Wisp enjoyers, I need your help!
For context, I have 4000 hours logged in missions, and I primarily play crowd control/weapon support frames like Nyx, Limbo, Caliban, Frost, Banshee, and so on. That is to say, while I’m not a new player by any means, I think I may have some biases that prevent me from fully appreciating a frame vaunted as the “best support in the game”.
I’m not here to gainsay her power as a damage frame, as frankly anyone with a blind can run Xata and propel themselves into the upper echelons of damage potential, and Wisp comes with an invisibility kit to boot. I also think she has great quality of life as a solo frame due to her ability to disengage and control enemy aggression.
Instead, I think I’m missing something about her support toolkit. Here’s where I’m coming from:
- Haste Mote looks nice on paper, but in my opinion fire rate is generally less valuable than reload speed, which is hard to get and mostly only available from fairly weak mods. Wisp also needs an eye-watering 300% strength just to replicate the effects of a single speed arcane.
- Vitality mote is fine, but certain maps such as T4 void, Zariman, and Deimos Labs have enemies with severe alpha strikes, so I think health tanking is generally more situational and requires Eclipse or another DR on top to really work and be comfortable.
- I think Breach Surge is becoming less useful as the strongest weapons have shifted to conal, punchthrough, and chaining weapons that rapidly kill enemies approaching from a single tile entry point. I believe it also has a fairly significant propagation delay between when it casts and when the effect radius reaches far targets? Correct me if I’m wrong, please!
A few things:
- What wisp does for herself she also does for the group. Your teammate can afford to bring a frame that’s not survivable enough normally because of vitality mote, and with very little coordination from the group.
- Because of the way reservoirs work, that strength requirement isn’t as much of a tradeoff as it seems. Wisp can afford to tank her efficiency into the ground and still function very very well in any mission where you can stay near your reservoirs.
- You compare her to arcanes, but those are a very large farming investment to get to high levels, whereas she drops from a boss fight / relics. If you’re one of the players that already has everything the comparison is fair, but if you’re looking at a new thing to acquire the two are very different hurdles.
Ultimately she’s probably rarely the best possible choice, but part of the reason that she’s considered “the best support in the game” is that she does so much with so little investment or effort (and that she was given that title before a bunch of older support frames got buffed to stand on par with her)
Haste mote does wonders for melee. Vitality mote is just convenient. In super endgame stuff you can’t rely on it alone for survivability but it is a very serious ehp boost, and life recovery can be pretty hard to come by. She DOES fall off towards the late game, but she’s still damn useful if only as a big quality of life boost.
The problem with support Wisp/support frames in general is that if you’re already going into endgame content, you can usually expect your team’s kits to already be sufficient for that content. You can increase their survivability further by making use of shock motes to stun enemies and rad procs but this typically just slows down missions (especially the shock motes in defense missions) if they’re used in situations where they aren’t really needed, and can cause issues with builds that make use of enemies clumping together like if you’re trying to make use of Gas/Blast or have a Harrow in the squad trying to buff with Covenant. Rad procs from breach surge usually aren’t as much of an issue though.
Breach Surge is a lot less useful now that enemies are often protected by overguard, ignoring the blind effect and being immune to the CC effects of Radiation procs, I think they might even be immune to friendly fire too (they aren’t targetted, and I think they’re immune enemy AOE attacks like a Bombard’s rockets). You can still try to make use of it though, there’s only so many enemies that can attack at the same time so you can still reduce the number of enemies attacking your team/the objective at the same time.
Pillage/Fire Walker for status cleanse; Pillage gives you Armor Strip at the same time while Fire Walker gives to a movement speed boost for memes. Your team still needs to walk through the flames though but it’s a more passive in its use versus Pillage which requires you to cast every time you want to use it. With Overguard being on everything now, status cleansing is a lot less useful, but it was still nice to have for Sorties.
I think you’re much better off modding to specialize for your loadout and letting your team pick up the buffs passively instead of trying to directly buff your team.
- Haste mote is multiplicative with attack speed modding on the weapon while arcanes and most other ability buffs are addative.
- True.
- Also true, though it does have certain synergies that can buff it into the stratosphere.
Worth noting that glaive throws and heavy detonations do not break her passive so you can just aimglide around and nuke with Xoris or Glaive Prime with impunity.
I take another tack with Wisp’s passive invis, one that recently got much stronger with the changes to damage.
Death from Above Wisp floats about until she finds a group of enemies, then slams down onto them with a Corrupt Charge heavy attack with a Hammer modded for slams. Much death, and then she jumps right back up into the air—and is invisible again. Aero mods, Aerodynamic and an Anti-grav Array Moa make her have silly amounts of hang time.
The main thing that makes Wisp such a good support frame is her sheer convenience and low maintenance. Support is a very unpopular and underplayed role in Warframe and for a good reason. All the good top end frames are entirely self sufficient, requiring no external aid to easily dominate. Wisp breaks the mold by providing generally useful buffs that apply to you AND your teammates while requiring no work from the player on top of having a solid CC/damage ability and a free subsume slot. A 400% power strength Wisp with Pillage makes for an incredibly nasty weapons platform frame while also helping out teammates with her Motes. She can support her teammates without needing to work for it all while being capable of doing the mission by herself if need be.