Warframe: Melee Hunter Voruna Build

Abilities

Shroud of Dynar (1st Ability)

Dynar shrouds Voruna with invisibility while also increasing her speed. Her invisibility ends when she attacks. While active and shortly after the effect ends Voruna’s melee attacks have increased Critical Damage and Status Chance and inflicts Bleed. Every melee kill extends the duration of the buff.

This move will buff our melee weapons significantly and will help us shred through enemies while on Steelpath.

Fangs of Raksh (2nd Ability)

Raksh tears into your foes causing 5 random Status Effects at 10 stacks each on an enemy. On target death, the Status Effects are spread to nearby enemies.

The bread and butter of Voruna’s kit, she’s all about spreading Status Effects and doing extra damage because of those status effects. This will work well with the melee mod Condition Overload which we’ll go over later in the build that increases melee damage based on Status’ effecting an enemy.

Lycath’s Hunt (3rd Ability)

When activated, this ability increases the chance for enemies killed by melee attacks to drop health orbs, while enemies killed by headshots supply energy orbs. Killing enemies affected by 5 or more Status Effects increases the duration of the effect.

This is the ability that will keep us healthy and with full energy. Even while focusing on melee we’ll have an easy source of energy with the Equilibrium mod.

Ulfrun’s Descent (4th Ability)

Dropping to all fours, Voruna gets 5 charges that lock onto enemies. Dashing at enemies, the attack does increased damage to enemies affected by Status Effects, and lethal attacks double the damage of Voruna’s remaining charges.

Voruna’s ultimate, while fun to use, will not be the focus of this build.

How to Get Voruna

Voruna is a bit of a late-game Warframe requiring the completion of The War Within quest line to get, and completion of Angels of the Zariman for access to the mercy system to get Voruna easier.

With those quests completed, you can get all of Voruna’s pieces from Rotation C of Conjunction Survival Yuvarium and Circulus on Lua. Alternatively, you can get every piece from Archimedean Yonta on Chrysalith, Zariman Ten Zero for Lua Thrax Plasm. Each component costs 75 Lua Thrax Plasm with the main blueprint costing 125.

Melee Hunter Voruna

Because Voruna’s kit is so melee-oriented, we’re going to lean on that and get it strong enough to get through Steelpath.

Mod Choice

The mod choice for this build is as follows:

• Equilibrium: A strong mod for every Warframe that can produce orbs, Equilibrium will allow Lycath’s Hunt to keep our energy pool filled.
• Primed Continuity: Shroud of Dynar and Lycath’s Hunt’s buffs both rely on duration and we want to keep these buffs going for as long as possible.
• Adaption: An excellent mod for Steelpath no matter who you’re playing, Adaption gives us damage resistance to whatever damage type has hit for some time. The damage reduction also stacks pretty high meaning it ups our survival decently.
• Overextend: Fangs of Raksh relies on Range to spread its Status Effects, and we want to spread it to as many enemies as possible. Overextend will help us do that by increasing our ability range significantly.
• Stretch: Just like overextend, we take Stretch to increase our ability range to spread Status Effects further.
• Augur Reach: Same reasoning as before, more reach means more enemies getting hit with Status Effects. If you think this is overkill, however, you can switch this mod out for a quality-of-life mod that supports your playstyle.
• Umbral Vitality: We take this mod to increase Voruna’s health to give her a little more survivability. Since we’ll also be taking Umbral Fiber, this mod will be getting a buff as well.
• Umbral Fiber: Just like Umbral Vitality, we take this mod to increase Voruna’s survivability while also getting the Umbral mod buff from both.
• Steel Charge: Because we’ll primarily be using melee weapons, we take this aura mod to give our melee attacks a boost.

Arcanes

• Arcane Guardian: This Arcane has a chance of boosting our armor whenever we take damage. On Steelpath this will happen a lot and is a good way to get our armor value to insane levels.
• Molt Efficiency/Arcane Strike: For our second Arcane we have a couple of options we can choose from. Molt Efficiency will increase our Duration as long as our shields are active, which boosts Shroud of Dynar and Lycath’s Hunts buffs. If you find keeping your shields active in Steelpath too difficult, however, Arcane Strike has a chance of increasing our melee attack speed which will come in handy with this build.

Helminth Abilities

When choosing to replace one of Voruna’s abilities, I recommend her ultimate, Ulfrun’s Descent. While cool, it doesn’t give us any buffs towards our melee or help spread Status Effects. Furthermore, we’ll be choosing helminth abilities that group enemies meaning we won’t need the dash element of that ability.

• Ensnare (Khora): This ability traps an enemy in metal and entangles anyone who gets close. This ability is great for grouping up tons of enemies to get an easy Status Effect spread.
• Pull (Mag): Pull does what it says and pulls enemies towards you getting rid of the need to chase after enemies, and get them all together to spread Status Effects.
• Larva (Nidus): Just like Khora and Mag’s abilities, Larva is an excellent ability for grouping enemies so you can attack them all with ease.

Weapons & Gear

Melee: The great thing about this build is that any competent melee weapon can work with this build. As long as it has the Condition Overload mod which increases damage per Status Type affecting the enemy you should be good.

Sentinel/Companion: Since this build relies on spreading Status Effects having a sentinel or companion that can help prime enemies will be beneficial. Grab something like a Diriga with Manifold Bond and Arc Coil or a Panzer Vulpaphyla with Viral Quills to help spread even more Status Effects to enemies.