Unlocked after The Second Dream (with even more options after The War Within) focus lines grant you another layer of options when putting together your loadout, and can be used to add offence, defence and utility to your playstyle.

Points: By attaching a focus lens to a max rank piece of equipment (you’ll get one as part of the Second Dream and also a whole bunch from bounty missions in Deimos/Orb Valis/Plains of Eidolon) you will generate a small amount of focus from otherwise “wasted” affinity. This will be multiplied when you find a convergence orb (yellow energy sphere) or for a brief period each wave in Sanctuary Onlaught missions. Focus points can be spent on abilities or on additional capacity to equip those abilities.

Focus Lines: There are five different focus schools you can choose from, each of which grants a unique skill tree filled with power modifications to your operator and passive bonuses to your frame. You can swap between each focus outside of missions, but only have one active at a time.

• Madurai: Damage for frames, weapons and operators
• Vazarin: Instant revives, regeneration and health for operators
• Naramon: Longer melee combo counter, speed and crowd control for operators
• Unairu: Bonus reflective armour, support abilities for operators
• Zenurik: Bonuses to energy regeneration, crowd control for operators

Active Node: Modify your operator abilities. Maybe it makes your Void Blast bigger, lets you generate an energy restoring field when you Void Dash or blinds nearby foes when you leave Void Mode.

Passive Node: Provide their effects at all times as long as you are in the focus. These are usually small but helpful buffs to damage, energy recovery, armour and so on.

Waybound Node: Certain passives in each focus can be made available to -all- focuses. For example, you can apply the health regeneration of Vazarin while you are Unairu. This does cost a lot of focus points to unlock though, along with a Brilliant Eidolon Shard from a successfully captured Eidolon in the Plains of Eidolon. Once unlocked, these will be added to the ability page of your other focuses!

Opinion: Picking a focus line is a personal choice, one that you can use to shore up a weakness in your loadout or capitalise on a strength. That said (for general purpose) it’s hard to go wrong with Madurai – bonus damage is almost always useful, or if you are constantly out of energy, try Zenurik. Unairu gets special mention for Eidolon hunts thanks to the Void Wisps it can create, allowing you to boost the damage of your operator or allies and thus take down Eidolon shields quickly.