The librarian, reader of forbidden tomes, death by thousand papercuts - Dante!
Release date: 2024-03-27
Passive: Enemies slain by Noctua’s primary fire, alt-fire, and page fragments are scanned into the Codex upon death, with each enemy death recording 1 scan entry. Enemy types with completed Codex research become permanently debuffed with Chronicler’s Mark, which grants Dante’s equipped weapons, including the Noctua itself, and Final Verse’s Wordwarden Noctua copies an extra 50% Status Chance versus these foes.
Noctua - Open Noctua, Dante’s Exalted Tome, and unleash a tale of woe upon his enemies.
Light Verse - Dante’s vitalizing composition grants him and his allies Overguard and increases their Max Health.
Dark Verse - Dante’s composition draws blood from nearby enemies, inflicting Slash Damage upon them.
Final Verse - Dante must compose two other Verses before his Final Verse.
Acquisition: Main and component can be obtained from Disruption Armatus on Deimos.
I got really lucky on the first disruption run. Got systems, neuro, and chassis all in one go. And have proceeded to just have the worst luck after that, but hey, plenty of Axi drops.
I did eventually get the BP, and tried out the funny books man, got the devil may cry jokes out of my system, and proceeded to helminth the guy. I’m still interested in picking him up again and using him for the Index, but he didn’t really grab me in the way other caster frames have. I like his exalted book, but I just didn’t have the tome mods (or desire to forma it up) at the time to really make it shine.
I can’t really say anything about Dante because…I still haven’t gotten him. I’ve been kinda burned-out on Warframe after the Whispers in the Walls grinds and barely played this update at all, mostly messing around with Nezha’s new augment until they killed it (it’s back to being good now). I watched some content creators mess with him and he seemed really strong, but not really my type of frame.
Thank goodness they have the pity system for Dante, farmed out 2 Dante and all weapons worth of pity points before the first part for him dropped. All in all, I think he’s a great caster frame. One drawback is that I think he needs casting speed, either from natural talent or archon shards to feel good. Even after the rebalancing, he’s still a damage monster, too busy for my liking.
Getting Dante is generally less grindy than some of the more recent frames especially with the pity system they added. It also came with some nice updates like better markers for Disruption and in a recent patch, made Rage/Hunter Adrenaline/Vex Armor usable even with overguard active.
From the time I’ve spent playing him, he feels mostly like a caster/Equinox with faster ramp-up and better survivability. I tend to play more weapon buff focus frames like Harrow/Wisp/Saryn with augments so Dante probably isn’t really the frame for me. He isn’t a bad choice though for anyone that likes caster style warframes/nukes though assuming you’re fine with line of sight checks.
