Warframe’sAbyss of Dagath update made sweeping changes to the companion system. All loyal companions, both robotic and organic, will no longer die when they reach zero HP. They will instead enter a recovery period that players can accelerate through specific means, notably by installing bond mods.
Bond mods are companion-specific upgrades that create powerful synergies between your Warframe and companion. These buffs range from shortened ability cooldowns to the occasional free ability cast. Today, we will rank all 14 bond mods released in the Abyss of Dagath update from worst to best, ranking them based on their utility and impact on Warframe’s companion meta.
Any
Mod Effect
Health Orbs restore 60 more HP and reduce Companion Recovery by 3s.
Source
Master Teasonai (Cetus)
Health Orbs are surprisingly common in Warframe, especially if you equip the Synth Deconstruct mod on your companion for reliable Health Orb generation. The problem with this mod is twofold:
The former means Restorative Bond has no notable synergies with Equilibrium builds outside of lowering your Companion Recovery timer. Even then, there are arguably better ways to reduce your Companion Recovery timer through other mods—Primed Regen paired with Momentous Bond, Tenacious Bond, Aerial Bond, etc.
Finisher and Mercy kills grant your companion 10s of stealth that attacks will not disrupt. Max 60s.
Covert Bond will grant invisibility to your companion upon performing a finisher or Parazon finisher, lasting up to 60 seconds. While this sounds powerful on paper, companions can be made fairly durable thanks to the pet balance changes that occurred in the Abyss of Dagath update. And in the event that your faithful companion does catch a stray bullet, it’s easier than ever to revive them through mods like Momentous Bond and Primed Regen. Covert Bond is by no means a bad option, yet the utility it offers is pitiful when compared to other companion mods.
Airborne kills reduce Companion Recovery by 3s, 9s for headshot kills.
While airborne, your companion creates a field of cold that follows you, growing each second
Covers 10m with a 60% chill at max charge. Persists for 3s after landing.
The Business (Fortuna)
Aerial Bond might have the most confusing description out of any companion mod, but the actual properties of Aerial Bond are fairly easy to understand. In essence, this mod is doing two things:
The first part of Aerial Bond is the main reason to use it, as landing headshot kills while aim gliding is surprisingly easy with a high multishot weapon. Even if you land bodyshot kills, reducing your Companion Recovery for every kill adds up quickly.
It’s the second half of Aerial Bond that makes it painful to recommend. The slow AoEworks identically to Sevagoth’s Gloom, minus the life steal. That sounds amazing on paper, but the issue is the aura projects a bright blue sphere that cannot be changed through color channels. This means that whenever you decide to bullet jump or aim glide, your Warframe will have a snowstorm following them, complete with all the visual clutter you’d expect. Considering Warframe can already be a visually busy game, adding more screen clutter completely offsets the otherwise excellent Companion Recovery reduction. If Digital Extremes makes the AoE colorable, Aerial Bond will become an excellent alternative to Tenacious Bond for most builds.
Damage dealt by Operator or Drifter grants 60% damage and 30% Void damage to your companion’s attacks for 10s.
Companion Void damage adds +30% Amp and Energy Efficiency to your Operator or Drifter for 5s.
Astral Bond is great for one thing and one thing only: Eidolon Hunts. This mod will infuse your companion with Void damage whenever your Operator/Drifter deals damage. That alone isn’t useful since all sources of non-Amp Void damage don’t damage Eidolon shields, but this allows the second half of Astral Bond to trigger.
Once your companion attacks something, your Operator/Drifter will gain 30% Amp and Energy Efficiency for a short duration. This makes it easier to spam your Amp’s primary or secondary fire mode to quickly break an Eidolon’s shield. It’s unneeded for optimized groups that can perform 3x7 runs per night cycle, but for more casual players looking to hunt down a Hydrolyst on their own, Astral Bond will certainly come in handy. It’s also your only means ofbuffing Amp efficiencyoutside of Operator Arcanes.
Companion melee hits increase your Combo by 6.
Heavy attacks increase your companion’s melee damage by 30% multiplied by your Combo for 30s.
If you want to make your beast companion deal some damage, look no further than Tandem Bond. Landing a heavy attack will cause your companion to deal significantly more damage, scaling with your melee weapon’s Combo value. To ensure your Combo doesn’t quickly decay, your companion will grant a small amount of Combo whenever it hits something.
The Combo from companion hits is a nice bonus, but the real reason to use Tandem Bond is for the bonus companion damage. Equipping this alongside Bite and elemental mods can make Kubrows, Kavats, and their Infested variants viable for Star Chart content and Sorties. Steel Path missions will require a means of armor strip, either from your Warframe or Vicious Bond, but Tandem Bond nevertheless makes pet melee builds a viable option.
When your companion kills an enemy afflicted with a status effect, 50% of the status effect spreads to other enemies within 9m.
Son (Necralisk)
Contagious Bond causes your companion kills to spread the slain target’s status effects to nearby enemies. If the status effect had multiple stacks, that number would be cut in half and rounded down. Considering how powerful Voruna’s second ability is, a Warframe ability that behaves identically to this mod, you might expect Contagious Bond to be an S-tier choice.
Unfortunately, this mod also halves the damage of spread damage-over-time status ailments. This means Slash, Heat, and Gas procs won’t deal any noticeable amount of damage unless you have an exceptionally powerful companion build, one that you could easily match by equipping the Mecha set. It does count as dealing damage for assist mods—including Synth Deconstruct and Dethcube’s Energy Generator augment—so Sentinels like Dethcube can get some use out of Contagious Bond. However, if you want to make your companion deal great AoE damage, you have better options.
Companion will clone itself each time you spend 100 energy, up to 3 clones.
Clones live for 30s and cannot use abilities. Clone kills have a 50% chance of dropping Energy Orbs.
Duplex Bond allows anyone to fulfill the power fantasy of becoming a beast master or a robot overlord. Every time you spend 100 Energy, a copy of your companion will spawn beside you and persist for 30 seconds. You can have up to three clones at a time, and this mod works for both Robotic and Beast companions.
These clones come with some major caveats, however. Chief among them is their inability to use any preset mods installed on your companion. Clones can’t trigger abilities, bond mods, or even passives like Deathcube’s Energy Generator mod. The clones may attack targets and share your companion’s damage mods. This means that if you build your companion to deal heavy damage, you’re able to make three copies of them to clear out a room of targets. Their lack of bond synergies limits what you can do with the clones, yet the added firepower on offer makes Duplex Bond at least worth using for Sentinels like Helios.
While a channeled ability is active, your companion’s melee attacks create a 4m shockwave for 30% melee damage.
Enemies hit by the shockwave grant 3% Ability Efficiency to your Warframe for 12s. Stacks 10x times.
It’s best to disregard the first half of Seismic Bond, as the shockwave itself is fairly small and deals insignificant damage. What makes this mod worth using is the second property. Each enemy hit by your companion’s melee shockwave will grant Ability Efficiency, up to 30% at ten stacks. This allows you to drop Streamline on certain builds in place of a different mod. It’s not the most exciting effect, but gaining a free 30% Ability Efficiency is nothing to scoff at.
If your companion exceeds 1,200 max shields or overshields, your fire rate is increased by 60%.
Reinforced Bond gives your primary and secondary weapons a 60% fire rate bonus if you manage to give your companion 1,200 shields or overshields. If the companion has 1,200 maximum shields, then the buff will always be active. However, if your companion can’t reach such a high shield capacity through modding, you may temporarily activate this bonus by reloading your weapon, granting your companion 150 overshields for every reload.
While this mod does force you to spec your companion for shield capacity, doing so is absolutely worth it for weapon-focused loadouts. Equip a Link Redirection mod on your companion, and you should have little issue keeping this bonus permanently active.
After your companion uses abilities with cooldowns 5 times, you may cast a Warframe ability without expending Energy.
Mystic Bond’s efficacy relies heavily on what companion you install this mod onto. Beast users can expect a free ability cast once per minute,acting as a moddable variant of Zenurik’s Inner Might passive. Unlike Inner MIght, Mystic Bond can be turned into a plentiful source of free energy when used with Robotic companions.
This is due to Manifold Bond, a Robot-exclusive bond mod that reduces companion ability cooldowns when defeating enemies with three or more unique status ailments. You can easily prime targets with a Sentinel weapon like the Helstrum, so you can consistently trigger five or more abilities in a matter of seconds. Nautilus, Diriga, and most Hounds can more or less spam their abilities when you set this combo up correctly, which in turn will allow you to spam your abilities far more often. Pair this with Diriga’s Arc Coil ability to create an infinite ability engine.
