Talk:Talons/@comment-2602:306:3725:2590:F0A2:5F14:B2A8:CC68-20181009231912

I see no reason to use this compared to the Sancti Castanas (which by the way are only slightly less garbage)

1) Sancti Castanas have a better and more versatile damage type to mod with. Innate blast damage is garbage against just about every faction and is only usable as a CC tool (why have blast damage on a mine that is meant to kill in one shot, the damage type just won't deal bonus damage against health types that matter and if it doesn't kill it just ragdolls them away instead and you have to chase them down to continue the mission) or as a Condition Overload powerup. Electric is useful to combine into raw Radiation (hello primed heated charge) or Corrosive damage.

2) Sancti Castanasa have an innate syndicate effect, Talons do not.

3) Sancti Castanas have higher base damage per mine.

The only upsides that might matter at all for Talons is 1) Talons deal damage in a 5m radius AoE while Sancti Castanas deal damage in a 3m radius AoE. 2) Talons have a magazine capacity of 4, but it doesn't matter since Sancti Castanas + Barrel Diffusion + Lethal Torrent = 2 throws of 3 castanas each which is the cap on Sancti Castanas' mines and you detonate after every empty magazine. Talons have a cap of 8 so you'll cap out if you use the typical multishot mods prior to emptying the magazine.

While the page denotes that the Talons get +150% damage if exploded when the mine is directly attached to an enemy, this is verifiably false/bugged.

Testing methodology:

Sancti Castanas with only maxed Hornet Strike equipped and no other mods = 960 Electric damage in Arsenal UI. Test against any Infested Charger, whose health type has no armor and no resistances/weaknesses to electric or blast damage. It deals 960 damage + electric proc per castana (non-crit) as expected.

Talons with only maxed Hornet Strike equipped and no other mods = 384 Blast damage in Arsenal UI. Test against any Infested Charger, whose health type has no armor and no resistances/weaknesses to electric or blast damage. It deals 800! damage per talon + puncture and blast proc (non-crit) which is unexpected. It does not have differing damage values regardless of distance of talon to an enemy. It does not deal bonus damage if the talon is attached to an enemy. So this would indicate that Talons have a hidden 2.083x multipier to their stated damage. Not that this even matters, because Sancti Castanas still have a higher base damage even after this hidden damage multiplier, with a base damage type that can be adjusted better to enemy health type.

Furthermore, I see very little usable reason to ever use the throwable-mine type secondaries to begin with. Even after their "buff". Even when considering rivens.

1) Any Warframe that can effectively clump together enemies (Nidus, Mag, Vauban) to maximize the damage per mine would never use these when secondaries like Mara Detron or Pox exist that can deal persistent AoE damage or can cause immense amounts of status applications.

2) Any warframe that would want a stealthy secondary to not break invisibility (Ivara, Loki, Ash) would never use these over just using a silence mod on a strong secondary which is still more efficiently playable than these. Although if you want a meme build, I suppose you could try using Navigator with Ivara and forgoing wasted multishot mods for higher single target damage. But why... When you can just use the Artemis Bow augment or navigate a Lenz arrow for bigger AoE boom?

3) Any warframe that just wants effective AoE death would never use these over an Atomos or Kulstar or something similar.

4) Any warframe that wants a self-damage weapon would never use these because DE's already nerfed almost any reason to ever use self-damage on any warframe, save possibly building Vex armor with a glaive. Not to mention that Talons, unlike Castanas, DO force a knockdown on the player if you detonated while still in range.

5) Multishot's spread is much too wide to effectively toss down a hallway since inevitably both side mines just clip onto the wall or other environment geometry early.

The deployable mine secondaries are still garbage in terms of usability. Are their crit and status and base damage values excellent on paper? Sure thing, boss. But that damage and status is worthless if you can't efficiently and easily apply it to enemies. It's like the old adage of a big engine doesn't matter if the rubber can't meet the road. The vehicle to transfer that damage and status is still so absurdly clunky that no real damage/number tweaks to deployable mine weapons would really matter if you keep limiting the magazine size, max ammo, and deployable maximum mine numbers to where the weapon class is effectively unusable.