The sound of the wind, rushing through the tall grass; the gentle breeze from the sky that becomes a cutting word – she is the blade, an instrument of invisible lethality, far more subtle than a whisper in the eye of the storm. Zephyr Prime arrives in Digital Extremes’ space-ninja simulator MMO-hybrid game Warframe with thunderous applause.
Zephyr is the twentieth warframe in WF to receive the prime treatment. With this process, older warframes released in their original versions receive an overall upgrade and their parts enter into the WF economy as tradable between players.
In this review, WF players will learn a little bit about how to acquire or build their own Zephyr Prime, how she handles, what her abilities are and where she fits into the ecosystem of Warframe. We will also explore some of Zyphyr’s history and the general sentiment of the community, while finally, we will provide community-sourced advice on how to build her.
Look up, Tenno, and join us as we explore the sky with Zephyr.
“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the disheveled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”
― W.B. Yeats, The Land of Heart’s Desire
Acquisition
As with every release of a primed warframe, there are two ways to obtain it: buying it directly from Digital Extremes in Zephyr Prime Access or by getting her parts from relics and then building them.
The Zephyr Prime Access that includes the warframe costs $79.99, includes a reactor in the frame and a warframe slot as well as a fully-built Tiberon Prime and Kronen Prime. As an incentive to buy it this way, DE also includes 2,625 platinum that can be spent on in-game items.
For those without money, getting Zephyr Prime is a question of getting blueprints for her parts and then building them.
The relics in which Zephyr Prime can be found are as follows: Blueprint from Neo Z1 (rare), Neuroptics from Lith H2 (common), Chassis from Neo K1 (uncommon) and Systems from Lith Z1 (rare). These relics are the same across all platforms.
In total, to build, Zephyr Prime will require a smattering of various different materials, of which the most expensive may be three neurodes, two nitain, two tellurium, 300 oxium and 550 cryotic. Also, the Systems blueprint will require 2 argon crystals to build, so it’s best to plan for that ahead of time.
Aesthetics
As for looks, Zephyr Prime takes on the appearance of being built out of layers of wings, with feather-like appendages and the expected golden-primed rims. The cast of her body primary color covers most of the frame, with her secondary providing large portions, and the tertiary dye channel running into lines and rivulets across the body.
Zephyr’s most striking features include feather-like flanges that extend from her arms which extend when she’s in motion (especially when in flight) and “tail feathers” on her posterior. It almost appears as if she’s wearing a swallow-tail coat with metallic caps on the ends. Finally, her metal-plated heeled boots have two small jet-booster nozzles at what would be the distal end of her fibula that afterburn with her energy color.
Her default helmet is still a “birdlike” swept-back beak portions, a fin down the middle, and flaring out extensions on the sides. In some ways, it looks a lot more like a fish or a shark than the bird and beak that her frame exemplars, but it’s possible to change out the prime helmet for other helmets on the market. The helmet also has a “ruff” of feathers sweep out of her collar area and they are not fixed, instead, they vibrate slightly when she moves like a thick feathered trim atop a shawl.
The color channels on Zephyr Prime make her a little bit difficult to color for. However, it is possible to produce striking effects by making primary and secondary similar tones, with a contrast color in the tertiary and a neutral color in the accents (which affects the metal prime bits).
Her frame should work well with a lot of the various accouterments and attachments, for example she looks great with the feather-like Avia parts, although that might seem simply thematic. Ki’Teer Foros, Eos Prime and Prisma Daedalus also look alright when attached to her shoulders, although the Eos Prime spurs can look a little weird. Some might even be able to pull off Naberus attachments, although bat-winged attachments on a bird-themed frame could feel out of place.
As for syandana things could get a little weirder because when flying about it will be flapping in the wind like some sort of crazed Superman pose so although capes will work well, sometimes thinner could be better. Of course, the Igaro, swallowtail cape, looks good, as can the Nave, Pakal, Udyat, Asa and Dex Nouchali. The tiny, ribbon-like Mozi or thin dual-tailed Vistapa Prime also have an interesting effect when colored appropriately.
In most cases, syandana using a striking or contrast color will look better on Zephyrs designed with a color palate that where the colors are all near tones (or in the same color group). Meaning that attachments and syandana could be set in the contrast color or designed to match the accent color of the primed metallic bits.
Our reviewers managed to get some remarkable effects by using a dark primary color with brighter contrast colors and then matched that into the syandana, which was designed to become the stand-out color. The effect can be even more prominent because most of the time players are looking at the back of the warframe anyway so a splash of color helps distinguish Zephyr from dark surroundings or luminous explosions.
Abilities
As with all warframes, Zephyr Prime inherits the four abilities of her normal variant and she can use them to great effect. As follows is a rundown of Zepyhr’s abilities, their effects and synergies.
At ‘1’ is Tail Wind, which launches Zephyr into the air with tremendous speed in the direction of the reticle – as a result, players can use this ability to rapidly traverse long distances on a map. While dashing she will battering ram enemies out of the way, knock them down, and apply slash damage to them. Casting Tail Wind while airborne costs less energy than the initial cast.
If Tail Wind is activated in the air, facing the ground, Zephyr will perform a dive bomb. She will dash towards the ground and slam into it, causing 500 base impact damage (increasing with dive height) and knockdown enemies nearby.
Tail Wind can also be activated from the ground by holding the hotkey to “charge up,” after which Zephyr leaps into the air and then hovers – nearby enemies are hit with impact damage and knocked down. Afterwards, she will hover at a maximum height of 12.5 meters for 10 seconds (at full charge).
The augment for Tail Wind, [Target Fixation] increases the damage bonus for the ability for every enemy hit by it when dashing.
At ‘2’ is Airburst, which causes Zephyr to launch a set of swirling condensed air projectiles forward with one hand. Upon impact, the airburst explodes inflicting damage, knockback, and will ragdoll enemies caught in the area of effect.
The Airburst ability does synergize with Zephyr’s ultimate (see below) to create larger tornadoes. It is useful to know that Airburst’s cost is halved when Zephyr is airborne and the ability will not shatter Corpus windows.
At ‘3’ is Turbulence, where Zephyr calls upon the wind to form a shield of turbulent air that alters the trajectory of incoming projectiles making her essentially invulnerable to all bullets and plasma weapons. The shield will even deflect Bombard rockets – but the shield does not protect Zephyr if one explodes nearby.
The augment for Turbulence, [Jet Stream] increases movement speed and projectile speed for nearby tenno – up to 40 percent for movement and 100 percent for projectiles. Players have used this augment with Zephyr in the past in order to greatly increase the effectiveness of weapons such as the Ogris and Tonkor.
Her ultimate Tornado, at ‘4’, unleashes a storm of cyclones that crowd control enemies, lifting them into the air, and inflict damage (distributed between impact, puncture and slash with a high proc chance). These tornadoes spawn and wander the battlefield hunting for enemies across their duration and will “follow” the player’s reticle, allowing the nearest tornado to be directed to move from place to place somewhat.
Firing into a tornado will spread bullet damage to all the enemies currently caught in it and also adds elemental damage to that tornado (also changing the energy color). Damage dealt to the tornado, including status and critical, is distributed 100 percent to all enemies trapped in the tornado.
Zephyr’s Airburst ability synergizes with this skill, if an Airburst is aimed at a tornado, it will double in height.
The augment for Tornado, [Funnel Clouds] increases the number of active tornadoes that Zephyr summons but decreases their size and removes their ability to pick up enemies. With Funnel Clouds, a player can add up to eight additional (50 percent smaller) tornadoes for a total of 12 funnel clouds.
Handling
To say that Zephyr Prime is a light frame is an understatement: she possesses a sort of low-gravity quality that makes her “feel” different than any other warframe to play. Although she’s reasonably agile on the ground and moves with a noticeable fleet-footedness, she really begins to shine when she’s in the air – when a bullet jump or an aim-glide becomes a surreal experience.
Zephyr embodies a strange joy of movement when leaping and bounding through an environment. Her lighter-than-air effect means that she leaps further and glides longer than other frames. As a result, space-ninja acrobatics and mid-air direction changes are almost effortless with her, it makes her a true merriment to simply bound into the air and soar.
However, this also means that tenno will probably be getting themselves slammed into walls, stuck in rafters – stuck above doors – or throw themselves out of the map with cheerful abandon. Zephyr’s alacrity of air-movement and the encouragement to throw caution to the wind means there’s a little bit of a learning curve to get those “wind legs” when getting used to her movement mechanics.
One place that Zephyr’s movement mechanics really stand out is on the Plains of Eidolon. With her Tail Wind ability – lunching herself into the sky or across the landscape – means that she traverses space with extreme ease. On the Plains her dive bomb ability is also a joy to use, rocketing into the sky only to crash back to earth to scatter bands of Grineer is extremely satisfying.
The Airblast capability is a lot like having a glaive on hand. The ability is one-handed, which means that it can be used while reloading without interruption. It’s rather like an airborne grenade that can just be tossed out to blast a group of enemies when in a pinch. Its biggest problem is that Airblast can explode on nearby objects and never reach its intended target in tight corridors or through doors, so it takes some finesse to use.
Using Airblast on her Tornado ultimate will also double the height of a tornado – although it’s hard to say exactly what utility this provides exactly.
At first glance, Zephyr feels a little bit fragile. She has only 75 armor and 450 health and shield at max rank; that high shield can come in really handy when modding her for survivability. This is where her Turbulence ability becomes very useful: it makes her basically completely invulnerable to pretty much every projectile in the game.
It is quite possible to face down an entire corridor filled with Grineer with Turbulence on and not feel a thing. Add in the augment [Jet Stream] (see above) and suddenly this ability makes Tonkor and other explosive projective weapons things of terror and fire.
There are lots of ways to use Turbulence for normal gameplay. For example, it works as a nice temporary invulnerability when moving amid ranged enemies – especially when sheer mobility will just not cut it – or as a panic button for those situations where you’ve just gotten too much attention.
With her ultimate, Zephyr becomes really interesting. The normal tornadoes explode onto the battlefield four in total and with often spawn on or near enemies, sucking them up into the air and ragdolling them. This can be extremely useful anytime enemies cluster up and can therefore be very useful in Defense.
The Tornado ability is affected by both range and duration mods, meaning that they can last a long time and field far and wide. However, there’s something to be said for strong duration and power strength so that the damage inflicted goes as high as possible, while also providing some amazing crowd control.
The augment for Tornado, [Funnel Clouds] removes the CC capability from the tornadoes – which seems like a bit of a let down for how good it is – but it does put 12 total whirlwinds into the field. As a result, it makes it possible to totally flood an area with massive damage and provide a lot of area denial. Experience with this augment may vary, but players might want to mod more heavily for that power strength to increase its total damage.
Sentiment
Although it seems as if the community has been mixed in reception about Zephyr, overall sentiment about the warframe and her abilities is extremely positive. She was released in February 2014 and since then has received multiple changes – especially to how her Turbulence ability works, which has caused some confusion amid the community.
Rob from A Gay Guy Plays commented that he is lukewarm but positive about Zephyr: there are parts he likes and parts he’s not too fond of. In his video review from 2014, he said that he believes the frame falls just short of its potential. During his update, after Zephyr received a rework, he said, “I feel like Zephyr is about 10 minutes out, really close to the party, she’s ready to come out and play.”
In his video review, Tactical Potato said that most of Zephyr’s kit does not work for him and would rather many of her abilities get replaced with something else. (Nothing was replaced with the rework really, but Airburst was added.) He also really liked Turbulence — and its Jet Stream augment, see below — but found little love for the other parts.
In his pre-rework video review, MCGamerCZ, recommends Zephyr as a very fun and surprisingly tanky frame — she is extremely mobile, and Turbulence, he notes, is an amazing survival capability. Although, he did point out that the Tornado flaw that sometimes tornadoes would fly into walls.
About the rework, Borzime found flaws with most of Zephyr’s kit, in particular he did not find the reworked Tail Wind hover ability that useful and said reworked tornadoes were not that reliable (but though them less annoying than before). He concluded that Zephyr is “totally functional,” but that tornadoes really needed significant improvement.
Twitch streamer GYFE told the voces that Zephyr is “one of the most underappreciated frames in the game.” He said, “Her Turbulence ability makes her nearly invulnerable to a number of enemies found in the game. And her ultimate is one of the better, more reliable crowd control abilities in the game – you can shoot all your damage right into the whirlwind and go to town on them.”
As for why she’s underappreciated, GYFE said, “I think she’s underappreciated because she was really underwhelming for a very long time.” But that could change, he said, “Zephyr is a much better frame now. Especially with quality of life improvements to her ultimate and other parts of her kit. I don’t know why I have not gone back to her.”
J.J. Martyr from the Twitch stream BagmenGaming told the voces, “I love Zephyr. She is the most fun for a worthless frame out there – she doesn’t really do anything.”
To explain, he went into his thoughts on her kit. “She has crowd control, right, but her crowd control is not the greatest. She has an airbomb, but it’s not the greatest. Her buff ability, still not the greatest, but it’s there. And her one ability is movement – even though it’s really, really fast, I’ve seen better.”
However, even Martyr doesn’t have zero love for Zephyr.
“That being said, I just said four negative things about the frame: I absolutely love the frame,” he said. “You can do so much fun stuff with the frame, fly around, dive bomb people and have fun. So, for just having fun? Very good. For utility and support in a group? Useless.”
Lizzy from the Dragon Fangs clan in Warframe also echoes the sentiment that Zephyr is a fun frame to play.
“I think Zephyr is an incredibly fun and useful frame,” she said. “Much like Saryn, I feel like I can bring her to defense or a survival. Her abilities make her easy and interesting to play. I can’t compare her to Valkyr quite yet, as Valkyr is by baby. However, I can say that modded right and equipped with reliable weapons, she will be as effective as a Saryn.”
However, Lizzy notes that Zephyr has had issues with customization and aesthetics.
“One thing I am not too happy about it the customization,” she added. “I think that she is very hard to customize and her alternative helmets for the most part don’t look so good. I also find it sad that community has not shown her much love with the Tennogen items. Here’s hoping for a change. “
To sum it all up: Zephyr is considered a very fun and effective frame, making her look rad is a bit difficult, but not impossible – the community sees her as an underused and potentially underappreciated frame, but she has a lot of silver lining amid her stormclouds.
Build Advice
For builds, Zephyr Prime comes with an astonishing number of polarities, adding two additional polarities on top of what Zephyr already receives. Once built, by default, she arrives with two Madurai (V), one Vazarin (D) and one Naramon (dash). Finally, her aura polarity is Vazarin (D). Assume that all builds below necessarily require an Orokin Reactor; if any need forma, how many will be noted in the explanation.
Lizzy, Dragon Fangs:
“Since most of her abilities depend on the time and they are quite weak, if they are not strengthened, I put on the ability strength as well as duration mods. She is also quite squishy without the health, armor and shield mods.
“The build I did for her makes her good for solo play and Defenses. However, with Defenses, she cannot be alone, she needs a squad.
“She could benefit from whatever arcane that makes her fast. One bad thing that can get in a way is her speed when she runs. She is very slow, and if you jump up, she takes forever to come down. So perhaps a gravity mod, if there was one.”
This build requires no forma, leaves open the exilus slot and one slot open with 12 capacity. This leaves the build open to adding any number of augments (such as [Funnel Clouds]) or mods that affect movement speech such as [Rush] or [Armored Agility].
MaxirionV, Dragon Fangs:
“Here’s my idea. I’ve never touched Zephyr, but I had the idea to make her as fun as possible to navigate the Plains with. Which means flight. Lots of flight. So, I buffed what I thought would do the job: strength, range, and duration, and then put the rest into survival because she’s squishy.”
As for changing approaches using this build, Maxirion said, “I think if you’re feeling particularly ballsy, drop some more range and strength into it and see if that gives you more lift and distance from one flight power usage.
“Probably have to sacrifice vital or redirection, though.”
This build requires three forma – and after the first forma, the Vazarin (D) polarity in the aura slot can be swapped out for a Naramon (dash) polarity.
J.J. Martyr, BagmenGaming:
Martyr’s Zephyr build works around extreme mobility — and maximizing fun parkour and being able to get from here to there as fast as possible. It functions by adding parkour speed, increased energy cap (with [Primed Flow]) and extra durability while in the air (with [Agility Drift]).
Of course, the build also includes [Heavy Impact] for that extra slam when hitting the ground using the Dive Bomb ability. Martyr says that this build is purely for having fun; it works great on the Plains but only a few other missions, such as Excavations if you want to run a battery in seconds.
This build requires two forma.
Conclusion
“This is Zephyr, light, yet deceivingly lethal.
Zephyr brings graceful destruction to the battlefield. Look up, Tenno.”
— Lotus
The Zephyr Prime warframe sits in a strange space in the ecosystem of frames as a highly mobile combatant who brings the invisible power of wind. She is lithe, swift and fragile – but at the same time can devastate entire crowds with cyclones or stare down a hail of bullets without flinching.
Looking at the sentiment about Zephyr, it’s clear that it’s hard for people to pin her down. She doesn’t do a significant amount of damage and although she’s extremely mobile that mobility comes at a cost with her “lightweight” movement.
Options for building Zephyr for different playstyles appear extensive. It’s possible to make her hit really hard and lock down entire groups or deny large areas with funnel cloud bombing. It’s also possible to build her to become an extremely mobile, bullet deflecting falcon sweeping up Grineer and Corpus sparrows across the battlefield.
She also couples extremely well, still, with explosive weapons, using her abilities to stay out of harm’s way amid the clouds even as she bombards the ground.
These elements put together make Zephyr a fun but difficult-to-play frame that has only been made a little bit better with a primed version.
Look up, Tenno, because Zephyr is the unseen blade to whom the grass of the Plains bow, makes the strong oak tremble and whispers razor thin bloodshed, like a whirling scythe to cut down the enemies of the Origin System.
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