Councilor Vay Hek

"Tenno... are you ready for a SACRIFICE?"

- Councillor Vay Hek

Councilor Vay Hek is the final boss of Earth. He is the most political Grineer figure players meet, marked by the Lotus for extermination for upsetting the balance in the system by killing several political opponents. Vay Hek is also heavily modified with Grineer alterations, with little flesh left noticeable while he rides in his giant Terra Frame.

He can be found on the Oro node, which can only be accessed when your Mastery Rank is level 5. After defeating him and completing the mission, players will receive a blueprint for either a Hydroid Helmet, Hydroid Chassis or Hydroid Systems. Upon death, Councilor Vay Hek has a chance of dropping Neurodes, Orokin Cells and Argon Crystals.

General
Vay Hek's fanatical loyalty to the Grineer cause has resulted in him spearheading most Grineer operations against the Tenno and their allies. His aggressive behavior had led to him hijacking transmissions to send boastful messages to the Tenno, ranging from Relay broadcasts to even a Devstream outside of the WARFRAME universe itself. Coupled with his position in the Grineer hierarchy and (later on) access to the formidable Fomorian fleet, this has made him one of the most dangerous enemies the Tenno has encountered.

The Cicero Crisis
In an attempt to expand Grineer territory on Earth, Vay Hek attempted to poison Earth's forests via the Cicero Toxin, as centuries of Orokin influence has made the vegetation difficult to destroy by conventional means. The Tenno responded to this by formulating antitoxins derived from Earth's native vegetation (with varying strengths depending on the plants used), and loading them into the Toxin Injectors to flush out the Cicero Toxin.

Ultimately, Hek's attempts were thwarted and the forests were saved, though some Toxin Injectors continue to operate, albeit on a smaller scale.

The Grustrag Three
Upon hearing word of The Grustrag Three's sudden slaughter of their fellow soldiers and subsequent incarceration at the Grustrag Reconditioning Facility, Vay Hek ordered Facility Director Tengus to recondition them in the hopes that their aggression could be directed towards the Tenno instead of their fellow Grineer. With Tengus mostly successful (as the Three still had lingering violent behavior towards other Grineer, which was easily counteracted with the Grustrag Bolt), Hek ordered the Three to attack anyone who stood against the Grineer during their Invasions.

General Sargas Ruk disagreed with Hek's actions, however, arguing that The Grustrag Three should have been executed for their actions (with the implication that the Three and the soldiers they killed were under Ruk's command). He also warns Hek that their decreasing mental stability will ultimately be his undoing.

Tethra's Doom
During Ties That Bind, Frohd Bek pleads his son Darvo to stay with the Corpus, mentioning that "Project Tethra" will ultimately be their destruction. Following this, The Lotus discovers that Project Tethra is Hek's attempt to rebuild the Fomorian fleet following their destruction during Operation Sling-Stone. The Lotus directs the Tenno to Earth to Intercept transmissions revealing the location of the Grineer Shipyards, and from there the Tenno will Hijack the Fomorian Power Cores, so that they can be towed away by Liset and safely destroyed in the depths of space.

During the Tenno's operations, Vay Hek sends a transmission to the Tenno, revealing that they have been simply destroying the Auxiliary Cores and that the Fomorian Shield Cores are still intact. The Tenno simply double their efforts and hijack the Shield Cores, which are more heavily guarded in response to their initial attacks. The Tenno's actions deal a significant blow to the construction of the Fomorians, forcing Hek to go into hiding. His location is unknown to all but a hand-picked group of Guardsmen known as Prosecutors.

The Archwing
After a long period of silence, The Lotus reveals the looming threat of Hek's Balor Fomorians, and that the Tenno will have to construct an Archwing in order to combat them. Towards the end, the Tenno are sent to a Corpus Ship in order to uncover more information about the Balor Fomorians, which is abruptly interrupted by the arrival of Hek and his Fomorians, taking both The Lotus and Frohd Bek by surprise. As he severs the Grineer's business contracts with the Corpus, the ship is heavily damaged by the Balor Fomorian's cannons, preventing a conventional extraction.

Acting quickly, The Lotus orders Ordis to deploy the newly constructed Archwing so that the Tenno can escape, now armed with the knowledge that Hek's forces are ready for action.

Operation Eyes of Blight
Councilor Vay Hek finally makes his move, intending to destroy the Relays with his fleet of Balor Fomorians. The Tenno are ordered to intercept the Balor Fomorians as they slowly lumber towards the relays, and damage the warships' power core in a limited window of time. Though he succeeds in destroying some of the Relays, he exhausts his fleet and ultimately fails his main objective.

Disappointed at the result, The Twin Queens send him a message voicing their frustration, particularly regarding the high costs of constructing a Fomorian. The message ends with them dismissing Hek, replacing him with Tyl Regor for planning future offensives.

The Law of Retribution
The Tenno are now out for vengeance for Hek's destruction of the relays, and the Lotus ultimately guides a precision strike force to hunt down and put an end to Vay Hek. The operation leads the Tenno to the heart of the Grineer Military and despite heavy resistance, including The Grustrag Three and a functional Balor Fomorian, the Tenno manage to defeat Vay Hek, though once again he escapes by flying off into the sky.

Appearance
Councilor Vay Hek has undergone extensive body modification to the point where the only visible flesh is his face, and even then his eyes and nose have been replaced with cybernetics. His mostly-intact head is attached to a yellow robotic suit (presumably containing whatever remains of his vital organs) that has the ability to fly or attach (and the event of an emergency, detach) himself into a landbound Terra Frame for heavy combat. The suit also has a mask to protect Hek's face from incoming fire.

His Terra Frame is a massive, bipedal exoskeleton that is heavily armed and is capable of hovering over the ground for a few seconds. Despite its size the Terra Frame is surprisingly agile, jumping to different platforms in order to reposition. It mounts a Drone launcher on its left side that ejects Propaganda Drones and Orbital Strike Drones, while its right side is mounted with a large Hek-shaped cannon that fires rockets. The Terra Frame's design seems to have been inspired by birds, particularly its large "tail" and the screeching the Terra Frame makes during combat.

Arsenal
Councilor Vay Hek will meet the players after they walk a certain distance into the Grineer forest, laugh, and then flies away. The players have to chase him across the map and progress through multiple phases. Like General Sargas Ruk, he has armor impervious to damage except his face. Each phase involves damaging Vay Hek's face when his mask opens occasionally until he is forced to fly away. At low health during the 4th phase, the final phase begins and Vay Hek flies into his Terra Frame, able to be damaged without needing to aim at a weak spot, but offensively more powerful. When the Terra Frame's health is low, Vay Hek will eject himself out and fly away, and the Terra Frame will explode, dropping the loot. Unlike other bosses, this makes him the only boss in an Assassination mission to not visibly die, which helps the idea of re-doing the boss lore wise.

Drone Form=

Machine Guns
Vay Hek has two mounted heavy machine guns on his back, which are surprisingly accurate even at long range. They will fire slowly and begin to spool up, similar to a Gorgon. Fortunately, the guns deal a fairly minimal amount of damage, and can easily be avoided by taking cover behind trees, boxes, etc.

Troop Summon
Randomly throughout the battle, a squadron of four Grineer units will be teleported into battle to aid Vay Hek. These units include: Lancers, Butchers, Troopers, Seekers, and Hellions. While Lancers, Butchers, and Troopers may not be much of a threat, Seekers and Hellions can prove a deadly force when the Tenno are too focused on Vay Hek.

Propaganda Broadcast
Vay Hek opens his mask and begins to broadcast to all local Grineer and Tenno in the area. Nearby Grineer will have boosted defenses and damage, while nearby Tenno will have their shielding reduced to half. As Vay Hek's mask is open, this is the only chance Tenno have to damage him and silence his broadcast. Grineer and Tenno who are affected will have an orange aura around them.

Disrupter Shock
From the second phase on, Vay Hek can target a single nearby Tenno and shock him with a burst of red electricity from his hands. An effect similar to being hit by a Ancient Disrupter will distort the screen, while energy and shielding will be drained. The bolt moves very quickly, and can be very difficult to avoid without fast moving tactics.

Disruption Wave
Vay Hek will begin using this on the third phase. Unlike Disrupter Shock, which targets a single Tenno, Vay Hek will release a fast moving wave of red electricity that travels across the floor. Any Tenno caught in the wave will be drained of shielding and energy and have their HUDs distorted. Like the Disrupter Shock, it can be hard to avoid the wave without careful planning.

Health Drain
When below maximum health, Vay Hek will float near a Grineer unit and begin to sap him of his health. If the Grineer is killed by Vay Hek, he will restore a portion of his health. This can be avoided by dispatching the affected Grineer before Vay Hek can.


 * -|Terra Frame=

Hek Cannon
Vay Hek launches a tracking missile that can deal a significant amount of Blast damage, and can cause knockdowns frequently. Unprepared Tenno can be easily defeated, as the explosions have a wide radius and track moving Tenno. Unlike the Bombard missiles, which follow a Tenno directly, Hek's missiles will predict where a Tenno is running towards, making it difficult to avoid.

Hek Barrage
When low on health, Vay Hek will instead launch 4-5 missiles simultaneously, which is almost guaranteed to cause heavy damage to any Tenno with the radius of the explosions.

Drone Launch
Randomly, Vay Hek will launch 1-4 Drones from his left arm cannon. The number of Drones is dependent on how many Tenno are currently fighting Vay Hek. Drones will float around the area, mostly following the Tenno or staying near Grineer troops. The Drones have two variants, a blue Propaganda Drone or a more deadly red Orbital Strike Drone. Both drones have a small amount of health and can easily be destroyed, dropping ammo, health orbs, or energy orbs. Propaganda Drone A blue drone a floats around empowering nearby Grineer units, while reducing nearby Tenno's shields. They do not deal any kind of damage, but can still boost the power of the Grineer backup and Vay Hek himself.

Orbital Strike Drone A dangerous red drone that chases after the Tenno. When a Drone is close enough, it will lock-on to the last location of a Tenno and begin to call in an orbital strike. If the Drone is not destroyed before the lock-on is finished, the orbital strike will fire, creating a massive explosion that deals massive damage to any Tenno within the radius.

Shockwave
If any Tenno wanders too close to Vay Hek, he will jump up and slam the ground, causing a slow, but wide shockwave similar to a Shockwave MOA. While the damage is negligible, a knockdown can leave a Tenno open for Grineer fire or Vay Hek's Charge.

Charge
Used when a Tenno is a medium distance away, Vay Hek will charge up and ram the Tenno, dealing a bit of damage and knocking them back a fair distance, usually into the pit at the center of the area.

Strategy
Vay Hek's protection consists mainly of Ferrite Armor, meaning that weapons with high  and/or are extra effective. However, Vay Hek and his Terra Frame possess a large amount of pure hit points that have no resistances or vulnerabilities against any damage type, making him a difficult damage sponge. Thus, it's recommended to use your best weapon with overall high damage to defeat him (For example, an excellently modded Paris Prime will crit him frequently, so the fight will be relatively easy) . This also makes Vay Hek difficult to defeat solo, and it's preferable to run this mission with a well-equipped squad.

It is of critical importance to kill the reinforcements (Lancers, Troopers, etc.) on the floor in the last boss area. Doing so will prevent Vay Hek from regenerating his health and will make the fight much easier.

It is also advised to bring Team Ammo Restores if the fight is going to be long because Vay Hek in Terra Frame form has quite a lot of health and people with automatic weapons will run out of ammo pretty quickly. High-powered, single shot weaponry like the heavy pistols and sniper rifles, however, are not as likely to need ammo, provided most of one's shots hit their mark.

If getting a group is not available, it is still possible to solo Vay Hek, albeit much harder. One will need a weapon that either has a high corrosive stat and/or puncture stat, as those are the weapons capable of doing the most damage to him.

Weapons that rely on sustained fire for damage like the Soma or Braton are not recommended as these weapons typically run out of ammunition too quickly against Hek in a straight-up fight, unless one is confident they will have enough ammo to sustain themselves. Instead, high-powered, single shot weaponry like the Paris, Lex, and Latron are recommended, as these weapons typically have more than enough ammo to drop Hek during all of his encounters and they are much more ammo-efficient when it comes to scavenged ammo.

A heavy Warframe like Rhino is advisable, but equally agile Warframes like Mirage can be viable as well. From there, one simply needs to play a game of cover-based hit-and-run with Hek. Shoot him from cover then when he closes in on you; reposition to another area and repeat the process, until his health has been withered down.

Utilizing Warframe Abilities
Rhino's Iron Skin and Trinity's Link also allows them to negate Vay Hek's disruption abilities.

Mobile frames such as Ash, Loki and Zephyr make it easier to reposition yourself in front of Vay Hek's face in case he turns away from you.

Bringing a Mag (with a few team energy restores) into the assassination can help finish Vay Hek off in his final phase when he combines with his Terra Frame by using Bullet Attractor. This will redirect all shots near Vay Hek right to him making it possible to hit him while running to avoid damage.

If timed correctly, Frost's Avalanche can be used to freeze him while his mask is open, allowing for a large amount of damage to be dealt. Avalanche is also useful in the Final Phase as it can freeze the Terra Frame in place, protecting the player from damage and allowing the player to attack him without much trouble.

Using The Environment
The final boss arena in which Vay Hek appears is a large open area with a deep lagoon in the middle. A short tunnel directly in front of the area's entry point can provide cover against Vay Hek's attacks in an emergency, and act as a safe area to regenerate shields. This tunnel may be closed off until an explosive barrel behind a grate uphill is destroyed.

Several objects in the arena, from large fans to high-pressure steam vents - can be interacted with to create powerful wind flows that can propel a Warframe up and forward, allowing a Tenno to traverse the entire arena quickly. This can be useful when catching up to Vay Hek's highly mobile Terra Frame that tend to hop quickly from place to place, and they can also serve to get Warframes away from explosive AoE attacks.

The lagoon in the middle of the arena can pose a significant impediment to Warframe mobility when trying to escape Vay Hek's AoE attacks. To mitigate this, there is a tram hanging from the top of the arena with explosive barrels attached to it. Said barrels can be destroyed to drop the tram into the lagoon, creating a bridge that allows for better movement between each side of the lagoon.

Trivia

 * If the Grustrag Three are fully scanned, it is revealed that each of them was worked upon by a "Doctor Tengus" who was authorized by Hek himself. Little is known about him, but it is made very clear that he is a prodigy in the field of cybernetics, indicating that he may have had something to do with Hek's mechanical rebirth.
 * Councilor Vay Hek was the person responsible for both The Cicero Crisis and Project Tethra.
 * Councilor Vay Hek was the fifth boss & fourth Grineer boss in the game to receive a complete rework, following Lieutenant Lech Kril, Captain Vor, & General Sargas Ruk.
 * Vay Hek was originally targeted for assassination by Lotus as he is a corrupt diplomat who has assassinated multiple political opponents and is a hindrance to the stability of the system.
 * The new Hek appears to have run from the Tenno in a paranoid panic, leaving him vulnerable if he could be tracked down. This becomes the new reason for Hek to be targeted after Update 13.
 * Prior to his rework in, Vay Hek was a grey colored Lancer with increased stats who wielded a Hek and was capable of creating three copies of himself that did no damage when he reached a certain health percentage. Before Update 13 he also dropped the components to Oberon. Before Oberon was released, he dropped Trinity components.
 * Because of this, he has dropped parts for more individual Warframes than any other boss.
 * Vay Hek's pre-rework quotes had some grammar issues.
 * He can be seen, in his new form, in audio messages during The Cicero Crisis. His appearance suggests he underwent vast body modifications similar to General Sargas Ruk or acquired a battle suit of similar nature.
 * The reworked Councilor Vay Hek seems to be more capable of speaking English than any other Grineer so far. He even has recorded voice clips on all Jungle Regulators spoken in full English when empowering the Grineer units.
 * Councilor Vay Hek is, by far, the character in Warframe who is found the most agitated by the presence of the Lotus, saying that he would personally kill the Lotus once the Tenno have been exterminated from the Solar system, unlike Captain Vor and General Sargas Ruk who simply disregard the Lotus and instead see the Tenno as the actual threat.
 * Despite the fact that Councilor Vay Hek is known for political assassinations among public alliances, his pre-rework quotes generate a certain air related to leisure entertainment. These include as gambling, joke-cracking and aggressive commandments, which makes Vay Hek surprisingly similar to many fictional dictators with decent relationships among his peers.
 * Hek has been the source of more Warframe components than any other individual boss, having dropped Trinity, Oberon, and currently Hydroid component blueprints.
 * Hek is the only boss that is unaffected by the Nukor's visual growth.
 * During his Earth Assassination mission, if you watch his taunts when he speaks to you he has tiny little arms and legs.

Bugs

 * Getting defeated by him may render you to become unable to move, shoot or use skills.
 * After defeating him, the water in the tunnel may not stop, making it impossible to leave the arena for extraction without the use of abilities such as Excalibur's Slash Dash, Rhino's Charge, Hydroid's Tidal Surge, Volt's Speed, Zephyr's Tail Wind or the Bullet-Jump maneuver.
 * After defeating him, he flies off, leaving a zero health Terra Frame that continues to attack and is impossible to destroy.
 * Skipping the beginning cut-scene can sometimes cause Vay Hek's laughter to still be played in-game.
 * Sometimes he won't retract his mask.

Media
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