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The Helminth system was introduced to Warframe as a way to spice up the build variety in the Heart of Deimos update. All Warframes start out with four active abilities and a passive one to tie them together. This system allows a player to "subsume" one of their frame's abilities, gaining it for standalone usage by sacrificing the Warframe in the process. This allows other frames to swap one of their abilities out to use this subsumed ability.
Helminth abilities were successful in revitalizing the game in a patch where the boom-and-zoom meta had long started to stagnate. Between the unique abilities from over 50 Warframes and some of Helminth's own, the possibilities are virtually endless to play around with different combinations.
5 Best Warframe Helminth ability wombo combos
1) Ash x Savage Silence
When it comes to meta-defining combinations between a Warframe and an ability augment mod, there is no beating Ash and Savage Silence. Savage Silence is an augment mod for Banshee's Silence ability, making it so that the Silenced targets are additionally vulnerable to 300% extra Finisher Damage.
Finisher Damage is only applied by default on some specific melee attacks, such as execution or stomp attacks on grounded targets. As such, modding for Finisher Damage yields some very limited advantages for its mod slot cost.
This limitation is because while Finishers deal a great amount of damage, they have an extremely long wind-up animation time, thereby making it an inefficient way to score a single kill.
These mods do, however, find a singular impactful niche on Ash. Ash's Shadow Clones deal an instance of true damage that increases with more Finisher Damage and a round of Slash ticks based on this initial damage.
With a proper stat stick, Ash can deal millions of damage in armor-bypassing Slash ticks to decimate Steel Path targets under the effect of Savage Silence.
2) Banshee x Gloom
Banshee's Silence, as discussed with the previous combo, is one of the most coveted Helminth abilities due to the timeless utility it brings to the table. Silence, as the name suggests, deafens all affected targets as they enter Banshee's field of sonic disturbance.
Part of what makes silence so great is its built-in stagger mechanic. As enemies enter the effective field of Silence, all non-Eximus units enter a stagger animation that they take two seconds to recover from.
While building for maximum range makes Silence a great stealth ability, you will not always benefit from the stun in the average tileset, as some enemies will have recovered from the stagger when you enter the next room to engage them.
Sevagoth's Gloom is also one of the most used Helminth abilities. Other than being the easiest way to life leech in Warframe, Gloom slows down enemies akin to Nova's Molecular Prime.
With a good amount of ability strength, Gloom can slow down the stagger animation triggered by enemies entering the area of Silence. In other words, together, they make for one of the best crowd-controls in the game, locking most enemies in place for about half a minute and disabling all special abilities from Eximus units.
3) Garuda x Thermal Sunder
The introduction of the Archon Vitality mod in the Veilbreaker update made most fire-based nukes in Warframe roughly twice as strong. This mod essentially makes all fire-based damage instances from abilities trigger a second time after they are cast. With it, Thermal Sunder also skyrocketed in terms of usage as a Helminth ability.
Thermal Sunder covers a wide area and deals enough damage to wear down even Steel Path targets over repeat casts with its status procs, even without its armor stripping capabilities while decoupled from Gauss. The only caveat is that you need the energy battery to sustain this energy-hungry ability.
Garuda is likely the best candidate to pair up with this ability. Her third ability, Bloodletting, is one of the best mana batteries in the entire game. Garuda's passive Death's Gate also grants her 100% bonus damage to the Thermal Sunder casts at maximum stacks, making it even deadlier.
4) Loki x Banish
Loki was arguably the most powerful Warframe out of the initial bunch released with the first public build of the game. Unlike other frames, his abilities provide utilities that are useful regardless of enemy level. However, Loki's kit provides too little utility in the game's current state.
While his Invisibility and Radial Disarm remain as strong as ever, Decoy and Teleport are barebone tools that provide no actual function in the game outside of being able to bypass laser traps in Spy missions.
However, if you replace Telport with Limbo's Banish, it is a surprisingly significant improvement. Despite Decoy's fragility, it has the highest aggro-drawing tendency in the game, so enemies will ignore almost anything to attack it first.
Casting Banish on Decoy is the second part of this puzzle, making Decoy completely invulnerable. This combo single-handedly trivializes missions where you don't need to eliminate enemies to progress, such as Interception or Mobile Defense.
5) Vauban x Spectrosiphon
Warframe's environment in 2023 does not leave much legroom for pure supports. Compared to its early form, the current meta is much more geared toward nukers who dispatch enemies in a jiffy, and crowd control is not as important as it used to be.
However, players who still prefer to endorse a support playstyle will find a good number of tools to play with from the Helminth system. Arguably, the most support angle you can focus on is Energy regeneration.
Vauban, with Gara's Sepctrorage ability, is one of the most intuitive combos in the game. Specifically, it is made possible thanks to the Spectrosiphon augment mod. With it, about half of all enemies within the range of Spectrorage's walls will guarantee an Energy Orb drop upon death.
In effect, you can put down a Bastille to suck in enemies, toss in a Flechetto Orb, and then cast Spectrorage on top to create an enemy blender that prints energy orbs. This is not only one of the most fun playstyles but also provides a much-welcome boon to a squad of four in endurance runs.
