We’ve caught up to the Primes! With the easier acquisition I imagine a lot more people are getting their hands on Protea and discovering what a powerhouse of a frame she is. Step aside Vauban, this is what a true engineer is! Granade Fan is incredible in both modes, the shrapnel grenades can stun lock enemies with their forced slash procs and tear through anything non steel path with ease. Low level defense alert? Spam shrapnel grenades on all spawn points and watch as the mission plays itself! The shield grenades are functional immortality for you and your team so long as you avoid the extremely rare toxic damage. Blaze Artillery is the main way you will deal with anything Steel Path and beyond, massive stacking damage with forced heat procs. Use Archon Vitality for silly damage if you feel like you need it. Dispensary is what allows you to completely forgo efficiency and not care. Just slot in Equilibrium and enjoy near infinite energy supply (this is a good ability to use with your passive, the extra drops help a lot!) Temporal Anchor is your subsume slot, this ability just doesn’t work well with how you actually play Warframe. Even it’s augment is not enough to salvage it. Use Roar for more turret damage or Gloom to completely shut off enemies coupled with Shrapnel grenades or whatever other subsume you want.

I enjoy keeping Temporal Anchor as a “here’s 20 seconds to spam EVERYTHING” ability. It’s really a combined ammo/energy 100% efficiency power, with a free revive thrown in.

And I haven’t tried the augment yet, but I bet it’s super strong.

Not trying to be mean, but I am trying to be counter to the typical thinking: At least with newer frames, DE is clearly working to make every power important to the frame. Calling Anchor a loss of a power slot is avoiding thinking deeply about how it can work for Protea.

What a frame. I actually started playing actively again to farm her Prime, although I was a bit disappointed Stahlta didn’t get the Prime treatment since it was my workhorse gun until I got into Kitguns (and then Incarnons blew them out of the water).

Some of the fun things Protea has access to:

Temporal Anchor, Temporal Erosion and Dispensary all work together to make her a decently scaling archgunner, in case you want to use that 5 forma Kuva Grattler on SP. With enough aggressive heat modding, you can also use her turrets to assist killing heavy targets that something like the Decs, Grattler or Corvus Prime can’t efficiently manage. Or just let the turrets do their thing.

Temporal Anchor stores overkill damage, so it’s quite functional as a nuke. Temporal Erosion both generally assists her with armour removal, as well as directly buffing the “time bomb” playstyle. Also worth noting the general utility of Anchor, as it can be used in quick succession as a grouping ability for your turrets.

In general, Temporal Anchor is an amazingly condensed ability, and deserving of its ultimate status. The Erosion augment rips armour off the heaviest enemies, then the stored damage provides a straight small modifier. At 15m, the implosion is actually one of the largest grouping abilities. Finally, it bestows generous intangibility frames when first used, and then for the entire duration of the rewind. I definitely recommend trying a vanilla Protea build before ripping it off for Gloom or a damage buff.

Protea is a fairly strong caster frame that also doubles as a support frame.

Protea’s shield grenades are extremely helpful for any content where enemies do very high damage to the player as long as the damage isn’t toxin. They’re functionally Arcane Aegis as an ability. The Tap/Hold functionality can be inverted in settings if you find you primarily use one mode over the other making it a little more comfortable to cast. The slash grenades offer some minor CC but the damage feels a little lack luster to me, at least when compared to her turrets.

Blaze Artillery is a very strong ability and it becomes more effective the more duration you mode for. It still requires some range to be effective though. Grouping abilities also help to make the turret more effective because the splash damage also increases its shot multiplier. There is also the Temporal Artillery augment for this ability which essentially turns the turret into one of Xaku’s, but the combo count is capped to 20, and requires using Temporal Anchor to be used at the same time.

Dispensary is Protea’s other support ability. it’s very useful if your loadout includes weapons with very low maximum ammo/arch guns or if you’re going to be doing anything that requires staying in a small area for a some amount of time like piloting a railjack or defense/survival missions. The augment for this ability was never really worth using and after the recent QOL changes to radar and companion reviving is even less useful. The Helmenth version of this ability was probably over-nerfed and only has 50% of the duration when subsumed onto another warframe.

Temporal Anchor is an ability that feels like it griefs you more than it helps you. If you forget to cancel the ability before the timer expires, you can be sent back far behind the rest of your squad. If it was possible to cancel the rewind while in progress it wouldn’t be as bad, but as the ability functions currently, you’re probably better off replacing it with something else. The Temporal Erosion augment seems somewhat useful, but with the armor rework it’s probably less important to have.