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.

(Not my video btw) The Limbo master himself has finally made the reference of all time for the mathemagician himself.

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.

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.

Quick maffs to compare it to Secondary Encumber+Galvanized Shot:

Hornet Strike/Secondary Surge: (1+2.2)*8 = 25.6. Encumber/GShot: 1+1.2*13=16.6.

In fact, your Surge multiplier only needs to hit 5.19x to reach parity with Encumber/GShot.

Now, there are two big caveats here, of course. The first is that you will need to build for max energy on your frame, which some people won't want to do. The second is that this is an altfire build, which is fine since the primary fire is adequate for killing weak enemies and charging the altfire.

I'll do a quick rundown of my "greatest hits" builds that I've tried so far:

• Banshee: affinity range fullstrip and an extra 3x multiplier on Sonar with Vome Invocation. I just change my rhythm to double-casting Sonar before doing an altfire nuke.
• Mirage: the clones also shoot their own altfire, although it doesn't benefit from Secondary Surge.
• Inaros: the living grouping ability strikes again! Ball 'em up, zap 'em down.
• Yareli: Crit buffs, and a ragdoll grouping ability. Can spam Sea Snares to charge Surge. Natively high energy pool.
• Zephyr: I finally have a use for Airburst Rounds. Not sure what the interaction with tornadoes is, and hard to test because everything is dead immediately.
• Ivara: Natively high energy pool, can set up for a big Navigator shot with just one extra cast beforehand. Haven't tested if it's even possible to exploit Piercing Navigator.
• Harrow: occasional headshots have kept Lasting Covenant rolling on my 155% duration build. The bullet hose effect from Penance is quite nice for using the primary fire too.
• Equinox: book rips off armour, so I can just Maim to my heart's content and run a more defensive Eclipse build.
• Gyre: more power strength! And a bit of armour strip, not that she needs it. Coil Horizon naturally sets up for the altfire. Electric ticks from Cathode Grace can keep Arcane Precision rolling passively.

I'd love to hear esoterica or historical curiosities or fun synergies; or whatever else you can think of!

I'm looking through the old 2023 stats page, and I see Caliban is extremely unpopular. Part of this is definitely availability, since he's gated behind a bounty farm after New War. But how much is it availability?

I get the sense that Caliban is a cult frame, split between people (especially YouTubers) who think he sucks and a minority that appreciates how wide his support toolkit is.

Will Caliban Prime give the sus space man some new appreciation, or will the stink stay on him forever?

The sport of champions

play Banshee btw

https://youtu.be/ujE8Mq0ZMqk

Will hopefully edit this later with a text version of the opening 5 minutes. Last 20 minutes are a gameplay and weapon demo.

Let me know if you'd like to see any other frame builds in particular! Two Frost and two Nyx builds coming up.

I think the three big problems in his kit are:

• Lowest damage potential in the game. He needs damage buffing or armour removal
• Tentacles move enemies out of range, necessitating radial weapons (and making most of them significantly worse due to the length of the tentacles)
• THE CAST TIMES

Also a mild nuisance that Barrage essentially doesn't scale off range. The knockdown radius does but big whoop, that's not how you use it anyway.

I love Hydroid, and I have a hot take that he's really good for when you get him due to having what you need to clear the starchart in a really fun way, but by god the scaling on this poor frame is atrociously bad.

Anyway, some hopes:

Passive is some kind of damage buff or a loot buff.

Undertow and Tidal Surge are merged. New ability is a damage vulnerability or an armour strip. (I don't see them buffing Barrage given they completely passed over Corrosive Barrage previously, maybe for Helminth reasons.)

NO MORE CAST TIMES

Tentacles have damage transference a la Tornadoes, or at least don't lift enemies up in the air where you can't hit them. Suction effect so enemies actually get caught in them.

Tentacles scale off range or power strength, or at least spawn intelligently according to the navmesh so you don't get random wasted tentacles doing SFA.