[Fun Experiment 8] Zymos two sides, and its rewarding creativity

[STUVash]

Zymos, that infested gun that you eventually get on Deimos. I wanted to play more with that weapon but I first set out to rank up all deimos weapons first.
Long Reload Speed, slow fire rate, slow projectiles forcing you to guess where the enemy is going, average magazine capacity, low ammo capacity, decent radius on damage, very low crit chance, average crit multiplier, average damage if you don't land headshots, and quite high status chance.

But if you do land headshots, that's when the magic happens. First step is to get there.

There are many ways to make headshots easier with any weapon, including that one, you can either use one or combine them.

1) Get closer.
2) Raise projectile speed through mods and/or ability like Zephyr's turbulence with her augment. (Zephyr can also be an ally providing the buff you need)
3) Add zoom mods
4) Slow the enemies with other weapons and or abilities first
5) Magnetize your enemies using Mag, Void status or Scourge alt fire.
6) Make the enemy heads bigger using peculiar mods.

There, now we're all at the headshot part but we're just starting.
 

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Players got quick to realise that Zymos damage was two folds.
One is the radial explosion you get from the headshot, this part uses all your mods.
The other part are from living spore clouds which emit noises similar to flies. That part seek out enemies and home toward them.
These guys don't benefit from your base damage mods.
This annoyed most players, but this mostly meant you now have two more obvious builds possible. The explosion build and the Spore build.

One is your usual build, typical no brainer damage, elemental damage, multishot, maybe an extra spicy mod to make it a bit more personal but that's about it.
The other one, spore build is where your creativity will matter. You'll be ditching damage mods, that's a given, so more slots for new ideas but you'll be thinking about how these spore clouds behave.

 It should be noted that this high radial damage when landing a headshot don't work on all enemies,

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there are specific rules attached to it, I didn't test enough to know them all.
On some enemies it doesn't work. On some other enemies the explosion occurs but no spores spawn. And on most enemies, some crowd control effect prevent the explosion from happening.

Here's a summary of the problem you will be solving with your build:

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-Headshot lands.
2 seconds later
-Head explodes
-Spore clouds go up
-Then go back down toward nearby enemies
(If there's only one, it'll be that one.)
-The spore clouds will travel up to roughly 3 seconds toward their target.
-If they're done hitting their target, they deal their damage and disappear.
-If their time limit is reached they explode and deal damage around them.

While slapping many elemental damage mods and multishot would be your first idea, notice how it's possible for the clouds to live up to 3 seconds while homing directly toward enemies ?
This means that adding punch through on this guy would technically buff their damage as each cloud would be hitting more targets, allowing them to make use of these 3 seconds instead of dying right away after one hit.
(Extra fun point for that one because the death of the clouds has the same visual and crunchy sound as the headshot explosion, so you'll be seeing a whole lot of these bad boys, damage isn't as high as your headshot explosion of course)

Multishot is obviously a great idea as it would mean more clouds chasing enemies, with elemental damage more damage. However, since we're mostly working with elemental damage here we'll have to switch the elementals according to the faction we'll be facing.

A minor hindrance for more fun toward modding and optimising the damage.

 

Since we're working with elemental damage
Warframe elemental damage buff and the universal Rhino Roar will be of great use to boost the Spore Clouds. Saryn with her corrosive damage, toxic damage and Rhino roar that you can now absurdly slap on top would be the strongest you can get for this weapon, buff wise.

If you use Saryn or Oberon, you won't be worrying too much about your build elemental order, however if you plan on using Ember, Frost, or Volt make sure to remember that their element will make combinations after your mods, so it's like adding one more elemental mod after your mod list.


The critical chance stat
can also be raised through the use of arcanes, kavat and Harrow ability, headshot being fairly deadly with him too. That's a variant that would work as it would raise the damage of your whole elemental build like base damage mods would but you don't have access to that.
Another funny thing about the fact base damage stat isn't affecting the spore clouds is that you can use Hollow Point mod, it has +60% Crit Damage and -15% Damage, but for the spore clouds it just means +60% Crit Damage.

Combined with the fairly high status you can expect decent Heat DoT the higher you go.

What else can we do about these clouds,

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if we could force them to head toward the enemies sooner or faster we'd probably earn more damage over 3 seconds.
Magnetize effect can help but I believe it has to be small enough for the flies to go out of the Magnetic Field and back in. So lower range Mag, Scourge and Void Status would work.

But we still waste a bit of time when they go up and back down, this is because they circle around instead of just going straight back in. I didn't feel like Projectile Speed mattered much to them but for the fancier players, this is a place where Nova's portal would do a decent job.
You could also get the best radius for your magnetic field with Mag by adjusting her Ability Range, make it low enough so that the Spore Clouds can fly out of it and high enough so that they come back in the Magnetic field right when they go down.
At this point this is more for the sake of optimising the travel of the clouds rather than making the weapon easier to use, but you would be technically making the Clouds travel easier which would result in more damage if you had more Punch Through stat to spare.

 

TL;DR (since someone asked for it)
I had fun with Zymos, details above.

There's probably more stuff regarding this weapon but I really like it, the combination and planning you have to do for this weapon can justify some weird choices and give a meaning to some other weapons and abilities. And the damage isn't low at all whether you get one build or the other, it's quite rewarding and pleasing to play.
If you guys have more ways to optimise that build, I'd be thrilled to hear more about it.
Good job whoever made this thing come true, I'm having a blast with these crunchy explosions.

Muahahahaa

[0_The_F00l]

OK

[(PSN)robotwars7]

mind adding a TL:DR? I'm glad you enjoy the Zymos and all, but that's quite the essay you wrote.

gimmick headshot guns are ok, but I prefer Dual Toxocyst, Athodai or Knell. higher rate of fire and unlimited ammo makes them more useful Zymos is more of a pistol for fun times only, I wouldn't take it into anything serious. 

[STUVash]

il y a 36 minutes, (PS4)robotwars7 a dit :

mind adding a TL:DR? I'm glad you enjoy the Zymos and all, but that's quite the essay you wrote.

gimmick headshot guns are ok, but I prefer Dual Toxocyst, Athodai or Knell. higher rate of fire and unlimited ammo makes them more useful Zymos is more of a pistol for fun times only, I wouldn't take it into anything serious. 

Sorry the whole topic is about an experiment, there's no point if I don't give out the details.
And you're right, like I said, it's hard to use, hard to mod, and the radial damage on headshot doesn't even work on all enemies and even when you can land it, there are still special rules that prevent it from happening like enemies suffering some crowd control or knockback might prevent the explosion.
Or in some other cases, the explosion does occur but no spore clouds appear depending on the enemies.

But, I play this game for the fun only, this weapon alone is adding playtime that I wouldn't have spent if it was just another infested theme Angstrum. At this point I actually need those weird weapons to bring more fun in the game, if it allows me to justify the uses of abilities you wouldn't usually think about it's even better.