Review: Kuva Tonkor (U29.6.7)

The Kuva Tonkor is an MR13 grenade launcher. One of the original Kuva Lich weapons, it is a total upgrade over the original Tonkor, and a fairly solid, if rather unexceptional, explosive weapon.

Acquisition

Another Kuva weapon, so same Kuva Lich deal as the others - make a Lich with that weapon and vanquish them.

Stats

Like with the other Kuva weapons, the Kuva Tonkor's base stats are quite well-rounded. It has excellent Crit stats, coupled with very high base Damage for overall fantastic damage-per-shot. A Status Chance of 17% is not terrible, especially as its explosions deal a component of Slash damage. Speaking of, the KTonkor's explosions are fairly large at 7 metre radius, though do suffer from up to 70% Damage Fall-Off away from the epicentre.

With only a single shot in its magazine, the KTonkor's actual fire rate is dictated by its Reload Time, which is 1.5 seconds at base. The Fire Rate stat only becomes relevant if you increase its Mag Capacity.

As standard for an explosive weapon, the KTonkor's explosions can inflict self-stagger/knockdown. However, its grenades have an 8 metre arming distance - upon impact within this range, they will not detonate.

Augments

The Kuva Tonkor has access to a Tonkor-exclusive mod, Precision Strike. This mod is only available through Nightwave. The mod significantly increases Reload Speed after achieving a direct hit. The buff can be refreshed while active.

This Augment is really useful for the Tonkor family. Both only have a single shot mag by default, so much like Bows, they are constantly reloading. Reducing Reload Time is thus a significant sustained damage output increase. Of course, it does not contribute to damage-per-shot, and has a specific trigger condition that you may not always achieve with an explosive weapon. Nonetheless, I think it is a very good mod very much worth considering for your builds.

Builds

NOTE: These builds are displayed with a full 60% Kuva Lich damage bonus. A minimum damage bonus of 25% will lose roughly 20% of the total damage.

0-Forma:

Unfortunately, the Kuva Tonkor has no innate polarities, so without Forma you will be stuck with a rather sub-optimal build. This example build slots in standard +Base Damage, +Crit and elementals to form Viral. Unfortunately, due to the lack of polarities, Split Chamber will not fit if all of your mods are max rank, so Vigilante Armaments occupies that slot instead. If you have both desired elemental 60/60s and any of your mods is not at full rank, you can fit in Split Chamber.

If your Kuva Lich damage bonus is a single element however, you do have an alternative (albeit slightly weaker) setup available. Adding in just a single elemental mod will still combine with it, such as this above Toxin bonus combining with a Cold mod to still form Viral. This build does not require 60/60s, but is restricted by what the Lich bonus is.

As usual, in the current state of Status, Viral is the best all-round option. A single Viral proc immediately doubles the damage dealt to enemy health, and it maxes out at just over quadruple. Corrosive and Radiation both have strong multipliers against various enemy types, the former against heavy Infested and Ferrite Armour, and the latter against Alloy Armour. Pure Toxin is worth a mention against unarmoured Corpus, provided your Lich bonus does not prevent it (Heat, Electric and Cold will all prevent pure Toxin without more mods).

Recommended Setups: Viral vs everything, Corrosive vs Infested, Ferrite Armour, Radiation vs Alloy Armour, Toxin vs unarmoured Corpus

1-Forma:

One added V polarity and the Kuva weapon rank bonus allows comfortable fitting of Split Chamber as well as two 90% elementals.

Alternatively, if you have the Toxin and Cold 60/60s, Hunter Munitions is worth very strong consideration. Due to its very low effective Fire Rate, the KTonkor does not inflict many Status procs naturally. HM circumvents this by going off of its far higher Crit Chance to inflict Slash procs with greatly increased frequency. It is still somewhat inconsistent given slow effective Fire Rate, but when it does proc, it inflicts massive Slash procs.

These Slash procs are by far the KTonkor's best weapon against heavily armoured enemies. Combined with Viral procs, they will rapidly eat through armoured enemies, bypassing their massive armour values entirely. Even with spending a mod slot on HM, the KTonkor still deals a good amount of direct damage in a decent area.

Recommended Setups: see above. Also consider: Viral + HM vs everything

2-Forma:

Another V polarity and two more ranks from the Kuva weapon bonus and you can start looking to use all eight mod slots - you will need the 60/60 elemental mods though if all your mods are max rank. For a Viral + HM build, provided your Lich damage bonus is Toxin or Cold, you only need one elemental mod to form Viral, and the rest can be general damage/other such mods.

As pictured here, Vigilante Armaments is a nice, no-fuss Multishot boost. I would like to draw attention to Precision Strike, as though it does not increase damage-per-shot, the massive Reload Speed buff it provides is a huge Sustained DPS increase.

Recommended Setups: see above.

3-Forma:

Another V polarity and you can fit in something larger like Heavy Caliber to further boost your damage output and especially Slash procs. There are of course a lot of other mod options to consider, on top of those already mentioned. Argon Scope and Bladed Rounds are conditional Crit-boosting options.

 

Primed Firestorm significantly increases explosive radius, for much more area damage but also much greater chance to self-stagger/knockdown. Do note that this will make the explosive radius larger than the grenade arming distance.

 

One completely different, novel option, is to equip Magazine Warp + Rank 3 Tainted Mag. Thanks to rounding, this setup gives you two shots per mag instead of just one, with minimum impact on Reload Time. Note that I would probably consider Precision Strike on its own to be overall better (while also only using one mod slot instead of two), however it is conditional where this setup is unconditional.

There is of course also the potential to have a triple-elemental combo, depending on what your Lich Bonus is. Viral + Heat is generally considered quite strong overall, however I personally don't think it is a good fit for the KTonkor. Against heavily armoured enemies, you are much better off with a more focused Viral + HM build, while most other targets are hit harder with something else. In particular, Corrosive + Heat hits almost every type of Infested effectively, likewise with Radiation + Toxin against the Corpus.

 

The obvious option for the Exilus slot is Vigilante Supplies. Besides increasing the Vigilante mod set bonus, it offers a very valuable Ammo Mutation effect for the KTonkor. A regular Ammo Mutation mod is very useful if Vigilante Supplies is not available. Terminal Velocity for increased Projectile Speed can help to land grenade shots at longer range, though I would go with the former options personally.

Recommended Setups: see above. Also consider: Corrosive + Heat vs Infested, Radiation + Toxin vs Corpus

My Build

Generic Viral + HM build, though looking back at it, Malignant Force should be dropped for Heavy Cal or Precision Strike, since my KTonkor has innate Toxin.

Kuva Lich Bonus

There are several decent options for which Kuva Lich bonus to choose, each with their own advantages. Toxin is notably strong as it allows you to make Viral just by adding a single Cold mod, like Primed Cryo Rounds. This lets you focus the rest of the mods on maximising the damage from your Hunter Munitions Slash procs. Against other targets, you can build for Corrosive instead (or even stick with pure Toxin). Cold also lets you make Viral with one mod, but does not combine with Primed Cryo Rounds to make it, nor does it form other good damage types.

Heat is a solid alternative, allowing you to make Viral + Heat with just two mods. Though the KTonkor's Status Chance is not amazing, even a single Heat proc from it can be extremely useful. Radiation is nice for adding a useful damage type and a proc that disables certain annoying enemies (mainly Eximi and Ancients). Magnetic is nice against heavily shielded enemies, but there are very, very few of these such enemies worth having Magnetic for. The latter two also allow otherwise illegal combos, such as Corrosive + Radiation/Magnetic.

Combat Use and Summary

As an explosive weapon, the Kuva Tonkor naturally excels against groups. It deals good direct damage in a fairly large explosive radius, easily killing weaker enemies caught in the blast. There are two notable caveats here. Firstly, the 8 metre arming distance means that if you get too close to the enemy, the grenade will not detonate and you will be left with a single pathetic hit. Secondly, the KTonkor's single-shot nature requires constant reloading, which can be troublesome if you don't kill everything in the first shot. Precision Strike is quite helpful in this respect though.

Great Crit and very high base Damage give the KTonkor quite good on-paper damage-per-shot. Provided you land the shot close to or directly on the target, it can deal quite a lot of damage to single heavy enemy.

Where the KTonkor is weakest is against heavily armoured enemies, at least without Hunter Munitions. Its Status Chance is decent, however it fires far too slowly to quickly stack up lots of procs. Viral or Corrosive can be stacked up, but it will take quite a lot of shots. Similarly, some added Heat can be quite strong, but is still subject to actually being procced, which can be very unreliable.

Hunter Munitions fixes most of this. Triggering off of Crits rather than Status Chance, it has a much better chance of inflicting Slash procs than the KTonkor does naturally. With such high Crit and base Damage, any Slash procs that are inflicted will deal massive damage, quickly eating through any heavily armoured enemies.

Firing a single, slow-moving grenade, the KTonkor is not great at longer-ranged combat. Its blast radius is fairly large, but unless you are very good at leading targets, it will be difficult to actually land hits.

The 8 metre grenade arming distance was much more important back when explosives dealt self-damage, and would more often than not just instantly kill yourself if you were caught in the blast. Now that it only inflicts self-stagger/knockdown, which can be mitigated by mods like Cautious Shot and (Primed) Sure Footed, it is somewhat less important. The arming distance makes it more difficult to inflict self-stagger/knockdown, however it is still very much possible to hit yourself if you are moving and firing forward. In particular though, it is quite troublesome if you get caught at point-blank range, as the grenade on-impact damage is minimal.

As the KTonkor uses the relatively rare Sniper ammo, I strongly recommend at least one of Ammo Case/Mutation/etc for longer missions. Though it does not consume ammo quickly, it does not have a huge spare reserve (60 rounds default), and Sniper ammo drops very infrequently.

Overall, the Kuva Tonkor is a decent explosive Primary. It deals a good deal of direct damage is a good area, ideal for clearing out lots of enemies. High Crit Chance also allows it to inflict powerful Slash procs against heavily armoured enemies. Its main weakness is the need to constantly reload, though this can be mitigated by good use of its Augment, Precision Strike.

 

As I discuss further below however, the KTonkor has one more huge problem - the Kuva Bramma.  The KBramma is all-round much more powerful, and the KTonkor has very little in its favour. Nonetheless, if you do enjoy explosive weapons, the Kuva Tonkor may be worth getting your hands on. It's nothing special, but it does the job fairly well.

Scores

Vs Trash Mobs: 4.5/5 - Fairly large explosive radius with good damage makes the Kuva Tonkor excellent against groups. Its main weaknesses are the need to reload every shot, and the short arming distance which can be troublesome at close range.

Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 4.5/5 - High Crit and base Damage give the KTonkor very good single target damage, provided you can hit the target directly or land a very close hit.

Vs Armoured Heavies without Hunter Munitions: 3/5 - Low Fire Rate and only medium Status Chance means that the KTonkor does not inflict a large number of procs naturally. It can proc Viral/Corrosive fairly reliably, but cannot take full advantage of its explosion's natural Slash damage.

Vs Armoured Heavies with Hunter Munitions: 4.5/5 - High Crit Chance allows the KTonkor to inflict strong Slash procs with HM. Its low Fire Rate can make it a little inconsistent at this, but anything that does take a Slash proc from it will likely bleed out shortly after.

Vs Variants

The MR13 Kuva Tonkor is a major upgrade over the MR5 Tonkor. On top of having superior Crit and Status Chances, and a far higher base Damage thanks to the Kuva Lich Bonus, the KTonkor's explosions notably deal part Slash damage, where the regular Tonkor deals pure Blast. This is a significant advantage when combined with the increased Status Chance. The Kuva's Reload Speed is also slightly faster.

 

For an MR5 weapon, the regular Tonkor is quite a strong explosive weapon, and when supplemented with Hunter Munitions, can still hold its own against large groups or fairly tough enemies.

Competitors

As a single-shot, Crit-focused explosive Primary, the Kuva Tonkor's main competitor is the Kuva Bramma, which is rather unfortunate. The MR15 KBramma is an almost total upgrade on top of the KTonkor. It has higher base Damage, higher Status Chance, larger explosive radius, additional bomblets for even more damage and coverage, and its Draw Time + Reload Time is still shorter than the KTonkor's Reload Time.

In the KTonkor's favour are its partial base Slash damage, where the KBramma relies entirely on Hunter Munitions, and its higher Crit Multiplier. It also has much more spare ammo. Overall however, the KBramma is easily much, much more powerful.

Rivens

The Kuva Tonkor has a neutral Disposition of 3/5 (0.95), while the regular Tonkor has a fairly high Disposition of 4/5 (1.3). I think the KTonkor is fine at a medium disposition as it is reasonably powerful, but largely unexceptional and already heavily powercrept.

+Damage/Multishot/Crit Chance/Crit Damage are all great stats to have of course. +Slash can help to increase the number of natural Slash procs you inflict, but Hunter Munitions is much better at that. +Elemental Damage can help to save a mod slot and add more direct damage. Especially when combined with Hunter Munitions, +Faction Damage can be an extremely strong damage multiplier. It is most relevant against the Grineer, who are the most consistently heavily armoured. +Mag Capacity of sufficient value (+50% is the threshold) gives the (Kuva) Tonkor a second shot, which drastically increases your burst DPS. +Projectile Speed makes it easier to land shots at longer range so isn't useless, but probably isn't as useful as some of the aforementioned. +Reload Speed is extremely useful if you are not using Precision Strike, but of minimal value if you are due to diminishing returns.

Any of the -Physical Damages can be useful. -Impact has no effect so is ideal. -Puncture is not bad as Puncture is a poor damage type and proc. -Slash is probably the worst since it is by far the best proc to have, but with Hunter Munitions you probably won't notice much of a difference. -Faction Damage to a weaker faction is manageable (-Infested is ideal). -Fire Rate has no effect on this single shot weapon family. -Mag Capacity also has no effect if you aren't going for a two-shot mag. -Ammo Max is very manageable with Ammo Case/Mutation/etc. -Projectile Speed can be manageable at close range, but may become more troublesome beyond. Small amounts of -Reload Speed have minimal effect if you have Precision Strike, but is very troublesome otherwise. +Recoil has essentially no effect. -Zoom is ideal for closer range.