Warframe, the Rhino

The Rhino is an appallingly good 'Frame, which is sort of funny. In a lot of MMO's, at least traditional ones, the 'Tank' is usually fairly pathetic, a professional sponge and little more, and requiring a healer to actually be viable.

Warframe, while an online, multiplayer game is not a traditional MMO.

The Rhino is both incredibly tough and ALSO incredibly powerful.

Lets go over the facts: The Rhino has the second highest armor value in the game, and unlike the Valkyr (number one), the Rhino also has a great base Shield value.  I'm still pretty noobish so I don't have all the best stackable mods, and some core mods aren't maxed out yet, and I still can top 1000 shields and health on my Rhino.

Curiously, I'd say that the Rhino's 'Polarity' slots seem designed for damage output, not input. At least... with the Mods I have available to me for Auras, the Rhino sacrifices to spam extra energy, but gains if he stacks on a damage boosting Aura, like Rifle Amp.  I've heard that the Rhino also naturally hits harder with melee weapons, but I've never seen any games stats that suggest one frame is better at laying smack downs than any other.

Also: The Rhino just looks cool.  Its not terribly flashy like the Oberon, but its a solid slab of muscle and armor. It is seriously the beefiest looking Frame I've seen by no small margin, easy to spot a player using one.

However, we can't truly evaluate a Frame's performance without talking about their suite of powers, so lets talk.

The first power is Rhino Charge, which is very like the Excalibur's Slash Dash. Cheap to the point of being spammable, you run forward and hit everything. Its best used as a movement power rather than a straight attack, however... that is crossing narrow, but unjumpable chasms, passing through laser gates and so forth.  Its not quite as beefy, damage wise, as Slash Dash. However, it does have some crowd control, as it knocks its targets down.  If you can aim well, supposedly the tactic is to run ALONG an enemy, rather than right at him, so you hit him multiple times.  Whatever.  I wouldn't skip this power, but I wouldn't spend a lot of energy leveling it either. Its a utility power.

The second is Iron Skin.  I'm tempted to call this power THE reason to take a Rhino, and certainly it is the most unique, signature, power the Rhino has.  Iron Skin is basically a very beefy pool of bonus Health that has to be chipped away before you start taking damage.  I've done entire missions, hard ones with lots of enemies, without having to refresh Iron Skin.  You start with fifty energy at the start of a mission, so as soon as you land, hit 2 and activate Iron Skin. Its that damn important.

No, seriously. See: In addition to more than doubling your health, Iron Skin also makes you more or less immune to crowd control. Run through a laser gate, no problem. Ignore poison, no problem. Forget being knocked down or scorpion tethered, Iron Skin ignores it all.  I did a nightmare mode run where no one had shields, but Iron Skin was still up. Honestly? If forced to chose between Redirection (The mod that boosts your shields) and Focus (The mod that boosts your powers... which I sadly do not have), I'd take Focus. Mostly my shields go unused.  

The third Power is Roar. I can't report well on Roar, because I'm a dirty noob who likes to kill shit instead of buffing, but people swear by this. Roar increases all friendly (including self) Frames to do moar damage.  I think it starts at +50% and goes to double, but I won't swear to it.  Look: This is a great power, no lie. I just don't use it. Besides, all dem power playa's running around don't seem to need it, though I can see its value in an Endless Defense once mobs start getting beefy.  If you're looking to grind, telling a potential group that you have a Rhino with a leveled Roar might get you laid, dunno.  The advantages for them is that they won't be constantly having to res you,  and you can make them tougher if you're not a spaz.

Finally we have Rhino Stomp, a power so cool that it can actually contend with Iron Skin for 'signature Move'. Its your Ultimate, and like a lot of Ultimates, its a bad-ass AoE damage dealing machine.  That factor alone keeps Iron Skin in first place for the win, as IS is unique while Stomp is merely... another cool 'kill every motherfucker in the room' sort of thing.  Stomp hits like a truck, once you've leveled  it (and you HAVE leveled it, right?), dishing out 1200 points of damage before buff mods (Like Focus...grrr...) to everything around you.  Unlike Radial Javalin (the Excalibur's Ultimate), Rhino Stomp will hit EVERYTHING around you, and to a pretty good distance. Also, unlike a few AoE killers, Stomp also knocks them off their feet and slows time. That's right, you stomp so damn hard, that Time Itself is stunned!   This means you can clean up a few really hard targets while they slowly drift to the ground in the aura of your awesome.

Look, just about every Ultimate is a killer, with the exception of the Nyx's Absorb (which is a killer on a long ass timer, meaning someone, maybe your own Sentinel, will probably have killed most of the potential targets before it goes off) and probably a few others I haven't seen yet.  Rhino Stomp is BETTER than Radial Javalin by any measure, for the same energy cost, and comparable with the Oberon's Ultimate (umm... Retribution? Gah... research! Where's my Intern?). Actually, I'm not entirely sure the Oberon's Ultimate hits as many targets (making it possibly more like Radial Javalin with cooler FX).

Now for the downside. The Rhino is NOT a caster Frame. You've got piddling energy (I think it caps at 150 without mod boosting, vs the Nyx's 300), and as noted earlier your Aura polarity doesn't support the Energy Siphon Aura. You can still equip it (and if you've got a potato on your Rhino you can afford the loss of mod slots this entails. Or Forma... changing the polarity). However, there are lots of options for energy gain in game, and if you run with a caster frame in your party you'll still get the aura benefit, making this a poor choice, I think.  Just realize that in Solo Play, you'll probably need your energy for Iron Skin, if you don't want to spam Team Energy doohickies... the lack of which cost me a solo Derelict run.

Thats... a pretty lame weakness, really.  Remember: Warframe is a shooter with cool bits tacked on.  Bring a good gun, a big axe and bring the pain the old fashioned way and you'll hardly notice how energy starved you are.

That said: It does mean that the Rhino has to pick his power use more carefully.  Casting Roar might mean skipping a vital stomp, using Rhino Charge might mean not having the energy to recast Iron Skin.  On the other hand, with overlapping energy siphon auras from friends, you can suddenly go a little nuts. I've done defense missions where my relative invulnerability let me stake out entry points and Stomp whole oncoming waves to death, and subsequently netted me the highest kill total of the run... something my lack of accuracy normally prohibits.

Before I close out I want to point out that the Armor of the Rhino makes every bit of the Rhino that much tougher. Even early on, before I could put many Mods on my Frame, and when I hadn't yet leveled my Iron Skin I noticed how much tougher the Rhino was than my Excalibur.  The Rhino is simply tough, it can't be stressed enough. This is the frame for you if you like running into the teeth of the enemy and laughing at his pathetic attempts to hurt you.

Wait? Did I say running?

Er....

Make that leisurely strolling.  All that beef is hard to move. In public games, I regularly missed out on the credit rewards for missions simply because I couldn't keep up with the other players and the mission ended while I was still racing to the extraction point.  Supposedly this also hurts in the free running, but I never found the Rhino to be that much less agile.  Maybe a little shorter on the jumping than the Nyx, but thats it.

So that's it. The Rhino in a nutshell.  Hands down this is my favorite Warframe so far, just like the Boltor is my favorite gun so far (though the Wraith Twin Vipers are a fun sidearm!). Given my lag, however, I'm not going to review guns in depth, as I can't give them the fairness they deserve.  I'd just automatically favor things with a good sized magazine and high rate of fire as that's about the only way I hit anything.