The fastest way for me to love a weapon in warframe is to make it a threat to myself on top of the threat to my enemies. As a result, many of my favorite weapons are explosives. Thankfully, the way this game is set up no two explosive weapons are quite the same; the way they work is different enough that they gravitate to different niches and uses. So, welcome to an exploration of how to best use weapons that will kill you just as happily as they’ll kill the enemy.
General Rules:
Explosive weapons do enough damage to be viable against single targets or hordes. They obviously excel against hordes but the raw damage output is not to be underestimated.
Know the explosion radius. You can use explosives pretty reliably in close quarters if you know the trajectory and detonation radius. It’s not smart to, but you CAN.
Use a close-range secondary option. A shotgun or a flexible weapon, either way.
Have an ammo management solution. Most explosives work on sniper ammo and have a small ammo pool, so having some kind of ammo conversion is important.
Have a patient group until you’re comfortable with your weapon. You’re going to be blowing yourself up some. Have a good-natured patient group that’s willing to suffer your silliness. Once you’ve mastered it and can fire it without blowing yourself up 95% of the time, you should be good to go public.
Lenz: The Lenz is a bow, except that it shoots arrows that release a bubble of cold and then explode a moment later. Why not just explode right off? I’ll tell you why: Enemies aren’t smart enough to flee the bubble. They’ll only escape the bubble if they’re on the edge AND they’re specifically going away from the area for a different reason. You, however, have the attentiveness to know that if you shoot a Lenz and get a cold Proc on you, you need to ESCAPE. The Lenz is a very forgiving explosive weapon, because it gives you that warning time in which you can roll backwards and just squeak out of the blast radius. As long as you weren’t stupid and planted it at your feet or something. The gimmick of ammo economy (it has 6 as its total ammo pool) is less important than it seems; an innate ammo conversion effect can be bolstered by any ammo conversion mod giving you a basically infinite amount of ammo as long as the thing is drawn. In addition, the fact that it’s a bow instead of just a launcher means that it’s excellent in precise long-range situations.
Penta: The Penta is an excellent and very safe explosive launcher because it only explodes when you tell it to. Its projectiles only explode when you hit the secondary fire button, and this means that if you (say) were hanging too close to a pile of boxes and your grenade bounces back in your face, you don’t instantly die! You can instead leave the area and detonate the wayward explosive at your leisure. The ability to place up to 5 explosives opens up possibilities typical of the ‘sticky bomb’ weapons, though with the caveat that penta rounds don’t stick to things. Still, you can set traps and bait stupid melee enemies. Or you can get the adhesive rounds mod and make it into a sticky grenade launcher!
Phantasma: It’s a beam weapon with a grenade launcher strapped to it. Said grenades also spawn homing projectiles but that’s not the point; the point is that it’s a beam weapon that can also explode things. It’s even one of the good beam weapons with enemy punchthrough! When you do decide to use the secondary fire not a lot can save you if you use it wrong, but not needing to switch weapons to fry things at close range is great.
Talons: If you choose a single explosive weapon to go and add to your arsenal, I recommend this one. Why? It’s literal remote-detonated sticky grenades. You know what I said up there about the Penta? All applies here, but with lower damage. However, the Talons don’t need a mod to become true sticky grenades, and the pistol slot will keep from infringing on your primary weapon. Excellent to use alongside a flexible primary for crowd control.
Zarr: Pirate jokes aside, the Zarr is basically a reverse Phantasma: it’s a grenade launcher with a shotgun attached. The base attack does good damage (though you need to be careful of the cluster bombs!) and the secondary also does good damage, even if the ammo economy makes it inviable for focused use as a shotgun.
So, the Braton Prime is okay. But as I’ve been leveling it up I noticed that I wasn’t impressed. The early damage was impressive, no doubt, but as I went on I just wasn’t grabbed. It was a good gun, but I didn’t like it. If I were to put it on my Quick Equip Guide (Which I might do another one later). I’d rate it at Okay. It works, it works fine, but it just isn’t... notable.
And it doesn’t do anything I can’t already do.
I’m a big proponent of loadout niching. That is to say, every weapon you invest in should have a different purpose. And for me this is less specific numbers and more the combat role: Snipers vs Marksman Rifles vs Assault Rifles etc. I could go on about this in the context of various games but in this case we’re talking about one gun and why it does nothing I can’t already do.
The Braton Prime is an assault rifle that shoots things very well. That is what it does. So you’d think it fits into an assault rifle niche, a flexible option that’s a good default. BUT, I already have a flexible default rifle: The Argonak.
The Argonak has two really nice features: it highlights enemies (very good in low-visibility situations) and it can switch between semi- and full-auto firing modes. I like that, it’s neat. But if the Braton Prime does the same thing better it should take over there, right? Well, the base DPS is higher due to the higher fire rate and crit chance. But... if I really care about damage output for the Argonak I’m using it in semi-auto mode which is a skewed comparison. The fact that the Argonak can work in both modes means that it’s just the most flexible gun in my arsenal, and that’s very useful.
Okay, so, the Braton Prime isn’t going to win the generalist contest. But it puts out a lot of bullets fast, so it’s clearly a full-auto DPS machine. Except I already have the Soma Prime, which also puts out a lot of bullets fast. The base DPS of the Some Prime is lower than that of the Braton Prime, but testing showed that the Soma Prime scales better due to its higher critical chance. So the Braton Prime is not winning the full-auto DPS slot.
But that’s not too surprising. It’s not really made to pump out critical hits, while it has a 26% base status rate, which is pretty fair! Full-auto status monster is a viable option, right?
Except I already have the Supra, which has a higher base status chance, fires more rounds per second, and has a syndicate mod which gives it more status. The Braton is not going to out-status the Supra, it’s not going to happen.
(Actually, the full-auto mode of the Argonak also has a better status chance than the Braton, but since it’s not the dedicated role it’s not relevant to the niching discussion.)
So, that leaves the Braton Prime, a good weapon, in the lurch. I don’t need it as a mainline weapon. I don’t need it as full auto DPS. I don’t need it as a full auto status weapon. So... if I kept it, I’d never use it. It has no augment mods or exclusive mechanics to make it stand out.
I have spent money on warframe. Apart from confirming that I’m not a ninja, I feel no shame in this (unlike some other games I could name). As a result I have extra weapon slots. However, I’m not one of those endgame folks who have 800 of the things. I just counted and I have a bit over 30, which is still not a lot in the grand scheme of things.
I keep my slot amount down by practicing niching; making sure that each weapon in my armory serves a different role so there’s no one of them that is just... kind of around, never used. That’s the theory, anyway.
If you’re new to Warframe and not sure how to use your slots economically, here’s my example setup for arsenal niching. This might be a multi-part series, as I delve into my arsenal and examine the increasingly poor levels of niching I partake in. These are the weapons that really form the backbone of my arsenal, with these I could likely plan for most any situation.
Primary
Flexible Rifle: Argonak A weapon that’s good in basically any situation, no matter the range, environment, or enemy. This is where I’d put most ‘assault rifle’ weapons; the bratons, burstons, boltors, etc. The Argonak is about as good as you can get for a flex weapon the Argonak can be precision fire for long range, rapid fire up close, it improves visibility in poor conditions, and it can be a status or crit weapon depending on how you build it. When it comes to a default for when I have no idea what to expect, I can’t get better than this.
Shotgun: Hek The shotgun is good in close quarters, against masses of light enemies, or just for panicked firing into the side of something very big. The Hek in particular is infamous for its syndicate mod, and is viable even into the endgame. The downside of the poor clip size and reload time doesn’t really kill it, but it is something to keep in mind. That said; this is likely the single weapon in this list that I use least. I’m not sure if I just don’t like shotguns much, or if the Hek in particular is just not my thing.
Bow: Dread The bow is a tricky weapon to really use to the same efficiency as guns (even precision guns) but that’s not its purpose. It’s purpose is to be quiet for when you need to be sneaky for some reason; such as stealth missions, stealth rivens, or when you’re just feeling sneaky. For this the Dread is my favorite; it has amazing crit capabilities and damage, no arrow drop, and even with the terrible color customization it’s a very distinctive weapon.
Precision Rifle: Quartakk Precision rifles are excellent at long range, letting you destroy enemies before they even have a chance to respond. For this the Quartakk is my favorite; I’m usually down on burst weapons but the Quartakk is my exception. High ammo (even with the usage of four bullets per shot), innate punchthrough, and while the whole square thing will definitely bug others it occasionally scores me an extra kill.
Sniper Rifle: Vectis Sniper rifles are similar to precision rifles, but they’re made to be used with their scope and suffer if not used in this way. They’re amazing against single heavy targets or on the plains of eidolon (a trend that will likely continue with further open areas) but suffer horribly in close quarters. However, every sniper rifle hits like a TRUCK and the Vectis is no exception. Especially with Charged or Primed Chamber the Vectis just feels good to use to me; it lets me stay scoped in and focused at all times and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Crit Monster: Soma Prime The ‘Crit Monster’ is a high-end weapon whose soul purpose is to pump out RAW DAMAGE. For this the Soma Prime is king, even if the ammo economy is a mess.
Status Monster: Supra Instead of focused on raw damage, the status monster is focused on afflicting the unsuspecting enemy with nasty conditions. For this I use the Supra with the syndicate mod; the high fire rate and good base status chance means that I can throw out those sweet status procs with aplomb.
Secondary
My theory with secondary weapons is that they should cover something you aren’t covering with your primary weapon.
Precision Secondary: Lex Prime If you have a shotgun or rapid fire primary, a long-distance high-damage accurate sidearm will let you deal with distant threats well. The Lex Prime is one of the best precision pistols in the game, and pretty easy to get for a prime weapon.
Shotgun Secondary: Mara Detron If your primary weapon is weighted toward long-range engagement, a shotgun for a secondary weapon likely won’t go amiss. Shotgun secondaries are rare and hard to come by, but I lucked out and had some extra dosh at the right time and got a Mara Detron. Good accuracy at a reasonable range, good damage, suffice to say I’m not disappointed.
Flexible Secondary: Stubba If you’re a crazy person like me and brought a gimmicky primary weapon (or a bow or something else with a slow fire rate) then a solid, flexible secondary is a must. Basically, you want a secondary weapon that’s trying to be an assault rifle: Fair fire rate, fair damage, fair ammo economy. Not just something that puts out a boatload of damage in mere moments, you want something that you can lean on when your main weapon fails. The Stubba has all of this: Fair fire rate, good magazine size, and it’s accurate enough as long as you’re not trying to use it at long range.
Melee Weapons
Melee weapons are 100% A matter of personal preference, since at this point in time there isn’t a lot of difference between them. I’ve been trying to get one per category, but eh. It’s really just a matter of personal preference unless one has a specific gimmick they want to maximize on. For now, the typically best weapon is a Zaw with a level 3 counterweight, that you made and gilded yourself.
Ultimately
These are just the niches and weapons I use as my baseline. Maybe you think that you both need a status precision weapon and a crit one (Maybe try the Veldt for that?). Maybe you think that having a ‘flexible default’ weapon is just silly. Maybe you personally hate the Lex Prime. That’s fine; the idea is that you find a set of niches you want to fill, and when a new weapon comes along that fills a particular niche better than your current one you upgrade... or, when you’re not sure whether to keep a new weapon, you ask whether it can fill any of these niches. If it can’t and you don’t love it that much, there’s no pressure to keep it around. This can save you money on slots!
Of course there’s going to be some weapons you just love, either because they do something unique and interesting or because they’re pleasant to you personally. I get that. That’s MOST of the weapons in my invantory. I’ll get to some of those next time.
Niches are a specific place where a specific thing fits in relation to everything else. Each member of the group fits a different space in the organization chart, each playing its own role resulting in a more cohesive whole.
I love the concept of niches. Ecological niches, loadout niches, playstyle niches, narrative niches, social niches, I know it’s worrying close to pigeonholing but I like niches. Especially niching things that you don’t typically consider niche-relevant, like factions.
Warhammer 40k has a lot of factions, and while mechanically they have fairly quality niching (barring a few exceptions) when you look at it from a narrative point of view a certain trend appears.
A certain trend that both defines the setting and limits it.
Enemy niching is a part of any work with a wide variety of enemies. Each enemy needs their own niche, a place they can sit pretty in the narrative in the work as an enemy to the protagonist. Let’s look at Batman’s rogue gallery as an example:
Joker, Two-Face, Penguin, and Black Mask are all crime bosses. This is just the A-list of crime bosses at that. That seems like bad niching, and in a number of works it is. But in good works you start to see different trends form:
Two-Face on top of the whole twos thing does a lot of stuff with stealing and justice.
Penguin is often connected to gambling or smuggling, and is (or at least presents himself as) a higher class of villain.
Black Mask is your more ‘realistic’ mob boss, with connections and really good plans.
Joker kind of shifts between a mob boss and a gang boss, but his antics are more about causing mass destruction than getting money.
See how the single archetype of villains sorts into several niches? Scarecrow and Mr. Freeze are both scientists, but in the right hands scarecrow instead touches on psychology while Freeze becomes about medicine and chemistry. Poison Ivy is an ecoterrorist, Man-bat is a re-telling of the traditional werewolf stories. When done well, Batman’s rogue gallery can tell a wide assortment of different stories. Ultimately, that’s what enemy niching is about: each villain allows different stories to be told.
With a baseline established, let’s look at Warhammer 40k’s enemy niching.
Eldar are meant to be a psychological enemy, though they’re rarely written well, that focuses on planning and psychology to come out on top in martial encounters. They’re supposed to be like a pseudo-villainous haughty Batman faction. They aren’t, but they’re supposed to be.
Orks are brutish and numerous, basically a straight combat enemy.
Chaos are a group driven forward by the demands of their dark gods. In some ways they’re a dark reflection of the Imperium, using much of the same symbols and a polytheistic religion instead of a monotheistic one. It’s more in terms of anarchy instead of the Imperium’s bureaucracy and oligarchy, but the parallels are there and effective. In addition, they have the whole ‘cult’ angle to subvert the Imperium.
Tyranids are kind of like a natural disaster, but when you dig into it a little it seems kind of like they’re driven forward by some kind of deific force, which comes out more in the genestealer cults which are used to undermine other places.
Tau are a political enemy driven forward out of religious belief in The Greater Good, acting as a subversive political force and on occasion as a military one as well.
Dark Eldar are raiders who are driven by a need to stave off a dark god that’s hunting them.
The Necrons are robots who live in a dynastic setup where only the upper echelons have self-determination. Personally, I like this change, previously they were driven to wipe all life from the planet in service to their dark gods.
When the Imperium is presented as an enemy, they’re a pretty stock evil empire, driven forward by dedication to their church and God-Emperor.
Okay, kids! How many times did I say variants of “driven forward by their god?”
Cults and Motivation
Stars above, doesn’t anyone pick their own fights? The only factions whose actions don’t trace back to some deific entity or religious organization are the Eldar, the Orks, the new Necrons (with some variance), and the Tyranids most of the time but not when genestealer cults are involved.
Now, the impact of the gods and spirits on the WH40k setting is a real one: I’m not nay-saying these factions for having gods. Even those not propelled by religion have religions, and that’s only realistic especially in a setting where the gods are not only real but on occasion very noisy. But, even so, why is basically every faction motivated by religion? It’s different levels of fakery and different details of motivation, but the sheer amount of wars fought due to religion in this setting is kind of insane.
The Greater Good is some kind of cult of personality that tells the Tau how to live, including inducting other races and forcing them to serve. This is the least violent example here, but it still forces a caste system and is aggressively expansionistic.
The Dark Eldar do everything they do, their entire civilization, to stave off Slaneesh eating them. This is why they kidnap and torture, which is the only thing about their culture I know and the bit that comes up most often. I’m sure there’s other things (they have to build their vehicles somehow) but torture and psychopathy are what they’re known for.
The Genestealer Cults act due to genetic and chemical manipulation more than typical cult mentality, but the result is the same. They have a religious fixation with the Tyranids, and specifically destabilize planets to make them easier for the Tyranids to eat.
The Imperium, while the history is complicated, uses the decrees of their God-Emperor and the Ministorum for a lot of things. Even when wars are waged for other reasons, they have an undertone of religious zealotry because such wars need to be religiously backed due to how influential the church is in the Imperium.
Chaos is nothing but a huge bunch of militarized cults doing stuff because their nutso chaos gods told them to do things. That is literally the entire purpose of the faction and sub-factions.
Now, that’s not to say there’s no individual motivation in these factions. There often is, a number of wars have been fought because of personal disputes. However, these people are often religiously connected, backed, or influenced.
The exceptions are real, the Orks fight because they’re Orks and their gods just approve, the Eldar work to preserve their race with religion a reasonable amount of their culture, the Tyranids are hungry and want to eat worlds, and the Necrons used to be trying to kill everything for their dark gods but they retconned that and I think they’re better for it. In any case, I won’t be counting the Necrons here.
That said, 5 of 8 factions (4 of 8 if you don’t count the Tyranids, which I do in this case) are sizably religiously motivated in their eternal wars. Most other wargame settings don’t have NEAR that level of religious zealotry in their makeup. Even Warhammer Fantasy, right next door, has far less religions with traction enough to start wars by themselves. (Empire, Beastmen, Chaos, and Bretonnia, and Bretonnia I’m not sure on. Maybe also the Wood elves?)
It’s just weird, and with the recent changes to WH40k (which I’m not fully read up on) the Eldar might be getting more religious traction, skewing the numbers further!
But there’s an additional trend. See, on top of the religious traction that powers the setting there’s a lot of factions with the ability to undermine the Imperium. The Imperium is almost the only straight combat faction, the rest all have varying degrees of cloak and dagger ability.
Cults and Espionage
Is it just me or is everyone sneaking around trying to bite of bits of the Imperium? I mean, on top of the literal armies gliding around. Every faction has SOME kind of way to subvert control of planets except the Imperium. No really, think about it.
Eldar are stated schemers. Though their schemes are never really presented well, the way they SHOULD be written is by them undermining the Imperium before using tactical strikes to accomplish their goal. Same with the dark eldar, if with different lighting and a different ESRB rating.
What about chaos? Chaos has cults that spring up on planets, slowly subverting them. So do the Tyranids! We just talked about why Genestealers subvert human planets out of a reverence for hive fleets!
And the Tau, the Tau do the craziest stuff. They use DIPLOMACY and PUBLIC RELATIONS to loosen the Imperium’s grip on worlds. It’s somehow both more and less dastardly than the literal cults!
But wait! Orks! Orks don’t do subtlety. They don’t do cults or manipulation. No, but they do reproduce with spores. This means that anywhere orks have attacked, new orks, feral orks will literally sprout up from the dirt. Barring that, spores can be spread by accident if unwary spacemen don’t keep their ships clean! Sure, it’s not on purpose, but it does allow the Orks to undermine Imperium control of planets.
Okay, Necrons. There is no way that Necrons have any kind of subversive ability, right? They’re giant black death robots that barely speak. And then you think of Tomb Worlds. Tomb Worlds on which humans settle and populate. No, the Necrons aren’t specifically undermining human civilization, but it just happens. They can’t set up more, but there’s an unknown number of tomb worlds just waiting to wake up and kill the human population. The end result is the same: Necrons have a way to weaken the Imperium’s hold on a planet by indirect means. It’s just a very direct indirect means.
And when I put it all end-to-end like this... doesn’t it seem a little absurd? I mean, every faction can play spy, and most of them are directed by their gods. Sure, there’s solid enemy niches about other things, but you could potentially have any faction in some kind of intrigue plot and it’d make sense. Doesn’t that seem a little redundant?
And yet... when you think about it, do you want to get rid of it? The strange fixation on religion, constant worries about enemies you can’t beat on the field of battle, on top of the ones you can?
Isn’t that kind of the appeal of Warhammer 40k? Isn’t that part of what makes it such an absurd and loveable setting? Don’t get me wrong, I want to change a lot of things about Warhammer 40k, but...
In spite of myself, I don’t want to remove the cults. Because at that point it wouldn’t really be Warhammer 40k.
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