The Pathocyst is an Infested Glaive that is the signature weapon of the Zealoid Prelate, boasting innate 
Viral damage and high status chance, and releases Maggots when attacking enemies or when thrown. The Pathocyst was introduced in Hotfix 25.7.7.
| Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 30,000 |
 2 |
 1 |
 5 |
Time: 24 hrs | |
Rush:  25
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 Market Price: N/A
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 Blueprints Price:N/A
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Characteristics[edit | edit source]
This weapon deals primarily Viral damage.
Advantages
- Highest base damage of all glaives.
- Innate
Viral damage – effective against Flesh and Cloned Flesh. - High Slash damage – effective against health.
- Innate
- Good critical chance.
- Above average critical multiplier.
- Tied with Glaive Prime and Cerata for the second-highest status chance of all glaives, behind Falcor.
- Slam Radial Damage deals Toxin damage.
- Heavy Attack throws the glaive, which can bounce up to three times or travels up to 30 meters before returning to the user, damaging anyone in its path.
- Primary and secondary weapons can be fired and reloaded normally with a thrown glaive, and retrieving the glaive does not interrupt these actions.
- Thrown glaive is silent.
- Glaive can explode in a 4.9 meter radius mid-flight by pressing the melee button which also forces a return.
- During flight or when striking an enemy, the glaive drops Infested pods which quickly hatch into Maggots that last for 7 seconds and will fight alongside the player.
- Maggots can latch onto enemies and stagger them.
- Maggots may also appear on any normal attack done to enemies.
- Can be wielded in-tandem with a single-handed secondary weapon.
- Innate and polarities.
Disadvantages
- Innate Viral damage – less effective against Infested and Machinery.
- Low Puncture damage – less effective against armor.
- Slowest attack speed of all glaives.
- Cannot use melee attacks while the glaive is in mid-flight.
- Explosion inflicts self-stagger.
- Explosion has linear damage falloff from 100% to 50% from central impact.
- Only glaive with no innate Punch Through when thrown.
- Spawned maggots deal negligible damage.
- Spawned maggots will alert enemies, despite the weapon being silent.
- Spawned maggots have a limited lifespan.
Weapon Loadouts[edit source]
- See Category:Pathocyst Build to see how players mod this weapon.
- See Category:Pathocyst Guides for guides on how to use this weapon effectively.
- For more general help with weapons, you may wish to browse Category:Weapon Guides.
Acquisition
Pathocyst's main blueprint and components can be obtained from defeating Zealoid Prelate on Exequias, Deimos. All parts are tradeable between players.
| Drop | Chance | Expected | Nearly Guaranteed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main Blueprint | 33.33% | 7 – 8 kills | 25 ± 6 kills |
| Subcortex | 33.33% | ||
| Blade | 33.33% |
Expected refers to total number of kills a player can expect to need in order to receive at least one Main Blueprint and Subcortex, and at least two Blades.
Nearly Guaranteed refers to the total number of kills a player needs to obtain a 99%, 99.9%, and 99.99% probability to receive at least one Main Blueprint and Subcortex, and at least two Blades.
For more detailed definitions and information on how these number were obtained, visit here.
Notes[edit | edit source]
- The Slam Radial Damage has a 35% chance to inflict the Toxin status effect but is unaffected by status chance mods.
- Acquired blueprints can be sold for 2,500 each while its components can be sold for 3,500 each.
- Maggots spawned by the Pathocyst do not interact with Nidus's abilities or the Strain Mod Set.
- Spawned maggots do not benefit from additional damage from abilities (except Roar and Molecular Primed enemies) or elemental boost augments such as Smite Infusion.
- Leveling the Pathocyst through stealth can be very challenging, due to maggots spawning sometimes through stealth finishers, and many more spawning through thrown attacks, which will alert enemies. Exploding maggots, while dealing low damage, may immediately thrust enemies out of a 'sleep state' (eg Sleep Arrow from Quiver or Rest & Rage) with no wakeup animation, who may then see dead bodies.
- It is important to mod the weapon with fire rate and finisher damage to ensure one-shot kills on enemies, but also extra awareness of which enemies in range are asleep or out of visual range, and which are not. Maggots may also suddenly sprint very quickly, darting around a corner if they detect enemies and then getting shot at, alerting the area.
- Properties of exploding Maggots:
- Explosions have 0% crit chance and status chance. (More testing required to find out damage type).
- Explosion damage can be increased through base damage modifiers (e.g. Pressure Point, Spoiled Strike).
- Maggot damage is not enhanced by combo multiplier, faction damage modifiers, elemental modifiers, or physical damage modifiers.
- Maggots spawn at the same level as the weapon's current rank. For Example, a rank 24 Pathocyst will spawn level 24 Maggots.
- The Pathocyst is the only Glaive that simply gains bonus damage on thrown attacks. All other Glaive weapons also gain bonus Status and/or boosts to Crits.
Tips[edit | edit source]
- The main benefit of the spawned maggots is crowd control; Enemies will be briefly distracted by running maggots or stunned when they manage to latch onto them, but due to their limited life spawn they won't last long.
- Modding the Pathocyst with high-status chance and Cold damage will extend the duration of the stun when maggots latch, assuming the cold damage procs. This can slightly boost the effectiveness of latched maggots.
Gallery[edit | edit source]
Media[edit | edit source]
Patch History[edit | edit source]
Hotfix 27.2.2
Reduced the following AoE weapons Radial Damage Falloff from central impact that were all previously 90%:
- Pathocyst: 50%
- Self Damage Changes
We are getting rid of Self Damage and replacing it with something else: instead of Self Damage, it’s now ‘Stagger’. This change completely removes the chance of killing yourself, and instead now creates scenarios where you will interrupt yourself - or ‘Stagger’ - to varying degrees if you aren’t careful.
The degrees of Self-Interrupt start with a small stumble all the way to full knockdown depending on how close you are to the center of explosion. Any Mods referring to Self Damage will be converted to acknowledge Stagger.
With this Self-Interrupt system, we have added dozens of new recovery animations that harness a ninja-like recovery experience. By pressing ‘Jump’ at the correct time, you can execute a ninja-skill-based knockdown recovery to ALL in-game knockdowns. This ninja recovery window is indicated by a glowing FX on your Warframe.
In the original Dev Workshop, we said:
As a result of this overall systemic change, Weapons with Stagger will be getting approximately a 20% buff in Damage, with any weapons with AOE receiving a 50% Radial Damage Falloff from central impact.
This is no longer accurate after continued testing. What we are doing now is:
No damage buffs have been added, but any weapons with AOE are receiving ~20% increase in Radius. Additionally, AOE weapons are receiving a 90% Radial Damage Falloff from central impact. This means on the very outer section of the explosion Radius 10% of the Damage will be dealt. Tactics will be deadly - aim true, Tenno.
Why: Several players brought up the history of the Tonkor and we want to make sure we ship this change in a place that’s conservative in its starting point from a balance perspective. The complete removal of Self Damage does change the pace of destruction with some of the game’s most powerful weapons, so we want to make sure we can iterate upwardly instead of releasing a bonanza of explosions with no other choices.
Update 26.0
As a general note, self damage has been removed from Glaive power throws. As this decision made it through the testing pipeline, some mentioned this impacts a specific Chroma interaction, but positively impacts 41 other Warframes.
- Damage increased from 82 to 262.
- Slam Attack increased from 82 to 786.
- Slide Attack increased from 410 to 524.
- Parry Angle set to 55.
- Follow Through increased from 0.5 to 0.7.
- Added new “fast whooshing” sounds to the Pathocyst.
- (Undocumented) Introduced.
Last updated: Update 26.0
