Rhino Prime

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1 General Description
2 Abilities (in order of usefulness)
3 Builds

General Description

Rhino is most definitely the most useful Warframe for beginners.

In my eyes it is the first new Warframe you should try to get since it is easy to mod and massively increases your survivability even without have many special mods.

However, this guide of course will show how to create some of the best possible builds for this Warframe.

The normal Rhino can be build with blueprints you can find early in the game by defeating the boss at the assassination mission at Mercury. Just run the mission a few time and you will get all the blueprints you will need.

Rhino Prime has slightly higher sprint speed and +50 armor compared to the normal version.

Abilities (in order of usefulness)

Ability 4 - Rhino Stomp

Stomps the ground, puts enemies around you in stasis and slows down time for a short duration while also causing damage.

In my eyes this ability has lowest priority since it consumes much energy while offering only situational benefits (e.g. stopping enemies during defense missions).

Ability 3 - Roar

This ability is also very situational since in normal gameplay you don't need it that often. However there are game modes where having a Rhino with a strong Roar can truly make a difference for the entire team.

This is why one of the builds I will propose is directly focused on this ability. Very good ability but not often needed.

Ability 1 - Rhino Charge

This ability is relative weak but very useful when combined with Ability 2 (Iron Skin).

It lets your Rhino charge forward, dealing damage to all enemies crossing this path and pushing them away from you.

Ability 2 - Iron Skin

As the name suggests it casts an Iron Skin over your Rhino, which can be considered a layer of armor. Rhino only takes damage to shields and health once this Iron skin layer is depleated entirely. With other words, as long Iron skin is active your Rhino wont take any damage.

Note: Nullifier fields (blue/yellow) of enemies can instantly deactivate Iron Skin. So stay away from these fields.

Builds

Iron Skin Build

As beginner you should focus on the Iron Skin build first as it will carry you through every challenging mission you will encounter on the starmap.

When you use the Iron Skin ability you might notice that it initially is not very strong even if your Warframe already is rank 30.

So lets see how we can improve this.

The amount of Iron skin is based on two factors. Your armor value and your ability strength. So the task is to use mods that increase both values.

Use the search function of the armory to find mods which increase armor or ability strength, put them on your Rhino and you will notice that your Iron Skin will be higher than before.

Ability Range can be totally ignored and even lowered below the initial 100% using Nightmare mods. You don't need range.

You also don't need Ability duration as Iron Skin does only decrease when you take damage.

Ability Efficiency should not get too low. Ideally you want an efficiency value high enough that your Iron Skin activation does not consume more energy than the amount of energy you have when you start into a new mission. This way you are instantly invulnerable when starting missions.

That's it. Low Range, low duration, high strength and an efficiency that matches the amount of energy you have when you start a mission.

What else can be done to increase the amount of Iron Skin?

There are many options.

There are two Arcanes which increase the Armor value of your Warframe on certain conditions.

Arcane Guardian can increase the Armor by up to 900% when being damaged (at a very low chance to trigger). Since this is a bit unreliable and since we actually don't want to get damaged in first place this is probably not the best arcane for the job but in theory it is an option.

Arcane Tanker can increase your Armor by up to 1200% after deploying an Archgun. This is a true option. Deploy your Archgun, put it away again and then cast the Iron Skin ability to have a much much higher Iron skin. You can do that on purpose at the beginning of a mission and it is a reliable method.

Arcane Ultimatum also can give you +1200% Armor prior you cast your Iron Skin IF you do a finisher kill (Stealth melee kill). It is not the easiest tasks but it is an option.

You can even combine the effects of Arcane Ultimatum with Arcane Tanker -> Do a finisher kill (+1200% armor), then deploy your Archgun (+1200% armor), put the Archgun away and then cast your Iron Skin.

Another method to increase the armor value is to make use of the Focus schools. e.g. Stone Skin of the Unairu Focus school increases your armor by 60%.

There are many ways to increase the Armor and therefore the value of the Iron Skin. If you are clever and combine stuff you can even reach Iron Skin values higher than 1 million.

There is one more method to increase the Iron skin which actually is easy to use and VERY effective.

There are two Augments you can use on your Rhino that can be very useful. Iron Shrapnel and Ironclad Charge. You can get these Augments from the Steel Meridian Syndicate. Just play a few Syndicate missions until you are able to buy these Augments.

Ironclad Charge changes the way how Ability 1 (Iron charge) is working. Iron charge still does what it did before, Rhino charges forward, pushing all enemies away and inflicts damage. But now every enemy hit by Iron Charge will increase your armor by 50%. If you aim for a large group of enemies you can massively increase your armor before you cast your Iron Skin. It is a quick and reliable method I really advice to use.

It is simple to use... press 1 and then press 2 and your Iron Skin will be significantly higher than before.

What is Iron Shrapnel for? Well this Augment can be used to be more flexible. Iron Skin originally can not be refreshed. That means you can not cast this ability again as long it is already active even if the value of your Iron skin is ultra low. You have to deplete Iron Skin completely before you can cast it again which might put you into the situation where your Iron Skin in the middle of a heavy fight that potentially could kill you.

Iron Shrapnel gives you the option to end the Iron Skin in a moment when you are not under attack and then cast a new Iron Skin. This Augment is not a must have but it grants you a flexibility you would not have otherwise.

In the video above you can see the values of Iron Skin when used alone, when used together with Ironclad Charge and also when used in combination with the Arcanes (even though my Arcane Tanker is not maxed out yet). You clearly see how easily the Iron Skin value can increase. In regular gameplay this even be even much higher because you can use Ironclad Charge on much larger groups of enemies sometimes.

Note: As you can see below I use an Umbra Forma in my build. You most definitely don't need to do that. You can use a normal vitality instead or you use a mod which further improves your Ability Strength or your Efficiency. I use this Umbra polarity as I wanted to try how far I actually can go with this build. It is not a requirement and to be honest... it is even a limiting factor (as you can see in the following 2 builds).

Index Build

The Index build is very similar to Iron Skin build above. Task is to have a strong Iron Skin and have an Efficiency value big enough to cast the Iron skin with the very first Energy Orb you can collect in an Index match. Duration and Range just like before play absolutely no role on this build.

As you can see below I have removed one Augment and use a Vigilante Pursuit instead. Iron Shrapnel only have minimal benefit in Index. The Vigilante Pursuit however allows you to see the enemies on the minimap which is very useful on Index.

Arcane Energize is my choice here because of the chance to get more Energy when collecting an Energy Orb. On Index matches Rhinos usually have the task to collect and carry index points. But the more points you carry the more energy drain is added. This makes it tricky to cast a new Iron Skin if you already carry many Index points. Arcane Energize can compensate it (with a 60% probability).

Not all of my mods are maxed out on this build. This clearly is a result of missing capacity which I only could solve by adding another Umbra Forma (which i don't want to do) but it is also a matter of choice. Blind Range could when maxed out increase my Ability Strength even more but at the same time it would lower my Ability Efficiency below a point where it would make casting the Iron Skin harder on the Index. It's good the way it is. And let's face it Vigilante Pursuit at this level has 20m enemy detection. More also is not needed.

Roar Build

The Roar build is one of the best damage buffs in the game.

It not only buffs your own damage but also the damage of the entire team (as long the team members are in range).

It affects all damage types and is simple to use. Activate ability 3 and as long the timer is running you and your team deals more damage.

The build is a bit harder to do since you need a high Ability strength, a long duration (of course you want your buff to last as long as possible). Ability range does not play much of a role as long you play solo but if you intent do use it as a team buff your range should not get too small. The Ability Efficiency should at least match the amount of energy you are able to collect in relation to the ability duration. So... a delicate balancing.

Most important is the Ability Strength and the Duration.

Roar is a great ability to be used in boss fights. It can be useful on Steel path missions and a Rhino Roar is always welcome on Eidolon hunts.

Next to that is Roar one of the best abilities you can subsume in the Helminth system (which I don't really want to explain in these guides - that simply would go way too far).

As you can see below my initial choice to have my Iron Skin build based on Umbra mods is a limiting factor for the Roar build. That however does not mean that this build wont work. In fact this build has everything it needs. High Strength and high Duration. It does not really matter. It also does not matter that one mod slot is empty. For the purpose of this build only the stats matter and these are more than sufficient.

The 337% Strength leads to a 168.5% increase of Damage which lasts for 51.45 seconds (with the 172% Duration value). One of the strongest buffs in the game.