Acquisition
Rhino is the easiest Warframe for a new player to acquire. His three parts can be acquired from the Jackal Assassination on Venus, while the main blueprint is available directly from the Market. This is the earliest new Warframe that a player can obtain, as the Mercury boss, Captain Vor, does not drop Warframe parts, while the Earth boss, Vay Hek, is a much higher level.
Stats
Notably, as Rhino's Iron Skin (2) scales with armour, Rhino Prime is one of the few Prime Warframes who has a boosted ability compared to its base model.
Abilities
Passive: Heavy Landing
This passive is, to be frank, practically worthless. It is true that it offers a minor defence against any enemies nearby your landing spot, but it does not affect enemies further away, who are still quite capable of attacking you during your hard landing animation. Furthermore, it does not eliminate the hard landing animation, which lasts long enough to leave you quite vulnerable and be annoying to have to wait through. With practice with Warframe's movement system, it is much better to simply avoid hard landings, through maneuvers like Aim Glides and Sliding.
1: Rhino Charge
Rhino Charge has a simplified combo system, which lasts for 1 second (+Dur). Casting Charge again during this combo window will double the damage, increase range by 0.25x, and halve energy cost from the previous cast, to a maximum of 4x damage, 1.5x range and 0.25x energy.
The damaging effect of Rhino Charge is pretty much meaningless beyond low levels, but this ability does have some uses. Since it ragdolls all enemies hit, and makes you invulnerable for a short time, it is a useful panic button ability that is also cheap to cast, especially in succession. With high Range, it can also be used to cover long distances quite quickly.
2: Iron Skin
Upon casting, Rhino will be made invulnerable for 3 seconds. During this time, any damage that would be received is instead absorbed, and added to Iron Skin's total health. This does not include self-damage. The amount absorbed is displayed in the buff/debuff bar in the top right.
Iron Skin is an amazing defensive ability. Blocking all status effects is very useful, as is absorbing huge amounts of damage, while the damage absorption period keeps the ability relevant at really high levels. There are two main problems with Iron Skin. The first is that it encourages complacency with regards to mobility, as it makes you extremely tough and minimises the need for evasive maneuvers to survive. The second problem Iron Skin has is its inability to be refreshed or recasted safely....at least without Augments.
3: Roar
Roar is the only ability in the game (so far) that boosts both weapon and Warframe ability damage directly, and boosts them by a substantial amount, applying after all other damage modifiers. The biggest problem with Roar is the inability to recast it while it is active, which would otherwise make it practically perfect.
4: Rhino Stomp
Stomp is a very effective CC ability, completely disabling all enemies within range for its duration, and even a little longer since they need to get up afterwards from the knockdown. Like Rhino Charge, its damage is negligible outside of lower levels, but this is hardly a problem. The inability to refresh the slow duration is not a big issue since you can just Stomp again when enemies are starting to get up from the previous knockdown.
Augments
1: Ironclad Charge
Even just on face value, Ironclad Charge is a decent, if a little finicky, Augment. Since it multiplies your total current armour, not just base, and scales with Strength, you can reach absurd armour values with a well aimed Charge cast. For instance, with just Intensify for +30% Strength, hitting just 4 enemies with a single charge will increase your armour by 260%, from 190 to 684. With higher Strength and some Armour mods, a good Charge cast can get your armour easily into the thousands, potentially even tens of thousands.
While this makes Rhino's health much tougher, Ironclad Charge has another, very noteworthy interaction. Iron Skin scales with Rhino's current armour - and takes into account the bonus armour from Ironclad Charge. High Strength and a well aimed Ironclad Charge with a follow-up Iron Skin cast can result in an Iron Skin with tens, if not hundreds of thousands of health. Strength is especially good for this, as it not only increases Ironclad Charge's armour multiplier, but also Iron Skin's overall health multiplier.
With all that said, the extra armour is worthless if you can't cast Iron Skin in time. If your Iron Skin is still active, it cannot be recast until it is depleted, which requires jumping into a pit, being Nullified or being attacked by enemies. That or using...
2: Iron Shrapnel
That first sentence alone makes Iron Shrapnel worth taking. Being able to dispel and recast Iron Skin on command is fantastic (and would be great if it was part of the base ability...), as it gives you much better control over Iron Skin health. For instance, if Iron Skin is low on health, you would otherwise have to either jump in a pit, run into a Nullification field, or risk getting shot at to remove it and allow recasting. Alternatively, you may have just made a perfect Ironclad Charge and now have tens of thousands of bonus armour that you want Iron Skin to benefit from. Iron Shrapnel allows you to refresh your Iron Skin when it best suits you, rather than as enemies and the environment allow. The detonation damage is negligible, though the radial knockdown is a nice extra.
3: Piercing Roar
This Augment is basically useless. As I discussed in my damage types article, Puncture procs are pretty much worthless currently, as 70% of a lot of damage is still a lot of damage. Again, the damage dealt is basically worthless. If Puncture procs are buffed to be substantially more effective, this mod may be worth using, but until then, don't bother. The inability to recast Roar also hinders this Augment.
4: Reinforcing Stomp
Reinforcing Stomp is notably a way of healing your Iron Skin without having to dispel it first. It does not heal a particularly large amount. A standard Rhino's base Iron Skin health is 1675, so you would need to catch 21 enemies in Stomps to fully heal this. Strength does not affect how many enemies are required for a full heal, since it scales both Iron Skin health and Reinforcing Stomp heal. However, additional Armour will increase the required number of enemies. With just Steel Fiber, the number of enemies required increases to 28. Rhino Prime's additional Armour increases this further.
With that said, Reinforcing Stomp is a neat convenience mod, as dispelling Iron Skin to recast it leaves you vulnerable for a moment. Personally I prefer just recasting Iron Skin with Iron Shrapnel, but this is a fun and useful Augment particularly if you Stomp a lot.
Builds
Rhino is a Warframe who appreciates all Ability stats. Strength notably boosts Rhino Charge with Ironclad Charge (1), Iron Skin (2) and Roar (3), and to a lesser extent, Stomp with Reinforcing Stomp (4). Range significantly improves Stomp and to a lesser extent Roar, while also making Charge go further. Duration benefits both Roar and Stomp significantly. Efficiency is always appreciated to make ability casting a lot easier. As such, I strongly recommend ensuring that all stats are at least close to 100%, even if it's not a primary stat.In Warframe's current modding system, you can either go for a balanced build, boosting all stats a reasonable amount, or maximise one or two, at the cost of the others. One of the many good thigns about Rhino is that just about any combination of Strength/Duration/Range can be effective, with the best setup depending on the mission and your personal preferences. Strength + Duration gives a tough Iron Skin and a strong, long lasting Roar, at the cost of a shorter Charge and smaller Stomp, great for solo play and general killing. Duration + Range gives a wide reaching and long lasting Range and Stomp, perfect for CC. Strength + Range gives a strong Iron Skin with a wide reaching and fairly powerful Charge and Stomp, particularly effective with Ironclad Charge and Reinforcing Stomp, and for map wiping at low levels.
General speaking, I find the Balanced or Strength + Duration builds to be the most overall useful, being effective in both solo play as well as buffing allies. Duration + Range is mainly useful in defensive type gamemodes where killing is less or not necessary (e.g. Mobile Defence, Interception). Strength + Range is useful mainly at lower levels, or for Iron Skin shenanigans with Augments.
Since Iron Skin completely absorbs any damage received, Health and Shields are not necessary. Armour does significantly improve Iron Skin, especially in conjunction with Strength, so is worth building for.
Of the four Augments, Iron Shrapnel (2) is by far the most generally useful. The ability to refresh Iron Skin at your own convenience is fantastic. Notably, since ranking up the mod only improves the mostly useless explosion, this Augment can be left at Rank 0 to save mod capacity. Ironclad Charge (1) is mainly up to personal play style. If you enjoy or are willing to regularly Charge into enemies, Ironclad Charge can be a very powerful Augment. If you're lazy like me and prefer not to, it's not worth it. Piercing Roar (3) is not worth it as Puncture procs are terrible, and Roar is not recastable while active. Reinforcing Stomp (4), like Ironclad Charge, depends on your personal playstyle. If you Stomp a lot, Reinforcing Stomp can be worth slotting in. If not, I'd leave it off.
Rhino has two native D polarities, with Rhino Prime having an additional - polarity. They both have a V Aura polarity.
General Purpose 0-Forma:
Rifle Amp has been used as the Aura as it's a fairly easy to acquire V polarity Aura with standard capacity. Steel Charge offers a bit more capacity, but is an anomaly in this respect.
Range + Duration 1-Forma:
Strength + Duration 2-Forma:
This is an alternative with Ironclad Charge, losing a bit of Strength, but having massively more Iron Skin potential. Hitting even just one enemy with Charge will get you an Iron Skin of comparable strength, while hitting multiple enemies will net you a substantially stronger Iron Skin. This of course comes at the cost of a noticably weaker Roar, at only +77.5% damage.
Strength + Range 2-Forma:
My Builds
Arcane Guardian, though it does not trigger while Iron Skin is up, can be useful. If Iron Skin is taken down by enemy fire, Arcane Guardian has a fairly good chance of activating, which will boost Rhino's armour and thus enhance the next Iron Skin casted. Arcane Energise helps a little with energy economy, though as a Zenurik user, this is rarely a problem anyway.
Roles
Rhino is a versatile Warframe useful in just about every mission type. In offensive missions that require damage dealing and killing power, he can increase all damage dealt by himself and all nearby allies by a significant amount. In more defensive missions, he can help keep objectives safe by Stomping any enemies who get too close, or knocking them away with Charge. Through it all, Iron Skin can keep Rhino (relatively) safe.
With Roar, Rhino is one of the best offensive Support Frames, offering a simple but substantial universal damage buff. His Stomp is also one of the best CC abilities in the game, completely disabling enemies in a fairly wide area for a decent amount of time. Charge likewise offers a little bit of CC. Iron Skin makes Rhino one of the Tankiest Warframes in the game, especially if armour boosting and damage absorption mechanics are taken full advantage of.
Combat Use and Summary
Rhino is a rather simple but quite effective Warframe. He is useful in just about every mission type, and is very easy to acquire and learn. Even without good mods, his abilities are good enough to provide quite decent benefit. Perhaps the only weakness, if you can call it that, is that at higher levels, Rhino relies entirely on his weapons for killing power.The first order of business in a mission is to put up an Iron Skin (2), and it should be refreshed as necessary. With Ironclad Charge, this may be preceded by a Charge (1) into a group of enemies for the extra armour, and thus Iron Skin health. Roar (3) should be kept active as much as possible, while Charge and Stomp (4) are used as necessary. In missions where CC is ideal and killing is less necessary, this could mean a lot of Charge/Stomp casting, while missions that require killing to progress would more likely see a minimum of it, only casting to survive or protect the objective. If Ironclad Charge is equipped, Charge should be casted shortly before recasting Iron Skin.
If you're looking for a simple, solid and useful Warframe, or even just your first new Frame after your starter, Rhino is a great one to go for. He is easy to acquire, easy to get good use of, and can be made very powerful. I personally don't particularly enjoy him as such, I find him very boring. However, I absolutely cannot deny his usefulness, and use him to level weapons in situations where a Speed Nova would be too dangerous.
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