Warframe: Cyte-09 build guide

Investing in a good Cyte-09 build pays huge dividends in Warframe if you like hitting high clear speed. On the surface, the marksman image of this Warframe may lead people to believe he's mainly good for single-target, but that couldn't be further from the truth. With specific weapons — yes, we're talking about Sobek — Cyte-09 turns into an extremely easy vessel for hitting 200 kills per minute and beyond.

In this Cyte-09 build guide, we'll give a brief rundown of his Warframe abilities, and the best-case build, weapons, and Helminth synergies to keep in mind.

What you need to know about Cyte-09's Warframe abilities: Explanation and tips

Cyte-09 has a synergistic kit (Image via Sportskeeda || Digital Extremes)

You can get a breakdown of all Cyte-09 Warframe abilities here, but here's the gist for the purposes of getting an operational build:

Seek is a deceptively powerful ability. With our Cyte-09 build, this becomes a crowd-clearing tool bypasses line-of-sight check.

Not only does it highlight all enemy weak points through walls similar to Zenith, it also gives your guns 10-meter body Punch Through and inifinite Terrain Punch Through.
Basically, if you find good cover where enemies can't easily reach you, Seek makes it so that you can camp there forever to kill everything around you.

Resupply can be held down to get a gear wheel where you can select any elemental type for your magazine. Afterwards, you can simply tap it to get that element throughout the rest of the mission.

The important thing about Resupply is that it functions similar to Saryn's Toxic Lash. Here's why that's important:

The Element from Resupply does not combine with your modded elements, and instead works as a separate add-on of that standalone element.
Crucially, Resupply-empowered bullets and projectiles will not get a simple damage bonus to its hit. Instead, it will do a second damage instance for every successful hit, and that damage instance will purely be the chosen element. This can trigger critical and status procs independently.

Evade is an infinitely extendable invisibility as long as you get weak-point kills. However, if you don't manage to chain up weak-point kills, you get a big 60-second cooldown to deal with, so Evade can be far more finnicky than other invisibility methods in Warframe.

The cooldown starts counting the moment you use Evade. So, if you can keep Evade up for a minute, you are free to cast it again the moment it expires naturally.
Everything in this ability including base duration, duration increment per headshot kill, and the max duration cap increases with Ability Duration mods.

Neutralize whips out your signature exalted sniper rifle. This is a pretty strong weapon on its own:

600m effective range, and falloff begins at 400m — far beyond any engagement in regular Warframe missions.
Alt-fire lobs a cold grenade to freeze all nearby enemies, which makes it easy to land headshots.
If you score a kill with a weak-point hit, the bullet will ricochet to up to four enemies.
Zooming in increases the Critical Damage by up to 80%. Speaking of, Zenith has incredible crit stats with 45% base crit chance and 3.0x base multiplier.
Sadly, the status is pretty low at 10%.

With our current build, we don't really use the Neutralizer rifle, but for what it's worth, it can easily handle all base Steel Path content on its own.

Don't have this Warframe yet? Here's how to get Cyte-09.

Best endgame build for Cyte-09 in Warframe

In a good Cyte-09 build, you mainly need Ability Strength to pump the damage numbers, and Duration for quality-of-life. Specifically, our build has the following stats:

242% Duration
50% Efficiency
115% Range
245% Strength (305% if counting Molt Augmented)

Ability modifer breakdown

The Duration is there to make things comfier, as you'll need to recast your abilities far less often. This also makes Evade upkeep much more manageable. If you want, you can simply trade Duration for more Strength.

You don't really need Ability Range, and you can actually go lower than 100%. The only thing Range does for you is reveal enemies further away with Seek.

Seek's base range is 60 meters, which covers more than the average engagement range in Warframe. Plus, we use the Sobek, a shotgun, so damage falloff makes us prioritize closer targets anyway.

With that out of the way, here's the actual build.

Cyte-09 mod setup (single-Forma)

Easy 1-Froma Cyte-09 build (Image via Sportkseeda || Digital Extremes)

Mods used:

Aura Slot: Dead Eye (use Shotgun Amp instead if following our exact setup)
Energy Nexus
Stretch
Narrow Minded (D polarity, default)
Augur Message (can be replaced with Augur Secrets if you can do with less Duration)
Transient Fortitude (V polarity, default)
Blind Rage (V polarity, spend Forma)
Primed Continuity
Augur Reach

Arcanes used:

Molt Augmented: This Cyte-09 build can pick up 250 kills within the first two minutes, so this is basically free 60% Strength)
Arcane Crepusculur: Much higher damage from our Sobek (or whatever weapon you use) as long as we keep up Evade. Can be replaced with Arcane Tempo (Shotguns), Arcane Rage (other Primaries), or Arcane Acceleration (other Primaries) if you don't want to manage Evade.

Archon Shards used:

Cyte-09 does not require Archon Shards at all to be functional, he's good to go just with the recommended build here. However, if you are following the exact synergy we recommend with Sobek, you want to use 5x Violet Archon Shards (+30% Primary Eletricity damage). The reason is discussed in the section below.

Otherwise, Cyte-09 can always use Abiltiy Strength or Duration, so you can use Crimson Archon Shards for a general build.

Best weapon for Cyte-09 in Warframe: Sobek synergy explained

Kuva Sobek build for Cyte-09 (Image via Sportskeeda || Digital Extremes)

The best weapon that perfectly synergizes with Cyte-09's kit in Warframe is Sobek (or preferrably Kuva Sobek if you don't have a Riven). Specifically, this is due to how the Sobek-exclusive Acid Shells mod functions with the additional damage instance from Resupply.

Long story shot, when you kill an enemy, Acid Shells turns it into a 15m-radius explosion that deals 45% of that enemy's HP as damage.

Now, here's the kicker: Resupply's additional damage instance also applies to this explosion damage. More importantly, the second damage instance has guaranteed status application.

So, for this build, we specifically want Electricity Resupply. The effect is essenitally the same as Melee Influence, but with guaranteed application and permanent uptime. The more enemies are caught in the explosion, the more damage this second Acid Shells instance deals with Electricity.

Mods used on Sobek (5-Forma):

Galvanized Hell
Acid Shells
Primed Ravage
Galvanized Savvy
Primed Charged Shell
Clip Delegation (you can use Primed or regular Point Blank if you don't have this)
Shotgun Elementalist
Primed Cleanse mod for the faction you are going to face (use the regular one if you don't have primed)
Exilus: Galvanized Acceleration
Arcane: Primary Deadhead

If you are runnign Kuva Sobek, use a +Toxin or +Cold progenitor, which will turn into Corrosive or Magnetic respectively.

Why these two specifically rather than Viral? They are both quite useful status effects for upping damage on this build, but we specifically want to use the Primed Charged Shell.

Much like Toxic Lash, Resupply also scales multiplicatively with your mods of the chosen element. This is also why a few Violet Archon Shards turns this Sobek into a single-target workhorse with Electricity Resupply.

Recommendation on other weapon slots:

This Sobek build, especially with the Violet Shards, makes a splash big enough to two-tap Acolytes in Steel Path. Still, you can't go wrong with something specializing in single-target such as the Laetum. Alternately, for those who want to snapshot their Resupply for an even bigger boom, you can run Grimoire with Vome Invocation.

However, the more important part is the companion. We recommend running an Adarza Cavat with this Cyte-09 build setup, as Kuva Sobek gets even better with the additive crit chance.

Best Helminth options for Cyte-09 in Warframe

Nourish is optional, but a welcome addition (Image via Sportskeeda || Digtial Extremes)

Resupply is considered a damage buff, so if you want Roar or Eclipse, you have to replace it. That is certainly not worth it, because Resupply alone enables the aforementioned Sobek synergy, and is all-around an irreplacable utility.

Here are some Warframe Helminth options we recommend for Cyte-09 (replacing Neutralize if you're going with our setup):

Nourish: It's not categorized as a damage buff for some reason, so this one actually works! You can get both Viral and a free Element from Resupply at the same time. There's also the Energy economy — but the Cyte-09 Warframe build shown here really doesn't need it. This is the one we recommend for our build.
Pillage: Lets you armor-strip, and also Shield-tank a bit up to Base Steel Path. You can replace Evade with this one, but this will need to be a different build with Primed Redirection.
Ensnare: Cyte-09 has no crowd-control, so this is an option to do it. Ensnare is the better group-up tool compared to Coil Horizon or Larvae because it lines the enemies up for headshots perfectly. To really get some good effect out of it, Ensnare would need higher range than our build, though.
Silence: Silence meshes really well with Cyte-09's kit and general theme of tactical supremacy. Useful for Ascension (vs Jade Light Eximus), Lich hunts, or even general gameplay if you want a pseudo-cc tool.

How to play Cyte-09 with this Warframe build

You just have to do this once per mission (Image via Sportskeeda || Digtial Extremes)

If you're running the exact Cyte-09 and Sobek combo shown on this guide, here's how to play this Warframe: hold down your Resupply to select Electricity, hunker down behind a wall at the edge of a tileset, place the Seek antenna, and fire away at the enemy heads thorugh the wall.

Instead of reloading, you can simply refresh your magazine with Resupply, but note that this breaks Clip Delegation sometimes
Activating Evade gives you better damage thanks to higher Critical Multiplier with Arcane Crepuscule
If you're running Nourish, you can activate it to get even easier Energy sustain, but honestly, the build has good enoguh energy economy without it.
If you don't want to camp, you can also do a run-and-gun playstyle. Just remember to keep your Evade up, as you don't have any defenses by default

This build, and Cyte-09 in general, performs its best in endless game modes. Particularly, due to how shotgun weak-point kill calculation works, it takes a while for the passive 300% critical chance bonus ramp up. However, once you get there, it's easily viable for level cap — Disruption, Defense, Cascade, Survival, you name it.

Cheap 1-Forma Neutralizer build for Cyte-09

Cheap Neutralizer build (Image via Sportskeeda || Digtial Extremes)

As mentioned earlier, we don't have any use for the Neutralizer for the specific setup. That being said, here's an easy and cheap 1-Forma build for the Exalted for those who do want to use it on their Cyte-09 build.

Mods used:

Semi-fire Cannonade
Galvanized Aptitude (or Hammer Shot)
Galvanized Scope
Critical Delay
Galvanized Chamber
Malignant Force rank 0
Rime Rounds
Vital Sense
Arcane: Primary Deadhead

Check out our other Warframe guides:

About the author

Sambit Pal is an esports Journalist on Gaming and MMO at Sportskeeda. He has Master's degree in English Literature. In his spare time, he is an amateur sleuth trying to trace the Riven Mafia in Warframe, and a recovering Bethesda modding addict. He also secretly enjoys action Roguelites, a severe lack of gitting gud notwithstanding.

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Edited by Sambit Pal