Talk:Dread/@comment-92.27.248.187-20160308175723

TL;DR Don't just mastery fodder this in 1 round of Draco without even putting mods in it, it's at least worth a try before you sell it hastily.

Loving this, it just became the most powerful weapon I have against real tanky high level enemies like lvl 90 Corrupted Heavy Gunner Eximi (CHGE). I had been pretty disappointed by how weak my potatoed Vectis Prime was against these types of enemies, taking 15+ headshots depending on procs to take them down. Utterly ridiculous.

Through some unrelated testing in the Simulacrum with my newly acquired Vaykor Marelok I stumbled on the fact that slash procs really tear these enemies apart, my Marelok was actually outperforming my Vectis Prime because of the near 100% status chance. I do have the option to get 96% on the Vectis but since the fire rate is so slow compared to the Marelok consistently getting the 'right' procs is more difficult, though when it does slash proc on a headshot it does hit(tick) like a truck. I'd pretty much ignored slash procs before and passed then off as either useless pitiful damage or hard hitting but far too unreliable to proc, now it was time for a re-think.

The Marelok has primarily impact damage so naturally impact procs occurred the most along with the main elemental. Since it would be optimal to be able to consistently stack slash procs with a high base damage weapon I started looking for snipers with mainly slash damage, there are none. Had a look at bows and saw the Dread which is almost pure slash! (generally considered the worst damage type in game since it isn't effective against armour or shields, and infested are the easiest opponents to deal with anyway) Luckily I just happened to have picked up the BP the prior day and had already started the crafting without even knowing its stats - praise RNGesus blessed be thy name.

Upon loading it up with a pretty standard multishot, 3 x 60% damage/status mods, Point Strike and Vital Sense, the results were just as expected. The slash procs can stack to several thousand per tick and ignore all armour. For reference normal yellow headshot crits on a lvl 90 CHGE are doing only 1900~ for me. Viral also procs very often which according to the wiki math effectively doubles any damage you do when the enemy is in this state, it also scales with enemy hp which is mainly why I chose it since my goal was to be more effective against the lvl 90+ bullet sponges.

Some enemies are immune to slash procs like Drekar Manic Bombards - one of the tankiest enemies in the game, but the damage of the guaranteed crits @4.4x mult and 25% red crit chance still outpaces my Vectis by miles which takes 30+ headshots to take down a lvl 90 DMB (Vectis also has 4.4x mult). Even a Tonkor doesn't hit for much against these guys due to their huge damage resistance. Sure you could all CP but where's the fun and challenge in that. At the moment this build is satisfyingly effective without trivialising the high level content, that's just my personal preference of how I want the experience to be. I can say that using Mirage with Eclipse on does start to make things a bit trivial, but at least if things get boring for you then you can just take another frame.

Final stats are: 125% Crit | 4.4x multiplier | 79% status | Viral main damage | 0 Forma and 1 mod slot free, I'm thinking a Shred which will require 1 Forma. Any 'non tanky' type of unit goes down in 1 hit (as you can do with many other weapons)  this only really distinguishes itself against super tanky opponents.

Other than that you can just go easy mode Tonkor (AOE is king in WF) and wipe entire rooms of 'basic' lvl 90+ enemies with 1 or 2 shots, but the low effort required meant that I personally got bored of that, hence the initial switch to the Vectis in the hopes of making the experience more challenging. Unfortunately I overdid it since the Vectis was more frustrating than challenging against the bullet sponges. I do however still take it into all void defenses, switching in a punch-through mod as it wrecks enemies who line up like skittles as they go through the main doors. When the Vectis is actually effective against the enemies I am facing then I do prefer it to the bows since there is no charge time, travel time or 'bullet' drop, and the optional high zoom comes in handy.

I know the Dread is going to be a bitch to acquire due to the RNG nature, but if you do get it don't just mastery fodder it in 1 round of Draco then sell it because it is slash damage, give it a try first and you might be pleasantly surprised.