Review: Embolist (U32.1.4)

The Embolist is an MR9 Beam Secondary. Though it packs a very high Status Chance, it has a very low Range and is completely outclassed by more meta weapons.

Acquisition

The Embolist's Blueprint can be researched and purchased from a Dojo's Bio Lab.

Stats

The Embolist is very obviously a pure Status weapon. 41% Status Chance is extremely high alongside a decent Fire Rate of 8, for great proc output. Crit stats of 3%/1.5x are basically worthless. Pure Toxin base damage is great for builds using pure Toxin, but not ideal for Viral/Corrosive + Heat builds since it skews damage away from Heat.

The Embolist has very short Beam range at just 9m - barely more than a high-range Melee weapon. This is a significant disadvantage for it compared to most other weapons. As a Beam weapon, it benefits from consuming ammo at half its stated Fire Rate, resulting in an excellent Reload Ratio of 6.35.

Ammo Max of 210 isn't particularly high, but Ammo Pickup of 60-per-pickup is quite generous, being nearly two full magazines. The Embolist has a relatively low Fire Rate for Beam weapon, so does not consume ammo especially quickly.

According to the Wiki, the Embolist produces a small AoE on impact with a 1m radius.

Augments

The Embolist has two exclusive mods.

Eroding Blight is an Augment available from the Red Veil Syndicate.

Its base effect is a simple +200% Mag Capacity, which is a significant increase from 33 up to 99 rounds. The Embolist's Reload Ratio is already quite good though, so it isn't the biggest deal.

The mod also adds the Blight Syndicate effect, which upon acquiring sufficient Affinity, deals 1000 Viral damage with guaranteed proc in a 25m radius, as well as recovering a small amount of Energy and increasing movement speed for a time. This is one of the best Syndicate effects, as Viral procs are near universally useful, and Energy restore is arguably the best of the restoring effects.

Overall, I'd say you mainly consider Eroding Blight for the Syndicate effect, since the mod's primary effect is not a big deal.

Vile Discharge is an Augment available from the current Nightwave season (Nora's Mix Volume 2).

Upon dealing damage with the Embolist's regular attack, a Vile Discharge counter will accumulate based on the damage dealt. The damage added to the counter is calculated before damage reduction such as that from Armour, so even against the toughest enemies it will stack very quickly. Damage from damage-over-time procs like Heat and Toxin will add to this as well. The counter has a hard limit of 30,000 damage.

Pressing Alt-Fire with any amount of Vile Discharge counter will launch a projectile that explodes upon impact, dealing the accumulated amount of damage as pure Toxin in a 6m radius. This projectile cannot Crit or inflict Status procs, nor is its damage influenced by any mods. However, the explosive radius can be increased with (Primed) Fulmination.

The inability to influence the damage dealt by Vile Discharge, coupled with its inability to Crit or inflict Status procs, makes this mod underwhelming against tougher targets. It can be nice to take down packed groups of enemies, particularly Corpus since the Toxin damage will completely ignore their Shields. Against tougher enemies however, simply hitting them with Primary Fire to stack up more Status procs will be much more effective.

Builds

Elemental 0-Forma:

The Embolist has just a single native - polarity. However, being a non-Crit weapon, it can still fit in most of the basics depending on the mods you have available - Hornet Strike, Barrel Diffusion, Lethal Torrent, then your choice of elemental mods.

With such high Fire Rate and Status Chance, the Embolist is most effective when built for damage-over-time procs - Heat, Toxin, Electric, and Gas. Gas and Electric notably offer AoE damage-over-time, which can give the Embolist a degree of sorely needed AoE. However, both of them have very poor damage multipliers, and Gas also has a cap of 10. Without additional support or interactions, for instance from Warframe Abilities for grouping and armour-stripping, I don't think Gas and/or Electric work very well on the Embolist.

Pure Toxin on its own is exceptionally effective against most unarmoured Corpus. It ignores Shields entirely, striking directly at their Health and often with a beneficial multiplier. For the select few enemies whose Shields are tough and cannot be bypassed by Toxin, Magnetic is the obvious complement for massively increased Shield damage. Magnetic procs will also drastically increase the damage dealt by any other damage-over-time procs, which both Toxin and Heat can take advantage of.

Heat is more well-rounded against most other targets. It provides a degree of armour-reduction, as well as having a unique damage-stacking mechanic that makes it scale better than any other proc (except Slash against armoured enemies). It combines especially well with Viral or Corrosive against the appropriate targets, as their procs also significantly increase damage dealt to the appropriate targets (Viral against any Health type, Corrosive against any armoured enemy).

Recommended Setups: Viral + Heat vs everything, Corrosive + Heat vs Ferrite-armour, Infested, Toxin vs unarmoured Corpus, Magnetic + Toxin/Heat vs strong Shields

2-Forma:

Two added V polarities allows you to comfortably fit in the essentials, with space for a seventh mod. In this pictured build, I've slotted in Magnum Force for a good chunk of extra damage. Its Accuracy penalty is negligible on the Embolist. Augur Pact is a weaker option but is much cheaper to max and easier to fit.

There are of course many other mods to consider for the remaining slots.

Recommended Setups: see above.

3-Forma:

Another added V polarity gives a number of options for the remaining mod slots, depending on your preferences.

As always, I am a big fan of the Punch-Through from Seeker. For any weapon with little-or-no AoE, Punch-Through allows them to hit multiple enemies in a line, conditionally drastically increasing multi-target damage output. The Embolist benefits from it relatively less than most weapons, as its range is so short that it may struggle to even reach multiple enemies.

For maximum damage, a (Primed) Expel mod is a great option. For non-Crit weapons there are fewer damage-increasing mods of value, making the Faction Damage mods much more enticing. Faction Damage is especially potent on damage-over-time procs like Heat and Toxin, as its damage increase is applied twice. +Fire Rate can also be used to significantly increase DPS and proc rate, at the cost of also increasing ammo consumption rate.

For any build using Heat damage, combined or separate, Primed Heated Charge is a big damage and bias boost. It is most notable for builds with separate Heat, as it both increases Heat bias as well as Heat proc damage.

The Embolist's two Augments, Eroding Blight and Vile Discharge, are worth consideration if they strike your fancy. Eroding Blight massively increases the Embolist's Mag Capacity as well as adding the Blight Syndicate effect which can be quite nice. Vile Discharge adds a degree of AoE that is sorely lacking, though is only really effective against weaker enemies.

For the Exilus slot, I'd say there is only one mod worth considering. Ruinous Extension almost doubles the Embolist's range from 9m to 17m, which is a significant improvement. 

Recommended Setups: see above.

Galvanised Build and Arcane:

Galv Diffusion of course.

Galv Shot is a good option, because it only needs two different procs to match Hornet Strike. The extra Status Chance is also greatly appreciated on the Embolist.

Galv Crosshairs is of course worthless, because the Embolist's Crit is awful. In a similar vein, Casc Accuracy/Overcharge are both worthless.

Casc Flare is in my opinion the best option, stacking up effortlessly and offering the strongest +Damage boost. Sec Merciless offers a smaller damage boost and stacks only on kills, but offers slightly increased Reload Speed. Sec Deadhead can be irritating to stack up since only certain kills from damage-over-time procs can count as Headshots, but if lucky it can also stack up very quickly and offers higher peak damage thanks to its extra Headshot Multiplier.

My Builds

Fairly standard Viral + Heat build. Ruinous Extension would go in the Exilus slot if I felt like investing in it more (which I don't). In its place I'd probably slot in Primed Heated Charge or Eroding Blight.

Combat Use and Summary

The Embolist's biggest strength is its solid Status stacking capability. It can max out Viral/Corrosive almost instantly, and subsequently stack up very strong Heat procs. This setup can be quite effective against anything Status-vulnerable, though takes some time to deal its full potential damage. A pure Toxin build can be extremely effective against unarmoured Corpus units, bypassing their Shields entirely.

Naturally, the Embolist is weakest against Status-resistant/immune enemies. Its direct damage output is very low, so without being able to stack up large numbers of damage-over-time procs, it doesn't do much.

Groups can also be somewhat problematic. It can handle single weak enemies reasonably, but has no notable built-in crowd damage. The Embolist's short range means that even added Punch-Through is not as useful as it could be otherwise. About its only notable advantage against groups is a high Reload Ratio. The Vile Discharge Augment can help in this regard but does not scale very well at high levels as its damage maximum is static.

The Embolist's pathetic 9m range is one of its biggest weaknesses (besides an overall lack of damage). This range is not much more than a Melee, and far less than just about all other Secondaries, without offering any of its own notable benefit. 

Overall, the Embolist is not a very good weapon. It can stack a lot of elemental Status procs, but that is all it does and even then it is outclassed by a number of other weapons. It has very poor Range, low direct damage, no strong AoE, and restricted elemental combos due to its base Toxin damage. For essentially any purpose, I'd recommend other Beam Secondaries over the Embolist.

Scores

Vs Trash Mobs: 3/5 - The Embolist has good Reload Ratio and a small AoE-on-impact, but otherwise little else that helps against groups. The Vile Discharge Augment can help, but scales poorly.

Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 1/5 - The Embolist deals very low Burst DPS, relying entirely on Status procs for its damage. Against Status-resistant/immune enemies, it struggles immensely.

Vs Armoured Heavies without Forced Slash: 4/5 - The Embolist can max Viral/Corrosive procs with ease, and stack up massive Heat procs quite reliably. Higher DPS would have been appreciated for even stronger procs.

Vs Armoured Heavies with Forced Slash: NA/5 - the Embolist does not inflict Impact procs, so cannot make use of Hemorrhage.

Vs Variants

None.

Competitors

The Embolist directly competes with other Beam Secondaries like the MR13 Kuva Nukor and MR14 Tenet Cycron, which is rather unfortunate for the Embolist.

Both the KNukor and TCycron are vastly superior, not only in terms of raw overall stats and range, but also because they chain to two other nearby enemies.

The recently-reviewed MR11 Catabolyst is also a rough comparison, the Catabolyst being vastly superior in just about every respect. Its Reload Attack also completely outclasses the explosive attack from the Embolist's Vile Discharge Augment.

In my opinion, there is essentially no practical reason to use the Embolist over these other three weapons (among many others).

Rivens

The Embolist has a very high 5/5 (1.4) Riven Disposition, which is fair given it is badly outclassed.

+Damage/Multishot are the obvious positives to have. +Elemental damage is your next best universal damage-increasing stat, also being useful to shift around damage type biases. +Faction Damage can be extremely strong given how high it can roll for the Embolist, and how it interacts with damage-over-time procs. +Punch-Through is quite helpful against crowds.

-Crit Chance/Damage are great negatives since the Embolist has almost none of either. -Faction Damage to a weaker Faction (mainly Infested) can be ignored against other Factions. -Ammo Max can be manageable if you have other ways of improving ammo recovery. -Mag Capacity is miniscule if you also install Eroding Blight. -Reload Speed has a relatively low impact on Reload Ratio. +Recoil has minimal impact. -Zoom is ideal because the Embolist is a close-range-only weapon.