The Cernos Prime, marriage of two classes of Flaws

[SquireAngel]

So, I'm a pretty big fan of Bows. I love the Paris Prime, I love the Rakta Cernos, I love the Dread, and I even have a special place in my heart for the Mutalist Cernos and Daikyu. When I saw the Cernos Prime model, I started drooling. The bow itself looks amazing, and even the arrows kinda scream beautiful opulence. I saw the stats and while not breaking ground in any department, I was still very eager to get my hands on it. I then started to hear the weird Multishot incorporation and I figured it was simply something to set it apart from being a slower Rakta Cernos. I farmed the parts, dropped it into the Foundry and waited. What I expected was a bow with performance comparable to the previous bows. What I got was a weird marriage of a shotgun like bow that couldn't excel in the close range dps a shotgun could, and couldn't boast the single target DPS a well placed arrow could. 

So, shotguns can boast a LOT of power close range, with Boar Prime, Vaykor Hek, the Tigris family, and Strun Wraith boasting impressively high numbers, and the Sobek close on their heels. Smashing an enemy point blank range, and still decent even out to moderate range, with a hand full of pellets can make short work of any enemy. This reliance on high pellet hits confirmed is both how the shotgun is kept to the chest in terms of long range -as well as a dmg fall off mechanic-, as it simply spreads out too far to keep the damage clustered. This is a mechanic that splitting damage amongst arrows has passed on to the Cernos Prime. 

Bows belong between snipers and rifles, being slightly more moderately range focused than snipers like a rifle, but boasting the high singular shot damage that explodes on well placed headshots. Body shots can be still rather hard hitting, but the difference in damage can see a 9k body shot elevated to a 60k+ headshot. The longer range allows for smaller movements to account for enemy movement and create an easier time hitting these headshots. The single shot mechanic can be rather slow compared to other rifles, and this makes it weak at handling enemies at close range, as much greater movement is needed to confirm headshots. This is a mechanic the Cernos Prime does not perform well. The fanned shot will only see one arrow hit, and because the damage is spread, it deals significantly less damage. 

So, the Cernos Prime doesn't have the high Pellet/Arrow count to make it effective in close proximity, and the Damage spread gives it significantly weaker headshot potential. The Cernos Prime is a good prime, it has good DPS, and it has a fantastic weapon model, like, I REALLY love this weapon model, but It's not a good bow. The mechanics are simply too counter intuitive, and even running it how it kinda none commitally wants to used yields really inconsistent and unsatisfying results.

 

[Rounpositron]

I love Chewbacca's crossbow. Seems like it has Blast damage.

Have you tried Rivens with negative multishot? (Does it work like that?)

Edited December 17, 2016 by Rounpositron

[Raniu]

It has high status chance and innate punch through.

It's good against groups, better mod it for gas/radiation/blast and forget about headshots. Also, I find the weapon incredibly fun :D Not every weapon has to be "godtier". And a bow that is so different from other bows... just try to enjoy it.

[Hixlysss]

Based on how you feel about the cernos prime, I bet you also dislike Ivara's bow. Honestly a "shotgun bow" seems...weird. But I donno how the damage is split among the arrows. Is the damage we see in game split among it's arrows, or is that for each arrow? The former is bad, the latter is good, but from understanding the damage we see is "per shot" with the exception being the redeemer whos stats show a per pellet damage rather than per shot.

So basically, to make the cernos prime "better" we need to either buff it's damage, or remove multishot, correct?

[SenorClipClop]

It'd be cool if they could make a toggle fire for this, like on the Strad or the Zarr. Pressing secondary fire could switch the Cernos into single-shot mode.

[Xebov]

25 minutes ago, Raniu said:

It has high status chance and innate punch through.

10% Status chance is nothing i would count as high, especially not on a weapon that is that slow.

 

29 minutes ago, Raniu said:

It's good against groups, better mod it for gas/radiation/blast and forget about headshots. Also, I find the weapon incredibly fun :D Not every weapon has to be "godtier". And a bow that is so different from other bows... just try to enjoy it.

Fun is nice, until you try to do the higher level contant and dont get anything killed. Thats the main issue of the game. All weapons can be fun and can be sued to beat the core game, but only a few can kill high level enemies. Thats why ppl are mad about the Cernos Prime. Its fun, it looks good, but it will not perform well on high level enemies.

 

10 minutes ago, Hixlysss said:

Based on how you feel about the cernos prime, I bet you also dislike Ivara's bow. Honestly a "shotgun bow" seems...weird. But I donno how the damage is split among the arrows. Is the damage we see in game split among it's arrows, or is that for each arrow? The former is bad, the latter is good, but from understanding the damage we see is "per shot" with the exception being the redeemer whos stats show a per pellet damage rather than per shot.

The bow has inate multishot. It fires 3 arrows and each of them doing 1/3 of the base damage. Using additional multishot will clone these arrows, while not impacting the damage per arrow.

 

11 minutes ago, Hixlysss said:

So basically, to make the cernos prime "better" we need to either buff it's damage, or remove multishot, correct?

We need to add a fire mode switch that allows to switch between multiple arrows and a single one to allow it to become more usefull against single targets. And a bit better reload speed would be nice, so far Cernos Prime requires ~50% more time to reload like any otehr bow in game.

[UltimateGrr]

6 hours ago, Xebov said:

The bow has inate multishot. It fires 3 arrows and each of them doing 1/3 of the base damage. Using additional multishot will clone these arrows, while not impacting the damage per arrow.

This is how every multishot gun in the game works.  Damage listed is divided between every projectile fired per trigger pull.  The fact that this is surprising to some people is truly shocking to me.

[fr4gb4ll]

OP beated to this post ^.^

i share this love for bows and also the dismay in this attempt to create a artemis bow for none-ivaras. i would be quite alright with it, IF the multi-arrow would be a secondary firemode (or at least if we can fire on arrow only with the sec. fire). as it stand, the bow is pretty much a half assed silent shotgun (and not even usefull in comparison with those).

sure, the total damage of the cernos is better than any other bow, but since it is divided to all arrows, and you won't get all of them into one target most of the time, it's far weaker in normal cases of fighting - worse, if you try to do stealth with it, those "stray" arrows tend to do you more harm by hitting someone/something else with the typical result of pissed enemies shooting at you back and pushing the alarm buttons... very annoying. saying its a great status weapon, is a bit exaggerated, for you must put in all of those dual mods into it to get somewhere - and that will go to the cost of damage and/or critical chance/damage. when i build it like the rakta cernos (or in this, like the dread and paris prime too), i end up with only the basic 10% status + split chambers 8.1%. but i would have two elemental mods of chioce and acrit chance of 104.3% with crit. damage multiplier of 4.4x. the charge rate would be much worse than any other bows though (0.68) but that would be ok for the multiarrows.

all in all, this is yet another fun-only weapon with sadly to few uses in our day-to-day missions, and could really use an overhaul like the above mentioned secondary firemode to switch between one and multi arrows (which i also wish the artemis bow of ivara had) - with maybe the single shot having a total damage a bit above the one from the rakta cernos.

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

Just out of curiosity, would a high enough negative multi shot on a cernos riven make cernos prime shoot one arrow while still having the benefits of split chamber? Could that work?

Edited December 18, 2016 by (XB1)FCastle74

[Xebov]

22 minutes ago, (Xbox One)FCastle74 said:

Just out of curiosity, would a high enough negative multi shot on a cernos riven make cernos prime shoot one arrow while still having the benefits of split chamber? Could that work?

What benefit? Split Chamber just adds more Projectiles and the way the Projectiels are arranged is a horizontal spread for this weapon.

[fr4gb4ll]

30 minutes ago, (Xbox One)FCastle74 said:

Just out of curiosity, would a high enough negative multi shot on a cernos riven make cernos prime shoot one arrow while still having the benefits of split chamber? Could that work?

how would you achive "negative multishot" at all? though, being able to "invert" the stats of mods sure would be interesting...

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

10 minutes ago, Xebov said:

What benefit? Split Chamber just adds more Projectiles and the way the Projectiels are arranged is a horizontal spread for this weapon.

Just was wondering of you could negate the cernos prime inate multi shot? 

Edited December 18, 2016 by (XB1)FCastle74

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

2 minutes ago, fr4gb4ll said:

how would you achive "negative multishot" at all? though, being able to "invert" the stats of mods sure would be interesting...

Just was wondering of you could negate the cernos prime inate multi shot?

Edited December 18, 2016 by (XB1)FCastle74

[Xebov]

Just now, (Xbox One)FCastle74 said:

Just was wondering of you could negate the cernos prime inate multi shot? 

And that would get you what benefit exactly?

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

Just now, Xebov said:

And that would get you what benefit exactly?

Damage would not be spread out over 3 arrows and u could still benefit from Heavy cal?

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

So cernos riven with -75% multi shot and then add split chamer +90% multi shot,  would that give you two arrows side by side? (not good at math) then u could add heavy cal with no accuracy penalty? 

Edited December 18, 2016 by (XB1)FCastle74

[Xebov]

4 minutes ago, (Xbox One)FCastle74 said:

Damage would not be spread out over 3 arrows and u could still benefit from Heavy cal?

You have no idea how Multishot works do you? If you have only 1/3 of the Arrows you will also only do 1/3 of the damage, arrows dont magically increase there damage just because you have less of them.

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

3 minutes ago, Xebov said:

You have no idea how Multishot works do you? If you have only 1/3 of the Arrows you will also only do 1/3 of the damage, arrows dont magically increase there damage just because you have less of them.

So cernos riven with -75% multi shot and then add split chamer +90% multi shot,  would that give you two arrows side by side? (not good at math) then u could add heavy cal with no accuracy penalty

? Disregard the damage, i just want two arrows from cernos prime with heavy cal still an option with no accuracy penalty.

Edited December 18, 2016 by (XB1)FCastle74

[Xebov]

Just now, (Xbox One)FCastle74 said:

So cernos riven with -75% multi shot and then add split chamer +90% multi shot,  would that give you two arrows side by side? (not good at math) then u could add heavy cal with no accuracy penalty? 

Less Arrows = less damage. Your example is pointless as it would lead nowhere.

[2035]

2 minutes ago, (Xbox One)FCastle74 said:

So cernos riven with -75% multi shot and then add split chamer +90% multi shot,  would that give you two arrows side by side? (not good at math) then u could add heavy cal with no accuracy penalty? 

That's like asking if I use a  -165% damage mod and the apply a +100% damage mod to get -330% damage. In this particular property, they'll counter act b4 applying effects, there are some exceptions for certain mods in certain orders but this case isn't one. for the proposal to ever begin to seem plausible, you'd ideally want 3 mods featuring -99%,-100%,-101% Mutishot to even enter extensive test data maybe even more.

[Xebov]

2 minutes ago, Cicadeus said:

That's like asking if I use a  -165% damage mod and the apply a +100% damage mod to get -330% damage. In this particular property, they'll counter act b4 applying effects, there are some exceptions for certain mods in certain orders but this case isn't one. for the proposal to ever begin to seem plausible, you'd ideally want 3 mods featuring -99%,-100%,-101% Mutishot to even enter extensive test data maybe even more.

I guess he has no idea how multishot works and expects that the damage stays the same so he has more damage per remaining arrow.

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

13 minutes ago, Xebov said:

Less Arrows = less damage. Your example is pointless as it would lead nowhere.

So my dread riven has +88% multi shot and split chamber and still shoots only 2 arrows....What i was attempting was to somthing similar to cernos prime,  except use heavy cal and split chamber  to make up for the negative affect of a -multi shot riven while still firing only 2 arrows? So like the way a rakta cernos shoots with split chamber but with heavy cal also with no accuracy penalty.

Edited December 18, 2016 by (XB1)FCastle74

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

So basically the question was:

can u get cernos prime to only fire 1 arrow (via riven mod) then add split chamber and heavy cal with no penalty to accuracy? 

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

20 minutes ago, Xebov said:

I guess he has no idea how multishot works and expects that the damage stays the same so he has more damage per remaining arrow.

So basically the question was: 

can u get cernos prime to only fire 1 arrow (via riven mod) then add split chamber and heavy cal with no penalty to accuracy?

Edited December 18, 2016 by (XB1)FCastle74

[Xebov]

21 minutes ago, (Xbox One)FCastle74 said:

So my dread riven has +88% multi shot and split chamber and still shoots only 2 arrows....What i was attempting was to somthing similar to cernos prime,  except use heavy cal and split chamber  to make up for the negative affect of a -multi shot riven while still firing only 2 arrows?

About your Dread Riven: +88% and +90% are 178% Multishot. Which means you always shoot 2 arrows and have a 78% chance of shooting a 3rd one. You might not see the 3rd one due to arrows sticking inside each other.

 

10 minutes ago, (Xbox One)FCastle74 said:

So basically the question was:

can u get cernos prime to only fire 1 arrow (via riven mod) then add split chamber and heavy cal with no penalty to accuracy? 

You have no idea how this all works.

1.) Heavy Caliber has no accuracy penalty because Cernos Prime has a fixed arrow spread, meaning the arrows will always land in the same way no matter how much accuracy you have. It doesnt matter how much arrows you finally have as all arrows get intigrated into this fixed pattern.

 

2.) Split Chamber and its +Multishot and a Riven with -Multishot will counter each other. I dont know how they are exactly calculated internally, but your idea to reduce the number of arrows to 1 and then clone that arrow to turn it into a normal bow does not work. And no you cant change the way the base damage is distributed, if you remove innate arrows you will also loose their damage.

Edited December 18, 2016 by Xebov