Review: Akarius (U25.7.6)

The Akarius is an MR8 explosive secondary, and is Gauss' signature sidearm. It deals significant damage in a wide radius, with high Status capabilities and delayed arming to mitigate self-damage. It is a fairly powerful secondary, though is held back by horribly long Reload Time and a tiny spare ammo reserve.

Acquisition

The Akarius' blueprint is dropped only by Infested Demolishers. These units spawn only in Infested Disruption, which at the moment is only the node Ur, Uranus.

Stats

The Akarius has very high Status Chance, with abysmal Crit stats. This combines well with its majority (and very high) Blast damage, giving it significant elemental proccing ability. Direct impact of its rockets deals the small amount of Impact damage, while the explosion itself deals the major Blast damage. Oddly, it is a Burst-Fire secondary, firing 2 rockets per trigger pull.

Thanks to its insanely long 3.4s Reload Time (second slowest in the game), the Akarius has an atrocious Reload Ratio of 0.69. This is mitigated by its passive ability of reloading faster while sprinting - this is amplified further when using Gauss. Unusually, the its spare ammo count is a measly 20 - only two magazines worth.

The Akarius' rockets have a blast radius of 5 metres, which is a significant area. This would normally also pose a massive self-damage risk, as a properly modded Akarius can easily one-shot all but the absolute toughest Warframes. However, its rockets have a minimum arming distance of 10 metres, meaning that any impact before this distance will not cause an explosion. This is great for safety, but also drastically reduces the Akarius' damage output at point-blank range. Additionally, if you are travelling fast enough, it is still very possible to get yourself caught in the blast radius.

The Akarius' rockets also have an inbuilt homing function, seeking out nearby enemies within a relatively narrow cone in front of them. This is very useful for reducing the effects of recoil and requirement of precise aim, but also means that the rockets may not home in on the intended target.

Augments

None, it's a new weapon.

Builds

General Purpose 0-Forma:

The Akarius has two native - polarities. As a pure status weapon with relatively few requirements to perform well, it can fit quite a decent build even without any Forma. Hornet Strike and Barrel Diffusion are givens, Pistol Pestilence + Pathogen Rounds + Convulsion gives very high Corrosive damage, with quite good Status Chance. Quickdraw is there to reduce the Akarius' painfully long Reload Time, and Pistol Ammo Mutation helps mitigate the awfully small spare ammo count.

Thanks to its pure Blast explosions, and very high Status Chance, the Akarius is quite adept at rapidly inflicting Status procs. With a Corrosive build, this makes it fairly effective against heavily armoured units, dealing a decent amount of damage while also inflicting Corrosive procs regularly. Similarly, Corrosive + Blast have excellent multipliers against the Infested's toughest units.

Against unarmoured Corpus, Gas is a fantastic option. Though its direct damage has poor multipliers, its Status proc is exceptionally effective on high Status weapons, inflicting Toxin in an area around the victim. The Akarius can take full advantage of this, inflicting Gas procs on multiple enemies at once, for a massive spike of shield-bypassing Toxin damage.

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

General Purpose 2-Forma:

Two added V polarities opens up a lot of options for the Akarius, enabling the comfortable use of all eight mod slots, with a lot of variety. Something to note here is that while Lethal Torrent is a massive on-paper DPS increase, much of that is from its RoF boost, which is much less useful on the Akarius given its terrible Reload Ratio. As such, unlike on most Secondaries, I would consider Lethal Torrent here to be optional.

As shown in this build and mentioned above, I personally consider (Primed) Quickdraw and (Primed) Ammo Mutation to be very useful for the Akarius, each helping with two of its major flaws. Augur Pact and Magnum Force offer a straight damage buff, with the latter's accuracy drop being largely a non-issue thanks to the homing rockets. Additional elemental mods are always welcome, for more damage and elemental bias. Lethal Momentum increases Projectile Flight Speed, which can be useful for getting the rockets away from you, faster, to reduce the threat of self-destruction.

Oddly, the Akarius is unable to use Fulmination, despite being an explosive secondary.

Recommended Setups: see above.

My Builds 

My primary build is a simple Corrosive one, for maximum direct damage and armour stripping. I might make some tweaks to this build, more akin to what is pictured above.

This Gas build is fantastic against unarmoured Corpus.

Combat Use and Summary

As an explosive weapon with decent direct damage, the Akarius naturally is most effective against tightly clustered groups of enemies. It can tear through large groups with just a couple of rockets, though requires a hefty Reload Time afterwards. Thanks to its surprisingly high direct damage output, the Akarius is also reasonably effective against heavy unarmoured enemies as well.

However, it is against these heavier enemies that one of the Akarius' other flaws comes to light. Its innate Blast damage results in a lot of Blast procs, knocking enemies to their feet. Though this is useful against groups of weaker enemies, who die quickly to subsequent explosions, the same is not so true of heavier enemies. Knocked down enemies are harder to shoot, especially in weakspots for additional damage.

With high Status Chance and pure Blast damage on its explosions, the Akarius fares reasonably well against heavily armoured enemies too. With a Corrosive build, it can deplete enemy armour quite reliably, and its fairly high direct damage can kill de-armoured enemies with reasonable efficiency. However, like with just above, its tendency to knock enemies to the ground can make finishing off heavy enemies much harder than necessary. This is less of an issue thanks to the Akarius' homing rockets, but is still quite annoying.


Speaking of, the Akarius' homing rockets are both a blessing and a curse. They greatly reduce the need to aim, and make tracking down more agile enemies much easier. Additionally, it greatly reduces the impact of the Akarius' unusually high recoil. In a game with as fast player movement as Warframe, this homing feature is extremely useful. However, it often also results in rockets not targeting the enemies you'd intended, if there are other nearby enemies in homing range. Again combined with Warframe's very fast movement, this can at times result in the rockets detonating on enemies very nearby to the user, for heavy self-damage or even instant death.

The 10 metre arming distance is likewise also both a blessing and curse. As intended, it does make the Akarius much harder to deal self-damage with, as in many situations, the user will still be well within the 10 metre arming range. However, it also means that its damage output at point-blank range is very low - only about 14% of its full damage potential!

The Akarius' abysmally small spare ammo count of just 20, coupled with its painfully slow Reload Time of 3.4 seconds, means that it spends far more time reloading and waiting for ammo drops, than actually firing. Sprinting and Reload Speed mods can alleviate the latter concern, while Ammo Case/Mutation/etc mitigate the issue with the former. Nonetheless, I would not recommend taking the Akarius on a long mission due to its significant ammo concerns.


Overall, the Akarius is a powerful and novel explosive Secondary. It deals good damage with great Status capabilities, and has measures in place to reduce the frequency of self-damage kills. However, it has several key flaws that keep its firepower in check, and can significantly alter your movement and play style.

Scores

Vs Trash Mobs: 4.5/5 - The Akarius deals good damage in a wide area, making it very good at crippling large groups of weaker enemies. It is primarily held back in this area by its atrocious Reload Ratio, which is partially helped by its faster-reload-when-sprinting passive. Its requirement to travel a certain distance before detonating also limits its damage potential in close quarters.
Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 3.5/5 - The Akarius has a surprisingly high Burst DPS, allowing it to deal quite significant damage to enemies with a lot of health. Its main weakness here is a lack of precision and frequent Blast procs, which pretty much prevents being able land headshots on enemies.
Vs Armoured Heavies: 3.5/5 - Very high Status Chance allows the Akarius to strip enemy armour with Corrosive procs with reasonable effectiveness. However, its tendency to also inflict Blast procs makes follow-up shots more difficult to land precisely, as dicussed just above.

Vs Variants

None, it's a new weapon.

Competitors

There are a couple of other explosive/AoE secondaries currently available.The (Prisma) Angstrume and Kulstar have worse Status capabilities, but much better Crit for higher direct-damage capabilities. The Pox is a similarly capable (if not arguably even more capable) Status Secondary, with pure Toxin damage, and leaving behind toxic clouds on impact. Notably, it does not deal any self-damage.

Perhaps the most notable competitor is the Staticor, with reasonable Crit and great Status capabilities. It deals very good direct damage in an AoE, yet does not deal self-damage, has an extremely good Reload Ratio and a much larger spare ammo count. The Akarius' main advantages are in single-shot damage, homing ability and explosion radius, however the Staticor is superior in just about every other way. Of the two, I far prefer the Staticor for its many advantages.

Rivens

As a new weapon, the Akarius has a neutral 3/5 (1) Riven Disposition, which seems reasonably fair. It is not especially powerful, but also does not need Riven help to be effective.

As always, Damage/Multishot are top stats to have. +Elemental Damage can be quite good, both for damage output and Status proc bias. +Mag Capacity can help to mitigate the Akarius' terrible Reload Ratio. +Ammo Max can be helpful too give it has a measly spare ammo count of 20. +Projectile Flight Speed can help the Akarius' rockets reach their targets/arming distance faster. +Reload Speed makes it handle much better, even with its passive ability.

-Impact/Puncture/Slash are all fantastic negatives. The latter two have no negative impact, while the former only reduces a small portion of the Akarius' damage output. -Crit Chance/Damage are both solid as the Akarius has barely any of either. -Faction Damage to a weaker faction can be a solid negative. -Fire Rate can be solid, as the Akarius isn't a weapon that really needs a high RoF. +Recoil isn't a big problem thanks to the rockets having a (limited) homing function. -Zoom is great since the Akarius isn't at all a precision weapon.