Building Your First Weapon Build

Everyone has been there at one point: building your first weapon build.  You got a handful of mods, you have the weapons, and you have an idea.  Great!  Let's get started on some ideas for you so that you have a decent grasp of how these things work.

First thing first.  Let's show where things are at on the screen.

• -Capacity - how many points are taken/total amount of points available
• -Stats - what to expect with the weapon or warframe stat wise.  Red or green numbers will show up if changing out mods that affect those particular stats.  Red means lower while green means higher.
• -Config - you can save up to 3 different configs as well as name them.  You can even rearrange them by drag/drop with one another.
• -Forma'd - how many times you have forma'd the weapon or warframe
• -Polarity - the type of class a polarity icon is.

Placement can make or break your build.  In general, you want to build from the left to right, and from top to bottom.  There are some slight variances to take into consideration, but this is the basic rule of thumb.

Now, you've probably noticed that some slots have a small image in the upper right corner.  This means the slot is polarized with that particular class and if you match the image on the mod to the slot, it will cost you half the cost in capacity.  When you get further in the game, you will start finding better mods suited for what you want and in most cases, you will want to forma a slot with a particular polarity.  A forma is an item found in game that allows you to change the polarity of a slot, whether that slot has been polarized already or not.

BUILDING

Depending on how you want to set up your build greatly depends on what you have.  What I mean by this is that some weapons have an innate ability associated with it that will automatically be incorporated into the mods you place on it.  For an example, I will use the Fulmin primary weapon.

As you can see, in the stats window it comes with electricity and impact damage as inherited traits.  I tend to pay attention to these when building, mostly because I want to get as much as I can out of the weapon.  For my build on the Fulmin, I used more electricity mods as well as impact to boost these stats, making it more powerful (see image below).

You can also add additional damage types to a weapon simply by adding a mod that does it.  For the example above, I placed additional toxin dealing mods to create corrosive damage instead of the default electricity.

DAMAGE DEALING

So you've gotten this far with placing some mods on your weapons.  How does it fare in a fight against enemies though?  Let's go take it for a spin and break down some basics of what you should be looking for.

Damage that 

• -hits vulnerable enemies appear white.
• -lands a critical hit or a stealth hit appear yellow.
• -surpasses the yellow range of critical hits appear orange.
• -surpasses the orange range of critical hits appear red.
• -affects shields appear blue.
• -affects overshields appear purple.
• -does nothing to an invulnerable target appear grey.

In general, you want to ideally get some yellow numbers, or higher, while you are battling the crazy enemies.  Seeing blue also means that you are taking down their shields.  In the end, you want to see some colors!  

As you can see in the stats box, there are numbers and words.  You might be wondering what these mean, so let's decipher it.  

• -Accuracy: higher the number, the better.
• -Critical Chance: higher the number, the better.
• -Critical Multiplier: higher the number, the better.
• -Falloff: lower the number, the better.
• -Fire Rate: lower the number, the better.
• -Magazine: higher the number, the better.
• -Noise: easy to figure out what it means.
• -Reload: lower the number, the better.
• -Status: higher the number, the better.
• -Trigger: easy to figure out what it means.

When you are busy swapping out mods, you might notice green and red numbers showing up to the right of the white numbers.  Green means better, red means worse.  It really comes down to balancing.

A good, general rule of thumb to think about is that when you see a % stat that is around the 15% - 20% mark, it is worth modding it further into those.  Anything less than that and you're going to probably get a headache, trying to make it work.

Criticals are essential to getting those beautiful yellows, oranges, and reds.  Higher critical chances means you increase the number of times you land a critical hit.  When you land a critical hit, your critical multiplier calculates the additional damage dealt for that critical hit.  Pretty easy math here, but check out the references below for actual mathematical equations on the wiki.

Status chance (the status stat listed above) indicates the chance of each shot landing the status effect.  Once the status effect hits, the enemy will be affected by that status for however long.  Lots of math goes into building!

STATUS EFFECTS

This is a generalized concept of what mods create what stat, so feel free to play around with various ideas.  Please make note that some enemies are more prone to substantial damage with certain stats.  Build accordingly.

	Causes the enemy to stagger for x duration of time.	Great against shields.
	Impairs the enemy's movement for x duration of time.	Great against everything.
	Weakens the enemy by x percentage damage for x amount of time.	Great against Grineer and Robots.
	Bleeds the enemy for x percentage damage for x amount of time.	Great against fleshy things.
	Nothing at this time.	Nothing at this time.
	Attracts all projectiles for x duration of time in a radius field.	Great against everything.
	Freezes enemies by reducing fire rate, movement speed, and attack speed for x percentage damage for x amount of time.	Great against shields.
	Deals electricity damage (chain lightning) to enemies within x range and stuns for x duration of time.	Great against Robots.
	Ignites enemies for x percentage damage for x amount of time.	Great against Infested.
	Deals toxic damage to enemies for x percentage damage for x amount of time.	Great against fleshy things.
	Knocks down enemies within x meter radius.	Great against Robots.
	Inflicts corrosive damage on enemies by reducing their current armor by x percentage permanently.	Great against armored things.
	Creates a gas cloud that inflicts damage to enemies within a certain radius for x percentage damage for x amount of time.	Great against Infested.
	Reduces the current and maximum shields of enemies for x percentage damage for x amount of time.	Great against shields.
	Inflicts confusion to close enemies, which in turn attack other nearby enemies for x amount of time.	Great against armored things.
	Inflicts viral damage to enemies by reducing the current and maximum health for x percentage damage for x amount of time.	Great against fleshy things.

Here is a simple diagram of what creates what.

One thing to mention is that when putting various mods on your weapons, placing a 3rd type of mod in front of electricity and heat (creates radiation) will cancel out the radiation.  Instead, it will combine the first 2 mods (into whatever they form - for the previous example we add cold before electricity) and leave the 3rd mod as is.  The example below demonstrates this.

Stormbringer deals electricity while Hellfire deals heat.  Combined and they create radiation.

By adding cold damage with Cryo Rounds, we now have magnetic damage and heat damage.

Remember, build left to right and top to bottom.  If you are modding a weapon that comes with an innate ability, try to play into it.  Removing it just makes the weapon less powerful and it makes it kind of a waste.  If you don't like the innate ability, try making a combined status.



References:
https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Status_Effect. - more about status effects
https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Damage - has a lot of math involved if you are into that sort of thing
https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Critical_Hit - all the crits