by F1ameBlade — last updated 3 years ago
Take to the skies with this golden bird of destruction.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
Zephyr Gameplay Guide[Zephyr] combines crowd control and situational defensive tools to provide her entire team with great quality of life boosts. Most of her damage comes from specific gimmicks tied to each ability but a good build can pull them off without jumping through too many hoops. The passive provides a free critical chance bonus which can benefit many meta weapons.
📝 Build Overview 📝 Tornadoes can multiply your damage when they overlap with each other on an enemy. There are many ways to set this up but this build focuses on the low Range variant. It works against single targets with stationary Tornadoes and large groups with wandering ones.
🔢 Helminth Options 🔢 Tail Wind is a decent ability but it's the weakest link in this setup. Airburst is necessary to boost the size and range of [Funnel Clouds] but if you aren't using that augment then it becomes a useless ability.
Roar synergizes with strong status procs that do damage over time. This double dips with your Tornadoes to instantly kill status vulnerable enemies to the level cap. This is far less effective on bosses or status immune enemies.
Shuriken with the [Seeking Shuriken] augment can strip armor from status immune enemies to allow your weapons to burst them down with raw damage. It's convenient that Tornado now groups these enemies together so they all get hit by the armor strip at the same time. This can save you Strength mods but costs an augment mod slot.
Eclipse is the strongest damage buff but requires adequate environment light to use properly.
[Xata]'s Whisper is a decent damage buff with the ability to do Void procs. This can be used for several different strategies but it mainly shines when used against Sentients.
Nourish provides a bit of healing along with a reasonable Toxin damage bonus. It can have negative synergy with some weapon loadouts as it can change the element combination into something suboptimal. Shock and Smite are similar but require an augment slot.
Elemental Ward and Warcry are decent buffs but have redundancy with Turbulence. Be careful with Warcry's attack speed bonus as Turbulence has issues with some attacks in melee range.
Other abilities are decent but provide a lot of redundancy due to the existence of operator mode and the previously mentioned abilities.
📊 Ability Stats 📊 Strength and Duration are the primary stats on buff focused builds. Range may need to be above the bare minimum to keep Turbulence consistent but this comes at the cost of Efficiency.
⏲️ Duration ⏲️ Duration allows your buffs to last longer and increases the uptime of her crowd control abilities. [Narrow Minded] and [Primed Continuity] should be enough for most situations and there usually isn't enough mod slots to fit in additional Duration due to diminishing returns.
⛽ Efficiency ⛽ Efficiency is boosted by [Streamline] to keep the energy economy in check. Tornado is expensive and you're usually using it multiple times to set up combos along with the rest of your abilities. Fleeting Expertise is stronger but it has negative synergy with the multiple buffs used on the build.
📏 Range 📏 Range is hurt by [Narrow Minded] which usually doesn't matter on solo buff builds. We intentionally lower the Range on this build as it synergizes with summoning stationary Tornadoes near each other for additional damage. Turbulence has issues at the bare minimum Range so you can replace a flex mod for Stretch or Augur Reach to keep it consistent.
💪 Strength 💪 Strength is necessary to get the most out of your buffs. Tornado doesn't scale absorbed or split damage with Strength so mods should be tailored to the subsumed ability or the Jet Stream augment.
↔️ Alternate Playstyles ↔️ Most builds utilize tools that can be swapped out to serve the same purpose albeit in a different manner. The following suggestions are an outline and aren't exhaustive.
🔧 Mods 🔧⚙️ Arcanes ⚙️ Arcane Energize synergizes with [Primed Flow] and keeps your energy topped off. It can be replaced if you have other strong forms of energy recovery either through abilities or other energy support frames. Offensive arcanes like Arcane Avenger or Arcane [Fury] are usually the call.
Arcane Aegis is an additional source of survivability and synergizes with shield gating. It can be replaced if you're relying on Operator mode or Rolling Guard instead of your shields. Tertiary offensive arcanes like Arcane Strike or Arcane Velocity are usually the call.
📋 Final Notes 📋 [Zephyr]'s passive is easy to activate and the game rewards you for constantly jumping around and staying in the air. Enemy accuracy is lowered and your hitbox fits more easily inside the Turbulence shield. The decreased gravity can be annoying to deal with in some tilesets as you can float too high and get stuck against geometry on the ceiling.
Hovering with Tail Wind and aiming with a weapon will cause you to do an aim glide animation that decreases the size of your hitbox. This can make even minimum range Turbulence builds have a consistent chance to redirect projectiles. Doing a slide while hovering has the same effect.
Turbulence has issues redirecting projectiles at extremely low Range values. Anything above 60% should allow you to redirect most attacks but some large rockets will still hit you even when you're at baseline Range. Recommending a Range threshold for every mission would significantly increase the length of this guide so it's best to find a combination of mods that suits your playstyle.
Tornado now holds enemies in a similar manner to other Vortex style crowd control abilities. [Funnel Clouds] can have the same affect by throwing Airburst at the smaller Tornadoes to increase their range and give them the ability to lift enemies. Shooting at multiple overlapping Tornadoes to hit a single enemy is a strong combo that can exponentially multiply your damage. This works against entire groups if you've placed your Tornadoes in chokepoints or if you've manipulated their spawns to be near each other.
🔄 Linked Builds 🔄 📧 Contact Information 📧 Remnants of the Void / Phantom Vanguard Discord Server
If you have any questions or concerns please contact us through the Discord server. We appreciate all forms of support and welcome any criticism designed to help us improve. If you enjoyed this guide you can also support us by giving it a 👍 and sharing it with your friends!This build is part of a collection that you can either find on the builder's profile or through a special bot we have in the Discord server. We have builds for every item in the game and we're adding new ones frequently. Come check it out!
🏆 Credits 🏆 🛑 Disclaimers 🛑 This build may make certain assumptions about mechanics that can change after a patch. Multiple unnecessary forma may be used to facilitate more options across multiple builds with one polarity plan. Certain sub-optimal mods may be run to fit them into the forma polarity plan. We do not make builds that purposely attempt to abuse mechanics that aren't intended by the developers. None of these previous statements are excuses for a fundamentally incorrect build and we ask that you please contact us when we're wrong. We do not consent to anyone other than the original author of this guide posting it without permission.
