Jade is a not-so-new Warframe introduced in U36: Jade Shadows. A Seraphim-themed Frame, she possesses a wide range of both offensive and defensive Abilities.
With the combination of a powerful flight mode and wide range of skills otherwise, she has quickly become one of my favourite Warframes.Acquisition
Jade's Blueprints can also be bought with the node-exclusive currency Vestigial Motes, traded to Ordis either in the Drifter Camp or in the Larunda Relay when Operation: Belly of the Beast is active.
Jade requires pretty ordinary resources to craft.
Stats
Jade has slightly above average Health and Shields, though below average Armour and Energy Max. Her Sprint Speed is standard.
Abilities
Passive
Jade has two components to her Passive. The first is that she has two Aura mod slots, contrasting from most Warframes who only have one. This is nice particularly for mod capacity, reducing the number of Forma you might otherwise need to invest to fit your desired build.
The second revolves around her Abilities. Some of Jade's Abilities will inflict a unique "Judgement" debuff on enemies, shown as an icon above the enemy like in the above image. Enemies inflicted with Judgement will suffer 50% Damage Vulnerability (i.e. take 50% more damage) for 10 seconds. There are more interactions with Judgement but I'll cover those in the separate Ability sections.
This is also quite nice, dealing more damage to enemies is always a good thing.
1: Light's Judgement
Jade throws a plume towards the reticle, which upon impact creates a persistent area with 6m radius (+Ran) for 10 seconds (+Dur). Enemies within range and line of sight of this plume suffer 500 Heat damage per second (+Str), and are also inflicted with the Judgement debuff. Allies within range and line of sight of the plume are healed for 8% of their max Health per second (+Str), and Defence Objects are healed for a static 75 Health per second.
Up to 5 Light's Judgements can be active at any one time. The damaging effect will stack on enemies in range of multiple, while the healing effect will not stack on allies in range of multiple.
Light's Judgement costs 25 Energy to cast.
Light's Judgement is a cheap and useful Ability. It is the primary method for spreading Judgement, and is very reliable at doing so, and its healing is appreciated, if not the most significant. Particularly for the benefits of Jade's other Abilities, it is best placed in choke points and other enemy-dense areas.
2: Symphony of Mercy
Symphony of Mercy grants a buff to Jade and allies within Affinity Range (default 50m) for 30 seconds (+Dur). This Duration is replenished by 2 seconds whenever Jade kills an enemy inflicted by Judgement, to a maximum of twice the standard Duration.
There are three different buffs that Symphony of Mercy can grant, though only one can be active at a time. They are toggled between by holding the Ability button.
Symphony of Mercy costs 50 Energy to cast, and can be cycled at no Energy cost.
2a: Power of The Seven
2b: Deathbringer
2c: Spirit of Resilience
Overall, Symphony of Mercy is an effective and versatile buff Ability. By its nature it shines most when toggled between the different buffs as the situation requires, but is effective even if you just pick one to stick with the whole time. The built-in Duration refresh is greatly appreciated and encourages an active playstyle.
3: Ophanim Eyes
Jade summons an Ophanim choir which hovers around her, gazing forward 20m (+Ran) in a 70° cone, lasting for 30sec (+Dur). Enemies caught in this gaze suffer a little Heat damage, are slowed by a stacking 15% per second, and also have their defences (Shields and Armour but not Overguard) reduced by 10% per second (+Str). The slow caps at 90%, which takes 6 seconds to reach, while the defence reduction can reach total removal, which takes 10 seconds at base but is shortened by increased Strength. These two debuffs are permanent, and will remain even after the enemies leave the gaze of Ophanim Eyes.
Any downed allies in the gaze will begin to be revived. This does not inherit Vazarin's instant revives.
Ophanim Eyes costs 50 Energy to cast.
Ophanim Eyes is a great ability overall. While the time it takes to stack to full effect is not ideal, that it can stack is very helpful and removes the need to go all-out in Strength. Slowing enemies and reducing their Armour and Shields is extremely useful for reducing their threat and making it easier to kill them. The cone AoE can catch large groups of enemies at once, though is not as convenient as full all-around Abilities like Gloom or Pillage. Reviving allies at range is convenient particularly for Jade's 4, but is very much an extra and not significant to its overall value.
Ophanim Eyes is Jade's subsumable Helminth Ability, though loses its revive-at-range when subsumed.
In Glory on High, Jade takes flight and puts away her normal weapons, replacing them with the Glory Exalted Weapon.
Note that the above stats are pictured with an Strength of 238%. The base damage of Glory is 150 Heat, and scales directly with Strength. Glory is considered a Secondary, and thus can use Secondary mods. Like other Exalteds, it cannot currently equip the "Acolyte" mods or Arcanes, though this is set to change soon.
Particularly with 2c, Jade can achieve better-than-average survivability, though is by no means outright tanky. I find Adaptation to be very effective with 2c, allowing her Shields to provide a surprisingly effective defence even at Steel Path levels. Shield-gating can also be effective with the enhanced Shield Recharge.
4: Glory on High
While Glory on High is active, Jade gains +100% Movement Speed, but cannot sprint. Additionally, she gains 35% Damage Reduction (+Str), to a maximum of 50%.
Glory on High costs 25 Energy to cast initially, and drains a further 5 Energy per second (+Dur) while active. As with all other drain-over-time Abilities, Glory on High prevents many sources of Energy regeneration from working, including Energy Siphon/Nexus, Energy Restores, and Zenurik's Wellspring.
Jade cannot interact with any objects or pick up any items while in Glory on High, necessitating decasting or use of Operator. However, all of her other Abilities can be cast.
Besides its base Damage scaling with Strength, Glory's stats are nothing exceptional. 15%/2× Crit is rather mediocre, while 20% Status Chance is solid but not exceptional at a base Fire Rate of just 1.67. Notably, the Glory has infinite ammo, so unlike Titania's Dex Pixia, there is no need to pause to reload or recharge, you can just hold down the trigger indefinitely.
Glory shots explode in a 2m radius (+Ran), which is also increased by (Primed) Fulmination. It has a 10% chance of inflicting Judgement to any enemy hit.
Glory also has an unusual Alternate Fire. Alt Fire detonates enemies who are afflicted with Judgement. It has a colossal base Damage of 1500 Heat (+Str), ten times that of base Glory, and inherits the Crit/Status of base Glory and all mods. It explodes in a radius of 4m (+Ran), not affected by (Primed) Fulmination. It is also not affected by +Damage or +Multishot mods, and has a fixed maximum Fire Rate of once per second. Alt Fire consumes 25 Energy per cast.
If an enemy is in the range of a Light's Judgement when Alt Fire is used, the subsequent explosion has a 50% larger radius.
Where Titania's Razorwing turns her into a fast, precision strike craft, Jade's Glory on High is more akin to a gunship. She doesn't move particularly fast, even with the Movement Speed buff, but her Abilities and Glory are much better suited to wiping out large groups of enemies. Particularly when augmented with Light's Judgement, Glory Alt Fire can deal impressive damage in a surprisingly large range, and especially benefits from lots of enemies being close together.
Augments
As a relatively new Frame, Jade does not have any Augments yet. What I would give for a Razorwing Blitz-style Augment though...
Builds
Strength is, in my opinion, Jade's most important stat. It improves every Ability significantly (except maybe 1, which is the least impactful Ability anyway), and overall increases Jade's capabilities and game impact. Range is also very beneficial, increasing the AoE of 1 and 3, and greatly improving the AoE capabilities of her 4.
Duration is nice to have, but not critical. 1 is short lived, but is relatively cheap to cast repeatedly. 2 has respectable base Duration which is replenished from killing enemies inflicted with Judgement, so can be maintained almost indefinitely. 3 also has respectable base Duration and is not an especially expensive Ability to cast. Finally, as 4 is a drain-over-time Ability, its Energy drain is reduced by increasing Duration. I would recommend keeping Duration above 100%, but not worrying too much about it otherwise.
Like with most other Frames, the necessity for Efficiency is largely dependent on your access to other Energy restoration methods. In particular, having Jade's 4 active blocks many Energy regen-over-time effects like Energy Siphon and Zenurik's Wellspring, forcing you to rely on other methods such as Energy Orb generation, Equilibrium and Arcane Energise. If you have such methods available to you, Efficiency is not overly important, though should be kept at at least neutral 100%. If you don't have many other Energy recovery methods, I would consider Efficiency much more important.
As a Frame with an Exalted Weapon, Archon mods are worth considering on Jade...though perhaps not Archon Stretch. While its Energy regeneration can be triggered by building Glory for Electric damage, it is blocked by her 4. Archon Continuity can be triggered by a Toxin-built Glory, though as the Glory has innate Heat damage, isolating pure Toxin can be rather inconvenient. Archon Flow can be triggered by a Cold-built Glory, and its Energy Orb generation can be beneficial, but again can inconvenient to build for.
Archon Vitality can be solid on a Heat-built Glory, greatly increasing its damage-over-time potential. As Glory has innate Heat damage, this is the easiest of the four Archon mods to benefit from.
I like including Health on a lot of Frames as an emergency buffer, but I would not consider it essential by any means.
With a second Aura slot, Jade can get a heap of bonus capacity that makes it very easy to fit in a basic build. This pictured build has a bit of everything, and exploits 2c to make Redirection a very solid survivability option.
This 2-Forma build throws in a lot of Primed mods, though follows similar build beats, notably increasing Strength significantly. Adaptation is used in lieu of Redirection, though depending on your playstyle may not be all that helpful.
As Glory has infinite ammo, increasing its Fire Rate is strictly beneficial. This build leverages that and stacks a whole lot of +Fire Rate, for a significant increase in DPS and Status proc output at no real cost.
This build is exclusive designed for Alt-Fire, which does not benefit from +Damage or +Multishot mods, for some reason. Instead, it goes all-in on Crit and Elemental damage.
My default Jade build has a bit of everything, leaning towards Strength. Adaptation coupled with 2c and the DR in 4 is enough for most content, and I have a +Health Azure Archon Shard as an extra buffer as well.
My default Glory build is a fairly standard Viral + Magnetic build. Viral is near universally effective thanks to its proc, while Magnetic has become drastically more useful with its effectiveness against Overguard, and the proliferation of Overguard in modern Warframe.
This second Glory build goes instead for Corrosive + Radiation, more effective against Viral-resistant/immune targets.
Jade has a lot of utility to offer, though her gameplay loop tends to be quite simple. Her 2 should be active at all times, preferably starting in Power of The Seven to buff her other Abilities, and then switched around as the situation dictates. 3 should also be active all the time, Energy permitting and provided there is not a reason for enemies to be moving faster. If you like the playstyle, 1 should be used primarily in choke points against enemies, or in areas where allies usually congregate or pass through.
Jade can uniquely equip two Aura mods, which offers some interesting options.
Growing Power and Aerodynamic are, in my opinion, the obvious choices. Jade greatly benefits from Strength, and when in her 4, is constantly airborne so will always get the DR from Aerodynamic. Aerodynamic notably also fits in Jade's native D polarised Aura slot.
Outside of these two, a lot of the usual suspects are less effective/desirable on Jade. Corrosive Projection is not really needed as Ophanim Eyes can quickly reach full Armour strip. Energy Siphon does not work while 4 is active, and unfortunately neither does Sprint Boost. Pistol Amp boosts the damage of Glory, but is too weak to be worth using. Loot Detector/Enemy Radar are always nice but Animal Instinct can easily be equipped on a Companion anyway.
There are a lot of good Arcane options for Jade, and below is a far-from-exhaustive list of them.
+Strength options are always helpful if you can reliably trigger them, mainly looking at Molt Augmented. For survivability, Arcane Aegis combines incredibly well with 2c to make Jade nigh-invulnerable with surprising frequency.
As mentioned previously, 4 blocks many forms of Energy recovery, so Arcane Energise is an obvious option to rectify this.
Arcane Avenger can be nice to buff any Crit weapons, including Glory.
Any of the Arcanes that buff Secondaries also apply to Glory, though keep in mind that none of the on-reload ones can be triggers by Glory. I am fond of Arcane Velocity for +Fire Rate, as I find Glory to be far too slow normally.
There are also a whole lot of good Archon Shard options.
For Crimson Shards, +Strength/Duration are naturally both good options. Amber Shards notably can increase effectiveness of Energy Orbs, which can mitigate any potential Energy issues.
Azure Shards primarily offer various survivability options (and +Energy Max), which can be nice to have, but are probably not as impactful as the other options. Emerald Shards can be beneficial for any Glory build with Toxin or Corrosive, though I consider that somewhat limited and restrictive. In particular, the effect of increasing maximum Corrosive procs is not necessary since 3 can completely remove enemy Armour.
Topaz Shards can provide benefit for any Glory build with Blast/Radiation, and particularly has an option for increasing Secondary Crit Chance (including Glory) from killing enemies suffering from Heat procs. Again, Glory's base Damage is Heat, so building for Heat is quite easy. Finally, Violet Shards can offer benefit for an Electric Glory build, or offer a minor Equilbrium effect for improved Energy economy.
Of those, I'd consider Crimson, Amber, and Topaz shards to be the most useful.
Basic 0-Forma:
2-Forma:
Glory
NOTE: Overframe does not calculate Glory's direct DPS correctly, for what reason I'm not sure. I suspect it's something to do with ammo.
Basic 0-Forma:
With two native V polarities, Glory can fit a pretty solid basic build even before any Forma. This above build shows all the basics - Damage, Multishot, and Elementals.
With innate Heat, there are several obvious elemental combos to go for.
Viral is the best all-rounder, being effective against almost all targets thanks to its proc even if it deals reduced damage. Corrosive has some notably useful multipliers, particularly against certain Viral-immune enemies like the Deimos Infested. The revamped damage multiplier system makes Corrosive effective even after enemy Armour is completely removed by Ophanim Eyes. Magnetic is notably strong against enemies with lots of Overguard like Eximus units, and also deals bonus damage against most Corpus units.
The innate Heat gets added after these combos, and works well with all of them. Its damage-over-time proc is enhanced by Viral or Magnetic procs in particularly, while it works well against many of the targets you would rather use Corrosive against.
While Glory and its Alt Fire both possess AoE that scales with Range, their AoE is still not that large. Blast can be used to stack powerful Blast procs for extra AoE DPS, which stacks quite reliably since Glory has respectable Status Chance and pure base Heat damage.
Fire Rate 2-Forma:
Accelerated Isotope is noteworthy as a way to get Radiation damage and procs without interfering with the native Heat damage, on top of the extra Fire Rate.
Galv Diffusion of course.
Primed Crit 2-Forma:
Glory can also be built for Crit with the Primed Crit mods, though as its Crit is not exceptional, this is not a huge boost to it. Unless you have both Primed Crit mods, I don't think it's worth building for Crit.
Due to 2b Deathbringer providing extra +Damage akin to a +Damage mod, it is not worth slotting in Magnum Force or Augur Pact. You could instead slot in a (Primed) Expel mod for extra Faction damage, though I'd favour more Fire Rate for the Glory specifically. Similarly, Pistol Elementalist greatly strengths any damage-over-time procs, but I'd still prefer the Fire Rate.
In my opinion, Magnetic Might is one of the best newer mods in the game, providing +Magnetic Damage and +Crit Damage. Released recently in the 1999 update, it provides a significant damage boost especially against enemies with Overguard, who are becoming increasingly prevalent. If you can find a slot for it, I would strongly recommend including it.
Currently, Exalted Weapons cannot use any of the conditional "Acolyte" mods, though this is set to change soon. Glory might make decent use of the conditional Crit mods (Hydraulic Crosshairs and Sharpened Bullets), though I wouldn't consider them best-in-slot by any means.
As it is an AoE weapon, Punch-Through does not benefit Glory at all. It detonates on the first enemy or object it hits, and cannot pass through.
Galvanised Mods:
Galv Shot does not affect Glory's explosions, so is of limited value.
Galv Crosshairs can't be equipped (yet). If it could, it might be nice for the huge Crit Chance increase, but its trigger condition of Headshots and Headshot kills is rather inconvenient for an AoE weapon like Glory.
Alt-Fire-only:
My Builds
Arcane Velocity is for Glory, which as I've already mentioned I find to be painfully slow firing.
Roles
Jade covers a lot of roles quite well. She can act as a decent AoE DPS with Glory while in Glory on High (4), particularly Glory's Alt Fire albeit at an increased Energy cost. While not especially powerful on its own, Jade's other Abilities go a great deal to amplifying Glory's power.
Speaking of, her Support ability is quite solid. All of the three versions of Symphony of Mercy (2) are useful and meaningful buffs. Increased Weapon Damage is always useful, and improved Shield Recharge is appreciated by a majority of Frames. Similarly, Ability Strength is beneficial to a majority of Frames. The healing from Light's Judgement (1) is also nice, though in my opinion much less impactful. Ophanim Eyes (3) can revive allies at range, which again is nice but far from critical.
Jade has some strong debuff capabilities as well. Her Judgement, which can be inflicted on enemies in several ways, increases damage taken by 50% for a short time, regardless of the damage source. 3 provides both a slow and Shield/Armour strip that are initially limited, but stack over time and are permanent, in a cone in front of Jade. The slow maxes out at 90% which is excellent, and its cone range allows you to CC large groups of enemies at once, though certainly not to the degree of more dedicated CC Frames.
While Jade is tankier than average with 2c Spirit of Resilience active, she does not come close to any of what I would consider to be the "true" Tank Frames - Frames such as Nezha and Rhino with significant damage reduction/mitigation.
Combat Use and Summary
With 4 active, Jade can comfortably hover above the battlefield and rain down shots from Glory, throwing out 1 as desired and using Glory's Alt Fire for big bursts of damage when appropriate.
Jade is effective in most gamemodes. Glory does respectable damage especially when amplified by her other Abilities, and has a solid element of AoE, making it effective for any gamemode where killing large numbers of enemies is beneficial - which is most of them. Ophanim Eyes is particularly useful against tough priority targets such as Disruption Demolishers and Bosses, provided they are not Ability-immune. The various effects of Jade's 2 are useful in many different situations, with only specific occasions where they might be ineffective (e.g. Inaros, Nidus, and Kullervo gain no benefit from improved Shield Recharge).
A lot of Jade's uniqueness lies in Glory on High. While all her other Abilities are technically unique, the vast majority of their effects can be replicated by other Frames and Abilities, and sometimes even better. If you don't like Glory on High, I think there is a lot less reason to use Jade.
In my opinion, Jade has three flaws of varying severity. The most significant is that while all of the effects of her 2 are powerful and desirable, she can only have one active at a time. In fairness, one could argue that having all three effects active simultaneously would be too strong. Making the most of Jade requires knowing when to toggle between the three versions of her 2. This is by no means a dealbreaker, as any one of the effects from 2 is already quite strong in its own right.
The less significant are both around Glory on High, and likely partly stem from me being a Titania main. I find both the movement speed and Fire Rate of Glory on High to be quite slow, to the point where I run +Fire Rate mods and Arcanes to compensate. I would love for Jade to get a Razorwing Blitz-esque Augment.
Overall, Jade is a strong a versatile Warfame. Her wide range of Abilities offer many useful effects both to an individual player and for the wider squad, and she is effective in many different gamemodes.
With the combination of her versatility and powerful flight weapons, Jade has quickly become one of my favourite Warframes, alongside Titania and Saryn.
Weapon Combinations
Jade has a unique synergy with her signature weapons, but otherwise does not have any notable preferences for specific weapons or weapon types. Every weapon likes dealing more damage and appreciates enemies having reduced defences.
If wielded by Jade, when the Evensong, Cantare, and Harmony all trigger their unique squad buffs, they merge into a single buff called Jade's Harmony. This combined buff has increased duration and stronger effect than those buffs individually.
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