Barkleyframe: The complete guide to Slamming and Jamming (Now updated with new info!)

Legends speak of the Barkleyframe, a Warframe whose dunking ability is unmatched. However, after the great B-Ball war of 2020X, the secrets of the Barkleyframe were forgotten...

Until now.

Getting to know your Barkleyframe

Legends speak of him: The master Dunker, the bringer of the new B-Ball order, the wielder of the Chaos Dunk. Charles Barkley is no doubt the most influential basketball player in history. With his unbeatable dunking ability, he brought about a new order, even in the furthest reaches of the future. His power seeped into the Tenno, creating the Barkleyframe: An embodiment of all things basketball in Tenno format. With such great power, the Grineer and Corpus sought to hide the Barkleyframe from everyone, hoping that it would never surface again. But that time has since passed, and now, you too shall know the full power and extent of the Barkleyframe.

This is your Barkleyframe, learn to know it well, as it's power relies upon a skilled user to fully unleash it's devastating abilities. Your Barkleyframe should be equipped with several necessities:

• The Atomic B-Ball Launcher
  
• The Automatic Miniaturized Dunking Devices
  
• Your B-Ball on a Stick

I will go into these 3 marvelous devices in-depth in a few moments. For now, let's take a look at the Barkleyframe itself.

The Barkleyframe

This is your Barkleyframe's recommended mod loadout, achieved using only a maxed Energy Siphon and an orokin Reactor. No Jigsaw pieces are required, unless you wish to swap out redirection for something more suited to the situation, such as Thief's Wit for resource farming. If you do Forma the Barkleyframe (you really shouldn't need to), I recommend you polarize the aura slot to synergize with Energy Siphon. This will give you 7 more points to work with; Well enough for any mod you may want. Your Barkleyframe is painted in traditional Suns colors. THIS IS A NECESSITY. Do not paint your Barkleyframe anything other than Suns colors, or it will cease to be a Barkleyframe. Now, onto the mod breakdown.

Your barkleyframe's abilities, thanks to a re-configuration of tenno technology, will now no longer be dependent upon cards. As you use your barkleyframe, your abilities will develop over time, and thus, your dunking potential. Still, as you increase in power, you can use additional mods to further power up your new barkleyframe. Focus will increase the damage your Foul ability and Splash-Dunk abilities do, as well as increasing your Dunk height and Timeout time. Streamline and Focus are a must, as these let you unleash your Barkleyframe's abilities more often and in greater combinations; The Barkleyframe can hold with a maxed out flow a maximum of 300 energy. Stretch will increase the distance your Foul, Timeout, and Splash-dunk abilities cover, and is CRUCIAL for Dunking. Continuity will simply increase the time of your Timeout ability and give your other abilities a slight increase as well. It is greatly recommended to have all 5 of these mods on at all times when using your Barkleyframe, as they are required for maximum Dunking. With space points on your barkleyframe, you may wish to add Natural talent, which will artificially speed up your barkleyframe's leaping speed, and thus, dunking potential. Additional modifying mods such as Overextended can further increase the height at which you leap. Finally, Vitality and redirection will give your Barkleyframe a bit more muscle, which, as you will find out later, may just save your life, as playing as a Barkleyframe isn't all fun and games...

The Atomic B-Ball Launcher

THIS DEVICE IS ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL TO DUNKING.
Now that that little tooltip is out of the way, I shall go into more detail about this device. First off, you might be saying: "What do rockets have to do with dunking?" The answer is everything. The Atomic B-Ball launcher is both the mightiest part of the Barkleyframe and it's greatest weakness, as with great power comes great responsibility. As there isn't a proper basketball given to the Tenno yet, Barkleyframes instead use spherical Rockets called "Rocket B-Balls" to do their hardest dunking. In it's highest form, the Atomic B-Ball launcher can do upwards of 12,000 damage per shot. Be warned however, that this means a simple mis-aim can instantly down you. This is the main reason Barkleyframes always go with a team. No Barkleyframe is perfect. You will mess up, and you will blow yourself to smithereens with your dunks. However, the key here is to blow more of them up before you blow yourself up. Now that this introduction is over, on to the mods!

Hellfire, Cryo Rounds, Piercing Hit, Stormbringer, Serration, and Infected Clip are all pure damage mods, which is exactly what we want when dunking. However, due to the change Damage 2.0 brought, you must be wary of the combination in which you put these mods in. When dealing with certain foes, it's best to re-configure your B-Ball launcher for maximum damage, or maximum blast, which is a combination of Fire and Frost damage. Choose wisely when gearing up your ABBL tenno. Next is Speed trigger. The Atomic B-Ball launcher to start has a horrible wind-up time, which simply will not do for the fast-paced slamming and jamming we want. Getting this to level 5 allows for a 2 second charge up time: perfect for dunking at just the right time. Split Chamber is also pretty important, as it gives a 90% chance to DOUBLE DUNK your unfortunate foe, doubling your damage up to roughly 12,000. Finally, Fast Hands isn't required, as your b-ball launcher has a good enough reload time, but it will increase your dunking frequency slightly due to less time reloading.

The Automatic Miniaturized Dunking Devices

Sometimes, there's no room to dunk with your B-Ball launcher without dunking yourself into oblivion. While minor dunks with your B-Ball stick work, some enemies are simply too hairy to get close to. For just these situations, the Tenno have provided the AMDD, pocket-sized rapid dunkers which, after a bit of love and care, do quite the amount of damage to unsuspecting foes and removes the risk of dunking yourself due to their small size.

The AMDD, like the B-Ball launcher, are equipped to the nines in damage mods, as all weapons ought to be. In addition, firerate mods like Gunslinger and multishot mods like barrel diffusion help increase the number of tiny b-balls you impact into your enemies, greatly increasing your damage and number of dunks per second. Finally, it's a good idea to equip the Pistol Ammo Mutation if you have it available. While these weapons dunk very rapidly, they will also chew through your ammunition like Shaq through corn. If you don't have this mod available, then put on Trick Mag for a greater magazine clip, ensuring to bring plenty of pistol ammo boxes in your gear for replacement ammo.

The B-Ball on a Stick

Many people underestimate the use of a good solid dunk from close range. For those of us using Barkleyframes, having a high damage, high AOE dunking stick is pretty important to proper Barkleyframing. With it, you can knock down pesky enemies, finish off enemies with charged shots, and score lay-ups on already damaged or weak foes in situations that are too hairy for the B-Ball launcher yet are in too great a number for the AMDD, such as waves of infested in a closed corridor.

As are all weapons on the Barkleyframe, the B-Ball stick sports mods such as Killing Blow and Reflex Coil to increase charge time and deliver maximum pain upon small dunks or charged shots. Reach is incredibly useful in this situation as well, since it increases your AOE, allowing you to dunk more foes at once and deliver charged shots to greater amounts of enemies. Fury, finally, is pretty useful in general on such a slow weapon as this, since downed enemies can be dunked for extra damage, using fury will allow you to dunk them even faster, keeping yourself out of the hot-seat. As an alternative to the standard skin the B-Ball Stick has, you may wish to obtain the Brokk Hammer skin, which will increase your dunking power at the cost of making your individual dunks a bit slower than normal. Both forms have their own payoffs depending on your playstyle, but I find just the regular B-Ball stick to be fine.

This covers the weapons portion of your Barkleyframe. While it isn't a requirement to paint your weapons Suns Colors, you will earn more respect from your fellow Barkleyframes if you do. Next up, we'll look into the 4 abilities the Barkleyframe has and how to use them to Dunk like a professional.

Fouling

the first ability on the Barkleyframe is the ability to Foul multiple people at once using the power of the B-Ball. When you use this ability, if you've specced your Barkleyframe correctly, you will propel yourself forward a massive distance, carving any ballers that may stand in your way into pieces. This is useful when dealing with massive numbers in situations that are too cramped for Dunking yet too great for the B-Ball stick or AMDD. This ability also allows a traditionally slow Barkleyframe to catch up with his fellow players on the courts, or traverse long gaps when combined with the Dunk ability. This ability is also a favorite of Shadow Barkley, that foul denizen who hunts down new warframes for punishment. That alone should be a testiment to it's dormant power.

Calling a Timeout

The second and more utility-based ability of the Barkleyframe is to call timeouts in the middle of battle. This ability has a massive reach when your Barkleyframe is specced correctly, and will stun your enemies for a good 5 seconds, giving you time to escape, prepare your B-Ball launcher, or score some dunks on helpless foes. Calling timeouts is also useful for your allies as well, since stunned foes are infinitely easier to hit than moving ones, and can't complain when they're carved in half by other ballers' B-Ball sticks. In reality, you should call Timeouts when needed, either to relieve tension on yourself or your allies. When specced properly, calling timeouts costs about 30 energy, so while not being a horrible price to pay, it's not advised to continuously call them when you could be putting that energy to use dunking or fouling.

Splash Dunking: A radial alternative to regular Dunks

I'm skipping straight to the Barkleyframe's fourth ability, since it's third is it's most important tool and must be discussed in more disclosure. The Barkleyframe's fourth ability is the power to dunk a large area, sending out piercing spears to any grineer who may want to foul you or your friends. While costing around 75 energy when your frame is specced (100 unmodded), this ability will bring the pain to everything around you, helping to permanently push pesky enemy ballers away into the penalty box. This ability is used more sparingly in barkleyframes, since it's other 3 abilities seem to cover more ground. Still, it is incredibly useful for clearing radial areas in cramped or stuffy environments, and does a solid 3,000 damage to anything it hits.

DUNKING: The Barkleyframe's secret power unleashed

The ability of the Barkleyframe to dunk higher than any other frame is unique to it, and it alone. While other frames may have pseudo-dunks (Nova's wormhole, Vauban's Bounce), only the Barkleyframe has the cheapest, most powerful dunk. The Barkleyframe's 3rd and final ability is the power to leap 9 times higher than any other frame into the air. this Dunking ability is the key cinch-point of it's power, and only costs 10 energy, making it essentially free. Dunk very quickly gets your Barkleyframe above the other ballers: Perfect for some dunking. In addition, it can be used to quickly scale up places, reach seemingly unreachable spots, and travel in a more agile fashion than the other frames can. Now, onto the actual act of DUNKING.


Dunking is a sacred art, passed down from the king of B-Ball, Charles Barkley himself. The key premise is simple: Use your Dunk ability to fly high into the air, then use your Atomic B-Ball Launcher to deliver a high-intensity dunk down upon your foes. Due to the height of your Dunk jump, your B-Ball launcher will not hurt you, since you've leaped far out of it's blast range. This gives the barkleyframe a unique advantage: the ability to deliver powerful aerial strikes in areas where firing from long-range just isn't feasible. This also gives the Barkleyframe user a supreme aim over the spot where his Dunk will land. Used correctly, the splash damage alone will kill most enemies, while direct hits will reduce them to nothing more than ribbons. That is the true power of the Dunk. Such rapid assault from both land and air allows the Barkleyframe to be a devastating force of nature to anything that may stand in it's path. But that's not entirely where the Dunk ability ends. Combined with your Foul ability, you can cross immense gaps in the map, getting to places faster. Combined with your Timeout ability, you can foul enemies that are stories above or below you, and still have time to deliver a dunk with your B-Ball stick. And finally, combined with your Splash Dunk, you can deliver more pain to more enemies simply due to the greater dispersion involved with not having land obstacles to hit.

Jordanframe, The Dunk of the Wind

For every Barkley, there's always been a Jordan. For every Jordan, a Barkley. If you're one of the rare few willing to suffer the oxium headache that is building Zephyr, you might be surprised to find out that it holds an old name in the barklean texts: Jordanframe. With it's reduced drag and almost wisp-like weight, it holds the power of flight deep within it's winged uniform. A powerful jordanframe can more than pull it's weight in place of a Barkleyframe, though, for reasons, you may wish to have both, as the jordanframe's dunking is much more energy intensive and distracting. The Jordanframe possesses the following Abilities:

- HEATING UP: Jordanframe launches itself with the energy of the ancients, propelling itself in the direction of your mouse cursor.

-WHOLE-BODY DUNK: The Jordanframe uses it's very chassis as a B-ball, dunking itself to knock down and damage nearby enemies.

-INTERFERENCE: Jordanframe bends the rules, using power to deflect projectiles such as arrows and rockets. This is useful if you find yourself in a hectic situation without much power left.

-POWER OF THE SLAM-NADO: Using power unknown to even the Barkleyframe, the Jordanframe dribbles the wind in such a fashion so as to create massive vortexes of energy which pick up and dunk any hapless enemy which stumbles into them.

By using the Jordanframe in conjunction with the Barkleyframe, You can create an all-star lineup that's sure to strike fear into anything in your path.

The Pure-Energy Dunking Cannon

Whether it is the product of war engineering, pure wrath from the corpus, or perhaps, a relic from another dimension entirely, the BFG 9000 Pure-Energy Dunking Cannon has arrived in the hands of the Tenno, and thus, into the ample hands of the Barkleyframe. But what is this magical device, I hear you ask. What does it do? How does it work?

The Pure-Energy Dunking Cannon is a revolutionary piece of Corpus Tech accessible from Clan Research. This device converts B-Balls into pure energy and stretches them out over a great distance to form a sort of "dunking beam" before finally releasing the built up energy and slamming your foe. This is good and bad, and I'll explain why. The Pure-Energy Dunking Cannon is, oddly enough, Barkley-proof. No barkleyframe to date has managed to dunk itself with this thing, so if you're having a hard time mastering the basics of dunking (or perhaps you're just sick of being put in time-outs), this weapon will ensure that you never blow yourself apart again. However, on the converse side, the PEDC isn't quite as powerful as a raw B-Ball, and thus, can only deal significant damage on a direct hit to a singular enemy. If you're dealing with large crowds, you may wish to use the old rocket B-Balls instead of Pure dunking potential energy.

Now. Let's talk mods. You like mods. I like mods. But for the PEDC, you want to spec it a bit differently. Since it lacks the raw area that the atomic B-Ball launcher has, you're going to want to spec it for Fire Rate, Clip Size, and Punch-through. That means mods like Shred are going to be your bread and butter. Damage wise, put any sort of mod under the sun on this thing, depending on the situation. Since it deals primarily puncture damage, you may wish to augment that with further puncture increasing mods. If you're looking for variety, try attaching the "blast" elemental damage to it. A good explosive finish is always a plus when speccing your dunking devices.

Finally, when using your PEDC, the process is straightforward, much like dunking with the Atomic B-Ball launcher. Leap up, power up, and fire. The PEDC lacks a locking fire mechanism however, so you'll have to constantly aim at what you want to hit before you charge up. Perhaps, in future tech upgrades, the PEDC will gain the firing mechanism of the B-Ball launcher. Until then, it serves as a potent alternative to it.

Conclusion

In closing, I hope this guide has opened your eyes to the immense power that the Barkleyframe possesses, and that, if you should choose to be one like I, that this guide helps you along the way to becoming a professional B-Baller. Remember that it's a long hard path to becoming a true Baller, one filled with endless tedium that grinding entails. If you need to level up your weapons or Barkleyframe quickly, I recommend Cyath Eris or Kappa Sedna, as the greater numbers quickly level things up much faster than standard or boss missions. Being a Baller is hard at first. You may blow yourself up a great number of times trying to learn how to Dunk properly. Don't be discouraged! All ballers started out in the amateur leagues! With practice, patience, and good teammates, you too will become one with the Barkleyframe and begin your domination over Grineer, Corpus, and Infested kind alike.

I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read this guide of great power, and that if you have any questions, I'm pretty much always on steam. Feel free to message me or post a question here.

Thanks for reading!

Oh, and just as an afternote: Slam-Jam remixes are excellent music to use your Barkleyframe with. If you're not familiar with them, try Wonderball 101.

Feedback

This is the section of this guide where I list some of the various feedback I get about my interpretation of the Barklean Scrolls.

1. Heavy impact. This seems to be the source of most of the negatives down there in the comments. While being a way of dunking without having to use your b-ball stick, I left heavy impact off the barkleyframe for a couple of reasons. One, if you replaced stretch with it, you'd lose a lot of the range on your Timeout and Splash Slam abilities, making them less effective. If you replaced vitality with it, you'd lose a lot of health and have to use a Forma to fit it in, forcing you to level it up all the way back to 30 again. The reason I leave heavy impact off is because your B-Ball stick can already do that, and, with heavy impact, you're not actually slamming anything but yourself into the ground, and it just doesn't look like any sort of dunking i've seen. Still, I can understand how many people might consider using it, considering it does a good bit of damage. I don't recommend it simply because it weakens your other powers or overall health, but if you absolutely had to remove a mod for it, I'd say continuity, as it's effect extends to powers you won't use as often or work decently enough without it.

2. as many of you have pointed out, barkley never played for the lakers, but instead, the suns, who have somewhat similar colors, hence the confusion. This has been corrected.

3. Yes, an orange-colored brokk hammer will be a more basketball looking B-ball stick. No, I don't recommend it still, simply because of the slower swing time. A slower swing means less dunks. Still, it's your B-Ball stick. You can do with it as you wish.

4. Yes, this is a Barkley shut up and Jam gaiden reference.

5. the Jat Kittag. While appearing as a B-ball on a stick, the jat-kittag is in fact, an impersonation. Look carefully. See the spikes? True B-Balls do not deal in spikey bits. You are wielding a lie.

[Squillen]

Exceptional guide

[G O R K]

[Altered Beast]

The Barkleyframe evolves! The Bullet Jump and Double Jump Techniques can get you good air for a solid jam!

[Bnuy]

I love you

[Huron Tax-Dodger]

Super Jump removed. Barkleyframe is now kill. RIP.

[Ixao]

Sweet. Can't wait to get an up to date version of my favorite way to play

[Sophia Aurageth]

That I will! It will take some time to research the ancient barklean scrolls, but i can get one out soonish.

[Ixao]

So what with U15 changing slots for frames, will you be putting out an updated version of the Barkelyframe?

[Ixao]

Have you tought of making a Balthizarframe or Hoopsframe guide?

[Olid Hihic Li]

This is a great guide