by Houndlore — last updated a year ago
Protea knows all about protection. Her vast arsenal inflicts damage and provides ally support. She can even manipulate time itself.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
(Lua's Prey and [Citrine]'s Last Wish Update)
The last two updates introduced new arcanes but none of them seem worth adding to the current build. The one for consideration is Arcane Blessing (On Health Pickup: +24 Health. Stacks up to 50x. ) which could work as a niche case against Infested missions, but I personally feel that you'd get more out of other arcanes.
Veilbreaker arrives and we get new toys to play with in the form of Archon Shards and Archon Mods. As such, there will be a couple of build changes to account for, and I'll list them here. Do note that the following changes here are optional, the old build still scales well up to the current gameplay. Additionally, these new updates to the build assume that you have the corresponding archon shards to make up for what they replaced.
Replaced [Natural Talent] with [Archon Vitality]. [Blaze] Artillery will melt enemies faster with this mod now. [Augur Reach] is now the "flexible" mod slot that you can replace with for augments on Helminth abilities. Credits to Corrosive_Sage for the suggestion.
Replaced [Preparation] with [Cunning Drift] or [Speed Drift]. [Preparation]'s role was simply to ensure that [Protea] had enough starting energy to cast her Dispensary, shield grenades, and start the "unlimited energy" cycle. That role is now filled by an archon shard.
Added "D" polarity for [Archon Vitality] and removed the exilus polarity. If you were following the previous version of the build, [Cunning Drift] had a different polarity as [Preparation] so you might have to pop another forma or so.
As a spellcaster frame, [Protea] absolutely wants the buffs from the Amber Archon Shards (dropped by Nira). In particular, two of the mods replaced in this new build ([Preparation] and [Natural Talent]) are all effects that can be covered by Amber Archon Shards. Crimson Archon Shards are also desirable if you want to squeeze out stats. The following are the archon shard effects that you want on Protea:
At least 1 shard to "x% Maximum Energy Filled on Spawn" especially if you replaced Preparation with Cunning Drift
At least 2 shards to "x% Casting Speed" especially if you replaced [Natural Talent] with [Archon Vitality]
The rest of the slot can be anything you want. I personally suggest Crimson Shard's x% Ability Duration; because of diminishing returns, [Protea] will feel the effects of duration more than Ability Strength. Or, if you want something memeworthy, consider filling it up with casting speed. Have fun with it!
The rest of the text below are written from the original version of this guide.
It's been a while since the AoZ update dropped, and along with that came some ability-friendly arcanes that our dear spellcaster Protea loves. This personal build of mine focuses on amplifying her abilities. This will also serve as a guide on how to play Protea, or at least one of the many ways to play this amazing Warframe.
If you like a Warframe whose gameplay...
Revolves around casting abilities a lot
Can easily provide survivability to herself and the team with a quick shield restore
Can wipe a room clean in 2-3 seconds with deployable abilities
Can easily sustain her energy requirements
Then you will absolutely love using Protea!
[Protea] has a well balanced kit that can fit nearly any type of gameplay. In my opinion, she can ace all missions types except Spy/Rescue, considering none of her kit offers anything in terms of stealth (although if cleaning an entire room quickly counts as stealth, then why not?)
Her passive makes it so that every 4th ability cast is given +100% strength. This can counteract some Helminth penalties such as Roar and Eclipse, making them almost as if she was the original frame casting them. It makes her very synergetic with a lot of infuseable abilities.
Grenade Fan is a very spammable ability. Tap the skill to spawn 3 grenades that will not only cause slash in an area but also lightly stagger some enemies. It is worth nothing that each grenade can stack, meaning you could easily create a dead zone by just spamming a couple of these in a small area.
Hold Grenade Fan to transform the grenades into shield grenades, that can be picked up by allies, sentinels/companions, and yourself. It restores and quickly regenerates your shields up to your maximum overshields. It also synergizes with shieldgating as it effectively resets them.
Blaze Artillery is your room cleaner ability. Simply point, summon, and watch as your mini-turret demolishes nearly everything in its line of sight. Every enemy it hits builds up its multiplier, so it scales well even in Steel Path as enemies go by the horde there.
Dispensary literally the reason why most people build [Protea] and chuck her into the Helminth. Strength and Duration benefit this skill a lot, with strength giving a chance to double the drops. This is also the one that's going to sustain your energy with Equilibrium, so don't replace this!
Her 4 is the spot that you'd most likely want to replace with an infuseable ability. For this, I'm going to say feel free to put whatever you want, but my personal recommendation is Roar because of how her passive simply makes the penalty irrelevant. It also buffs her ability damage a lot, so lots of synergy going on there. Second recommendation would be any crowd controlling ability, such as Airburst, Larva, and Ensnare as it synergizes well with her [Blaze] Artillery. The new Tharros Strike from [Styanax] is also a great choice and will be necessary when planning to bring [Protea] for long SP endurance runs.
In general we want our [Protea] to have as much ability stats as possible, with nothing hitting below 100%. The priority is as follows: Strength > Range > Duration > Efficiency. Strength is pretty flexible, given her passive.
Aura mod slot is pretty flexible, slot in anything that you feel you want. Growing Power complements her kit a lot.
For exilus slot, [Preparation] is a luxury that allows [Protea] to just dive into the battle. If you don't have this, you will want to start your missions by casting Dispensary first and letting your energy fill up (goes fast with Equilibrium).
Equilibrium is the centerpiece of this build, and it has to be run with your sentinel/companion equipping Synth Fiber (and Vacuum/[Fetch]). [Synth Fiber] allows you to pick up health orbs even at full health, and [Equilibrium] restores your energy based on the amount of health you would have restored. This pairs well with Dispensary, functionally eliminating any energy problems. Health orbs restore more energy than energy orbs with this setup.
[Primed Flow] ensures that you have a bit of a generous energy store for when you are moving around a lot and don't have the luxury to stay in an area and wait for the Dispensary to spawn an orb. Can be substituted with regular Flow.
[Primed Continuity], [Transient Fortitude], [Stretch], and [Augur Reach] are all there to give a well rounded boost to ability stats. You can be flexible with this if you want, but remember the priority.
Umbral Intensify can be replaced with Blind Rage, but only do so if you have slotted in Preparation and/or [Primed Flow]. You will want to always have enough energy to spawn a Dispensary, otherwise you'd have to be spawning an energy restore just to keep the sustenance going.
[Natural Talent] is very useful as you will be spamming your abilities a lot. This can become optional if you are running a Madurai operator, but I personally run both and it just makes my gameplay feel extra powerful. This is also your augment slot. If you have infused an ability with an augment that you want to use, feel free to do it here.
As for the arcanes...
Molt Efficiency is an easy choice given that you'd always be on overshields with the help of your Grenade Fan.
Molt Augment can quickly ramp up with the help of [Blaze] Artillery being such an effective room killer. If you want the ability strength upfront, consider replacing it with Molt Vigor instead.
Madurai is my top recommendation, given that you can boost your casting speed via Power Transfer (just switch to Operator and back to frame), and doing chained slings gives you up to +40% ability strength. This school is pure power and she benefits so much from it.
My 2nd favorite, Vazarin supercharges [Protea]'s supporting capabilities and allows you to restore health via Squad [Regen] (hooray, now Nidus and Inaros can benefit from you too!). It's a very comfy school that I like to run on Arbitrations for a risk-free run. Void Snare helps you clump up enemies in case you want a crowd control but didn't infuse one.
Unairu is useful in general, and is my 3rd recommendation given that the last two schools either have zero synergy (Naramon) or are redundant in terms of energy (Zenurik). Unairu levels out the playing field by either stripping armor with Caustic Strike, or stripping shields with Magnetic Flare. Unairu becomes a must when playing for long SP endurance runs or levelcap, unless a) someone in your squad has already covered armor/shield stripping or b) you have Tharros Strike infused.
