Review: Mesa (Prime) (U24.2.6)

Mesa is a gunslinger-themed Warframe, released back in U15.5. Mesa Prime was recently released alongside Akjagara and Redeemer Primes, in U24.2.2. Despite Mesa's relatively more difficult grind, she is an extremely popular and very powerful Warframe.

Acquisition

Mesa's blueprint is available directly from the Market, while her part blueprints are dropped from the Mutalist Alad V Assassination. This mission is available on after you have completed the Patient Zero quest, and requires spending a Mutalist Alad V key to access, the blueprint for which is awarded at the end of the aforementioned quest. The key notably requires a Mutalist Alad V coordinate, which is occasionally rewarded by Invasions, but also is a drop from Eris Hive Sabotage caches, or Orokin Derelict Defence/Survival rotations. Originally, three coordinates were required to build one key, but this has since been reduced to just one.

Mesa Prime's blueprints, as standard, drop from various Relics.

Stats

Mesa has low base armour and shields, at 65 and 75 respectively. Her base energy is average at 100, while hear base health and sprint speed are above average at 125 and 1.1 respectively.

Mesa Prime has slightly higher armour at 85, and higher energy and health at 125 and 135 respectively. The armour increase is pretty much negligible, as 85 is still a very small amount. The extra energy and health however are both appreciated.

Note that these stats include Peacemaker's innate +150% damage. The base Damage of Regulators is 25/12.5/12.5.

Mesa (Prime) has the Regulators (Prime) Exalted Weapon. Exalted Weapons are a special class of weapon, each used only by a particular Warframe, and only under certain conditions, usually by using a particular ability. They are modded just like regular weapons and appear in Arsenal, for instance Mesa's Regulators take secondary mods. However, you can equip the same mods on both the Exalted weapon as well as regular weapon without conflict (for instance, the same Barrel Diffusion can go on both Regulators and your regular secondary). Exalted Weapons are also levelled and Forma'd separately from the Warframe.

Exalted Weapons can be equipped with most of their class' mods, for instance the secondary Regulators can equip most secondary mods. However, they notably cannot equip weapon-specific Augments (e.g. Grinlok's Deadly Sequence), weapon-type specific mods (e.g. beam range mods) or Acolyte mods (e.g. melee's Blood Rush or Maiming Strike). They also do not have Rivens.

Notably, Exalted Weapons are available and fully modded in weapon-restricted Sorties.

Immediately obvious is the Regulators' great crit, with 25%/3x. Its RoF is also fairly high, which helps to mitigate the relatively low Status Chance. Regulators do not consume ammo like a normal weapon, so the Mag Capacity and Reload Time stats are meaningless.

Abilities

Passive: Marksman's Dexterity

Mesa gives +10% Fire Rate to dual secondaries, and +20% Reload Speed to single secondaries. She has +50 health if no melee weapon is equipped, which is unaffected by mods.


The secondary buffs of Mesa's passive are quite nice, offering some thematic and useful benefits to a lot of weapons. The additional health from not equipping a melee is not so useful, primarily as it does not stack with +Health mods - with Vitality equipped, you will only go from 925 to 975 health (999 to 1049 health for the Prime), a rather small improvement for losing a lot of utility. Especially considering melee weapons are absurdly powerful and very useful right now, I would not forgo one just for a little more health.

1: Ballistic Battery

Mesa stores 70% (+Str) of the damage dealt by her ranged attacks (including gunblade shots and Peacemaker [4]), to a maximum of 140 damage per shot (+Str), and a maximum total of 1600 damage (+Str). Upon recasting, the stored damage is added to the base damage of the next ranged attack (excluding gunblade shots, but including Peacemaker), not affected by base Damage mods. If the weapon fires more than one pellet, only one pellet will gain the added damage. For beam weapons, this bonus damage will apply for the whole magazine so long as the beam remains on the initial target. Ballistic Battery costs 25 energy to cast and interrupts actions, but is free to recast.


Initially, I thought this ability was completely worthless. Considering it takes time, energy and effort to charge up and use, 1600 extra damage (+Str) is pretty pathetic when there are many weapons that can easily exceed 30,000 DPS. However, what makes it less useless is that it is added before crits and elemental mods. On a crit heavy weapon like say the Rubico Prime, and with some +Str, you could easily have the total bonus damage exceed 20,000, which is more respectable if you need to put damage into a priority target. With that said, again I feel that the time, effort and energy to actually pull that off is not really worth focusing on. Sure it's a nice boost if you have the spare energy, but it's not really something to build and play around.

2: Shooting Gallery

Mesa creates a buff that circles her. This gives her +25% Damage (+Str) to weapons, treated like a +Damage mod. Notably, this affects Peacemaker (4), as well as Operator Amps. Additionally, every 1.5 seconds, it will stun or jam up to 3 enemies within 16 metre range (+Ran) for a short duration. The buff lasts for 30 seconds (+Dur). Casting Shooting Gallery costs 50 energy, interrupts actions, and it cannot be recast while still active.

If there are teammates, casting Shooting Gallery also creates one around another teammate. The teammate buff will periodically jump between teammates. By the time Mesa's buff expires, the teammate buff will have encircled each teammate for an equal amount of time. The teammate around which the buff is circling gains the full benefits of the ability.


Shooting Gallery is a useful, if not especially powerful, ability. The damage bonus it gives is not very large, but more damage is always welcome. The CC aspect of it is the main benefit here. As will be discussed shortly, Mesa is vulnerable to melee enemies, so the short stun that Shooting Gallery offers against such enemies is quite helpful for keeping her alive. Stunning regular enemies is appreciated too of course.

3: Shatter Shield

Mesa creates a barrier around herself that reflects ranged attacks back towards enemies, reducing the damage received by Mesa from such attacks 80% (+Str, to a max of 95%). It lasts for 25 seconds (+Dur) and cannot be recast while active. Shatter Shield costs 75 energy and interrupts actions when cast.


Shatter Shield is a great defensive ability. 95% DR makes her nearly invulnerable to ranged attacks. However, note that it does nothing against melee attacks, AoE such as Bombard rocket explosions (the rocket itself can be reflected without issue), status effects like Toxin and Slash, or radial knockdowns such as from Heavy Gunners and Shockwave MOAs. This seems like a fair compromise considering most other abilities with universal damage reduction have a smaller reduction. The reflected attacks deal mostly negligible damage, since enemy health scaling far exceeds enemy damage scaling.

4: Peacemaker

Mesa draws her Regulator Exalted pistols, and creates a targeting ring. While the fire button is held, she will shoot at a random enemy within line-of-sight inside the targeting ring, aiming at their torso, to a maximum range of 50 metres. Certain enemies cannot be targeted, such as enemies inside a Nullifier bubble and Capture targets. Each shot reduces the size of the ring, to a minimum Field of View (FoV) of 15 degrees (+Ran). This resets if Mesa deactivates Peacemaker.

Peacemaker gives Regulators an innate +150% Damage boost (+Str), treated like a +Damage mod. Additionally, they gain extra damage the more they are fired. Regulators fire in a two-shot burst, but function as Full-Auto weapons. For each burst to a maximum of 20, Peacemaker gives an additional +7.5% damage buff to a maximum of +150%, treated as an external multiplier. It does not stack with other damage multipliers like Roar. Sustained fire will also increase Regulator's RoF, to a maximum of 14.8 (+Fire Rate).

Casting Peacemaker costs 25 energy initially, and drains 15 energy per second. The drain-per-second is affected by both Efficiency and Duration. Peacemaker immobilises Mesa when she is on the ground, but can be cast in the air for short period of mobility. Her other abilities cannot be cast however Ballistic Battery can be recast to spend its damage bonus on a Regulators shot.


Peacemaker is one of the most powerful abilities in the game. Well modded, it can tear through droves of enemies in a blink of an eye, and even obliterate heavily armoured enemies. The FoV, line-of-sight and immobility limitations seem fair given Peacemaker's absurd power, and how easy it is to circumvent them by just quickly deactivating Peacemaker.

Augments

1: Ballistic Bullseye

Gives the shot affected by Ballistic Battery +100% Status Chance, unaffected by +Str. There has been some suggestion of disparaties between hitscan and projectile weapons - supposedly hitscan weapons benefit as if it were a +100% Status Chance mod, while projectile weapons have it added to the final Status Chance. Thus, on projectile weapons, this guarantees a status proc.


This Augment is tedious to use at best, and worthless at worst. Since Ballistic Battery affects only a single shot, you get only one boosted/guaranteed status shot. With the time and effort it takes to repeatedly cast and charge Ballistic Battery, it will only boost an occasional shot. Any decent status weapon will inflict far more status for much less effort. There are niche uses for it, for instance with the majority Slash, projectile bow Dread, allowing it to more reliably inflict massive Slash procs, but they are few and far between.

2: Muzzle Flash

Just before Shooting Gallery switches from a player, it performs essentially a mini Radial Blind from the player with the Shooting Gallery buff, as well as the Mesa player who casted it. This blind has 8 metre range (+Ran), with 7 second duration (+Dur).


Muzzle Flash is an Augment that on paper sounds kind of useful - Radial Blind, even a small one, is quite a powerful CC. However, it has several problems that mitigate its usefulness. Firstly, it requires at least three players in a squad to even function - with only one other squadmate, Shooting Gallery will not jump at all. It also has a conflict between wanting both more and less Duration. More Duration gives a longer lasting blind, however it also results in a longer lasting Shooting Gallery, which thus will jump between players less often. Less Duration results in more frequent blinds, however they will not last as long, as well as harming Shatter Shield significantly. Not to mention the unreliability of having to wait for Shooting Gallery to jump to emit a blind, rather than on a more controllable trigger. Overall, I don't think Muzzle Flash is worth the slot.

3: Staggering Shield

Shots reflected by Shatter Shield have a 50% chance of inflicting an Impact proc.


The effectiveness of this Augment depends on the enemies shooting at you. With slower firing enemies like Ballistas and Sniper Crewmen, you probably won't notice much difference since they take so long between shots anyway. Where Staggering Shield really shines is against fast-firing enemies, like Heavy Gunners and Corpus Techs. Under normal circumstances, after their short spool-up period, they let loose a rapid torrent of rounds that can shred all but the tankiest of Warframes, and can pose a threat to Mesa even with Shatter Shield's 95% DR, mainly through Slash procs. With Staggering Shield however, they can only fire a few shots before being staggered for a moment, then needing to spool-up again, only to be staggered shortly after again, greatly reducing their threat.

This Augment is also helpful against enemies like Bombards, who can potentially bypass Shatter Shield with AoE - the fewer shots they fire, the better. An additional noteworthy interaction is that Shatter Shield does not necessarily reflect the attack at the enemy who fired it - thus a fast firing enemy like a Heavy Gunner could end up stunning a whole group of enemies. Personally, I really like this Augment and strongly recommend it.

4: Mesa's Waltz

While Peacemaker is active, Mesa can walk at 50% speed, and can still roll. When not firing Peacemaker, its targeting ring will slowly expand, though this also slowly decays the damage and RoF bonuses.


Mesa's Waltz is an Augment whose usefulness depends heavily on how you use Peacemaker. If you spend extended periods of time in Peacemaker, this Augment gives you the ability to reposition without having to dispel and recast it, which can be a great convenience especially with the line-of-sight limitation. However, if you are very good at positioning for Peacemaker, and only spend brief periods using it, you're probably better off with another mod. Notably, Mesa's Waltz is an Exilus mod, so can go in the Exilus slot rather than taking up one of the regular mod slots. I personally really like this Augment. It makes minor repositioning much easier and more convenient, which I feel is worth the Exilus slot even though I don't use Peacemaker a whole lot.

Builds

Strength affects all of Mesa's abilities positively. The absolute minimum Strength you should have is +19% to reach a maximum Shatter Shield (3) damage reduction of 95%. Beyond this, Strength simply increases all of the damage bonuses, so is still useful to have, but is overkill for most content. Duration is also very beneficial for most of her abilities. It increases the duration of Shooting Gallery (2) and Shatter Shield, as well as reducing the drain of Peacemaker (4) if it is not already at minimum. Range affects most of Mesa's abilities, though it is relatively less useful than the other stats. It increases the range of Shooting Gallery's stun/jam, as well as the reflection range of Shatter Shield and the minimum FoV of Peacemaker. However, provided your Range is not very low, I haven't found more Range to be very useful, certainly not as much as more Strength, Duration or other mods. Efficiency is always nice, especially if you use Peacemaker a lot.

Mesa is fairly easy to get a serviceable build from. Shooting Gallery and Shatter Shield both have reasonable base durations, which are propped up significantly by the easier-to-acquire Duration mods. Shatter Shield's DR can be easily maxed out with just Intensify. Peacemaker has an absurd amount of firepower with just Intensify and a basic set of secondary mods.

Of the Augments, I'd personally strongly recommend Staggering Shield (3), as it greatly improves survivability against faster firing enemies. I'd also recommend considering Mesa's Waltz (4), depending on how you use Peacemaker.

When it comes to survivability, Mesa has many options. My default is always Vitality, as it helps to soak up Toxin/Slash procs, and is affected by armour so works well with Arcane Guardian for a bit of extra damage absorption. There are however several other viable options for Mesa. Since Shatter Shield's DR applies to shields, Redirection can be an effective protection, with the convenience that shields recharge on their own. (Primed) Vigor offers a bit of both. Rapid Resilience is an option that greatly reduces the threat of Toxin/Slash procs. Quick Thinking is always an option, but I'd personally consider it less useful on Mesa (Prime) as their energy pools are not especially large, and they really like having energy to cast abilities. Adaptation is an option that Mesa can build up reliably, and will even further reduce damage taken.

Arcane Aegis, Barrier and Grace are all very effective with Mesa. Since she can receive ranged damage quite safely in controlled amounts, she can trigger both of these Arcanes quite easily and safely. Arcane Deflection and Resistance can help protect her from Slash and Toxin procs respectively. Arcane Velocity can be triggered by, and affects, Regulators.

Rage/Hunter Adrenaline are options for keeping Mesa supplied with energy. Shatter Shield's DR allows you to take ranged damage a lot more slowly and safely, greatly reducing the threat of dying while trying to regain energy.

Mesa has two native - polarities, with a V in the aura slot. Mesa Prime has additional D and V polarities.

0-Forma:

This build focuses on Duration, with a bit of Strength and Efficiency. Augur Message is one of the easiest Augur mods to acquire, certainly more so than Augur Reach and Secrets. Vitality is my preferred survivability mod, for anything that slips past Shooting Gallery and Shatter Shield. I personally really like Staggering Shield, offering additional CC on top of Shooting Gallery. That last slot is very much personal preference however.

Rifle Amp has been chosen as a generic +7 capacity V polarity Aura. Pistol Amp does benefit Regulators, but only very slightly. Steel Charge notably offers extra capacity. Growing Power is a powerful option, but is quite difficult to acquire. With this particular setup, it is also possible to drop one of the mods and use a non-V polarity Aura, such as Corrosive Projection.

Primed Mods 1-Forma:

An added V polarity lets you comfortably fit both Primed Flow and Continuity, for a bit more energy and Duration.

Corrupted Mods 2-Forma:

An added D polarity lets you fit in some Corrupted mods as well, namely Transient Fortitude and Narrow Minded. Narrow Minded significantly boosts Duration at the cost of Range, which is quite beneficial for Mesa, with Stretch keeping Range from dropping too low. Transient Fortitude offers a bit more Strength than Intensify, at the cost of a little Duration. With this setup, Peacemaker is very cheap to cast and maintain, and has a nice damage boost. Shooting Gallery and Shatter Shield both last for a very long time, and can be fairly easily maintained. Again Staggering Shield is there because I like it, but there are many options for the last slot, for instance Augur Message/Constitution for more Duration, a different Augment, or more survivability.

If you can be bothered, Forma-ing the Aura polarity for Corrosive Projection is generally recommended, as the -30% enemy armour will beat just about any damage bonus otherwise offered. Enemy and Loot Radars are also useful - polarity Auras. Notably, Speed Holster greatly speeds up the draw/holster animations of Peacemaker.

Regulators:

0-Forma:

Because Peacemaker gives Regulators an innate +Damage mod that scales with Strength, base Damage mods like Hornet Strike are much less effective than usual. Especially at high Strength, much like Chroma, you may actually achieve higher DPS by dropping Hornet Strike for something else. Additionally, as Mesa auto-targets enemies so long as they are in line-of-sight, and Regulators can have an absurdly high RoF, Punch Through is not important.

The chosen elemental combo is Corrosive, aiming for high Status Chance. Peacemaker obliterates just about anything that isn't heavily armoured or an Ancient Healer/Disruptor in a blink of an eye, and Corrosive is the most effective against these remaining targets. With boosted RoF, even with fairly low base Status Chance, the Regulators can be a decent status weapon. Since they do not consume ammo, +RoF is essentially just more damage, as well as proccing more status - this is why Anemic Agility has been slotted in.

If you don't have the Primed crit mods, a second 60/60 mod can be slotted in as well, though you may not have Jolt either.

I've included build images with and without the elementals, as Warframe Builder does not show the actual damage values with the elemental mods installed.

Corrosive Status 1-Forma:

An added V polarity lets you fit in another 60/60 mod in, for maximum Corrosive bias and Status Chance.

For more general purpose use, there are many elemental combos you could consider. Corrosive + Heat/Cold, Viral + Electric, Radiation + Toxin/Cold are all decent options. Notably, Primed Heated Charge is a very powerful mod that can offer a significant damage boost for any build that isn't status-focused. The (Primed) Expel mods also offer a big boost against the appropriate faction.

If status is less important than raw damage, and you don't run particularly high Power Strength, Hornet Strike will still give you a lot of damage. I'd drop one of the elemental mods for it if that's what you're after.

My Builds:

This is my preferred, and only, Mesa build. Growing Power is the chosen Aura as the most useful V polarity Aura. The rest of the build is exactly like the one shown above. Mesa's Waltz is the chosen Exilus mod as I really like the added mobility, although something like Handspring is always a strong option.

My Regulator builds are not too special. The first one is optimised for Corrosive armour stripping, with Hornet Strike dropped because Regulators already deal an absurd amount of damage, and Peacemaker gives them an innate +Damage anyway. High Corrosive bias, boosted Status Chance and insane RoF make the Regulators a decent armour stripping weapon despite their relatively low base Status Chance. This build is aimed primarily at armoured heavies, since little else survives more than a split second in Mesa's crosshairs.

The second build is a high damage Radiation build, primarily aimed at Sortie Corpus bosses. Against typical Sortie level bosses, this build will kill the bosses before the Corrosive armour strip build has the chance to strip enough armour to deal more damage. Hornet Strike has been slotted in to help in Elemental Enhancement Sorties, which greatly reduce the elemental damage that enemies receive.

Roles

Mesa has two main roles. With Peacemaker (4), she serves as probably the best line-of-sight DPS in the game. Shatter Shield (3) and Shooting Gallery (2) give her quite decent protection against most enemies, Shatter Shield protecting against direct ranged fire and Shooting Gallery offering some protection against melee enemies. In this way, she is sort of a Tank, but is still vulnerable to melee attacks, AoE and status effects. She also serves as a bit of a Support and CC with Shooting Gallery, but these are quite minor. The damage bonus from Shooting Gallery is quite small, and its CC only affects up to three enemies at a time. Its Augment, Muzzle Flash, does improve its CC capabilities, but not enough for me to consider it a truly good CC ability.

Combat Use and Summary

Disregarding Peacemaker, Mesa's gameplay is pretty much just making sure Shooting Gallery (2) and Shatter Shield (3) are active as much as possible. If energy is tight, I'd prioritise Shatter Shield because of the massive DR it offers against all direct ranged attacks. When appropriate, Peacemaker (4) deals massive damage to any valid target within line of sight and range, great for clearing out a room, or quickly eliminating dangerous enemies. With high efficiency, Peacemaker can almost be used like a regular weapon, blasting away any enemy foolish enough to poke their head out.

As mentioned previously, Mesa is vulnerable primarily to melee enemies, AoE attacks like Napalms, and Toxin and Slash procs. All of these bypass Shatter Shield's DR, so can quickly kill her. Melee enemies can be held at bay for a moment with Shooting Gallery, and quickly dispatched with Peacemaker or any weapon, particularly melee. Toxin and Slash procs can be mitigated by something like Rapid Resilience, or simply running Health mods and healing up as appropriate. AoE attacks are the most dangerous, as even if Shatter Shield reflects the projectile, if it collides into something nearby and explodes, it could still hurt Mesa a lot.

There are some enemies in each faction that give Mesa trouble. Ancients of all sorts pose a problem or threat. Ancient Healers and Disruptors greatly reduce Peacemaker's damage output, while Toxic Ancients can instakill Mesa through Shatter Shield with their toxin breath attack. Grineer Nox are resistant to Peacemaker, as it does not target their head weakspot, and the AoE from their shots can damage Mesa significantly. Corpus Nullifiers of course are unaffected by Peacemaker and can dispel any of Mesa's buffs, but their shots can still be reflected by Shatter Shield.


If you're looking for a Warframe capable of dealing massive damage to enemies, while also offering some protection against enemy attacks, Mesa is a pretty good option. With the right mods on her Regulators, her Peacemaker can obliterate anything that is a valid target, while Shatter Shield and Shooting Gallery offer protection against most enemies. I personally don't especially enjoy using her, but a big part of that is that I prefer aiming and shooting regular weapons. I also don't enjoy her gameplay of just casting and recasting Shooting Gallery and Shatter Shield regularly.

Weapon Combinations

Thanks to her passive, Mesa works well with any single secondary that would appreciate a faster reload, and any dual secondary that would appreciate a higher RoF. Personally, I don't consider forgoing a melee to be worth the +50 health, considering it isn't affected by mods.

Dual Toxocyst, upon achieving a headshot, gains 100% Toxin damage and 150% Fire Rate for 3 seconds. Mesa's Regulators will benefit from this buff while it is active, but will not refresh or trigger it themselves.

Though not a weapon combination, an interaction worth noting is that Peacemaker can shoot across Limbo's Rift. Mesa can target enemies outside the Rift while she is inside, and vice-versa. This makes a Mesa-Limbo pairing incredibly powerful, Limbo providing Mesa with essentially invulnerability and free energy, and Mesa dealing massive damage to everything in sight.