Review: Boar Prime (U23.10.8)

Released with Mag and Dakra Primes way back in U10.0, the MR11 Boar Prime is one of the earliest Prime weapons in the game. A relatively uncommon weapon, the BoarP is a reasonably effective shotgun, with a high ROF and being capable of 100% status

Acquisition

As standard for a Prime shotgun, the Boar Prime is made from 3 parts + blueprint. It is currently unvaulted, so is available from special relics that drop only in specific locations (currently Void and PoE/OV bounties).
Stats

The first stat to jump out is of course the 30% base Status Chance, which with the four 60/60 mods, gives the Boar Prime 100% Status Chance. Its crit, at 15%/2x, is usable if you have the spare slots, but not exceptional. Shotgun crit mods are particularly poor, and shotgun status is especially important, so modding the Boar Prime for crit is not a high priority. The BoarP fires 8 pellets at base.

The BoarP has a fairly high ROF and capacity for a shotgun, making it more of a spray-and-pray weapon than the mostly precision, one-shot-one-kill shotguns. Its Reload Ratio is relatively poor, at 1.53.

As standard for a shotgun, the BoarP has damage fall-off, losing up to 70% of its damage beyond close range. It also has lower than usual zoom.

Augments
None.

Builds
0-Forma:

As mentioned earlier, the Boar Prime's power comes from being able to reach 100% Status Chance with the four 60/60 mods. Building for crit and/or raw damage leaves it as a relatively mediocre weapon, falling behind several other shotguns with much better direct damage capabilities. This is rather unfortunate if you haven't been able to acquire all of the 60/60s, Shell Shock being by far the hardest of these four to get.

Even with no innate polarities, since it really wants all four 60/60 mods, the Boar Prime can fit a basic complete build. There is plenty of space for say a partial rank Seeking Fury or Vigilante Armaments, or switching Point Blank for its Primed version. There's a number of options for the remaining space.

Recommended Setups: Corrosive + Blast vs Grineer, Corrupted, Infested, armoured Corpus, Gas + Magnetic vs unarmoured Corpus

General Purpose 3-Forma:

Three V polarities lets you comfortably fill in all the mod slots, as well as Primed Point Blank. Seeking Fury has been added for the Punch Through and slight reload boost. Contagious Spread increases the Corrosive bias and damage, which results in far more Corrosive procs.

Both Contagious Spread and Seeking Fury can of course be switched out for other mods of your choice. For an overall damage boost, Vigilante Armaments and/or Vicious Spread add a nice amount of extra damage. Perhaps you want more of a reload boost, in which case Tactical Pump would fit nicely. Maybe you want an Ammo Mutation instead to improve ammo recovery, which will also fit comfortably.

Another option for higher raw damage is to slot the crit mods instead. With mediocre crit stats, and Shotgun crit mods being relatively weak even with Primed Ravage, the damage boost is not massive. I personally wouldn't bother, again if you're going for raw damage, there are other, better shotguns.

Recommended Setups: see above.

Primed Charged Shell 4-Forma:

An extra - polarity allows the use of Primed Charged Shell, for a nice damage boost, and a big Corrosive bias increase.

Recommended Setups: see above

My Builds:

My Riven allows a hybrid build to fit comfortably and work effectively, without compromising status or Punch Through.
The first build is a maximised Corrosive build, optimised for armour stripping. At point-blank range, this build can easily kill a Grineer/Corrupted heavy in a couple of shots. Cold has been used as the additional element for its effectiveness against shields, against which this build otherwise struggles against. Notably, Primed Point Blank has been dropped in favour of Primed Charged Shell, as the Riven already gives good damage, and PCS massively improves armour stripping speed.
The second build is my anti-Corpus build. Thanks to sheer Burst DPS, I find that this build actually kills faster than a Gas + Cold/Electric/Magnetic build at the levels I care about.
The third build is an anti-Infested focused on raw super-effective damage.

Combat Use and Summary

As you'd expect from a shotgun with fairly wide spread, the Boar Prime is best in close quarters. It excels at proccing a lot of status to multiple enemies at once, especially with Punch Through. It can do reasonable damage to groups of weaker enemies, being one of the best non-AoE shotguns for group damage due to its spread and ROF. The BoarP is not exceptional against high health unarmoured enemies, as there are multiple shotguns well ahead in terms of single target damage.

The Boar Prime is exceptional against heavily armoured targets, due its high ROF, and being capable of 100% Status Chance. It can proc Corrosive rapidly, leaving heavies with a tiny fraction of their armour after just a few shots. Furthermore, it deals enough damage to kill a de-armoured heavy quite quickly, even without a crit build.

The Boar Prime has noticeable but in my opinion manageable vertical recoil. It kicks up a reasonable amount, but is fairly consistent and only recoils upwards. With a high ROF for a shotgun, it can go through ammo fairly quickly. This is worsened by shotgun ammo being a rarer drop, and the BoarP only have 120 spare rounds. For anything more than a short mission, I'd strongly recommend Ammo Case/Mutation or Shotgun Scavenger.

Overall, the Boar Prime is a solid and perhaps underappreciated weapon. It will handle most of Warframe's content fairly comfortably provided it has ammo support, and handles groups better than most shotguns. With that said, I don't think it is necessarily worth hunting down while vaulted, as it does not do anything that other primaries do not do. I do enjoy using it on occasion, but it has taken a back seat to 100% status Kohm...

Scores
Vs Trash Mobs: 3.5/5 - Good ROF and decent capacity, and its spread is decent, but its Reload Ratio is mediocre and it isn't as efficient as the AoE shotguns in the game.
Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 3/5 - The Boar Prime is a little lacking for single target damage, especially beyond close range. It can kill unarmoured heavies in a reasonable time, but lags behind several other shotguns for single target Burst DPS.
Vs Armoured Heavies without Hunter Munitions: 4.5/5 - 100% status capable, with a high ROF and good capacity, the Boar Prime excels at proccing a lot of status. With its reasonable DPS, it can kill heavily armoured enemies quite easily.
Vs Armoured Heavies with Hunter Munitions: NA/5 - mediocre crit but great Status Chance, HM does far worse than a Corrosive status build.

Vs Variants

Comparing the MR11 Boar Prime to the MR2 Boar is rather unfair. Most importantly, the Prime is capable of 100% status where the base Boar is not, and has almost double the damage.

Competitors

There are several other shotguns worth considering depending on what you're looking for, though none directly compare to the Boar Prime. For Full-Auto crowd killing, there are weapons like Astilla, Kohm and Sobek, all of which have solid crowd killing abilities. Astilla has a minor explosive AoE, and as a single pellet shotgun, does not require 100% Status Chance to be an effective status weapon, but of course does not compare to status shotguns for status application (it really behaves more like a rifle). Kohm has 5 metres innate Punch Through, and the Sobek has the Acid Shells Augment, which gives it great crowd killing bursts. However, both Kohm and Sobek cannot be good status shotguns without extra mods, like Nano-Applicator or Sobek's Shattering Justice Augment. The Strun Wraith is the other shotgun worth considering, easily capable of 100% Status Chance, as well as being crit viable. It is more powerful, but also much slower in both RoF and reload.

Rivens

Retaining its high 5/5 (1.34) disposition, the Boar (Prime) can get some very powerful Rivens. Given its substantial power boost in the U22.12 Balance Pass, and overall strength, I think the Boar (Prime) is due for a disposition drop, perhaps to 3/5 (~1) given its unpopularity. That said, any disposition drop will potentially completely ruin certain Rivens, mainly ones sitting close to +120% Status Chance.

By far the best use for a Boar Riven is +Status Chance, so you don't have to use all four 60/60 mods. +120% is the goal as it allows replacing two 60/60 mods, which drastically increases the proc ratio of the remaining elements, and also opens up more mod slots for more build diversity. Anything lower is still usable and can replace one 60/60 mod, as any +Status Chance roll will be above 60%.

Beyond +Status Chance, Damage/Multishot/Crit Chance/Crit Damage are all good to have. Having the crit stats in particular open up ways to build the Boar Prime for both crit and status quite effectively, such as the Riven I have. An element of the combo you want to be proccing (ie Toxin/Electric for Corrosive), is a useful additional stat. Personally, I would also consider +Reload Speed and Punch Through to be valuable stats to have.

-Max Ammo can be usable if you always run Ammo Case/Mutation/etc. -Status Duration is alright if you only ever intend to use it to proc Corrosive, but ruins most other elements. -Impact/Puncture/Slash is great, as it will result in more of every other proc, which mitigates the damage loss. -Infested/Corpus damage is also solid if you only intend to use the BoarP against Grineer/Corrupted, who are the only factions with common armoured units. As its recoil is very predictable and consistent, +Recoil can also be a tolerable negative.