Frost / Frost Prime is highly recommended for all kinds of "defence" missions. Frost and Frost Prime are very good at defending the mission target in Defence / Mobile Defence / Excavation / Interception missions by casting the Snow Globe ability that creates a shield around the target. Frost can cast this spell several times on the same target to make the shield stronger or place several frost globes around the map, e.g. to protect all Interception targets. With the Chilling Globe augment mod enemies have a 50% chance of being frozen when entering the snow globe, which makes Frost even better for defence missions.
How to get Frost
Frost is very easy to get for new players as the compont blueprints drops from Lt. Lech Kril & Captain Vor @ Exta on Ceres (LV 14-16).
The main blueprint can be bought at the market for 25.000 credits.
The relics that drops blueprints for Frost Prime are currently removed from the drop tables and have been moved to the "Prime Vault". They will likely be unvaulted again at a later date - pay attention to news on the official Warframe site for information of which warframes gets unvaulted next time. You can however still acquire those blueprints by trading with other players (for Platinum) who already possess those blueprints.
Abilities
Frosts passive ability is a 10% chance to temporarily freeze enemies attacking with melee weapons.
1: Freeze throws a freezing projectile that inflicts Cold damage and freeze enemies in front of Frost. If the Freeze projectile hits a surface, it will result in a frozen area, that slows enemies down as they walk into it. Freeze can also be used to shatter a Snow Globe, which will then detonate and damage nearby enemies.
The damage scales with Ability Strength and the duration of the freeze scales with Ability Duration.
Augment: The Freeze Force augment give a DPS buf to nearby team mates; hold the Freeze button (1) to add 100% Cold damage for the next 40 sec to all attacks by nearby team mates.
2: Ice Wave damage enemies in a cone in front of Frost and procs Cold status, which reduce the targets movement and attack speed by 50%.
The cone angle and range are both affected by Ability Range. The damage scales with Ability Strength.
Augment: Ice Wave Impedance cause the Ice Wave to leave a frozen trail behind for 12 secs that will slow down enemies walking into it.
3: The Snow Globe ability is the main reason to play Frost! It is very useful for protecting a mission target and/or the team. The Snow Globe ability creates a sphere around the area that shields everybody/everything inside against incoming damage from the outside - however, you can still fire on enemies outside while you are inside the Snow Globe. When you cast Snow Globe, every enemy within range is violently pushed outside. Enemies that enter the Snow Globe will have their attack and movement speed reduced.
Hint: When casting Snow Globe it is invulnerable for up to 1-4 seconds - any incoming damage during this time will be added as extra health to the Snow Globe! For this reason it is better to cast Snow Globe when there are a lot of incoming fire rather than when there are no enemies around.
Frost can cast up to 4 separate Snow Globe's to e.g. protect all radio towers in an Interception mission - or you can cast Snow Globe several times on an existing Snow Globe to make it stronger or to refresh an old Snow Globe. You can use the Freeze ability to destroy a Snow Globe - this can be useful on defence missions where the mission target is on an elevator that goes up and down again - having a Snow Globe flowing up in the air can be rather annoying.
The strength of the Snow Globe scales with Ability Strength and armor. The radius of the sphere is affected by Ability Range.
Augment: The Chilling Globe augment is highly recommended, as it results in 50% chance of freezing enemies that walk into the Snow Globe.
4: The Avalanche is very powerful - it freezes all nearby enemies, reduce their armor temporarily (similar to Corrosive proc) and deals Cold damage with 100% status proc. Frozen enemies that dies during the Avalanche will explode and deal Cold damage to nearby enemies.
The armor reduction and damage scales with Ability Strength. The range scales with Ability Range and the duration scales with Ability Duration.
Augment: The Icy Avalanche augment protect allies within range an icy armor that scales with the number of enemies hit by the Avalanche.
Frost Builds
This is a balanced build that boost all your abilities but especially the Snow Globe. Extra Duration is nice for improved crowd control. Extra efficiency combined with (Primed) Flow allow us to use our abilities more often.
If you mainly use Frost for Defence type missions, then the Chilling Globe augment is good with the 50% chance of freezing enemies walking into the Snow Globe, but it is not required and can easily be replaced with whatever you find more useful; for example you could equip the Icy Avalanche augment to get some ice armor each time you cast your fourth ability. Or equip (Primed) Vigor for some extra Health and Shield if you have trouble staying alive.
On some missions it could be useful with more Ability Range - in that case just replace the Chilling Globe with e.g. Stretch.
Against high-level enemies you may consider replacing the Chilling Globe augment with e.g. Intensify for more Ability Strength, which will make your Snow Globe stronger and increase the Cold damage from your abilities - or you could equip Armored Agility for some more Armor and sprint boost (more Armor will also increase the health of the Snow Globe).
For Sorties you may consider replacing either the Chilling Globe augment or the Cunning Drift mod with Intruder in order to make it easier to hack the terminals.
This build is work-in-progress and need some more Forma and Endo to complete it but already works well.
