I have an odd relationship with spiders. I personally think they’re incredibly neat, but I also find them really disturbing. So I do not want them around me, like, at all, but I was also immediately fascinated by Oraxia as a concept because ooh, spider-frame, how do you make a frame focused on spiders? It’s hardly among the weirdest themes that Warframe has tried, but the reality is that we are not lacking for predatory animals as it stands.
But I definitely was excited for Oraxia, to the point that I actually did something I never do and paid some Platinum to speed her along and get to play with her faster. And my evaluation? She is stupidly fun, and while I have joked about her being broken, she’s more broken in the classic sense of “it feels like she shouldn’t be able to do this, but she can, so you might as well take advantage of it.” And I do, in fact, really like her kit. So let’s talk about her a bit.
First of all, ability rundown. Oraxia’s passive renders her invisible for eight seconds every time she wall latches, something that you almost never have reason to do otherwise but is obviously super useful for her. As you would imagine, invisibility works like it always does; no one can see her, but she isn’t immune to anything, and at least from a bit of quick testing this invisibility does not allow her to pass laser barriers unmolested. However, it does not have an internal cooldown; you can, theoretically, keep her invisibility up forever.
Her first ability is a long-range lunge that deals a lot of damage and, if it kills the target, makes it drop a ton of health and energy orbs. You will get a little icon over enemies who will be killed by it if they’ve taken at least some damage; on lower levels, you might need to just hit it, because it might kill on contact anyway.
Her second ability is by far her weakest; it snares and slows enemies while making them more vulnerable to damage. It’s not a bad ability, but it is clearly the most “you can Helminth over me” candidate in her kit, and it doesn’t tie to most of her strengths. I rarely use it myself.
Her third ability, by contrast, is one of her most crucial. It throws a fan of daggers forward in a kinda unclear arc (I’m never totally sure how many things they’ll hit) that inflict Toxic damage, and anything so afflicted will explode to deal damage to nearby enemies and will spawn a little Scuttler minion. These last for 45 seconds at max rank, you can have 10 out at most, and they feature a small and constantly depleting health bar while they run around and attack.
Scuttlers are, in a word, awesome. It’s kind of weird that “swarms of spiders” are a thing we have agreed upon even though they’re not really a thing in the real world, but these little minions are not terribly tanky but are incredibly easy to spawn and keep up and do a great job of harassing and pressuring enemies. Also, it’s worth noting that enemies have to be marked to spawn Scuttlers; they do not have to die from the DoT. You can (and often should) throw your toxins, then use Oraxia’s first ability to drain some poor fool, then throw more toxins along with your newly spawned Scuttlers rushing in.
Last but not least, there’s her fourth ability, which is what really makes her great. Oraxia extends her spider legs, which make her immune to knockdown and status effects. It increases her health by a multiplier which is affected by ability strength, adds a toxin damage increase to her primary and secondary weapons which is also affected by ability strength, and it increases her movement speed and parkour velocity. Last but not least, it lets her wall latch indefinitely, and her roll is replaced by an ability that shoots a line of webbing and pulls her to it almost instantly.
The last one is more powerful than you might think. It is not affected by ability range, but its range is 75 meters, which in practical terms is basically anything in line of sight for all but a few cases. (You can use it to effortlessly traverse the big sky gaps in Corpus Jupiter tilesets, for example.) It makes her incredibly maneuverable, even more so because you can wall latch, turn invisible, rain fire, wall latch elsewhere, and resume. Also, her melee button is replaced by her first ability, unless you subsume over it.
It’s an astonishingly cohesive kit in terms of the spider theme, but it’s also potent as heck. Her survivability is huge with some investment in ability strength, thanks to a huge health pool plus invisibility plus health spawns. Scuttlers and her toxic damage allow her to pump out a lot of pain in short order. And she’s incredibly maneuverable, to boot. About the only real weakness she has is that she needs good weapons, since she has no Exalted or on-demand killing blow for groups.
She also has some great synergy with Arcanes you might not normally think much about. Arcane Arachne seems like it’s such an obvious pull that there has to be a downside, but she works great with it. Arcane Crepuscular makes her even more deadly, and since the two stack nicely, you can see where the synergy comes from. She can require a bit of ramp-up since she does guzzle energy (once she starts ripping through huge packs and using her first ability that’s easy to handle, but she can start weaker) and her Scuttlers do a lot, but it’s not an insane amount of ramp-up.
In terms of weaknesses, of course, she does have a pretty weak second ability and her energy sustain is based around being able to kill things; if you can’t maintain her fourth ability, she gets a lot more vulnerable in short order, and having fresh Scuttlers spawn is important. That being said, this mostly comes up with specific Assassination targets, and even then she’ll usually have enough adds to clear her way through things. Give her a strong primary and she’ll rip apart packs like nobody’s business.
As you can probably tell, IÂ really enjoy her. I don’t think she’s overpowered, honestly; nothing that she’s doing really obsoletes other good or powerful frames. She just combines a lot of tools into one thematic package, and while you have to do a fair amount of wrestling with those parts to make her sing, once she does… yeah. She’s good in a lot of scenarios. Just give her some really good weaponry to wreak havoc.
I will say that it’s weird that one of her specific weapons is a melee weapon, but the way you want to play her she won’t even have access to melee weaponry 95% of the time. I understand not wanting to do a whole lot of melee animations for Spiderleg Lady, sure, it was probably the smart choice, but then why does she have a signature whip she’ll never use? Why? Other than obvious overtones!
Pick a ‘Frame, any ‘Frame! The Warframe galaxy is in danger, Tenno, and Space Mom needs help to combat it. Are you in the right Warframe of Mind to join in? The MOP writers have enlisted, suiting up in their favorite ‘Frames to fight the good fight, blasting the Grineer and Infected into smithereens.
