Focus

Focus (version 2.0) refers to the unlocking of a Tenno's true abilities, guided by the principles of the Five Great Tenno Schools.

Activation


Upon completion of the Second Dream quest, players become able to perform Transcendence. When activated, an invulnerable projection of the Tenno Operator (along with a powerful Void Beam attack) will appear and hover from the Warframe, able to be controlled through basic movement. During Transcendence, the player's Warframe is invulnerable but disabled. Channeling/cast Abilities will remain active however. This state lasts for 10 seconds unless the player manually deactivates it or falls off a platform. Each activation of Transcendence has an initial cooldown time of 180 seconds.

Completing The War Within replaces Transcendence with Transference, which allows the Operator to physically join the battle with an entirely new set of Abilities, Amp and Arcanes.

Acquiring both Transcendence and Transference are required to activate and take advantage of the passive and active Focus powers provided by each school.

Tenno Schools
The Tenno Schools represent differing paths of discipline in regards to the Tenno's personality and fighting styles, manifesting in the various abilities that each school provides for the Tenno Operator. Several aspects of the Focus powers are additionally granted towards the active Warframe.

At the end of The Second Dream, players are asked to choose one of the five Tenno Schools available as their starting Focus school. Focus is classified into the five Schools, similar to the modern polarities:
 * Madurai, School of the Fighters
 * Vazarin, School of the Protectors
 * Naramon, School of the Tacticians
 * Unairu, School of the Indomitable
 * Zenurik, School of the Arcane

Each school has their own skill tree comprising of 10 abilities called Ways, which unlock various passive abilities that can enhance Operator powers and to a lesser extent, grant improvements to the player's Warframe.

Each Way contains their own ranks which can be increased by spending Focus points into the specified Way. An unlocked and activated Way will be lit up in red, the lines between two Ways signify the outer's dependence on the activation of the inner Way as a pre-requisite to be able to be active.

Unlocking a Way requires a one-time spending of Focus, while ranking up a Way can be performed by gradually allocating points into it by holding down the Focus button beside the Way's icon until the required amount of Focus is reached, thereby reaching the next rank.

Focus allocation can be stopped at will, and will also stop once the current amount of held Focus for that school is depleted. The player must then confirm the allocation; otherwise they will revert their Focus powers to that of the last-confirmed change. Once confirmed, Focus cannot be reimbursed or retrieved.

Ways are split into Active, Passive and Way-Bounds, which will be covered below.

Active Ways
Active Ways are abilities that provide improvements or alterations in regards to utility and the Operator's Void powers, namely Void Blast, Void Dash and Void Mode, and are denoted by having a circular icon. Activated Active Ways have an associated energy cost increase, consuming more Void energy. Deactivating Active Ways will return cost consumption of the stated power to normal.

Passive Ways
Passive Ways are abilities that provide passive enhancements to either the Operator's or a Warframe's stats, and are denoted by a hexagonal icon. Passive Ways which grant Operator and Warframe bonuses are active from the start of a mission as of update.

Way-Bounds
Each School's Way-bound abilities passively enhance the Operator's base combat stats. Unlike all other Ways, these can be "unbound" from the Focus school they are part of, therefore showing up (and treated as) as an additional unlocked Way in any selected school afterwards. To activate the unbound node(s) their usual capacity is still required.

''E.g. Unbinding Rejuvening Tides from Vazarin allows the player to activate it as a Way and benefit from its effects even whilst having Naramon as the Primary school. The player will also need 10 additional Way Capacity on top of that consumed by activated Ways in the Naramon school, to activate Rejuvenating Tides. ''

Unbinding a Way-Bound node simply requires the particular Maximum-ranked ability node to be spent on, 1,000,000 Focus points and a Brilliant Eidolon Shard.

Each school has two Way-Bound nodes, for a total of 10 Way-Bound nodes available to unlock.


 * -|Madurai =


 * -|Vazarin =


 * -|Naramon =


 * -|Unairu =


 * -|Zenurik =

The Focus Trees
Initially, only two Focus Ways per school will be available to the player for activation upon completing The Second Dream Quest, both abilities mainly providing passive Warframe bonuses. In order to reveal the rest of the Focus abilities in a particular school, players must have completed both The War Within and Saya's Vigil, and subsequently visit The Quills on Cetus in order to be able to unlock and rank up their Ways.


 * -|Madurai =
 * -|Vazarin =
 * -|Naramon =
 * -|Unairu =
 * -|Zenurik =

Convergence
Convergence orbs, which are yellow glowing orbs, multiplies the amount of Focus gained from converting Affinity by 8x for either a period of 45 seconds, until death or when the daily Focus cap has been reached, whichever is shorter.

These orbs appear periodically (with a glowing indication of its location) throughout a mission, though not simultaneously will stop spawning once the daily Focus cap has been reached.

Unlike most buffs, Convergence duration cannot be altered or interrupted by abilities like knockdown, Dispel or falling off the map. Immediately upon expiry, a short summary of Focus points earned during the active period will be displayed on the player's screen.

Way Capacity
All Focus schools have the same total Way capacity or Pool. Pool is consumed upon activation or attaining a higher rank of a Way; the more total Pool a player has, the more Ways can be simultaneously active at once. The cap on capacity initially starts out with four of five points, with the starting skill already taking up one capacity. Unlocking (and therefore activating) each Way will consume one capacity, with each incremental rank increases its capacity consumption by 2.

Way capacity can be increased by spending the required lump of Focus points from the currently selected Primary school, either through the school selection screen or Way selection screen. Pool capacity is increased by one for every increase, and the amount of Focus needed is also increased for the next increment. If players have an insufficient Pool capacity they will be limited in how many Ways they can simultaneously activate or upgrade.

Increasing the Way Capacity directly affects the total capacity each school has, and each active Way will only consume the capacity of its own school. For example, a total Way Capacity of 10 will allow the Ways in the Zenurik school to consume up to 10 Way Capacity, separate from the consumption of Ways in the Naramon school.

Unlocking each of the remaining schools requires a lump of 50,000 Focus points, though players must first accumulate Focus points through using Lens attributed to the desired school. Afterwards, they are able select a single Primary Tenno School, switching all bonuses of the previously selected primary school to the bonuses of the current primary school.

Total Costs
Previously, players who wish to max out their school (every node maxed and unlocked, including the 2 Brilliant Eidolon shards and 2,000,000 additional focus to add the way-bound nodes to your other schools) will require roughly the following amount of Focus per school. The duration has since been greatly shortened with Synthetic, Brilliant and Radiant Eidolon shards bypassing this cap, granting 5,000, 25,000 and 40,000 focus points respectively.
 * *Not factoring in Focus gained from converting additional Eidolon Shards, which bypasses the daily limit and higher Mastery Rank limits.

Tips

 * As Focus is reliant on the amount of affinity gained, using Affinity Boosters can increase the total amount of Focus gained during missions.
 * The following is applicable when you are starting off and have a constraint on the amount of lenses you are able to install.
 * Due to affinity distribution mechanics when Focus lenses convert affinity into Focus points, the most effective placement of your first lens depends on play-style and role. If you are personally doing almost all of the killing, it is more effective to install Focus lenses on Warframes, as Warframes will be able to receive Focus regardless of weapon used, and can receive the full amount of Focus point conversion upon kills using Warframe abilities. This is the obvious choice for solo play. When you are playing a more supporting role, if you don't need other weapons, a single weapon equipped with a lens will be much more effective. For balanced team play, where you expect to get no more than 1/3 of the kills, a single weapon will be better than a frame. If you wish to use multiple weapons while farming, then lensing the frame still makes sense.
 * One of the most effective ways to farm Focus is doing high level Exterminate missions (notably Adaro, Sedna) through Stealth, taking advantage of the stealth affinity multiplier to rake in large amounts of affinity, resulting in equally large conversions to Focus. This is more easily accomplished using a stealth Warframe such as Loki, Ash, or Ivara equipped with a Focus Lens, and using a high damage melee weapon such as a dagger equipped with, or a melee weapon with high range and damage, such as Jat Kittag.
 * Ivara's Sleep Arrow and Equinox's Rest & Rage in particular can make stealth runs easier by putting groups of enemies to sleep, preventing them from being alerted to deaths in the vicinity.
 * Banshee's Silence activation can stagger enemies, and greatly increases the damage of stealth attacks, which can be used to blitz the mission.
 * The Affinity Spike passive from the Naramon school grants +45% affinity to the equipped melee weapon.
 * Sanctuary Onslaught provides Convergence Orbs on each Zone after the first that scales up to a 16x multiplier, making it a great way to farm Focus.

Trivia

 * The initial Focus system originally debuted in the same update as The Second Dream quest, and focused on providing direct bonuses to Warframes or alterations to the Void Beam. The current version is 2.0, a release of the reworked Focus system which came with the Plains of Eidolon update.
 * The Focus system has been in development for a very long period, and was initially slated for release in . The developers admitted that Augment Mods and Arcane Enhancements initially started out as components of the Focus system before being split from it entirely.
 * The five schools of Focus are based upon the five elements of Wu Xing found in Book of Documents(尚书) and is widely used in ancient Chinese philosophical traditions. It resembles the five elements of godai, which lacks Naramon (the tree), as seen on the backgrounds of each school's skill tree page. The Five Elements are Fire, Earth, Water, Wood, and Metal.
 * The Naramon School represents Wood 木. In Wu Xing this is associated with the eyes, growth, flourish, and reaching outward.
 * The Madurai School represents Fire 火. In Wu Xing this is associated with the heart, force, passion, and raw ability.
 * The Unairu School represents Earth 土. In Wu Xing this is associated with the flesh, stability, durability, and bearing.
 * The Zenurik School represents Metal 金. Also interpreted as mineral or crystal, this is associated in Wu Xing with the lung, concentrating, reserving, and abundance.
 * The Vazarin School represents Water 水. In Wu Xing this is associated with the bone, inflexibility, supporting, adaptability, and sympathy.
 * While the replies that the player chooses during the Operator's conversation with the Lotus has no gameplay effect, the choice of replies are used to reorder the choices of Tenno Schools. Once the selection screen appears, with the school most suited to the Operator appearing on the left, and choice to the right being the least suited. Example: choosing the conversation options relating to knowledge will put Naramon to the leftmost side as the most desirable choice. Players are still free to choose the Focus they wish to start with however.

Patch History
Focus Фокус 專精2.0 Fokus