I overlooked Trinity for quite a while, since a support frame centered around healing is somewhat of a moot point in modern Warframe, what with room-nuking clearing out most enemies before they pose a threat and shield-gating being commonplace in the current meta. Still, there are some interesting ways to utilize Trinity’s kit that can make her shine beyond just a support role.
Trinity Build Guide
In this guide, I’ll show you how to build Trinity to shrug off most damage, with layers of redundancy that ensure she stays in the fight. Trinity is already effective at keeping the entire squad alive when things get dicey, but we can make her effectively immortal with the right combination of mods and arcanes. This build has been stress-tested in both Arbitrations and Steel Path, and clears both with relative ease. You’ll only need one Forma to follow this build to the letter.
What To Mod For
This build revolves around Arcane Persistence, which prevents you from taking more than 500 damage per second so long as your armor is above 700 and you’re not afflicted by magnetic status or ability nullification, but which also strips you of all shields. A high cost, perhaps, but the lack of shields synergizes well with the inclusion of the Hunter Adrenaline and Rage mods, which stack for a combined 85% conversion of health damage to energy. That alone provides a self-sustaining pool of energy with which to continually cast Trinity’s Blessing, which heals you to full with each cast while providing 75% damage reduction for the duration. When combined with the Quick Thinking mod, which drains energy to prevent lethal damage at 240% efficiency, you’ve got several layers of redundancy keeping you alive.
The rest of your mod slots are a bit more flexible, but Primed Flow gives you an increased energy pool to keep the engine going, while Adaptation gives you contextual damage resistance that stacks multiplicatively with the damage reduction from Blessing and the damage reflection from Link (for around 99.3% total reduction). That leaves Primed Continuity, Stretch, and Cunning Drift as the most viable mods to swap out, if you so choose. I chose to include them because duration is always nice to have, so that you’re not constantly recasting abilities, while range helps keep allies within healing distance and enemies within your damage reflection radius. The aura mod isn’t as vital here, either, but Combat Discipline pairs well with this build in particular since the 10 self-damage on kill will provide a modicum of energy to sustain you (while the 20 health to allies is a nice bonus).
Beyond The Mods
Since Trinity doesn’t have much innate armor to begin with, the most reliable way of surpassing the 700 armor threshold to trigger Arcane Persistence is to use Azure Archon Shards with the increased armor effect. Three Tauforged Azure Shards will bring you up to 810 armor, with the remaining two slots being more flexible. I chose another two Azure Shards with increased health selected so that I’d have more of a buffer before Quick Thinking has to trigger, as well as a deeper well of health for Rage and Hunter Adrenaline to draw energy from. That said, since this build also utilizes Arcane Blessing, which provides an extra 1,200 health at max stacks once you’ve picked up enough health orbs, you could potentially swap out those two extra Azure Shards for something like amber shards for faster casting speed if you’re willing to be a bit more vulnerable at the start of missions.
The main threat to this build is all the ways that Arcane Persistence can be negated, which includes the magnetic status effect, ability nullifiers, and statuses like heat and corrosive, potentially reducing your armor below the 700 threshold. You can’t really counter nullifiers besides avoiding (or destroying) them, but the rest are relatively easy to accommodate. Trinity’s first ability, Well of Life, already cleanses allies of status effects while inside its aura, but it relies on you targeting enemies with it and staying within range. A more reliable, mobile option is to subsume Nezha’s Fire Walker ability over Well of Life, which provides status immunity and cleansing to Trinity and any allies who stand in the trail of flames she leaves behind. Of course, Well of Life also has other benefits like sacrificing the targeted enemy to resurrect allies who die within its range, so keeping or subsuming over it really depends on your preferences and playstyle.
The Gameplay Loop
However you decide to play, it’s in your best interest to cast Firewalker straight away, and to continually recast it before it expires to ensure Arcane Persistence, well, persists. Keeping Link and Blessing active is also beneficial to ensure you maintain that 99.3% overall damage reduction when paired with Adaptation. Energy shouldn’t be much of an issue with this build, given the passive health-damage-to-energy conversion from mods, but if your reserves ever do get low, you can always just cast Energy Vampire to leech energy from a nearby foe. It also serves as a reliable source of damage, since Energy Vampire drains a percentage of max health over time while completely ignoring armor. Admittedly, this build doesn’t prioritize ability-based damage, so increased DPS will mostly depend on your weapons. I’d recommend bringing something built for viral status to make enemies more vulnerable to health damage, which synergizes well with the damage from Link and Energy Vampire. Of course, you could always bring a companion to inflict viral on enemies instead, while you simply stand still and let the damage reflection do the job for you.
Just coming back to Warframe? Check out our guide on the Shadowgrapher update! Interested in more of my build-crafting? Give Uriel a try! We encourage you to comment below with any questions regarding the mods, arcanes, or various tips in this guide. Keep checking GameObserver for more Warframe guides and news!
