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Warframe’sJade Shadows update added the titular support character to the Warframe roster, empowering her allies while damaging her foes. She plays like a hybrid between Titania and Wisp, smiting enemies from on high while buffing her allies with various symphonies and blessings.
Mastering this Warframe is a fairly straightforward process, but creating a build for Jade can be tricky, especially since her abilities want you to invest in every core stat. In this guide, we’ll go over the best ways to build Jade in Warframe. But before we cover those builds, let’s first cover how to obtain Jade and showcase all four of her abilities.
How To Craft Jade
Jade’s components are awarded from theAscensiongame type on Brutus, Uranus. This mission and Jade’s main blueprint are unlocked upon completing the"Jade Shadows" quest. You’ll gain access to this quest upon completing “The New War.”
The Ascension game type can drop Jade parts or components for her signature weapons—Harmony, Cantara, and Eversong—upon completion. If luck isn’t on your side, you can also trade theVestigial Motesearned in Ascension to purchase the exact Jade parts you need. These parts are purchased from Ordis in the Larunda Relay orbiting Mercury.
Passive
Jade’s profound understanding of the relationship between life and death grants her two Aura Mod Slots. Some of her abilities apply Judgments, increasing enemy damage vulnerability by 50% for 10s.
Jade has two passives that make her incredibly strong with the right build:
The first part of her passive is quite straightforward but opens up a ton of build possibilities.Jade can equip two unique aura mods simultaneously.The squad benefits from both aura mods, and Jade’s energy capacity is increased bybothmods. This makes her incredibly easy to mod for and less reliant on Forma than other Warframes.
Her second passive isJudgment, a 50% vulnerability debuff that’s inflicted by her first and fourth abilities—Light’s Judgment and Glory on High, respectively. Enemies marked by Judgment will have a seven-leaf clover icon above their head. This debuff lasts for ten seconds, can be refreshed, and doesnotstack on itself. You can choose to consume this debuff with Jade’s ultimate to detonate targets for immense damage.
Other sources of damage vulnerability, such as Wisp’s Breach Surge, stack additively with Judgment.
Light’s Judgment
Create a well of light that heals allies and hurts enemies. Those who enter the well will be highlighted by Judgment.
600 Heat per second
8% HP per second
5 Wells (unmoddable)
Affects how long the wells last
Affects ability radius
Affects cast Energy cost
Affects the well’s damage and HP regeneration
Light’s Judgment acts as an offensive variant of Wisp’s Mote ability. Jade will hurl an orb at your cursor that detonates on impact, creating an energy pool that heals allies and damages enemies.Allies restore 8% HP per second while inside the well, and this persists for ten seconds upon exiting the well.As this is a percentage of HP restored, this is incredibly effective on Warframes with high HP pools like Inaros.
Enemies caught inside the well aremarked with Judgment and take constant Heat damage.Most enemies will shrug off the Heat DoT, so this ability is best used to mark a group of enemies with Judgment. Unlike Wisp’s first ability,Light’s Judgment will despawn after 15 seconds, regardless of your Duration stat. Up to five may be up at a time.
The healing from Light’s Judgment can trigger Archon Intensify.
While it’s labeled as a support power, Light’s Judgment is more of adebuff grenade that primes your ultimate.Whenever you see a group of enemies, throw this in their general direction, then cast Glory’s alt-fire to detonate every marked foe. It’s an effective way to clear out rooms of enemies. Light’s Judgment is affected by Ability Strength, Range, Duration, and Efficiency.
Symphony Of Mercy
Cycle through three songs that strengthen allies. Power of the Seven increases Ability Strength. Deathbringer increases weapon damage. Spirit of Resilience increases Shield Effectiveness. Extend the duration of each song by killing enemies surrounded by Judgments.
Kills:+2 Seconds per slain Judgment foe
Power of the Seven:+25% Ability Strength
Deathbringer:+130% base damage
Spirit of Resilience:+10% Shield Regen per second; -10% Shield Recharge Delay
Affects aura duration
N/A; range is based on Affinity
Adjusts aura buff magnitude
Casting this ability will empower your team with your currently selected buff, showcased on the bottom-right of your HUD. Tapping the ability will cycle between the auras, while holding the input will cast the ability.Despite the in-game description, you may only channel one aura at a time; you may’t cast all three auras simultaneously. With that said, if multiple Jades are in your team, each Jade can channel each song.
This ability applies to all allies within Affinity Radius (50 meters). you may extend this with the Vazarin Focus School and flare consumables.
Power of the Sevengives your squad additional Ability Strength, stacking additively with other sources. Unlike Equinox’s Provoke, this doesnothave an upper limit. This effect scales with Strength, so scaling Ability Strength will further enhance this aura. While this aura doesn’t buff Symphony of Mercy, it does affect your other three abilities. Be sure to channel this song before you cast anything else.
Deathbringergrants a 150% base damage bonus to all weapons, which can be enhanced with Ability Strength. To be clear, this isbase damage, the same as mods like Serration and Hornet Strike.It isnota faction modifier like Eclipse or Roar. Unless your weapons lack any base damage scalars, we suggest you avoid using Deathbringer entirely.
Spirit of Resiliencegreatly improves your shield regeneration stats. While your shields are regenerating, you’ll restore an additional 10% of your maximum shields per second. Your shield recharge delay is also reduced by 10%. Both effects can be enhanced with Ability Strength and shield regeneration mods like Fast Deflection, which willmultiply this aura’s effect.If you’re able to hit over 300% Strength and equip Fast Deflection, you can restore your entire shield pool in just over one second.
All three auras benefit from Ability Strength and Duration. We highly recommend building for Strength since it’ll scale Power of the Seven’s buff, giving you even more Strength than usual. Once you’ve used your powers, swap to Resilience until your abilities need a refresh. Thankfully, you’ll never need to refresh this ability sinceits duration is extended by two seconds for each Judgment enemy you kill.
Ophanim Eyes
Jade summons an accusatory gaze that slows nearby enemies and dissolves their Shields and Armor. When the gaze falls upon allies, they can be revived from a distance.
Angle:70° (unmoddable)
10% per second
Slow:15% per second
Cap:90% (unmoddable)
Affects ability duration
Affects cone distance
Affects defense strip and slow per second
you’re able to subsume this ability onto other Warframes through the Helminth system.
Channel a petrifying gaze that leaves your enemies defenseless.All enemies in Jade’s cone of vision will have their defenses stripped and movement slowed.Ophanim Eyes will debuff all enemies in a 70-degree cone, so you’ll want to fight at a distance to maximize the number of targets you’re debuffing. Each enemy caught in your gaze will lose 10% of their defenses per second and be slowed by 15% per second.
Enemies cannot be slowed beyond 90%, but the defense strip will continue until the target no longer has shields and/or armor. Both debuffs can be scaled with Ability Strength. Since your second ability already grants Ability Strength, you’re able to drastically improve the defense strip of this ability with the right build. Ability Range is also recommended, as it extends the reach of the gaze.
Downed allies within your gaze will be automatically revived. Jade Specters also inherit this behavior and will prioritize reviving you.
Glory On High
Soar with destructive power. Use alternate-fire to detonate Judgments, causing an explosion of Jade Light. Enemies inside the Light’s Judgment radius empower the explosion.
35% (caps at 50%)
10% per hit
Affects Energy drain while
Affects Glory’s explosion radius
Affects cast and drain Energy costs
Affects damage resistance and Glory’s damage output
Glory on High turns Jade into a flying artillery cannon.This is a channeled ability where Jade sprouts her wings and becomes airborne, granting access to her Glory exalted secondary.While in this state, Jade controls similarly to an open world Archwing, locking her Z-axis until you ascend or descend manually. She cannot sprint, but she can roll. Parkour velocity modifiers can drastically speed her up.
Glory is a secondary weapon that fires explosive bolts, similar to the Laetum’s Incarnon form or the Acceltra.Each shot detonates in a two-meter radius and deals pure Heat damage. It also has analt-fire that detonates all enemies marked with Judgment, dealing x10 damage with double the blast radius.This is especially effective if you use your first ability, Light’s Judgment, to quickly mark a group of targets. Use your first ability like a grenade, then detonate the struck targets with your alt-fire to deal some serious damage.
Every projectile from Glory has a 10% chance of marking an enemy with Judgment. This cannot be tweaked with mods.
As this weapon has a rather poor fire rate stat, you’ll want to enhance this gun’s fire rate as much as possible to make it competitive with Titania’s Dual Pixias. Fortunately, that’s fairly easy to do through secondary mods and Arcane Velocity.Base damage can be increased with Ability Strength, and its blast radius can be modified with Ability Range.
Beyond the weapon, Glory on High also grants a passive 35% DR buff while active. you may increase this to 50% with Strength, but the DR value can never exceed 50%. We highly recommend pairing this ultimate with Adaptation or the Resilience aura from your second ability to stay alive in Steel Path content.
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Jade Builds
We will be showing three builds for Jade that focus on her ultimate ability: Glory on High. While you may use her as a dedicated support by subsuming over her fourth ability, we don’t recommend this. If you want that sort of playstyle,we suggest playing Citrineor Wisp instead. Jade’s claim to fame is her angelic form and explosive weapon.
For all three builds, we recommend building Jade as ashield tank.Spirit of Resilience from her second ability makes it trivial to restore your shields. You can even pair it with Fast Deflection to hit the 80% shield recharge delay cap. In other words,Jade shield regeneration rivals Arcane Aegisif you can keep her second ability active. Throw on that Arcane, and you become invincible to just about everything, Toxin damage notwithstanding.
As for Focus schools,Vazarinis the clear winner. The extended Affinity Range makes it much easier to buff your team with Symphony of Mercy. If you’re having Energy issues, feel free to run Zenurik instead. Jade should also be paired withDethcubefor ample Energy Orbs during combat. If you plan to spam her first ability or use Blind Rage, you’ll need to rely on Equilibrium effects to keep her Energy pool topped off. Violet Archon Shards are ideal if you own any.
Archon Shards
Jade needs virtually every stat in the game, somost Archon Shardsare worth using on her. We highly recommend aViolet Shard with Equilibriumto give Jade a source of Energy while in her ultimate. If you plan on spamming her first ability, you’ll also want anAmber Shard with cast speed. Our endgame builds use both shards.
Other good stats includeAbility Strength (Crimson), Duration (Crimson), and starting Energy (Amber).
None
Feel free to replace any Primed mods with their standard variants. If you don’t own Archon Vitality, put on Augur Secrets or Augur Message instead.
Aura mods are to taste. Use anything you have.
This is azero Forma buildwith no Archon Shards or subsume, modding Jade for high uptime on her ultimate while also boosting her overall damage. We focus on increasing Jade’sStrength and Rangewithout hurting any of her other stats. We start by equippingTransient FortitudeandUmbral Intensifyto increase her Strength stat. Don’t worry if you don’t own a max rank Umbral Intensify; any rank will work here. We counter Transient Fortitude’s penalty withPrimed Continuity, although normal Continuity works fine.
For range, we useStretchandAugur Reachto hit 175%. This makes her first ability far more consistent and gives you some leniency while aiming her ultimate. Energy sustain is somewhat of an issue for Jade, so we’ve opted to useEquilibriumand a companion withSynth Deconstructto keep her Energy reserves full. Health Orbs will grant their value in Energy and vice versa. You’ll eventually want to put on a Violet Archon Shard and drop Equilibrium entirely, but this is a good stopgap measure for now.
To address the elephant in the room, we useFast Deflectionin place of a traditional defensive mod. That is because Jade’s second ability gives you a major boost to her shield regeneration and recharge delay.Fast Deflection nearlydoublesthe strength of that aura.Instead of regenerating 20% of your shields per second, you’ll regenerate 38%andhave a far shorter recharge delay. It’s like having Arcane Aegis always active.
Finally, we useArchon Vitality (R0)to double the number of Heat procs inflicted by Glory, our exalted weapon. We only care about the secondary effect, so you don’t need to level this mod at all. Speaking of Glory, we’ve opted for a generic damage build for it.Hornet Stike, Galvanized Diffusion, and Lethal Torrentscale your base damage and multishot. Throw onAnemic Agilityfor more fire rate andyour preferred combined element—we’re using Viral in the screenshot above.
Violet (equilibrium), 2 Amber (cast speed, starting energy)
This build focuses on using Jade’s first ability to prime targets for detonation with Glory on High.Cast your ultimate, throw Light’s Judgment, and then use your alt-fire. Repeat as needed.You’re effectively using Light’s Judgment like a grenade. Spam this combo to cover your screen with explosions. For this build to work, you’ll need as muchStrengthandRangeas possible without dumping your Efficiency.
Before we jump into the core mods,this build requires Combat Discipline.It’s an aura mod that damages you whenever you kill something. We can use this to force ourselves to get healed through Light’s Judgment, which will then procArchon Intensify’ssecondary bonus. We can also use it to maintain 100% uptime onArcane Avenger’scritical chance buff. The second aura is up to you—we recommendAerodynamicfor free DR while using your fourth ability.
For the core mods, we useTransient FortitudeandArchon Intensifyfor the bonus Ability Strength.Fast Deflectionshould take care of all survivability woes, so long as Song of Resilience is active. We then runArchon Vitalityto double-dip on Heat procs andPrimed Continuityto counter Transient Fortitude’s penalty.OverextendedandStretchgreatly buff the radius of your wells and Glory’s alt-fire. Throw onStreamlineandAviatorto complete the build.
Glory has seen some major investment in this build. We threw on five Forma to use a min-maxed damage setup. This weapon’s alt-fire is unaffected by base damage and multishot, so you’ll want to focus on critical damage, elemental damage, and bane multipliers. In this example, we’re runningPrimed Pistol Gambit, Primed Target Cracker, Expel Corpus (any bane works), and four elemental mods.We keep Hornet Strike in case we need to use Glory’s primary fire.
You might notice that Glory’s critical stats are still quite low for an exalted weapon. you’re able to fix this withArcane Avengeron your Warframe. This grants an additive 45% critical chance if you’ve taken damage recently, which is all the time thanks to Combat Discipline. That gives you an 88% critical chance with Glory. We wrap up the build withMolt Augmentedto gain some much-needed Ability Strength as we kill enemies.
We’re turning Jade into an explosive version of Titania with this build.This build focuses on making Glory’s primary fire as potent as possible.We aggressively scale Ability Strength, Range, and Glory’s fire rate to turn it into an orbital flak cannon. You can’t spam your alt-fire like with the previous build, but your primary projectiles will put in some serious work. This build is also much tankier.
Once again,you’ll need Combat Disciplineto maximize the effects of Archon Intensify and Arcane Avenger. We also recommend you runAerodynamicas your second aura for some free DR while in your ultimate. This stacks withAviatorto drastically improve your DR while airborne, allowing you to drop Adaptation forFast Deflection.Once your Ability Strength is ramped up, your shields will regenerate in just over one second.
The first major change is that we drop Transient Fortitude forBlind Rage.This nearly doubles your Strength at the cost of Efficiency. We address the Energy concerns with four things:
Dethcube can use itsEnergy Generatoraugment to spawn Energy Orbs for landing assists. This works alongsideSynth Deconstructand your Violet Shard to gain constant Energy from slain foes. To help the build at the start of a mission, we usePrimed Flowand an Amber Shard tuned for starting Energy to begin every mission with 450 Energy. This is enough to cast all your abilities right away.
As for the mod configuration, we useArchon Intensifyagain for its massive Strength boost, which we always maintain through Combat Discipline and Jade’s first ability.Augur ReachandStretchgreatly buff your Range stat, andPrimed Continuityboosts your Duration. For survivability, we’ve opted to useFast DeflectionalongsidePrimed Redirection.Since we’re restoring a flat percentage of shields per second, Primed Redirection effectively triples our shields regenerated per second.
Shield Tanking
With Spirit of Resilience active at max Strength, this build regenerates 70% shields per second with a 0.2-second delay, increased to 0.8 if your shields are fully depleted. If your shields ever break, cast your second ability to become invulnerable while your shields recharge.
Glory is using a configuration that’s closer to a typical gun build. Her primary fire scales with damage and multishot, so we runHornet Strike, Galvanized Diffusion, and Lethal Torrentto get her base damage and multishot to a respectable level.
Beyond that, we use an elemental combination and slot in the critical mods. The final slot is flexible, but we suggestAnemic Agilityfor a drastic boost to your fire rate. With a Reinforced Bond mod on your companion, you’ll fire five shots per second. Arcane Avenger then bumps your critical chance to 88%, andMolt Augmentedwill greatly increase your Ability Strength, scaling your base damage further.
If you want to shoot even faster, drop Molt Augmented for Arcane Velocity. You can activate it while using Glory.
