Warframe Protea guide: How to get the new time-bending frame

The latest frame added since The Deadlock Protocol is none other than the tech-savvy Warframe Protea. With a bevy of gadgets at her disposal, Protea has a few different supporting and survivalist play styles from which to choose. Much like her own experiments as a chrono-gadgeteer, the more time you put into mastering Protea, the more you’ll get out of her kit.

With this guide I'll be breaking down the skills at the new frame's disposal, how to farm Warframe Protea parts, and how to put together builds that'll make the most of her abilities. So, here's everything you need to know about the master tactician and gadgeteer.

Warframe Protea abilities

The constantly turning cog in Protea’s abilities is her passive. With every three abilities she casts, the fourth will be powered with a bonus 100 percent Ability Strength bonus. In other words, Protea demands a constant upkeep of abilities for you to see her full potential. If you love to dash around the battlefield while managing resources and controlling foes at the same time, Protea will be a natural fit.

Grenade Fan is Protea’s first ability, and it has a few different tricks to it. Tapping the key sees Protea unleash three devices in a cone-shaped area in front of her, called Shrapnel Vortex. Moments later, the devices summon swirling vortexes of lacerating energy, dealing constant slashing damage and staggering any enemies who wander too close. Holding the key down changes this ability to Shield Satellites. Here, each device attaches to friendly frames (including yourself) when you pass by, granting you an overcharging shield generator. Even in the case of your shields being broken, these powerful pieces of tech will sacrifice themselves to extend the invulnerability time to by two seconds.

What’s especially nice about the satellites is that they do not require line of sight to pick up, so you can use them in plenty of sticky situations from behind cover to make a quick recovery and then jump back into the fray. With her passive ability primed, Shrapnel Vortex will see a huge boost in damage-per-second, and Shield Satellites’ burst shield restore on hit and restore per second will increase as well.

Protea’s second ability is a more straightforward damage dealer: Blaze Artillery. It deploys a hovering plasma artillery cannon that will automatically fire upon targets in a 30-metre range. You can have up to three active at one time, and you’ll want to place them in a location where they can get as many shots off before expiring as possible. Besides doing Heat damage by default, Blaze Artillery’s overall damage jumps by 50 percent for each successful hit against all enemies in the plasma stream. This stacks with subsequent plasma charges. What’s great about each turret is that you can fire and forget them; you can place them in dangerous and populated territory and then focus on your other more timely abilities. With proper coordination during Protea’s passive ability proc, Blaze Artillery will deal even more damage-per-shot.

With Dispensary, Protea unleashes a static device that generates three pickups after a short period of time: empowered health orbs, universal ammo packs, and energy orbs. For its duration the device attempts to prioritise replenishing the specific pickups taken, and there's a small chance that a second copy of the pickup will drop upon use. Keeping the Dispensary rolling lets you and your team build small havens in which to regroup and return to the fight as you see fit. While Protea’s passive ability is charged, there’s an additional chance for extra pickups dropping, too.

With Protea’s ultimate, Temporal Anchor, there's no holding back. Once cast, Protea sets a rewind point at her casting point where, after a duration of time, to which she will eventually return, along with her health, energy, and status effects. At the same time, when returning to the anchor, Protea also triggers a temporal implosion, dealing damage that she dealt prior to the rewind. Even if she dies before the rewind, the ability activates, bringing Protea back to the anchor with her status as she was when she cast the ability (with significant cost to her health).

How to farm Warframe Protea parts

Now that The Deadlock Protocol is here, you have the chance to craft this exciting frame. First you’ll need to be at Mastery Rank 4 and have completed the Vox Solaris Quest from Fortuna. Then you’ll receive her blueprint and can move onto finding her components. You’ll find all of them in the Granum Void. 

As all of them are on Rotation C, you need 75 kills in each area. That means you should be checking out Granum Void, Extended Granum Void, and Nightmare Granum Void. Doing each about 9-10 times should net you the Neuroptics, Chassis, and Systems Blueprint, respectively. 

Her component parts contain many common material requirements around Credits, Salvage, Alloy plates, and more. Just make sure you’ve not been slacking in your Warframe Cubic Diode farming. Also, don’t forget to have at least 12 Morphics available, which you can pick up as a rare component from Mercury, Mars, Europa, or Pluto. 

Warframe Protea build tips

With such powerful abilities and a built-in passive affecting Ability Strength, building towards that in her mods is a natural choice for a strong Warframe Protea build. Streamline is also a good move for anyone who really wants to lean into the casting/controlling sort of role. 

Among my favourite builds are the self-sufficient ones, letting Protea handle more endgame content on her own without running out of energy. You might find yourself making multiple builds for her depending on what you’re up against, and it's fun to experiment.