By Nelson Schneider - 06/17/23 at 07:19 PM CT

Last year, I gave a short list of my top picks for the best-in-class weapons in each major category in Digital Extremes’ long-running Live Service MMO-Shooter, “Warframe.” Of course, because it’s a Live Service, the game is always getting a stream of patches, balance tweaks, and new content. That means the goalposts are always moving. Unfortunately for fans of big explosions, Digital Extremes went a bit overboard in attempting to nerf last year’s meta-game environment that relied heavily on explosive area-of-effect weapons. Fortunately for readers of this blog, none of my top picks from last year were affected much by the Nerf Mallet – though it was pretty touch-and-go for a week or so, when Digital Extremes also over-nerfed regenerating ammo guns like the Fulmin and Bubonico, before ultimately rolling back those changes.

This time around, we’ve got several new content expansions to consider, specifically the ‘Angels of the Zariman’ questline and the most recent ‘Duviri Paradox’ and its variety of Rogue-ish inspired game modes. Once again, I’m going to leave-out the Kuva and Tenet variant weapons due to the tedium in tracking them down, and will stick with gear that can be acquired through normal gameplay. And, ultimately, it’s just as well, considering that these easier-to-get items outclass pretty much everything else in the game so far.

One of the biggest new additions to the “Warframe” arsenal is so-called Incarnon weapons, that is, guns and melee weapons that have been possessed by the entities that live within the game world’s space-between-space, giving them ludicrous stats compared to other weapons, AND the ability to get a little bit pissed off and enter Incarnon Mode, giving them a temporary burst of even more power. While the original batch of Incarnon weapons were added in ‘Angels of the Zariman,’ Digital Extremes came up with the clever ability to transform a fairly large selection of old, terrible weapons from the game’s early years into the new Incarnon hotness via Incarnon Genesis Adapters, which are a decidedly end-game upgrade, since they can only be earned by playing the Steel Path version of the Duviri Circuit, which means the player need to have cleared the ENTIRE starmap in Normal Mode.

While it is cool that Incarnon Genesis brings new life to a huge spread of old weapons, the bad news is that these Incarnon copycats all pale in comparison to the originals. Now, onto the list!

Primary Weapons:

1. Phenmor (MR 14)
The Phenmor is the Big Daddy of all Incarnon weapons, and nothing from the new stable of Duviri wannabes has been able to steal its crown. While it starts off as an unremarkable single-target, semi-automatic rifle, its Incarnon mode metamorphoses it into a devastating Gatling gun. But what’s even more shocking is that the normal mode is capable of being deadly as well, taking out high-level, heavily-armored Steel Path Grineer in one or two headshots. The main reason the original crop of Incarnon weapons is better than any of the Genesis weapons is the presence of an Incarnon Evolution called Devouring Attrition, which gives every non-critical hit with the gun a 50% chance of dealing 2000% of its regular damage… and the Phenmor’s regular damage is already stellar. Effectively, the original Incarnon guns are anti-crit guns that can dish out obscene amounts of damage by embracing the power of Attrition. For comparison, a crit-based weapon would have to have a 20x crit multiplier to keep up with an Incarnon weapon built for anti-crits, and that’s next to impossible to achieve through modding.

2. Vermisplicer (MR 0)
The Vermisplicer is an older weapon, and part of the Kitgun ecosystem I talked about last time around. However, I never really gave Kitguns the benefit of the doubt until Digital Extremes introduced their ammo nerfs to counter meta-gamers spamming explosive weapons all over the place. Suddenly, Kitguns with their universal ability to equip the Pax Charge weapon Arcane to give them infinite ammo and a recharging battery instead of a magazine became a big deal. And I can’t believe how many people have been sleeping on the Vermisplicer. This gun shoots tentacles. No, seriously. And these tentacles reach toward potential victims, giving it a heavy dose of auto-aim. On top of that, on a successful hit, MORE tentacles will sprout from the target and latch onto additional nearby targets, giving this weapon more area of effect than many other options. I love using the Vermisplicer in non-Steel Path missions, since I can just hold down the trigger, spin around wildly, and watch damage numbers fill the screen and enemy death cries fill my speakers. This gun is actually Steel Path viable, too, but it involves getting a decent Riven Mod with extra crit chance and more damage.

3. Felarx (MR 14)
The Phenmor’s little brother is a pump shotgun whose Incarnon form is dual pistols that shoot huge, penetrating projectiles reminiscent of the Nataruk bow (from the last article). The Felarx does pale incomparison to the Phenmor in a number of ways, ranging from its horribly low ammo capacity to its short falloff range. But it does have its upsides, including being much lighter on rare materials in its crafting recipe, and innate infinite body punchthrough, which lets it mow down entire conga lines of enemies with a single shot.

4. Miter (MR 6)
The Miter is a very old gun that I fell in love with when I was a “Warframe” noob 2 years ago. It’s effectively a sniper rifle that shoots giant saw blades instead of bullets. Unfortunately, all of its stats, ranging from its base damage to crit chance to status chance are woefully inadequate. But then Digital Extremes released an Incarnon Genesis adapter for it and gave it a new lease on life. When Incarnized, the Miter can temporarily transform into a mode that shoots, not ordinary saw blades, but bouncing, homing, exploding saw blades! Plus the various evolutions do a great job of compensating for its awful base stats. The reason this gun is so low on this list, though, is that, without an Attrition evolution, it’s still going to do sub-par damage compared to the Phenmor or Felarx. It also currently is suffering from a glitch that disables all of the gun’s innate (and modded) punchthrough, making the non-Incarnon mode into a single-target affair. Maybe Digital Extremes will give these Incarnon Geneses another once-over, as the Miter’s horrible base crit chance is just screaming for an Attrition evolution instead of the one it got that increases its base crit to tolerable levels.

5. Telos Boltor (MR12)
Oh, the good (read: bad) old Boltor. It’s one of the earlier full-auto rifles most players will encounter, and Digital Extremes has attempted to rehabilitate it several times already, with an improved-stats variant in the Boltor Prime and the syndicate-exclusive Telos Boltor. The recent release of Incarnon Genesis Adapters blessed the Boltor as well, and with the ability to clamp a baby void angel to ANY Boltor variant, I naturally went with the Telos. Not only did I already throw away the Boltor Prime I built a year ago, but the Telos is just a better designed weapon overall. First, the regular and Prime Boltors are both status-based weapons, with dismally low crit chances, meaning they don’t generally do very much damage, which is a big problem with “Warframe’s” full-auto weapon environment overall. The Telos Boltor, on the other hand, has more than double the base crit chance of the other variants, and a significantly higher crit multiplier. Then there’s the built-in syndicate ability, Truth, which causes the gun to hemorrhage a huge gas cloud and heal its wielder for every 1000 affinity gained while using it (even after it’s at max rank). The Incarnon mode takes the Telos Boltor from a nail-shooting machinegun to a nail-shooting machineSHOTgun that throws so much iron down range, it will clear out everything short of a Kuva Lich or Archon (both of which are endgame bosses with BS damage reduction mechanics that do not favor rapid fire weapons).

Secondary Weapons:

1. Ocucor (MR 8)
When I first built the Ocucor a year ago, I couldn’t wait to master it so I could sell it and make room for something else in my inventory. The base damage, crit, and status for this thing are all so abysmally low that I never actually got to experience its gimmick while I was leveling it. So, how did this absolute turd of a beam weapon, which felt like trying to kill heavily armored foes with a laser pointer, end up in the new top slot for Secondaries? Digital Extremes released a new Augment Mod specifically for the Ocucor, and it quite literally changes everything. See, the Ocucor’s gimmick is that each kill with its beam generates an extra beam that will target another enemy all on its own. The gun can generate 4 of these extra beams at maximum, giving the player 5 times the damage output listed in the gun’s stats. Unfortunately, the extra beams all go away when the gun is reloaded. But thanks to the shiny new Sentient Surge mod, the gun never needs to be reloaded. I generally don’t want to talk about modding in these articles, because it’s a complex system that really needs its own article, but in the case of the Ocucor, a mod makes all the difference. Sentient Surge not only allows the Ocucor to reload itself on-kill, keeping extra beams active, but also boosts the base crit and status chances for each extra beam active, allowing this ONE mod to replace a crit chance mod, a status chance mod, and a gimmicky reload-while-holstered mod. Combined with the Cascadia Flare Arcane – which was released in ‘Angels of the Zariman’ alongside the Incarnon guns – suddenly every Secondary that can rapidly generate Heat debuffs will gain a massive damage boost equally-as-rapidly. Thus the Ocucor transformed from an absolute joke of tinkling yellow streams on enemies and reloading 3 times to kill a single non-Steel Path grunt to a genocide machine that can kill an entire mission worth of enemies without aiming or reloading.

2. Gaze (MR 0)
While most of the “Warframe” community is insistent that the Kuva Nukor is the best Secondary beam weapon for painting status debuffs all over enemies – and killing them too – I personally find the Gaze Kitgun Secondary to be far more enjoyable. The Gaze fires a beam of energy for as long as the trigger is held, and, like the Kuva Nukor, the beam will automatically chain to three other viable targets near the primary target, allowing it to clear out hallways with ease. Unlike Nukor variants, however, the Gaze deals a mix of Puncture and Radiation damage, instead of pure Radiation, giving it another debuff by default. Even better, the Gaze can be built with a variety of grips and magazines due to it being a Kitgun, allowing the player to customize just how much crit and status chance they prefer. I’ve tried both the OG Nukor and the Kuva Nukor, and find that neither can output the same amount of damage, consistently, as the Gaze, in large part due to the Gaze being a Kitgun and thus compatible with Pax Charge, giving it an infinite ammo pool and a regenerating battery, reducing its downtime significantly.

3. Laetum (MR 14)
The Laetum is the third and final OG Incarnon gun released in ‘Angels of the Zariman,’ and the only Secondary in the group. It’s, essentially, a pocket Phenmor, sporting very similar stats, evolutions, and functionality. In its normal form, it’s a semi-auto, single-target hand cannon that can pop Steel Path heads in one or two hits, while its Incarnon form is a full-auto SMG that fires explosive rounds. Like the Phenmor, it’ll clear entire rooms in even the hardest missions, and deals massive damage to bosses with BS damage reduction algorithms… but if you’ve already got the Phenmor in your primary slot, the Laetum feels redundant in the same loadout, so I’d always go with a beam weapon instead. But this is most likely the first Incarnon weapon a player will have the opportunity to craft.

4. Hystrix Prime (MR 12)
The Primed (read: power crept) version of the Hystrix was released just about a week after I wrote the previous list of my top “Warframe” arsenal picks, and largely rendered the original obsolete. Of course, the Hystrix was already a top-tier Secondary, so the Prime only got a small damage bump and some extra status chance. The only reason to keep using the original over the Prime is if you haven’t reached Mastery Rank 12 yet, since the orignal’s MR requirement is only 7.

5. Vermisplicer (MR 0)
The Vermisplicer is so nice, I built it twice. Yeah, I got a Riven Mod for the Vermisplicer, so I built one as a Primary and one as a Secondary. While they’re both nice and clean up rooms of mooks, the Secondary Vermisplicer is a bit glitchy. Instead of shooting one tentacle that splits on contact, it shoots several shorter tentacles that can have trouble grabbing onto enemies… but if they do manage to find their mark, it’ll be dead in nanoseconds. On top of that, the multiple tentacles give the Secondary Vermisplicer a weird form of multi-shot, which is supposed to work differently for beam weapons than projectile or hitscan weapons, but which also thoroughly screws the Secondary version’s base status chance. It’s still fun to use, but it could be so much better if Digital Extremes fixed its behavior to be more similar to a fully ramped-up Ocucor.

Melee Weapons:

1. Praedos (MR 14)
‘Angels of the Zariman’ brought us not only Incarnon guns, but Incarnon melee weapons. These void-possessed beat sticks all rely on a gimmick revolving around the Combo Counter, which I honestly didn’t realize was a thing until I got my first Incarnon melee weapon and was forced to engage with it. Scoring hits against enemies builds the Counter, and at certain thresholds increases damage output based on a Combo Multiplier, which is x2 by default (and invisible) but can be stacked up to a maximum of x12. Each Incarnon melee requires a specific Combo Multiplier – x5 for the Zariman weapons, x6 for the Genesis weapons introduced in the Duviri Circuit – before allowing the player to activate Incarnon mode for 3 minutes by executing a heavy attack, which, naturally, consumes the Combo Counter and resets the multiplier to x2. The Praedos is a tonfa-type weapon, which is my second favorite type in the game after Polearms, and its normal damage output is nothing to sneeze at. However, in Incarnon mode, its attack rate and range are ramped up to insane levels. Even better, both of the Zariman Incarnon melees have evolutions which decrease the required Combo Multiplier to transform them, and can actually be modded rather trivially to be able to Hulk-out into Incarnon mode at any time. The final cherry on top of the Praedos is an evolution that passively increases the equipped warframe’s sprint speed, which makes going back to any other melee weapon feel like walking through waist-deep molasses.

2. Innodem (MR 14)
The Innodem is the Praedos’ kid brother, much like the Felarx is to the Phenmor. It takes fewer rare materials to craft it, but otherwise it’s fairly similar. The Innodem is a dagger, though, allowing it to benefit from a few dagger-specific mods, which make it deal obscene amounts of finisher damage, making it ideal for a stealth-focused loadout. And, like the Praedos, it can be modded, quite trivially, to go into Incarnon mode at any time. Between the finisher bonus, stealth modifier, and Incarnon mode’s damage boost, this thing is capable of outright murdering Steel Path Eximus units in one or two strikes.

3. Quassus (MR 8)
The Quassus is an older weapon that I only recently fell in love with due to its gimmick. The Quassus is a warfan, which generally have poor stance choices and are generally sub-par across the board. This weapon, though, has a great base crit chance and a hidden surprise: Performing a heavy attack with it throws a spread of daggers at range. While a lot of “Warframe” veterans would recommend the Redeemer Prime – a gunblade – as a strong choice, I personally can’t stand it, and find that the Quassus does everything the Redeemer Prime does, but better. It slices and dices up close, and can hit Red Crit damage levels on its thrown daggers quite easily, making it a silent and deadly option for those times when bringing a gun is out of the question.

4. Dual Keres Prime (MR 14)
Released alongside the Hystrix Prime, the power-crept version of the Dual Keres dual swords got a significantly bigger stat boost than its pistol counterpart. These things are fast, with good stance options, and significantly boosted crit chance. Sure, they don’t really have any gimmicks like the Incarnons or the Quassus, but what’s wrong with a beatstick just being really good at being a beatstick?

5. Corufell (MR 8)
Released in the post-Zariman ‘Citrine’s Last Wish’ mini-expansion, the Corufell is the most recent gunblade to be added to the game’s arsenal… except it’s not a gunblade… it’s a heavy scythe… with a shotgun hidden in the handle. I would have ranked this higher, since I love the massive damage output of the secret shotgun, but I feel like the one-and-only stance available for heavy scythes kind of sucks and is slower than it should be, even with a high attack rate modded onto it. When I use the Corufell, it’s all shotgun, all the time, with maybe the occasional heavy slam sprinkled in for crowd control. Let’s hope Digital Extremes gives us some new, better stance options for this weapon class sooner rather than later.