Warframe Guide: The Best Yareli Build (2024) | HGG (2024)

Surfs up, Tenno. In this guide, we’ll be discussing how to get Yareli and the best build for Yareli in Warframe right now. Aside from her amazing water lady aesthetic, Yareli is a rather unique Warframe because of how flexible her base kit and augments allow her to be when it comes to builds. To avoid confusion, we can just say that she has the potential to be both offensive and defensive while still having the option to specialize in one or the other depending on personal preference.

The more offensive parts of her kit heavily support and encourage the use of secondary weapons over other kinds of weapons. The defensive parts of her kit revolve around her living hoverboard creature called Merulina that will provide damage reduction and redirection while riding on it. And just like flowing water, this Warframe doesn’t stop moving. Sounds like fun? That’s because it is.

Yareli Base Stats

Here are Yareli’s base stats.

• Health: 100 (300 at rank 30)
• Shields: 150 (450 at rank 30)
• Armor: 100
• Energy: 200 (300 at rank 30)
• Sprint Speed: 1

Yareli Abilities Overview

Let’s take a closer look at Yareli’s abilities.

Passive

Yareli gains +200% Critical Chance for Secondary weapons when she has been moving for at least 1.5s.

Sea Snares (1st Ability)

Form three water globules that seek out enemies and expand on contact, simultaneously damaging and immobilizing their victims.

Since its rework, Sea Snares has been seeing a lot more use in higher level missions just due to how much more of an impact the vulnerability debuff adds. On top of the vulnerability, the main use of the skill itself is the decently long 12 second crowd control which should provide more than enough time to deal with the trapped enemies. However the best part of this ability is the interaction it has with Merulina because enemies killed while affected by Sea Snares will both heal Merulina and provide fire rate and reload speed to secondary weapons with the Merulina Guardian augment. That being said, you’ll always be wanting to use Sea Snares to upkeep both your buffs and Merulina.

Merulina (2nd Ability)

Summon Merulina, a rideable creature of the waves, and the inspiration for K-Driving. Merulina protects Yareli by absorbing a large portion of incoming damage.

Merulina is Yareli’s signature ability and probably one of the most unique abilities in the whole game. Yareli calls upon Merulina for mounted combat but in doing so, can only use secondary weapons. This is a pretty fair trade considering she is immune to ragdoll effects and resists most instances of knockdown and stagger. Mounting and dismounting Merulina is also extremely safe and efficient as Yareli gets 1.5 seconds of iframes (invincibility frames) during the mounting and dismounting animations. While mounted, 90% of damage taken is redirected to Merulina who has their own health pool that maxes at 7,500 and can only be healed when enemies die while affected by Yareli’s Sea Snares (ability 1) while using the Mirulina Guardian augment. This all makes for a generally fun and safe mounted combat gameplay experience while still being able to make use of the secondary weapon.

Aquablades (3rd Ability)

Tear through foes with a trio of orbiting aquatic blades.

While you can make builds catered toward Aquablades, they don’t usually tend to offer nearly as much value in higher level content. Even though the damage isn’t usually anything spectacular unless specifically built for using them for damage, they still provide the stagger. Using this ability more as a mass crowd control than a source of damage will usually net more value overall against higher level content enemies.

Riptide (4th Ability)

Drag enemies into a crushing maelstrom and then blow them away in a watery burst. Each enemy trapped in the vortex increases the burst’s Damage.

Ragdoll is usually seen being used in synergy with Sea Snares for easy crowd control and can even be cast while riding on Merulina. It’s worth noting that Riptide can be manually detonated before the duration is over by holding down the ability key (default 4) or else it will automatically detonate at the end of the suction. This is really the only ability that determines whether you would want to have a positive duration or a negative duration build for your Yareli and is completely personal preference. Positive duration would require manual detonation while negative duration can just wait out the suction since it won’t last too long.

How to Get Yareli

Protea’s main blueprint can be instantly obtained upon completion of The Waverider quest. The blueprint for the component parts (neuroptics, chassis, and systems) can be acquired through the Clan Dojo in the Ventkids’ Bash Lab.

Alternatively if you’re strapped for time, you can just outright buy Yareli from the Market for 325 Platinum.

Arcanes

• Molt Augmented – More ability strength not only means more health for Merulina, but it also helps with the Gloom slow effect if you decide to take it.
• Arcane Guardian – Just something to add a little more tankiness (not that she needs it). Can be replaced with another Molt arcane for even more ability strength.

Mod Choice Explanation

• Combat Discipline – Used with Gloom builds to bypass the issue of Gloom heal negating the effects of Merulina Guardian. Can be replaced with Growing Power or Pistol Amp if you’re not using Gloom.
• Primed Sure-Footed – Since Yareli isn’t fully immune to knockdowns while riding Merulina, this is more of a safety net. Can be replaced with Handspring.
• Archon Intensify – The ability strength effect can trigger from Merulina Guardian heal which just means more strength for free!
• Merulina Guardian – Main star of this build that helps Merulina survive while buffing Yareli’s secondary.
• Equilibrium – More than enough to sustain energy to cast abilities.
• Adaptation – Added comfort tankiness.
• Vitality/Stretch/Fleeting Expertise/Streamline – Stats

Weapon Choices

• Tenet Plinx – A very popular secondary and probably the best to use for Yareli in general is the Tenet Plinx. Normally it requires a very long charge time before shooting but with Yareli’s buffs, this little guy is turned into a quite literal hand cannon with the alternate fire. The most desirable element progenitor is electricity due to how it affects ragdolled enemies with multiple body parts.
• Sporelacer – High critical chance and explosions, what else could you ask for? This kitgun build is great for clearing out mobs of enemies which makes it prime for Yareli’s kit that buffs it to seemingly astronomical heights.
• Otherwise any powerful secondary with a lot of multishot, punch thru, or area of effect damage will suffice as you will mostly be shooting it into a group of clumped up enemies from Riptide (ability 4).

Helminth Abilities

Yareli’s Aquablades (ability 3) is probably the only real candidate to swap out for an infused Helminth ability due to how little we really need to rely on it for damage. Despite that, there is really only one fitting option that works with Yareli’s kit since she can’t use Helminth abilities while riding Merulina.

• Gloom (Sevagoth) – Since it’s a toggle skill, it can be activated before getting on Merulina and is also the reason to take the Combat Discipline mod in the aura slot. Otherwise you won’t be getting the Merulina heal or buffs for secondary weapons.
• The interaction works by Yareli killing an enemy in Sea Snares and is healed by Gloom but also takes damage from Combat Discipline. Merulina Guardian redirects 9 of the 10 damage from Combat Discipline and thus procs the 25% heal for Merulina and the buffs for secondary.

Join the High Ground

Hopefully our guide helped you better understand and build Yareli in Warframe! She truly is a unique Warframe that requires you to adapt to mounted combat for this version of the meta build. But it’s definitely worth it when you’re able to tear past Steel Path with no issues at all! If you have any build tweaks or suggestions feel free to throw them in the comments!

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