Warframe‘s Eidolon hunter has gotten a shiny new coat of paint. On Oct. 5, 2022, Revenant finally received his Prime variant, and Revenant Prime brings a few advantages over its base version.
Like other Prime Warframes, Revenant Prime comes with extra polarities and slightly improved stats, which might make a difference for min-maxers. And players who are looking for the most fashionable looks can also earn the unique Prime skin for Revenant when using Revenant Prime.
Revenant Prime cuts close to the original and without earth-shattering changes to gameplay, as is the custom in Warframe. Luckily for players, however, this means Revenant maintains the synergy that runs deep into his kit, allowing players to continue to be immortal and one-shot enemies (which was pretty busted with the base Revenant and will continue to be with Revenant Prime).
Here’s a breakdown of Revenant Prime’s kit, how to make the most of it, and how to build Revenant Prime to double down on his lethality.
How to build Revenant Prime in Warframe
Our Revenant Prime builds lean onto his strengths, including the borderline broken synergy between his first three abilities. Building him isn’t too different from the normal Revenant, with the exception you already have one Naramon (—), one Madurai (V), and one Vazarin (D) polarities from scratch. This allows you to prioritize strength and survivability, while also having easy access to Flow/Primed Flow/Archon Flow thanks to the built-in Naramon polarity. His Naramon Aura polarity, however, means you can’t rely on Growing Power (Madurai) without spending a Forma on him.
Revenant is one of the many Warframes that requires high ability strength if you want to make the most out of his kit. Rolling Guard is also a staple of most Revenant builds due to its ease of use alongside Mesmer Skin—and, since you’ll be running Mesmer Skin anyway, you won’t really need an Adaptation for that Vazarin slot, so you can seamlessly slot in Rolling Guard in all Revenant builds. We also won’t take into account possible Helminth subsumes, which are up to player preference.
Zero-Forma, One-shot Reave build for Revenant Prime
This build makes the most out of the synergy between Reave, Enthrall, and Mesmer Skin which to create a one-shot machine—and the good news is that, unlike the regular Revenant, you can use this build without even needing to shell out Formas for it. Its downside is the low ability efficiency, however, which is particularly evident when using Reave in quick succession. This is inspired by Grind Hard Squad’s Revenant video, though it doubles down on ability strength at the cost of efficiency to reach 100 percent health drain on Enthralled enemies.
The goal is to get ability strength close to 250 percent so you can max out the life drain on Enthralled enemies, which will allow you to one-shot them with a single use of your Reave. Mesmer Skin is there to keep you alive, while Rolling Guard allows you to buy some time to safely reapply your Mesmer Skin. Natural Talent is there to mitigate Revenant’s base casting speed, though feel free to change it if you feel it’s unnecessary.
The downside of this build is that Blind Rage gets your efficiency extremely low, and any energy-draining effects can disable your Mesmer Skin and make you unable to cast it due to having no energy.
This is also a pretty crowded build thanks to the series of moving parts it has, though depending on your preferences, you can remove Natural Talent or even Vitality if you’re sure of your skills (though we like having the extra Vitality to fall back on so we have more time to activate Rolling Guard in case the enemies get the jump on us).
One-Forma strength build without efficiency loss
Alternatively, if you want a more comfortable Reave build that doesn’t sacrifice too much efficiency and doesn’t require many Formas, you can follow this build to offset the efficiency loss from Blind Rage.
It’s a fairly tight fit for a single Forma, and you’ll also miss Natural Talent if you want to run this build. That said, it allows you to use Transient Fortitude instead of Blind Rage, then use a regular Continuity to offset the loss of duration, and bulk up the missing ability strength from Blind Rage with Umbral Intensify, Umbral Vitality, Amar’s Hatred, and Augur’s Secret. This should push you to 249 percent strength—just enough to reach 100 percent reduction without sacrificing your other stats. This is a fairly resource-intensive build, however, since it’ll need a good deal of Endo to max out these high-level mods.
You can also remove Amar’s Hatred and swap it out for Natural Talent, though you won’t reach 100 percent health drain on Thralls. There are a few ways to make up the difference, including the Growing Power Aura, but doing so will take a few more Forma. That said, you can still get by easily with 90 percent damage reduction (and even less), so if you’re struggling without Natural Talent, there are some places you can slot it in this build.
With it being such a tight fit, however, you could change your Aura polarity to make use of Growing Power (V) and change Amar’s Hatred for a different mod. Using one of the Augur mods will give you just enough space to upgrade your Continuity to Primed, but you can also continue to run the base Continuity and use a nine-energy mod like Stretch or Streamline. The extra 25 percent strength you get when Growing Power is active could easily push you past the necessary threshold, which opens up another mod slot.
Due to the high ability strength and the lack of any major penalties, this build can be used for pretty much anything, including using Revenant’s fourth ability, Danse Macabre, in case you ever feel the urge of being a spinning ball of Eidolon energy and death.
Zero-Forma Comfort generalist Revenant build
If you don’t want anything specific for Revenant, you can tone down on the ability strength and build upon duration, efficiency, or range, depending on your preferences. Range affects the range for Enthrall pulls and Danse Macabre’s effects, as well as the width of Reave’s effect. Duration, on the other hand, improves Enthrall’s duration and the length of Reave’s dash, and it even diminishes the energy drain on Danse Macabre. Lastly, efficiency affects all cast costs and reduces the drain on Danse Macabre.
This build takes a little bit of everything, focusing on minor boosts to most stats instead of one big spike. It boasts decent ability strength, which should put your Reave at around 67 percent health drain, but it also brings bonuses to duration and efficiency. You won’t have the sheer firepower you get from other Revenant builds, but this could be a comfortable build to keep on the backburner, especially if you want to try to get used to Revenant Prime.
How to use Revenant Prime’s abilities and synergies in Warframe
Revenant Prime’s kit has four abilities, and though they may seem simple individually, they really shine when used in tandem with each other. His core synergy works between his first three abilities (and usually with the Rolling Guard mod), while his fourth ability can be used for extra damage and for its fun factor. Here are his abilities in order:
- Enthrall: “Convert a target into a zealous thrall. Thralls turn on their allies and enthrall through damage. On death, they disintegrate into a damaging pillar of energy. The thrall horde remains under Revenant’s spell until this Ability runs out.”
- Enthrall is one of the cornerstones of Revenant Prime’s kit. It allows you to entrance an enemy, meaning it won’t be shooting at you. You’ll use this ability as a primer for the rest of your synergies.
- Mesmer Skin: “Become enveloped in Sentient energy, which redirects damage and stuns all those who dare attack. Stunned enemies can be Enthralled at no energy cost.”
- This is where the synergy starts to kick in. Mesmer Skin comes with a set number of charges (which scales off ability strength), and each time an enemy attacks you, Revenant consumes a Mesmer Skin charge. This effect denies any damage from the attack and stuns targets, allowing you to enthrall them for free for a short period of time.
- Reave: “Dash through enemies as a wall of Sentient energy, leeching shields and health from any encountered, enhanced for thralls.”
- The third step of Revenant Prime’s magical kit. Reave drains hitpoints from enemies, but has an increased effect on Thralls (40 percent health at 100 max level with base ability strength). With around 249 percent ability strength, Revenant can push that value to 100 percent health drain, allowing him to one-shot any Enthralled enemies he passes through. As a bonus, Revenant restores one Mesmer Skin charge for each Thrall he passes through, which allows you to top up your charges quickly.
- Danse Macabre: “Erupt with a multitude of Eidolon energy beams and sweep a circle of death around Revenant. The beams will modify their Damage Type to target select defenses, while incoming damage is redirected back into the beams. Hold fire to boost Status Effects and Damage, at the cost of increased energy consumption. Thralls killed by this leave overshield pickups.”
- This ability doesn’t necessarily synergize with the Enthrall–Mesmer Skin–Reave triumvirate, but it could have its uses for Revenant players. High ability strength allows them to take advantage of Danse Macabre’s damage, and it also synergizes slightly with Enthrall by letting dead Thralls drop overshield pickups.
The strengths of Revenant Prime hail mostly from the synergy with his first three abilities, with Danse Macabre as a possible panic button or a prime target for a subsumed Helminth ability. Revenant players also commonly build him with Rolling Guard to buy a three-second invulnerability window, which should be enough to reactivate Mesmer Skin (especially if Natural Talent is involved).
