Excalibur is a solid frame with strong scaling due to Exalted Blade and Radial Blind being a decent CC ability.
Is usually the most picked by beginners, is also the posterboy for Warframe.

Mag is a decent pick, before she was only useful against shields, but her tools have been slightly updated and she can
provide good single-target damage against all factions with Magnetize. The rest of her kit centers around buffing allies'
shields and debuffing enemies.

Volt is good for going fast and defending objectives, his damage isn't the best as he is more of an utility frame than
anything else. His shield buffs ally damage and his Discharge, when properly built out, can wipe whole tiles of 
trashmobs.

Bows are mostly useless in this game.

Most Shotguns are viable.

Some Snipers are pretty good.

Full auto and AOE weapons will be your bread and butter even vs high levels, useful pretty much everywhere. Stick
to them if you want a nice and relaxing grind experience.

Melee is always stronger than ranged weapons because of the mods melees have available.

NEVER use your starter plat for capes, shitty armor pieces, kubrows (god forbid), icons or other useless shit. That cape                
isn't worth it. Use your starter plat on a frame slot and 4 weapon slots this will allow you to have 3 warframe slots and
12 weapon slots. In the end the only thing preventing you from actually getting more frames/weapons are the slots which
can only be acquired via plat.

Rhino is one of the earliest frames you can get, due to his drops being from the boss of Venus. With Iron Skin he can 
survive a lot of shit until high levels.

After that if you prefer to melee more you can pick Valkyr off Jupiter's first boss, Alad V. Unlike Rhino she has high base
armor to mitigate damage and Hysteria makes her quite tanky. Neither of these frames are good for soloing defenses and similar.

If you like avoiding damage rather than just taking it up the ass then there are Nova and Loki, off Europa and Neptune
bosses. Nova can slow down enemies to a crawl and make them take double dmg and Loki can be invisible or completely disarm enemies.

There is absolutely no reason not to play public if you just started. With the way affinity (that's exp) sharing works it's
best to play with 4 people as much as possible than trying to steamroll through it alone because you'll level up your shit
faster. The only exception is MAYBE Spy missions because pubs can be pretty fucking retarded there.

http://warframe.wikia.com/ is your best friend. No reason not to use it, it has everything from mod
drops to frame drop locations. Check there also for more information and scaling of frames abilities.

You use void relics to acquire rewards at the end of Void Fissure missions.
Void Fissures are how you get the good stuff (prime warframes, weapons, etc).
There are 4 relic tiers (eras) and each tier has a few relics, each with their own rewards.
To increase the chance of getting what you want you can "refine" these void relics with "void traces", boosting 
the % to get good stuff. If you complete a Void Fissure mission in a full squad with 3 other people and you all have 
relics equipped at the end you get to choose from 4 different rewards.
NO void relic = NO rewards, even if other people equip them.

Run Void Fissure missions, even if you don't have a relic equipped you can still farm traces.
Do this in solo mode or randoms will bitch at you for lowering their odds of getting rare parts.
The amount of Void Traces is also capped to 100 + (Mastery Rank × 50).

The "rotations" are your rewards from doing defense/survival/interception/excavation missions past a certain point.

Rotation A:
    5 and 10 mins of survival
    5 and 10 waves of defense
    1st and 2nd successful excavations
    1st and 2nd rounds of interception
Rotation B:
    15 mins of survival
    15 waves of defense
    3rd successful excavation
    3rd round of interception
Rotation C:
    20 mins of survival
    20 waves of defense
    4th successful excavation
    4th round of interception

The cycle goes 'AABC', after C you return to A and it starts over.

You do not lose rewards from earlier rotations for continuing on, they add up. 
However, if you fail the mission, you lose everything, so don't try to stay longer than you're comfortable.

You can probably guess what makes the game have such tedious grinds at this point. All rotation rewards are clustered
with useless crap and such low drop chances that DE hopes it will force you into just buying it off the market with plat.
Note you can still get lucky but mostly you should get ready to grind more.

Vault runs refer to running Orokin Derelict missions and searching for the vault which can contain extremely useful mods. 
These mods are the bread and butter to every good build and you'd want to farm them as soon as possible once you unlock
Dragon Key blueprints from Clan Dojo research. Do note that you need 10 Void Traces to craft each Dragon Key which 
you'll use to unlock the vault. There are 4 different types of key; the correct key to open the vault is randomized.
You should always equip all 4 keys at once to make sure you can open the vault every run.

Fusing mods is how you "level up" weapons, frames and shit. Even if you level up a weapon its damage doesn't actually
increase, but you get additional mod capacity so that you can fit an extra rank of Serration or whatever into it. 
To level up mods you use Endo. Endo can drop from enemies and also mission rewards. Endo fusion cost increases per level
and depending on the rarity of the mod you're fusing; fusing also has a credits cost which increases similarly.

It's important to level certain basic mods to max as fast as you can; these include mods that directly increase damage
(Serration, Hornet Strike, Point Blank, and Pressure Point) and mods that increase Multishot (Split Chamber, Hell's
Chamber, Barrel Diffusion, and Lethal Torrent). These mods are mandatory on every build because they provide the biggest
damage benefits.

Useless. Don't bother with it unless you have 90 million credits and over 500 duplicate rare mods to waste.

While not worth a whole lot, selling certain mods (like the sentinel mods you will get thousands of) can
help boost your credit count. You can also dissolve them into Endo, which is usually the better choice
since it's harder to get when you're starting out.

Welcome to grindframe. At this point you probably joined some random clan that has its own dojo and built their key so 
now you can start trading. The trade here is user-controlled and prices may vary between regions and time of day. Do 
vault runs in the derelict with other people for the corrupted mods; the good ones (overextended, narrow minded, blind  
rage, fleeting expertise, heavy caliber) can easily sell for at least 1 frame slot worth of plat.
Or if you are looking for bigger game you can try farming Void Relics, then opening them for Prime parts and selling sets.

https://warframe.market/  bookmark this shit and use it often

Keep in mind that 1 plat = 500 credits for tax so if you want to sell a Prime set for 100 plat you'll need 50000 credits.
Other than that you can sell Arcanes that you buy from open world NPCs for plat too. And again regions and different times of day might
change plat prices so keep an eye on the trade chat.

Work on ranking up your rare mods, getting good weapons and formas because you will need those if you don't want to get
carried anymore.
Finish all the missions on the star map. Do nightmare missions for shred, lethal torrent and other mods.
Get more weapons for 10o points to increase your mastery rank.

NEVER buy weapons or frames off the market. They are piss easy to get normally and it would be cheaper to: rush all parts, buy a
slot AND a potato for it. 
Market prices are retardedly high and never worth spending any plat on it. ESPECIALLY resources since you can just grind them out
in a good squad.

== Also take a look at the "Frames and Modding" pastebin in the OP ==

The ninja frame often considered the go to frame for maximum edge.
Roles: Damage

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Ash

Passive: Bleed Procs dealt by Ash from any source are 25% deadlier and last 50% longer.

His 1 (Shuriken) throws out shuriken that deal damage and leaves a DoT.
His 2 (Smoke Screen) makes him invisible for a while, while stunning nearby enemies. stealth damage multiplier on melee attacks.
His 3 (Teleport) teleports him to his target and opens them up for a finisher. (can teleport to allies)
His 4 (Bladestorm) marks enemies you aim on up to 3 times, each mark takes up energy. Press 4 again to send clones to
    damage marked enemies. You can use your Teleport on marked enemies to join your clones.

Frame that deals surprisingly good DPS with Bladestorm. Because of its Finisher damage type that ignores shields and armor,
Bladestorm scales well into endgame, capable of one-shotting regular enemies, though it falls off against high-HP heavy units.
Unfortunately, Ash has no use outside of Bladestorm.

There is one build:

-Smoke Screen/Bladestorm build that runs high duration, high strength, and high range - yes, it needs everything now. 
Because Bladestorm is no longer so easy to use, you actually need high duration for Smoke Screen to stay alive. 
Go Invis, mark enemies, Bladestorm them, watch as you get outdamaged by any other frame with a good gun. 
Mod your melee weapon with Fury/Quickening to speed up the animation and Body Count/Drifting Contact to increase damage. 
Other melee mods don’t carry over. Note that Bladestorm's Finisher damage type goes through shields and most importantly armor,
making it better for augmented armor sorties.

Don't use Ash in Infested missions. Bladestorm can become animation-locked against Ancient Disruptors (which have 90% resistance 
to ability damage), and other units if an Ancient Healer is present. Not only will you become animation locked, Bladestorm's
invincibility mechanic also means your allies won't be able to kill the Ancients.


Augments:
1(Seeking Shuriken) your shuriken temporarily reduces enemy armor.
2(Smoke Shadow) your smoke screen also makes nearby allies invisible. (very small range)
3(Fatal Teleport) makes your teleport cast an instant finisher on the target with an additional damage multiplier, refunds half
energy cost if target dies.
4(Rising Storm) increases melee combo counter when blade storm is used. (Augment made pointless by melee mod 'Body Count')

The other while not popular builds include:

The armor removal build which uses the seeking shuriken augment with ~160% power strength to completely remove armor of
enemies.  Only ever used in the simulacrum for weapon testing;

And the standard full duration build for invisibility with the optional augment if you are playing with fellow edgelords.

'Brawler/Rock' warframe.
Roles: Damage, CC

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Atlas

Passive: Can't be knocked down while on the ground.
         Rubble drops from petrified enemies and rumblers. It heals Atlas and also boosts armor(decays over time).

His 1 (Landslide) punches an enemy and nearby targets, press 1 again to combo into another one for reduced cost/more damage.
    Scales with certain melee mods equipped.
His 2 (Tectonics) puts up a small rock wall in front of you, press 2 again to change it into a charging boulder.
His 3 (Petrify) turns enemies to stone in a cone in front of you.
His 4 (Rumblers) petrifies nearby enemies and summons 2 rock elementals to fight for you.

While he's mostly useless, he can be quite resilient as he has high armor and can get some big numbers using his 1 (landslide)
if built right. Shouldn't really use him unless you like him and want to have "fun".

Augments:
1 (Path of Statues) Landslide leaves a trail that petrifies enemies for a short while.
2 (Tectonic Fracture) Lets you make more rock walls but you can't turn them into boulders. (Poor man's Frost)
3 (Ore Gaze) causes enemies turned to stone to be scanned into the Codex and have a chance to drop extra loot.
4 (Titanic Rumbler) instead of 2 rock elementals you summon 1 that's bigger and stuff.

Sound themed frame.
Some people consider her fun.  Most people are not that kind of person.
Roles: CC, Damage, Buff

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Banshee

Passive: All weapons are treated as silent.

Her 1 (Sonic Boom) is a quick shockwave that knocks back enemies in front of you in a cone.(don't use it for damage it's laughable)
Her 2 (Sonar) puts weak spots on enemies and marks them on the map, shooting the spots makes you do more damage.
Her 3 (Silence) briefly stuns enemies within a radius and makes everything deaf.
Her 4 (Sound Quake) makes her quake the ground in a radius, enemies in range take damage, are staggered and/or knocked down.

Augments:
1(Sonic Fracture) makes her sonic boom temporarily reduce enemy armor.
2(Resonance) shooting and killing on the weakspots casts another Sonar in a radius around the target.
3(Savage Silence) while silence is active enemies affected by it take extra % finisher damage.
4(Resonating Quake) turns Quake into a one time cast shockwave that deals more damage near the center.

-Quake (CC) Banshee that runs max range and enough duration to hit Sound Quake's efficiency cap. Dump stat is power strength.

-Resonance Banshee that runs the Resonance augment and builds for high duration, high strength, and high range 
(yes, it needs everything). Recast Sonar to stack weak points. Only good for extremely long endless runs. 
For the vast majority of the game (including sorties), damage is not a problem with good weapons/damage frames/CP.

Monk frame.
Roles: Survivability, CC
https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Baruuk

Passive: "Restraint" provides up to 50% damage resistance when meter is depleted.
          Using abilities erodes meter.
          Using his 4 refills the meter until full.

1 (Elude) dodges all incoming projectiles while not attacking, in a cone in front of you.
        Buffs range of his 3 while active.
2 (Lull) spreads a wave around him that slows down enemies and puts them to sleep. Resets enemy alert state when they wake.
3 (Desolate Hands) summons daggers that him give damage reduction. 
        Daggers will fly out, damage and disarm enemies if they are close. They can also jump to allies.
        Can be recast to restore daggers.
4 (Serene Storm) Exalted Fists. Empowers fists similar to excalibur's Exalted blade, and valkyr's hysteria.
        Attacks send out energy waves where you aim, they also have a lot of punchthrough and decent crit chance/damage. 
        Staggers/Ragdolls enemies. Provides damage reduction while active.
        Each combo has some different properties (levitate enemies/pull them in/etc).
        Does not use energy, instead uses his Restraint meter.

Augments:
2(Endless Lullaby) using a finisher on a sleeping enemy recasts Lullaby for 100% of the duration.
4(Reactive Storm) increases Desert Wind status chance and makes all attacks match enemy weakness.

His 4 augment makes him like a better version of Excal, the energy waves will pretty much delete everything you look at.

Dragon themed frame.
The king of gimmick builds.
Roles: Survivability, Damage, Credit Farm, Buff

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Chroma

Passive: Changing his energy color changes his abilities' properties.
    >Red, magenta, brown, orange and bright yellow - Heat
    >Blue and purple hues - Electricity
    >Green, lime, teal and dark yellow - Toxin
    >White, grey, black, and some faded colors - Cold

His 1(Spectral Scream) fires a breath of the element you picked.
His 2(Elemental Ward) emits an aura around himself and nearby allies
    Heat - Health buff + heat dot around you.
    Electricity - Shield buff + converts damage taken and zaps a nearby enemy.
    Toxin - Increased reload and holster speed + toxin dot around you.
    Cold - Armor Buff + reflects damage back at enemies.
His 3(Vex Armor) emits an aura around himself and nearby allies, taking shield hits increases armor, taking health hits 
    increases your weapon damage. Buff is based on Chroma taking hits. Can be recast to keep buff.
His 4(Effigy) makes him shed his dragon pelt which then acts as a sentry, it attacks nearby enemies and stuns them and
    boosts credit drops in a small radius around it. While effigy is up you run faster but have reduced armor.


Augments:
1 (Afterburn) after you cancel spectral scream you shoot a projectile that deals damage for each second the scream was up.
2 (Everlasting Ward) allies retain your elemental ward buff after getting out of range.
3 (Vexing Retaliation) taking damage causes a burst around you, shield hits proc puncture, health hits proc blast.
4 (Guided Effigy) hold 4 to move your effigy to a location, doing damage to enemies in path.


For general soloing:

Ice Chroma is tankiest Chroma, building high/max power strength, max duration.
Dump stat is range. Efficiency isn't as important because Vex Armor and Elemental Ward are all you'll be using and each
one last 50s+. With Vex Armor and Elemental Ward active, you become increasingly tankier and deal increasingly 
more damage the more you get hit; the effective HP from Steel Fiber and Vitality thus become significantly magnified.
You still need some way to regain health from chip damage. Medi-Ray is the best and easiest way to do so, but bringing
along another source of healing is a good idea, e.g. Magus Elevate/Repair, Lifestrike, lifesteal Furis, Syndicate proc.

Word of caution: Tank Chroma requires multiple high-ranked r10 mods and forma to become good.
Chroma is not recommended for new players.

Meta for Eidolon Hunts.

The fire frame.
Roles: Damage, CC, Buff
http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Ember

Passive: Gain a small % power strength buff based on number of enemies on fire around her.

Her 1(Fireball) shoots a fireball that does damage on impact and around the area hit.
    Can charge the fireball for extra damage and leaves fire at target location.
    Has a mini combo counter similar to Atlas' 1 where casting multiple times will do increased damage up to a point.
    Increases heat meter.
Her 2(Immolation) gives a base damage reduction that increases based on the heat meter.
    Will drain energy if at 100% heat for too long.
Her 3(Fire Blast) creates a wave of fire that damages enemies knocks them back.
    Removes 50% heat from the meter.
    Enemies hit have their armor reduced by 50%-100%
Her 4(Inferno) causes meteors to crash on enemies in line of sight within range and leaves a ring of fire on them.
    Enemies can spread this ring of fire by getting close to each other.
    Increases heat meter.
    Damage increases with heat meter %.


Augments:
1 (Fireball Frenzy) casting fireball on allies gives them extra % heat damage on all attacks.
2 (Immolated Radiance) gives allies in affinity range 50% of the damage reduction. 
3 (Healing Flame) heals Ember based on each enemy hit by the blast.
4 (Exothermic) gives enemies affected by her 4 a chance to drop energy orbs on death.

Yin-Yang/Day & Night frame
Roles: Damage, CC

This frame has 2 forms, Day form is more damage focused while Night form is more of a support role.

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Equinox

Passive: Picking up health orbs gives you a bit of energy, picking energy orbs gives you a bit of health.
         Starts mission in Day or Night form depending on your energy color.
         Bright colors = Day Form
         Dark colors = Night Form
Her 1(Metamorphosis) Switches between forms. Switching to Night gives you extra shields and armor, switching to Day gives you 
     a weapon damage boost and you run faster - all of these effects are temporary and fade over time.
Her 2(Rest & Rage)  Rest(Night Form) puts targeted enemy and nearby enemies asleep, while they sleep you can use a finisher.
                    Rage(Day Form) enrages target enemy and nearby enemies, move and attack faster but also take extra damage.
Her 3(Pacify & Provoke) Pacify(Night Form) - Emits an aura around you that reduces enemy damage.
                        Provoke(Day Form) - Emits an aura that buffs nearby allies Power Strength.
Her 4(Mend & Maim)  Mend(Night Form) - Emits an aura that stores hitpoints with each enemy killed, when deactivated it distributes
                                       stored hitpoints evenly to health and shields of you and allies.
                    Maim(Day Form) - Emits an aura that damages enemies and stores damage with each enemy killed within range,
                                     when deactivated it releases a burst of damage based on how much was stored up.


Augments:
1 (Duality) when using metamorphosis you spawn a specter of your opposite form that deal lingers for a bit and does extra damage.
2 (Calm & Frenzy) enemies killed under the effect of Rest or Rage spread the effect to nearby enemies.
3 (Peaceful Provocation) Pacify(Night Form) turns damage done to your allies into a slow aura.  
                         Provoke(Day Form) turns damage done to enemies into extra Power Strength.
4(Energy Transfer) keep 4 charge while switching forms.



Her Night Form sleep is an 'alright'CC, her damage reduction aura isn't anything too crazy, most of the time you'll probably 
be in Day form buffing allies and storing your Maim for giant bursts of damage.

Good for specific frames because her damage buff gives power strength rather than damage.

There are a few builds:

-Maim build (Day form) that builds max range with enough duration to hit the efficiency cap. 
Dump stat is power strength (strength is good on buff builds but you will very rarely run a buff Equinox). 
Press 4, let damage store, press 4 again. The amount of damage you want to store before popping depends on the mission, but it
doesn't take a lot of kills. Natural Talent is very good to speed up Maim's 2s cast time. 
Maim is ineffective against armored units unless you bring multiple CP.

-Low-level Maim build that builds max range and high strength, with enough duration to hit the efficiency cap. 
Instead of relying on Maim's stored damage you'll be relying on its initial Slash proc to deal damage. 
The slash damage it'll do is poor and only works on low levels (<20), but this build is very efficient for low levels.
Particularly good against corpus, use it to farm some relics on Io, Jupiter.

-Peaceful Provocation build (Night form) that uses the slow part of Peaceful Provocation (PP), building for high power strength
(ideally 200% to hit the slow cap) and high range. Dump stat is duration; some people like to add duration for Sleep, 
but mod space is very limited. PP's slow takes a long time to build up, especially for a competent team that has ways to 
mitigate damage. Self-damaging weapons alleviates this problem. Even then, slow is not a hard disable like Stomp or Bastille. 
Note that although this ability drains energy, it is not a channeled ability; Zenurik/Energy Siphon still work through it.

-Rest build (focus farm) - Max duration and range, putting everything to sleep and kill them.

Swordsman frame
Roles: Damage, CC

The poster boy of Warframe was behind many nerfs and buffs over the updates. Currently he is sitting in a pretty high
spot as one of the few frames that actually has abilities that scale off your weapons making him pretty good despite
being available for everyone even from the start.

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Excalibur

Passive: Attacks faster and does a bit more damage with:
        Longswords
        Dual swords
        Nikanas
        Rapiers

His 1(Slash Dash) dashes between enemies in a cone while cutting them down with his exalted blade.
His 2(Radial Blind) raises his blade and blinds enemies in a radius, blinded enemies take extra melee damage.(Needs line of sight)
His 3(Radial Javelin) slams down his blade on the ground, launching javelins towards his enemies.
His 4(Exalted Blade) summons an energy blade and puts you in melee mode, attacks launch energy waves (can be aimed).


Augments:
1 (Surging Dash) enemies hit by slash dash increase your melee combo counter.
2 (Radiant Finish) enemies affected by radial blind take extra % finisher damage.
3 (Furious Javelin) temporarily increases melee damage done for each enemy hit by radial javelin.
4 (Chromatic Blade) makes exalted blade work like Chroma, energy color changes its status type and boosts status by 50%.

Radial Blind's Line of sight requirement makes it unreliable as CC, though the damage amplification it gives is good.

-EB build is by far the most popular build. If you want to go pure EB, all you need is power strength, but most of the time there’s
enough mod space to add range and duration for Radial Blind. Using Radial Blind is in fact encouraged since it's not just CC but
also a DPS increase via the stealth damage multiplier; against high-level enemies using Radial Blind is a must. 
An equally important part of this build are your melee mods. 
Slap on Condition Overload and as much damage as possible through elementals, also grab the Chromatic Blade augment. 
EB has mediocre crit stats, but modding for crit + Berserker will still give you the highest DPS.

-Radial Blind build that goes for max range and duration. Dump stat is power strength. 
Pure Radial Blind builds are unpopular because the line-of-sight restriction makes its CC unreliable; 
you can get shot at from an enemy less than 5 feet away if he's around a corner.