Does require you to map the alt-fire onto something easy to use, though. And dear god does the "jam" (i.e. not having enough ammo to fire a cube but still having ammo left) get annoying.
Aren't warframe slots 20p each?
Speaking of Trinity Prime, got my parts for that cooking. Ash Prime is a couple days out from finishing.
As for weapons, without needing to deal with T3-4 endless survival and defense you can easily do most content with a Mk.1-Braton, provided you're willing to waste a tater and 3-4 forma on it. Almost anything can be viable, and when it comes to warframes almost anything is on its own. Though it kinda hurts that the starters are only 1/3 on good frames now.
The only easily-argued bad starter is mag, and you can clear that up by...being very particular about your build and not doing things solo. Excal is still excal and speedframe is still speedy.
Excal is great, natch. Mag is trash compared to most frames (and Prime, as I've been finding, is playable at best). Volt is pretty bad right now as well, though Volt Prime's advantages make him decent. The problem is with his incoherent kit. Passive and 2 are all about being sanic fast, 3 is all about being slow and tanky/buff-like, 1 is a sorta decent CC, 4 is completely counterintuitive (as you have to build for
negative power strength if you want it to be effective, especially against high-level enemies).
Basically if you want to use all of his kit, you need Efficiency, Duration, Range,
and (negative) Strength. Compare to (say) Loki: even if you want to use his entire kit, you need at most Efficiency, Duration, and Range. If you just want to perma-stealth or just want to spam CC, all you need is Eff/Dur or Eff/Range. With Volt you basically ignore half his kit. 2 is great, but 3 counteracts both 2 and the passive. 1 is okay, but loses all its damage if you mod for 4 (which has vastly better CC), and ability damage is mostly shit
anyways outside of certain frames and situations.
He really needs some love, is what I've saying. Not a bad frame, but an ability rework to fix the ability rework needs to happen, and he deserves a sprint speed buff (because seriously, a frame all about being speedy gonzales with 1.0? wat)
Of course I completely understand why Loki isn't a starter frame any more, that's basically just giving clever players the keys to do an end-run around 85% of the game's difficulty.
There's really no point in staying with Mk1 weapons when you can just buy the blueprints for their regular versions from the market :v
But I haven't found a primary weapon that I really liked yet, so I've just been staying with melee. The Quanta is ok, but not that good against stuff that isnt Corpus. Apart from that... Everything seems sort of meh.
That's pretty normal for early on, most of the guns available from the get-go are kinda crap. That said, here are two lists of suggestions. Both stuff you can get now/soon and Prime/Syndicate stuff you'll need to run relic missions/grind points for.
[Primaries]
- Hek: ML4. Probably the best shotgun in the game. Insane damage. The syndicate version is worse because it can't use the syndicate mod for the Hek. Ammo-efficient.
- Paris Prime/Dread/Rakta Cernos: Bows. ML4/0/12 respectively. People constantly argue over which is best, but since endless T3/4 doesn't exist any more effectively they're all completely broken and the differences are largely moot. Ammo-efficient.
- Amprex: ML5. Dojo research though, so you'll need a clan (even if only for a day or two; there are plenty that will let you drop in to buy BPs). Chaining lightning rifle. My personal favorite. It's a crit machine and spews status procs as well. No physical damage so you can slap on toxin and melt armor for days. Ammo-hungry
- Soma Prime: ML6 Regular Soma is kinda shit. This is a crit machine that also does decent status. Gonna take a lot of forma and rare mods to get it fully set up, though. Ammo-hungry.
- Tigris (Prime): ML4(13). The 'other' shotgun as far as I'm concerned. Does primarily slash (whereas the Hek does puncture mainly), but their damage is so high that it doesn't fucking matter most of the time. Main difference is that the best Hek variant is much easier and faster to acquire. Ammo-efficient.
- Snipers: They're all pretty shit in the current game state, don't use them.
- Tonkor/Penta: Grenade launchers. ML5/6. Use the former if you can aim, the latter if you can't. Make things go boom. The Penta can and will kill the shit out of you with misaimed shots, the Tonkor does a maximum of 50 damage to you.
[Secondaries]
- Lex Prime: ML0. Pretty easy to acquire. Solid damage. It's a classic for a reason.
- Vaykor Marelok: ML6. The non-syndicate one is easier to get and still pretty good. It's a fucking lever-action handcannon, what more do you want? Good crit and status chance.
- Sonicor: ML2. CC. All the CC. Easily the most fun weapon in the game. Make shit go flying everywhere while still doing decent damage.
- Tysis: ML4. 50% status chance. Innate corrosive damage. What more do I need to say? It's a goddamn armor-shredding machine. Slap on more toxin and electric mods, add the usual suspects plus punch-through, laugh at Grineer. It makes an immensely satisfying sound.
- Synoid Gammacor: ML6. Innate magnetic damage, 20% status chance, it's a beam. Short range, ammo inefficient, highly situational (AKA FOR CORPUS USE ONLY). But it's a blast to use and melts shields fast. Useful as a touch-and-die weapon in lower level play, you can just fast-swipe across crowds to clear them.
- Akstiletto Prime: MR5. Literally a pair of cut-down Soma Primes. Good crit, great status, eats ammo like no other. Reloads so fast you barely notice that you've stopped firing.
Melee: Use whatever you like/is mission appropriate. I have no goddamn clue what's meta now apart from maybe the one-shot stuff still being popular and Covert Lethality daggers being niche but loved among certain crowds.
That's all just stuff I've used and enjoyed/done well with. Not exhaustive, definitely not anything like a meta tier list.