Review: Hikou Prime (U30.8.2)

The Hikou Prime is an MR4 Thrown Secondary. It is an old favourite of many players, having been in the game since U14.8 back in 2014. Though it received a significant buff in U22.12, it is still badly outclassed by many other Secondaries, and offers almost nothing notable in the current meta.

Acquisition

Standard Prime weapon stuff, Blueprint and Components drop from certain Void Relics. Hikou Prime is part of Nyx Prime's set, so is now permanently available from Relics which can drop in certain Railjack missions.

Stats

The Hikou Prime is obviously a Status weapon, with very high Status Chance and decent Fire Rate, though majority Puncture damage is not great for this. Its Crit is awful and essentially unsalvageable.

Mag Capacity of 26 is respectable especially alongside an ultra-fast 0.5 second Reload Time, for an exceptional 8.92 Reload Ratio.

As a thrown weapon, the Hikou Prime fires projectiles with both travel time and drop. This can make longer ranged combat a lot more difficult. It is also innately silenced, though this is less notable now that every weapon can simply equip a silencing mod in the Exilus slot.

Augments

None.

Builds

Basic 0-Forma: 

Two innate V polarities is a great help in fitting a Forma-less build. Given it has abysmal Crit, a "standard" Hikou Prime build will start with Damage, Multishot and Elemental damage. This above build is an example of what you could start with, with plenty of spare capacity to accomodate different elemental mods as desired. Augur Pact is a no-fuss, if rather weak, option to fill some mod space.

The usual elemental suspects are all applicable here. Viral is the best general-purpose element as its proc is almost universally effective. Corrosive is slightly stronger against armour as well as having better multipliers against the Infested, particularly the Viral-immune ones on the Cambion Drift. Against unarmoured Corpus, Toxin is a strong option as it bypasses Shields entirely. For the select few enemies that have strong Shields that cannot be bypassed with Toxin, Magnetic is a strong option to deplete them.

Recommended Setups: Viral (+ Heat) vs everything, Corrosive (+ Heat) vs armour, Infested, Toxin vs unarmoured Corpus, Magnetic vs shields

Concealed Explosives 2-Forma:

Two added polarities, likely at least one V, gives a lot more space to play with.

Concealed Explosives is a very interesting mod. At max rank, it gives an 80% chance for a given pellet to detonate on impact, dealing 250 Blast damage in a 10 metre radius. This damage is not affected by base Damage or Elemental mods, however is affected by (Primed) Expels and (Primed) Fulmination. It cannot Crit or proc Status, and can inflict self-stagger/knockdown, but has no Damage Fall-Off. Hikou Prime is a great platform for CE, as it deals low damage-per-shot with relatively high Fire Rate, for a surprisingly consistent and damaging AoE. The damage amount is still very low compared to ordinary explosive weapons, but can put in surprisingly decent work against weaker enemies. On the HikouP which itself deals very low damage-per-shot, the overall boost from CE is actually very, very strong - an approximate 60% damage increase in this pictured build.

(Primed) Fulmination is a fun option alongside CE but of course useless otherwise. A (Primed) Expel mod is a decent overall damage boost and one of the only ways of increasing CE damage output.

Magnum Force is stronger than Augur Pact for direct hit damage, though the accuracy penalty can be troublesome for concentrating damage on single targets. Primed Heated Charge is a major direct hit damage boost to any build using Heat damage, though take note that it will skew Status procs. 

With amazing Reload Ratio, +Fire Rate from Gunslinger or Anemic Agility is a strong DPS increase and again one of the few ways of improving CE, but of course this is at the cost of faster ammo consumption.

For the Exilus slot, there are two main options. Pistol Ammo Mutation will solve any ammo issues, while the +Projectile Speed from Lethal Momentum can be useful for combat beyond close range.

Recommended Setups: see above. Consider Concealed Explosives in any build.

Galvanised Build and Arcane

Galvanised Diffusion, naturally.

Galvanised Shot does not currently work properly on the HikouP, but if it did, would be a reasonable option. Even with its heavy Puncture bias, the HikouP can inflict a reasonable number of unique Status procs, provided it is equipped with three elemental mods. Puncture plus two unique elements is already enough to comfortably exceed Hornet Strike. The lack of damage before achieving the first kills is less of an issue in a Concealed Explosives build, as CE's damage is not affected by most mods.

Galvanised Crosshairs is a terrible choice given the HikouP's Crit is extremely poor.

Between the two Arcanes, I'd recommend Merciless over Deadhead. Particularly if you are using Concealed Explosives, Deadhead can be rather troublesome to trigger whereelse Merciless is much more convenient. The +Reload Speed is also nice, if a tad unnecessary.

My Builds

Default build is a Viral + Heat one with Concealed Explosives. The elements weaken priority targets while CE deals surprisingly usable AoE damage, at least at lower levels. Primed Fulmination cranks up the CE explosion radius to a hilariously large 15.5m.

Alternate Corrosive + Heat is stronger against heavily armoured enemies and certain Infested, but weaker against most unarmoured.

Combat Use and Summary

With reasonable Fire Rate and great Reload Ratio, the Hikou Prime is perhaps best against groups. It can use Concealed Explosives to surprisingly good effect thanks to its decent Fire Rate, as CE deals a set amount of damage in a surprisingly wide area, and thus mainly scales with Multishot and Fire Rate.

Decent Status output also makes the HikouP reasonable at weakening heavily armoured enemies, though the severe lack of direct damage or Slash proc potential limits it from actually getting the kills efficiently. Concealed Explosives is not as much help here either as its Damage type, Blast, is very poor against typical armour types.

Speaking of, the dire lack of direct damage makes the HikouP quite poor against singular unarmoured heavy targets, and especially anything Status-resistant/immune.

Ammo can be a slight issue if greatly increasing Fire Rate for a CE build. One of Ammo Case/Mutation/etc can easily alleviate this issue. The HikouP's projectile nature also makes combat beyond close range relatively difficult, though this is only primarily an issue in the Open Worlds.

A CE-built Hikou Prime was a surprisingly effective option for equippable allies like Rescue Hostages, as they disregard any ammo concerns and launch endless streams of explosive projectiles. In more recent times, it has been overshadowed in this role (and all others) by more conventional AoE weapons like the Kuva Nukor.

Overall, the Hikou Prime is not the absolute worst Secondary in the game but it is badly outclassed by many others. Everything it does can be done much better by many other Secondaries. Now that all Secondaries have an Exilus slot that can use Suppress, innate silencing is no longer a big deal either. Concealed Explosives offers an entertaining option as a light AoE weapon, but again this is badly outclassed by conventional AoE weapons. In my opinion, the Hikou Prime offers essentially nothing beyond Mastery.

Scores

Vs Trash Mobs: 3/5 - Decent Fire Rate and great Reload Ratio allow the Hikou Prime to comfortably engage many enemies, especially with Concealed Explosives. However, it deals only moderate damage even to these sorts of weak enemies at higher levels.

Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 1.5/5 - Very low DPS makes the HikouP quite poor against singular unarmoured and especially Status-immune targets.

Vs Armoured Heavies without Forced Slash: 1.5/5 - Fairly high Status Chance allows the HikouP to inflict a reasonable number of elemental procs, which can greatly weaken heavily armoured enemies. It struggles however to put out the direct damage required to kill them.

Vs Armoured Heavies with Forced Slash: NA/5 - HikouP does not have the Impact-proc-dealing abilities to use Hemorrhage effectively.

Vs Variants

The MR4 Hikou Prime is largely superior to the MR2 Hikou. With the exceptions of lower Fire Rate and Slash bias (which is still poor), its other stats are much stronger.

Competitors

There are not many other Thrown Secondaries, let alone ones worth seriously considering. With so few options, they generally fill different roles. Unfortunately for the category, Thrown Secondaries as a general weapon type are not very strong overall compared to more conventional Secondaries.

The MR7 Fusilai notably has great Slash bias, overall better Crit and much higher base Damage to inflict Slash procs of reasonable strength and frequency. This makes it notably decent against heavily armoured enemies, and a little better against unarmoured heavies. In exchange, it has much lower Fire Rate and worse Reload Ratio so fares a lot worse against groups.

The MR10 Spira Prime also has fantastic Crit and much higher base Damage for overall much higher DPS, particularly effective against unarmoured heavies. It however has a lower Fire Rate for worse anti-crowd performance, and also notably a much lower Status Chance. Where the Hikou Prime relies on stacking many Status procs to try taking down heavily armoured enemies, the Spira Prime has to brute force through them and hope for beneficial procs.

Finally, the MR9 Pox is another Status-focused option. Its base Damage is relatively low pure Toxin, and it has lower Fire Rate as well as worse Reload Ratio. However, the Pox leaves a lingering Toxin cloud on impact that offers it superior AoE capabilities, particularly against the Corpus who are most vulnerable to Toxin.

Looking more generally at other Secondaries makes things really bad for the Hikou Prime, as starting looking at powerhouse weapons like the Kuva Nukor, Tenet Cycron, Sporelacer Kitgun and Staticor, just to name a few. I would consider all of these weapons, as well as many others, to be much stronger than the Hikou Prime overall. They all pack far, far more direct damage output, stronger consistent AoE and some even have far superior Status capabilities.

Rivens

Hikou Prime currently has a fairly high Riven Disposition of 4/5 (1.25), and the regular Hikou slightly higher at 4/5 (1.3). These are not surprising given how many weapons, particularly newer ones, outclass the Hikou (Prime).

+Damage/Multishot are the standard universally good stats, the latter being better of the two especially with a CE build. +Fire Rate is ideal for a CE build and overall DPS, but can exacerbate ammo issues. +Elemental Damage is nice for more direct hit damage. +Faction Damage is one of the few ways of enhancing CE damage. +Projectile Speed can make longer ranged combat a little easier. +Punch-Through is great for a non-CE build, but detrimental for CE like with most explosive weapons. +Ammo Max can slightly alleviate ammo concerns.

-Crit Chance/Damage have minimal impact given how poor the Hikou family Crit is already, with the former being preferable of the two. -Mag Capacity/Reload Speed will reduce overall Reload Ratio, but it is so high by default that you may not notice much difference. -Ammo Max is not a big concern alongside one of Ammo Case/Mutation/etc. -Projectile Speed can be compensated with Lethal Momentum in the Exilus. +Recoil has essentially no impact. -Zoom is ideal for close quarters.