Ranking the New Melee Arcanes in Warframe & How to Obtain Them

Collecting Arcanes is one of the most lucrative and extensive endgame activities in Warframe. Now, with Whispers in the Walls or Update 35, there are even more Arcanes for you to collect. You can have six new Melee Arcanes in Warframe. All of them are associated with the new hub area in Deimos. As always, grabbing these Arcanes is a lot of work. So we’re giving you the rundown on which of the new Warframe Melee Arcanes are most worthy of your efforts.

Ranking the New Melee Arcanes in Warframe

Remember that this list is subjective and based on our experience with the game. We did consider the top weapon choices for Melee combat. This ranking is from worst to best. We’ll also be detailing how you can obtain them.

8. Melee Influence

• Rank 5 – On Melee Electricity Status: 20% chance for Melee Status Effects to apply to enemies within 20m for 18s.

It looks great for Nikanas or shorter weapons since those have a limited range, but most of the time, Melee builds in Warframe tend to include Reach mods already.

That means this could easily become a redundant Arcane and nothing but a Status primer. It’s not really much of a damage increase if you’re relying on nothing but melee weapons.

7. Melee Fortification

• Rank 5 – On Melee Kill: +210 Armor for 10s.

Armor is always great in Warframe; but if you’re Shield-gating as a means to survive attacks, then it’s Melee Fortification is almost wasted.

Moreover, you might not see much use for this in boss fights with no minions. Still, you get a near-permanent +210 Armor for 90 percent of the content, which is always welcome.

6. Melee Retaliation

• Rank 5 – Gain 30% Melee Damage for every 200 current Shields, up to 420%. Bonus halved for Overshields.

Looks great on paper, but in practice, you don’t really have a lot of Warframes taking advantage of 200+ Shields. There’s Hildryn, Harrow, Mag, and Volt, but then again, you’ll be sacrificing Shield-gating if you use this Arcane.

Still, if you manage to pull it off, that’s a lot of Melee Damage. Some niche or specialized builds might be able to take advantage of this Arcane.

5. Melee Crescendo

• Rank 5 – On Finisher Kill: Gain 6 Initial Combo for the rest of your mission.

Quite situational and niche since it’s for melee weapons that rely on the combo meter, but combos are still commendable as damage boosts. Only granting six is a bit stingy, but it does help certain builds like Bladestorm Ash.

4. Melee Vortex

• Rank 5 – Kill an enemy affected by Magnetic Status for a 45% chance to pull in enemies within 18m radius.

Now this one’s nice for a pure melee build. You’re practically combining Vauban’s Vortex Ability and turning yourself into a blender or a black hole.

It spices up melee playstyles. The only issue is that Magnetic Damage isn’t as good as Viral, Corrosive, Radiation, or even Heat. But if you’re fighting Corpus enemies, you’ll get a lot of mileage out of this Arcane.

3. Melee Animosity

• Rank 5 – On Melee Hit: Gain 42% Critical Chance on your next Heavy Attack, up to 420%.

There we go with the big numbers again, but to get it to the maximum damage boost, you will need a lot of buildup. Hitting the enemy 10 times with normal, fast attacks might not be ideal for many weapons, especially those that rely on Heavy Attacks such as Gunblades. Those weapons are slow already even with normal attacks.

Still, it might be worth it to delete those pesky Steel Path Eximus units. It also works well with the Innodem dagger and as we mentioned before, the Gunblades.

2. Melee Exposure

• Rank 5 – On Ability Cast: Gain 60% Corrosive Damage on Melee strikes for 25s. Stacks up to 240%.

Again, big damage, but more importantly, this one is more “lasting” since 25 seconds is a comfortable duration in Warframe and in that window, you can spam a cheap Ability four times. Thus, this Arcane is almost always activated at max.

Moreover, Corrosive damage is terrific for endgame whether you’re fighting Grineer or Corrupted enemies. You might even be able to free up two Elemental Mods if you use this Arcane.

1. Melee Duplicate

• Rank 5 – On Base Critical Hits: 100% chance for your attack to strike a second time.

Basically, just double whatever you have for your Critical Damage multiplier– this Arcane is busted. It’s by far the most powerful new Melee Arcane in Warframe. It’s also hard to obtain, mind you.

How to Obtain the New Melee Arcanes

You have a long grind ahead if you want the new Melee Arcanes in Warframe and even longer if you want to max them out to Rank 5. Here’s a step-by-step process to get you started.

1. Complete the “Whispers in the Walls” quest.
2. After completing the quest, head to the Sanctum Anatomica in Deimos (if you aren’t there already) and go to Bird 3 (second floor or just Fast Travel to him).
3. Click on Bird 3’s “Browse Wares” to purchase the new Melee Arcanes using Cavia Standing as a currency.
   • Here’s the hard part; you need to be Scholar in your Cavia Standing level or reputation if you want all the new Melee Arcanes.
   • To raise your Cavia Standing, perform some Bounty missions for Fibonacci (the talking fish on the first floor of the Sanctum). Then rank up your Cavia Standing level by submitting whatever requirements Fibonacci is asking.
   • Once you have reached Colleague level, you can start purchasing some Melee Arcanes and again, reach Scholar if you want to buy all of them from Bird 3.
4. Melee Crescendo and Melee Duplicate, however, are exclusive to Netracells and accessible through Tagfer (first floor in the Sanctum).

You will need to keep performing Bounty missions for Fibonacci to gain Cavia Standing as a currency to purchase more Melee Arcane duplicates so you can rank up the Arcanes. Repeat ad infinitum if necessary.