Focus




 * Not to be confused with .

Focus (version 2.0) refers to the release of the reworked Focus system which came with the Plains of Eidolon update. The Focus system originally debuted in the same update as The Second Dream quest, and revolved around unlocking 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, which will call out a spiritual projection of their Operator. When activated (default ), a spiritual projection of the Tenno Operator will appear behind the Warframe, and player control shifts to said projection, which will begin using a powerful Void attack in the direction of aim. In this so-called Transcendent State, the player can move the projection as well as aim its attack, and both the projection and the Warframe are invulnerable to attack. The Warframe itself is unable to move during this state, however continuous Abilities cast before using the focus ability remain active. This state lasts for 10 seconds, or if the player manually deactivates it. Transcendence has an initial cooldown time of 180 seconds before it can be used.

Completing The War Within will replace Transcendence with Transference, where players will be able to directly call out their Operators into battle as fully controllable units with their own powers and abilities.

Both methods of calling out the Operator are required in order to activate and take advantage of the Focus powers provided by the system.

Tenno Schools
The Tenno Schools are disciplines that represent a particular way of thought in regards to the Tenno's personality and fighting styles, with each school focusing on a different discipline, manifesting in the various abilities that each school provides for the Tenno Operator, and to a lesser extent their Warframes.

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:

Each school has a skill tree comprised of 10 abilities called Ways, of which one will already be unlocked as the starting ability. These Ways unlock various passive abilities that can improve either the player's Warframe or grant additional utility to Operator powers. Once unlocked, a "Way" has to be activated by clicking on its icon which will change its icon color from black to red, with a red line leading back to the preceding active Way in the tree to signify that it is on. Ways also require that the preceding requisite Way in the skill tree is active in order to be activated: if the preceding Way is turned off, the Way node it is connected to will also be deactivated.

Certain Ways provide Passive upgrades, which confer bonuses that last for the duration of a mission, applying to either the Warframe or the weapons they carry. These passive Ways do not activate until the Operator has been called out at least once in a mission.

Individual Ways also contain their own ranks which can be upgraded by spending Focus points to enhance that particular Way's attributes. Unlike unlocking a Way which requires a lump sum of Focus points to be spent, ranking up a Way is 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. Allocation of Focus points can be stopped at any time or until the currently available amount of Focus points for that school is depleted, and once allocated can be confirmed to lock the points into that Way, or canceled to return the allocated points to the School's available Focus points for spending elsewhere. Focus points allocated in such a manner cannot be reimbursed once allocated and confirmed into a Way. The amount of Focus points required to rank up a Way increases with each rank purchased. Ranking up a "Way" will not increase the cooldown penalty for activating it.

Each school starts with a Way capacity or Pool of five slots. Initially, the starting skill takes up a single Way, leaving four more spaces open. Adding other active Ways or ranking up a "Way" will take one Pool slot each, with each additional rank increasing its Pool cost. Players can spend Focus to increase the school's pool capacity, increasing the number of Ways that can be activated by one per purchase. While players can unlock any number of Ways in a school's skill tree, if they have an insufficient Pool capacity they will only be able to activate or rank up a limited number of Ways. The amount of Focus required to increase Way capacity becomes increasingly more expensive the more capacity is added.

Focus points are school-specific, where points earned from one school can only be used in that school, ex. earned points can only be used to unlock Ways in the  school. Other schools asides from the originally chosen school can be unlocked, but require spending that specific school's Focus points to do so, thus players must first gather Focus points using the Lens of that specific school.

While a player has only one School at the beginning, they can use Focus Lenses from other Schools to earn the corresponding Focus points required to unlock other Schools. Once a player has unlocked other Schools, they can choose to select a School as their Primary, switching out their current Focus abilities for the selected school. Only one School can be active as the Primary at any time.

Focus Abilities and Upgrades
There are two main types of Ways available in a particular School: Active Ways that provide improvements to the Operator's Void Powers, namely Void Blast, Void Dash and Void Mode, which are denoted by having a circular icon; and Passive Ways, which provide passive enhancements to either the Operator's or a Warframe's stats, and are denoted by a hexagonal icon. Passives that improve Warframes will only take effect upon the player activating either Transcendence or Transference for the first time in a mission. Active Ways have an associated energy cost increase when activated, meaning that their improvements come at the cost of larger energy consumption. Players can thus choose to either activate the enhancement regardless of the cost, or deactivate it to reduce their Void power's casting cost. Finally, each School has certain Ways known as Way-Bound abilities that passively enhance the Operator's base stats. Unlike other Ways in a Focus tree, these abilities can be "un-bound" from the Focus school they are part of, meaning that they become available for use when using other Focus schools as the Primary, e.g. unbinding Vazarin's Rejuvenating Tides will allow a player currently using Naramon to benefit from it. Unbinding a Way-Bound ability requires that the ability first be upgraded to maximum rank, then players have to spend 1,000,000 Focus points and a Brilliant Eidolon Shard to complete the unbinding, which will make the ability visible to all Focus schools. The unbound ability is treated as an additional Way node when used by Focus schools other than where the ability originated from, and must be activated like a normal Way to benefit from its effects. Subsequently, players must have sufficient Way Capacity in the Focus school they will be using the unbound ability in order to use it. Each school has two Way-Bound abilities, thus there are 10 Way-Bound abilities available to unlock.

Initially, only two Focus Ways per school will be available and visible to the player for leveling upon completing The Second Dream Quest, both abilities being centered on providing passive Warframe buffs. In order to reveal the rest of the Focus abilities in a particular school, players must have completed both Saya's Vigil and The War Within quest. To actually unlock the rest of the abilities however, players must visit The Quills on Cetus in order to be able to rank up their Ways.

Madurai = "They followed the path of Engage The Enemy. Their swift, uncompromising onslaught, holding nothing back and recklessly attacking their foes, could vanquish an opponent before he had the chance to steel himself. Speed and savagery characterized this school."



This skill tree focuses on straight damage.

"They trained to Counter the Enemy, and move with an opponent's attacks in order to nullify them. They maintained constant awareness in order to defend against all aggression."
 * -|Vazarin =



This skill tree focuses on heals, revives and shields.

"This discipline focused on Knowing the Enemy, and the tacticians of Naramon believed that to truly understand a foe would confer the greatest advantage upon a warrior."
 * -|Naramon =



This skill tree focuses on crowd control, Finishers, and critical damage.

"They pushed themselves to Outlast the Enemy, to withstand all aggression without retreat. They believed that if the enemy could not match their endurance, then a battle could be won without having even commenced."
 * -|Unairu =



This skill tree focuses on petrifying enemies either through its basic ability, Basilisk Flare, or through melee attacks, increasing the player's own and their allies' armor, and reducing enemies' armor through melee attacks.

"They believed the clearest path to victory was to Dominate the Enemy. They sought to choke an opponent of all resources; that sheer strength could erase any resistance."
 * -|Zenurik =



This skill tree focuses on crowd control, energy restoration and general utility.

Convergence
Focus gain can be further increased through the use of Convergence orbs, which are yellow, glowing orbs that periodically appear during a mission. When picked up, Convergence will multiply the amount of Focus converted from Affinity by 8x for a period of 45 seconds. Once the Convergence period expires, a summary of the amount of Focus points earned during the active period will be displayed on the player's screen. Unlike most buffs, its duration cannot be interrupted by such things as Dispel or falling off the map, though it will be interrupted on death, showing the amount of Focus gained as though it had run its course.

The appearance of a Convergence orb will be accompanied by a glowing indicator on the screen, displaying the location where the orb has appeared. Multiple orbs will form throughout the duration of a mission, although only one orb can be created at a time. Note that Convergence Orbs will stop spawning once the daily Focus cap has been reached.

Tips

 * As Focus is reliant on the amount of affinity gained, using Affinity Boosters can increase the total amount of Focus gained during missions.
 * 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 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.
 * Ivara's Sleep Arrow in particular can make stealth runs easier by putting groups of enemies to sleep, preventing them from being alerted to deaths in the vicinity.
 * Additionally, the Affinity Spike passive from the Naramon school, due to the +45% affinity from melee kills at max rank, can cut a run or two out of the grind for the daily 250,000 cap on Focus.

Trivia

 * The Focus system has been in development for a very long period, and was initially slated for release in . The developers admitted that Augmented 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