If you pick a base character then the prime gets removed as well, the better version cant exist without the base version, however if you remove a prime version then the base character can still exist. My personal pick would be Valkyr due to how [IMO] useless she seems
Hmm, I’ll try rebuilding her as a stealth focused build then and see if she’s better that way, but I’m not super optimistic. How do you deal with energy? Her 3rd only gives energy on headshot kills, but her two viable paths for securing kills are melee and her 4th ability. Do you need to just use a gun (bow?) to get headshot kills when her energy starts to run low and spam her 1st ability until you get your energy reserve back up so you can go back to using her 2nd and 4th? She still sounds way too finicky just to arrive at a state where she’s able to keep up with what other frames can do effortlessly.
If you go the heavy melee route, you can slot in Equilibrium and Synth Fiber on your pet to always pick up health so you can always get that energy, and then you’ll never have energy issues.
Using the pounces for kills actually doesn’t trigger her 3 at all (which is problematic and I wish it was otherwise) so you have to do the normal energy economy stuff like Arcane Energize, yellow archon shards, Streamline, Zenurik, etc… The pounce build basically completely ignores her 3 and subsumes over it. You could even use Citrine’s subsume which would let her get energy on kills again, but I prefer Roar because I have Arcane Energize.
Basically, don’t worry about headshots and either ignore the ability or use Equilibrium to make the ability into something Voruna wants.