Warframe Guide | Top 5 Underrated Warframes in 2025

Even though it's been two years since Warframes was released, playing it in 2025 is still so much fun. Here's a guide that highlights the top five underrated Warframes in 2025. 

You will discover why these frames deserve more attention, learn about their core strengths and mechanics, and explore several build options ranging from budget-friendly setups to endgame configurations.

Even if you've played Tenno before, this guide will help you get better at these Warframes that don't get as much attention.

Grendel

Grendel's Character Overview and Playstyle

Grendel is great as a tanky brawler who can handle crowds well and nuke them. If you do nothing, his passive gives you extra health and armor, and his abilities let you absorb and kill waves of enemies.

The Augment Gastro makes its fourth ability stronger, which is to create multiple gas clouds that do a lot of damage and get worse with each one.

Grendel's Core Abilities

Feast: Grab targets and store them in Grendel's belly, granting armor per enemy absorbed.

Nourish: Provides significant energy regeneration and applies Viral waves to nearby enemies and your weapons whenever you are hit.

Rolling Ball: Transforms Grendel into a rolling sphere, enabling fast traversal and damage.

Regurgitate: Vomits stored enemies as projectiles, inflicting damage and stripping armor, amplified by the Gastro augment.

Grendel's Build Recommendations

Budget Build: Suitable for Star Chart and early Steel Path. Focus on health, armor, efficiency, and range to maximize enemy absorption and crowd control.

No‑Helmet (Endgame) Build: Emphasizes raw damage with Raw mod to double-dip toxin and gas cloud damage, combined with high strength and efficiency to maintain constant nuking.

Tank Demon Build: Prioritizes pure survivability with health and armor mods, plus a couple of Health Shards, Casting Speed, and Equilibrium Shards to sustain ability usage.

Grendel's Strengths and Considerations

Grendel shreds through groups of enemies while remaining hardy. His main drawback lies in team play: allies may kill targets before you can Feast, and enemies with Overguard cannot be absorbed without a secondary primer weapon.

Mitigate these issues by increasing the ability range or carrying a utility secondary with a fortifier to break guards quickly.

Goth

Goth's Character Overview and Playstyle

Goth is a great place to be a busy caster because it has great survivability and crit scaling. Her main abilities are status changes, cursing targets, and dealing massive amounts of damage over a large area.

Goth's Core Abilities

Sickle Storm: Slows and applies Viral to enemies, increasing crowd-control potential.

Doom: Curses targets and places damage-tracking sickles above them; after two seconds, these sickles strike as True Damage.

Grave Spirit: Enters a spectral form, granting invulnerability and critical damage bonuses; kills reduce its cooldown.

Rakhali's Cavalry: Deals Viral damage and strips armor on cursed targets.

Goth Build Recommendations

Budget Build: Balanced efficiency, duration, and range for reliable utility across Star Chart. Energy Nexus and Natural Talent are optional based on mod availability.

Steel Path No‑Helmet Build: Combines Spectral Spirit augment with shield‑gating or Adaptation for near-unkillable performance—swap mods like Growing Power or Brief Respite to fine-tune defenses.

Raw Caster Build: Stacks Ability Strength and duration to spam Rakhali's Cavalry, leveraging tower-forced Casting Speed Shards.

Melee‑Focused Build: Uses Spectral Spirit to boost critical chance and damage for melee weapons, with subsume Augment and high-strength stacking for red crits.

Goth's Strengths and Considerations

When it comes to fast state changes, crowd control, and crit-heavy melee play, Goth is the best. When facing weak enemies, the Doom feature may not feel fully utilized, but it shines when facing tough opponents. Make sure the casting speed is right to get the most out of her.

Lavos

Lavos' Character Overview and Playstyle

Lavos is the ultimate alchemist frame, adapting to any faction or scenario by imbuing his abilities with elemental combinations. Mastering his kit requires memorizing element pairings, but rewards you with unparalleled versatility.

Lavos' Core Abilities

Gastronomic Reservoir: Heals Lavos and applies Toxin to nearby foes.

Reconstituting Detritus: Applies Cold to enemies and platforms for mobility.

Transmutation Probe: Converts orbs, reduces cooldowns, and applies Electricity.

Catalyze: Launches elemental probes for AoE damage; damage multiplies with each element applied.

Lavos' Build Recommendations

Budget Build: Focus on Efficiency, Duration, and Strength for early missions; Swift Bite augment on Gastronomic Reservoir decreases cooldown.

No‑Helmet Build: Utilizes Valance Formation and Blessing Arcanes, plus Ice Storm for added duration. Adapt mods to personal preference.

Melee Build: With Valance Formation augment, imbued elements transfer to weapons, guaranteeing status per hit—ideal for melee-centric play.

Caster Build: Max out Ability Strength and Efficiency to spam Catalyze rapidly.

Lavos' Strengths and Considerations

Lavos gives you a vast range of build options, but it takes practice to be able to switch between parts smoothly. His strengths are being able to change his state on the fly, creating new ones, and making elemental orb effects work well with weapons.

Voruna

Voruna's Character Overview and Playstyle

Voruna excels as an invisible melee assassin, spreading status effects and delivering massive burst damage. Her passive grants buffs tied to wolf spirits, while abilities emphasize stealth, mobility, and status proliferation.

Voruna's Core Abilities

Umbral Dash: Grants invisibility and buffs your melee on exit—bonus Slash procs, crit chance, and crit damage.

Savage Pounce: Leaps on foes, applying five random status effects; upon enemy death, those effects spread to nearby targets.

Blood Moon: Drops Health orbs on melee kills and Energy orbs on headshot kills.

Wolf Frenzy: Pounces in feral wolf form for high damage, augmented by Prey of Dina for increased spread radius and vulnerability multiplier.

Voruna's Build Recommendations

Budget Build: Balance Efficiency and Duration for stealth and status spread; customize defense with shield‑gating or Rolling Guard.

Melee Build: Use Wrath of Ukko stance and purple Casting Speed Shards to boost attack speed and status application.

Ulfrun's Descent Build: Focus on Wolf Frenzy with high Strength mods for colossal single-target nukes.

Gunner Build: Transition to ranged combat with status‑priming companions and versatile weapon mods.

Lavos Strengths and Considerations

Voruna thrives on invisibility, rapid status stacking, and melee burst. Her main challenge is mastering her wolf‑based buffs and ensuring defensive layers complement her glass‑like nature.

Garuda

Garuda's Character Overview and Playstyle

Garuda is a high-risk, high-reward frame that leeches life force from enemies to fuel devastating abilities and self-heals. Her kit revolves around damage absorption, health sacrifice, and slash priming.

Garuda's Core Abilities

Dread Mirror: Absorbs incoming damage into Dread Heart; hold to charge and unleash a massive damage orb.

Blood Alter: Creates an aura that heals allies and permanently boosts Power Strength; also drains enemy health over time.

Bloodletting: Sacrifices half your health to fully replenish Energy.

Bloodburst: Prime enemies with Slash and enhances weapon status chance against them, augmented by Bleeding Talons for tap‑casting.

Garuda's Build Recommendations

Budget Build: Early‑game focus on Efficiency and Strength to leverage Bloodletting and Dread Mirror without heavy mod investment.

No‑Helmet (Endgame) Build: Pair Arcane Arachnne with high Strength for Dread Mirror nukes; customize defenses with Adaptation or shield gating as needed.

Melee Build: Use Afflictions melee mods and Malicious Raptor stance for powerful slide and channel attacks.

Raw Build: Incorporate Raw mod to multiply Dread Mirror and melee damage for extreme nuke potential.

Garuda's Strengths and Considerations

Garuda excels at converting enemy damage into raw power and sustaining Energy through Bloodletting. Her vulnerabilities stem from health sacrifice mechanics and slow channeling on Bloodburst, which Bleeding Talons can mitigate.