sandriver

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.

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.

Group hug, sea slug fans. She'll come eventually :(

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.

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.

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!