Bo Incarnon - Not the best, but better than you may have heard

[(PSN)Unstar]

I think that there are plenty of Warframe Creators who generally do a great job of analyzing weapons and showing good builds for them, but from what I've seen, even the Creators I respect seem to have gotten it wrong with the Bo Incarnon.  Which is fine, we're all going to fumble an at-bat now and then, and in this case it's easy to see why: in Warframe, we understandably love our Slash procs, so it's no surprise that everyone gravitated towards Slashing Bleed, the 4th Tier Evolution that allows the Bo a chance to proc Slash when it procs Impact.

And what they discovered is that Slashing Bleed's results were...fine?  That's what I found as well.  You can certainly make a build that functions with Slashing Bleed, but based on my testing it doesn't give you great returns compared to the other two 4th Tier Evolutions.

Based on my testing, what you want to do instead is choose Absolute Dominion, which will increase the Bo Prime's base status to 62%.  Then you can do a build like the following:

• Clashing Forest (stance)
• Primed Reach (+3 Range)
• Sacrificial Pressure* (+damage)
• Sacrificial Steel* (+crit chance, doubled for heavy attacks)
• Amalgam Organ Shatter (+crit damage, faster heavy attacks)
• Vicious Frost (60 cold 60 status)
• Virulent Scourge (60 toxin 60 status)
• Volcanic Edge (60 heat 60 status)
• Molten Impact (90 heat)

With this build you'll have a heat-weighted heat+viral weapon with 6.5 meters of range (10.5 in Incarnon) and 173% status chance, meaning each time this stick is swung, it will give out just under 2 status effects per enemy it hits.  The first hit of the neutral attack hits very fast even without any speed modifiers, it hits 3 times while also giving Lift status, and (subjective) it feels fun, too!

So why does this work better than the Slash procs?  I would hazard that it's a few things:

1. Even if its status chance is raised, the Bo doesn't guarantee an Impact proc** and then when that Impact proc happens there's only a 40% chance of a Slash proc.
2. Optimizing for Slash procs means that any hit that doesn't proc Slash isn't providing meaningful value.***
3. Even once a Slash proc happens, the Bo's follow-through value of 0.5 means that the damage of that Slash proc is being drastically diminished for most of the enemies your 10-meter pole is slapping.

...whereas, the damage multipliers provided by heat and viral are equally applied to every enemy the Bo hits.  In short, building for status plays to the Bo's strength of hitting a dozen enemies at the same time, rather than struggling to dish out Slash procs which it really isn't built for.

So if you like playing with Bo weapons, I'd encourage you to give a build like this a try.  I wouldn't say that the Bo Prime is on the cutting edge of melee, but it's close enough that it's well worth using if it's what you enjoy!

TL;DR - Bo Incarnon isn't the best but it is great, just don't fall into the trap of building for Slash.

* Do you prefer Condition Overload/Blood Rush?  Knock yourself out! :)

** The Flailing Branch stance has two combos that each contain a single forced Impact proc, but in my experience this didn't make things much better and was also a clunky stance to use.

*** You can build for other statuses as well, but that will further reduce your already low odds of getting a Slash proc.

Edited June 12, 2023 by (PSN)Unstar
Updated title since it was being interpreted in ways I did not intend

[Traumtulpe]

You are right in so far as that a maximum of 40% chance to proc slash per hit isn't good, and neither is 50% follow through.

Take the Pangolin Prime, not exactly an outstanding weapon at this point, with only Weeping Wounds it has a 130% chance to proc slash (and 0.6 follow through) - that's more than 3 times the DPS of the Incarnon Bo Prime (damage including evolutions and attack speed roughly equals out).

So DE just released a new shiny that has <1/3 the DPS of an old, forgotten primed weapon. And somehow you made a thread how it's "better than we've heard". No it isn't.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[(PSN)Unstar]

23 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

You are right in so far as that a maximum of 40% chance to proc slash per hit isn't good, and neither is 50% follow through.

Take the Pangolin Prime, not exactly an outstanding weapon at this point, with only Weeping Wounds it has a 130% chance to proc slash (and 0.6 follow through) - that's more than 3 times the DPS of the Incarnon Bo Prime (damage including evolutions and attack speed roughly equal out).

For sure, though my main point is really just that folks will get better results from a weapon if they build that weapon in accordance with its strengths.  Since it would be generous to say that the Bo Incarnon is mediocre at Slash procs, players must choose between two mutually exclusive possibilities: do you want an effective weapon that deals Slash procs, or do you want an optimized Bo Incarnon?  You cannot have both. :)

Edited June 12, 2023 by (PSN)Unstar

[nslay]

I'd also stick Shattering Impact on Bo to make it scale infinitely without help... For readers unfamiliar with this overlooked common mod, Shattering Impact is a magical armor stripping mod that removes base armor. So, for example, if an enemy has 6 base armor, then no matter what level it is and how many millions of scaled armor it has, one swing of a Shattering Impact weapon strips all the armor of this hypothetical enemy.

Yes I do also use Unairu, but it's annoying to use.

[Vryheid]

Just looking at the build you posted, it don't think it makes any sense to go full in on status and not use Weeping Wounds. I'd recommend replacing Volcanic Edge with it as the extra status chance landing more procs will make up for the loss of heat damage.

Anyways, there's no build that will make up for how fundamentally unreliable this weapon is and how frustratingly ineffective the stats on the weapon are at complimenting its genuinely interesting set of perks and bonuses. +4 range is amazing, sure, but as Traumtulpe stated the 0.5 follow through absolutely tanks this weapon's damage if you try clearing out a group of enemies with it... which is the whole point of having all that range in the first place. Having 50% heavy attack efficiency in Incarnon mode is cool, and the extra 20% efficiency you get from the Overhand perk on top of that is enough to make a functional hybrid heavy attack build, but the disappointing heavy attack damage output and lack of forced slash procs means that you barely get any reward for doing so. Crashing Bleed giving us a Hemorrhage-like effect on impact procs is cool and all, but this means the Bo loses out on crucial buffs to status chance and crit chance that other melee incarnons would be getting in that slot, meaning those slash procs don't hit nearly as hard as they should.

Personally, I don't have all that much attachment to the Bo in terms of gameplay or style, and most of the time I just want to use whatever big range hitty-whacky-melee weapon that carve through large groups of armored enemies as conveniently as expeditiously as possible. Right now that weapon is the Nami Solo Incarnon, which is so astronomically more effective than the Bo that whether or not the Bo is a little underrated doesn't really change anything for me. I appreciate that you're trying to make the weapon more enjoyable, but I do still think that until the devs give it some adjustments to make its kit more coherent it's going to sit right up there with the Sibear as one of the most disappointing Incarnon choices in the game. 

[(PSN)Unstar]

12 minutes ago, Vryheid said:

Just looking at the build you posted, it don't think it makes any sense to go full in on status and not use Weeping Wounds. I'd recommend replacing Volcanic Edge with it as the extra status chance landing more procs will make up for the loss of heat damage.

Weeping Wounds is certainly a valid mod to use in this build for those who want it, but I wanted to present a more general build that didn't depend on maintaining combo.  For those who like to go in that direction, I agree it's probably a good choice!

15 minutes ago, Vryheid said:

Anyways, there's no build that will make up for how fundamentally unreliable this weapon is and how frustratingly ineffective the stats on the weapon are at complimenting its genuinely interesting set of perks and bonuses.

Just out of curiosity, have you tried the build I mentioned?  While it doesn't quite reach the murder output of my top-tier melee, it's felt very reliable in my hands.  That said...

16 minutes ago, Vryheid said:

Personally, I don't have all that much attachment to the Bo in terms of gameplay or style, and most of the time I just want to use whatever big range hitty-whacky-melee weapon that carve through large groups of armored enemies as conveniently as expeditiously as possible.

This is valid.  And indeed, I would say that the main reason to use the Bo Incarnon is simply because you want to use a bo weapon.*   If someone was asking, "What melee weapons will be most effective?" then the Bo Incarnon wouldn't be on the list I provided them.  The Bo Incarnon is more for people who are happy being "sufficiently effective" rather than "cutting edge" if it means they can do so with the flavor of play that suits them.

*or potentially because you like having a 10 meter reach?

[angryjanitor]

3 hours ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

I think that there are plenty of Warframe Creators who generally do a great job of analyzing weapons and showing good builds for them, but from what I've seen, even the Creators I respect seem to have gotten it wrong with the Bo Incarnon.  Which is fine, we're all going to fumble an at-bat now and then, and in this case it's easy to see why: in Warframe, we understandably love our Slash procs, so it's no surprise that everyone gravitated towards Slashing Bleed, the 4th Tier Evolution that allows the Bo a chance to proc Slash when it procs Impact.

And what they discovered is that Slashing Bleed's results were...fine?  That's what I found as well.  You can certainly make a build that functions with Slashing Bleed, but based on my testing it doesn't give you great returns compared to the other two 4th Tier Evolutions.

Based on my testing, what you want to do instead is choose Absolute Dominion, which will increase the Bo Prime's base status to 62%.  Then you can do a build like the following:

• Clashing Forest (stance)
• Primed Reach (+3 Range)
• Sacrificial Pressure* (+damage)
• Sacrificial Steel* (+crit chance, doubled for heavy attacks)
• Amalgam Organ Shatter (+crit damage, faster heavy attacks)
• Vicious Frost (60 cold 60 status)
• Virulent Scourge (60 toxin 60 status)
• Volcanic Edge (60 heat 60 status)
• Molten Impact (90 heat)

With this build you'll have a heat-weighted heat+viral weapon with 6.5 meters of range (10.5 in Incarnon) and 173% status chance, meaning each time this stick is swung, it will give out just under 2 status effects per enemy it hits.  The first hit of the neutral attack hits very fast even without any speed modifiers, it hits 3 times while also giving Lift status, and (subjective) it feels fun, too!

So why does this work better than the Slash procs?  I would hazard that it's a few things:

1. Even if its status chance is raised, the Bo doesn't guarantee an Impact proc** and then when that Impact proc happens there's only a 40% chance of a Slash proc.
2. Optimizing for Slash procs means that any hit that doesn't proc Slash isn't providing meaningful value.***
3. Even once a Slash proc happens, the Bo's follow-through value of 0.5 means that the damage of that Slash proc is being drastically diminished for most of the enemies your 10-meter pole is slapping.

...whereas, the damage multipliers provided by heat and viral are equally applied to every enemy the Bo hits.  In short, building for status plays to the Bo's strength of hitting a dozen enemies at the same time, rather than struggling to dish out Slash procs which it really isn't built for.

So if you like playing with Bo weapons, I'd encourage you to give a build like this a try.  I wouldn't say that the Bo Prime is on the cutting edge of melee, but it's close enough that it's well worth using if it's what you enjoy!

TL;DR - Bo Incarnon isn't the best but it is great, just don't fall into the trap of building for Slash.

* Do you prefer Condition Overload/Blood Rush?  Knock yourself out! :)

** The Flailing Branch stance has two combos that each contain a single forced Impact proc, but in my experience this didn't make things much better and was also a clunky stance to use.

*** You can build for other statuses as well, but that will further reduce your already low odds of getting a Slash proc.

Your wall of text is meaningless, demonstrate its damage in a video of basic Steel Path or Simulacrum (Exo Gokstad officer level 150+). I'm betting the time to kill things is far worse than "meta" melees. Glaive Prime, Kronen Prime and so on.

There are already decently accurate tier lists (as far as one can make a tier list in Warframe) https://overframe.gg/tier-list/melee-weapons/ which generally do a pretty good job of reflecting the "effectiveness" of weapons as they are community curated (aka voted). Base Bo Prime is in "B tier", sure the incarnon may have marginally more damage but it's not gonna climb all the way to "S Tier" so there's a ton of just better melee weapons.

Edited June 12, 2023 by angryjanitor

[(PSN)Unstar]

2 minutes ago, angryjanitor said:

Your wall of text is meaningless, demonstrate its damage in a video of basic Steel Path or Simulacrum (Exo Gokstad officer level 150+). I'm betting the time to kill things is far worse than "meta" melees. Glaive Prime, Kronen Prime and so on.

I would guess that you see my wall of text as meaningless because you read it thinking I was saying "Bo Prime is as good as the Glaive Prime".  That's not what I'm saying so I encourage you to read it again.

[nslay]

Yeah, it's not as good as "meta" melees, but you can't really go "meta" in SP Circuit unless you're very lucky. I would be building Bo Prime (and will) in anticipation of it popping up in SP Circuit's randomization.

[angryjanitor]

18 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

I would guess that you see my wall of text as meaningless because you read it thinking I was saying "Bo Prime is as good as the Glaive Prime".  That's not what I'm saying so I encourage you to read it again.

Ok I'll bite by feeding you (a troll). We've "heard" (aka we Think or we Know) that Incarnon Bo is trash tier. You're trying to argue that its 'better than we've heard" i.e. better than trash tier. OK, let's define that as "A Tier or better".

There are 20 melee weapons in "S Tier". There are 60 melee weapons in "A Tier". If a weapon is not even in the top 80 Melee weapons, it's pretty safe to say its Trash at that point.

 

Now, go take any of the weapons in "A Tier", find a Youtube video of performance in Steel Path or Simulacrum, go make your own video of Incarnon Bo and compare them. IF Incarnon Bo outperforms all of the weapons in "B tier" then we can say "it's better than we heard".

But since you provided no such proof, your wall of text is just meaningless conjecture.

Edited June 12, 2023 by angryjanitor

[(PSN)Unstar]

I'm getting some unexpected responses that I feel I should address:

3 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

So DE just released a new shiny that has <1/3 the DPS of an old, forgotten primed weapon. And somehow you made a thread how it's "better than we've heard". No it isn't.

1 hour ago, angryjanitor said:

We've "heard" (aka we Think or we Know) that Incarnon Bo is trash tier. You're trying to argue that its 'better than we've heard" AKA better than trash tier.

As I described in my original post, I made this post because I had seen Bo Incarnon videos from several high-profile Warframe Content Creators, and they all chose Slashing Bleed.  Because I'm stubborn and wanted to try to make the Bo Prime perform well, I tried out some different builds on my own and found that my build resulted in faster kill times than those of the content creators.  Because of that, my thought was that there was some misinformation going around, and hence I made this post.  I chose the title "Bo Incarnon - Not the very best, but better than you've heard" in an attempt to summarize all of that.  But of course, the truth is, I have no idea what you each have individually heard, and I would never seriously make such a claim.  I didn't expect for people to take the title nearly as literally, but since they are I'm going to adjust the original post to add the word "may" to the title.  Hopefully that will help.

Edited June 13, 2023 by (PSN)Unstar
typo

[angryjanitor]

23 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

I'm getting some unexpected responses that I feel I should address:

As I described in my original post, I made this post because I had seen Bo Incarnon videos from several high-profile Warframe Content Creators, and they all chose Slashing Bleed.  Because I'm stubborn and wanted to try to make the Bo Prime perform well, I tried out some different builds on my own and found that my build resulted in faster kill times than those of the content creators.  Because of that, my thought was that there was some misinformation going around, and hence I made this post.  I chose the title "Bo Incarnon - Not the very best, but better than you've heard" in an attempt to summarize all of that.  But of course, the truth is, I have no idea what you each have individually heard, and I would never seriously make a claim.  I didn't expect for people to take the title nearly as literally, but since they are I'm going to adjust the original post to add the word "may" to the title.  Hopefully that will help.

Just so you know, weapon performance is usually pretty obvious to most veterans by now. It's a straight up numbers game.

Base damage, crit chance/critdmg, status, attack speed, STANCE (for melees) e.g. forced slash procs/animation speed, Unique weapon gimmicks.

People are usually able to accurately estimate weapon performance using datamined stats of new weapons even before release (for instance estimating the performance of Primed versions versus the originals). (assuming no unique mechanics).

Bo Incarnon has NOTHING in particular that stands out in any of these categories. It has mediocre stats, no unique gimmick, and staves just have bad stances.

 

Now let's compare it to some of the "S tier" weapons, Kronen Prime -> Tonfa stances are insanely fast, with multiple forced slash procs. For this reason, just about every Tonfa is "A tier" or better.

Glaive Prime - Unique mechanic of glaives, 1 shotting everything within like 15m, more like AOE weapon than melee

Praedos - Great base stats and unique mechanic of extra parkour speed to finish missions faster (and yes, another tonfa).

[(XBOX)CaligulaTwily]

Bo is bad because stance moveset is bad. There is literally nothing in the stat menu that could be changed to make me like Bo. 10,000% status chance, 69 swingspeed, 420 meters range, +400 cc/cd, -1 or 999999999999⁹⁹⁹⁹⁹⁹⁹⁹⁹ damage, none of that would be enough for me to *like* the Bo or *enjoy the stance*

I remember one stance, the whole thing is 1/2 combo. I don't remember the gold stance being much better. 

 

Edited June 13, 2023 by (XBOX)CaligulaTwily

[(PSN)Unstar]

1 hour ago, angryjanitor said:

But since you provided no such proof, your wall of text is just meaningless conjecture.

I feel like we got off on the wrong foot.  Can we start over?  I in no way wanted this thread to be contentious; I just wanted people who were interested in the Bo Prime to know there were meaningfully better ways to build it than the ways I had been seeing.*

While I disagree that my post is meaningless conjecture (as it's based on actual tests I did), you are 100% correct that I've provided no proof.  And heck, it would be hypocritical for me to encourage you to be anything other than skeptical of what I've said, since a major facet of my original post is the fact that you can't always believe what you hear; after all, I'm trying to correct what I see as misinformation that has been (unintentionally) spread by several content creators!  People shouldn't trust me on my word alone; they should absolutely try it out for themselves and verify the results!

 

23 minutes ago, angryjanitor said:

Bo Incarnon has NOTHING in particular that stands out in any of these categories. It has mediocre stats, no unique gimmick, and staves just have bad stances.

With respect, do you really not think that 10.5 meters of range and 62% base status chance stands out?  I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of all weapons but those seem fairly exceptional to me.

Regardless, if you want to categorize the Bo Incarnon in whatever tier makes sense to you, I think that's fine.  What's great to me might be trash to you and that's valid.

*And just to be clear, I agree that the Bo Incarnon is not on the same level as a weapon like the Praedos, and I would never say anything with the intent of suggesting that it was.

[(XBOX)DollBoyWren]

I'm not sure how you've been so misread. But your information gives fine ideas for optimizing weapons not typical. Meta isn't that important. That is, it isn't if you dont play meta. KPM is always better either way. I like the idea for this build. I used to use the bo all the time when I first started. Staves are fun imo. Have a good day!

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

On 2023-06-12 at 4:30 PM, Traumtulpe said:

You are right in so far as that a maximum of 40% chance to proc slash per hit isn't good, and neither is 50% follow through.

Take the Pangolin Prime, not exactly an outstanding weapon at this point, with only Weeping Wounds it has a 130% chance to proc slash (and 0.6 follow through) - that's more than 3 times the DPS of the Incarnon Bo Prime (damage including evolutions and attack speed roughly equals out).

So DE just released a new shiny that has <1/3 the DPS of an old, forgotten primed weapon. And somehow you made a thread how it's "better than we've heard". No it isn't.

The whole point of the post is that people should try doing a different build on bo incarnon than building for slash. 

Of course a sword is going to be better, but that's not supposed to be surprising, since Broken War, Dakra Prime, Pangolin Prime, Prisma Skana, and even Skana Prime are all good due to having really high cc and status combined with high slash. 

But for the people who want to use a staff, the post is to say that people who thought bo prime was interesting should get it anyway since the weapon can be good if built for it.

[Traumtulpe]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

[...]

I really don't think you can make the Bo work. It's just bad.

How about instead you try out the Furax Incarnon? It's also bad at slashing, but what it can do is kill a blob of 20 armored enemies with a single ground finisher, and proc Trickery on top. Not exactly meta, but a far cry from hitting a group with the Bo and... doing pretty much nothing.