Mutalist Quanta

The Mutalist Quanta is an Infested fused Quanta with a rapid-fire function in place of the Quanta's continuous fire feature. In place of zoom, Mutalist Quanta has a secondary fire function which projects floating masses of infested tissues, that irradiate enemies and bullets on contact. It is also the first weapon to possess a separate secondary fire mode that is not engaged via charging.

Characteristics
Advantages:
 * Deals high damage as well as moderate  damage, making it effective against both heavy and light armored Grineer.
 * Its high fire rate and area of effect allows it to dispatch groups of Infested with ease.
 * Good status chance.
 * Perfect accuracy, identical to the Dera and Flux Rifle.
 * Has a polarity.
 * Secondary Fire:
 * Shots fired through the orb deal additional damage.
 * Confuses enemies into attacking one another, making it useful for crowd control.
 * Causes instant hit-scan damage to target on initial fire.
 * Orbs produced can be moved around using melee attacks, allowing the mass to be thrown into multiple enemies after coming to a stop.

Disadvantages:
 * Very low critical chance.
 * Inability to zoom.
 * Normal shots have slight travel time.
 * Secondary Fire:
 * Fires a slow-moving projectile that moves at speeds similar to Napalm shots that decrease in speed after being ejected.
 * Consumes 15 rounds; will not function with less than 15 rounds.
 * Long delay until explosion (9 sec).
 * Damages player on explosion.
 * Bounces off environment and occasionally enemies.
 * Can only have a default total of two orbs active.
 * Long reload time in comparison to DPS statistics.

Weapon Loadouts
See the user build section for builds using this weapon.

Tips

 * The weapon's secondary fire goes really well with Mirage's Hall of Mirrors as her clones have the ability to shoot at least one projectile, up to six projectiles can be fired at once.
 * Due to the weapon's inefficient ammo economy, Rifle Ammo Mutation and/or Rifle Scavenger are useful at providing sufficient ammo for extended gunfights. Team Ammo Restore can also be used to replenish ammo quickly.
 * Heavy Caliber seems to have very little affect on the Mutalist Quanta's accuracy in-game, making it a viable option for increasing the weapon's damage output.
 * As this weapon has no zoom function, Eagle Eye has no effect.

Bugs

 * Orbs also will sometimes detonate prematurely when forced into objects, enemies, players, or other orbs.

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 the 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 will rotate when firing and the Infested growth moves at all times as well.
 * Oddly, the Infested part of the weapon is static in the Arsenal screen, but becomes animated in a mission.
 * While reloading, the Infested part of the weapon will pull the "clip" out of the gun and throw it away.
 * This is the first weapon to repurpose the Zoom key into a separate Alternate Fire key that results in a completely different attack.
 * This weapon is the third hybrid weapon added in the game (incorporating both Corpus and Infested characteristics), preceded by the Orokin/Grineer Seer and the Infested/Grineer Torid.
 * The 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 result of the Infestation of the weapon resulted in the arms to rotate when firing, normal shots turned into individual energy bursts that deal physical damage opposed to electricity, and the cubes to eject partially Infested energy.