Best Primary Weapon?

[(XBOX)ZaBaconator3000]

What is it? Is it the Soma, Latron Prime, Braton Prime, or something else? I know the answers will vary but I'm looking for the best weapon to use.

[taiiat]

'best' is subjective. subject to situation, needs, and player playstyle/skill.

any and all answers you get will be wrong.

 

 

my vote is for MK-1 Paris.

:>

[Watlok]

Quanta is a top tier primary. I have fully leveled mods and have full formad some prime, boltor prime, quanta, opticor, paris prime, and ogris. 

 

Boltor Prime is actually kind of underwhelming compared to Quanta/Soma Prime. The issue with Soma Prime is you burn through ammo. Boltor's main issue is you have to reload often and the travel time on the projectile. Quanta's drawback is around 15% less dps on paper and a 50m range.

 

In practice it's nearly identical because of reload timings In a wave 40 t4d you won't reload a quanta once during a wave (even with vile accel+shred), while you will reload a boltor prime at least twice. 

 

Opticor is pretty underhwelming. It fires too slowly (including reload, without reload it fires at an okay pace once you have many fire rate mods) and does the same dps as quanta. Which makes little sense, because a weapon that's subpar due to its fire rate could probably do twice the dps of boltor prime/soma prime and still be worse. But that's pretty much a universal issue with "sniper" style weapons in this game, and opticor despite using rifle ammo and having a borderline pointless aoe that should be innate punch-through instead is pretty much a sniper weapon. Both quanta and opticor will probably never run out of ammo no matter what content you are doing, but if there were some magical content that drained quanta ammo the opticor would run out of ammo significantly slower than the quanta for similar amounts of damage. There's 0 reason to care about this in practice, without even using ammo restores. Quanta has the added benefit of never reloading or charging attacks. You just left click as needed or hold it down and aim at stuff. The right click isn't too useful, but sometimes it's nice depending on frame.

 

The bows suffer from the same issue as opticor. The other issue with bows is heavy caliber doesn't play nice with them. One of the perks is they have innate punch-through while the opticor, unfortunately, doesn't so you must mod shred if you want it to be at all useful. Opticor does put out higher dps (vs void stuff) than any of the bows. If you want to put heavy cal in a bow then it starts to compare with the big boys, but without that it doesn't in endless content. And with it it doesn't because heavy cal kills the entire point of bows. With that said, if you really think bows are cool/fun then they are perfectly viable, and the opticor is as well. Well, not so much now with nullifiers around, but ignoring those they're fine.

 

Ogris is okay. I miss the old infinite ammo personally. It has issues sort of similar to the opticor and snipers, although less so because its aoe is giant in comparison. There's really no reason to use anything other than quanta/boltor prime/soma prime though when it comes to the "best" weapon. Ogris is also awful vs nullifiers. Nullifiers pretty much killed half of the high tier weapons unless you want to let other people handle them.

 

If you're just looking for burst damage then secondaries win in that department. Brakk if it does enough damage before reloading, or synoid gammacor if not because its ammo lasts ages even with a high burst build. Both burst more than any of the primaries anyone has listed here. Even Telos Akbolto bursts higher than the primaries listed here, although its sustained dps is pathetic once you start reloading and the life proc is significantly worse than the energy proc of the gammacor, which is by far the best single target weapon in the game.

 

Amprex gets honorable mention as well. You can easily build it to be competitive with the other high tier primaries. Amprex and bows are next on my todo list.

 

Anyway, it's pointless to stay in a survival for more than 40 mins or a t4d for more than 40 waves. So if that's all you're doing you can use whatever weapon you want. As long as you potato+forma it and mod it optimally it will do fine unless you picked something awful like the miter.

 

I'd recommend Quanta for general purpose if you plan on formaing a bunch. I use heavy cal/serration/multishot/shred/vile accel/corrosive+cold (use the full mods, not the status chance ones). The cold could be fire or a bunch of other mods depending on what you are doing, but cold is good enough general purpose and it does so much damage that I don't bother changing it. If they introduce difficult content for high end weapons then you need to min-max I guess.

 

If you plan on potatoing and not slamming formas into it then boltor prime is decent. Boltor Prime is probably the best 'newbie' gun in the game because you can use it very early on and depending on your clan you'll even get donated parts for free. I know I've hooked up a bunch of people in mine.

 

Synoid Gammacor is real beast. It out performs primaries, but there's no real good way of getting punch through on it and it only has a 15m range. You can get around it with volt shield or by not caring about your range and being close to things, but secondaries don't really compete with primaries for general use. Although you can certainly just use a good secondary instead of a primary and do just fine. Especially the synoid, which you can literally hold left click on and whip your mouse around and anything your mouse glances over melts instantly.

 

edit: And to be clear, I don't think there is a clear best. For secondaries it's pretty much synoid gammacor no debate unless you really want range or a healing proc on your secondary for some reason. For primaries there's around 5-8 weapons that are fairly equal with various pros and cons. I'd say Boltor Prime/Soma Prime/Quanta are probably top 3 in no particular order, and then slightly below them there's a bunch of stuff that lots of people have mentioned here. I might be wrong on amprex placement though I don't have experience with it.

Edited January 4, 2015 by Watlok

[HunRii]

Best for you can only be answered by you.  There are many weapons of similar strength with different mechanics in their useage.

[Terumitsu]

This is a highly subjective question as it doesn't take playstyle into account.

 

That said, Opticor is amazing but:

 

Vectis All Day

 

Vectis E'rry Day.

[(PSN)IIIDevoidIII]

Answers will vary because you don't specify. 
I can argue that the Dread and the Opticor are just as good as a Boltor Prime and it will be impossible to prove that I am right or wrong. 
It's the beauty of the game and also the flaw of your question.

 

Moved to a more appropriate subforum.

[Z123FFSS89]

I'm going to have to agree with everyone saying the quanta. After using the synoid gammacor something in my mind clicked and was like QUANTA!!! I knew I didn't sell you for a reason lol.

[Snydrex]

Opticor for me. I just love teh lazors.

[VKhaun]

Best primary weapon for doing what, at what level, vs what faction?

[Zaniux]

Quanta > Boltor Prime.

[Im_All_In]

Amprex for me <3

[Utarious]

Paris Prime is love.

 

Paris Prime is life.

[The_Ellimist]

Paris prime FOREEEEEVER. ...and opticor(with shred)

[PureMalice]

Same here, Amprex lovin all the way, nothing says dead like screaming lightning bolts cooking everything in front of you, well....that and that lovely POP Nukor makes baking enemies like dollar store lasagna.

In the end though its all up to your personal choice, some love soma, others Attica with thunderbolt, find the combo YOU play best with, and as the saying goes, Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life.

The game is loaded to the gills with grindiness, find the way that makes that grind enjoyable & interesting to you.

[The_Ellimist]

Dead at dollar store lasagna. Random super funniness.

[Separius]

primary weapon

 

Lol, just get a synoid gammacor, you won't need a primary

[Xaturas]

Current meta

Boltor P

Synnoid Gammacor

Melee is based on waht you want copter or dmg or smth else, so either Scindo P, D Nikana, D Zoren, Bo P, Orthos P or whatever floats your boat.

[Simaka_Wolf]

Quata ^_^

 

7 Formas

 

[(XBOX)Grihaly]

Synoid Gammacor.

[OuTlAwTACO229]

Best rifles:

-Soma Prime, Boltor Prime and Latron Wraith/Prime

Best sniper:

-Vectis by far

Best bow or charge up weapons:

-Opticor, Paris Prime, Dread and Lanka

Best unique weapons:

-Quanta, Amprex, Phage and Synapse

Best shotguns:

-Boar Prime, Strun Wraith and Hek

Edited January 4, 2015 by OuTlAwTACO229

[(PSN)SpearOfTheKnight]

Paris prime, Dread, Opticor, Phage, Latron Prime,Soma Prime, Boltor prime, Braton prime, Synapse, Amprex Penta and Ogris

[_FrostPrime_]

MK-1 Braton or uninstall

[Darzk]

Agreed that charge weapons are subpar in lower level content, and if you're going to bail like 40 minutes in you wont see them shine. But the Opticor and the Paris Prime (and maybe the Vectis/Dread on a lucky crit) are the only weapons that can one shot a level 100+ Corrupted Heavy Gunner (even without 4x CP) before they can begin firing for hundreds of hit-scan damage per round at you and teammates, and that makes them very valuable.

 

Quanta's a great weapon, but the DPS is very sub-par compared to other top tier weapons. The compensation is the AoE secondary fire and the slow ammo consumption. You can get the DPS up by including RoF mods in the build but they won't contribute to the secondary damage, meaning you should only do so if you're going to use primary fire only (and sometimes you need the AoE burst).

Edited January 4, 2015 by Darzk

[Watlok]

Agreed that charge weapons are subpar in lower level content, and if you're going to bail like 40 minutes in you wont see them shine. But the Opticor and the Paris Prime (and maybe the Vectis/Dread on a lucky crit) are the only weapons that can one shot a level 100+ Corrupted Heavy Gunner (even without 4x CP) before they can begin firing for hundreds of hit-scan damage per round at you and teammates, and that makes them very valuable.

 

Quanta's a great weapon, but the DPS is very sub-par compared to other top tier weapons. The compensation is the AoE secondary fire and the slow ammo consumption. You can get the DPS up by including RoF mods in the build but they won't contribute to the secondary damage, meaning you should only do so if you're going to use primary fire only (and sometimes you need the AoE burst).

The quanta left click does identical dps to the opticor. The only advantage of the opticor is its dps is all burst.

 

If you don't believe me check a calc or do the math by hand. Make sure to put in actual optimal builds not the default garbage on warframe builder.

Edited January 4, 2015 by Watlok

[Darzk]

The quanta left click does identical dps to the opticor. The only advantage of the opticor is its dps is all burst.

 

If you don't believe me check a calc or do the math by hand. Make sure to put in actual optimal builds not the default garbage on warframe builder.

Opticor = 15631 (http://goo.gl/Z2Lftd)

Quanta = 9854 (http://goo.gl/BXwsmm)

 

Adding RoF mods to the Quanta can spike it to 13683 (http://goo.gl/v6Wh3y) but reduces the damage of the secondary fire by 43%.

 

Edit: So yeah, I call Quanta's <10k subpar compared to weapons like Boltor Prime, which pulls 18-20k sustained, or Soma Prime pulling 21.5k (75k with headshots).

Edited January 4, 2015 by Darzk

[Watlok]

Opticor = 15631 (http://goo.gl/Z2Lftd)

Quanta = 9854 (http://goo.gl/BXwsmm)

 

Adding RoF mods to the Quanta can spike it to 13683 (http://goo.gl/v6Wh3y) but reduces the damage of the secondary fire by 43%.

 

Edit: So yeah, I call Quanta's <10k subpar compared to weapons like Boltor Prime, which pulls 18-20k sustained, or Soma Prime pulling 21.5k (75k with headshots).

http://goo.gl/eu6tli is a less horrible quanta build (14.4), and secondary dps is irrelevant beacuse you shouldn't really be using it in high level content and it still obliterates everything instantly in low level/wave 40 carries or whatever.

 

The literal numbers for quanta vs boltor prime vs soma prime vs opticor when fighting vs corrupted are like:

 

Opticor - 18.1k dps 

Quanta (left click only) - 17.5k dps (18.5k no reload, mildly relevant because not reloading is fairly practical with quanta compared to other choices and it also illustrates how little burst the quanta has)

Boltor Prime - 21.4k dps or 20.8k with shred my note is unclear and I am too lazy to recalc but we all agree it does more than either

Soma Prime - Slightly higher than boltor prime

 

Saying it has poor dps compared to other weapons while praising the opticor is kind of a joke. Note that these are paper values, in practice human error primarily benefits the quanta while harming the opticor more than the other three.  

 

The quanta's two main drawbacks are no burst at all - prior to reloading the opticor/boltor prime/soma prime are going to smoke the quanta in damage output - and a 50m range.  The reload thing is moot. Opticor you're reloading on wave 1, and by the time quanta vs boltor/soma prime dps starts to matter you're going to be reloading with those too long before the quanta. 

 

I'd be saying the opticor is great if it had an endless clip or something, because the shot time is fine, it's the reload that totally murders the weapon's viability and enjoyability outside of niche scenarios. It's also really, really awful against nullifiers which matters until they change it.

Edited January 4, 2015 by Watlok