Useful Specter Loadouts for People Who Need AI Friends

Specters are great. Even before they were buffed up to actually use abilities and buff team mates, they’ve always been useful to me. It’s basically like adding an extra idiot into the fray, someone who will distract enemies and possibly even kill some of them, but is cheap and easy to make and doesn’t ruin your day if it gets murdered the way a Sentinel, animal companion or fellow human player would. If you’re playing on your own, a Specter can go a long way in higher level missions.

But what Specters should one take? Do you take the cheap, flimsy ones from low level missions that you get 5-10 of per blueprint, or do you spend your resources on one single Cosmic Specter? And what Warframe and weapons do you use?

Well firstly, there’s not that much point using Cosmic Specters. They might make a difference in a low level mission, but you don’t need them in low level missions. Specters spawn based on the level of enemies around them, but spawning 5 levels higher than nearby enemies doesn’t mean much in missions with level 60+ enemies, and it means nothing at all in endurance missions, like hour long survivals. So save your money and get cheap, dirty Vapor Specters. You get 10 of them at a time, so why not?

But what Warframes? Definitely not Limbo. Limbo is literally useless as a Specter as they can’t use any of their abilities. Exalted items are out as well, so frames like Titania and Wukong are out, but Ivara and Valkyr both provide a handful of buffs so they can be handy. Frosts and Garas might want to be avoided as they can place obstacles in your way, but otherwise pick what you like. Generally, the simpler the ability, the more likely a Warframe will use them.

Weapons-wise, stick to powerful primary weapons. But not just any powerful primary weapons. Weapons that Specters use are the same as weapons the Grineer and Corpus use, they don’t use any of your mods and seem to just scale, based off the weapon’s default stats.

Specters rarely use secondary weapons and they only really use melee weapons while reloading or when they’re short on ammo. So it doesn’t really matter what you give them aside from the primary weapon.

So, getting to the point of things, here’s some interesting specters to use. These are all ones I’ve used who genuinely do a good job. Sadly testing specters is a pain because it costs like 8 hours just to build them.

Electric Volt – A Volt Specter with the Amprex, with a Serro or Ohma if you so desire for matching themes. Volt Specters aren’t that smart when it comes to using Electric Shield, but they tend to stay by their shields, use Discharge often and also regularly give you 10 second speed boosts. The Amprex is all-round fun and strong so it might as well be given to a Volt Specter.

Healing Oberon – Oberon Specters seem to use their abilities more than Trinity Specters do. Throw an Arca Plasmor in their hands and they’ll happily spread Radiation everywhere. Oberon’s healing won’t be that strong or that regular, but they do use Hallowed Ground and Reckoning pretty regularly and with not awful duration.

Roaring Rhino – Rhino Specters are neat because they will pretty consistently give you a 25% Rhino Roar buff, but better yet, they reapply it. Even better, Rhino Specters are tanky as heck and will use Iron Skin and Stomp on a regular basis, meaning they’re not going to die any time soon.

Nasty Nidus – Nidus Specters are the best. Mostly because they are cheaters who don’t need stacks like real players do! They’ll almost instantly cast Parasitic Link on you, giving you +28% power strength and they constantly use their abilities apart from Larva – but they don’t need it because they will also cast Ravenous whenever the fuck they want, which heals team mates. Nidus Specters aren’t as durable as Rhino ones, but with Ravenous and Parasitic Link, they don’t need to be. For weapons, you could equip them with matching Infested stuff (particularly the Mutalist Cernos) but really I just shove an Arca Plasmor in my Specter’s hands because it does the trick.

So yeah.

Use Nidus Specters. They’re the best.