Introduction
Caliban is an oft-forgotten and frequently misunderstood frame. This is the build I use with him and it's been serving me very well for pretty much all content. In this guide I'll go over the details of all his abilities and some alternatives to make him suit your playstyle.
Keep in mind for this frame: while you can minmax him for Strength, [Caliban] functions best as a weapons platform with some strong tools to aid his gunplay. If you're relying on his abilities for damage, you probably want to rethink your approach in higher-level content.
Abilities
Passive
[Caliban] and all allies in affinity range gain stacking damage resistance against the same type that hit them. This functions similarly to [Adaptation] and does not stack with the mod, instead using whichever modifier is higher. The damage resistance starts gradually decaying after 5 seconds. Of note, frames will not gain stacks from blocked damage or incoming damage while invulnerable. Status effect damage over time will similarly not build stacks (such as slash/toxin/heat procs).
This passive is more of a nice-to-have that gives additional survivability should you be caught without your shield gating active. 50% damage resistance isn't all that much compared to other options.
Razor [Gyre]
A channeled ability that causes [Caliban] to spin rapidly and deal slash damage to nearby enemies. [Caliban] is immune to knockdown and staggers while spinning. You can hold Primary Fire to spin faster, ramping up both the damage and energy cost of the ability. Tapping Primary Fire causes you to dash to the enemy in your reticle.
In addition, several restrictions and benefits are in place while channeling Razor Gyre:
- You can't fire, switch, or reload weapons
- You can only move on the ground (i.e. can't jump, bullet jump, or parkour)
- Can't pick items up, though Companion Gather-Link still sucks items up and makes them float nearby you
- Can't cast abilities 3 or 4. However, Sentient Wrath is enhanced, gaining 50% cast speed and it doesn't interrupt the channel.
Overall this ability is not worth using. It's too restrictive and energy-hungry compared to the (low) damage it deals. Maybe someday we'll get an augment that makes it worthwhile, but for now it's a free Helminth slot. If you manage to make the ability worth using, please let me know in the comments!
Sentient Wrath
[Caliban] stomps the ground and causes a shockwave to spread out in all directions. The shockwave seeks out enemies (to a maximum affected cap) and Lifts them up in to the air, also providing damage vulnerability. Of note, you can't recast the ability until either if affects at least one enemy, or the shockwaves spread to their maximum distance.
This ability provides both hard CC and a damage amp, making it quite versatile. It benefits from Strength to increase the enemy target cap and damage vulnerability amount, which hits 100% effectiveness (i.e. doubling your damage) with 287% Ability Strength. Use it whenever you need some breathing room when surrounded by enemies, or if there's a particularly tough baddie that won't go down with just the armor strip from Fusion Strike.
Lethal Progeny
[Caliban] summons a Conculyst ally as a teammate. The ability can be recast twice for a total of three summons. Summoned Conculysts have a Rank based on Ability Strength, and work the same way that standard enemies scale with Rank, along with an additional multiplier to Damage and Health. The summons will attack foes and constantly regenerate [Caliban]'s shields (until shield gating is triggered, at which point they will resume after [Caliban]'s shields start to recharge naturally).
There's a lot of stuff going on with this ability, so let's piece it together.
- The final Rank of the Conculysts is based on Caliban's Rank multiplied by his Ability Strength.
- The AI for summons behaves very similarly to typical Conculyst enemies. However, they have a very high Threat Level, which draws aggro away from Tenno players effectively.
- The Damage and Health modifiers apply after Rank scaling.
- Shield regen from the Conculysts stacks from multiple summons.
- After hitting a shield gate, you can immediately resume their shield [Regen] by recovering shields, such as from an Augur mod or Brief Respite.
- Summoned Conculysts also have adaptive Damage Resistance, the same as their enemy counterparts.
- Passing through a nullifier field does not dispel the summons, but deals a percentage amount of their health in damage and staggers them.
All in all, this makes the summoned Conculysts a potent defensive tool; they take aggro away from players and are surprisingly tanky, even in Steel Path. You likely will not have to re-summon them due to them dying. Unless you're out of energy, there's not much reason to not have 3 out at all times.
Fusion Strike
[Caliban] shoots 3 beams of energy that converge on your targeting reticle and cause an explosion. This creates a field that lingers and strips defenses off enemies that enter the field. Additional casts create additional fields that linger for the duration.
This is [Caliban]'s bread and butter ability. The damage is mostly inconsequential, but the defense strip it provides is one of the best, leaving a large-range lingering area of effect that instantly strips armor and shields. The base effect is 50%, which means we only need 200% Ability Strength to fully strip in one cast. The biggest downside is a long casting time, which we'll want to mitigate through mod flex slots (using Natural Talent), or through amber Archon shards.
Stats
- Strength: The key stat we'll want to focus on, as it improves all of [Caliban]'s abilities in meaningful ways. You'll want to target at least 200% for this to achieve full strip with Fusion Strike. You can also keep pushing further for Sentient Wrath to hit 100%+ damage vulnerability. Overall anything more than 200% is a nice to have.
- Duration: The secondary stat to focus on. This extends the length of the field from Fusion Strike and makes it so you have to cast Lethal Progeny less often, saving energy. It also keeps enemies Lifted and vulnerable for longer from Sentient Wrath.
- Range: Range is not a crucial stat, but it makes the frame feel better to play when you aren't having to worry about making your ability casts precise with Fusion Strike and Sentient Wrath. Stretch is typically plenty, but I prefer a little bit extra.
- Efficiency: Since [Caliban] casts often but doesn't constantly spam abilities, we can dump this a little bit but we'll have to make up for it in other ways. See the Helminth and Loadout sections for more details.
Mod explanations and alternates
In this build
- [Brief Respite]: Used alongside [Catalyzing Shields] to rely on shield gating for your primary defense. Also makes your Conculysts start restoring shields right away after you hit a shield gate. Flexible if you put in another way to restore shields, such as Augur mods.
- Primed Sure Footed: It's here for the same reason it's in any other build: a helpful quality-of-life mod that prevents you from getting one-shot while knocked down or staggered. If you don't have it, the build functions the same, but you open up some vulnerability. Consider an alternate source of knockdown resistance, such as a Wyrm sentinel, if you replace this.
- [Catalyzing Shields]: I find abusing shield gating to be more effective than straight up shield tanking, especially once enemies start hitting higher levels, but you can also swap this for (Primed) Redirection and rely on Caliban's passive combined with Conculyst shield regens to tank damage.
- [Primed Flow]: Due to the low efficiency and reliance on abilities, a high energy pool is handy to have. Regular Flow works just fine here too.
- [Augur Reach]: Extra range, but also the Augur set bonus adds even more shields to compliment Brief Respite. Augur Secrets or Augur Message would be fine too, but ultimately this is a flex slot.
- [Streamline]: Without this, energy costs would be too high to be spammed. Only drop this if you change out Blind Rage for something else.
- [Blind Rage]: Almost enough to hit the 200% Strength breakpoint on its own. The negative efficiency hurts, but it's compensated for elsewhere.
- [Primed Continuity]: All of the abilities in this build benefit from more Duration. Regular [Continuity] is fine as well. The penalty from Narrow Minded is too harsh to be a suitable replacement, since you want a moderate amount of Range.
- [Stretch]: You want just a bit of Range, and this is just about the right amount. You can probably get away with just Augur Reach, but you'll have to be more precise in your ability casts.
- [Umbral Intensify]: It's definitely not necessary to use this to hit 200% Strength. Regular [Intensify] is fine too, but any Strength above 200% is welcome, especially if you're looking to hit 287%+ for Sentient Wrath vulnerability.
Other mods to consider
- Growing Power: Another alternate source of Strength. Be sure to include at least one Augur mod if you replace Brief Respite.
- Energy Nexus: Helps to offset low efficiency. Use if you're having energy issues.
- Natural Talent: If you don't have (or want) amber shards on Caliban, this is a necessity.
- [Precision Intensify]: This plus one crimson shard allows you to hit 200% Strength for full strip, eliminating the need for other Strength mods. However, the vulnerability and enemy cap for Sentient Wrath and the effectiveness of Conculysts suffers.
- [Transient Fortitude]: The Duration penalty from this hurts, but it's workable. Use it if you need that extra push to 200% (or 287%) Strength.
- [Rolling Guard]: The invulnerability time from this is mostly overkill considering how well [Caliban] abuses shield gating already, but the status cleanse can be helpful.
Not recommended
I don't recommend using health mods such as (Umbral) [Vitality] alongside armor increases for defense. [Caliban]'s passive isn't strong enough to make him a true health tank on his own, and since it doesn't stack with [Adaptation] you lose the (personal) passive benefit entirely if it's equipped. The investment required to get his armor high enough to health tank isn't really worth it either.
Arcanes
- Molt Augmented: Here to get me to 287% Strength so Sentient Wrath has 100% vulnerability. This is a flexible slot if you find that you don't need it.
- Arcane Energize: Alongside Nourish and [Primed Flow], it helps to offset energy costs. Not strictly necessary but you'll probably feel a little starved for energy without it. Consider Energy Nexus or Arcane Steadfast as a replacement.
Other considerations
- Arcane Aegis allows for further shield gating shenanigans, and helps your Conculysts start restoring shields faster after you hit gating.
- Arcane Steadfast fills a similar role to Energize, but isn't as reliable.
- Arcane Barrier is a less-reliable version of Aegis. It's more useful if you choose to swap Catalyzing Shields for (Primed) Redirection.
- Arcane Blessing can help with survivability if you're having trouble maintaining shield gating.
Helminth
You can use this build effectively without touching the Helminth, but it helps to shore up some of the inherent weaknesses.
Ability Subsuming
In almost all cases, you're going to want to subsume out Razor [Gyre]. It's clunky and not effective enough to justify keeping it around. You'll want to use this ability slot to shore up the holes in your Caliban build. Here are a few options you can explore for the slot:
- Nourish: This is what I use for this build. It helps make up for the negative efficiency and also lets your summoned Conculysts apply Viral status, and increases their damage a bit. Giving the effect to your companion and squadmates is just icing on the cake. Even post-nerf it's still great.
- Condemn: Additional CC and shield restore. I find it overlaps with Sentient Wrath enough that it's mostly just useful for the shield restoration, but it is a great alternative to Brief Respite if you want to use a different aura.
- Roar, Eclipse: The old standbys. Bring if you want even more damage.
- Empower: If you want to focus on gainsmaxxing your Conculysts, this along with shifting around some mods for additional Strength can get their Rank into the 140+ range. It can be amusing but I find it's not worth the additional setup.
- Dispensary: An alternative to Nourish for energy maintenance.
- Breach Surge: If you want to turn Caliban into a nuker, this is probably the most effective way to do it.
- Smite, Reave: The damage vulnerability in Caliban's kit make these an option to spam for percentage health damage to enemies. It's a very one-trick build but can be fun.
- Ensnare, Larva, Airburst, Coil Horizon: Any of these can be useful if you want to group up enemies.
Shards
There's a decent amount of flexibility on shards with [Caliban], though if you're not running [Natural Talent] you're going to want to use two amber casting speed shards. Otherwise there aren't really any required shards to implant. Here are some options for any free slots you have left:
- Ability Strength (Crimson): More strength scales abilities. If you're under 200% (or 287%) Strength this is a good way to make up the difference.
- Ability Duration (Crimson): Not having to recast abilities as often helps with energy economy.
- Maximum energy on spawn (Amber): Makes it so you can start off missions with summons ready to go.
- Parkour Velocity (Amber): Helpful for moving around faster.
- Health Regen (Azure): Tops off your health if you end up taking non-shield damage.
- Mini [Equilibrium] (Violet): I haven't tested this out much myself but it can help out with energy economy and and damage that slips past your shields.
Loadout
Your primary, secondary, and melee options are wide open for whatever weapons you want to take. This build doesn't need a primer to function. I swap out weapons with Caliban pretty regularly depending on my mood at the time.
For your companion, here are some options:
- Dethcube (Prime): This is what I use, mostly due to Energy Generator. It's not necessary but makes the build comfier.
- Wyrm (Prime): With Negate, this can help you dodge status effects (including knockdown/stagger).
- Any Hound: Null Audit and Reflex Denial are both great abilities to have at your command.
- [Nautilus]: [Cordon] is a great mod to have if you want enemy grouping but don't want to change up your Subsume ability.
Ultimately any companion you want to bring is fine. If you have a favorite, bring it!
Conclusion
While there are often other frames that do what he does better, [Caliban] is still very effective and fun to play. Give him a try and see for yourself!
