, because the excavators themselves don’t have much health, and power cores can sometimes dry up, but it’s doable. Void Fissure Excavation though is a massive pain in the ass. Reactant is a funny thing and requires enemies to be corrupted before it can be dropped, but enemies require time to become corrupted in the first place. This runs in parallel with the timers for the excavators, meaning it’s really easy to finish the two required drillings before you have enough reactant to open a relic. Having a Nekros around can help, but you shouldn’t really be reliant on such a thing. All they need to do is make reactant drops better, and this would be… okay, I guess.
Disruption
Theoretically, Disruption is one of the better mission types, at least when it comes to rewards. While most mission types have an ABC or AABC rotation (with B and C rewards being better than A rewards), Disruption’s rotation goes ABCCCC, as long as you keep on killing Demolysts. However, those Demolysts are a pain in the ass. They magically nullify Warframe abilities AND Operator abilities, they have huge amounts of health and are resistant to a lot of things, meaning the only way to kill them is through sheer brute force. That and the beeping the Demolysts make are basically the only tactic in the game mode. Every other enemy, aside from the ones carrying keys, are nothing more than a distraction.
I also find the beeps difficult to follow. Because the Demolyst comes from a random direction, I often end up wasting time running the wrong way, trying to find the beeping sound. It’s just bad luck.
Defense
Defense missions are just boring. While, yes, you are defending something, the main objective is to kill every enemy in every wave. Except enemies are slow to spawn, and the only way to progress is to kill everything. So if an enemy decides to get stuck, you find yourself wandering around the map, looking for the lost bastard. Things are made worse by the fact that most Defense mission maps are huge. The best maps for Defense, Corpus Ship and Gas City, were replaced with multi-level maps that enemies really struggle to pass through.
Worse, if you are doing anything above a sortie, the stationary cryopod is reduced with an operative who will wander around and will constantly try and get itself killed. The operative can be revived multiple times, but their AI is as bad as enemy AI, and they’ll get themselves stuck in awkward positions. It’s not fun at all.
At least Mirror Defense alleviates this, by having you defend for a specific period of time, before switching to a new location.
Defection
People in general don’t like escort missions. Babysitting a rather stupid AI as it gets attacked by mindless enemies is never fun. Defection is exactly that, except it’s an endless mission type. There’s an infinite number of Kavor, Grineer defectors, to escort, and the Infested don’t stop coming, ever. To make matters worse, it was only recently that the Kavor could be affected by Warframe abilities – initially, only Nova’s portals and Trinity’s Bless would actually affect them. The Kavor do shoot back, but they are prone to getting stuck on terrain. Luckily, you can lose one or two before the mission fails, but if one gets stuck, then more will likely get stuck too.
On top of that though, there’s actually no reason to do Defection outside of one single Harrow component. It used to be the best way to farm Ash components, but they’ve been moved to Railjack. Defection is now completely pointless.
You may disagree on the other missions, but frankly, no one likes Defection.