Warframe: Protea Complete Guide – Drops, Abilities, And Builds

Make Protea the strongest Warframe in your arsenal with these powerful endgame builds.

Protea is one of Warframe's strongest titular characters, wielding the power of technological machinations to empower her allies and obliterate her foes. Powerful weapon emplacements, resource dispensers, and shield generators may be deployed at a moment's notice to turn the tide in Protea's favor.

While Protea might be somewhat tricky to farm for, she is an absolute powerhouse in the hands of a good player. She has infinite damage scaling, an easy way to Shield Gate, and can wield Archguns like primary weapons thanks to Dispensary. Use the tools in her toolkit correctly, and Protea will make you an unstoppable force in Steel Path and beyond.

How To Craft Protea

Protea's components drop from the Granum Void, a difficult side objective that can be accessed in any Corpus Ship tileset. The game type becomes available upon completing "The Deadlock Protocol" quest, which is also where Protea's main crafting blueprint drops from. Interact with any of the gilded hand statues aboard the ship to start the activity.

Before you can enter the Granum Void, you will first need a Granum Crown. This is a currency type that drops from Treasurer enemies aboard the Corpus Ship tileset. The level of the mission determines the tier of Granum Crown they drop, corresponding with the difficulty of the Granum Void run itself.

Each part has an 11.11% drop chance, so it will take quite a few runs to obtain her entire set. Alternatively, you may also purchase Protea pre-built for 325 Platinum from the in-game market.

Protea Blueprint

Protea Neuroptics

Protea Chassis

Protea Systems

How To Craft Protea Prime

Protea Prime is available through certain Void Relics that can be earned through mission rewards, Relic Packs, and player trading. These items can be cracked open in Fissure missions that appear on the Star Chart. Protea Prime's parts only drop from specific Relics, and they aren't a guaranteed drop, but you can influence the drop rate by improving the Relic with Reactant.

Farming Relics

The fastest way to get Void Relics is by purchasing Relic Packs from Syndicate factions, including the six main Syndicates and Teshin's Steel Path shop.

As for farming Relics, we recommend farming the missions shown in the table below.

Protea Prime Blueprint

Protea Prime Neuroptics

Protea Prime Chassis

Protea Prime Systems

Protea Abilities

Stats

Passive

Passive: Every fourth ability cast is granted +100% Ability Strength.

There's not much to explain here. Every fourth ability cast will gain an additive 100% Ability Strength, similar to Molt Augmented and Focus passives. Once the fourth ability is cast, you'll need to cast four more abilities to receive the bonus again; the fourth cast doesn't count towards your next boosted ability cast.

It's also worth noting that subsumed powers also benefit from your passive. This is especially useful if you use abilities that rely heavily on Strength, such as Hildryn's Pillage or Sevagoth's Gloom.

Grenade Fan

Grenade Fan: Throw a fan of grenades. Tap to create a slashing, staggering swirl of shrapnel. Hold to create shield satellites that behave as shield generators, protecting her, her allies, and companions. When shields break, a satellite is destroyed to double your minimum Shield Gate invincibility time.

Protea throws out a fan of grenades that can do one of two things, depending on how you cast the ability:

• Tap: Shrapnel Vortex
• Hold: Shield Satellites

Shrapnel Vortex detonates the grenades on impact, creating a swarm of projectiles that deal Slash damage to targets within. Enemies inside receive 500 Slash damage per second with a small chance of receiving a Slash proc. The damage can be buffed with Ability Strength, and the effective radius is affected by Ability Range. Scale the range of this ability, and you can lockdown entire tiles in Normal Path content.

Shield Satellites convert the grenades into pickups that increase your shield capacity for you and your companion. More importantly, you will constantly regenerate 50 shields per second while the grenade is attached to you, affected by Ability Strength. This can also generate Overshields, giving most Warframes a massive boost to their survivability.

Should your shields break, the Shield Satellite will be consumed to double your Shield Gate duration. For example, while Primed Redirection is installed, your Shield Gate duration is 2.5 seconds. If your shield breaks, your grenade will be consumed and grant 5 seconds of Shield Gate invulnerability. Needless to say, this is an absurdly powerful defensive mechanic when used correctly.

Blaze Artillery

Blaze Artillery: Deploys an artillery unit to blast plasma charges at enemies it faces. Each enemy hit increases the power of subsequent plasma attacks.

The game tries its hardest not to call this ability a turret, but that's exactly what it is. Protea creates a stationary turret that will fire at anything within a 130-degree cone. It lasts an incredibly short duration and attacks at a set interval (three times per second), but each enemy it hits will increase its damage by 100% until the turret expires. You can't scale this bonus with Ability Strength, but you can increase its Ability Duration to ramp up to a higher multiplier.

Each shot of Blaze Artillery inflicts guaranteed Heat status. Throw on Archon Vitality to double the number of Heat procs inflicted by your turrets.

Interestingly, the turret has infinite punch through. This means you can theoretically gain over 1,000% damage from a single shot if the turret hits ten or more enemies. This is why many Protea builds replace her fourth ability with a CC power like Larva or Ensnare. If you can group the enemies together into a tight ball, the turret will obliterate everything in the game, even level-cap Steel Path enemies.

Making her Blaze Artillery stronger will require you to scale Ability Duration and Range. Ability Strength should remain positive, but it doesn't need to be specced into since it doesn't affect the turret's damage scaling. If you need more damage, run a status primer like the Epitaph or subsume Roar over your ultimate ability.

Dispensary

Dispensary: Deploys a device that generates 3 pickups after a short delay: an empowered Health Orb, Universal Ammo Pack, and an Energy Orb.

This ability can be subsumed with the Helminth system , albeit with weaker effects.

Dispensary is a stationary emplacement that creates a powerful Health Orb, Universal Ammo Pack, and Energy Orb in that order. It creates these items every five seconds until your duration expires, so you can create additional items by scaling your Ability Duration. A maximum of one Dispensary may be active at a time. Creating an additional one will destroy your last Dispensary device.

Additionally, scaling Ability Strength increases the chance of Dispensary creating extra pickups. For example, a 100% extra pickup chance will cause Dispensary to always spawn a second Health Orb, Ammo Pack, and Energy Orb.

Temporal Anchor

Temporal Anchor: Drops a Temporal Anchor which, after a short duration, Protea rewinds to trigger a temporal implosion Implosion damage increases based on damage dealt between anchor drop and rewind. Everything lost or expended in that time is returned. Dying while the Anchor is active rewinds Protea to the anchor, saving her. Protea is knocked down and the anchor vanishes.

Temporal Anchor will create a snapshot of your character's current HP, Shields, Energy, and ammunition. While the ability is active, a portion of all damage you deal will be stored in Protea's suit. Weapons and abilities will build up this meter. Once the timer ends, you will explode and deal that damage in a massive area. Afterward, Protea will be transported back to your initial anchor location, resting your stats to their pre-anchor values.

That sounds complicated on paper, but there are really two uses for this skill:

1. You want to spam a ton of abilities or expend rare ammo.
2. You want a safety net for a tough fight.

If you're a newer player and don't have endgame mods and gear yet, the former strategy is quite viable. Place down an anchor, expend all of your Energy on Blaze Artillery, shoot your weapon for good measure, then rewind time to get your resources back. For veteran players who don't need help managing resources, the latter is more important.

Should Protea die while in Temporal Anchor, she will instead become invulnerable and retreat to her pre-anchor location. Your HP and Shields won't be restored to their initial values, but your ammo and Energy will. You can use this ability as a panic invulnerability button if you're about to fight a tough boss. You can give yourself more time by scaling Ability Duration.

You can cancel the ability at anytime by holding the ability key. You won't get your resources back, but you won't be sent back to your previous location.

Protea Augments

As of Update 35.5, Protea has two augment mods you can use. All of Protea's Augments may be purchased from the Perrin Sequence or Arbiters of Hexis. Both Syndicates must be at Rank 5 to purchase either augment, and each mod costs 25,000 Standing. Alternatively, you may trade for these mods through Warframe's player trading system.

Repair Dispensary

Repair Dispensary: Dispensary also creates pickups that heal companions for 20% of their maximum HP and reduce their incapacitation time by 12s.

After Dispensary creates an Energy Orb, it will generate a smaller Health Orb that may only be consumed by companions. When grabbed, your companions will be healed by 20% and, if currently incapacitated, will recover 12 seconds faster.

While the augment isn't directly affected by mods, Ability Strength can spawn additional companion orbs. Since this is tied to Dispensary itself, this augment does work with the Helminth variant of Dispensary.

Temporal Erosion

Temporal Erosion: While Temporal Anchor is active, each strike of Grenade Fan and Blaze Artillery strips 10% armor from enemies.

While Protea is actively using Temporal Anchor, all instances of damage from Grenade Fan and Blaze Artillery (excluding status procs) will strip 10% of a target's armor. This armor strip is permanent, additive with other sources, and can be scaled with Ability Strength. We suggest ending Temporal Anchor manually whenever you need to refresh this ability to maintain the augment bonus.

If you spec for Ability Range, you can make Shrapnel Vortex overlap with itself. This will strip armor in seconds.

Protea Builds

Protea is a powerhouse right out of the box, but the right build can make her viable for endurance Steel Path content and Elite Archimedea runs. Thanks to the power of Grenade Fan, Protea is an ideal Warframe for Shield Gating. Be sure that you have a Shield Satellite active at all times, and you'll be incredibly tough to kill. You can also build Protea to shield tank with (Primed) Redirection if you prefer.

As for Focus Schools, we suggest Zenurik or Madurai. Zenurik has excellent Energy sustain and a free 20% Ability Strength through Hardened Wellspring. If you don't have Energy issues, run Madurai for the free 40% Ability Strength and bonus cast speed.

Archon Shards

Protea ideally wants Crimson Shards and Emerald Shards . You can increase Protea's duration with Crimson Shards to greatly boost the DPS of your Blaze Artillery. Emerald Shards can be used to increase your Corrosive status cap to 14. This allows you to fully strip armor with Corrosive weapons or subsumed abilities like Hydroid's Tempest Barrage.

Our endgame build ideally wants two Emerald Archon Shards, but it is not a hard requirement.

Starter Build (Zero Forma, No Subsume)

• Forma: 0
• Subsume: None

You only need a standard Protea for this to work. The extra polarities and Prime variant are not required.

This is a cheap, efficient build that brings out the best in Protea's kit. We spec for Ability Range while also boosting our other stats slightly. Additionally, we make use of Equilibrium and Flow to fill our Energy reserves with Dispensary's empowered HP Orbs. This makes Energy a non-issue if you remember to cast Dispensary on occasion.

Stretch and Augur Reach scale our Ability Range, making Grenade Fan a potent skill for damaging foes and supporting your team. It also makes Blaze Artillery far more consistent. Intensify scales our damage, and Continuity makes every ability last longer. Streamline will make each ability cast a little bit cheaper, and Redirection will increase your Shield Gate duration, which is then doubled through Shield Satellite. Use any Aura mod you own.

When you start the mission, cast Dispensary to restore your energy. Hold down Grenade Fan to spawn some Shield Satellites, then pick one up. You're now good for all Normal Path content. If you start playing Steel Path, use Temporal Anchor to give yourself a safety net, and make liberal use of Blaze Artillery while in narrow corridors.

Blazing Barrage Build (Two Forma, Tempest Barrage Subsume)

• Forma: 2 (D, D (Exilus))
• Subsume: Tempest Barrage (Hyrdroid)
• Archon Shards: 2 Emerald (+4 Corrosive Cap)

Most Protea builds tend to use Nidus' Larva ability to clump targets together for Blazing Pillage. We've opted to do something a little different. This build uses Hydroid's Tempest Barrage to prime targets for Shrapnel Vortex and Blaze Artillery. We start the build by replacing Temporal Anchor with Tempest Barrage. This suppresses an area with water projectiles that detonate on impact, inflicting Corrosive with each hit.

What makes this ability really shine is Viral Tempest, an augment mod that gives Tempest Barrage a 100% chance of inflicting Viral status on hit. We can now prime enemies with Corrosive and Viral with a single ability cast. If you run two Emerald Archon Shards to increase your Corrosive status cap, this ability will single handedly strip armor for you. Anything that survives will be obliterated by your other abilities.

Nautilus Synergy

Nautilus can use its Cordon preset to group enemies in a tight ball, similar to Larva. You can use Manifold Bond to reset its cooldown by killing foes affected by three or more debuffs.

We can easily meet this condition with Tempest Barrage and Blaze Artillery. The former inflicts Corrosive and Viral, while the latter inflicts Heat. This lets Nautilus group enemies for you with zero downtime.

For easy slaying, we've opted to spec for Ability Range and Duration. We use Overextended, Stretch, and Augur Reach to substantially increase the radius of Shrapnel Vortex and our Tempest Barrage projectiles—each explosion is larger than the targeting radius. We then use Primed Continuity to scale our Ability Duration. If you want more uptime on Blaze Artillery, you can use Molt Efficiency and Crimson Shards.

For Energy, we run Arcane Energize and Primed Flow. With Dispensary's guaranteed Energy Orbs, you should have max Energy most of the time. If not, drop Augur Reach for Equilibrium. For damage, we run Blind Rage for a ton of Ability Strength and Archon Vitality (unranked) to scale our Blaze Artillery's Heat procs. This effectively doubles the DoT damage of that skill for free.

The Aura and Exilus slots are down to preference. We suggest using Growing Power for the free Ability Strength and Primed Sure Footed to make Protea completely immune to knockdown effects. Since we don't have any survivability mods on our build, we also use Arcane Aegis to rapidly regenerate our shields. Paired with Shield Satellite, you will almost always have shields available.