JadeKaiser

See, that's fine. I wasn't saying that your build is bad, or irrelevant. Far from it, I even mentioned that it might be better to run a more standard hybrid build like the one you did rather than trying to lean on the weapon's unique trait. That's a lead for discussing the matter, not a dismissal. It does seem like you just had a bit of a reading comprehension fail, rather than being a jerk. Which is something that happens to all of us, so don't worry about it. My build is this, at present: As you can see, I'm leaning heavily on status and triggering red crits off its unique trait. I haven't taken it into really high level stuff yet, but it seems to have no trouble killing quickly against corrupted enemies in the level 100-ish range. To a degree where I think it should be good for at least another 20~30 levels or so. It does struggle a little against heavier eximus units until their overguard is depleted and they become open to status procs, though.

I'm really not seeing how anything I said could imply that I'm not talking about optimized modding. If that's somehow what you got from my post, then you need to work on your reading comprehension. Either that, or you're the kind of elitist who thinks that merely trying to account and optimize for levels of equipment availability that aren't "you have literally everything in the game already" is pointless. If it's the latter, then don't let the door hit you on the way out. We can certainly talk about those kinds of builds, but don't go trying to tell people that we shouldn't also talk about builds for those who "merely" have the standard modset and some, but not all Primed/Galvanized/Archon/etc. mods maxed.

Well yeah, definitely don't drop Vital Sense for Hammer Shot ever. I wasn't really considering Galvanized mods, mostly because I've not played much for the last few years until very recently, so I had some vitus saved up from before they were added but I didn't really know about them beyond "galvanized mods exist." Galvanized Aptitude would probably replace HS by default once I get it ranked, now that I've got it. Not everybody has access to those sorts of endgame mods though, Galvanized mods and primed Bane mods and the like, and your build look simultaneously very endgame-optimized and completely unoptimized for this gun in particular, as opposed to a generic hybrid AR. Though, maybe going for a more standard hybrid build instead of leaning on its mechanic is better, overall. Status in general seems to be suffering a bit at higher levels, what with everybody and their mother being given immunity one way or another. Even just your regular eximus units have it via overguard.

Really, you should just never run the basic Status-Chance-only mods. On anything. They're always, with no exception, not good enough to fill the mod slot. Hammer Shot gives only 10% less status, and also gives 60% crit damage, and yet this is the first weapon in the game where it has ever been worth using. And even that is still up for debate, as is half the purpose of this thread.

That's basically what I've got except Hammer Shot instead of Rifle Aptitude. 60% crit damage for those red crits is worth more than an extra 10% status chance. I'm also running Corrosive rather than Viral for now, but that's subject to change.

Baro has come bringing Gotva Prime back for those of us who missed Tennocon. With it's mechanic for flat red crits after status, Gotva Prime seems to be the product of DE sitting down and asking one another: "How can we make a gun that will actually want to run Hammer Shot?" It's in the unique position of wanting to maximize status chance and crit damage, while not caring about crit chance. Even so however, we still have only 8 mod slots on a weapon, and the question arises: is the 60% crit damage and an extra 20% status vs a 60/60 elemental worth the loss of the elemental damage? On any other gun the answer is obviously no even if every shot crits, because adding 60% to the base number being multiplied is better than adding another 60% of the base multiplier if you're already running Vital Sense, but this one casts it into doubt. Should we be looking at dropping Hunter Munitions, instead? HM offers a whole extra source of status procs to help fuel the red crit machine, but with the crits being more focused on a few that hit really hard instead of a steady stream compared to a more standard crit AR, its 30% proc chance might be a tad too inconsistent. Moreover, swapping it out for a third elemental while also keeping Hammer Shot lets us bring our status chance up to 97.2%, as opposed to 75.6% with just three elementals or 81% with 2 elementals and HS. That's a source of greater consistency all its own. The third option to drop would be Vigilante Armaments, but that's just no. The gun comes with a slot pre-forma'd for it, since it's the only good dash polarity mod to go there, and when stacking DPS multipliers you always want to add to the lower one. Maybe if it was a single shot weapon, but on an AR, 60% multishot is flat better than 60% crit damage any day. Even more so when the crits are less consistent. Personally, I'm leaning towards dropping Hunter Munitions so I can run HS and 3 elemental 60/60s all together, but I'm not sure and I would like to see what other people think.