Antimatter Drop

2 50	Antimatter Drop Launches a contained particle of antimatter that will detonate upon collision. Introduced in Update 9.0 (2013-07-13)	Strength:100 / 125 / 150 / 200 (base Blast damage) 2x / 4x / 6x / 8x (absorb multiplier) 10 (contact damage)
		Duration:N/A
		Range:5 / 8 / 10 / 15 m (explosion range)
		Misc: 100% ( Blast status chance)

Info

Nova expends 50 energy to create a volatile orb of antimatter that travels forward which is steered with the aiming reticle. This particle absorbs all damage (friendly and hostile) when shot at, lasting indefinitely until it makes contact with a surface. Upon collision, the particle inflicts 10 Blast damage on contact, then explodes to inflict 100 / 125 / 150 / 200 base damage plus 2x / 4x / 6x / 8x all absorbed damage as Blast damage with 100% status chance to all enemies within 5 / 8 / 10 / 15 meters and in direct Line of Sight.
- The particle cannot absorb more damage being shot 5 times (excluding Multishot, but will count a contact + explosion attack as two hits), after which it will speed up.
- The particle cannot absorb more than 25,000 damage.
- Extra damage from Critical and Status Effects are not absorbed by the particle.
- The particle does not absorb damage from other Antimatter Drop explosions.
Recasting the ability will cause the active particle to massively speed up.
The particle is guided via the HUD's targeting reticle, steering itself towards any object the reticle is placed on including environmental obstacles and enemies.
Ability Synergy: An Antimatter Drop that enters a Wormhole absorbs 12,500 damage.
The antimatter particle appears as a sphere contained inside another sphere, with the inner sphere growing in size as it absorbs damage.
Antimatter Drop's visuals will appear gold when cast by Nova Prime.
This ability is a one-handed action; as such, it will not interrupt full actions such as reloading, charging, or shooting.

Augment

Main article: Antimatter Absorb

Antimatter Absorb is a Warframe Augment Mod for Nova's Antimatter Drop that allows it to absorb incoming enemy gunfire, adding to its total damage potential.

Antimatter Absorb

Tips & Tricks

A quick and reliable way to utilize the Antimatter Drop's damage potential is to aim it at the floor and blast it with a shotgun point blank as soon as it's launched, resulting in a radial explosion around the player. A well-modded Sancti Tigris or Tigris Prime are capable of fully charging the Drop with a single duplex shot, while Arca Plasmor's wide effective area makes it easy to hit the Drop without taking time to aim.
Antimatter Drop moves towards a point at which the player is placing their reticle, whether aiming or not. Keep this in mind to control it. If you aren't absolutely sure that enemy fire will kill you it may be wiser to persevere through the hail of bullets and continue guiding the Drop until it detonates as prematurely running for cover may cause a loaded drop to float back to you and waste your invested ammo.
If done correctly, this is the most effective ability that can be used against powerful bosses that retain a single stage of health, as a well-charged drop can deal damages up to more than 100,000 Radiation damage on a single explosion.
- The Opticor is an example of one weapon that can provide a large amount of damage to the drop.
- It is preferable to use weapons that have zero or little recoil, as recoil moves the weapon and this will move the reticle as well. Which in turn will steer the orb away from the centerline (when it flies away from you) and will make it take time to re-steer it to where you wish it to hit
Critical damage does not amplify the Drop further, as Critical hits do not affect objects.
Most likely due to the behavior of abilities with Cataclysm, it is ill-advised to use Antimatter Drop inside of said ability. The orb will always count as "outside of the rift plane" and therefore you will be unable to hit it unless you leave the Cataclysm.
Using the augment, you can create a moving shield that charges itself.
Being squad host will remove the burden on experiencing input lag when using this ability. When playing as a client the position needs to be sent to the host & back to you.

Maximization

This calculator feature is sunsetted on the wiki. It may not see further updates, but will be present on articles for the time being since some people still find use for them. See User blog:Cephalon Scientia/Sunsetting of Maximization Calculators for more details.

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Patch History[]

Update 37.0 (2024-10-02)
Antimatter Drop Changes:

Tapping the ability input while an Antimatter Drop orb is active will massively increase its speed, causing it to zoom in the direction of the player reticle.
- As a result, only one Antimatter Drop orb can be cast at a time.
- Antimatter Drop has historically been difficult to control, with its speed only increasing once the orb is “fully charged”. This change gives players the ability to shoot at the slow-moving orb to maximize damage output, and then catapult it towards unsuspecting enemies at their whim.
Changed damage type from Radiation to Blast, with 100% Status Chance.
Only 5 shots will be absorbed by Antimatter Drop to reach full charge (excluding multishot).
- Teleporting an Antimatter Drop orb via a Wormhole will automatically charge the orb halfway.
Antimatter Drop’s explosion now uses Line of Sight checks.
- With the above improvements, it is now much easier to use and packs a punch, so to prevent disruptive gameplay we added the checks. What this means is that the detonation damage will check for any part of the enemy that has been drawn on the screen, if any part of them is visible it will pass the LoS check and deal damage to them.
- In light of this change, we’ve made it so that Antimatter Drop’s explosion range is now affected by Range Mods.
Removed the delay that would occur before Antimatter exploded when making contact with a surface – it will now immediately detonate on impact!
Updated the orb’s appearance to better communicate its charging mechanic:
- The orb now looks like one sphere contained within another. The inner sphere will grow in size as damage is absorbed, until it reaches the cap.
Improved Antimatter Drop's movement logic so it tries to stay within the player's line of sight, to avoid cases of players "losing" the orb after casting.
Removed collision on the Antimatter Drop orb so it will no longer be blocked by allies. (RIP Orb Surfing 2024)

Hotfix 29.6.7 (2021-01-13)

Fixed a script error when casting Nova’s Antimatter Drop ability.

Hotfix 27.3.15 (2020-04-17)

Fixed a script error with Nova’s Antimatter Drop with the Atomica Skin equipped.

Hotfix 25.7.5 (2019-09-09)

Fixed Nova’s Antimatter Drop exploding prematurely when aiming with your gun, and looking down a bit. We attempted to fix this in Hotfix 25.7.4 (2019-09-05) but it actually broke it more!

Hotfix 22.20.9 (2018-06-07)

Nova’s Antimatter Drop base projectile damage is now reflected on the Abilities screen modified by Power Strength, and the multiplier also appears as an unchangeable 8x. This is purely a UI tweak to match how Antimatter Drop has functioned since its release.

Hotfix 22.20.8 (2018-06-05)

Reduced Nova’s Antimatter Drop max Health in half and doubled the absorbed damaged. This fixes Nova’s Antimatter Drop charging twice as quickly as a Client by buffing the Host to match Clients!

Update 22.9 (2018-01-17)

Updated all mentions of "anti-matter" to read "antimatter".

Update 20.6 (2017-05-24)

Nova’s Antimatter Drop will now auto-detonate upon Nova dying.

Update 18.9 (2016-04-20)

Changed the FX of Nova’s Molecular Prime and Antimatter Drop explosions to improve both visuals and performance.

Hotfix 17.10.1 (2015-11-05)

Fixed Nova’s Antimatter Drop not properly showing damage numbers.

Update 17.0 (2015-07-31)

Fixed some Radiation damage weapons not properly applying damage to Nova’s Antimatter Drop absorption.

Update 16.11 (2015-07-07)

Fixed some weapons not properly adding damage to Nova’s Antimatter Drop.
Fixed some projectiles not properly doing damage to Nova’s Antimatter Drop and Grineer door sensors.
Fixed Fusion MOA’s ranged attack causing issues with damage absorbed by Nova’s Antimatter Drop.

Hotfix 16.4.4 (2015-04-28) Antimatter Drop:

Fixed projectiles level 1-3 having double shimmer visual effects..
Fixed Antimatter Drop’s collision detection being affected by projectile scale on Host. Increased the collision detection radius for Clients to help compensate.
Fixed Client projectiles doing 2x damage on contact (not related to Antimatter Drop’s explosion damage).
Fixed base explosion damage to match the Ability’s scaling explosion damage (was 100, now 100/125/150/200).
Fixed sometimes doing minimal damage when used by Clients, regardless of how much players pumped into it.
Fixed low damage as Host or Client if the projectile hits where you are aiming (as opposed to hitting something while trying to get to your aim position).
Fixed aiming at the projectile not causing it to slow down.
Explosions from Antimatter Drop will no longer fuel the damage of other nearby AMD projectiles.
Projectiles from Antimatter Drop will now get brighter as you do damage to it.
Various changes have been made to improve the visual and audio fx of Antimatter drop.
Nova now shows a proper animation during multiple casts of Antimatter Drop.

Hotfix 15.7.2 (2014-12-19)