Returning to One’s (Electric) Roots

It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally reached the point that many older Warframe players are at, with a nice armory of weapons, a nice collection of companions, a maxed out Focus school, a cool-looking Space Kid and a wardrobe of Warframes ready to be taken on any mission. Well, almost. But sitting in the back of said wardrobe is an often forgotten little friend. My original starter Warframe, Volt.

I never sold Volt, I could never bring myself to do it. He’d put up with me flailing all over the place, falling down pits and running into walls from Earth all the way to Saturn, after which I got Volt Prime. With his upgraded form being better than Volt in every way, once Volt Prime reached level 30 and got fitted with an Orokin Reactor, there was almost no reason to use Volt.

Normal Volt got relegated to the occasional trek on E Prime, either taking newly forma’d weapons out for a spin or just wanting to pose for some screenshots. I have Volt Prime. I have Frost Prime. I have Trinity, Oberon, Ember, Saryn, Vauban and Rhino Prime – some of which may get their own little articles in the future. Looking at you, Rhino. I even have Mag Prime, although I still have no idea how to play her. All of these characters (apart from Mag Prime) are pretty well equipped when it comes to dealing with post-Pluto missions. So I kinda… forgot about Volt. Unless I needed an image for an article.

It wasn’t until I accidentally took Volt, with only a melee weapon equipped, into an alert. I have a specific loadout just for taking screenshots and forgot to switch to my normal loadout before selecting the alert. I didn’t realise what I had done until I loaded in, but decided to go with it.

Somehow, a Volt using the Kogake – a simple punching/sparring weapon, managed to do 55% of that mission’s total damage dealt. It was amazing.

A quick aside, I wish the Kogake was better. It’s a pretty weak weapon, mostly because of its tiny weeny range. In today’s fast-paced, room-melting Warframe meta, there’s no time to stop and punch things to death individually. High range, multi-hitting weapons like the Galatine or the Atterax are generally more preferable.

Back to Volt. The poor frame had clearly enjoyed his outing out, so I decided to use him a bit more.

Despite Volt’s flaws, I often forget that he’s still perfectly capable of doing most missions across the solar system. Even at low levels and ranks, Volt will have no problem getting from A to B. Capture, Exterminate, Mobile Defense, Sabotage, 5 waves of Defense or Survival, all not a problem.

Really though, any Warframe is capable of doing that, assuming you have a half decent weapon. Or even just a Braton with a Serration on it and a handful of other mods. What stops Volt and other Warframes is his inability to go past that. While I had a blast taking Volt to the planets his Prime self completed, taking him into a Sortie would be incredibly dangerous, due to his low energy and next to nothing armour. Most Warframes have around 50 armour, tankier ones have around 200. Valkyr has 600ish armour. Normal Volt has 15 armour. And with only 300 base health and shields never preventing fatal damage, you will die REALLY quickly.

So yeah, normal Volt could do with some buffs. If anything, Volt Prime could as well, due to the fact that there’s a really stupid damage cap on his fourth ability. Also remove the energy drain on Electric Shield when it’s picked up, since it already has a duration and disappears after 30 seconds.

And maybe give Volt a tiny bit more armour. I think he’s earned it, having to put up with being everyone’s second choice for the last few years.

But that’s okay. Sometimes it’s nice just to go out and do something different. Even if it’s technically the same but weaker.