The Strun family is one of the oldest weapon lines in Warframe, with the base Strun being available in-game in its original release. It has since seen several variants introduced, notably the MR10 Strun Wraith in U9.7.2, and most recently the MR14 Strun Prime in U30.7.
Strun Prime
Acquisition
Stats
The Strun Prime is clearly geared towards Crit, with 24%/2.2x being quite good. 6.7% Status Chance is fairly low, but is somewhat compensated for by very high base Multishot of 12. 40% Slash bias is decent but not amazing, allowing reasonable chance of natural Slash procs.
The StrunP is a weapon that reloads one round at a time. It has a reload starting delay of 0.6 seconds, then reloads each round in 0.4 seconds for a total Reload Time of 4.6 seconds for a full default mag of 10 rounds. With Fire Rate of 3.33 seconds, this gives an utterly atrocious Reload Ratio of 0.65. This mechanic also means that increasing Mag Capacity increases total Reload Time.
Innate 0.8m Punch-Through is very nice, though not quite enough to consistently penetrate certain larger enemies.
As a Shotgun, the StrunP suffers from Damage Fall-Off, though it is some of the most lenient in the game. It doesn't start losing damage until 26 metres, and only reaches minimum damage at 52 metres where it still deals 50%.
Augments
None.
Builds
Basic 0-Forma:
The Strun Prime has several innate polarities, two V and one -. This is very welcome after the vast majority of other new weapons with few or no innate polarities. These polarities allow you to easily fit in a solid build even without Forma. As pictured above, if you are sticking to basic mods, depending on the elemental mods you have available, you can potentially fit in eight mods right off the bat.
Primed Mods 0-Forma:
If you do have Primed Point Blank/Ravage, those will still fit comfortably as well, though you will likely have to lose the eighth mod. I'll discuss options for the seventh and eighth mods further below.
Elemental options are very boring if you've read any of my recent posts, as the exact same few elements pop up again and again. I hope that DE will address the complete lack of diversity of viable elements at some point.
In terms of two-element combos, Viral is the clear winner. Not only is almost universally useful, but it also combines very well with Slash procs against heavily armoured enemies. Corrosive is extremely strong against Ferrite-armour and solid against armour in general, as well as having the best multiplier against heavier Infested. Radiation is strong against Alloy-armour, which is used by both the Grineer and Corpus. It is most useful for boss hunting.
Pure Toxin is excellent against any unarmoured Corpus, bypassing their Shields entirely to strike at their often low Health. Shields are rarely worth specifically targeting as there are so few enemies whose Shields are actually worth the effort - for those who do, Magnetic is the natural elemental combo to go for.
There is potentially space for three elemental mods, depending on which elemental mods you have available and the desired setup. Adding Heat to a Viral or Corrosive setup is always a strong option, as it is a decent proc that synergises very well with both of those two. Radiation and Toxin can be combined for a decent anti-Corpus catch-all, though it can struggle against very tough Shields.
Finally, Hunter Munitions is a very strong option in a Viral build. The StrunP's very good Crit triggers HM regularly for frequent and strong Slash procs. Such a setup eats through any Status-vulnerable armoured enemies with ease, though will be slightly lacking in direct damage against other targets.
For any build using Heat, Blaze is very much worth considering if you have it. On top of its 60% Heat, it also gives +60% base Damage which prior to Galvanised Savvy and weapon Arcanes is a solid increase even on top of Primed Point Blank. Blaze will add more total damage than any other +Heat mod.
Any build using Cold can use Chilling Reload. Its elemental component is a standard 60% Cold, but it notably also provides +40% Reload Speed which is extremely beneficial for the StrunP in particular.
Recommended Setups: Viral (+ Heat) vs everything, Viral + HM vs armour, Corrosive (+ Heat) vs Ferrite-armour, Infested, Radiation vs Alloy-armour, Toxin (+ Radiation) vs Corpus, Magnetic vs strong Shields
1-Forma:
One added V polarity is all you need to starting giving more consideration to the eighth mod slot, again depending on what elemental mods you have and want to use. A second Forma will likely be necessary to accomodate any higher drain mods.
Like with essentially all Crit-viable Shotguns currently, I strongly recommend Critical Deceleration over Blunderbuss. It offers more than twice the +Crit Chance for a minor Fire Rate penalty.
+Reload Speed is extremely beneficial to the StrunP as its base Reload Ratio is awful. Seeking Fury provides only a small +15%, but also adds Punch-Through which is very helpful against tightly packed crowds. Primed Tactical Pump is especially strong, halving Reload Time.
(Primed) Cleanse mods are particularly strong at enhancing Slash procs, so the ones most worth consideration are vs Grineer and Corrupted in a Viral + HM build. Vicious Spread and Vigilante Armaments are much cheaper and more convenient, but become significantly less valuable once Galvanised mods and weapon Arcanes are included.
Shrapnel Shot, Laser Sight and Motus Setup are decent conditional mods. If you have Critical Deceleration equipped, the former is the strongest of the three.
There are a few Exilus mods worth consideration. An Ammo Mutation mod completely negates any potential ammo concerns, which are already minor for the fairly efficient StrunP. Vigilante Supplies in particular provides a slight Crit boost with its set bonus. Fatal Acceleration's +Projectile Speed extends Damage Fall-Off ranges, though this is less necessary on the StrunP than most other Shotguns. For longer ranged combat, you could instead consider Narrow Barrel, which reduces spread.
Recommended Builds: see above.
Galvanised Build and Arcane:
Galvanised Hell, naturally.
Galvanised Savvy is a solid choice. With just two unique procs it will roughly match Primed Point Blank, and exceed it with any more. Though the StrunP is not great at inflicting lots of procs, it can get enough to make good use of Galv Savvy. It has reasonable chance for Impact, Slash and whatever elements are modded on, already enough for Galv Savvy to be worth using.
Galvanised Acceleration is a solid, if perhaps unnecessary option for the Exilus slot. It extends Damage Fall-Off ranges significantly, but the StrunP's are already very high and lenient by Shotgun standards. Most engagements in Warframe can be comfortably made to be well within the 52 metre ending distance, mitigating the effect of Damage Fall-Off.
Between the two Arcanes, Deadhead and Merciless, I'd personally favour Merciless. As is usually the case with slow-firing Shotguns, both offer benefits but have notable flaws. Deadhead stacks faster and offers more peak damage with its +Headshot Damage, but will not stack from kills by damage-over-time procs, and may not build stacks correctly on partial headshots. Merciless takes longer to stack and loses stacks much faster, but will stack more consistently. Its +Reload Speed however is the key factor that makes me personally prefer it. The StrunP's Reload Time is awful and any improvement to it makes it much better to wield.
My Builds
Combat Use and Summary
The Strun Prime's great Crit and overall very high damage-per-shot clearly make it an excellent choice against single heavy targets. It deals great Burst DPS even by Shotgun standards. High Crit also lends well to a Hunter Munitions build, to inflict lots of strong Slash procs on heavily armoured enemies. This is especially useful as the StrunP does not inflict many natural Slash (or any other) procs due to its fairly low Status Chance.
With atrocious Reload Ratio and no real AoE to speak of, the StrunP is not good against large crowds. It effortlessly kills weaker enemies and its little bit of innate Punch-Through is helpful, but it still spends far too much time reloading.
With very lenient Damage Fall-Off for a Shotgun, and reasonable pellet spread, the StrunP is surprisingly usable at longer ranges. Though it is still undeniably worse off than most conventional Rifle Primaries and especially Snipers, it is among the best Shotguns beyond close range.
The one-by-one reloading helps to mitigate the disadvantages of long Reload Time. It can be interrupted part way through, for instance by rolling or switching weapons, and will retain any rounds that were successfully loaded. You can also interrupt the reload to shoot with whatever rounds are in the mag. Note that as there is a short delay between beginning a reload and actually loading rounds, it is still a little more efficient to reload all rounds in one go if possible.
Overall, the Strun Prime is a strong and fairly standard Shotgun. It is highly effective against single targets of all types, but struggles against large numbers of weaker enemies. If you're after a strong single target weapon, the Strun Prime is one of many weapons worth considering. It does its job well, but also faces strong competition from a wide variety of other weapons.
Scores
Strun Wraith
Acquisition
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| This is a very old screenshot. |
Stats
The Strun Wraith is somewhat more balanced than the Prime. Its Crit is still solid though not exceptional, but more importantly it has an extremely high Status Chance of 12% per-pellet. This gives it one of the highest overall Status output of all Shotguns. Unfortunately, it is heavily biased towards Impact damage with very little Slash, so is relying primarily on elemental procs.
The StrunW also reloads one round at a time. It has a 0.25 second reload start and end delay, unusual for this type of weapon as generally they only have a start delay. After the start delay, rounds are reloaded at 0.45 seconds per round, for a total Reload Time of 5 seconds for the default 10 mag. With Fire Rate of 2.5, its Reload Ratio is very poor at 0.8. Again, increasing Mag Capacity will increase total Reload Time.
As a Shotgun, the StrunW also suffers from Damage Fall-Off, starting to lose damage beyond 15 metres and dealing as little as 50% damage from 30 metres.
Augments
None.
Builds
Basic Crit 0-Forma:
The Strun Wraith has just one native - polarity, which has value as it fits 3/4 90% elemental mods as well as a few others, but isn't as universally useful as a V. This example Crit build can fit with the basic versions of Point Blank and Ravage, and up to three elements depending on which mods you have available.
Elemental 0-Forma:
If you only have the basic Crit mods however, building for pure Elemental and base Damage ends up with much higher overall damage output. This example build is again highly dependant on what elemental mods are available to you, notably Blaze which is an extremely rare Nightmare mod.
For elemental setups, Viral and Corrosive are of course your two base options. Viral is more general-purpose, with its proc being almost universally useful, while Corrosive is stronger against most armoured enemies as well as Viral-immune Infested. Adding Heat to either of these is a great option.
Radiation remains strong against specific Alloy-armoured enemies, but is only of notable value against those who are Status-immune. Toxin on its own is a great counter to almost any unarmoured Corpus, as it bypasses their vast Shields entirely. It can also be combined with Radiation for a decent Corpus catch-all, but can struggle with heavy Shields. Speaking of, Magnetic is the obvious anti-Shield option for the select few enemies whose Shields can pose an actual problem. Heat or Toxin can be added alongside it to cover more Health types, but otherwise can still struggle once the Shields are down.
As mentioned previously for the Prime, builds using Cold can appreciate the low drain and +Reload Speed of Chilling Reload, while builds using Heat get even more damage from using Blaze.
There are naturally a significant number of other solid mod options for the seventh and eighth mod slots, which I will discuss further below.
Recommended Setups: Viral (+ Heat) vs everything, Corrosive (+ Heat) vs armour, Infested, Radiation vs Alloy-armour, Toxin (+ Radiation) vs Corpus, Magnetic (+ Heat/Toxin) vs strong Shields
Primed Crit 1-Forma:
One added V polarity allows you to upgrade both Point Blank and Ravage to their Primed versions, provided you have enough of the 60/60 elemental mods to save space.
If you have it, I'd also strongly recommend replacing Blunderbuss with Critical Deceleration, which gives vastly more Crit Chance in exchange for a minor Fire Rate reduction.
Recommended Setups: see above.
General Purpose 3-Forma:
Two more added V polarities allows you to start filling in the other mod slots, though you may need even more to accomodate higher drain mods.
One more setup worth mentioning is Viral + Hunter Munitions. It allows the StrunW to reliably inflict Slash procs, which are greatly augmented by its frequent Viral procs.
Vicious Spread offers reasonable extra damage, though the spread increase can be very troublesome even at close range. Vigilante Armaments is a little weaker, but has no spread penalty and helps to inflict even more procs. A (Primed) Cleanse mod is very strong against the appropriate Faction, and is especially powerful for amplifying damage-over-time procs. With that in mind, the two most useful Cleanse mods are vs Grineer and Corrupted, as they have the most common heavily armoured enemies.
Shrapnel Shot, Laser Sight and Motus Setup are decent conditional mods. With Critical Deceleration, the former is the strongest of the three.
+Reload Speed is very valuable. The aforementioned Chilling Reload is great for any build with Cold in it. Primed Tactical Pump halves Reload Time, which is a massive improvement. Seeking Fury gives just +15% Reload Speed, but the Punch-Through is very helpful against tightly packed crowds.
For the Exilus slot, there are several solid options. An Ammo Mutation mod completely negates any potential ammo issues, and Vigilante Supplies in particular slightly improves Crits. To improve combat at longer range, both Fatal Acceleration and Narrow Barrel are decent options. The former increases Damage Fall-Off ranges, while the former tightens spread.
Recommended Builds: see above. Also consider: Viral + HM vs armour
Galvanised Build and Arcane
Galvanised Hell for more Multishot, of course.
Galvanised Savvy is a very good option. The StrunW has significantly superior overall Status capabilities than the Prime, and even with its heavily Impact-biased base damage, has no issues quickly inflicting three or even four unique procs. This of course works best in a three-element build.
Galvanised Acceleration is a solid Exilus option as the StrunW has Damage Fall-Off more in line with other Shotguns. At max stacks it almost doubles said ranges, significantly improving the StrunW beyond close range.
Again, I'd favour Merciless over Deadhead primarily for the +Reload Speed. Neither is ideal, since Deadhead will not stack from damage-over-time-proc-kills, but Merciless takes a lot longer to stack up.
My Builds
Combat Use and Summary
With decent Crit but more of a focus on Status output, the Strun Wraith fares best against heavily armoured enemies. It can inflict quite a lot of Status procs, though with majority Impact damage, the main ones of value will be from its elemental mods. A Viral/Corrosive + Heat build can greatly weaken heavily armoured enemies and deal reasonable damage to them, with the stacking Heat procs also dealing decent damage-over-time.
Somewhat surprisingly to me when I was crunching the numbers, the StrunW's Burst DPS is not particularly high by Shotgun standards. Though its many Status procs are undoubtedly still useful, against unarmoured and Status-resistant/immune enemies it is a lot less exceptional compared to many of its competitors.
Once again, the StrunW is quite poor against large groups of enemies. It has no AoE to speak of, no innate Punch-Through, slow Fire Rate and terrible Reload Ratio.
Moderate Damage Fall-Off and pellet spread make the StrunW's performance at longer ranges somewhat poor, as expected of a Shotgun. This isn't a big issue outside of the Open Worlds and largest tiles as any Frame can close to effective ranges in a split second thanks to Warframe's incredibly fast movement system.
As with the Prime, the StrunW's one-by-one reloading helps to mitigate its extremely long total Reload Time. It can interrupt the reload at any time by actions such as rolling or even shooting, and will retain however many rounds were reloaded before that. However, it also means that increasing Mag Capacity will increase total Reload Time which can be inconvenient.
Overall, I personally find the Strun Wraith rather underwhelming. It is one of the Shotguns most negatively affected in the U27.2 Status rework, and it also has to face extremely tough competition from a wide variety of newer, overall much stronger Shotguns. It cannot compete with most of them for direct damage, and its Status capabilities are not strong enough to compensate. As discussed further below, I'd consider the Prime version superior, and there are a lot of other Shotguns I'd recommend instead as well.
Scores
Comparing Variants
The Wraith's one main advantage is nearly double the Status Chance, for far superior Status application. Even this though is not perfect, as its Slash bias is much lower for fewer natural Slash procs, and the Prime can make better use of Hunter Munitions for far more Slahs procs overall.
Overall I'd consider the Prime to be the superior Strun. It is much more powerful and can make up for its lack of natural Status procs with superior use of Hunter Munitions.
Competitors
There are a number of other solid hybrid-capable Shotguns that are potentially comparable to the Strun Prime and Wraith.
First is the newest member of the Hek family, the Kuva Hek. It packs a lot more damage-per-shot thanks to its Kuva Lich Bonus, and its Alternate Fire gives it even higher single-target Burst DPS. The KHek even has a superior Reload Ratio to both variants. Its average Status output is slightly superior to the Prime as well.
However, the KHek is worse at longer range as it has much harsher Damage Fall-Off, dealing just 17% at long range where both Struns still deal 50%. The StrunP can inflict Slash procs much more consistently, with or without Hunter Munitions, and the Wraith inflicts more procs overall.
I'd consider the Kuva Hek superior against single enemies where you want maximum direct damage, while one of the Struns is much better against heavily armoured enemies, depending on which procs will be most effective. None of the three are much good against crowds.
The Vaykor Hek on the other hand has slightly inferior damage-per-shot to the Prime, still beating the Wraith. It also has inferior overall Status capabilities to either. Where the VHek shines however is its far superior Reload Ratio, a much more respectable (but still poor) 1.16. Of the three, the VHek is the least-worst against crowds of enemies, while the StrunP is better against most heavier targets.
The Corinth Prime offers a very interesting comparison. It deals greater damage-per-shot than Strun Prime, and has far better Reload Ratio than either, at a legitimately great 4.69. With much lower Fire Rate however it has worse Burst DPS than Strun Prime, and also has far worse Status capabilities than either Strun using its Primary Fire.
What sets the CorinthP apart though is its airburst Alternate Fire, dealing solid damage with very high Status Chance in a massive explosive radius. This gives it far greater crowd-clearing ability and general versatility than either Strun.
The Cedo is an odd but very strong one as well. On its own, Primary Fire is not very impressive. While its Glaive Alternate Fire is less damaging than the CorinthP and Bubonico, it primes enemies to be swept away by its conventional Primary Fire, which has a built-in Condition Overload for maximum benefit. The net result is a Primary Fire that is conditionally far superior in DPS, and an Alternate Fire that provides fantastic Status capabilities.
To be honest, I would personally place both Struns (especially the Wraith) below the latter three Shotguns mentioned. They are all much more versatile with their various Alternate Fires, while still remaining fairly competitive with their Primary attacks against single targets.
Rivens
The Strun Prime, as a new weapon, starts with the usual minimum 1/5 (0.5) Riven Disposition. The Strun Wraith on the other hand has a very high 5/5 (1.35) Disposition, typically reserved for particularly unpopular and/or weak weapons. As mentioned previously, the Prime is a solid Shotgun but offers nothing special compared to other novel (and very powerful) Shotguns. With that in mind I'm expecting a significant Disposition increase for the Prime, though probably not to the same degree as the Wraith.
The usual positives are all nice, +Damage/Multishot/Crit Chance/Crit Damage. Keeping in mind Galvanised mods, weapon Arcanes and the heavily buffed Critical Deceleration, +Crit Damage ends up being the best of the four. +Elemental Damage can help save a mod slot and/or add more damage. +Status Chance is a useful stat but of course does not add any direct damage. +Faction Damage, mainly to Grineer, is a very strong multiplier of damage-over-time procs. +Fire Rate can make the Strun family more comfortable to use, and can offset the penalty of Critical Deceleration. +Projectile Speed increases Damage Fall-Off ranges so can be useful. +Reload Speed is a fantastic quality-of-life stat. +Punch-Through is helpful against tight crowds.
-Impact/Puncture are both good negatives. Neither is a good proc outside of being an extra multiplier for Galvanised Savvy, nor are they good damage types. Reducing or removing them opens the way for more useful procs: Slash and whatever elements are modded on. -Faction Damage to the weaker Factions, particularly Infested, is usually quite manageable. Since the Strun family reloads one-by-one, -Mag Capacity is not a huge deal since the whole family reloads rounds one-by-one. -Ammo Max is not a major issue, especially with one of Ammo Case/Mutation/etc. -Projectile Speed can be compensated for with Fatal/Galvanised Acceleration. +Recoil is not a big issue at fairly low Fire Rate.
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