Modding: A Checklist for Guns
Table of Contents
Overview
This guide walks through my personal checklist for building guns from scratch and is based on lessons and tips I've picked up through my time playing Warframe. Unlike the Warframe checklist which focuses on playstyle decisions and planning, this checklist focuses more on how to mod your guns step by step, based on your weapon's stats. These builds won't be 'perfect' but they're perfectly functional and will be good starting points for tweaking and refining your build.
My gun checklist has 5 questions, and at the end I've included a basic star chart and Steel Path Baza Prime build to show the process in action.
The Checklist
- What are my Base Damage Mods?
- What's my Multishot Mod?
- Is It a Viable Crit Weapon?
- Is It a Viable Status Weapon?
- What QoL Mods Should I Use?
1. What Are My Base Damage Mods?
Base damage modifiers are any mod, ability, or arcane like Serration that gives the '%Damage' stat. This is probably your most important stat since everything else scales off your modified base damage.
If we greatly simplify Warframe's damage formula it looks like:
Damage = (Base Damage x Base Damage Modifiers) x ... (Crit, Elements, Multishot, etc.)
Generally you'll want 1-2 sources of base damage. Any more than that and the diminishing returns you run into usually mean other mod types will be more effective. Check out the Modding: Advanced Concepts guide for more on diminishing returns. The most common sources are Serration (primaries), Hornet Strike (secondaries), and Point Blank (shotguns), along with Merciless and Deadhead Arcanes after unlocking Steel Path.
2. What's my Multishot Mod?
Multishot is the chance for your weapon to fire extra projectiles per shot (without consuming extra ammo). These extra projectiles behave like regular projectiles and fire at the same time as the initial shot. For example, a weapon with 2.9 Multishot has a 100% chance to fire a second projectile and a 90% chance to fire a third for each trigger pull.
Note: Beam weapons handle Multishot differently. Instead of additional projectiles, each damage tick has a chance to deal bonus damage. This also causes weird interactions with damaging status effects, causing them to be greatly boosted by Multishot.
Like base damage, you'll generally want 1-2 sources of Multishot. The most common sources are Split Chamber (primaries), Barrel Diffusion (secondaries), and Hell's Chamber (shotguns).
2a. Should I Consider Acuity Instead?
Acuity mods are an alternative to multishot mods and offer an alternate gameplay style. These mods disable multishot entirely, but grant a massive increase to weakpoint crit chance and weakpoint damage.
This is generally considered a DPS nerf for most weapons that benefit from applying multiple status effects. However, for players that like to focus on consistently landing headshots and for weapons designed around that like snipers and some bows, this can be a great alternative. Do note, that Acuity necessitates having a high weakpoint accuracy to maintain good DPS numbers. For more comfort, run multishot instead.
3. Is It a Viable Crit Weapon?
In my opinion, a weapon is generally crit viable if it has at least 15% crit chance (CC) and 2x crit damage (CD). Below that threshold, crit mods aren't usually worth the slots.
CC and CD work synergistically since more CC means more crits and more crits means more shots getting boosted by the weapon's CD. As such, when you're modding CC you usually want to mod CD as well.
Common sources include Point Strike + Vital Sense (primaries), Pistol Gambit + Target Cracker (secondaries), and Blunderbuss + Ravage (shotguns), along with their corrupted variants from Deimos Dragon Key Vaults.
What if my weapon has low CC but high CD?
Some weapons have very low CC but good CD values, like the Kuva Nukor (7% CC, 5x CD). In these cases flat crit buffs can help force crits to benefit from the high CD. Flat crit buffs are generally final modifiers to a weapon's crit chance that do not scale based on the weapon's base CC. For example, Arcane Avenger has a conditional +45% CC buff. For the Nukor, this would turn the 7% CC into 52% CC (equivalent to a +642% CC mod in this situation)! Since your crit chance is sourced elsewhere, you can skip CC mods entirely and run 1-2 CD mods instead.
4. Is It a Viable Status Weapon?
To judge if a weapon is status viable, you need to consider its status chance, fire rate, and multitarget capability through either AOE or punch through. As a rough guideline, a weapon is status viable with:
- At least 15-20% status chance and a decent fire rate
- At least 10-15% status chance and a high fire rate or strong multitarget capability
If your weapon is status viable, then the main decision becomes whether to run 60/60 mods like Pistol Pestilence (60% Element + 60% status chance) or standard 90% elemental mods like Hellfire. 60/60 mods are better for status focused builds, while 90% mods tend to be better for raw damage or when trying to adjust your status weighting.
Note: Not sure which elements to run? Check out the Damage Types & Status Effects guide and check out the status effects and tips sections.
5. What QoL Mods Should I Use?
QoL mods are a broad category covering anything that makes a weapon 'feel' better to use or just doesn't really fit into the previous four questions. It's where I include fire rate, punch through, and status damage mods and other similar mods.
At this point I'd recommend hopping into the Simulacrum or a test mission and see how the weapon feels.
- If the fire rate or draw speed feels slow, add a fire rate mod
- If the weapon struggles against groups consider punch through or (AOE elemental combos)
- If my weapon applies a lot of status DoTs, add an Elementalist mod which boosts status effect damage
- Faction mods are strong but situational, not worth prioritizing early
- Rivens can fill this slot, but can be expensive to invest in early. Not necessary for most builds.
Example: Basic Baza Prime Build
The Baza Prime is a silenced submachine gun primary with decent stats across the board, making it a pretty standard weapon to mod for. This basic build is geared towards regular star chart and avoids any Galvanized and Primed mods. If you don't have the capacity to fit all of your mods, prioritize them in checklist order.
1. What Are My Base Damage Mods?
Serration (+165% damage)
2. What's My Multishot Mod?
Split Chamber (+90% multishot)
3. Is It a Viable Crit Weapon?
With 28% CC and a 3x CD it's very crit viable. Slotting in Point Strike and Vital Sense
4. Is It a Viable Status Weapon?
At 14% status chance and 16.67 shots per second it's on the lower end for status chance but has a high fire rate which makes it status viable. Running the Corrosive and Heat for this example since I'm planning to fight the Grineer. You can change the elements around for other factions. If you don't have 60/60 mods yet, you can always use 90% elemental mods.
5. What QoL Mods Should I Use?
With one slot left, you have to consider what quality of life mod you'd want. My personal pick in this situation is Shred (+30% fire rate and +1.2m punch through). The Baza Prime has good single target damage, so with more punch through it should be able to hit multiple enemies in hordes.
Example: SP Baza Prime Build
It's the same weapon, but now I'm assuming you have access to a lot more content.
1. What Are My Base Damage Mods?
Swapping to Galvanized Aptitude, the gun-version of Condition Overload. On kill, it gains stacks of bonus direct hit damage for each status type affecting the target. It takes 2 kills to fully ramp up but is easy to maintain once it does.
Note: Galvanized Aptitude's damage numbers will look worse in the arsenal since conditional effects aren't reflected in the arsenal stats.
2. What's My Multishot Mod?
Swapping to Galvanized Chamber, the scaling version of Split Chamber.
2a. Should I Consider Acuity Instead?
I'm not since I use the Baza Prime on faster frames where landing consistent headshots isn't always practical. The stats aren't bad for an Acuity build so if you prefer that playstyle, you can make that call.
3. Is It a Viable Crit Weapon?
Swapping Point Strike for Critical Delay for higher CC at the cost of some fire rate. Keeping Vital Sense for CD.
4. Is It a Viable Status Weapon?
Yes, so running Malignant Force + High Voltage for Corrosive and Hellfire for Heat.
5. What QoL Mods Should I Use?
Swapping to Primed Shred to make up for some of the lost fire rate from Critical Delay and get more punch through. Slotting Primary Crux in the arcane slot for up to 300% extra status chance and 60% ammo efficiency which is great for sub machine guns which often run into ammo issues.
