Review: Rubico Prime (U23.10.8)

Released with Chroma and Gram Primes in U23.9, the Rubico Prime is a relatively newly released Prime sniper. With across-the-board improvements from the base Rubico, the RubicoP is a very solid and quite effective sniper rifle.

Acquisition

The Rubico Prime is a standard Prime rifle, consisting of 3 parts + blueprint. It has not been vaulted yet, so its parts and BP can be obtained from currently available relics. At the time of writing, Chroma Prime is also the current Prime Access, so RubicoP can be obtained through that as well.

Stats

Immediately obvious is the Rubico Prime's exceptional crit stats, which are the best of all snipers currently in the game. Combined with its solid base damage, this gives the Rubico P exceptional damage-per-shot. The rest of the stats are pretty standard as snipers go, tiny mag with an annoyingly long reload and an oddly high ROF (for a sniper) give the RubicoP a measly Reload Ratio of 0.68. Status Chance is not very high, though this isn't an especially important stat on snipers anyway.

Also of note is the innate 1m Punch Through as standard for all snipers, which is very useful. Like all snipers, the Rubico Prime has damage fall-off from 400-600 metres, where regular hitscan weapons do not hit past 300 metres.

As a sniper rifle, the Rubico Prime has a combo counter that increases on each hit, and decreases slowly over time or with each miss. The RubicoP's is especially fast, starting at 1.5x after the first hit, and increasing in intervals of powers of three (ie 1,3,9,27,etc). It decays every two seconds. The RubicoP's gets increased Crit Damage as its zoom bonus, with +35% at 2.5x zoom, and +50% at 5x zoom.

Augments
None.

Builds
0-Forma:

This first build is a standard Viral-Hunter Munitions build. It has little trouble killing anything with low or no armour, and Hunter Munitions to blast through anything with heavy armour. The extra 4 mod points can be used in several ways, perhaps replace one of the 60/60s with a 90%, or a partially ranked Fast Hands or something.

This second build goes all out for damage-per-shot, dropping Hunter Munitions in favour of Vigilante Armament. This build does far more direct damage, especially against enemies with low or no armou, and with the right element setup, can brute force through some armoured enemies as well.

Recommended Setups: Viral + HM vs Grineer, Corrupted, Radiation + VA/Cold vs armoured Corpus, Eidolons, Viral + VA/Electric vs unarmoured Corpus, Corrosive + VA/Heat vs Infested

General Purpose 3-Forma:

Two more V polarities and a - polarity offer a lot of build versatility, allowing the easy use of two 90% elementals, with space for another mod. Another Forma or two may be necessary to fit the last mod, depending what you want in that slot. Mods I can think of that could be effective in that slot include Fast Hands and Wildfire.

A Viral + HM build comfortably fits as well, with far more damage-per-shot, but losing out a little on Viral proc chance. I personally still find HM necessary to reliably punch through heavily armoured enemies, but if you don't, you can of course drop it for another mod.

Recommended Setups: Viral + HM vs Grineer, Corrupted, Radiation + Cold vs armoured Corpus, Eidolons, Viral + Electric vs unarmoured Corpus, Corrosive + Heat vs Infested

Primed Cryo Rounds 4-Forma:

An added D polarity allows the use of Primed Cryo Rounds, which is a massive damage boost and very useful for certain builds. My preferred Viral + HM build uses PCR and Malignant Force, for high Viral proc chance as well as high direct damage.

This also allows the use of PCR for an extremely powerful Radiation + Cold build, perfect against robotic Corpus and Eidolons. If running Chroma, Serration should be dropped for another mod, though I'm not sure what would be the best replacement.

Depending on your preferred other builds, additional Forma may be necessary to compensate for the D polarity.

My Builds:

Nothing special here, just those two specialised builds in different arrangements.

Combat Use and Summary

As a sniper rifle, the Rubico Prime excels at killing single high priority threats. It does exceptional damage-per-shot, and with a headshot can instantly put down just anything with low or no armour. With Hunter Munitions, this extends to heavily armoured enemies as well, with a nearly 100% Crit Chance with Point Strike. Without, it has to brute-force through armoured enemies, but can still do so thanks to raw damage, and the combo counter benefits.

The Rubico Prime has almost no recoil, which was quite surprising for me, as I use the Vectis Prime as my primary sniper, and am used to high sniper recoil.

Where the Rubico Prime falls down is against crowds. Besides innate Punch Through, there isn't much in its favour for killing large numbers of weak enemies. It has a very poor Reload Ratio, with tiny capacity and an annoyingly long reload. Furthermore, when fired from the hip, it has very poor accuracy.

As snipers go, the Rubico Prime is quite solid. Fantastic crit as well as across-the-board improvements from its base model make it one of the best sniper rifles in the game. That said, snipers are not very well suited to the majority of Warframe's content, so unless you really like snipers or Eidolon hunting, this isn't a weapon you're likely to get much use out of. For Eidolon hunting, the RubicoP is solidly the second best weapon, behind the Lanka.

Scores
Vs Trash Mobs: 1/5 - Tiny mag, no AoE and a terrible Reload Ratio, the only thing in the Rubico Prime's favour is its innate Punch Through.
Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 5/5 - With the right elements and/or some combo counter, the RubicoP can one-shot unarmoured enemies up to very high levels.
Vs Armoured Heavies without Hunter Munitions: 4/5 - Thanks to incredibly high damage-per-shot, and the sniper combo counter, the Rubico Prime can brute-force through armoured units much better than most other pure-damage weapons.
Vs Armoured Heavies with Hunter Munitions: 5/5 - Very high Crit Chance combined with Multishot makes HM proc reasonably often, and a single crit slash proc from the RubicoP can easily kill an armoured heavy.

Vs Variants

The Rubico Prime has a number improvements over the base Rubico, with the biggest being the Crit Chance (38% from 30%). The Reload Time improvement (2s from 2.4s) is also quite nice. With all that said, the base Rubico is still quite powerful, and at MR6 and being available from the market, is much easier to acquire.

Competitors

The Rubico Prime has few competitors, as there aren't many sniper rifles in the game. Both Snipetron (Vandal) and Vulkar (Wraith) are semi-auto snipers with larger capacity, but much less firepower. The Lanka deals more damage-per-shot, but falls behind massively for follow-up shots. The Vectis Prime is perhaps the closest competitor, also with good firepower, but differs significantly in firing rhythm. The Rubico Prime has a moderately sized magazine with lengthy reload, while the Vectis Prime has a tiny magazine but short reload. Both are definitely worth trying out, as the better sniper will come down mainly to personal preference.

Rivens

Riven found on Trade Chat

The Rubico (Prime) has a higher end 3/5 (1.1) disposition, which can give it a substantial power boost. Especially given how powerful the Prime is, I think a disposition drop would be quite reasonable for balance's sake, perhaps to 2/5 (~0.8).

For Eidolon hunting, the best stats to have are Crit Chance and Multishot, then Electric/Fire or Crit Damage. As Chroma is the go-to for Eidolon limb/body damaging, and his Vex Armour (3) acts essentially as a massive Serration, +Damage is actually not a very big damage boost. If not using Chroma, +Damage is a good stat to have.
Just about anything that doesn't affect damage-per-shot is an acceptable negative for Eidolon hunting, though -Zoom is especially good since it reduces the maximum zoom.

For general use, Damage/Multishot/Crit Chance/Crit Damage are all great, though as usual I'd favour MS+CC for improved consistency. An element can help save a mod slot, but otherwise +Mag Capacity/Reload Speed would greatly improve usability.

As usual, -Max Ammo or -Zoom are great negatives. Owing to its sheer firepower, -Infested/Corpus damage is also very tolerable. -Status Chance is solid since the RubicoP doesn't focus on proccing much status. -Status Duration is alright if you're not relying on Hunter Munitions, but is quite bad if you are. -Puncture/Slash are quite tolerable given how little of those damage types RubicoP has. Personally, I'd also consider -Fire Rate quite reasonable on it, as you're relying more on damage-per-shot far more than ROF for damage output. -Projectile Flight Speed is typically quite tolerable, as although it does reduce the fall-off distances, you're unlikely to see any effects in Warframe's standard relatively close quarters combat.