This is a pretty simple build for generating infinite energy for your entire squad, protecting defense objectives, and being generally invulnerable.

How-to/general gameplay loop:

• Bring a good weapon for hitting Tornadoes - primary or secondary preferably, but melee or an archgun also work. This is a necessary step. The build is nonfunctional without a way to deal good damage to Tornadoes.

• Keep Turbulence(your 3) active at all times - almost every attack in the entire game is a projectile, and thus is redirected and blocked by Turbulence. This also protects allies and any defense objectives you happen to be floating near.
  Due to running high range for Spectrorage, Turbulence's range is high enough to entirely block explosive projectiles like Bombard rockets, leaving you only vulnerable to melee attacks.

• Wherever possible, be airborne, to prevent yourself from taking damage from melee attacks.
  If you have excess energy, hold-to-cast Tail Wind(your 1) to float in midair and keep your passive +150% critical chance active.

• Cast Spectrorage(your 2) and hold-to-cast Tornado(your 4) for stationary tornadoes in its center - use this whenever you need to protect a defense objective, an excavator, or just want to turn a group of enemies into a bunch of orbs.
  Spectrorage will attract enemies into itself, which will cause them to be caught up in the tornadoes. Shoot the tornadoes to multiply your critical damage and kill enemies to generate energy orbs through Spectrosiphon - this generates an average of one orb per two enemies, which will pay for itself after an average of fourteen enemies. Or, if using Arcane Energize, an average of four enemies.

Why this choice/other options:

• Replacing Airburst with Spectrorage+Spectrosiphon - High range causes enemies to enter the ring of mirrors but be caught up by tornadoes before they can damage them, allowing for consistent energy generation at the cost of an ability that has no synergy:

• Quick Thinking - With an energy pool of 638 and a way to generate massive amounts of energy efficiently, Quick Thinking prevents any damage that slips past Turbulence(from, say, Lich or Sister abilities) from killing you.

• Low Power Strength - Zephyr functionally does not benefit from Ability Strength - Tornadoes pass 100% of the damage dealt to them to all enemies in range regardless of Ability Strength, and benefit more from a weapon with high critical chance than increasing their mediocre base damage.

• Speed Drift - There are very few Exilus options that are meaningful, as this build scales primarily with weapon damage, and the cast speed bonus makes Turbulence easier to maintain safely.
  If you're concerned about using energy pads, or just don't want to wait around for Energizing Dash, swap Speed Drift for Preparation to spawn with maximum energy.

• P⁠ower Donation - Provides allies with additional ability strength, but makes Spectrorage marginally more fragile. Under normal conditions this is mitigated by Tornadoes. Swap to taste. C⁠orrosive Projection is also useful. A⁠erodynamic is also nice, though the damage reduction is more useful for allies than you.

• Molt Efficiency - Gives higher ability duration than C⁠onstitution, giving the build space for Rolling Guard, further increasing survivability with a panic button.

• Arcane Eruption - Extremely funny and effective, but can be swapped for an Arcane of your choice.

Tips and Tricks:

• Tornadoes pass weapon damage to all enemies in their range - this damage is not ability damage, and thus applies at 100% to ability-resistant enemies such as Ancient Disruptors and, more notably, Arbitation Drones. This allows the build to function with high efficiency in Arbitrations, as shooting the Tornadoes will pass damage directly to Arbitration Drones without needing to aim specifically at them.
  • Tornadoes also pass all status effects dealt by the weapon to enemies in range, which massively multiplies the effect of status effects. In the case of Gas and Blast damage, the AoEs produced can also deal damage to Tornadoes, further increasing the resulting damage.
  • Tornadoes prevent enemy-only punchthrough, such as Arca Plasmor, or Ignis, but not actual punchthrough - if you can hit multiple Tornadoes with a single shot, this will double or even triple the damage dealt. Explosive attacks do count as hitting Tornadoes, which can do utterly absurd amounts of area damage.
  • Similarly, hitting multiple Tornadoes with a single melee attack will pass that damage to every enemy in range, and this ignores Follow Through - hitting three Tornadoes with one melee attack triples the damage dealt.
  • Since Tornadoes pass weapon damage directly to enemies, Augments and weapon passives that trigger off of hits or kills will trigger when attacking them for each enemy hit or killed - this includes effects like Arcane Merciless, Hata-Satya, Bhisaj-Bal, and the Pennant's increased attack speed on heavy attack kill, but not Arcane Deadhead, Brain Storm, Skull Shots, the Knell's Death Knell passive, or similar headshot-based effects.

• Aiming while Tail Wind is active will dramatically slow your movement speed. Crouching, however, will give you a short boost of movement speed in the direction you're going, as if you were airsliding.

• Tail Wind as a channeled ability has an exceptional energy cost and will constantly pull energy orbs to you, so floating high enough that Vacuum or Fetch can only pick up energy orbs directly below you can increase your overall energy efficiency. This will usually not be necessary, however.

• While Tail Wind is being channeled, casting Turbulence or Tornadoes will not interrupt reloading or firing, and you can begin reloading or firing while still in the casting animations for Turbulence and Tornadoes.

Recommended Archon Shards:

• So, if you've been using this build for a while, you've probably realized that it doesn't really need most shards - Amber are the most appealing, for starting with energy or increasing orb value or casting speed, but really even these aren't super necessary for the build. So what do you put on? There's got to be something critical you can do with your two years of stockpiled shards that'll help this Zephyr build out...
  • That's right. 5x Melee Critical Damage Violet Shard. While most warframes find other shards more important, Zephyr is free to take advantage of one of the most powerful shard options - melee crit damage. Five of them provide +250% critical damage, which is significantly more than Organ Shatter and Gladiator Might combined.
• If fully Tauforged, this bonus is +375%.
  • Recommended Melee Build: Venka Prime - Zephyr's Crimson Claws