Specter (Tenno)


 * For the Specters in Junctions, see Specter (Enemy).

"A replicant cloned from a Warframe that can be deployed to assist Tenno on missions."

- In-Game Description

Specters are AI-controlled replicants of Warframes. These Specters act autonomously from the player, and can provide support by engaging enemies with their weapons and Warframe powers. There are four ranks of Specter based on their acquisition difficulty, namely Vapor, Phase, Force, and Cosmic. Specters can be customized with any Warframes and weapons that the player owns, allowing for a wide range of versatility in Specter loadouts.

A Specter is crafted from the Foundry by copying the player's current loadout. However, this does not copy any installed mods or appearance. Instead, Specters utilize the Warframe and weapon's base unranked statistics then scale them according to the Specter's level. Additionally, Specters gain increased damage based on their rarity, with rarer Specters dealing higher damage. All weapons and frames will have their default appearance.

Like the Syndicate Operatives, Specters can be commanded to Hold Position or Follow by interacting with them. By default, Specters are set to Follow.

Usage
Specters can be crafted in the Foundry (under Gear section) and once crafting is finished they must be equipped from Gear in Arsenal.

Before a Specter building begins, a Specter loadout screen appears where a player must first set the Warframe and loadout that the Specter will use. Specters of a particular Blueprint grade use a template loadout that is derived from a player's current Warframe and weapon loadout in their Arsenal. Players can choose to change a Specter's loadout by changing their own loadout, which the Specter will replicate upon creation. Once a Specter has begun construction, the template loadout used is saved, and can be used for future Specters to be built, allowing Specters of a certain loadout to be built even if the player changes their own loadout. The template loadout can be changed upon creating another Specter of the same grade, or the player can choose to use their previously saved loadout. Note that the loadout it copies only reflects the base statistics (scaled by level) and not the mods.

Up to four different loadouts can be saved, one for each Blueprint grade; Vapor, Phase, Force, and Cosmic, from lowest to highest grade.

Acquisition
The blueprints necessary to build Specters are automatically rewarded by Rescue missions upon completion, with the type of Blueprint dropped depending on the node that was played, and how many points were acquired. In total, three points can be attained in a mission: one point for rescuing the target, another point for not triggering the execution sequence in the process, and one more point for killing all the Wardens.

Vapor= The Vapor Specter (or Bronze Specter) blueprint is rewarded from Easy and Medium difficulty Rescue missions, and yields 10 Specter uses per build. Spawns at the starting level of the enemies in the current mission.

The Phase Specter (or Silver Specter) blueprint is rewarded from Easy, Medium and Hard difficulty Rescue missions, and yields 5 Specter uses per build. Spawns at the starting level of the enemies in the current mission, plus three levels.
 * -|Phase=

The Force Specter (or Gold Specter) blueprint is rewarded from Medium, Hard, and Nightmare difficulty Rescue missions, and yields 3 Specter uses per build. Spawns at the starting level of the enemies in the current mission, plus five levels.
 * -|Force=

The Cosmic Specter (or Platinum Specter) blueprint is rewarded from Hard and Nightmare difficulty Rescue missions, and yields a single Specter usage per build. Spawns at the starting level of the enemies in the current mission, plus ten levels.
 * -|Cosmic=

Warframe
Tenno Specters don't rely on Energy, instead utilizing a short cooldown system for their abilities. As their health, armor and shield scales with the mission level, their Effective Health will generally scale far past the player's Warframe.

Depending on the Warframe being used, each of these specters have their own specific AIs tailored to assist the player Tenno in their endeavor. Abilities used by Specters have different values from their regular versions.


 * Ash - Uses Shuriken and Smoke Screen at regular intervals. Casts Teleport and Blade Storm rarely. Blade Storm targeting is rather inconsistent.
 * Atlas - Skips to the ragdolling punch of Landslide and then casts Rumblers. (Appears to be unranked.) Will not cast Tectonics or Petrify.
 * Banshee - Casts Sonic Boom, Silence Sonar, and Sound Quake at regular intervals, with Sonic Boom the most frequent. Appears to cast Sound Quake for around 10 seconds.
 * Chroma - Casts Elemental Ward, Vex Armor, and Effigy. Does not cast Spectral Scream. Effigy appears to be uncast as soon as it is out of range of enemies.
 * Ember - Casts Fireball, Accelerant, Fire Blast and World on Fire at regular intervals, appears to have World on Fire active most of the time.
 * Equinox - Casts Metamorphosis to switch to Day Form, but only switches to Night Form at low health. Is capable of casting her three remaining abilities. (It should be noted that Equinox specters created by will NOT use abilities)
 * Excalibur - Casts Slash Dash, Radial Blind, and Radial Javelin. Slash Dash will NOT jump between enemies. Radial Javelin does not appear to hit anyone.
 * Frost - Casts Freeze, Ice Wave, and Avalanche. Will cast Snow Globe when the specter's shields are depleted or at low health, but only if it doesn't have another globe active. The specter may pop Snow Globe with Freeze, but won't do so intentionally.
 * Gara - Casts Shattered Lash (Sweeping only), Spectrorage and Mass Vitrify. Does not appear to cast Splinter Storm. Passive operates as normal. Is capable of shattering Mass Vitrify with Shattered Lash.
 * Harrow - Casts Condemn, Penance, and Covenant. Casts Condemn the most but will periodically cast Penance as well. Only the specter receives the buff from Penance. Covenant invulnerability duration is around 6 seconds and retaliation buff is around 12 seconds provided to both the specter and the player. Retaliation buff does scale with damage taken with a base buff of around 5%.
 * Hydroid - Casts Tempest Barrage, Tidal Surge and Tentacle Swarm. Will never cast Undertow. Will continue casting Tidal Surge and thus still move around even when asked to hold position.
 * Inaros - Has a tendency to use Sandstorm followed by Devour. Will cast Desiccation which does open enemies to finishers. Has the ability to cast Scarab Swarm but with different mechanics than a normal Warframe. It will not use Scarab Swarm to charge armor but somehow has the ability to immediately cast the swarm projectile of Scarab Swarm which stuns enemies and provides a small amount of healing. The specter will do this frequently.
 * Ivara - Automatically uses Sleep Arrows from Quiver. Casts Prowl but cannot loot enemies. Can cast Artemis Bow. When using Artemis bow, she always fires arrows horizontally and doesn't suffer from the same delay that normal Bow type weapons have on Specters.
 * Khora - Spawns with her own Venari that only does normal Kavat attacks. Venari specter will not respawn once killed. Will only cast Strangledome that stays active for a second. It is cast periodically regardless of range.
 * Limbo - Will only cast Banish between lengthy intervals. Banish will NOT send enemies into the Rift Plane and lacks its visual effects.
 * Loki - Casts Decoy, Invisibility and Radial Disarm. Will never cast Switch Teleport. Can also use abilities while invisible.
 * Mag - Will cast Polarize frequently when enemies are close, Magnetize and Pull occasionally, and Crush rarely. Polarize appears to work in a delayed fashion where the energy pulse stops at the initial cast radius for 2 seconds before further expanding. Occasionally has issues casting Crush.
 * Mesa - Will cast Ballistic Battery and released the stored damage after a long period of time. Also casts Peacemaker for around 10 seconds at a time. Does cast Shatter Shield and Shooting Gallery but it is quite random or unclear when it does so. Shooting Gallery does provide the disarm buff to players for around 30 seconds but it appears that the player must be in close proximity to the specter.
 * Mirage - Will cast Sleight Of Hand and Eclipse whenever possible. Occasionally casts Prism . Does not seem to cast Hall of Mirrors.
 * Nekros - Will cast Soul Punch and rarely Terrify.
 * Nezha - Casts Blazing Chakram and Warding Halo. Does not appear to cast Divine Spears. Blazing Chakram will NOT cause the healing burst on death. Warding Halo doesn't appear to grant Nezha a ring.
 * Nidus - Will cast Virulence and casts Parasitic Link on players giving them a 28% power strength buff. Also casts Ravenous complete with ~30 health regeneration per second with maggots spawned as well. Maggot spawned do detonate from other Nidus players. Does not seem to cast Larva. The specter does not require Mutation stacks to cast Parasitic Link or Ravenous. It does however benefit from Nidus' passive; it can build stacks, use the Undying portion of the ability, and rapidly regenerates health (though this may not be noticeable with higher-level specters). Note that Parasitic Link may sometimes be only a 10% buff with Ravenous providing less health regeneration as well. The cause is unknown.
 * Nova - Will cast Null Star, Antimatter Drop and Molecular Prime. Does not cast Wormhole. Molecular Prime travels a radius of around 30 meters and will slow enemies before dissipating.
 * Nyx - Mostly casts Psychic Bolts, but will sometimes cast Chaos and rarely Mind Control. Will rarely cast Absorb but only if enemies are close to her, but she will often choose to melee instead in this case. Mind Controlled targets last the full duration and will store damage from allies.
 * Oberon - Will cast all abilities with Hallowed Ground being cast frequently. It will occasionally cast Smite and Reckoning. It will cast Renewal under two conditions; when first spawned and when at low health. Renewal buff is 40 health per second and 200 armor which lasts until the specter runs out of energy.
 * Octavia - Casts Mallet, Resonance, Metronome and Amp. Metronome is recast as soon as it expires. Uses the default Mandachord track. Players do benefit from Octavia's passive as well. Amp appears to provide around a 25-42% weapon damage buff depending on the surrounding sound volume in the enviroment.
 * Rhino - Will cast Iron Skin when first spawned and will refresh it at random. Has a tendency to use Rhino Charge at random. Does cast Rhino Stomp but it appears to only knock down the enemy instead of leaving the enemy in stasis. The specter will cast Roar, however does so Irregularly.
 * Saryn - Will cast with Molt being the most frequent. It casts Spores and Miasma seemingly at random. It seems to only rarely cast Toxic Lash when at close proximity with enemies. There appears to be a bug with Molt where it may proc toxin on the player.
 * Titania - Casts Spellbind, Tribute and Lantern. Tribute will NOT spawn Soul buffs.
 * Trinity - Regularly alternates between Energy Vampire and Link. Rarely uses Blessing when specter health is low and Well Of Life if the player's health is low (strangely, the damage a Specter deals on Well of Life is given to the player). The specter does not require a line of sight to enemies for casting any of her abilities, and may often cost Energy Vampire on enemies in other rooms or behind objects. Blessing does not provide the damage reduction to players but appears to fully heal both the player and the specter. Energy Vampire casts provide around 25 energy per pulse.
 * Valkyr - Will cast Rip Line, Warcry and Paralysis. Appears to only cast Warcry and Paralysis at short-medium ranges. Paralysis will use up a portion of Valkyr's shields like the regular ability and is sometimes used outside of enemy range.
 * Vauban - Will use all abilities, including all variations of Minelayer (with the exception of Bounce), Tesla, Bastille, and Vortex. All abilities appear to have unranked values.
 * Volt - Uses all abilities with Electric Shield and Speed being the most frequent. It will occasionally cast Shock and Discharge. If left to hold position and fighting an enemy, it will have Electric Shield active 100% of the time by immediately recasting it after it expires. Speed provides a weak buff for around 10 seconds. It will cast Shock through Electric Shield as well.
 * Wukong - Will only cast Iron Jab. Appears to have infinite reach with it.
 * Zephyr - Will only cast Airburst. It is cast very frequently.

Weapon
The most important part about Tenno Specters weapons is that they are not bound by normal ammo limitations. This allows them to use otherwise extremely ammo inefficient weapons and reduces the importance of melee. Reloading time shouldn't be taken into account as they have infinite magazine size

Tenno Specters prefer to closely guard you or their assigned position, and rarely move out of close range to take on enemies itself, a specter never chooses to melee the enemies out of range of their melee weapon, even despite having better damage than its rifles, and capability of performing finishers (if they attempt to melee an eligible enemy). Thus you might prefer to give them long range heavy hitters such as whips, polearms, and heavy blades. Or you can equip them with something with high block rate, since Specters love to channel-block with melee.

Specters will rarely ever use secondaries unless when they go into bleed-out. The Kulstar can be good as a "flare" gun of sorts that can let you know if they are down, otherwise, it does not matter what secondary is equipped.

Since Specters will mostly use unmodded primaries, cannot compensate for lengthy travel time, and their DPS will be the weapon you equip, the most useful would be hit-scan, non-crit weapons with decent base damage output. You should avoid most projectile weapons and special weapons such as Synoid Simulor (Specter AI does not understand them). Syndicate weapons will not proc their effects while used by Specters.

Range-limited weapons might be less effective since Specters do not account for that behavior and do not move around much by themselves. But Glaxion, Amprex, Phage, and shotguns seem to be exceptions and will produce a good "bodyguard" Specter for the cost of efficiency at long distances.

Weapons with innate elemental damage, high base status chance, or CC potential will make Specters useful past being just another source of damage. For example, a Specter equipped with an Amprex will quite often trigger procs, which helps with crowd control in close quarters.

Tenno Specters have some specific behavior towards some specific kinds of weapons:
 * Bow weapons are an exception for the non-projectile weapon rule, as specters will always charge a full shot before firing and have almost pinpoint precision, meaning they will never miss unless the enemy is behind cover, and will usually land headshots, which does not happen with other weapon types.
 * Supra is also an exception, since travel time is fast enough.
 * Tenno Specters using throwing explosives will only detonate the grenade when the substance limit has been reached. They will, however, detonate the Penta's grenades when it is in proximity of an enemy. They aim the weapon so as to try to hit the enemy with the projectile. It does not seem that Specters are affected by self-inflicted damage due to close proximity detonation. Generally, specters seem to be better with the Penta than with the Tonkor due to better aiming and sustainability.
 * Dera does not have pinpoint accuracy with Specters, instead, it has some deviation per shot, much like a Crewman, although the fire rate and overall damage output is still that of a player's Dera.

Survivability

 * Tenno Specters are affected by the Aura and Trinity's Blessing, and by Oberon's Renewal, however cannot pick up Health Orbs.
 * Ancient Healers under Mind Control, or their Shadow and Specter variations can heal Tenno Specters.
 * Tenno Specters do not lose shield or health after life support runs out in Survival missions.
 * Tenno Specters are not affected by the Shield loss from Cryogenic Leakage, the No Shields challenge of Nightmare Mode, and the Toxic Ancient's aura.
 * It is possible to revive your Specter if it hasn't bled out yet, though they appear to have a negligible bleedout health limit and often die immediately.
 * Tenno Specters can revive other downed Tenno Specters, but cannot do so to a teammate.
 * They can also revive the objective during Sortie's Defenses.
 * Stationed Tenno Specters are quite vulnerable to ground slamming enemies, Arson Eximus and such, since they tend to quickly displace them into bad positions.

Trivia

 * Each Specter type can be visually distinguished from each other via their color (Which is applied on their Accents):
 * Vapor Specters have a bronze energy glow.
 * Phase Specters have a silver energy glow.
 * Force Specters have a golden energy glow.
 * Cosmic Specters have a white energy glow, with thin rings emanating out of them.
 * Before their release, specters were referred to as Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum specters, matching their current color distinctions.
 * As of, Conclave restrictions have been removed from crafting Specters.

Bugs

 * Throwing the ball on shallow water will make it disappear.
 * Specters can be built using Zaws, however they do not seem to use them (or if they can, some don't at all) causing the specter to stop attacking when enemies get close.
 * When holding position, melee combat may cause the specter to become unresponsive. This can be fixed by ordering them to follow and hold their position again.