Warframe: Harrow Complete Guide – Drops, Abilities, And Builds

With the release of Warframe’s The New War update, everyone’s favorite priest Warframe has received a Prime variant. Harrow is one of Warframe’s most ability-intensive characters you can play, requiring you to juggle your shields and three different buffs. However, if you can pull it off, you’ll be rewarded with a fast-firing, critically-hitting machine.

But to turn Harrow into such a powerhouse, you’re going to need to farm him and create some builds. This guide will go over how to obtain Harrow and his Prime variant, what each Harrow ability does, what his Augments do, and we’ll cover five builds that will showcase Harrow’s true potential.

How To Craft Harrow

Harrow is obtainable upon completing the Chains of Harrow quest, unlocked after you complete The War Within. Once you’ve completed the quest to obtain Harrow’s main blueprint, you’ll have to complete Kuva Fortress missions and complete Fissure missions to obtain his other three components. His systems can also drop from Defection missions.

Harrow Blueprint

Harrow Neuroptics

Harrow Chassis

Harrow Systems

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How To Craft Harrow Prime

Harrow Prime’s components all drop from certain Void Relics. He’s currently unvaulted, so nearly every activity you play can drop Relics for Harrow Prime. We recommend the following for getting these Relics quickly:

Harrow Prime Relic Farm Locations

• Yursa, Neptune — Drops Axi K6 and Axi T8
• Ukko, Void OR Sedna, Kappa — Drops Meso G3
• Hepit, Void OR Memphis, Phobos — Drops Lith H3

Additionally, you can also purchase Relic Packs from any Syndicate or Teshin for a slight chance of obtaining one of these Relics.

Harrow Prime Blueprint

Harrow Prime Neuroptics

Harrow Prime Chassis

Harrow Prime Systems

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Harrow Abilities

Stats

Passive

Passive: Overshield capacity doubled. Start missions at max Energy.

The overshield cap in Warframe is 1,200 for most Warframe. Thanks to Harrow’s passive, your overshield cap is increased to 2,400. Overshields stack on top of your standard shield capacity and are unaffected by shield Mods like Redirection.

Whenever you join a session or start a mission, Harrow will spawn with maximum Energy reserves. This has great synergy with Flow and Primed Flow, allowing Harrow to easily accrue a high Energy on kill effect with his Thurible ability. Bear in mind that Harrow’s Energy does not reset between Sanctuary Onslaught waves.

Condemn

Condemn: Cast a wave of energy that chains them where they stand. Each enemy held reinforces Harrow’s shields.

Condemn is your bread and butter for increasing Harrow’s shields. Activating this ability will cast a one-handed action that will project a wave from Harrow’s position for two seconds that follows the ground. Enemies that are touched by the wave will be chained in place for a short duration. Targets are chained in such a way to expose their head, making it much easier to land headshots. Each enemy hit will restore a portion of Harrow’s shields. Should his shields be full, Condemn will generate overshields instead. The Condemn wave can chain targets through walls.

Bear in mind that targets already affected by Condemn will not grant additional shields if affected by the ability again. You must wait for Condemn’s duration to end before that target will grant you shields once again. Chaining a target that’s already affected by Condemn will refresh the ability’s duration. Due to Condemn’s range affecting both its maximum length and width expansion, we highly recommend you put some range on Harrow to make full use of this ability. It doesn’t take much for Condemn to chain an entire room.

Penance

Penance: Sacrifice shields to boost Reload Speed and Fire Rate while converting damage inflicted on enemies into health for Harrow and nearby allies.

Harrow flagellates himself with his Thurible, sacrificing 50 Energy and all of his shields for three buffs:​​​​​​ increased fire rate, reload speed, and life steal from all damage dealt. While all of these buffs only affect Harrow, any healing dealt from Penance’s life steal can heal any allies within Affinity range, including Companions. Range Mods do not affect this radius, although it is affected by the Mending Unity passive from the Vazarin Focus school. You also regain a chunk of health upon casting this ability.

The duration of this ability looks terrible on paper, but it’s quite easy to reach Penance’s duration cap of two minutes. Every 100 shields will add 1.54 seconds to the base timer. Assuming you have 3,000 shields to sacrifice, Penance will last for 50 seconds without any duration Mods installed. With a little bit of duration, you only need to cast Penance twice with max overshields to reach the two-minute cap. To get the most out of your Penance buff, build for Ability Strength.

Thurible

Thurible: Channel Harrow’s Energy into the Thurible to generate a buff. Once finished, kill enemies to bestow nearby allies with bursts of energy. The more Energy channeled, the greater the reward for each kill. Headshots produce extra Energy.

Harrow will begin to swing his Thurible, converting 15% of Energy used into a buff that grants Energy on kill. The channel portion of this ability ends when you either recast Thurible or run out of Energy. When you finish channeling, all kills from Harrow will grant Energy to himself and all nearby allies. Should that kill be a headshot, the Energy received is quadrupled. Ability Strength affects the Energy conversion and, therefore, the magnitude of this buff. Strength does not affect your headshot multiplier.

Even if an ally is inside the Thurible aura, only kills from Harrow will give them Energy. Enemies do not have to be in Thurible’s radius to generate Energy. Channeling your Thurible before the ability ends will prematurely remove your previous Thurible buff. You also can’t attack or use other abilities while channeling this skill.

Covenant

Covenant: Protect nearby allies with an energy force that absorbs all damage and converts it to a Critical Chance bonus for all those under the Covenant. Headshots are amplified even further.

Covenant is Harrow’s strongest ability, arguably one of the strongest buffs in the entire game. Harrow breaks his chains, causing himself and all allies within Affinity range to become impervious to all damage for a short time. Damage taken during this time is tracked on your HUD. When the invulnerability period ends, all affected players will gain an additive critical chance buff that scales with how much damage your team received while invincible. This critical chance buff cannot exceed 50%, regardless of Ability Strength and damage taken.

Just like Thurible, headshots quadruple the strength of this critical chance buff, granting your weapon 200% additive critical chance. That allows any weapon you’re wielding to orange crit, regardless of its critical chance. We want to emphasize that the critical chance given by Covenant is additive; the effect is added after your weapon’s critical chance is calculated. For example, a weapon with a 10% critical chance with Point Strike would normally have a 25% critical chance. With Covenant active, that chance goes up to 75%—225% if it’s a headshot. This buff also stacks with Arcane Avenger.

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Harrow Augments

Harrow has three Augment Mods: Tribunal (Condemn), Warding Thurible (Thurible), and Lasting Covenant (Covenant). Let’s go over what each Augment does.

Tribunal

Tribunal: Condemn Augment: Other players will trigger 50% of the effects of Penance and Thurible when attacking chained enemies.

Tribunal allows Harrow to become a proper support Warframe for his team, allowing allies to gain the benefits of Thurible and Penance by defeating chained targets. Any enemies that die while chained will give both themselves and Harrow Energy. This fixes one of Harrow’s issues of needing to be the group’s main DPS to properly support the team. With this augment, you just need to keep your buffs active and have a supply of chained targets for your allies to kill. To make good use of this augment, build for Ability Range. Ability Strength does not affect the effect percentage of this augment.

Warding Thurible

Warding Thurible: Thurible Augment: Allies in range take 40% less Damage while channeling Thurible and grant 0.5 additional Energy charge whenever damaged.

Warding Thurible gives your team a benefit while Harrow is channeling his third ability. The damage resistance it gives looks lackluster on paper, although this can be increased up to 90% by building for Ability Strength. The extra Energy gained from taking damage is also affected by Ability Strength.

Despite the immense amount of damage resistance and bonus Energy you can receive from this augment, Thurible shouldn’t be used like this. Most Harrow builds use Natural Talent to speed up Harrow’s long cast times—an anti-synergy with this Mod. If you want to become a mobile DR aura and nothing else, build for Ability Efficiency. But for most builds, it’s tough to recommend Warding Thurible.

Lasting Covenant

Lasting Covenant: Covenant Augment: Headshot kills increase Critical Chance bonus duration by 3s.

Lasting Covenant allows Harrow to maintain the Retaliation part of Covenant for an extended period, potentially for an entire mission. This comes with two caveats:

1. You can’t recast Covenant, meaning you lose the on-demand invulnerability this ability would typically grant.
2. You’re using a Mod slot.

Even with both opportunity costs, the damage increase provided by Retaliation is so good that Lasting Covenant is a compelling option for most Harrow builds. The duration increase is affected by Ability Duration, and the maximum duration Retaliation can have is equal to triple its original duration. For example, Retaliation usually lasts for 20 seconds. Assuming you land enough headshots with Lasting Covenant, you can extend that time up to 60 seconds. This duration cap is also affected by Ability Duration.

Overall, Lasting Covenant is a powerful option for players that don’t want to juggle one of Harrow’s abilities. If you plan to exploit shield gating to keep Harrow alive, we highly recommend you give this Augment a try.

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Harrow Builds

While Harrow is advertised as a support character, he’s much more of a solo Warframe that supports as a byproduct of dealing damage. Without a dedicated support build, Harrow mostly focuses on himself and occasionally helps his team. Regardless of build, you should use Natural Talent on all Harrow builds. You’ll charge Thurible faster and cast your other abilities quicker. As for stats, focus on Ability Strength and Duration.

With how powerful Condemn is, most players will want to focus on shield gating to stay alive as Harrow. Whenever your shields break, you can cast Covenant or spam Condemn to reset your shield gate invulnerability timer quickly. Rolling Guard pairs nicely with this as well. Of course, if you don’t like managing shields atop of Harrow’s abilities, slap an Adaptation on Harrow and keep your overshields capped. That will be more than enough survivability to stay alive for most content.

For subsumes, Harrow has two good options: Pillage and Thermal Sunder. The former replaces Condemn’s CC with a wider area of effect and defense strip, although Pillage does not work on Infested. Thermal Sunder turns Harrow into a DPS carry in activities like Sanctuary Onslaught, making him a fantastic Warframe for farming Focus.

Starter Build (0 Forma, No Subsume)

• Forma: None
• Subsume: None

This build covers all of your bases for Harrow. We run Blind Rage and a second Ability Strength Mod—Intensify on Harrow Prime, Augur Secrets for default Harrow—to build up a sizable Strength value. From there, slot in Primed Flow and Natural Talent to drastically improve the overall feel of Harrow. If you don’t own Primed Flow, use normal Flow.

With our bases covered, we’ll flesh out the last few slots by building for Ability Range and Duration. Stretch and Augur Reach will give you 175% Range, which should be more than enough for Condemn. Primed Continuity will then give 55% extra duration, giving Thurible a duration just short of a minute. Of course, feel free to use Continuity in its place. Use Adaptation or Rolling Guard in the final slot to give yourself some added defense. With how effective Condemn is at giving shields, we don’t need to run Vitality or Redirection on Harrow.

If you’re running normal Harrow, not the Prime variant, replace Intensify with Augur Secrets and drop one point from Augur Reach. The Aura can be whatever you like; any dash polarity Aura will work just fine.

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Support Build (1 Forma, No Subsume)

• Forma: 1 (V)
• Subsume: None

This build uses the Tribunal Augment to fix Harrow’s selfish means of supporting teammates. Overall, this build is the same as our starter build with two changes:

1. We replace Augur Reach with Tribunal.
2. We use an Exilus Adapter to use Cunning Drift.

You’ll lose a small chunk of Ability Range in exchange for much better support capabilities. Allies will easily benefit from the effects of Thurible and Penance, and you’ll be able to provide excellent crowd control with Condemn. Once again, use any Aura you like.

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Endgame Build (4 Forma, No Subsume)

• Forma: 4 (V, –, D (Exilus), Universal (Aura))
• Subsume: None

With four Forma installed on Harrow Prime, you’ll be able to achieve a great Ability Strength value of 243%, a respectable 175% Ability Range, 155% Ability Duration, have two means of going invincible with Rolling Guard and Covenant, and you’ll be immune to all knockdowns and staggers with Primed Sure Footed. If you don’t own Primed Sure Footed, use Handspring instead. This also means you don’t have to polarize the Exilus Slot, saving your one Forma.

We recommend you put an Aura Forma on Harrow Prime due to some powerful Aura synergies he can use (as shown in the build below). As for some good neutral game Auras, we recommend either Growing Power for more Strength or Swift Momentum if you wish to use a Heavy Attack melee weapon with Harrow.

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Endgame Pillage Variant (4 Forma, Pillage Subsume)

• Forma: 4 (V, –, D (Exilus), Universal (Aura))
• Subsume: Pillage (Hildryn)

This build variant is all about streamlining Harrow’s playstyle while drastically improving your damage output. We do this by replacing Condemn with Hildryn’s Pillage. This will give you a fantastic means of restoring your shields that covers a wider area than Condemn. It also strips defenses, potentially fully stripping a target’s armor and shields if you can reach 400% Ability Strength through external modifiers. And since Pillage purges status debuffs, you can use Adaptation instead of Rolling Guard if you aren’t planning to run endurance missions.

To help streamline Harrow’s playstyle, we’re using Lasting Covenant to never worry about his fourth ability. You do lose out on a panic invulnerability window, yet this build is so good at resetting your shield gate that you’ll hardly notice. Bring a pellet weapon like the Pyrana Prime or Kuva Kohm to easily land headshots, building up a Retaliation buff that lasts over 50 seconds.

Finally, were going to be using Combat Discipline to have 100% uptime on certain Arcanes, mainly Arcane Avenger. Avenger gives 45% additive critical chance and stacks with Covenant. This means all of your weapons will have an additional 95% chance to critically hit, 245% if it’s a headshot. Your second Arcane can be whatever you desire. Some good picks include Arcane Agility, Pistoleer, and any fire rate Arcanes since they proc on critical hits. This Aura is also why we’re running Vitality—Umbral Vitality if you’re willing to invest an Umbral Forma into this build. It gives you a health buffer to ensure that slaying too many enemies won’t immediately kill Harrow.

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Sanctuary Onslaught Build (3-4 Forma, Thermal Sunder Subsume)

• Forma: 3-4 (V, –, Universal (Aura), D or Umbral (optional))
• Subsume: Thermal Sunder (Gauss)

We’re going to turn Harrow into a DPS carry by replacing Condemn with Gauss’ Thermal Sunder. This ability is absurdly strong with Harrow, giving you Energy whenever Thermal Sunder kills a target. This lets you spam Thermal Sunder with reckless abandon in Sanctuary Onslaught. Simaris will never disable it either.

This build focuses on two things: Strength and Range. Duration and Efficiency don’t matter since you’ll be spamming Thermal Sunder to get Energy. With that said, pay attention to your Thurible duration. If it drops and you continue to spam Thermal Sunder, you’ll lose all your Energy.

As for the playstyle, it’s very simple:

1. Charge your Thurible.
2. Kill a few enemies.
3. Spam Thermal Sunder.
4. Periodically refresh Thurible.

It’s that easy. This build also takes advantage of Penance by using the Brief Respite Aura and Redirection Mod, giving you a decent duration on Penance to heal allies. If you find that overkill or unneeded, feel free to replace Redirection with Natural Talent. This will also save you a Forma.

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