Warframe features over 40 Warframes to choose from, each with a unique playstyle and set of abilities. Oberon is the closest thing Warframe has to a paladin, smiting foes while protecting his allies. He might be one of Warframe's toughest characters to earn, but Oberon can become a support powerhouse when built correctly.

Related: Warframe: Loki Complete Guide – Drops, Abilities, And Builds

This guide will go through every aspect of Oberon and his Prime variant. We'll be covering how to obtain Oberon, his Prime variant, explain what all of his abilities and augments do, and we'll end the guide by covering three powerful builds that make Oberon a devastating, team-oriented paladin.

Updated February 11, 2023, by Charles Burgar: Oberon has gotten some buffs in recent patches, increasing the armor strip of Reckoning and buffing one of his augment mods. We've updated this guide with updated values for his abilities and augments, added a section discussing optimal Archon Shard use, and we've added a few Relics tied to Oberon Prime the last time he was unvaulted.

How To Craft Oberon

Oberon's parts are obtained from caches in certain Railjack missions, dropping from rotation A. This makes Oberon one of the hardest Warframes to obtain. His main blueprint can be purchased from the Market for 30,000 Credits.

Oberon Blueprint

Oberon Neuroptics

Oberon Chassis

Oberon Systems

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How To Craft Oberon Prime

Oberon Prime's components can be obtained by opening certain Void Relics. As of writing, Oberon Prime's is vaulted, meaning Oberon's Relics will no longer be obtainable. Any previously obtained Oberon Prime Relics may still be opened in Fissure missions, and any obtained Oberon Prime Relics or parts may be traded between players.

Oberon Prime Blueprint

Oberon Prime Neuroptics

Oberon Prime Chassis

Oberon Prime Systems

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Related: Warframe: Top Prime Weapons, Ranked

Oberon Abilities

Stats

Passive

Passive: Allied pets receive 25% Health, Armor, and Shield buffs. In addition, your pet receives an instant revive per mission.

In practice, this passive gives a 25% health, armor, and shield link between your Warframe and every allied companion—not just Oberon's pet. As you increase Oberon's stats, so too will your pet's defensive stats increase. This passive stacks additively with Link mods. Oberon's passive does not work with MOAs or Hounds. The free revive per mission is only for Oberon's companion.

Smite

Smite: Focuses deadly energy within a target and then projects it outwards, damaging both the target and surrounding enemies.

This ability can be subsumed with the Helminth system.

Smite will strike a target on your reticle, knocking them towards the ground while releasing a flurry of orb projectiles. These projectiles will seek nearby targets and have a 35% unmoddable chance of inflicting Radiation. The initial target hit will always be affected by a Radiation status effect.

Unlisted in the ability's description, each Smite converts 35% of the initial target's health as bonus damage, divided among each orb. This conversion is not affected by Ability Strength, but any damage-altering effects like armor or debuffs will affect the damage your Smite orbs deal. Orbs will attempt to target unique enemies, although multiple orbs can strike the same target if it's close to your initial target. Smite is also a one-handed action, meaning you can use it while firing or reloading your weapons. Most players use this ability in conjunction with its augment, Smite Infusion. This is also a great ability to replace with a subsumed power.

While players don't tend to spec for this ability specifically, Smite works best with Ability Strength. Strength increases the damage of this ability and the Radiation damage bonus you receive from the Smite Infusion augment.

Hallowed Ground

Hallowed Ground: Sanctifies the ground before Oberon with righteous fire, inflicting damage to any enemy that stands in the flames.

Oberon blesses the ground before him, creating a field of grass and energy. Standing in this field will make you immune to knockdowns and status effects, and walking onto the field will immediately purge any status effects on your character. This benefits allies and companions as well.

Enemies that stand on Hallowed Ground will take damage twice every second, each tick providing a slight chance that the target will become irradiated. Targets affected by Radiation will attack nearby enemies, effectively making Hallowed Ground a crowd control ability. To make this ability easy to use, build it for Ability Strength and Range. Range will make it cover a much larger area—increasing its radius and the angle it covers—while Strength will increase Hallowed Ground's damage and status chance.

Walking onto Hallowed Ground while Renewal is active will grant the Iron Renewal buff, increasing your armor by a flat amount while Renewal is active. This applies to teammates as well.

Renewal

Renewal: Healing waves of energy flow outward from Oberon to his allies, regenerating Health over time.

Casting Renewal will create a ring of energy around Oberon for a short duration, causing himself and all nearby allies to gain Renewal's various buffs. These buffs persist until the ability ends, either from Oberon running out of Energy or manually turning Renewal off. While Renewal is active, you gain the following buffs:

1. You regenerate HP over time.
2. Should you become downed, you'll bleed out slower.
3. After standing on Hallowed Ground, you'll gain an armor buff for a short duration.

The third effect activates upon walking atop of Hallowed Ground at any point while Renewal is affecting you. The HP regen starts at a modest 40 per second, but this is affected by Ability Strength mods. Renewal can also affect companions and summoned allies like Nekros' Shadows of the Dead. Each target affected by Renewal will make Oberon's Energy drain more extreme.

Actively healing an ally with this ability increases the drain even further, so we highly recommend you have some sort of Energy regeneration or Ability Efficiency in your build. An easy way to keep Renewal active is by pairing this ability with Hunter Adrenaline or Rage, causing damage Oberon receives to refill his Energy reserves. For scaling the healing effect and armor buff from Hallowed Ground, spec for Ability Strength.

Reckoning

Reckoning: Quickly lifts enemies into the air and then hurls them down with conviction. Enemies who succumb to this power have a chance to spawn a Health Orb.

Oberon grabs every target near him and slams them into the ground, dealing a large amount of damage that's further amplified if the targets are affected by Radiation. Enemies slain by Reckoning have a 50% chance of dropping a Health Orb for your squad. Should any targets survive that were beside Oberon, they'll be blinded for a short duration as well.

Arguably the strongest part of Reckoning is its armor strip. If Reckoning attacks an enemy that's on Hallowed Ground, this ability will strip 50% of their base armor. Base armor is worth emphasizing here, as this means that subsequent Reckoning casts have an additive strip effect. It'll only take two casts to fully strip a target's armor, reduced to one cast if you can hit 200% Ability Strength.

We highly recommend you scale Reckoning through Ability Strength and Range. You want to ideally hit 200% Ability Strength to strip a target's armor entirely, and a boost to your Ability Range will ensure you can strip most enemies within your line of sight.

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Related: Warframe: A Complete Guide To The New War Quest

Oberon Augments

Oberon has an Augment for each of his abilities, some of which make Oberon sought after for endurance missions or Eidolon Hunts. Oberon's augments may be purchased from the New Loka or Steel Meridian Syndicates for 25,000 Standing each. You'll need to be at max rank with either Syndicate to purchase these mods. Alternatively, you may obtain these mods through Warframe's player trading system.

Smite Infusion

Smite Infusion: Smite Augment: Hold to cast will grant all allies within 15m an additional 100% Radiation Damage to their attacks for 40s.

Holding down the Smite ability will grant you and nearby allies a Radiation damage buff instead of casting Smite. This buff is effectively an elemental damage mod, adding 100% of your weapon's base damage as extra Radiation. This buff effect is affected by Ability Strength, and the radius of who gets the buff is affected by Ability Range. You can also extend the buff's duration with Ability Duration mods. Recasting Smite Infusion gives you a new buff with a refreshed duration.

Remember that Radiation damage is less effective against specific targets, so your damage output might vary based on enemy type. Status procs also have a chance to activate Radiation, which can be a detrimental effect for some weapon builds. We highly recommend using this mod for Eidolon Hunts or any content against Sentients.

Hallowed Eruption

Hallowed Eruption: Hallowed Ground Augment: Reactivate to deal all remaining damage and Radiation status. Passive: +100% Hallowed Ground Duration.

Whenever you cast Hallowed Ground, you can recast it at any point to detonate the ability. Any enemies atop the Hallowed Ground will take the remaining damage Hallowed Ground is set to deal—twice the damage listed of the ability multiplied by its remaining duration. This makes Hallowed Eruption a solid DPS ability for low-level content.

The damage of this ability is affected by Ability Strength and Duration. While the ability gives you bonus Duration, that benefit is not affected by Ability Duration or any other mods; it stacks additively with other Duration sources. While this Augment is installed, you can only have one Hallowed Ground instance active at any given moment.

Phoenix Renewal

Phoenix Renewal: Renewal Augment: Taking fatal damage while under the effects of Renewal will instead Heal you or allies to 50% Health. This effect triggers only once for each ally every 90s.

Whenever a target under the effects of Renewal would become downed, they instead gain 50% of their HP and become invincible for a few seconds. This effect has a 90-second cooldown and is per person. Phoenix Renewal will activate on players and companions alike. While the HP regained from this Augment is affected by Ability Strength, the 90-second lockout duration is not affected by Ability Duration mods. You cannot reset this cooldown by reactivating Renewal; the cooldown persists even after Renewal ends. We recommend using this Augment if you plan to take Oberon into Arbitrations or any endurance missions.

Hallowed Reckoning

Hallowed Reckoning: Reckoning Augment: Reckoning gains +40% range. A 3m radius around each affected enemy grants bonus armor to allies and deals 300 damage per second to enemies.

Damaging a target with Reckoning will create a three-meter vortex that deals 300 damage per second, each tick of damage carrying a high chance of inflicting Radiation status. Allies that stand in this vortex gain 250 armor instead, additive with other armor sources and unaffected by mods. You can increase the vortex's range with Ability Range, additive armor with Ability Strength, and damage per second with Ability Strength. The range bonus for Reckoning is additive with other Ability Range modifiers.

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Related: Warframe: Caliban Complete Guide – Drops, Abilities, And Builds

The Best Oberon Builds

We'll be going over three builds for Oberon that should give you a rough idea of how to maximize this paladin Warframe. You'll find a starter build, endgame build, and Eidolon hunter build below. Unless otherwise noted, each build assumes you're using Oberon Prime.

Before we get into the builds, it's important to mention that Oberon's best defense is HP tanking. He's a Warframe that can regen HP and gain a high amount of armor, making him a perfect candidate for Adaptation and certain Umbral mods. For Helminth abilities, we recommend replacing either Smite or Reckoning with another support ability like Chroma's Elemental Ward. You can also subsume Rhino's Roar ability to give your team an offensive buff. If you go with the latter, consider keeping Smite to use the Smite Infusion Augment.

As far as Focus schools go, Madurai and Zenurik are solid options. Madurai is great for getting 40% Ability Strength for your Renewal and Hallowed Ground casts. Zenurik can help recover Energy if you don't mind temporarily dropping Renewal.

Archon Shards

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Most Oberon builds will want to use Ability Strength (Crimson) Shards. It's not a bad idea slotting two Cast Speed (Amber) Archon Shards to make Reckoning and Hallowed Ground easier to cast, but that's mostly a quality of life improvement and not mandatory. The more Strength you can give Oberon, the stronger his heals will be. None of the builds listed below use any Archon Shards.

Starter Build (0 Forma, No Subsume)

• Forma: 0
• Subsume: None

This starter builds focuses on one thing: Ability Strength. Since Oberon doesn't use his abilities often, we'll be using Energy Conversion and Growing Power as conditional Ability Strength bonuses that Oberon can snapshot onto his Renewal ability. Umbral Intensify and Augur Secrets further increase this build's overall Strength to make Renewal a reliable survivability tool.

To keep Oberon's Energy pool at a decent level, Primed Flow and Rage are used to convert all damage taken into Energy. From there, use Umbral Vitality and Adaptation to tank even more hits. Finally, an unranked Phoenix Renewal is used to give yourself a grace period in case you get one shot. Ranks of that augment only affect the HP regained when you would otherwise die, so we can afford to use an unranked version.

Bear in mind that all the Primed mods listed here are fully optional. You can replace any Primed mod with its default counterpart and do just fine with this build. If you find Energy to be an issue, replace Augur Secrets with Streamline and Umbral Vitality for its common variant. For Arcanes, use whatever you have on hand. Arcane Guardian, Grace, Avenger, and Molt Augmented are some good choices.

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Endgame Support Build (4 Forma, Roar Subsume)

• Forma: 4 (Aura, Umbral, V, D, D (Exilus))
• Subsume: Roar (Rhino)

Since Oberon doesn't need as much Ability Strength to strip armor with Reckoning, we don't need to use Blind Rage in this configuration, greatly improving our Ability Efficiency. We first aim to hit 200% Ability Strength by using Umbral Intensify and Transient Fortitude. We buff Umbral Intensify by using Umbral Vitality which also greatly improves Oberon's HP.

For Energy, we're using Primed Flow and Rage to get Energy upon taking damage, something we'll immediately recover from through Renewal. Adaptation will help minimize rapid hits from multiple targets, and we'll also be using Stretch to make Hallowed Ground and Reckoning easier to use. We prefer Combat Discipline for our aura slot, as it allows us to trigger on-hit Arcanes like Arcane Guardian or Arcane Avenger. Pick your favorite.

The Exilus slot is up to you. We recommend using Primed Sure Footed for situations where you aren't on Hallowed Ground. While most Oberon players will attempt to play near their Hallowed Ground, this makes bullet jumping or moving in large tilesets quite risky in Steel Path content. If you aren't worried about getting stunned, feel free to replace this with Cunning or Power Drift. You'll need to derank a mod and not Forma your Exilus slot to fit either mod.

Arcanes are flexible here. We recommend using Molt Augmented to scale your Renewal heals as you kill targets. Once you get maximum stacks, recast Renewal to greatly improve your healing output. The second Arcane should improve your survivability, notably Arcane Guardian or Arcane Blessing.

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Eidolon Hunter/Damage Buff Build (5 Forma, Roar Subsume)

• Forma: 4 (Aura, Umbral, V, Double Dash (Exilus))
• Subsume: Roar (Rhino) OR Eclipse (Mirage)

An Eidolon Hunter and dedicated buff build are marginally different, so we're going to be covering both in this section. For an Eidolon Hunter, you'll want to use Rhino's Roar in place of Reckoning and build for as much Strength as possible. You'll also want the Smite Infusion Augment to further buff you and your team's damage output. When the lures are getting damaged, pop Renewal to quickly heal them. Be sure to disable Renewal when you're done to quickly get your Energy back. While not required, we recommend Arcane Nullifier to avoid losing all of your Energy during an Eidolon fight.

A buff build is typically used for static endurance missions like Defense, focused solely on buffing your team's damage. We replace Roar for Mirage's Eclipse and Hunter Adrenaline for the Total Eclipse Augment. You can also replace Primed Continuity for a rank eight Narrow Minded, provided you don't mind standing right on top of your allies. Steel Charge can also be swapped for Power Donation if you don't mind losing some Ability Strength. Be sure your Oberon is standing in light to give your team a damage buff.

Feel free to use Roar instead if you don't like Eclipse, but it gives an objectively better damage buff than Roar and stacks with that ability. For a buff-oriented Oberon, we do recommend you run Arcane Energize or the Zenurik Focus school to keep your Energy at max.

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Next: Warframe: Wisp Complete Guide – Drops, Abilities, And Builds