Mutalist Quanta

The Mutalist Quanta is an Infested fused Quanta with a rapid-fire function in place of the Quanta's continuous fire feature. Like its normal version, the Mutalist Quanta has a secondary fire function which projects floating Infested projectiles. However, the Mutalist Quanta's projectiles proc on contact with enemies.

Characteristics
This weapon deals primarily damage.

Advantages:
 * Primary fire has high and good  damage – effective against health and armor.
 * Alternate Fire orb has innate damage – effective against Alloy Armor, Robotic, and Infested Sinew.
 * Alternate Fire explosion has innate damage – effective against Machinery and Robotic.
 * Has a special alternate fire function (see below).
 * Primary fire has good status chance.
 * Alternate fire orb has guaranteed status proc.
 * Primary fire has pinpoint accuracy.
 * 's accuracy penalty is minimal.
 * Innate polarity.

Disadvantages:
 * Primary fire has low damage – less effective against Shields.
 * Alternate fire orb has innate damage – less effective against Shielded, Infested, and Fossilized.
 * Alternate fire explosion has innate damage – less effective against Alloy Armor.
 * Extremely low base critical chance.
 * Below average base critical damage multiplier.
 * Primary fire projectiles have travel time.
 * Alternate fire projectiles have slow travel time.
 * Very low reload speed.
 * Alternate fire expends 5 ammo per shot.

Alternate Fire

 * Shoots a large, Infested orb that travels a short distance, stops, then explodes after 9 seconds. Additional shots will home in and combine with the first orb, similar to Simulor orbs.
 * Orbs can be stacked up to three times.
 * Launching an orb costs 5 ammo per orb.
 * Shots fired through a single orb will gain up to +~29% damage (without any elemental mods equipped). An orb stacked twice will yield +~190% damage, while three stacks will yield +~271% damage.
 * In general, the damage bonus consists of a reduction of base damage by 1/3 along with +101% / +379% / +510% bonus electricity damage depending on whether the orb has 1 / 2 / 3 stacks. This bonus is applied to each stack of orbs shot through, and maximum damage is typically reached for one orb with three stacks.
 * Shots fired through the orb deal additional damage.
 * Shots fired through the orb will gain additional critical chance, unaffected by mods.
 * Shots fired through the orb will also receive a 25% increase to critical multiplier, multiplicative with critical damage mods such as.
 * Enemies standing in the orb receive damage every second.
 * Orbs block enemy fire, such as Bombard rockets, from passing though.
 * Orbs deal damage and have a guaranteed status proc.
 * Orbs bounce off solid objects and can be moved around using melee attacks, allowing the mass to be thrown into multiple enemies after coming to a stop.
 * The more an orb is stacked, the larger an attractive force it will have. For example, if one orb is fired towards an existing orb that has been stacked before, the higher stacked orb will absorb the new orb.
 * Other than weapons, the following things can be affected by orbs.
 * The Operator's Void Beam will gain additional base damage and critical chance.
 * Fireball will gain damage, which combines to become  damage, and the ability to critically hit.
 * Freeze will gain the ability to critically hit as well as a damage bonus, but no damage.
 * Artemis Bow will receive a critical chance bonus and additional damage.
 * Antimatter Drop receives the ability to critically hit, as well as bonus damage.
 * The secondary projectiles of Smite will gain the ability to critically hit and bonus damage.
 * This is difficult to do as the enemy must be inside the orb for the secondary projectiles to loop around and go through the orb to hit them.
 * Direct impact from Vauban's grenades will have bonus damage, the ability to critically hit, and a low chance to deal an proc. The abilities themselves are not affected.

Tips

 * The weapon's secondary fire synergizes well with Mirage's Hall of Mirrors as her clones can shoot at least one orb each, for up to three orbs at once.
 * seems to have very little effect on the 's accuracy, making it a viable option for increasing the weapon's damage output.
 * Placing orbs in corridors or near chokepoints helps maximize the effectiveness of their boost.
 * The innate polarity matches.
 * Enemies become confused and attack one another when they touch the orb, making it useful for crowd control.
 * Orbs will immediately explode when impacting Blunts, Bulwarks, Decoys, Molts and Ramparts, allowing players instantly deal high amounts of damage.
 * While modding for additional critical chance is not recommended as the boost from the orbs does not take mods into account, modding for critical damage is recommended as the orbs allow weapons to critically hit more often and because the critical damage bonus is affected by mods.
 * Orbs can increase the critical chance of weapons to the point where they can deal red crits.
 * Weapons that can attain a critical chance of at least 38% will have the ability to deal red crits when fired through the orbs.
 * Combining orbs together will not  refresh their duration. Avoid combining orbs if one has been out for a while to conserve ammo.
 * Due to the erratic physics of the orbs and the threat of them being thrown around by allied and enemy melee attacks, it can be difficult to line up an orb 'stack' to effectively shoot through. Consider getting to higher ground and/or letting an ally distract enemies for you to avoid the threat of your orbs being moved away by melee units.

Bugs

 * Infested orbs will add a critical chance bonus to Zenistar discs and bonus damage to direct disc impacts, but will also lower the AoE damage of the disc, resulting in lower and lower damage despite eventually being able to get red crits.
 * The added electricity damage seems to combine with other single elements on projectile secondaries, but not on continuous or hitscan secondaries.
 * Infested orbs will move in random directions, usually towards the player, when stacking.
 * Orbs fired by Mirage's clones will occasionally not stack with the original orb, despite being attracted to it, which can give the Mutalist Quanta the ability to deal orange crits.
 * Said orbs can however stack and fire off in random directions.
 * In Captura, when slow motion is enabled or the player is in the War Within Choice scene, the Mutalist Quanta's arms will not rotate properly when firing; they will jerk to the side slightly between shots but move back to their neutral position by the time another shot is fired.
 * Since an unknown update, the warped orange 'cube' that once appeared aronud the infested bubbles no longer renders.

Trivia

 * The word Mutalist may refer to Mutualism, which is a sector in biology which refers to how two different species interact with each other where each individual benefits. Alternatively, it may simply be derived from mutate.
 * "Muta" is a form of the Latin verb mūtāre, which means "to alter/to change".
 * The word Quanta is plural for Quantum, used in Physics as a measure of the smallest minimum constituent of any object, ex. a Photon is the smallest quantity of light.
 * The weapon has a non-static model; the weapon's arms will rotate when firing and the Infested growth moves at all times as well.
 * The weapon's arms will continuously rotate faster the longer the user holds down the trigger. This doesn't affect the rate of fire, however.
 * While reloading, the Infested growth on top of the weapon will eject the spent energy cell and throw it away while the player inserts a new one.
 * This was the first weapon to repurpose the Zoom key into a separate Alternate Fire key that results in a completely different attack and also the first weapon to possess a separate secondary fire mode that is not engaged via charging.
 * This weapon is the third hybrid weapon in the game, incorporating both Corpus and Infested characteristics, after the Orokin/Grineer Seer and the Infested/Grineer Torid.
 * The weapon's projectiles appear to fire from the infested growth. Since the weapon rotates, the projectiles converge in a spiraling pattern toward the player's crosshair.
 * Oddly enough, the Infestation of the weapon resulted in the arms rotating when firing, normal shots turning into individual energy bursts that deal physical damage instead of electricity and the Quanta cubes being replaced by Infested orbs.
 * The Mutalist Quanta's projectile model is identical to the Paracyst's and Torid's, being a chitinous brown-violet pod with a number of large, yellow, barnacle-like 'tubes' coming from it. This can easily be seen in Captura by pausing the time and zooming in on one of the projectiles.
 * Interestingly, the energy color for both the primary and secondary firing modes is orange and is unaffected by the chosen energy color.

Patch History
Last update: