The waverider, the other water themed frame, beaten by a random Grineer henchman in her own lore entry - Yareli!
Release date: 2021-07-06
Passive: Everflowing with the seas, whenever Yareli moves for at least 1.5 seconds, she gains the Critical Flow buff that increases Critical Chance on her secondary Weapon by 200%.
Sea Snares - Form three water globules that seek out enemies and expand on contact, simultaneously damaging and immobilizing their victims.
Merulina - Summon Merulina, a rideable creature of the waves, and the inspiration for K-Driving. Merulina protects Yareli by absorbing a large portion of incoming damage.
Aquablades - Tear through foes with a trio of orbiting aquatic blades.
Riptide - Drag enemies into a crushing maelstrom and then blow them away in a watery burst. Each enemy trapped in the vortex increases the burst’s Damage.
Acquisition: Main blueprint is acquired by completing The Waverider quest. Component blueprints are acquired through Research inside the Ventkids’ Bash Lab within the Clan Dojo.
I know she got better but between the clunky merulina, many abilities being CC in a game filled with overguard enemies nowadays and her style, I was never too interested in dumping any forma in her.
Also, I know Merulina adds DR but it does so by redirecting it from Yareli into Merulina’s HP, and its defenses are not affected by adaptation or other sources of DR, right? Doesn’t this mean you will get practically instantly dismounted in any high level mission?
Merulina works the same way Rhino’s Iron Skin and Nezha’s Warding Halo work, during the 4sec invincibility period after casting all damage you take adds to it’s HP pool. Even with no HP absorbed, getting an extra 10-15k effective HP (depending on power strength) for 25 energy with a guaranteed 4sec of invulnerability is nothing to sneeze at! As always, the best defense is not getting hit, and not being bound to clunky K-drive controls thanks to Royal Merulina helps a lot with that.
A while ago Merulina gained a scaling mechanic like Warding Halo, so the “well it’s only good for shield gating” isn’t true anymore. Loyal Merulina is still relatively squishy, although you can do silly things like standing in jade lights and activating Merulina for the tail end where all the damage is.