As the games newest Warframe, Harrow offers a steep learning curve as this warframes approach to combat isn’t your typical one. Harrow, at heart, is a combination of support and tank. Its abilities allow the frame to sustain your group through health regeneration, damage mitigation, and even energy regeneration while in combat.

To fully utilize Harrow to his maximum potential, there’s a bit of work that needs to go into the frame, which includes the understanding of its three abilities. First off, Harrow, like any Warframe, comes with several abilities. Its first is called ‘Condemn’, which allows Harrow to swing its thurible in order to cast a spectral afterimage that snares its targets and immobilizing them, while also granting Harrow a shield restore based on the level the warframe and the ability is.

Up next comes the frames ability ‘Penance’, which allows Harrow to heal your team mates and gain a faster fire rate for all its weapons at the cost of its own shields. Since this does drain his overshields, it is suggested to wait before you can use both ‘Condemn’ and ‘Penance’ together.

Next up his his third ability, ‘Thurible’, which allows Harrow to channel its energy in order to generate a buff, which restores energy based upon the duration of the channel, and the amount of energy sacrificed. This ability sees an increase in energy returned if Harrow lands headshot kills against your enemies. This ability helps both Harrow and his team if they are near by him, allowing him to act as an energy battery for them.

Last, but not least, is the frames ability ‘Covenant’. This ability allows Harrow to protect your nearby allies with an energy shield, which absorbs all incoming damage for a set amount of time, before giving Harrow and your team mates an increased critical chance bonus. Headshots also increase this ability and allow for it to become more lethal.

How to Optimize Harrow’s Abilities When Used in a Rotation

Harrow is by far one of Warframe’s most effective support frames. His abilities allow him to increase damage, heal your team mates, restore your shields, and even provides limited invulnerability while also increasing your teams critical chances. As a character that acts as both a guardian and a support, Harrow is one that can be hard to use due to its utilities. Knowing when, how, and where is the most important of these, but so is a proper rotation.

To begin, you must remember that Harrow is a solid Warframe thanks to this frames diverse approaches to combat. To begin, if you are just starting a mission where you do not have access to a team energy deployable, it may not be a bad idea to start out with channeling the ability ‘Thurible’ in order to begin bumping up your access to energy. Doing this will be viable in both short and long term periods, as you will find yourself struggling less with energy than before, but will also have a better chance in both survival, defense, and mobile defense missions. Since these missions are where Harrow shines the most, these are the best missions to learn how to use the frame, and how to maximize the potential of this ability.

When your energy is up and your team mates have low shields, using ‘Penance’ in tandom with ‘Condemn’ in order to regenerate your shields, while using ‘Covenant’ to resist damage as both your shields and health restore. Because ‘Covenant’ does require a significant amount of energy, it may be best to use ‘Condemn’ instead as it does require less energy, stuns enemies, and allows Harrow to regenerate the frames shields after losing them due to ‘Penance’.

If your shields are already restored, it may be best advised to chain both ‘Condemn’ and ‘Covenant’ together, allowing Harrow to maximize the amount of critical chance that your frame provides its team mates with. Since Harrow’s abilities can be used in tandem, it’s just a matter of knowing when, how, and where to use them and in what order you wish to chain them together. More importantly, it’s also worth noting that your mods are going to be of the up most importance in how you play your Harrow warframe.

And Now a Suggested Mod Build for Harrow

One of the best mod builds out there is one I found on the forums and have found quite useful for myself. It’s called “The Guardian”. This build allows him to sustain high health, quick casts, and even little downtime in the abilities this warframe provides. So lets take a peek at this build real fast.

Aura:
Enemy Radar
Exilus:
Rush/Handspring (Naramon polarity, Forma)
Mods:
Primed Vigor/Vigor (Vazarin polarity, default)
Vitality (Vazarin polarity, Forma)
Primed Continuity/Continuity (Madurai polarity, Forma)
Constitution (Naramon polarity, default)
Transient Fortitude (Madurai polarity, Forma)
Intensify (Madurai polarity, Forma)
Natural Talent
Streamline

Because this build does focus on health and ability duration, you may want to know that you will want to take full advantage of his energy levels. You will want to take note, that Streamline is of high importance. Because you aren’t using Primed Flow (which you can substitute Primed Vigor for), you will need to ensure that you keep both ‘Penance’ and ‘Thurible’ up so that both your shields, and your shields are at max.

Onto Weapons for the Build

If used right, you can get your Thurible to provide you with around 75 energy per headshot at lv. 30 and even get your ‘Penance’ so that it lasts around 119 seconds with headshots. For weapons with this build, it is advised that you use abilities such as Braton Prime, Lex Prime, and even using heavy melee weapons such as Galatine Prime or Fragor Prime. Because your attack speeds are elevated, it is worth noting that Galatine Prime or Fragor Prime both swing as fast as weapons such as Ankyros Prime or even the Dakra Prime.

The Braton Prime in this build fires almost, if not as fast as the Dex Furis, allowing it to become a viable weapon based on the encounters. If you are really hurting for damage, the corpus bow called the Lenz. Since your fire rate is extremely high, this bow can do a substantial amount of damage, allowing it to dispatch large crowds of enemies rather quickly.

Since Harrow is all about learning, you may want to find a loadout that works best for you since not everyone has the same play style. With this bit of advise, Harrow can be an absolutely devastating frame, and quite possibly one of the best support frames to date. If you have questions, please let us know down in the comments below, and we’ll get back to you with more tips, tricks, and advise about the frame!

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About the Writer:

Dustin is our native console gamer, PlayStation and Nintendo reviewer who has an appetite for anything that crosses the boarders from across the big pond. His interest in JRPG’s, Anime, Handheld Gaming, and Pizza is insatiable. His elitist attitude gives him direction, want, and a need for the hardest difficulties in games, which is fun to watch, and hilarity at its finest. You can find him over on Twitter or Google+.