Armor Liquefaction

Liquefaction is the conversion of a solid or gaseous material into liquid form, usually achieved by melting or by condensation. In our case, it refers to the entire removal of armor by a process of rapid slurrification, assisted by cutting implements, corrosive agents, and rapid heating of ferrous alloy substances. Inspired by mathematics and the success of my Kuva Ogris Build, this build for the [Kuva Kohm] strives to provide an endgame weapon for a variety of situations, achieving a build that will strip armor entirely on even the tankiest of units. It doesn't fare well versus status-immune enemies or those at greater distances, but against units like Demolishers and Demolysts or up-close Heavy Gunners and Nox or Bombard units, it really shines. It's a classic status-based corrosive build, but it takes into account some subtler mechanics that make an enormous difference in how the build performs.

The Trouble with Status

The trouble with status-based shotguns is well known, but not generally fully understood. A lot of players understand that you have to [Reach] 100% status, but many of them don't realize that you have to [Reach] that status before multishot, and even more don't realize the incredible penalties of having even just 99% status. In a nutshell, it goes as follows: a shotgun lists in the arsenal its chance that at least one of the pellets will proc an effect. Because of a complexity in how it's calculated, reaching 100% status pre-multishot will ensure that every single pellet procs a single status; if you only have 99% chance, it drops into the mid-thirties for the individual shots. This means that a one percent difference in the arsenal can triple your status output, and that's incredibly significant. For this reason, we're going to build the [Kohm] with one hundred percent status, and that leads us into our next point.

A Riven is Indispensable

I've tried this build both with and without a Riven, and the results are incredibly telling. Without a Riven, you have three options to get to 100% status: you can run four elemental mods, you can run Motus Setup, or you can run Nano-Applicator. You need to reach +233.333% status, repeating, in order to hit 100% pre-multishot - and that's important because of rounding. What this means is that [Shotgun Savvy] just won't cut it; you need at least 53.333% status from your final mod after adding in three elementals, and it just doesn't have the punch. Motus Setup and Nano-Applicator have both been difficult to proc in all my testing, which leaves the question of that fourth-slot elemental. The problem with one of those is that we're limited in damage types, and that bears unpacking in greater detail, which we do below. At the end of the day, you're going to need a riven if you want to mod this weapon properly, but the good news is that it can be almost any riven: it only needs to have a measly 53.3% status chance, and that's below the lower bound for it's 1.00 disposition. Any roll that even touches status will suffice.

The Problem with Damage Types

The problem with damage types is, on the Kuva Kohm, that we're limited in what we want to proc by the potential that we could over-proc. If we run radiation-viral, for instance, we end up wasting a lot of our potential: after multishot, we're firing up to thirty-four pellets per shot at full spool, and with all thirty-four of them proccing, it makes no sense to have each of those procs be something that cannot stack. Assuming each pellet has a twenty-percent chance to proc each type, we're guaranteed to get radiation and viral with over ninety-nine percent certainty, but we're nearly guaranteed to get many times that amount of procs, and the trouble is that each consecutive proc doesn't stack. If we take a look at consecutive procs, we get the following damage types:

Radiation, Magnetic, and Viral

These types are generally considered very useful. Viral reduces maximum and current health; magnetic does the same for shields, and radiation is the strongest crowd-control effect in the game because it even makes enemies attack each other, which can buff our damage output. In fact, we can even stack radiation and viral, but the trouble is, as mentioned above, that it doesn't stack. Once we've procced one radiation, viral, or magnetic effect, we can't proc more: consecutive procs extend the status, but don't increase it. For this reason, these types aren't as useful as they could be on a ten-plus pellet weapon.

Cold, Blast, Impact, and Puncture

These types are potentially useful, especially as crowd control, but they don't stack, and have little impact on our damage output. Blast in particular can actually be a problem for us as it forces our targets to the ground, where the Kohm's innate punch-through isn't able to hit as many of them due to angle. I don't recommend taking these damage types on this weapon, and in particular, that means that we won't be taking the blast-corrosive route, because other types are better.

Gas, Toxin, and Slash

These types are more useful: they stack, and they do so in a way that takes advantage of faction damage mods. In fact, in the case of gas, we actually take advantage of those mods three times, and so we see that a potential gas-stacking build exists. Unfortunately, unlike the Kuva Ogris, we don't have any gas-stacking mechanic, so each pellet only does an amount of gas damage proportional to its initial impact. Still, it's a useful build for Corpus, and we touch on it below.

Heat and Corrosive

These are the two elements we'll be going with. Heat not only stacks, but actually benefits from consecutive procs: since the changes to damage with Update 26, each successive heat proc both refreshes and increases damage taken over time, so no consecutive proc is ever wasted. In addition, we see that heat reduces armor by a factor of one half, which greatly accelerates our ability to melt the armor of a heavy unit. In combination with heat, we use corrosive, which strips armor by twenty-five percent of the current value on each proc; what this means is that multiple hits will strip armor more effectively than just a single proc, and effectively there is no upper limit. On a weapon like the Kuva Kohm, we'll often strip armor in just a couple hits; an average of thirty-seven hits are required to strip the armor off a level 120 heavy gunner, and we will average something like a dozen procs per shot. Combined with the heat halving from ignite procs, it's not uncommon for me to strip a Nox to zero armor before it's even hit half health, at which point it will die quite quickly.

Electricity Damage

I've left this one for last because the wiki isn't clear on how it stacks exactly; it seems logical that it will stack, because the proc is instantaneous, but it's also possible that it doesn't, and simply refreshes the duration or gets ignored entirely. I've got some more research to do on my own end, but for now we'll put this one in a special category - more information required. In any case, it helps us potentially against Corpus enemies - and can be run in companion with gas - but isn't going to be much good against heavy armored units, which this build excels at taking down.

Damage Types: The Resolution

The resolution from all of the above is that we should run heat and corrosive. Both types stack, both can be run together, and both will strip the armor off of heavy units. Combined with slash, which this weapon deals natively, we can make quick work of Grineer units, which are vulnerable to both heat and slash because of their cloned flesh. Without their armor, they go down very quickly, and that gives this build its name: armor liquefaction, for the process of turning solid into liquid by melting and corrosive means. Specifically, a key takeaway from our choices of damage is that we can't run a fourth elemental sixty-sixty, which means, as we said above, that we need a Riven. I tried to build this build without a Riven - believe me, I tried, and I'm no friend to riven-flashing builds across the internet - but the Kohm benefits so much from one that it's impossible to not include. And yes, I know that they're expensive - I purchased mine for plat to test the merits of this build. Thankfully, you don't need a god roll, or even one with useful stats. You only need the status chance.

Aside: I rolled this Riven more times than I needed to. I saw the status chance come up a couple times, but I kept re-rolling because I had a lot of Kuva from my lich hunts and from requiem unlocking, and I wanted to see if I could get a better build. In the end, the toxin stacking from this riven combines with the toxin on the weapon natively, and weights the results quite heavily towards corrosive or gas damage in the Grineer and Corpus builds respectively. The extra damage to Corpus is a nice touch that makes the gas-based alternate even better than it would be otherwise.

A Note on Multishot, Fire Rate, and Ammo Consumption

Because of the [Kuva Kohm]'s high pellet count at upper spools, it benefits from multishot even more than most other weapons would. Because we have one hundred percent chance to proc a status from each pellet, we can linearly increase the number of statuses we proc by adding multishot, and it makes sense to just go ham. In terms of fire rate, we add a mod like Shotgun Spazz to spool up faster, but have to be aware that in doing so we make the [Kuva Kohm] an ammo monster. It fires an extra pellet with each consecutive shot, up to twelve, and thankfully only consumes four ammo per shot at full spool - but at a fire rate of almost eight rounds per second, you can burn through thirty of your thousand rounds for every second that you're firing. That means that if you were able to hold the trigger down without reloading, you could burn through your ammo stocks in thirty-three seconds, which isn't a lot of time. For this reason, we need to run some form of ammo mutation - and, excluding carrier, which doesn't help when our weapon is holstered - we can choose from [Shotgun Ammo Mutation], [Primed Shotgun Ammo Mutation], and [Vigilante Supplies]. I've chosen Vigilante Supplies because it stacks with Vigilante Armaments, but be aware that it's the worst conversion of the three - when using it, you have to be aware of how much ammo you're using and avoid behaviors like sweep-firing and over-killing targets. You're always going to be hovering, and in most situations you're going to be losing slowly, and in the end you can't just pop an ammo restore because they give back ammo as though it was a normal shotgun. You have to pop two or three or even four to get a usable amount back, and then you have to stand there.

Behaviors that Reduce Ammo Consumption

I've put this here because ammo consumption is this weapon's biggest drawback. There's a couple things you can do to reduce that, and while I won't dictate your playstyle I'll tell you what works for me. First, I fire single shots or "click each shot" as often as possible, especially at lower levels or for weaker enemies like troopers and scorpions. Second, I avoid spooling up the weapon unless I need to, such as for a heavy enemy like a Nox or a big, dense crowd of enemies that I want to dump a full half-clip into. I almost never get the weapon to full spool, and if I do it's a sign that I'm in a heavy-hitting environment and might need to switch to something like warframe abilities or status-focused melee. I always take a decent secondary, and tend to rely on my melee weapon a lot more than I would on average - for instance, in disruptions, I'll save my [Kohm] for the incoming demolyst or demolisher, and will use secondaries and my melee for clearing out the trash mobs. I'll usually fully-spool the weapon into such a heavy enemy, and that takes up a whole clip, which I then recover by using my melee while I wait for the next demolyst to arrive. It's worth noting that in fully-spooling the weapon I'll usually take out a demolyst in a matter of just seconds, often stripping their armor in the process. It's also good on targets (like in capture) or enemies like Juggernauts and heavy eximus units, but I almost never fire more than one or two shots semi-automatically into an enemy of lesser threat and status. It helps to run a warframe, such as [Saryn], who can still maintain a threat while out of ammo for your primary. And always, always check that you are carrying at least twenty or thirty ammo restores, in case things go due south.

Perhaps the most important - and potentially non-obvious - thing is this: the weapon's ammo consumption changes at different ranges. The Kuva Kohm has falloff - a lot of falloff, and it can be more than ninety percent less effective at long ranges. If you're firing at something forty meters away and it's not taking nearly as much damage as it should be, consider closing distance. In the long run, it will save you tons of ammo, especially when taking out a group.

Testing of the Build

I've tested this build both in simulacrum and extensively in the field; it's one of my favorite weapons. I've found that it handles anything and everything that I can throw at it, with the exception of status-immune enemies such as sentients and Kuva liches, and does so with varying amounts of ammo. I don't take it in the Index, because, while it will handle anything up through levels past 120, it does so with increasing amounts of ammo, especially when firing into shields. I avoid damaging shields with the build as much as possible, because it's not designed for that. If I have to run against Corpus, I'll change the order of the elementals to make it gas-electricity, which deals damage around instead of through them. While a group of heavy corpus enemies dies in about two clips of the corrosive-heat build, they die to less than a clip of the gas-electricity build. For Grineer, the build is only effective with heat-corrosive, so I take it into things like fissures or the void where I know multiple types of enemies will be present. In either case, it powers through infested like they weren't even there, but I avoid the gas build: it does much less damage into Toxic Ancients.

Summary and Final Thoughts

Through effective choice of damage types, this build presents two alternative ways of taking out Corpus and Grineer enemies, with the latter being useful in the mixed-environ case. It melts through anything that I can throw at it, provided that something isn't status-immune, and it does so while consuming alarming quantities of ammo. If you can keep it fueled, and if you fire it selectively, it will delete enemies like Demolysts and capture targets, and has no problems deleting things like Nox and Bombard Eximus units. I take it comfortably into sorties and arbitrations, and I'm happy using it anywhere - as long as I have ammo restores. Always take another weapon, and never let this be your only source of damage - but accept that it will be your highest, most badass, and most epically ass-kicking source of damage in just about any mission. Go ahead and try it out - and let me know what you think in the comments below.