Navigation

Account

Social

Vauban

MinMaxed | One Man Killing Zone

by last updated 10 months ago

70

Vauban is the model of innovative technology. He deploys clever inventions to provide crowd control. His tenacity and focus make him formidable.

28 VOTES
4 COMMENTS

ITEM RANK

30

60 / 60

APPLY CONDITIONALS

ENERGY
225
HEALTH
370
SHIELD
280
SPRINT SPEED
1
DURATION
100%
EFFICIENCY
100%
RANGE
100%
STRENGTH
100%
ARMOR
160
Damage Reduction
34.8%
EFFECTIVE HIT POINTS
941
Guide
4 Comments
Vauban builds
Builds by TwistedBOLT

MinMaxed | One Man Killing Zone

Need a position fortified but lacking the manpower to enforce the fortification? Call Vauban, the one man kill zone. Vauban's kit allows him to stun-lock rooms of enemies, strip their armour and then gathers them all up nicely on a silver platter, usually served to his 4 automatic nailguns boosted by weapon buffs.

Notes:

  • The umbra forma is not necessary for this build, simply run a higher rank combat discipline.
  • Base bauban is used over the prime prime as the only things prime offers are armour, which is irrelevant, more starting energy, which is only relevant in short missions and more shields which is detrimental. Two meh-gatives and a negative make prime an inferior choice.

Abilities explained:

1: Tesla Nervos: Summon up to 4 mini-rollers that attach to enemies and proc electric in an AOE stunning enemies. Due to the stun effect being periodic the only thing the rollers will do most of the time is slow the enemies down from getting in to your kill zone. Not a bad ability but with so many things demanding your attention already it's often a waste of time and energy.
2: Minelayer: Places one of 4 different mines, each with a specific function (the mines are colour coded).

  • Tether (Blue): Drags enemies to itself, stunning them. This one's great for extending your vortex range in larger rooms.
  • [Flechette] (Red): Shoots randomly in an AOE around itself, coded as a weapon, scales with enemy levels. This is your main damage dealer as it not only scales with enemy level but also most weapon buffs that don't specifically boost a single type of weapon.
  • Vector (Yellow): Basically a meme. Could technically be used to send an enemy off a cliff or to speed you up but it's clunky to use and not worth the effort. Don't cast it.
  • Overdriver (purple): Sticks to the nearest player/companion/specter/operative and provides them with a weapon damage buff that scales with strength. ([Flechette] is coded as a weapon so it gets boosted as well.)
    3: Photon Strike: An FPS destroying amount of particle effects that tickle enemies. Even if you build for this ability it's not great but compared to the DPS output of [Flechette] it's honestly sad.
    4: Bastille: Two skills in one. Bastille and Vortex. If you throw down a Bastille it'll turn in to a vortex when it expires or when you hold 4:
  • Bastille: Suspends enemies in an AOE keeping them from moving or attacking siphoning armour from them and giving them to the caster.
  • Vortex: A massive gathering tool that ragdolls enemies.
    P: [Vauban]'s passive is a global, 25%, separate damage multiplier on stunned or ragdolled enemies that double dips procs. (This buff is multiplicative to banes/roar)

Core:

Range Mods: [Overextended] is mandatory. There's no way around it, the more enemies you can [Reach] with your 2 and 4 the safer the room is and the quicker said enemies will die. [Augur Reach] helps with shield gating due to the augur mod passive on top of the range boost. The second range mod can be considered a flex slot.
Strength Mods Strength heavily boosts [Vauban]'s damage as it: Boosts [Flechette]'s base damage, overdriver's damage boost and bastilles strip speed. [Blind Rage] might be a controversial choice as it makes managing the energy economy harder but that's offset heavily by the subsumes. [Umbral Intensify] is the biggest str mod with no downside so it's the second best choice.
Duration Mod All your skills are duration based and [Primed Continuity] offers just enough duration to not have to spend a second slot on an extra mod.
Arcane Arachne: More than doubles [Flechette] damage for the low cost of hugging a wall for a single instant every 30 seconds.
[Combat Discipline] and Arcane Avenger: Killing enemies with your melee will make you lose a single HP due to discipline and give you a chance to trigger avenger. Avenger, being a global weapon buff works on your [Flechette] mines making them crit almost every hit. Taking damage also allows you to pick up health orbs and convert them to energy without requiring synth fiber on your pet, a mod that you don't have access to in content such as the circuit.

Alternatives:

  • [Enemy Radar]: If you don't care about the arcane avenger interaction you can change the aura to [Enemy Radar] for the sake of better map awareness. Keep in mind that if you have no pet and no way to damage yourself dispensary + equilibrium becomes a liability.
  • Vigorous swap boosts Flechettes although it's additive to arachne and is somewhat tedious to use.
  • [Stretch] can swap out augur reach. Although the 15% extra range sounds nice the augur mod set boost's too good to drop so I'd advise against it.
  • Trainsient Fortitude and Augur Secrets can be used instead of the strength mods if you have no access to Dispensary or an umbra forma.
  • Augur Message/[Constitution] if you're feeling particularly lazy and want to cast less often then these are worth considering but the difference is so minor it really doesn't help much.
  • [Natural Talent] boosts cast speed which is what you're doing most of the time anyways. Although the addition of archon shards it's harder to justify a modslot for it.
  • [Tek Collateral]: [Tek Collateral] doubles your weapon crit damage, as [Flechette] is coded as a weapon it also benefits from this buff. This mod can be rather clunky as you have to rely on your pets derpy AI for a damage boost but when it does work it's amazing. If you're playing a mission that makes camping impossible the mod is basically worthless but vauban primarily shines in camping anyways.

Non-Alternatives:

  • [Tesla Bank] is an augment for nervos that absorbs all damage done to an enemy with a nervos attached to them and discharges it as an electric proc on their death due to this damage being raw damage and relatively slow in its execution it's better to just skip.
  • Energy Conversion: You cast entirely too much to make use of this mod.
  • [Narrow Minded]: Range is too important.

Economy:

Dispensary and [Equilibrium]: [Vauban]'s massive energy needs need to be met and these two together are the least painless way to do so.
[Primed Flow] boosts your energy reserves by enough to allow you to get a full perimeter secured without needing extra energy. It also serves as a buffer preventing you from screwing up and not having enough energy to cast your Dispensary.

Alternatives:

  • A subsumed Spectrorage with it's augment [Spectrosiphon] instead of [Equilibrium] can also do the job of providing you with enough energy to function but it's much less reliable, completely fails at times due to allies killing enemies away from you and is just overall clunkier to use.
  • Arcane Energize can be used to help out the economy but your arcane slots are too valuable to be spent on it. If you don't have avenger or arachne then sure, go for it.

Note: If you're using vauban prime but not using zenurik and don't want to pop a pad at the start of mission de-rank [Blind Rage] by 1 and forma the last slot which should give you enough energy to cast Dispensary with just the starting energy alternatively you could just increase the rank of the aura. (Reminder: Every unspent capacity on the frame increases your starting energy by 5)

Survivability:

  • Your 4 and the tether mine: provide so much lockdown that any additional survivability is just a charry on top.
  • Primed Sure Footed: prevents you from being stunlocked and killed.
  • Decaying Dragon Key: Lowering shields makes shield gating much easier.
  • Spoiler mode: Magus Lockdown to stun enemies and Magus Repair/Elevate to heal from stray shots on lower levels dashes as a repositioning or damage dodging tool.
  • [Equilibrium] and Dispensary counter the damage you do to yourself with Combat Discipline.

Alternatives:
If you think you're lacking survivability and/or dislike the amount of clunk that the tek mod adds to the table you can remove tek collateral for rolling guard.
If you're using vazarin it's dash and blast can also help you stay alive.

Notes:

  • Warframe is a game where taking damage is mostly optional and revives are plentiful and are a resource to be used. This means that it's perfectly fine to die from time to time as long as you aren't failing missions.

Quality of Life:

None... Maybe Prime [Sure Footed] counts here for the sake of self stuns with explosive weapons but that's about it.

Alternatives:
[Firewalker] or another mobility mod can be used to speed you up, not that you'll need it considering you'll be camping most of the time.

Subsumes:

What skills to swap out for a subsume: Photon Strike, it's flashy but offers little to nothing. Second best choice is Tesla Nervos due to it's lack of reliability but I'd advise against it.

Any subsume other than Dispensary (and maybe Spectrorage) demands a full build rework as the economy becomes completely unmanageable without the influx of energy.
If you were to rework the entire build some good choices would be, eclipse, roar, Pillage and a few other commonly used subsumes.

Archon Shards:

Mandatory shards: At least a single casting speed shard.

Red: Ability Duration, Ability Strength
Yellow: Casting Speed
Blue: Energy Max (Only recommended when stacked as a replacement for [Primed Flow])

Gameplay:

Start the mission by finding a way to get enough energy to cast dispensary (orbs, zenurik dash, pads, weapons that give energy) then search for a good spot to camp, (Ideally you'd want a location where the enemy doesn't have line of sight of you until they go in to your vortex). After you refilled your energy from dispensary repeat the following until the mission is done or you get bored: Throw a 4 in the middle of the room and 2 or more blue mines on the edges of your 4 (so that enemies will be dragged in to it) towards locations that the enemies will come from. Throw 4 red mines around your 4, throw a purple mine on yourself (and your allies), maintain your 3 for energy, (Cast 1 if you have nothing better to do) and trigger your buffs by hugging a wall every 30 sec (standing in your cats circle if you're using tek) and with the murder machine started maintenance is all you have to worry about.

Notes:

  • Big thanks to Sealy and Booben for helping with this build.