[2021] Gauss Ruined Warframe for Me

Looking back at my playtime since I got Gauss, it's nothing but Gauss. It's Gauss all the way down. Everything is to Gauss, and all else is decay. My once adored Frost has been mothballed. Chroma, ignored. Volt, nah. My all for Gauss. Every new frame that's released, I've turned my nose at. My reasons are arbitrary and petty, but they are my reasons all the same.

For me, Gauss was a terribly, terribly perfect frame. The planets aligned on his birth. I adore his stylings. The way his shoulder engines rumble idly. The redline mode. The Redline. Mode. All the ways his armor opens up in the name of speed. It makes my little robot adoring heart jump with glee. The little moustache wings on his base helmet. The base helmet, period. His tassets are delightful. His little taka-tak feetsies. The blend of materials. Yummy, yummy.

If that wasn't enough, his Leverian exists only to dazzle me further. Something about the way his story is told and his armaments notated just leave me entranced. The Saint of Altra. Ooh. Goosebumps.

Then his gameplay, his gameplay is what sealed my fate. The game of balancing his battery levels and the interplay of his abilities to that end. When you're in the zone with Gauss, it feels like you're playing something entirely different. I love the utility of being able to CC with freezing, or strip the armor of tough targets. I delight in being able to just say no thank you, not today to damage. Redline, again, is just a treat. The flair of it all. Stagger immunity says hello heavy ordinance, shall I deploy you point blank? The simple quality of life of slicing all reloads and swing speeds down. Then there's the Mach Rush. Sure, there are frames that can outpace it, but the ability to just take off like the Flash and go running across a lake for fun is second to none in my heart. The fact that he just explodes like a railgun every time he slams into something is just the icing on the cake.

My mastery rank weeps, for it knows no frame will level it again, save one. The son reborn. The Gauss Prime. We await our Saint of Altra's second coming.