One of the strongest weapons in the game currently. The primary fire feels like a lex prime but hits a truck. Getting 12 headshots charges up it's Incarnon mode (can be shortened to about 3-4 shots with multishot). Switching to Incarnon mode with alt-fire makes it feel like a pocket Acceltra with small AOE on impact but with significant damage. This build is a raw damage non-crit build using Devouring Attrition.

UPDATE JUNE 2024
With the armor/health scaling changes, status rework and damage vulnerability rework, Viral Heat is now the undisupted top status combination. This is because heat is able to strip 50% armor after 2 seconds which currently reduces a 90% DR from armor cap to about 63% DR, which is equal to a 3.7x damage boost. Viral status boosts all damage to health by up to 4.25x at 10 stacks and 2x at 1 stack. In addition, corrupted enemies are now weak to viral by 50%.

UPDATE APRIL 2024
[Xata]'s Whisper double dipping Devouring Attrition has FINALLY been officially nerfed. Note, while this means Xata's whisper no longer receives an additional chance for 21x damage (i.e. the 441x damage on 25% of non-crits), Xata's Whisper is still the strongest subsume option for "raw damage" weapons like Laetum that kill predominantly with non-status damage. This is because [Xata]'s whisper still double dips faction mods and headshot multiplier (which only applies to the direct hit part of laetum).

Other build options:
Crit Viral Heat Overwhelming Attrition (higher potential single target DPS): https://overframe.gg/build/315013/
Viral Slash Devouring Attrition (scales better against armor against single targets) : https://overframe.gg/build/316948

Evolution Choices

• Evolution I - Incarnon mode

• Evolution II - Rapid Wrath: +20% Fire rate. Can use recoil perk if you don’t use one of Secondary Deadhead or Steady hands, or prefer to use Lethal Momentum in exilus.

• Evolution III - Lethal Rearmament: +90% reload speed on headshot at 3 stacks. This also shortens the transformation animation to Incarnon mode from approx 3s to 1.5s.

• Evolution IV - Elemental Excess +20% status, -10% crit chance. Reducing crit chance increases the likelihood of Devouring Attrition boosted shots.

• Evolution V - Devouring Attrition: 50% chance to do 2000% damage on non-critical hits. This is currently multiplicative to base damage mods such as [Hornet Strike] and double dips the void damage instance of [Xata]'s Whisper.

Calulations of Devouring Attrition vs Overwhelming Attrition

Devouring Attrition

With no crit mods + hornet strike (2.2) + deadhead (3.6) + elemental excess (-10% crit):

• 88% chance to do no crit with 50% chance to get 2000% multiplicative with hornet strike/deadhead
  - 44% chance to do 21x(1+3.6+2.2)=142.8x
  - 44% chance to do 1+3.6+2.2 = 6.8x
• 12% chance to crit and do (1+3.6+2.2) x 2.2=14.96x

Average Damage multipliers
Body shots: 44%x142.8 + 44%x6.8 + 12%x14.96=67.6192x on bodyshots

Headshots: 75% x (44%x142.8 + 44%x6.8 + 12%x2x14.9) + 25% x (44%x142.8 + 44%x6.8 + 12%x2x14.9) x 3 x 1.3 = 135x on headshots

Now that the AOE component doesnt get headshot multiplier, only 25% of the damage receives the 3x headshot multi. Deadhead still applies 1.3x to both AOE and non AOE parts, and is also multiplicative to the base 3x multiplier.

Overwhelming Attrition assuming 100% uptime at max stacks giving additive 1200% on all hits:

With galvanized crosshairs (max stacks), primed target cracker and secondary deadhead (max stacks):

• 92% crit chance to do (1+3.6+12) x 4.62=76.692x
• 8% chance to not crit 1+3.6+12= 16.6x

On headshots, tier 1 crit multiplier is 2.8(1+1(2*4.64-1))=25.984 (with secondary deadhead 0.3 and caput mortuum 0.5 multipliers additive to 2x headshot multiplier)
Headshot damage is then (1+3.6+12) x 25.984=431.3

With primed pistol gambit, primed target cracker and secondary deadhead:

• 63% chance to do (1+12+3.6) x 4.62=76.692x
• 37% chance to not crit and do (1++3.6+12)=16.6x

If you run [Xata]'s Whisper however, you can trigger Overwhelming Attrition despite being above 100% cc.

AVERAGE DPS COMPARISON
This table compares Devouring Attrition in the build above, compared to Overwhelming Attrition with [Hornet Strike] + [Accelerated Isotope] replaced by [Galvanized Crosshairs] + [Primed Target Cracker], takes into account the average DPS of both direct hit and AOE components on a single target, as well as the raw DPS and heat status DPS:

TL,DR:

Use Devouring Attrition if you don't want to aim at heads and just spam AOE shots.
Use Overwhelming Attrition if you want to be more precise and aim at heads consistently, or for use with external CC buffs + Xata's Whisper.

See Overwhelming Attrition build here: https://overframe.gg/build/315013/

Mod Breakdown

• [Galvanized Diffusion]: +230% multishot at max stacks, meaning you get at least 3 bullets per shot with a 30% chance for 4. This allows you to basically do 3x more damage AND charge incarnon mode 3x faster.

• [Hornet Strike]: +220% damage which is multiplicative with devouring attrition and additive with secondary deadhead but helps initial ramp up before any deadhead stacks are active. [Galvanized Shot] is not used here since it does NOT work on the AOE component (which is responsible for 3x more raw damage compared to direct hit). This is a FLEXIBLE SLOT if you use secondary deadhead.

• Primed Expel: A further 1.55 multiplier to hornet strike/deadhead and Devouring Attrition and double dips on heat procs giving them 2.4x multiplier. Use regular expel mod if no primed version as it is still a 1.3 or 1.69x multiplier.

• [Lethal Torrent]: Brings multishot to 3.9 so 90% of shots give 4 bullets, and gives fire rate (combined Rapid Wrath gives +80% fire rate total)

• [Primed Convulsion] + Pathogen Rounds: makes corrosive, high raw damage against ferrite armor and armored enemies, corrosive status strips armor

• [Primed Heated Charge]: Big elemental mod bonus on pistols to multiply raw damage. Heat procs also strip armor by 50% and can stack indefinitely, which each new stack refreshing all existing stacks.

• Steady Hands: Combines with Deadhead or recoil perk to give -100% recoil for laser point accuracy. [Lethal Momentum] is an alternative but this requires changing polarity.

Flexible Options
Accelerated Isotope is your flexible slot:

• Anemic Agility - increases sustained DPS.
• Primed Fulmination - increases small AOE
• Augur Pact - useful for Augur set bonus for shield gating and gives minor additive damage boost
• Magnum Force - more additive damage but reduces accuracy, which can make getting headshots to charge incarnon mode more difficult
• Galvanized Shot - this is a LAST RESORT option because it is a) additive to hornet strike and secondary deadhead and b) only applies to the non-AOE component which is only 25% of total damage. This basically means galv shot is effectively only a +40% dmg per status boost and only to a single enemy at a time. You could potentially use this if offloading viral from nourish since there just arent many other mod choices.
• Riven:
  Best Positives : multishot, damage, fire rate
  Okay positives : status chance, toxin, reload speed
  Best Negatives : crit chance, zoom

Arcane

• Secondary Deadhead: Long upkeep times of +360% damage and gives -recoil and +headshot multiplier. Notably, this forces a 1.3x headshot multiplier that is multiplicative with the 3x base headshot multiplier on direct hit component (making it 3.9x) and the 1x base multiplier on AOE component.

• Cascadia Flare: Gives an extra +120% additive damage bonus compared to deadhead (i.e. a +20% final DPS increase on bodyshots) but at the loss of -recoil and multiplicative headshot multiplier (reducing final headshot DPS by 10%).

• Secondary Merciless: Doesn't need headshots to upkeep, but stacks fall off quicker, and you get a neat reload bonus that helps with transform speed. Not recommended unless you hate aiming for heads and don't own flare.

ELEMENTAL VARIATIONS

If armor stripping against Grineer/Corrupted: Use Viral Heat (swap Primed Convulsion for cold mod)
For Corpus: Make Toxin by swapping convulsion+heated charge for Pistol Pestilence + Anemic agility/Augur Pact/magnum force. Toxin bypasses shields. Swap to Primary Deadhead
For Angels/Eidolon/Murmur/Archon: Swap Pathogen Rounds for Anemic Agility/Augur Pact/Magnum force to make pure Radiation. Swap to Primary Deadhead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFgMUfJUkK8

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