Review: Kompressa (U30.6.1)

The Kompressa is an MR8 Secondary. Yareli's signature Pistol, it fires slow-moving bubbles that explode a short time after impact. With pure Viral base damage and high Status Chance, it is a decent AoE weapon with a useful niche, but faces stiff competition from some other very strong weapons.

UPDATE 17/09/2022 (U32.0.6): specific details updated, primarily around the impact (or lack thereof) of Multishot.

Acquisition

The Kompressa's blueprint and the blueprints for its components are available from the Ventkids on Fortuna. You must be at Logical (Rank 5) with them.

Stats

The Kompressa is clearly a Status-focused weapon. 30% Status Chance is excellent, and combines very well with its base Viral damage - a very rare and highly valuable trait. This is further enhanced by its innate 4 Multishot. In contrast, its Crit is terrible and not worth building around - very odd when Yareli's Passive works best with Crit Secondaries.

I've heard there is a specific unique interaction that the Kompressa has with Yareli, but I am unsure of the details as it is not a simple stat buff or basic effect.

With a Mag Capacity of 12 rounds, Fire Rate of 3.33, and a Reload Time of 1.8 seconds, the Kompressa has an average Reload Ratio of 2.00.

The Kompressa fires relatively slow bubbles that detonate 0.6-0.8 seconds after impact with an enemy or object. It has a small explosive radius of just 2.4 metres, but has very lenient Damage Fall-Off, dealing at worst 80% of its full damage. These explosions pack the vast majority of the Kompressa's damage output, as is usual for most explosive weapons. Naturally, the explosions can inflict self-stagger if you get close enough.

These bubbles spread out quite significantly, which can make it very difficult to concentrate damage on single targets. By default, they have a maximum range of roughly 35 metres, and will automatically detonate at this max range if they reach it.

EDIT: There is currently a bug (or perhaps feature?) whereby only four bubbles from any particular shot will detonate. This drastically decreases the value of Multishot, since the direct hit damage of the Kompressa is terrible.

Augments

None.

Builds

0-Forma: 

Base Viral damage offers a lot of unique and very powerful elemental combos. The innate D polarity is troublesome up until you acquire Galvanised Shot, as there are few other compatible mods. Depending on what mods you have available, and the ranks of your available mods, you may be able to fit in up to three elemental mods.

EDIT: Because I wrote this review long before realising the issue, these builds continue to recommend Multishot mods on the Kompressa. In its current state, this is not effective unless also running Cascadia Empowered for its own specific interaction.

Corrosive is of course a very strong anti-armour option, Viral + Corrosive procs greatly weakening armoured enemies. It also provides a great damage multiplier against most Infested. Magnetic is the equivalent anti-Shield option, becoming a little more notable with a few more enemies with very tough Shields (e.g. Sisters of Parvos, Kuva Liches).

Adding Heat to either of these setups is a strong option. Viral + Corrosive + Heat combines all of the best elemental anti-armour Status procs in the game currently (Slash of course is not an element), greatly reducing enemy armour as well as increasing Health damage taken. Heat capitalises on this quite well with additional armour reduction and an infinitely stacking damage-over-time proc. Viral + Magnetic + Heat covers essentially all Corpus units, being less effective against heavy armour but much stronger against Shields.

Pure Toxin is a novel option against the Corpus, the Viral + Toxin combo being exceptionally effective against anything unarmoured. If you want to cover more bases, adding it alongside Magnetic counters the enemies whose Shields cannot be bypassed by Toxin. It will however be much less effective against heavily armoured Corpus.

Recommended Setups: Corrosive (+Heat) vs armour, Infested, Magnetic (+Heat or Toxin) vs Corpus

2-Forma:

Two added V polarities lets you fit in a strong seventh mod. Notably, Magnum Force not only adds solid damage, but the accuracy penalty causes the bubbles to drift further apart for greater AoE. Of course, this comes at the cost of reduced single target damage since it will be a lot harder to strike a single target with the wide bubble spray. There are a number of other options for the last two mod slots as I discuss below.

Recommended Setups: see above.

5-Forma:

If you want to retain the D polarity, which is very useful for Galv Shot (see below), it will take several more Forma to fit in a good build. The only other mods that fit the D polarity are Sure Shot and Deep Freeze, neither of which is all that useful.

Augur Pact offers a smaller damage boost than Magnum Force, but is also much cheaper to max and easier to fit. It also does not have the Accuracy penalty. A Primed Expel mod is slightly stronger than Magnum Force and also doesn't have the Accuracy penalty, but of course they are very expensive to max out and tedious to switch for each Faction. Primed Heated Charge is always a strong option for any build with Heat damage in it.

Primed Fulmination increases the Kompressa's explosive radius significantly, representing no increase to peak damage output but greatly improving area and average damage. +Mag Capacity/Reload Speed can be nice quality-of-life. Of note, Primed Quickdraw nearly halves Reload Time, from 1.8 seconds to just below 1 second (rounds up in stat screen).

You can also consider a +Fire Rate mod like Anemic Agility, which provides more DPS at the cost consuming ammo much faster, and a worse Reload Ratio.

For the Exilus slot, Lethal Momentum is a strong option. On top of making medium-range combat a lot easier, the increased Projectile Speed also increases the bubble maximum range to around 50-55m. Otherwise, (Primed) Pistol Ammo Mutation if you're worried about ammo.

Recommended Setups: see above.

Galvanised Build and Arcane:

Galvanised Diffusion as usual, if Multishot bubbles ever get fixed.

Galvanised Crosshairs is not worth using, as the Kompressa has neither good Crit, nor good ability to land headshots. 

Galvanised Shot does not apply its +Damage to explosions, so is a poor choice on the Kompressa, whose damage is heavily focused in its explosions.

Merciless is the clear winner over Deadhead here, again because the Kompressa does not land killing headshots well. Additionally, the increased Reload Speed from Merciless is quite helpful as it reloads quite frequently.

My Builds

Pretty standard Corrosive + Heat fare, to go with the Kompressa's innate Viral. Galvanised Shot should be replaced with Magnum Force since DE confirmed Galv Shot does not apply to explosions.

Combat Use and Summary

Quicky firing a spread of explosive bubbles, the Kompressa is fairly effective against groups. It deals enough damage to kill weak enemies without much difficulty, and though its explosive radius is not particularly large, the wide spread of bubbles that it sprays provide reasonable coverage.

High Status Chance and base Viral damage also make the Kompressa quite well suited against heavily armoured enemies. Modding in Corrosive + Heat is very strong, drastically reducing enemy Armour as well as greatly increasing damage dealt to Health. Stacked Heat procs can also deal a reasonable amount of damage-over-time, though the Kompressa is slightly lacking in raw damage output to stack up very strong Heat procs.

Speaking of, the relative lack of direct damage and difficulty in landing precision hits significantly impairs the Kompressa's single target damage ability. This is most significant against unarmoured and especially Status-resistant/immune enemies, who are less or even not affected by its impressive Status capabilities.

With very low Projectile Speed, limited range and wide bubble spread, the Kompressa is only suited to close-quarters combat. It is quite difficult to land a meaningful number of hits on enemies beyond around 20-25m, especially if you or they are quickly moving.

As I always say, I strong dislike delayed-detonation explosives. It introduces an unnecessary delay between firing and dealing significant damage, during which enemies often stay alive and continue attacking.

EDIT: The issue whereby only four bubbles per shot will detonate greatly limits the Kompressa's potential firepower. It makes Multishot nearly useless, keeping its damage ceiling and Status output much is much lower than it could/should be. If this is ever changed to allow all projectiles to detonate, the Kompressa will become significantly stronger.

Overall, the Kompressa is a decent but not exceptional explosive Status weapon. It deals enough damage to kill weaker enemies in its spread of exploding bubbles, and with base Viral damage and high Status Chance is excellent at weakening enemies, especially heavily armoured ones. However, it is somewhat lacking in direct firepower for killing tougher targets, especially if they are Status-resistant/immune. Additionally, it has very limited effective range, limiting it largely to close-quarters combat.

If you're looking for a decent Secondary crowd clearer, or a sidearm for crippling heavily armoured enemies, the Kompressa is one of several decent options.

Scores

Vs Trash Mobs: 4/5 - Reasonable Fire Rate for an explosive weapon, and an explosive radius, though small, give the Kompressa decent capability against tightly clustered enemies.

Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 1.5/5 - With unimpressive DPS, essentially no Crit, and wide spread, the Kompressa does not fare well against tough unarmoured and especially Status-resistant/immune enemies.

Vs Armoured Heavies without Forced Slash: 4.5/5 - Base Viral damage and high Status Chance allows the Kompressa to utilise an extremely powerful Viral + Corrosive + Heat build, drastically weakening heavily armoured enemies. It is somewhat lacking in the direct damage to efficiently kill off such targets, but can effortlessly cripple them.

Vs Armoured Heavies with Forced Slash: NA/5 - The Kompressa cannot inflict Impact procs so cannot use Hemorrhage.

Vs Variants

None.

Competitors

There are a lot of other Status-leaning AoE Secondaries out there. The Kompressa retains its niche of Viral base damage which is excellent, and and can hold its own compared to similar explosive weapons.

Of primary note is the MR14 Zakti Prime, which also fires delayed-detonation explosives. The ZaktiP has an overall larger AoE, between larger explosive radius and innate Gas for Gas procs. It also sports slightly higher DPS as well as higher Status Chance, and with much higher projectile speed has better effective range. However, the Kompressa's base Viral damage is a much better damage type for general use than Gas, and its innate Multishot results in many more Status procs overall.

There are also weapons such as the Akarius and Cyanex. I'd consider the Cyanex largely inferior, while the Akarius with its stronger, slower-firing rockets serves a slightly different role.

If you start to look at more general AoE Secondaries however, you then come across beasts such as the Staticor, Kuva Nukor and Tenet Cycron. Though none of these have innate Viral damage like the Kompressa, they are overall much stronger and more convenient weapons.

Rivens

As standard for a new weapon, the Kompressa starts at a minimum 1/5 (0.5) Riven Disposition. I expect this to rise up in future disposition updates as I do not think the Kompressa is especially powerful or popular.

+Damage/Multishot are of course your goal stats, since the Kompressa has terrible Crit. +Elemental Damage is your next best bet for more damage, and can save a mod slot for something else. +Status Chance enhances the Kompressa's main strength, but is a bit redundant alongside 60/60 elemental mods and Sure/Galv Shot. +Faction Damage can be a strong multiplier against the correct Faction, but of course does nothing against the others. +Fire Rate is a decent DPS increase, with the cost of worse ammo efficiency and Reload Ratio. +Mag Capacity/Reload Speed are nice quality-of-life stats. +Projectile Speed is quite helpful, as discussed previously.

-Crit Chance/Damage are not bad negatives since the Kompressa has barely any of either. Between the two, I would prefer the former. -Faction Damage to weaker Factions you are less concerned about (e.g. Infested) is usually quite manageable. -Ammo Max is not an issue alongside Ammo Case/Mutation/etc. +Recoil is not a big deal, as is -Zoom.