Cascadia Accuracy and Overcharge: Use Cases and Comparisons (U31.6.3)

Cascadia Accuracy and Overcharge are two Secondary Arcanes introduced in U31.5 Angels of the Zariman, alongside Cascadia Empowered. These two are a lot simpler than that one mechanically, simply offering conditional +300% Crit Chance. Nonetheless, I thought it worth discussing which weapons should legitimately consider them.

NOTE: There are very slight spoilers for Angels of the Zariman due to the acquisition method of Cascadia Accuracy and Overcharge.

Acquisition

Cascadia Accuracy and Overcharge are both purchasable from the Zariman's weapon vendor. You must be Rank 1 (Fallen) to purchase Accuracy, and Rank 5 (Angel) to purchase Overcharge.

Both are also potential drops from Void Angels and Thrax enemies.

Game Effect

Cascadia Accuracy triggers after rolling, and grants +300% Crit Chance for the next 4 seconds, only on Headshots. Body shots and non-head weakspots will not benefit.

As such, CascAcc is clearly suited to precise weapons that land headshots easily.

Cascadia Overcharge grants +300% Crit Chance so long as the Warframe has Overshields.

As such, CascOver is only worth using alongside Warframes that can regularly generate and maintain Overshields. The Helminth segment makes this significantly easier as it allows subsuming of Overshield-generating abilities like Pillage and Condemn onto any Frame. Because of this requirement for Overshields, Nidus and Inaros (and any future Health-only Frames) cannot benefit from CascOver.

Use Cases

As with the previous post, the primary competition to Cascadia Accuracy/Overcharge is the standard +Damage Arcanes, Secondary Merciless/Deadhead/Dexterity, and the newer Cascadia Flare. The interactions of these different stats make direct comparisons more difficult. I have used the following assumptive setup for this comparison:

• Weapons are equipped with both Primed Crit mods (Primed Pistol Gambit, Primed Target Cracker), for +187% Crit Chance and +110% Crit Damage respectively.
• Weapons are typically equipped with fully stacked Galvanised Shot (+120% Damage per unique Status proc). Maximum damage is calculated using the maximum possible procs with that weapon alone and up to three elemental mods.
• Assume that Galv Shot applies its damage bonus correctly, as a normal +Damage mod. There are instances where Galv Shot doesn't apply the full damage bonus, applies more damage than it should, applies its +Damage as a separate multiplier making the +Damage Arcanes strictly superior again, etc. I won't be covering those, partly because I'm not totally across the details of them myself.
• If the weapon is majority AoE damage, it uses Hornet Strike. In my table this is estimated by 2 procs of Galv Shot (+240% instead of +220%), which isn't perfect but made table construction a lot easier. In practice this minor discrepancy wasn't particularly relevant.

This of course is not perfect. Weapons will not always have every unique proc present on enemies for maximum Galv Shot benefit, particularly those with low Status Chance. Additionally, builds with Casc Acc/Over can feasibly drop Primed Pistol Gambit for another mod such as a Primed Expel, which will offer far more damage at the cost of great reliance on the Arcane.

There are two key equations used. The first is an equation that estimates the damage increase ratio from equipping CascAcc/Over:

The second is an equation that estimates the damage increase ratio from equipping Merc/Dead/Dex or CascFlare:

As mentioned previously, Hornet Strike for AoE weapons is estimated using 2 procs for Galv Shot.

For a weapon to consider using Casc Acc/Over from a pure damage perspective, its CascCrit Ratio must be equal to or higher than both of its Dmg Ratios.

I plugged pretty much all of the Crit-viable Secondaries (excluding Kitguns) into a table using these equations, and got the following, sorted by CascCrit Ratio:

Alternate version sorted by Casc Acc/Over viability, and then alphabetically. Much more useful if you're looking for a particular weapon. If it doesn't show in this sorted table, either I missed the weapon or the table says it prefers a regular +Damage Arcane.

In short, there are a lot of weapons worth considering Cascadia Accuracy or Overcharge on. The second column from the right is whether Casc Acc/Over beats Merc/Dead/Dex (+360% dmg), and the far right column is whether Casc Acc/Over beats CascFlare (+480% dmg). My formatting choices aren't great - just look for the green.

Any weapon highlighted in red has a strictly superior variant, so should be ignored.

There are a number of high-Crit weapons which by the table often prefer Merc/Dead/Dex or CascFlare over Casc Acc/Over. Of note, it includes all of the majority AoE weapons as they do not benefit properly from Galv Shot (e.g. Laetum Incarnon, Talons), or have very few native damage types (e.g. Athodai and Plinx only have Puncture and Heat at base, Synoid Gammacor is pure Magnetic). These are the ones with proc number highlighted in Orange.

The weapons highlighted in yellow are those that can struggle to get all of the procs for maximum Galv Shot benefit. This is typically due to low Status Chance, relatively low Fire Rate, and/or extreme heavy bias against one or more damage types that make it unlikely to be proc'd (e.g. Spira Prime is relatively slow firing and has 80% Puncture bias, making Impact and Slash procs quite unlikely). This situation favours the Damage Arcanes more, since these weapons will gain less +Damage from Galv Shot, however it is very difficult to quantitatively capture since Status procs are based on chance.

In short, note that these yellow-highlighted weapons may perform better with a regular Damage Arcane (Merc/Dead/Dex) even if the table says otherwise, due to their (lack of) Status capabilities.

The Sepulcrum, Tenet Spirex, Hystrix, and Laetum (default) are all individually highlighted. Though not highlighted, Knell Prime should be as well. The Zymos is worth mentioning here even though it is not in the table, due to its unusual Crit interaction.

The Tenet Spirex has an AoE, but it is only just minority (40% AoE by base Damage), so it is tabled as using Galv Shot as normal. A regular Damage Arcane thus has more value on it than tabled, since Galv Shot does not buff AoE. I'm not sure which Arcane ends up strictly better, I suspect it will be a Damage Arcane. Similarly, the Sepulcrum is 50/50 AoE and Direct Hit, and I don't know which Arcane is better for it. The Kuva Seer falls in this category a little as well (~35% AoE), however it inflicts so many more proc types (up to 7!) that I think Casc Acc/Over still come out ahead.

The Hystrix is notable as although it has relatively low Status Chance and is majority (~85%) Puncture, it inflicts forced base elemental procs (Cold, Electric, Heat, Toxin) and can switch between the four at will. As such, properly micromanaged, it can inflict 6 or more unique procs on enemies for immense Galv Shot benefit, and thus would prefer Casc Acc/Over.

Finally, the Laetum is mentioned here due to its Evolutions. In a Crit build, you would be using Evo 5 Overwhelming Attrition, which offers up to +1200% Damage, greatly reducing the value of a regular +Damage Arcane. However, E5OA only stacks up upon hitting an enemy with a shot that does not Crit or inflict a Status proc. As such, equipping and activating Casc Acc/Over too early can prevent you from dealing full damage with the Laetum, as either alongside Primed Pistol Gambit will exceed 100% Crit Chance. CascAcc is the easier of the two to get around since you can just shoot away from enemy heads to stack E5OA, but CascOver has no such simple workaround.

Knell Prime is worth a mention in a positive light. It gains additive +Crit Dmg when used correctly (landing headshots), making increased Crit Chance even more valuable than the table already suggests. Even without this, it works brilliantly with either of Casc Acc/Over as it already wants to land Headshots that CascAcc wants, and works really well with Harrow, who can generate Overshields for CascOver easily with Condemn (1).

For reasons unknown to me, the Zymos gains exponential benefit from +Crit Chance effects. As such, though on-paper it does not work well with Casc Acc/Over, in practice it actually can do really well with them. It already wants to land headshots, which CascAcc works really well with. Would it would beat the normal +Damage Arcanes? I have no clue - I don't even know how the Zymos-Crit interactions work.

Outside of these (admittedly numerous) exceptions, there are many weapons where Cascadia Accuracy/Overcharge are legitimately strong options.

Kitguns

I'd forgotten to account for Kitguns in the Cascadia Empowered post, though given its conclusion nothing of value was lost. Kitguns are again not included in this table because I didn't bother to create the different relevant combinations. The table and some of my own math has given the following additional conclusions though:

• Due to its AoE nature, even a max-Crit Sporelacer prefers the +Damage Arcanes.
• The Tombfinger falls in a similar category to the Tenet Spirex, having a minority-but-not-negligible AoE. I again don't know which Arcane comes out ahead - it is quite complex.
• Any Crit-leaning build for any other Kitgun Chamber is worth consideration for Cascadia Accuracy/Overcharge.

Other Considerations

Galvanised Shot is a major factor in the viability of Cascadia Accuracy/Overcharge. Its massive +Damage boost on many weapons diminishes the value of other +Damage effects like the competitor Arcanes. If you are using Hornet Strike, a regular +Damage Arcane wins easily, even on super-high Crit weapons like the Epitaph (charged), Akbolto Prime and Tenet Diplos.

There are several other aspects to consider besides just a pure damage view. The original +Damage Arcanes have additional effects that can justify their use even if peak damage is lower.

• Secondary Merciless gives +30% Reload Speed and +100% Ammo Max, which can be highly beneficial for slow-reloading, low-ammo weapons.
• Secondary Deadhead gives +30% Headshot Damage and -50% Recoil. If you struggle with recoil, Deadhead can be a solid option to mitigate it without using a mod slot. In this context, the +30% Headshot Damage is not notable as Crit headshots get a doubled Crit multiplier, putting Casc Acc/Over even further ahead.
• Secondary Dexterity gives +60% Holster Speed and +7.5 Combo Duration for Melee. It is clearly less beneficial for the weapon it is installed on, but is the only one that benefits Melee if you favour that.

Each of the Arcanes also has a different trigger condition, and all the +Damage Arcanes also require stacking for maximum effect.

• Cascadia Accuracy only triggers on headshots, so is not suited to imprecise or AoE weapons, nor is it a good choice for a spray-and-pray playstyle.
• Cascadia Overcharged triggers only when the Warframe has Overshields, which requires specific Abilities or mods as well as potential micromanagement to activate and maintain.
• Secondary Merciless and Deadhead both require you to get kills with the weapon to stack and maintain.
• Secondary Dexterity stacks only upon achieving Melee kills, so suits a combined-arms playstyle.
• Cascadia Flare stacks from repeatedly inflicting Heat procs, so is most well suited to high Fire Rate, high Status Chance weapons.

Cascadia Arcanes can also be acquired before Secondary Arcanes, as they drop from the Zariman where else Secondary Arcanes drop on Steel Path. Regardless, they both use the same Arcane slot which is only unlocked by playing Steel Path, so this consideration is minimal.

Conclusion

Cascadia Accuracy and Overcharge are both worth consideration on a lot of weapons. On the right weapons with the right supplementary equipment, they are best-in-slot damage increases. For maximum benefit, they need to be equipped alongside Galvanised Shot.

Both are equipment/playstyle specific. Accuracy only triggers after rolling and only works well on precise weapons in the hands of a player who lands headshots easily, while Overcharge only works on Warframes that can generate and maintain Overshields.

If your playstyle and equipment preferences fit one of these two categories, I'd say Cascadia Accuracy or Overcharge are very much worth investment. They are quite strong, and are worth using on a number of good weapons.