The Spartan, poke & board master, rain of thousand spears - Styanax!
Release date: 2022-09-07
Passive: Styanax’s weapon Critical Chance bonus increases by 1% per 40 Shield points, based on his current total including Overshields. Passive bonus is doubled on Speargun primary Weapons.
Axios Javelin - Throw an Axios Javelin. When the javelin impales an enemy against a wall, surrounding enemies are pulled into the area and suffer a burst of damage.
Tharros Strike - Summon Tharros, the shield of Styanax. Swing Tharros to repel enemies and reduce their shields and armor. Styanax regenerates health for every enemy struck.
Rally Point - Draw enemy attention to Styanax. His resolve uplifts nearby allies, regenerating the squad’s energy over time. Styanax and his allies also regenerate shields for every kill assist they contribute.
Final Stand - Exude might and valor. Rise into the air and throw a barrage of Axios Javelins. The javelins deal damage to nearby enemies wherever they land. Direct hits to enemies deal greater damage.
Acquisition: Main and component blueprints are available from Chipper of Kahl’s Garrison with Stock earned from Break Narmer weekly missions.
Styanax is a beast in Circuit since his Final Stand spears scale off the amount of decrees you have. He’s easily one of the best Circuit frames, standing alongside Nova, Vauban, Gyre and Protea for hard-scaling Circuit nukers.
To be fair, Styanax is a beast everywhere due to the raw power of Final Stand (especially augmented with Overguard) and Tharros Strike. If you’re not in Duviri, the projectile ability scaling can be tapped with Arcane Arachne.
Nipple tassles.
As we approach the more recent frames, most of these are going to be absolute monsters. Styanax is no exception. This guy’s got it all and then some! Near unlimited energy for you and your team? Check! Full armor strip on demand with no prerequisites? Check! A huge AoE nuke that deals Slash procs on every hit and provides you and your entire team 30k Overguard? Check! This frame is insanely powerful and I’m constantly surprised to never see anyone play him despite DE handing him out multiple times for free with a potato included.
I think the main roadblock for people is that those that didn’t get him for free have to do kahl missions, which are subjectively not very fun and objectively not very warframe, not to mention that he is a very late acquisition in progression that a lot of people get comfy with other frames that can do similar things. That’s before thinking about the handful of pain points in his kit.
Styanax was pretty fun to play, I had it modded to be a shield tank before his Final Stand augment was added, so he had pretty good survivability. His 1 without his augment feels terrible to use though because it requires you to hit a target to group enemies and if that enemy has Overguard it won’t group any of the other enemies around even if they aren’t protected by Overguard. It doesn’t help that Overguard is getting put on everything in recent updates, his augment does let you hit the ground instead but that feels more like a band-aid instead of just letting it group enemies that aren’t CC immune.
He had pretty good energy management with rally point and tharros strike helped with removing armor from tankier enemies before killing them to replenish your shields. I don’t think Final Stand was useful on its own, but it is a very good ability if you’re using its augment.
