Review: Vaykor Marelok (U29.2.4)

The Vaykor Marelok is an MR10 Semi-Auto Secondary, available from the Steel Meridian Syndicate. With an unconventional stat spread for a slow-firing weapon, it can inflict powerful Status procs quite reliably, however faces immense competition and powercreep from many newer weapons.

Acquisition

The Vaykor Marelok can be purchased from the Steel Meridian Syndicate if you are max Rank (5) with them. Unused copies installed can also be traded between players.

Stats

The Vaykor Marelok's stats clearly lean towards Status, with a 35% Status Chance being among the highest for standard Secondaries. Unfortunately, the rest of its stat spread does not support this especially well. Its Slash bias is only 30%, and its Fire Rate is quite slow at 2. A Crit Chance of 20% is solid and very usable, though a base Crit Multiplier of just 1.5x is quite low.

A Mag Capacity of 10 rounds works reasonably well with a rather fast Reload Time of just 1.7 seconds, for an overall Reload Ratio of 2.94.

 

As a Vaykor Syndicate weapon, the VMarelok innately has the Justice Syndicate effect. Upon gaining sufficient affinity, it deals radial Blast damage with guaranteed proc, healing a small amount and also slightly increasing armour for a time. Blast damage is not good, however healing is always nice, and the armour increasing isn't totally worthless (though it is very small).

Augments

Shrapnel Rounds is a Marelok-exclusive mod that used to be PvP only. In that format, it offered no significant damage increase, however this is not the case in regular gameplay. The massive +220% Damage from Hornet Strike makes Shrapnel Rounds actually stronger than Barrel Diffusion, especially so with more +Damage like Augur Pact or Chroma's Vex Armour. Additionally, Barrel Diffusion and Shrapnel Rounds can of course be stacked together for even more Multishot, though this has diminishing returns in terms of damage increase.

Outside of Conclave, Shrapnel Rounds can also appear in the Nightwave store.

Builds

Crit 0-Forma: 

Status 0-Forma:

With one native V and D polarities, you can fit several types of basic builds on the Vaykor Marelok. The top build goes for Crit, which is relatively unimpressive due to such low base Crit Multiplier and regular Target Cracker. This lower build goes for much higher Status Chance, while being a lot more reliably with damage and Status output. The additional Heat is also a big advantage to the Status build, allowing it to combat heavily armoured enemies much more reliably.

If you have Shrapnel Rounds, it is slightly better than Barrel Diffusion when used alongside Hornet Strike, much more so if Augur Pact (or Magnum Force) is installed as well.

 

In terms of elemental setups, as usual Viral is your general-purpose option, with extra Heat being especially powerful. Heat procs deal damage-over-time and are greatly strengthened when repeatedly procced, which the VMarelok is very good at. Corrosive + Heat has strong multipliers against Infested enemies, Deimos Infested in particular who are largely immune to Viral procs.

Against unarmoured Corpus, pure Toxin is a very strong option as it bypasses their Shields entirely. Otherwise, Viral + Electric is super-effective against all of their health types once their Shields are depleted. Radiation hits particularly Alloy-armoured enemies very well, which includes pretty much all armoured Corpus units and half of the Grineer. Unfortunately, its proc is not anywhere near as good as some of the others.

A novel, if perhaps slightly niche, option is Gas + Electric, for use against groups. With extremely high Status Chance and fairly high base Damage, the VMarelok can make better use of these procs than most other weapons. Both of these elements inflict area damage with their procs, which helps to deal with groups that the VMarelok otherwise struggles against. This comes at the cost of drastically reduced firepower against single, heavier targets.

Recommended Setups: Viral (+Heat) vs everything, Corrosive (+Heat) vs Infested, Toxin or Viral + Electric vs unarmoured Corpus, Radiation (+Toxin) vs Alloy armour, Corpus, Gas + Electric vs groups

Primed Crit 1-Forma:

If you have Shrapnel Rounds, or your mods are not at max Rank, one added V polarity allows you to upgrade both Crit mods to their Primed versions. This provides a significant damage boost over the regular Crit mods, particularly Primed Target Cracker.

Barrel Diffusion Primed Crit 2-Forma:

Otherwise, if all your mods are at max Rank and you only have Barrel Diffusion, you'll need another V polarity to fit everything in.

General Purpose 3-Forma:

Another V polarity to fit in the high-drain mods and you can start seriously looking at the eighth mod slot, though you may need more Forma still...

General Purpose 4-Forma:

This build replaces the native D polarity with a much more versatile -. This change allows you to fit in many more high-drain mods, like Primed Heated Charge pictured above. PHC adds a large amount of Heat damage, not only increasing your damage-per-shot but also making Heat the most likely proc to inflict, which is very effective on the Vaykor Marelok. Scorch is a lower drain Heat option that adds less damage, but increases Status Chance even more.

There are a number of other options to consider outside of extra elements however. Magnum Force and Augur Pact both increase damage output, the former being stronger but also significantly impacting accuracy. On a slow-firing, precision weapon like the VMarelok, I personally consider the accuracy penalty to be very troublesome. The other one of Barrel Diffusion/Shrapnel Rounds is penalty-free and also offers a solid damage boost, notably also increasing the number of procs inflicted.

Hydraulic Crosshairs and Sharpened Bullets are conditional Crit-boosting options, though these are weaker than the above options. A Primed Expel mod is especially powerful on a Status weapon like the VMarelok, as it is applied twice to damage-over-time procs like Slash and Heat. At max rank, such procs deal more than double damage. Seeker offers no direct damage boosts, but the Punch-Through can allow you to hit multiple enemies at once, which is a massive damage multiplier against groups.

A novel, if not necessarily strong, option is to install Maim or Carnis Stinger for increased Slash damage. With such high Status Chance, the increased Slash bias allows the VMarelok to inflict Slash procs much more frequently and reliably. However, the overall damage output increase from these mods is miniscule compared to most others. Additionally, +Heat offers a similar effect with much larger direct damage increases.

There aren't any Exilus mods that do anything special for the VMarelok. The reload-while-holstered effect of Eject Magazine is less valuable as it already reloads quite quickly, and it does not have much recoil. (Primed) Pistol Ammo Mutation is always an option to keep topped up in longer missions, but it is already quite ammo efficient anyway.

Recommended Setups: see above.

My Builds

Standard Viral + Punch-Through build. In this setup, Shrapnel Rounds provides slightly more overall damage than Barrel Diffusion, and a lot more procs.

Combat Use and Summary

 

As a slow-firing precision weapon, the Vaykor Marelok naturally fares best against fewer, tougher targets. In particular, its high Status Chance and the extremely powerful Heat proc are quite potent against heavily armoured enemies, weakening them and dealing significant damage-over-time. This is somewhat less effective against unarmoured enemies, against whom direct damage is much more viable often gives faster time-to-kill.

Status-immune enemies are the VMarelok's worst nightmare, completely ignoring its biggest strengths. Large groups of weak enemies are also troublesome, especially if they are tough enough to survive the Justice effect when it procs. Unless you build specifically for anti-group (ie Gas + Electric, which greatly reduces your single-target damage output), the VMarelok struggles to kill large numbers of enemies quickly. It is slow firing, with no significant scaling AoE.

 

 

Recoil is largely a non-issue, allowing precise follow-up shots on targets. However while initial shots are quite accurate, rapid-fire seems to significantly reduce accuracy, to the point where it spreads significantly even at close range. As such, I'd recommend pausing regularly to allow the spread to reset. Ammo efficiency is largely a non-issue.

The innate Justice Syndicate effect is always nice, though fairly limited in value. Blast is not a good damage type, and its proc is now quite useless - old Blast at least served as a short-CC with its knockdown. Health restoration is nice, though quite small, and the temporary armour increase is also very small.

Overall, the Vaykor Marelok is a decent but largely unexceptional Semi-Auto Secondary. Its focus on Status causes it to lag behind many other weapons for direct damage output, while its low RoF means that it stacks up procs (particularly Viral/Corrosive) much slower than other weapons can. Though its Heat procs are undoubtedly potent, they are nothing exceptional compared to other Secondaries. If you're looking for a hard-hitting, slow-firing Secondary, or a Secondary for stacking up Status procs rapidly, there are several other weapons I'd recommend instead.

Scores

Vs Trash Mobs: 1.5/5 - Relatively slow RoF with no form of AoE, the Vaykor Marelok is not very effective against groups. The Justice proc can help at lower levels, but Blast damage is terrible, and it does very little against higher level mobs.

Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 2.5/5 - A focus on Status over Crit leaves the VMarelok well behind many other Secondaries for direct damage output. Though it procs Viral reliably, even at that it is still slower than many other, stronger weapons.

Vs Armoured Heavies: 3.5/5 - A very high Status Chance allows the VMarelok to inflict strong procs with reasonable consistency. Notably, even with only 30% Slash bias, it can inflict Slash procs somewhat regularly, and it is especially potent at inflicting Heat procs if modded for it. However, again its low RoF limits how quickly and reliably it can inflict these procs. There are a number of Secondaries that can inflict similarly powerful procs with greater frequency and regularity.

Vs Variants

The MR10 Vaykor Marelok is a majority upgrade over the MR7 Marelok, with increased Crit Chance, Status Chance, and Mag Capacity. However, it has noticeably lower Slash bias, which is a distinct disadvantage.

Competitors

The Vaykor Marelok has to compete with other slow-firing Semi-Auto Secondaries, of which there are many other strong options. It is fairly uncommon in that its Status Chance is much higher than its Crit Chance, where most such Secondaries lean the other way.

 

The Arca Scisco is probably the closest comparable one stat-wise. It is much weaker per-shot, but has a much larger Mag Capacity, higher Fire Rate, and its "Target Analysis" buff keeps it competitive for overall damage and Status output. The Kuva Seer is also quite similar in that it leans more towards Status, but still has superior Crit, higher overall base Damage including its Corrosive explosions, and is generally a lot stronger.

 

The (Ak)Vasto Prime has lower damage-per-shot, but is faster firing and inflicts Slash procs very reliably. The (Ak)Lex Prime is harder hitting, but is much less capable of inflicting Slash procs. A Tombfinger Kitgun cannot inflict Slash procs, but can pack far more firepower as well as having a much better Reload Ratio. It also has a small explosive radius.

Rivens

The Vaykor Marelok currently has a slightly above-average 3/5 (1.1) Riven Disposition, while the regular Marelok has a higher 4/5 (1.2) Disposition. I personally wouldn't be surprised to see that creep up further over time, as the past few years of new releases have significantly powercrept them.

As usual, +Damage/Crit Chance/Crit Damage are all great options. +Multishot is good if you don't have Shrapnel Rounds, but much less valuable if you do. +Slash can be useful for pushing up bias for more Slash procs. +Elemental Damage can be a nice damage boost, or for saving a mod slot. +Faction Damage to a tougher faction (mainly Grineer) drastically increases the damage of your damage-over-time procs (e.g. Heat, Slash). +Fire Rate can be useful against larger groups, though I find +Punch-Through much more useful for that role. +Mag Capacity/Reload Speed can be nice quality-of-life improvements, but are by no means amazing.

-Impact/Puncture are ideal, as they reduce the bias of unwanted procs without massively impacting damage output. -Faction Damage to a weaker faction (Infested is ideal) can be manageable. -Fire Rate is not bad if you prefer taking slower, more precise shots. -Ammo Max is largely a non-issue. -Projectile Speed has no effect. +Recoil is good if you handle recoil well. -Zoom is ideal for close quarters.