Review: Latron Prime (U23.10.8)

The Latron Prime is an MR10 Semi-Auto rifle that was released way back in U8.0, and is currently bundled together with Frost and Reaper Primes. The Balance Pass in U22.12 gave it a new lease of life in the form of a substantial buff, but it remains a victim of powercreep, and is also a little out-of-place in a game focused on crowd killing.

Acquisition

The Latron Prime is a standard Prime rifle, consisting of 3 parts + blueprint. It is currently vaulted however, so cannot be found in currently available relics.

Stats

With the U22.12 Balance Pass, the Latron Prime's stats are quite respectable for damage-per-shot. It has a high base damage with great crit and good status, though the high status chance is somewhat limited by its low ROF. Furthermore, with 90% Puncture damage, it can't use its status chance to reliably proc Slash.

The LatronP has a rather low Reload Ratio of 1.50, and a lack of innate Punch Through or AoE effects which further inhibit its potential against groups. The LatP also has higher than average zoom, which is typically seen as a disadvantage in Warframe's predominantly close quarters combat.

Augments
None.

Builds
0-Forma:

This is the rough build I'd recommend for 0-Forma. The elements can of course be switched around as desired, but for something with low ROF/volume of fire, I personally prefer Viral for a general purpose element. This build already achieves solid damage-per-shot desipte missing two mods, and is the build I'd recommend trying out if you're unsure if it's worth the Forma. Using a 60/60 in place of one of the 90% elementals would give you a bit more mod space to fit something else in, like Fast Hands.

Recommended Setups: Corrosive/Viral/Radiation vs Grineer, Corrupted, Radiation vs armoured Corpus, Viral vs unarmoured Corpus, Corrosive/Viral vs Infested

General Purpose 2-Forma:

This is a basic filled Viral + Hunter Munitions build, adding in two V polarities. The high base status chance means that you will proc Viral quite frequently, and the solid crit stats result in some pretty powerful Slash procs being dealt to your targets. This build will do quite well against Grineer and Corrupted, and will probably still fare decently against most Corpus and Infested. As usual, Vigilante Armaments can be swapped out for a number of other mod options.

This build drops the 90% elemental down to a 60/60, which allows the use of Shred instead. You lose a little damage-per-shot, but the Punch Through is fantastic against groups of enemies. Switching to Corrosive puts a lot more direct damage out against Infested, though I feel the ROF is still far too low for a good armour strip build.

One or two more Forma for V polarities would open up a lot more build options as well.

Recommended Setups: see above.

Primed Cryo Rounds 5-Forma:

A more extreme Viral + HM, with two more V polarities and one D for PCR. This one again goes to the extreme with Viral damage and proc chance, with Shred for group killing. Shred can of course be replaced with another mod of your choice.

Using the same polarities, this one fits in a full Corrosive damage build, which again can be switched to your elements of preference. This build does quite respectable damage-per-shot, and can kill most weaker enemies in one or two shots, depending on crits.

Recommended Setups: Viral + HM vs Grineer, Corrupted, Radiation + VA/Toxin vs armoured Corpus, Viral + VA/Electric vs unarmoured Corpus, Corrosive/Viral + (VA or Heat) vs Infested

My Builds:

My builds are nothing special, I just have the problem of fitting both a Riven and Primed Shred in. Because of the D polarity for PCR, I can't fit two 90% elements for my Corrosive or Radiation builds, but they still do a substantial amount of damage. Even without HM, the Viral build does quite good damage to both types of Grineer heavies, and easily punches through anything else that isn't an armoured Corpus robot. Viral is my preferred go-to for the Latron Prime.
For reference, the Viral build deals around 94,000 burst DPS.

Combat Use and Summary

The Latron Prime is a solid DMR-type weapon in a game where DMRs are not really needed, or indeed particularly powerful or noteworthy. Against crowds, especially without Punch Through, it struggles a fair bit, often requiring lengthy reloads in the middle of combat. When it comes to heavy killing, there are many other weapons with comparable or superior burst DPS, often also with superior crowd killing capabilities.

Furthermore, the Latron Prime sports unusually high zoom for a rifle. Though potentially useful on the Plains, and the upcoming Orb Vallis, the majority of Warframe's content is in relatively close quarters, where the high zoom is even worse to use.

With Point Strike, the Latron Prime reaches only 55% Crit Chance, leaving significant chance that any given shot will not crit at all. For a weapon already with a poor Reload Ratio, potentially randomly requiring an additional shot to kill is particularly annoying. If this especially bothers you, Critical Delay or Argon Scope can be used to reduce the chance of any particular shot being a dud.

The LatP has a moderate amount of vertical recoil, which can make consecutive shots a little harder to land. If you struggle with the recoil, Stabilizer may be worth a try, replacing Shred/Vigilante Armaments. The recoil is exacerbated by its unusually high zoom. With a relatively poor Reload Ratio, Fast Hands may also be worth using if you have a little spare capacity.

As someone who likes DMR-type weapons, I quite enjoyed the Latron Prime, and used it a fair bit. It's decently powerful, and is one of the better Semi-Auto non-snipers out there. However, it is a weapon that does not really work well in Warframe, since it doesn't do anything particularly well, and is eclipsed in every category by a number of other weapons. If you're going for high damag per shot, all of the snipers are far superior. If you're going for general Warframe combat, many of the burst and select fire rifles serve a similar role, and have better performance. Unless you're a Semi-Auto/DMR aficionado, you're probably best off just levelling it to 30, then moving on to something else.

Scores
Vs Trash Mobs: 2/5 - Though it has great damage-per-shot, the Latron Prime has a poor Reload Ratio, low ROF and no innate Punch Through or AoE.
Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 4/5 - With fairly good burst DPS for a rifle, the LatronP is quite solid for taking down a few high health enemies.
Vs Armoured Heavies without Hunter Munitions: 2.5/5 - Despite its high Puncture damage, the LatP does not have a lot that helps it get through armour besides just brute force direct damage.
Vs Armoured Heavies with Hunter Munitions: 4/5 - Solid crit stats make HM hit quite hard from the LatP, though a higher crit chance would have been greatly appreciated for consistency and frequency of Slash procs.

Vs Variants
As an MR0 weapon with awful stats, the base Latron is not worth comparing to. Instead, we'll focus on the MR7 Latron Wraith.

The U22.12 Balance Pass pushed the Prime way ahead of the Wraith, with the Prime now having only slightly inferior crit stats, but a far higher base damage and status chance. As a result, the Prime does far more damage per shot, and with identical builds, achieves very slightly higher DPS despite the Wraith's higher ROF. Personally, even before the Balance Pass, I much preferred the Prime's higher damage-per-shot.

Competitors

There are not many Semi-Auto rifles (Grinlok, Latron family, Veldt), however they also face competition from similar precision rifles like the Sybaris and Tiberon families, as well as sniper rifles. As the Semi-Auto rifles go, the Latron Prime is by far the most powerful, and with Hunter Munitions, handles armoured enemies fairly well. It handles groups worse than the higher capacity Veldt however. When it comes to comparing against Burst- and Select-Fire rifles, the Latron Prime starts to fall behind. Many of them (e.g. Dex Sybaris, Sybaris Prime, Tiberon [Prime], Argonak) can handle groups much better with much better Reload Ratios and similar or better RoF. They often also can handle both armoured and unarmoured heavies just as well, if not even better. Sniper rifles, though worse against groups, deal far, far more damage than the Latron Prime.

Rivens

The Latron (Prime) has a reasonable but not exceptional disposition of 3/5 (1.07). It gets a solid boost from a decent Riven, but not game-breakingly so. 3/5 seems like a reasonable disposition for it given its relative unpopularity but good power.

As usual, the most desirable stats would be Damage/Multishot/Crit Chance/Crit Damage. Personally I favour Multishot and Crit Chance for the greatly improved consistency. Elements that aren't Heat can be useful for saving mod slots - in particular, Toxin and/or Cold lets you make Viral while still having space for both Hunter Munitions and Shred. Personally, I'd consider Reload Speed a valuable positive, as I find the LatronP's reloads to be overly frequent and quite slow. - Recoil may also be worth a try, as it has fairly high vertical recoil. Punch Through is also a very useful stat that would help significantly against crowds.

- Zoom is an especially desirable negative on the LatP, due to its native above-average zoom. - Ammo Max is generally great as it is quite ammo efficient. - Slash/Impact are quite nice as the LatP has barely any of those damage types, so the damage loss is minimal and the Riven stat boosts are significant. I find - Status Chance to actually be quite reasonable. With low Slash and a low ROF, and the current status system, the LatP's high status chance is actually somewhat wasted. It doesn't fire fast enough for Corrosive armour strip to be especially good, and can't proc Slash reliably without HM. Furthermore, with a 3/5 disposition, it's pretty easy to compensate for with a single 60/60 mod. - Puncture would make the LatP able to proc Corrosive and/or Slash much more frequently, but you'd lose a lot of direct damage as well. - Projectile Flight Speed has no negative effect, since the LatP is hitscan and has no damage drop-off. - Infested/Corpus damage are both reasonable negatives, since the majority of those enemies are substantially weaker than Grineer/Corrupted heavies, and a decent Riven roll will still boost damage substantially.