Review: Prisma Grakata (U23.10.7)

The Prisma Grakata is an MR11 weapon that was introduced in U16.8.3 in Baro's stock. An improved version of the standard issue Grineer Grakata, it is a powerful, though ammo hungry and inaccurate rifle.

Acquisition

The Prisma Grakata is only available occasionally from Baro Ki'Teer.

Stats

The Prisma Grakata has a great combination of crit and status, along with a very high fire rate and a surprisingly solid Reload Ratio of 2.77. These help to make up for its extremely low base damage. This balance of stats gives it a wide variety of potential builds and a lot of versatility. The poor Slash bias of its base damage is unfortunate, but not at all a deal breaker.

The U22.12 Balance Pass gave the weapon a buff over its old stats, notably boosting its total base damage from 11 to 15. The PGrakata's overall effectiveness hasn't changed significantly, but a buff is a buff.

Augments
None.

Builds
0-Forma:

Unfortunately, the Prisma Grakata has no native polarities, so 0-Forma builds are annoyingly incomplete. This is the build I'd recommend starting off with, with the last 5 points being filled with whatever else you please. 60% Multishot from Vigilante Armaments at 9 points is far better value than 75% Multishot from a Rank 4 Split Chamber at 14 points, and leaves space for a convenience mod like Hush or a partial rank Fast Hands. Otherwise the setup is pretty ordinary, Damage + Multishot + Crit + Elements.

With the PGrakata's high status chance and ROF, a Corrosive status build is by far the most effective against Grineer, Corrupted and armoured Corpus robots. Even without full Multishot, it applies Corrosive procs at an impressive rate, often dealing many times more damage after half a second of sustained fire. Against unarmoured Corpus, you're much better off with Viral since Corrosive is ineffective against Proto-Shields. Infested are best combatted with either Corrosive or Viral, depending on whether you want higher direct damage (Corrosive), especially against Eximi, or a more useful proc (Viral).

High Voltage is a relatively more difficult mod to acquire, being rarely dropped from Hive Sabotage caches, or sold by Baro occasionally. If you don't have it, Stormbringer would substitute for it just fine in this build, and is a far more common mod.

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

General Purpose 4-Forma:

With 4-Forma, all V polarities, you can fit a decent complete build in the PGrakata. There's nothing really special about these builds, just your usual Damage + Multishot + Crit + Elements. Switching Shred for a slightly lower drain mod, like Bladed Rounds, lets you upgrade one of the 60/60 mods to a 90% elemental if you so choose. Vigilante Armaments and Shred are your replaceable mods of course, whether you want more elements (e.g. for Viral + Electric or more Toxin/Electric for a higher Corrosive bias), more raw damage (e.g. Heavy Caliber), or perhaps -Recoil or an Ammo Mutation. A more versatile build probably wants one or two more Forma, at least one - polarity and possibly another V polarity, depending on your preferred additional mods.

Something I would like to note here is that from my experience, a Corrosive Status PGrakata is far more effective against armoured heavies than a Viral + Hunter Munitions build. The rate at which the PGrakata procs Corrosive vastly outpaces the killing speed of Viral + HM bypassing armour with Slash procs, at least at higher levels. Furthermore, against enemies who you would rather use Viral against (ie Corpus and perhaps Infested), you'd get far more effectiveness out of Vigilante Armaments/Shred/Heavy Caliber/another elemental/etc than HM. The extra damage that HM puts out is relatively low compared to any direct damage boost, and is only really noticeable/useful against high armour or high shield enemies. As I said before, from my experience the PGrakata does far better with Corrosive against high armour, and against high shield enemies you can just go full Toxin damage.

Recommended Setups: Corrosive Status vs Grineer, Corrupted, armoured Corpus, Viral vs unarmoured Corpus, Corrosive/Viral + VA/Heat vs Infested

Raw Damage 6-Forma:

One - polarity and another V polarity lets you use two 90% elementals instead of 60/60s, for a significant damage boost against enemies who don't need high status. Another V polarity for Vital Sense would open up more possibilities, like switching Vigilante Armaments for another 90% elemental, or perhaps switching Shred for Heavy Caliber for an even larger damage-per-shot boost. Perhaps you'd rather have a -Recoil or Ammo Mutation mod. At this point, you have a wide range of reasonable mod options available to you.

Recommended Setups: see above

My Builds:

My builds aren't really any different from the sample builds I listed above. The first is a standard Corrosive Status build, fantastic against anything with armour. The second is a Viral build with increased status chance, great against unarmoured Corpus. The third build loses some status chance for raw Corrosive damage, primarily used for Infested, especially Lephantis/Hemocyte.

Combat Use and Summary

The Prisma Grakata essentially functions as a high capacity SMG. It is fantastic in close quarters with its solid DPS and great status, and can tear through large groups and heavies alike. With a couple of Forma and appropriate mods, the PGrakata can handle the majority of content in the game quite well.

However, its high recoil and rapidly increasing spread make it quite difficult to use beyond close range. Furthermore, the very high ROF eats through ammo extremely quickly, making Ammo Case, Rifle Scavenger or Ammo Mutation quite important for longer missions. A base ammo max of 1000 does help alleviate this issue a little.

If you find the ROF and/or recoil to be too much, a mod with - ROF/Recoil can make the PGrakata much nicer to use. Something like Stabilizer or Critical Delay could work out nicely.

Personally, I quite enjoy taking the Prisma Grakata out on occasion for a run. It's a fun, powerful and versatile rifle. As someone who runs primarily Carrier (Prime), ammo efficiency is rarely a concern, and as a former Battlefield 3/4 player, I find the recoil to be quite manageable. If you enjoy fast firing weapons, SMGs, or even just want a solid rifle that can deal with armoured units, I'd say that the Prisma Grakata is certainly worth a look.

Scores
Vs Trash Mobs: 4/5 - Respectable Reload Ratio and solid DPS, but is matched or exceeded in this capacity by a number of other weapons.
Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 3.5/5 - Doesn't have an especially high burst DPS among rifles or weapons in general, but will kill them without too much trouble.
Vs Armoured Heavies without Hunter Munitions: 4.5/5 - PGrakata is among the best anti-armour rifles in the game, thanks to its high status chance and ROF.
Vs Armoured Heavies with Hunter Munitions: NA/5 - Doesn't need HM to do well against armour, and in my opinion and experience, does worse when building for it.

Vs Variants

The Prisma Grakata is strictly superior to the MR5 base Grakata, which for its MR lock is actually a pretty solid weapon. Notably, it has improved Crit and Base Damage, a faster reload and a double size magazine. If you enjoy the Grakata, you'll enjoy the Prisma Grakata.

Competitors

There are a lot of other Full-Auto rifles, many with their own merits. However, none have the same crit-status balance that the Prisma Grakata has, and several of the closer competitors are spool-up rifles. The Prisma Grakata is also the highest RoF rifle. There are several rifles with heavier crit bias, such as Soma (Prime), Baza Tenora and Telos Boltor, though all have lower status. Similarly, there are many more status-focused rifles like Boltor Prime, Braton Prime and Supra Vandal, although appropriately they all have weaker crit.

Notably, the Prisma Grakata plays much like an SMG, with high recoil and rapidly increasing spread relegating its effectiveness to close quarters only. This sort of close-quarters-only behaviour is emulated only by the Baza, a silenced, crit-focused rifle.

Rivens

The (Prisma) Grakata has a fairly reasonable Riven disposition of 3/5 (1.1). A decent Riven gives the weapon a solid boost, but doesn't massively change its power level. This disposition seems reasonably fair to me, though give its buff in the U22.12 Balance Pass and its overall power, an argument could be made to drop it down a little bit.

As always, Damage/Multishot/Crit Chance/Crit Damage are desirable stats. Toxin/Electric are quite good for increasing Corrosive damage bias and thus proc frequency. - Recoil can greatly improve usability, and can be worth trying. + Status Chance does boost effectiveness against armoured units even further, but the PGrakata is already a status machine as is. Punch Through makes the PGrakata more efficient at tearing apart crowds, and can be a nice Riven stat.

- Zoom is a great negative, as it reduces the perceived effect of recoil when aiming. Furthermore, as a weapon only really good at close range, Zoom is really not necessary. - Ammo Max can be alright for short missions, or if you run Carrier/Ammo Mutation/Rifle Scavenger, but it's a lot iffier on the PGrakata than other rifles. - Status Duration is alright if you're running a Corrosive status build. - Impact/Puncture/Slash can all be useful for a Corrosive status build, since the minor damage loss is easily made up for by the boosted Riven stats, and increased Corrosive proc frequency. - ROF can also be a reasonable stat if you struggle with recoil and/or ammo economy, although you lose a significant amount of DPS with it. As a hitscan weapon with no damage drop-off, I believe - Projectile Flight Speed has no negative impact. - Infested/Corpus damage can also be quite reasonable, as they generally don't remotely compare to Grineer/Corrupted enemies in EHP. Furthermore a good riven can easily outweight the - faction damage with its stat bonuses.