Guide to Creating Basic Effective Weapon Builds in Warframe.
1. It is necessary to determine whether the weapon deals damage with an AoE effect or not. It can deal damage on direct projectile hit and with the explosion effect of that projectile.
You need to choose what should be your priority in case of dealing damage the projectile or the explosion; usually, a build should be created for one specific aspect. Also, it is important to consider that weapons with an Incarnon form should be assembled based on which form will be used - Incarnon or default. Forms can have completely different characteristics.
1.1 Mods that deal "x damage per status type on the enemy" do not work on AoE damage, so do not use them in builds prioritizing AoE damage.
1.2 Check the base explosion radius of the AoE effect; if it is acceptable, then it is probably best to enhance this effect with mods for blast radius.
1.3 Melee weapons also have a base radius of their attack, and it is often very beneficial to increase the base radius with mods for radius enhancement.
1.4 Beam weapons have a beam length parameter - usually a mod for the exilus slot in the build. You can use it to increase convenience.
2. You should know that the aforementioned mods that deal "x damage per status type on the enemy" interact differently with mods that increase the base damage of the weapon (like Serration). For some weapon, they either multiply each other or add up (most often). This rule usually applies to the type of weapon that shoots "projectiles." If you know that these 2 types of base damage additions multiply with each other in a specific weapon, use this knowledge and install both types of mods on the weapon (you can use a mod that provides base damage and mod that provides "x damage per status type on the enemy").
2.1 If base damage mods do not multiply, it is best to use one mod that increases base damage (this can also be Arcane). Using more than one such mod is usually not rational due to limited space for other mods.
3. The next parameter that increases our damage the most is multishot. Upon activation, additional bullets are created, each with their own critical hit and status chance. Try to gather as much of it as possible. Currently, this is usually one mod (can be combined with a Riven mod) or in addition to the mod use Arcane (although the additional from this Arcane effect usually does not provide an advantage compared to installing other Arcanes).
4. At this stage, you need to evaluate against which enemy levels this weapon will be calculated. For enemies at low levels (less than 60), you can ignore their small amount of health and armor.
4.1 If the enemy is low-level, you can kill them with direct damage without using DoT status effects. If the weapon has a sufficient critical hit chance, just deal direct damage (ignoring status effects) (you can use one of type of damage the faction's vulnerability).
4.2 If the enemy already has a big amount of health and armor, you need to consider the basic characteristics of the weapon. Simply killing with a direct damage type like in the previous case will be problematic (unless considering external buffs to enhance our damage from warframes), we need a weapon with a sufficient chance of triggering status effects. If the chance of triggering status effects is low, it's better not to use this weapon.
4.3 If you use external armor removal (for example, a warframe skill), you can kill enemies with almost any weapon, even with direct damage and a very low chance of triggering status effects.
4.4 If you do not use external armor removal and the weapon has a good chance of triggering status effects, you can remove armor with corrosive or heat status effects (you can use both at once). Usually, it is enough to use just one - either heat or corrosive. In the case of corrosive, you can complement the build with green archon shards that increase the maximum possible number of corrosion status effects to remove even more armor.
5. Choose status effects for your weapon.
5.1 If your enemy is of the "Corpus" faction with a large amount of shields and a small amount of health, you should use the damage type and in addition, the Toxin status effect, which allows you to deal damage bypassing shields.
If you do not want to use Toxin against this faction, damage to shields (and overshields of eximus units) enhances the Magnetic status effect.
5.2 If the enemy has a large amount of health, you should consider using the viral status effect in a build, which significantly increases damage to health (and armor). It is important to note that it is best not to spend mod slots to create a viral type. If your mob killing speed is relatively low and allows you to use an external source to apply the viral status effect, you can passively use, for example, a sentinel weapon for this purpose. Sometimes it makes sense to apply this status separately by another of your weapons. In most cases, you can use the Grendel's ability, which adds the viral effect to your weapon and does not require mod slots for it.
5.3 If the weapon is fast-firing and allows you to quickly apply many status effects, you should use one of the DoT status effects (heat, toxin, electricity). Slash, gas, and blast DoT effects will be discussed separately. Slash damage allows you to deal damage bypassing the enemy's armor, which eliminates the need to worry about removing it. However, it has a lower damage dependency on the weapon's base damage (35%, while heat, toxin, electricity damage is 50%). Gas and blast DoT damage deal AoE effects but are not enhanced by elemental mods in the weapon. Heat, toxin, and electricity DoT effects increase their damage from having corresponding elemental mods in the build (and this should be used). By choosing, for example, heat in the weapon, with a good ability to apply a large number of status effects, you can both remove armor and deal a significant amount of damage per unit of time due to the DoT effect.
5.4 If your main damage is a DoT effect, install modifiers that increase the damage of status effects (for example, Elementalist). They multiply your final DoT damage.
5.5 Mods that increase physical damage types do not affect the damage of the DoT effect.
5.6 If you want to further multiply your damage, especially the damage of DoT effects, use the faction damage multiplier.
5.7 Pay attention to modifiers that change the duration of status effects. Naturally, if you reduce it significantly, it will take away a very large part of your damage.
On the other hand, by increasing it above the base value (usually around 6 seconds), for example, to 12 seconds, you need to understand if you are going to shoot at one enemy for 12 seconds? Most likely not. But this trick can be used in some cases when applying a one-time damage effect taking into account the entire duration of DoT effects (for example, the Expedite Suffering skill).
5.8 If the weapon has a relatively high critical hit chance (at least 70%), and regardless of the chance of triggering status effects, you can use the "Hunter Munitions" mod, which will apply a slash status effect with a 30% chance based on the critical hit chance.
It should be noted that after the patch increasing the amount of health for enemies, this mod has become less effective because it applies the status effect relatively rarely. It can be used against not very high-level enemies.
It should also be noted that there are similar mods (for example, Internal Bleeding) that also apply the slash status effect, at the expense of the Impact status effect and reduced weapon fire rate (can be installed on certain types of weapons).
5.9 It is important to remember that there are mods or Warframe abilities that add specific basic elemental status effects (and sometimes combined status effects as Saryn or Grendel). Based on this, sometimes you may not need to use these elements in your build and best way is instead obtain them from the corresponding ability. For example, a build with a single heat mod mixed with Volt's ability (with an augment) for electricity will result in radiation damage.
5.10 When creating a build that includes many different damage types, always remember that the overall chance of triggering status effects determines the fact that something from the list will trigger, while what specifically triggering will be determined by the ratio of damage types to each other.
For example, if a weapon has 100 heat damage and 100 Corrosive damage, the chance of each triggering will be distributed as 50-50. The more one element predominates over the other, the greater the chance that it will trigger.
Therefore, in builds, avoid the dominance of unwanted damage types for dealing damage. For example, if your Ignis has 300 Viral damage and 100 Heat damage, you should reconsider, as Heat should prioritize dealing DoT damage, unlike Viral which lacks it. It would be much better if the ratio changed to 300 Heat and 100 Viral, giving Heat a 3 times higher chance to trigger than Viral status. Sometimes it is worth being clever - to achieve the optimal chance ratio, you can use partially upgraded mods that provide less unnecessary damage type.
6. Weapon fire rate is a very important indicator directly affecting how much damage you will deal per unit of time. You should increase it as much as possible, but within reasonable limits so that it does not deplete your magazine in seconds. Usually, one mod for a 90% increase in fire rate is sufficient for this. You can also use similar Arcanes inserted into the Warframe to avoid using a slot for fire rate on the weapon.
6.1 Melee weapons use a more complex attack speed mechanism. It mainly depends on the animation time of the stance you have chosen. You should select a stance, or a specific combo within the stance, based on the speed of their animations - the faster it completes, the better.
7. Critical chance and critical damage. These are two related parameters - when the critical chance exceeds 100%, each subsequent multiple level of critical chance (200, 300, 400, etc.) will increase your critical damage. Therefore, you should aim to make this parameter high (within reasonable limits, without wasting extra mod slots). There are exceptions to this in the form of weapons where the base critical chance is very low and it is not advantageous to increase it with regular mods. In this case, you should either not increase the critical chance at all, or use a trick and use "absolute" critical chance increase (for example, Arcane Avenger or certain Warframe abilities). This will give you a high amount of critical chance regardless of the weapon's parameter, and to effectively use it you can equip mods that increase critical damage without using mods that increase critical chance.
7.1 Mods that increase critical damage should usually always be equipped (when you have sufficient critical chance). It is important to balance the quantity of these mods (you need to save the number of slots for other mods). If your weapon is focused on status effects, it may be better to use mods that increase both critical damage and status chance (like Hammer Shot) instead of a regular critical damage mod.
8. Forced status effect procs - some types of weapons (like Glaives) have guaranteed status effect procs upon hitting a target. Some weapons are advantageous to use because of this feature. Study your weapon, and even if it has a low status chance but applies a guaranteed status effect, it may not be a bad weapon to use. It is worth noting that some weapons (usually shotgun-like) apply a guaranteed impact effect at close range, which can be used to apply a slash status effect through mods like "Internal Bleeding".
8.1 Melee weapons are capable of inflicting forced status effect procs through their stances. Each stance is unique, and it is necessary to carefully study what specific procs it applies. Sometimes, the melee weapon itself may not seem strong based on its stats, but the procs (such as the Slash status effect) from stances make it good.
8.2 Melee weapons designed for use with heavy attacks are assembled slightly differently. Their damage is influenced by the current combo counter as a multiplier. Typically, you need increase its starting amount to prevent the combo counter from dropping below a certain level. Mods that enhance heavy attack efficiency make sense, as they allow you to not consume a portion of the combo counter when attacking. There is also an additional influence of the heavy attack speed parameter. Usually, heavy attacks have an increased hit multiplier from a stance with a guaranteed forced status effect proc (you may want to enhance this particular aspect).
8.3 Melee weapons have received the so-called Tennokai mods. They allow for the use of a heavy attack without consuming the combo counter (as with 100% heavy attack efficiency). Thanks to these mods, it has become possible to more conveniently apply mixed weapon builds focused on both heavy and light attacks simultaneously.
9. Beam weapons. It is worth mentioning them separately because they apply multishot differently, creating not a multitude of separate shots individually, but enhancing one with increased damage and status chance. As a result, for a unit of time (for one shot), you can apply a fairly large number of status effects (for example, >4 in one shot). Also beam weapons benefit even more from increasing fire rate than regular weapons.
10. For weapons that shoot projectiles and have projectile fall-off, another important point is the projectile speed increases the maximum shooting range until full fall-off. It is often advisable to equip a mod that increases this parameter on weapons that shoot at close range (for example, the Arca Plasmor).
11. If you plan to use a weapon for "headshotting," remember that some weapons have the base headshot multiplier disabled (for example, the Ignis), and shooting at the head will not give you the desired effect. Some enemies sometimes do not have heads. And (possibly a bug?) the headshot modifier, for example, "Primary Deadhead" does not stack if you kill the target with status effects (possibly because of this, it will not be fully utilized). This problem has also been noticed in mods like "Galvanized Scope".
12. Punch through - an effect that won't hurt. Passively allows you to pierce through an enemy and hit the next one if there is enough piercing distance. In most cases, it passively increases damage by hitting additional enemies. Some types of weapons have infinite punch through (for example, the Nataruk). On beam weapons with a beam jump effect, it usually adds an additional number of beam jumps. Overall, this is more of a convenience parameter, it won't add damage to a single target, but it will make it easier to kill enemies.
13. Ammunition Efficiency - allows you to increase your damage in the long term, excluding reload speed from constant shooting. This is especially helpful on weapons that shoot rarely, but with high impact and long reload times. The effect can be activated by warframe abilities (such as Energized Munitions), certain Acranes, some passive weapon effects, and properties of incarnon weapons.
13.1 Optimize your ammo supply. If a weapon has a small maximum ammo capacity, consider using a mod that increases this amount. It's also beneficial to use a mod that converts unwanted ammo types into needed types. The magazine size of the weapon in Incarnon form remains unchanged.
13.2 If a weapon has a small magazine and requires frequent and lengthy reloads, consider installing mods that increase magazine size and reload speed.
It is important to remember that for weapons with a magazine in the form of a rechargeable battery, the characteristics of reload speed and magazine size work differently. Specifically, reload speed only affects the reload delay, and the reload speed itself remains unchanged. The magazine size also affects the amount of time needed for a full recharge of the battery.
13.3 It should be mentioned that weapons have a parameter known as the number of rounds spent per shot. Beam weapons typically spend 1 round for every 2 shots. Some weapons may expend the entire magazine in a single shot (for example, the Tenet Plinx). In this case, reload speed plays an even greater role.
14. Your usual weapon build may not be suitable for killing some unique enemies. It is important to learn the unique characteristics of these enemies. Some, for example, have complete immunity to status effects, so there is no point in trying to kill them with weapons focused on status effects (such as Eidolon Teralyst, Wolf Saturn Six). Some enemies are immune to certain status effects, such as viral status effects (like unique Deimos enemies), so it doesn't make sense to include them in your build. Some enemies have a limit on the maximum number of applied status effects (e.g. 4 for Acolytes), making it inconvenient to kill them with status weapons with low momental damage, etc.
15. It is worth mentioning separately that there are weapons in the game with mechanics that do not follow the usual rules. Such weapons usually do not fit into the framework of regular build crafting, and in each specific case, if you know their peculiarities, they should be built in a special way. It is also worth mentioning some abilities, such as "Xata's Whisper" (adds a separate instance of damage with its own characteristics to your hits), which sometimes, quite often, interact with weapons and certain mods differently than described in the ability description, but more powerfully. For such abilities, it may be worth adjusting your build slightly in favor of mods that enhance their effects.
16. Some "Exalted" weapons depend on the Warframe ability strength. By increasing the strength, you will increase their damage.
16.1 Whenever possible, try to use mods not only inserted into weapons but also into Warframes. Some auras can provide a significant boost to damage. Additionally, there are unique frame-specific mod-augments that increase weapon damage in various ways.
17. How to understand which riven mods are best to pick for your weapon? Let's try to understand this. It is worth mentioning that rivens have a so-called synergy with weapons. This parameter is occasionally adjusted by developers to slightly "balance" the weapon.
Synergy varies on different versions of the same weapon (for example, it may be high on the default version and low on the Prime version), so good Riven mods for one variant of a weapon may be much worse on another version.
If the synergy of your weapon is minimal, installing such a riven mod will likely make your weapon even worse than if a different, more useful mod were in its place.
You should aim to have 3 useful parameters and one harmless negative.
17.1 If you want to maximize the damage on your weapon first and foremost, rather than convenience, try to choose a stat on the riven mod that will provide the greatest increase in damage, such as multishot and critical damage.
Secondly, prioritize strong stats, such as damage to factions, critical chance, fire rate/attack speed. Status chance is not the worst option for beam weapons. An increase to base damage won't hurt, but usually it's sufficient in the weapon and it's better to get something else.
Sometimes convenience stats are desirable - like melee range, punch through, reload speed, magazine size, recoil, combo counter duration. For weapons used with heavy attacks, increase the starting combo counter.
Most of the time, having elemental damage on the riven mod ruins the build, and is generally undesirable. However, sometimes you can try to get elemental damage that is missing in your build to free up space from it. Sometimes you need additional elemental damage that is already in the build to maximize DoT damage from heat, toxin, or electricity status.
