Review: Soma Prime (U27.5.6)

Last updated: U27.5.6

The Soma Prime is an MR7 assault rifle available from the current Unvaulting. It was originally released alongside Nova and Vasto Primes in U15.7. A highly popular spool-up rifle, it was left behind in the U22.12 Balance Pass, but is still a solid and reliable weapon.

Acquisition

As standard for a Prime rifle, the Soma Prime is made from 3 parts + blueprint. It is currently Unvaulted, and is available from special relics. These relics can primarily be found in the Void, or in PoE/OV bounties.

Stats

Obviously, the Soma Prime should be built for crit. 30%/3x is one of the best set of crit stats in the game, and helps to compensate for the measly base Damage. A Status Chance of 10% is not great, but somewhat compensated for by such a high RoF.

With a RoF of 15/s, Mag Capacity of 200 and a Reload Time of 3sec, the SomaP has a very respectable Reload Ratio of 4.44. However, with such a high ROF, it goes through its magazine and 800 spare ammo surprisingly quickly.

The Soma Prime has a relatively fast spool-up, requiring only 5 rounds to be shot before reaching full speed.

Augments

None.

Builds

0-Forma:

Two natural V polarities makes the Soma Prime quite easy to fit a basic build into. With mediocre Status Chance, Hunter Munitions is your best bet against enemies with heavy armour. This above build is a standard and fairly decent Viral + HM build. Malignant Force instead of Infected Clip would help with stacking up Viral procs.

If you'd rather focus on the up-front damage, you can of course switch Hunter Munitions for Vigilante Armaments, or slot in two 90% elementals. A full damage build will do just fine against anything without armour, provided you have the right elements.

Recommended Setups: Viral (+ HM) vs everything, Radiation vs armoured Corpus, Toxin vs unarmoured Corpus, Corrosive vs Infested

General Purpose 2-Forma:

If you have all of the 60/60 mods, two V polarities is enough to give you pretty good build versatility. If not, you'll need another Forma or two to free up enough space. This first build is a simple Viral + HM build with Shred, because I love Punch Through. There are a bunch of other good mods for that last slot, such as Heavy Caliber if you don't mind the accuracy loss, or Vigilante Armaments. Bladed Rounds and Argon Scope are both decent damage boosts as well. If the high ROF bothers you, Critical Delay will boost damage-per-shot a little while dropping your ROF, though this costs a fair bit of DPS.

A full damage build naturally still works well too, though being limited to the 60/60 mods isn't ideal. The extra Forma doesn't change any build options available, just lets you use more mods.

Another strong option is to add in a third elemental. This opens up several strong combinations such as Viral + Heat, Viral + Electric, Radiation + Toxin and Corrosive + Heat. Each of these is especially effective against particular targets.

There are a few good options for the Exilus slot. An Ammo Mutation mod is worth considering as the SomaP eats through ammo rapidly. Vigilante Supplies in particular also enhances the Vigilante mod set bonus. Stabilizer for reduced recoil can be helpful if you are struggling with it.

Recommended Setups: see above. Also consider: Viral + Heat vs everything, Viral + Electric vs unarmoured Corpus, Radiation + Toxin vs armoured Corpus, Corrosive + Heat vs Infested

Raw Damage 4-Forma:

Another two more Forma, one V and one - polarities lets you fit in two 90% elementals comfortably. At this point just about every decent setup is available to you.

My Builds:

Pretty much just exactly those 2-Forma builds, except with Primed Shred.

Combat Use and Summary

With a massive capacity and good ROF, as suggested by its description, the Soma Prime is fantastic against groups. It does enough damage to kill weaker enemies with only a few shots, and can kill very many before running low on ammo. This is further amplified by Punch Through, which can let you damage multiple enemies if they are lined up.

Compared to a lot of other primaries, especially since the U22.12 Balance Pass, the SomaP does not have a particularly high Burst DPS. It falls behind quite a bit for killing unarmoured heavies, even with the critical headshot bonus.

Without Hunter Munitions, the Soma Prime does have some struggles with armoured enemies as its Status Chance is not particularly high. The SomaP does proc a reasonable number of status effects through sheer volume of fire, but not enough to make a Corrosive status or Viral + Slash build truly effective. With the lowest Status Chance of all the spool-up rifles, it struggles the most against armour. Hunter Munitions of course mitigates this, taking advantage of the SomaP's very high Crit Chance to proc a lot of extra Slash. Even with HM though, the SomaP's DPS is not exceptional, and I find that it still falls behind quite a few other weapons for killing speed.

Something of note is the SomaP's unusual recoil pattern. Unlike most weapons which primarily have a vertical component, the SomaP's appears to be random, and can occur in any direction. This combined with its rapidly increasing spread with sustained fire results in poor effectiveness at longer ranges or against precise targets, despite its high Accuracy stat. Stabiliser may be a mod to consider if it gives you trouble.

As stated before, with such a high ROF, the Soma Prime eats through ammo quite quickly. For longer missions, Ammo Case/Mutation/etc is strongly recommended. Critical Delay is an option that will reduce your ammo consumption while boosting damage-per-shot, but will cost you in overall DPS.

Personally, I don't like the Soma Prime. I've always much preferred the feel of many other rifles. With the U22.12 Balance Pass, it's also fallen behind most of the other spool-up rifles, and been powercreeped by many other weapons. Nonetheless, it performs quite well for an MR7 assault rifle. If crit-based full-auto rifles are your thing, the Soma (Prime) is worth a look, especially as it is currently Unvaulted. However it is far from the best weapon of its type, and is outclassed by many other primaries.

Scores

Vs Trash Mobs: 4.5/5 - Massive magazine with a pretty good Reload Ratio, the Soma Prime handles crowds quite comfortably, especially with Punch Through.
Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 2.5/5 - Relatively mediocre damage output even by rifle standards. It kills unarmoured heavies without much trouble, but is outclassed in raw DPS by a lot of other weapons.
Vs Armoured Heavies without Hunter Munitions: 2/5 - Very high ROF allows the SomaP to proc more status than you'd expect, much of which will be very useful Slash procs. However, it simply does not proc frequently enough or deal enough damage, and falls far behind many other Rifles.
Vs Armoured Heavies with Hunter Munitions: 3.5/5 - Though its Crit Chance is fantastic, I've always found the SomaP's damage against armoured targets, even with HM, to be relatively mediocre. Though HM does make it significantly better against armour, it still lags behind many other weapons.

Vs Variants

The Soma Prime is a minor improvement over the MR6 Soma. The double mag size is useful, as is the unlisted boost of 800 spare ammo from 540. Notably, the Prime also spools up faster, requiring only 5 rounds to be shot where the base Soma requires 8. The Status Chance boost is nice but not exceptional.
The Soma Prime is obviously an improvement over the base Soma, but not by a lot. If you are yet to acquire the Prime, the base Soma functions essentially the same and will perform fairly similarly.

Competitors

The Soma Prime has two main groups of competitors - spool-up rifles and other crit-based rifles. Of the spool-up rifles, both the Tenora and Prisma Gorgon are crit-focused. Both have better status abilities, with the Tenora having a unique and powerful secondary fire, and the Prisma Gorgon being overall significantly more powerful. The Supra Vandal is status-focused spool-up rifle that still achieves a much higher DPS.

More generally, there are many other strong Full-Auto rifles, such as the Baza Prime, Telos Boltor, Prisma Grakata, Kuva Karak, the list continues. Most, if not all of them, are capable of far higher DPS than the Soma Prime, though with much lower capacity.

Rivens

With its low power level and significantly declining popularity, the Soma Prime is currently sitting at a neutral 3/5 (1) Riven Disposition. I would not be surprised to see that continue to rise, as it is vastly outclassed and could use the boost.

As standard for a crit weapon, Damage/Multishot/Crit Chance/Crit Damage are great stats to have. A desired element like Toxin can help free up mod slots and/or add extra damage. -Recoil may be useful if you struggle with the Soma (Prime)'s recoil. Punch Through makes crowd killing even easier.

-Max Ammo can be tolerable for shorter missions, or with Ammo Case/Mutation/etc. -Zoom is generally fine, since you probably won't use the Soma (Prime) much at longer range anyway. A low -Mag Capacity can be a tolerable negative. -Fire Rate can be useful if you want to improve ammo efficiency, though significantly impacts DPS. -Impact/Puncture don't reduce your damage by that much, and can help boost your Riven a fair bit. If you can handle it, +Recoil can be a nice negative as well.