One nice thing I can say about Xaku is that they've aged magnificently. Essentially the gold standard for a high performance all-rounder. If you want a chill tank, Vampiric Grasp is great on health conversion tanks, and it might even be possible to get a functioning energy tank going, although the mod requirements for such a build might not fit. I'll experiment once Xaku Prime is out of the oven.
The worst thing I can say about Xaku is they feel like they're in the wrong game sometimes. Having six abilities sounds great, but the "ability wheel" style abilities always feel too slow for Warframe for me.
One very specific niche Xaku enjoys is as the best Syndicate mission runner, as combined Golden Instinct and Vast Untime make it very easy to quickly locate medallions while you're getting a feel for where they can be for a given tileset.
Xaku is one of my basically never used frames: I use Zephyr for box breaking, and now Caliban's kit has a lot of convergence with Xaku. Honestly the most exciting thing about Xaku for me is the weapons that came with their release... although I'm kind of sad they passed over the Sepulcrum for the shiny prime buffs.
I was on Yareli because she's my comfort Xata tank pick (and I rolled her for the week). I believe her design is based on nudibranchs.
This week's Deep Archimedea (Elite only? not sure) has infinitely spawning adds, so I just sat on the boss nuking everything.
I would love to immerse myself in the DE ecosystem, but on the other hand I'm simultaneously playing 3 different Phantasy Star Online games.
We've finally caught up! What would people like now, should I just keep doing a weekly discussion thread and link to previous weeks? Or just wait for the week 8 rotation until it's all done?
This week is another amazing one, with some very notable community favourites:
- Lex
- Magistar
- Boltor
- Bronco
- Ceramic Dagger
My top picks this week are the Boltor and Ceramic Dagger, but the Bronco is a very fun and totally unique toy for reasons I will explain.
Lex
Oh boy. This is it, this is the Surge weapon of all time. I also ran it as a Fortifier build during Jade Shadows and it turned me into a Fortifier Enjoyer (before I graduated to Atomos and Akarius). It's also an amazing Outburst weapon. And it's compatible with Cannonade!
Essentially the final form of Arca Plasmor style weapons, this "side"-arm hits like a truck with a big wall of energy that kills anything you point it at. Maybe I'll give it a catchy name like "one of the Three Demons" of priority killers in the Incarnon arsenal, alongside Furis and Vasto. If nothing else, the raw damage numbers are extremely entertaining. If you go the Surge route, try it on Yareli smiles sluggily.
Magistar
Has two variants: the base Magi and the Loka Sancti Magistar variant.
Slamkong might have had a QoL regression but the Magistar is still great on every frame. Can be evolved for a truly unreasonable 20m slam radius, although it's not a true sphere like other radial effects, and seems to be restricted by terrain slopes and steps, just like Slampotes and Exec shockwaves. Still, this is a massive nuke, and the new Galvanized Melees let you pretend this is the Arca Titron if you run an Influence build. Needless to say it's great as an Afflictions weapon too. The nuke radius is significant enough it's also a candidate for Exposure builds, which have great synergy with Surge builds.
The Sancti variant heals you too, so this is an interesting option for Combat Discipline/Arcane Avenger setups that don't otherwise want to run some form of self healing.
Boltor
My beloved, and easily my favourite Frostbite weapon. First up is the consideration between the Telos and Prime variant. Telos Boltor is technically the lesser of the two Truth incarnons after the Burston, but it still does its job well enough. Telos is also a straight downgrade to the Prime by a fair margin, and for no real benefit in raw stats. What you do get is the Truth effect, which gives you +25% parkour speed!
That said, Telos Boltor makes it into many of my loadouts as a great utility weapon. It kills most things very fast, clears crowds, and anything it doesn't kill is buried under Cold and Corrosive for my other weapons to handle. And most importantly of all, it makes me go even faster. Zoom!
Bronco
It's time to reveal some deep Warframe lore. Dizzying Rounds applies always. You can open finishers even through Overguard, as well as spam finishers on Acolytes. As an Incarnon, it hits hard too. My favourite combo is an Outburst build with a Ceramic Dagger, but this goes great with the two rapier zaws and the Destreza Prime due to their exceptional finisher damage. Like the Boar, I think the biggest pain point is the slow charging and poor accuracy, although like the Boar you can run "accuracy on equip" in your Exilus to mitigate this.
The weird thing about Dizzying Rounds is that Zakti does not exhibit these properties. Maybe it'll get nerfed, maybe the Zakti will get buffed. Who knows! Enjoy it for now.
Also, credit to Nash Prime for revealing this weird interaction in his Protea video. Go subscribe to him, his buildss will turn you into a Warframe genius.
Ceramic Dagger
Ah yes, the iconic funny combo stacking Incarnon. With the addition of Galvanized Reflex, can get to 11x initial combo, and I believe Ready Steel might push it to 12x? If you don't have Crescendo yet or want to run Slamflictions or Influence, this is a great option. I use it as a slamfluence weapon on Zephyr.
Probably the best stat stick for most frames with exalted pistols, since all you have to do is get some melee kills to keep Galv Coil rolling, and you can transfer Outburst to your exalted to your heart's content; unless you count Crescendo and Vazarin. I wouldn't recommend this on Titania though due to the clunk of having to recast her 4 every now and then.
Combined with Lavos, she gives me total coverage for Sortie and Nightmare modifiers. I have an extremely cursed Perspicacity Hildryn when the mission type calls for it too, since she can just keep casting it at will.
With the new augment, she is highly functional as a tank, having high radial damage, a large AoE CC, and party survival support. Really the only thing she lacks is the ability to put Fortifier on her Balefire.
Also, having spreadsheet Avenger Outburst combos, Balefire actually benefits hugely from the combo, in case you want to pump more damage into your funny little death cannon. In a stroke of good fortune, Ceramic Dagger is coming back next week too, so you have the perfect Outburst companion!
What an incredible week. It's genuinely difficult to choose! What do you all have planned? For those of you who have everything, what are your favourites?
On offer:
- Latron
- Strun
- Furis
- Furax
- Bo
My personal favourite this week is the Furax. Furis is also probably the king this week. Latron follows closely if you're like me and married to your Akarius or Grimoire.
So, let's talk about the weapons!
Latron
There's a lot to love here. Double Tap is kind of unreasonable to have on an Incarnon, but here we are: stacking damage from 1.2x, to 1.4x, up to 5x damage. Can also remove armour with Flensing Spikes if you have no other source. Just an extremely powerful weapon. If anyone wants to test this, I'm curious if Blast detonations add Double Tap stacks.
Strun
Like the Bo this week, pretty no-frills. It's a good and reliable weapon for killing priority targets and doing a bit of crowd sweeping.
Furis
The spiciest blowtorch in the game. It's an absolute monster. Outburst and Encumber are my personal favourite builds, and you can pretty reasonably build either Heat or Blast depending on what you're trying to kill; Blast is as always the perfect all-rounder.
I admit, after reviewing the evolutions for this writeup, I'm really curious about a deliberately nerfed build around Conjunction Voltage, Stormburst and Prelude of Might to stack up huge multishot... for the memes.
Furax
This might be my second-favourite Incarnon of all time. Where do I start, it has so much going for it!
The first thing is it's strong, and fist weapons have really cool animations. I make joyous "DOONG" sounds every time I heavy attack. The best bit though is that this is a specialised heavy slam weapon, as if you're the host (most of the time) it has 90% heavy slam efficiency. With the new Galv Reflex, you can just keep throwing out heavy slams to your heart's content.
The other perk is that it is compatible with Amalgam Furax Body Count, which confers +30% fire rate to secondaries and also staggers nearby enemies whenever you get a melee kill. Great on Gloom frames.
Finally, the Wraith variant also has heightened initial combo so you can heavy attack a little harder.
This can also be evolved into a combo storage weapon, so one setup I use is Rauta, an Outburst secondary for priority killing, and an Influence Furax for crowd clearing.
Bo
Another uncomplicated beatstick. It's a staff. I use it as an Influence nuker (waddatwist), but I believe Clashing Forest is good for racking Afflictions stacks? I'll actually have to hand discussion off to someone else, I don't really know much about staves.
A pretty cool week with some very unique gimmicks on offer. For the Suda enjoyers we also have a Synoid weapon, so that's nice!
As always, I'd love to hear what people have to say about their favourite incarnons.
Offerings this week:
- Boar
- Gammacor
- Angstrum
- Gorgon
- Anku
My top picks are the melee (as always) and the Angstrum, but there are really no wrong choices here.
Boar
Can either use the base, or the Prime, which if memory serves me comes out alongside Mag when she comes back. The Incarnon form turns this into three Amprexes duct taped together, and the evolutions themselves give this incredible power even without shifting it. Has a fairly major weakness in that it is very difficult to charge Incarnon due to the low charge per pellet, and fairly severe spread.
Gammacor
Has a Synoid variant, if for some reason you still have the base and didn't glue it to a stick to make a Heliocor. Interesting concept for an Incarnon in that both modes achieve something different, so it kind of has an altfire with extra steps. Evolutions put the unshifted mode into an absolute powerhouse of a Magnetic beam, although it doesn't chain, sadly.
Incarnon form has a bit going on: it shoots slugs very slowly that embed, suck enemies in (or levitates enemies if you get a headshot), then explode. It deals base Cold and also forced Cold on detonation. I can't remember if it can pull Demos around or not. Bit of an oddball weapon, it feels like a priority killer.
Technically has multiplicative Accuracy, but good luck if you try that build route. Works amazingly with Outburst. Also one of the top Surge weapons, and the Evolution II: Infused Shots has natural synergy if you go that route.
Angstrum
One of the two options this week with Prisma variants, which makes it very appealing. Like the Torid, it also charges off body shots, and like the Torid this means it can self-charge off Blast procs placed by the base form. Blast builds can often shoot once, shift the weapon, and have a full charge by the time it's shifted. Very cool!
This one has a few build routes. You can go Surge and build it Incarnonless with the old "stack multishot and magazine size" meme build, but better this time due to the Incarnon buffs. It also has multiplicative Accuracy, so I personally like to use it as a head deleter since it can achieve a 2.9x multi. And as is more often than not the case, Outburst is a strong option, especially with Avenger. Finally, it has quite a good proc rate, especially when paired with Amalgam Furax, so a classic Encumber build is a strong option.
Gorgon
The other Prisma this week. Also has a Wraith variant. Currently our only LMG incarnon, unless you count the Phenmor.
I'll be honest, I have a bit of an emotional grudge against the Incarnon form. The Gorgon has a very cool augment called Metamorphic Rounds, which is functionally completely useless on the Incarnon. The weapon is good, it just fills me with sadness.
Incarnon mode shoots fireballs that deal Heat, so we once again have a one-mod Blast option for even more crowd clearing! Not much to say, it's just a solid incarnon that deals a lot of damage and looks very cool.
Supra incarnon when though? Make it shoot clouds of homing flak and we're golden.
Theoretically, Zephyr could exploit Funnel Clouds to make Metamorphic Rounds work on the Incarnon form, but also Zephyr with a Gorgon kills everything pretty much immediately, so it's just a mental exercise. Play Zephyr btw.
Anku
A Tenno Labs offering. Scythes are just a great weapon class, and this is no exception. The Incarnon mode's innate perk gives this forced Slash and +3 range.
The one thing I can say against the Anku is that the forced slashes can be a bit of a liability for Afflictions builds, but it's easy enough to play around and prepare. Otherwise this is an amazing blender weapon for Influence spam. Can also be evolved for combo storage, which I always appreciate as a recovering Naramon enjoyer.
I'm a little bit late with this one! I've been having fun with ReFantazio and I guess I just mentally warped a week or something. Hopefully everyone's locked in for the week and working towards some goodies.
Up this week:
- Braton
- Lato
- Kunai
- Skana
- Paris
There's some cool things this rotation. My personal recommendations are the Skana and the Kunai, read on to find out why!
Braton
Braton Prime is an easily acquired evergreen, and Braton Vandal is a very cool and very rare drop from Elite Sanctuary. Has kind of an interesting build anchor with Prelude of Might, which gives you base 5x crit if you stay under 50% crit. I need to test if bugged multiplying crit like Biting Frost and Zephyr's tornadoes (on the radial component only) break the condition, although field tests with Biting Frost make it look like much of a muchness.
Lato
If you don't have the Vandal, and I don't blame you if you don't since it's a painfully rare drop from ESO, your only option as a non-Founder is the OG Lato you buy with creds.
We actually have two Deathtrap Trigger weapons this week, and this is the first one! It's also the less interesting one. Works great with Outburst builds, which are better than ever now with Galvanized Reflex if you don't have Melee Crescendo yet. Outburst Deathtrap is an intensely powerful combo and this does not disappoint in absolute terms.
Kunai
The king this week, although its optimal power is behind a pretty involved setup that some people might find too clunky, even with the damage output. There are a few ingredients here: the first is that the Kunai incarnon seeks heads, the second is that it has multiplicative Cascadia Accuracy, and the final is that it has Deathtrap Trigger. It's a bit weird to get used to, but you roll, buffer a weapon swap mid-roll, and shoot your funny little head-seeking daggers for massive damage. It's very fluid once you get the hang of it.
Skana
Yup, it's an incarnon melee. They're all great, and this one is a sword! There's nothing really special about the evolutions. Put Influence on it and kill everything around you. Pretty good as a stat stick for pseudo-exalteds, so naturally Excals building for Slash Dash murder will love this, assuming you're not doing Chromatic Blade blastdash memes.
Paris
Another evergreen Prime, although with more parts than the others. The Prime has a neat exilus augment from Father in the Necralisk that massively increases the status chance on the bow, which is very nice. Has multiplicative Galv. Aptitude. Hits like a truck, racks status and very easy to build for Blast due to its innate Heat.
Nourish is an interesting choice for Koumei due to how well she can supposedly energy tank with Omamori. Naturally high armour and decent health means she gets good Rage conversions and particularly high energy efficiency for Quick Thinking. Her good energy economy means she's not drawing from her energy pool much either.
I say supposedly because I couldn't really make an energy tank build fit with my build goals so I gave up. Something to experiment with at any rate.
Yeah, I took it down the status damage and duration evolutions. I settled on an Influence build, specifically viral/electric. The multi-CO means you can also build CO onto it and just mod pure electric for mag/cold/electric for much higher damage. The Okina and all melee incarnons are still strong enough to kill most priority targets anyway, even doing focused Influence builds.
The boilerplate Influence build I run with the new Galvanized Melees is (for incarnons with +100% melee damage when shifted): Weeping Wounds, Blood Rush, Elementalist, Galvanized Steel, Blast 60/60s, Shocking Touch, Elementalist, Discipline's Merit on Exilus. On this weapon, if you're trying to optimise for damage, you would swap the 60/60's for CO and Berserker Fury.
The Okina are really good! There are a few quirks that make them exceptional: the first is that the cold procs are forced, so you get cold + any other cold-related elemental combos, like Blast, Viral or Magnetic. The second is that the spectral Okina obey glaive maths, so melee damage and swap damage (such as Holster Amp, Toxin Ward and so on) are multiplicative, and Eclipse and Vex Armour are self-multiplicative. I haven't tested it, but word in my Alliance is that they have multiplicative Condition Overload, and these weapons are very proficient self-primers. Needless to say, Chroma is a monster with these bad boys.
Since they can be evolved for combo storage, all frames and loadouts have super easy access to a Melee Influence build, which means they can easily mass-freeze within 20m.
I still need to test if Afflictions builds are underperforming due to the multi-element bug, which is currently still afflicting Hate and Ack & Brunt. I also will test a Blata's Influence build for general use and see how it compares to Eclipse builds.
I will update this post with the tests, and in a couple of days I should also have the Dera.
Update:
Dera is neat. It has a low proc rate due to its crippling base 2 fire rate, but you can also build it down having noticeably high crit factor if you build it down status. My corr/cold loadout is sitting at 57%/3x. I'm going to keep playing with builds, but I think optimising its proc rate is going to be my personal goal, so fire rate and SC. More goals will be seeing if I can get Frostbite to stack at an acceptable rate, otherwise I think Deadhead will continue to be the play.
The good news is that it hits like a truck: I was getting deadhead hits for 450k on a boilerplate hybrid build, and blast procs would onetap crowds of enemies.
New meta, new incarnons! I don't have any commentary this week since everything is new.
The offerings:
- Sybaris
- Sicarus
- Okina
- Dera
- Cestra
What did everyone pick? I went with Okina followed by Dera. I love melee incarnons, and I love Cold, so Okina was an easy pick. I went with Dera because it's an OG weapon from back in the days when "laser damage" was a thing, and because I don't believe we have any Magnetic incarnons (excluding Synoid Gammacor, kinda).
Will post my thoughts on my picks as I unlock them.
Flashbacks to Ecaflip in one of the early Wakfu betas where your entire skillset was randomly allocated every level, lol.
There's an introductory video, but basically:
- Passive: Koumei rolls 5d6 on every ability. If she gets three sixes, the ability powers up. One of her weapons also gets status procs, with the enchantment jumping weapon to weapon.
- 1: Koumei spreads some string around, dealing a random status at some interval to enemies touching strings. Three sixes means the strings inflict every status.
- 2: Koumei gets a challenge with a curse attached. Once she does the challenge, she gets a Duviri decree. Stacks infinitely, but they said they might change it. Triple sixes skips the challenge and awards the decree immediately.
- 3: (Helminth). Koumei gets some charms that randomly turn incoming damage into healing. Three sixes gives her complete invulnerability for the duration.
- 4: Stacks status and CCs enemies in a cone. Three sixes maxes out the status stacks and turns it into a radial ability.
As always, I'd love to hear what people think of the incarnons available. And don't forget to check out Arthuss's video later in the week (or from previous week 7 rotations).
This week brings us the two Nightwave headline weapons, Stalker's very own Dread and Hate, plus some others:
- Zylok
- Sibear
- Dread
- Despair
- Hate
So what makes these weapons cool?
Zylok
Has an augment, Eximus Advantage, that gives +600% secondary damage for 10 seconds when headshotting Eximus units. I use a Secondary Fortifier build on my stealth frames so I can actually land the headshots. Extremely fun since it basically turns Eximus into bombs. Crowd Control enjoyers rejoice because removing Overguard and then locking the enemy in place for headshots is a great strategy. Magus Lockdown is an option too.
The only other thing of note is that this is one of the rare hitscan radials. Blast builds can trivially trigger Eximus Advantage once overguard is gone and the eximus is susceptible to ragdolls. More funny eximus bomb setups.
Sibear
The underappreciated black sheep of the Incarnon lineup. Even before the armour nerfs, this forbidden popsicle was a monster and one of my favs on Zephyr and Kullervo. Deliciously powerful on Frost and Mag too.
Has the general utility of being both incredibly lethal and racking cold stacks and combo extremely fast. One of the best candidates for where to fit Cold into your loadout.
Instead of a crit weapon, you can also build it as a stat stick or light slam weapon with Red Right Hand; or build it as an initial combo heavy slammer with Mounting Avalanche. Both builds really want some kind of final crit though, say with Avenger or Wrathful Advance. (Or Biting Frost and Arcane Avenger ;))
As a CC utility weapon, the cold fields left by the slams, including combo slams, mean any knockdown animation is also extended. The description lies to you, the cold fields are in fact from all slams.
Okay, I had a lot to say about the Sibear. I love this weapon a lot.
Dread
Absolutely amazing. This weapon was already a beast from out of time before it got an Incarnon. The incarnon just lets it do even more damage but now with infinite body punchthrough. Modding it for cold gives you one-mod Blast, which makes this the cooler Bramma. As a bow, it also enjoys extremely hard damage scaling, with access to Longbow Sharpshot and multiplicative Galvanized Aptitude.
The coming augment, Unseen Dread, gives you both a short stealth effect as well as extra crit damage while invisible. Given Zeroed In bumps this to 4x crit damage, that's a lot.
Despair
They would be the Most Okay of Stalker's weapons if it weren't for Secondary Outburst. Despite being projectiles, not subject to multiplicative Accuracy. Not much to say here, Outburst builds are extremely spicy, and can be used to heat prime for the next weapon...
Hate
Hoo boy. This weapon will give your enemies the worst case of heartburn in their lives. Was a good scythe even before the incarnon and melee arcanes, and has only gotten better.
Shoutouts to Unified Codex for labbing that the new augment, Burning Hate, is a special kind of status vulnerability that is multiplicative to Elementalist.
I've winnowed down the builds to three main ones: Crescendo, Afflictions, and Influence.
Crescendo is just reliable, and gives up the nukes of Influence and the spicy spicy damage of Afflictions for an on-demand Incarnon and consistent good damage. Very good as a vulnerability primer for a Blast Dread. The main appeal of Crescendo is that it serves as a bank for Outburst.
Afflictions is fantastic. Reaping Spiral has two Afflictions triggers in its neutral combo, and the heavy also natively applies a 6x slash on top of... more Afflictions. This stacks up spicy heat damage extremely quickly.
Influence needs an outside source of Heat to trigger the augment, but honestly it was quite performant before it. Nezha, Lavos and Chroma all make the augment sing due to having Heat procs naturally available. Neutron Star/Molecular Fission Nova might be interesting after her update. Naturally, Ember and Blazing Pillage Hildryn are also sources of beautiful glowing Heat procs.
Closing thoughts
Probably grab the Hate and then Dread incarnons if you haven't, since they're the fun toys this Nightwave. Despair is fun, but the "Stalker's Arsenal" type evolutions won't exactly alter the course of your destiny, so don't worry if you don't have it. Sibear is my personal favourite this week, and if I could get an overpriced, oversized plushie of it I absolutely would. I need to play with the Zylok more to form an opinion on it.
Dagath is cool, her entire kit facilitates both weapon support and "uninstall enemies in a line". Grave Spirit alone makes her extremely rare as a crit damage buffer, but combined with Doom powering up crits and cutting enemy health by up to half, she's an absolute monster of a weapon platform. If that's not enough, her 4 is an extremely potent nuke with an armour strip.
Her augment is interesting. Rather than being a Kinda Cool damage semi-passive, it flips it into a mixed defensive tool and offensive turbomurder utility. Dagath immediately becomes intangible, applies Doom with all damage instances, gains 200% of her Ability Strength as critical damage, and spawns health orbs like they're delicious strawberry jellies. For a base 10s of duration, scaling with duration mods. In exchange, you are forced to reckon with a 25s cooldown after the duration, although it diminishes at 1s per kill, so it's over in the blink of an eye.
The passive Doom during Grave Spirit's spectral phase also means that Wyrd Scythes can be used to mass-spread Doom, opening up support playstyles for Dagath, although keep in mind that Doom is currently bugged and the scythes will steal kills from on-kill arcanes.
She also has some quite interesting setups between Scythes and Cavalry. The slow from Scythes will pin priority targets in place so you can properly space Rakhali. The horses have active hitboxes during the startup, so you can rapidly dump large amounts of damage in front of you, useful for killing things that need to be controlled and then killed.
Like Sevagoth, I think she's burdened by very tantalising but also eye-wateringly high Strength softcaps.
Overall, I love Dagath. I think gun buffers are a fairly competitive frame archetype, but she can throw down with the best of them. Very few frames have the unbridled turbo murder capacity of Dagath, to the point that, like Frost, she can elevate the dusty old weapons in your arsenal into off-meta monstrosities. I rate this frame "I can nuke with Staticor again?!" out of 10.
Even without Grave Spirit running, the armour strip and viral from her horse blast essentially just demotes enemies off Steel Path, so the 25s cooldown is more like a 3s cooldown... if you're soloing. Finding enough enemies on a squad is pain though.
(Not my video btw) The Limbo master himself has finally made the reference of all time for the mathemagician himself.
Don't forget to check out Arthuss's weekly video too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wai93stOoKc
As always, I'd love to hear what people think about the incarnons this week!
I think the theme of this week is "Yup, these weapons sure do kill things".
The offerings:
- Ack & Brunt
- Soma
- Vasto
- Nami Solo
- Burston
Some thoughts:
- Ack & Brunt is the one here with a neat passive. Elemental damage you take is banked into the weapon as a modded element, as well as supplying an elemental damage mod to the next attack. Can be really good on factions that have good elements. Can functionally apply DR and status immunity to the team with its augment, but the 12m link radius is pretty restrictive. It also stands out as one of the strongest SnS weapons in a weapon type that is already honestly ridiculously good. Try Afflictions with the Final Harbinger stance for the funny slash spam.
- Soma is interesting as a counter to certain types of damage attenuation since, like its direct comparison the Boltor, it just spits out a wall of bullets. The Entrati augment, Hata-Satya, pushes this just a hair past 100% CC if using Avenger, which is fantastic, because this bad boy has an impressive 4x CD if you take Zeroed In as an evolution.
- Vasto is, in my opinion, the undefeated champion this week. Outburst and Accuracy give this burst damage totally unconditional on kills, which makes it great as an Acolyte killer, Demolisher destroyer, and Archon annihilator. Try it with Deathtrap Trigger specifically.
- Nami Solo, I don't have many thoughts on. If you like Machetes, it's a strong one. You can build it for high followthrough which makes it great as a hybrid Influence nuker.
- Brrrrrston is one of a very rare type of weapon that is both a hitscan and an AoE, so it can do all sorts of broken things with enemies susceptible to ragdolls. Otherwise, it's a weapon! It has high crit stats and high status, and one-mod Blast if you're into that.
Vasto is my personal pick this week. If you have no other preferences, Ack & Brunt can be evolved for combo storage so you can pick up your combo somewhere and dump it on an enemy elsewhere if you're running an Outburst build. Great for Disruptions. Obviously less useful if you have other combo storage weapons like the Furax, Grigori, Livia, Xoris etc. Beyond that, this week is just picking outstandingly powerful weapons of a flavour you enjoy.
Given it's only worth 4p on the market, I'll just gift you Heavy Caliber, I have four spares.
But yeah, I wouldn't suggest using it on the Fulmin. Heavy Caliber is a massive drain of credits and endo for something you'll basically never use. What build are you planning?
I have some Heavy Calibers to trade. If I may offer some additional considerations, unless the weapon just does not crit the critical acolyte mods are also worth considering. For Rifle that's Argon Scope and Bladed Rounds, which I can also trade you. Otherwise they can be farmed from Entrati bounties.
I'm looking to trade for Catalyzed Shields if you have one.
Ah yes, Kullervo, the reason Overguard finally got fixed. Wrathful Advance is cool, but I actually really appreciate how you can also play him as a nuker due to the quadratic scaling off Collective Curse and Ukko's Storm.
Ukko's Advance is a fun augment because it streamlines his gameplay to bringing a combo charger with you as you hack and slap your way to epic victory with his 1.
Not Kullervo specific, but because Blast is currently coded a la Xata as an entire second hit, this means Blast Rauta can actually charge extra combo over what it says it does. Same mechanic behind why Blast on Snipers leads to extremely rapid combo racking. Not sure how it interacts with Xata and Collective Curse, but I imagine Nautilus might enable one-tap combo maxes with such a setup.
Stealth frames with Xata and an Influence nuke weapon can actually enjoy similar levels of KPM and damage output as Kullervo due to the somehow still broken interaction between Xata and stealth bonus. Even Loki can exploit this to have a 20m oneshot nuke, which I find hilarious.
Sure did! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1Fsh2brPlM
Translation is in the comments, by akisame-akiko.
I've noticed a few things, and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts.
The first is the infestation in the song: not only are there repeated callbacks to the "Infested strings" motif, including during the verse "There is no way out"; but the final verse is the repeated chant of "The corruption infesting your lands" with a pitched-down voice responding "Infestation" (along with the Infested strings motif coming back low in the mix). In keeping with this, the promotional art we have depicts Cetus, which I think is a deliberate choice to invoke the Infestation era of Earth in the setting's history.
The final musical thing I noticed is the three-way presence of Tenno/Orokin polyrhythm motif, the bulk Koumei theming in the music, and the Infested strings. Given the polyrhythm lapses out I wonder if this is setting up that Koumei is a fallen or corrupted frame in some way, like Chroma or Revenant.
As a side comment, I'm loving the implied Infestation theming. I think it's going to serve as a prelude to the strong Infested presence in 1999. Here's hoping for a very creepy crawly Naberus!
What do you all think?
As of this posting, week 4 is about to end, and I hope everyone got their Ceramic Dagger incarnon ;) Let's look ahead to next week!
Fine people of Dormizone, I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on the coming incarnons! Unlike other weeks with clear winners and underappreciated hidden gems, week 5 is basically all killer, no filler.
Week 5's offerings:
- Torid
- Dual Toxocyst
- Dual Ichors
- Miter
- Atomos
Some thoughts on the offerings:
- Torid: it's strong. Toxin Amprex, but to play it optimally you have to play Toxic by Britney Spears.
- Dual Toxies: have the strongest toxin proc in the game thanks to the Frenzy passive. Very comfy to use too due to the gargantuan incarnon battery.
- Dual Ichor: run these on a Quiver Xaku or Xata stealth frame, just trust me. Saryn in shambles. The death clouds will chase enemies back to their spawns. Limbo can heavily abuse viral or gas/electric Influence builds to assault enemies outside the rift. Non-Influence builds can enjoy combo self-charging and extremely fast combo racking. Afflictions is kind of nasty on these too.
- Miter: the big bad bubble popper, and the Justice proc from the augment is nice. Like all incarnons with a split physical-heat projectile, can run cold/blast for a mix of crowd clear and utility. There's a bug with the multishot evolution, but I don't understand if it makes the gun better or worse; someone else please comment!
- Atomos: it's the Atomos! The radial effect on the evolution is pretty massive, and the damage output is great. I have a Fortifier and an Outburst build and they both slap. Can actually achieve guaranteed blast procs, which is kind of incredible given the amount of damage this bad boy pumps out and the radius over which it does so. Try it on Biting Frost/Arcane Avenger Frost ;) Blast Atomos also works great on Xata frames. It's basically glued to my Ivara loadout, don't think any other pistol compares.
Out of all of these, Atomos is the one I use the most regularly. Stealth Xata on the Ichors is something you need to experience at least once, but it does admittedly get pretty boring... eventually. I got several hours of laugh out loud entertainment from it though. I believe overall Torid and Dual Ichor are the community darlings this week.
If anyone wants builds for any of these, please do let me know!
Wisp enjoyers, I need your help!
For context, I have 4000 hours logged in missions, and I primarily play crowd control/weapon support frames like Nyx, Limbo, Caliban, Frost, Banshee, and so on. That is to say, while I'm not a new player by any means, I think I may have some biases that prevent me from fully appreciating a frame vaunted as the "best support in the game".
I'm not here to gainsay her power as a damage frame, as frankly anyone with a blind can run Xata and propel themselves into the upper echelons of damage potential, and Wisp comes with an invisibility kit to boot. I also think she has great quality of life as a solo frame due to her ability to disengage and control enemy aggression.
Instead, I think I'm missing something about her support toolkit. Here's where I'm coming from:
- Haste Mote looks nice on paper, but in my opinion fire rate is generally less valuable than reload speed, which is hard to get and mostly only available from fairly weak mods. Wisp also needs an eye-watering 300% strength just to replicate the effects of a single speed arcane.
- Vitality mote is fine, but certain maps such as T4 void, Zariman, and Deimos Labs have enemies with severe alpha strikes, so I think health tanking is generally more situational and requires Eclipse or another DR on top to really work and be comfortable.
- I think Breach Surge is becoming less useful as the strongest weapons have shifted to conal, punchthrough, and chaining weapons that rapidly kill enemies approaching from a single tile entry point. I believe it also has a fairly significant propagation delay between when it casts and when the effect radius reaches far targets? Correct me if I'm wrong, please!
The following restrictions apply:
- Account is totally fresh
- Joining a clan for blueprints is allowed
- Every node must be done solo
- No trading, except for transferring a prime set of the frame of your choice (if a prime exists)
- Specters and Skaut are allowed, but please note if your strategy would require them for certain nodes
- Helminth abilities are allowed
Off the top of my head, my top picks for this challenge would be Nyx, Limbo, Octavia and Frost since they have good CC and objective defense, and good weapon support; "complete" frames if you will. Loki, Zephyr and Banshee would all also be good picks, although missing elements from their kit here and there.
Something I've been playing with is the simple observation that crit keeps getting better the more you have of it, since the crit damage part of the damage product typically looks like this:
1+crit chance*(1+cc modifiers)*(crit damage*(1+cd modifiers) - 1)
which if we rearrange it, has a term of modified cc * modified cd. That is to say, stacking crit exhibits polynomial growth, which is better than the linear growth of stacking base damage.
Per the title, Secondary Outburst gives us a way of stacking huge amounts of crit chance and crit damage to take advantage of this.
That said, we do need to put Outburst in its proper context of different scaling techniques for secondary weapons:
- additive Galvanised Shot with Secondary Encumber = 16.6x
- multiplicative Secondary Shiver with Hornet Strike = 14.4x
- Cascadia Flare with multiplicative Galv. Shot <= 34.56x
- multiplicative Galv. Shot with Encumber and Hornet Strike = 41.6x
- multiplicative Cascadia Accuracy = ? (I need to sit down and digest this one)
- Cascadia Flare and additive Galv Shot (IPS+two element) = 10.8x
- Additive Secondary Shiver and Galv Shot (IPS+two element) = 10.5x
- Acolyte arcane and additive Galv Shot (IPS+two element) = 9.6x
You might think that Outburst is highly dependent on the weapon's base crit stats, but in fact the bonuses are so big, just over half of all weapons beat the reference "acolyte and additive gshot" multiplier. The strongest weapon in my calculations that shouldn't run raw Outburst is the Velox Prime, but note the emphasis on "raw"...
Incorporating Arcane Avenger into an Outburst build yields an overwhelming amount of power, only beaten by certain multiplicative arcane setups such as multiplicative Cascadia Accuracy, or the multiplicative Galv. Shot builds. Certain frames with flexible Arcane allocations can also afford to run Arcane Precision to push this even further.
One final note is that crit often is less attenuated than raw damage, so for instance Outburst builds will significantly outperform base damage stacking builds on the appropriate enemy types.
How do we take advantage of Outburst? I have three builds around it: the first is to use Rauta with Frostbite and a large magazine to max out Outburst before swapping to my secondary. I use this so I can keep using my Praedos for mobility. The second is to use a good Crescendo stacker, like the Venka Prime, a Zaw with a finisher riven (I use Balla and Dehtat) or a strong finisher weapon like the Innodem. The final is to just use a gunblade and the old forward-neutral High Noon loop technique; fast combo rackers like the Incarnons Dual Ichors or Sibear could also be an option. Theoretically, Rising Storm on Ash might also be an option.
Who uses Outburst well? The usual suspects with big crit buffs, naturally: Zephyr, Yareli, Ivara, Frost, Sevagoth, Harrow, Ash, Dagath, Citrine, and Gyre. I would also say base damage buffers benefit as well, so count Limbo and Chroma.
What are some of my favourite Outburst carriers? The best users are the Deathtrap Trigger incarnons: Lato, Vasto and Kunai; Dual Tox; Lex; Akarius Prime; Atomos; Synoid Gammacor; Epitaph Prime (Dystopia--not our one AFAICT--has a multiplicative Accuracy build though); Athodai; Furis; Onos. Honestly, the sky's the limit.
If anything? I feel like the scattered Limbo guides are mostly pretty comprehensive, but I am curious if there are any needs being underserved.
For a bit of context, I got back on my Limbo bullshit and I think it would be good to spread a bit of the Limbo propaganda. He's out of retirement and back in my daily driver roster, and I'd love to do a little to get people to look at the funny magic man again.
If you've been avoiding Trinity, what would entice you to play her? Alternatively, are you a Trinity main with a wishlist of buffs for the lovely lobster?
Not enough of a Trinity player to dream up cool stuff, but for example here are some of mine.
- Mild: base duration and maybe animation speed improvements
- Wild: one of her augments generates Overguard for the squad. Some kind of buff for Champion's Blessing that makes it easier to stack, and makes the buff permanent until downed or something?
This is quickly becoming my favourite secondary arcane. Giving up Secondary Encumber (and Surge in a few cases) was hard, but it's fairly easy to compensate nowadays.
So what's so great about Fortifier? It performs two roles: it gives overguard to frames that can't generate it but enjoy useful synergies with their native defenses, and it also rapidly strips overguard from affected enemies with a x8 damage to overguard multiplier, opening them to CC. CC might have died for a bit, but Fortifier has kind of brought it back.
I'll cover two points in this post: frame synergies, and my favourite Fortifier weapons. Let's start with the synergies.
Frame Synergies
Stealth frames benefit hugely from Fortifier for two reasons. The first is that they typically enjoy running Molt Efficiency, and the extra layer of overgating ensures Molt Efficiency is always running at max power. The second is that overguard broadly cancels almost all negative effects on the frame, including Conduit debuffs in disruption, Netracell debuffs, Archimedea debuffs, Eximus effects etc. One of my banes on Ivara was getting hit with Arson waves while I was on my dashwire and not able to react, or the punishing energy drain conduits working against Prowl. No longer, I am free! The same can be said for Loki for Disruptions and if choosing to run Irradiating Disarm or using Decoy.
Revenant benefits from Overguard for similar reasons, as some negative effects still apply to him even through Mesmer Skin.
Zephyr, my favourite frame of all time and the core of my Warframe addiction, became very clunky to play after Zariman and Overguard, but Fortifier, especially on a good rad weapon, means Turbulence can do its job and keep her very safe again.
Finally, and credit to the wiki for this, damage redirect frames, notably Yareli and Nezha, and to a lesser extent Nekros and Trinity, hugely extend the effective overguard provided by Fortify, up to 150k for Yareli, Nezha and Nekros, and 60k for Trinity.
Favourite weapons
Grimoire goes without saying. The pulsing AoE and chaining property means this rapidly strips overguard in a wide area. Tome mods provide great utility. Without Surge, I only use the Fortifier config on frames that can compensate the damage, like Zephyr and Yareli.
Akarius Prime is a nice hybrid pistol with a massive radius, easily spreads radiation and other statuses while shredding overguard.
Hystrix Prime remains my staple for Disruptions. Still primes well without Encumber due to the puncture and forced element mechanic.
Twin Graks are an incredible hybrid weapon. High single target damage so they shred easily, and absolutely enormous proc per second rate for priming.
Tenet Cycron with magnetic progenitor. Beam weapon so procs rapidly, and very high damage output. Can do mag/viral for priming. Magnetic rapidly shreds overguard. Mag beam so rapidly pops bubbles.
Lex Prime Incarnon. Has enough damage to spare that it can afford to use a utility arcane. Easily oneshots eximus, and the punchthrough and large projectile can deal with Ancient Healer overguard balls.
Tenet Plinx. Lex but radial instead of columnar.
Awaiting testing
Epitaph (waiting for Prime), has higher status and an even IPS spread, as well as two guaranteed elements before modding. Charge shot might be good enough for oneshotting Eximus overguard. Probably not enough damage on the radial tapshot for Archimedea AoE strip.
Synoid Gammacor Incarnon. If you're not running a Contagion Verglas robo buddy, has the nice utility of forced Cold procs. Does spicy AoE hits a la the Tenet Plinx. Un-carnon form has innate mag. The lovely space cubes restore your energy <3
Calculations for my extreme turbo tank build:
- Base health with Umbral Vitality R8: 763
- Health with Arcane Blessing R5: 1963
- Armour with 5x Tauforged Azure: 1230
- Armour with 3 stacks of Health Conversion: 2580
- Base EHP = 1963/(1-2580/2880) = 18844.8
- EHP with Merulina = 188,448
- EHP with Eclipse = 753792
Bombard rocket does 65 damage at base, which oneshots Yareli at around level 6300, or around 3100 with the +200% T4 Void damage multiplier.
Yareli is truly a "Metal Slug". We're so close, sea slug fans!
On a more serious note, if you don't want to invest so heavily in stacking armour, Eclipse shield tanking is a good alternative: Primed Redirection gives her 62,160 effective shields, more than enough for anything EDA can throw at you aside from the Mech Mines.
That all said, I think Pillage or Condemn + Primed Redirect is the most ideal way to tank nowadays, as the 2.5s shield gate from shield healing works nicely with the chunky Merulina shields for a good mix of active and passive defenses.
If you know, you know: Xata Ivara is an absolute powerhouse of damage output due to Xata's weird spaghetti code mechanics, and now we can finally use that potential to N U K E.
Video is captured footage of the end result, although I hadn't begun labbing things at the time. You can also freeze frame and spot a whopping ~8x Xata hit coming off a Blast death detonation.
Basically, Xata will trigger a second hit off Blast detonations, and be scaled massively off the big death blast detonations. I've been having the most luck with the hybrid snipers like Lanka, Sporothrix, and Komorex to place big blast procs. Komorex is in a class of its own with the elemental boost, high rate of fire, and AoE though.
I plan to continue testing this with blast beam secondaries, due to Arcane Precision's capabilities in setting large Blast detonations quickly, as well as good status and hybrid Blast spreaders like Akarius Prime. Epitaph is also potentially an option, since the tapshots do both Blast and self-prime a multiplicative Shiver and Galvanized Shot with forced Cold...
If anyone else wants to test some weapons, please do let us know here.
Final note, I did a quick test on my Xata Loki and it seems to work just fine on regular Xata users. Blast is already silly, this just makes it sillier.