Review: Burston Incarnon (U33.0.14)

As you'd most likely know by now, in U33: The Duviri Paradox, DE released a number of "Incarnon Genesis" adapters for existing weak or powercrept weapons. In many ways these have re-invigorated said weapons to be reasonably competitive with the current meta, if not outright top-tier.

I thought it appropriate to start this review series with my favourite of the lot (thus far), the Burston Incarnon. As Incarnon Genesis also makes the base form drastically stronger, these will be largely kept separate of reviews for the un-Incarnoned base weapon.

NOTE: This review demonstrates Incarnon on a Burston Prime.

Acquisition

As standard for all Incarnon Geneses, the Burston's is acquirable only through Steel Path Circuit, and must be installed at Cavalero in the Chrysalith.

Stats

Unlike Burston's base burst-fire form, Burston Incarnon is a Full-Auto. At first glance, the BurstonP Incarnon's base damage is surprisingly low, with 13 on both damage instances being extremely low. This however is easily fixed by Evolutions, which are of course discussed later on. 28%/3× Crit is exceptional even before any Evolutions, as is 30% Status Chance with base Heat damage.

Perhaps most notable though is its colossal Fire Rate of 20, which despite being among the highest in the game is paired with almost no recoil. This Fire Rate is fed by a similarly gigantic max charge of 600 rounds - which takes 30 seconds of continuous fire to deplete.

Like with most other ranged Incarnons, Burston Incarnon is charged by landing headshots. Each pellet (including Multishot as separate headshots) will add 30 rounds to Incarnon charge, thus requiring 20 headshots in total for full charge. Between Multishot and the Burston's Burst Fire nature, this is fairly easy to achieve.

As suggested by its stats screen, Incarnon shots have a small AoE on impact. Despite its small size, the AoE actually has the maximum possible Damage Fall-Off, dealing no damage at its full range of 2m. Note that Incarnon form fires hitscan rounds, so it will detonate on the first object it hits regardless of Punch Through, however its explosions do not benefit from Multishot at the time of writing. As a result, the AoE is actually very weak and contributes little outside of stacking extra procs.

These explosions can of course inflict self-stagger, though they are so small that it is only possible to do so at point-blank range.

Augments

The Burston Prime's Augment Gilded Truth will apply in full to its Incarnon form. Note that the base Burston cannot equip it.

+80% Fire Rate is a significant DPS increase, and since Incarnon form doesn't consume normal ammo, ammo consumption is less of an issue. However, Vile Acceleration exists which offers more Fire Rate at a negligible Damage cost, and Primed Shred also exists which offers less Fire Rate, but adds in Punch Through.

The main draw of Gilded Truth is the Truth Syndicate effect. Upon triggering, it deals a little radial Gas damage with guaranteed proc, restores a little Health, and increases Aim Glide duration and Bullet Jump velocity for a time. The latter effect is the most useful, as mobility is always appreciated in Warframe. On the other hand, there are increasingly more ways to quickly and conveniently heal, and the radial Gas damage is too weak to scale well.

Ultimately, whether you want to equip Gilded Truth lies primarily in whether you want its mobility increase from the Truth effect, as nothing else it offers is significant or notable compared to other Fire Rate mods.

Evolutions

Unlike the "true" Incarnon weapons, IGA upgraded weapons only have four Evolutions - the first of which is the automatically-unlocked Incarnon form.

Evolution 2

Evolution 2 is unlocked from completing a solo mission with the Burston equipped.

• Forceful Finality - +42 base Damage. On the last burst of the magazine in Base form, grants +5 base Multishot. Makes the last burst very strong, but otherwise does not offer any extra benefits. Notably does not affect Incarnon form.
• Fortress Salvo - +42 base Damage. If your Warframe's Armour is above 450 at any time, grants +2 Punch Through during that time. This includes conditional effects such as Arcane Guardian, and it will dynamically activate/deactivate as your Armour value changes. As Incarnon form is a hitscan explosive attack, it currently detonates on the first object it hits, even if it would penetrate it with Punch Through.

Since the Forceful Finality extra bonus doesn't affect Incarnon form, I'd recommend Fortress Salvo.

Note that the +Damage bonuses here are to the weapon's base stats, so they are fully multiplied by mods. This is already very strong for Base form, which gets almost doubled base Damage from 46 to 88. Incarnon form however gets it added to both damage instances, increasing from a mere 26 to a far more impressive 110 - over 4× the damage.

Evolution 3

Evolution 3 is unlocked from killing 100 enemies with Incarnon form.

• Extended Volley - +21 Mag Capacity. Nice for Base form, but does not affect Incarnon form.
• Ready Retaliation - On reload from empty, grants +100% Reload Speed. This buff speeds up Incarnon form transformation. Currently bugged to always be active.
• Kinetic Baffle - -50% Recoil. Can be nice for Base form but Incarnon form is already fairly low recoil.

All three of these are useful depending on your form preference and mod/Arcane choices. I use Ready Retaliation personally.

Evolution 4

Evolution 4 is unlocked from landing 40 headshots in a single mission. Multishot pellets count as additional headshots, making this challenge significantly faster to complete.

• Reaver's Rapture - when using Base form, grants +20% Damage each time a full burst hits. Stacks up to 5× for +100% Damage, and resets on Reload. Also resets when transforming into Incarnon Form, and Incarnon Form cannot stack it. Additionally, the +Damage bonus is additive with other +Damage bonuses like Serration, making it very weak overall.
• Absolute Valor - +22% base Crit Chance. Incredibly strong for both forms.
• Fatal Affliction - +40% Damage per Status type on target, only for direct damage. The same effect as Galvanised Aptitude, except weaker. Note that neither E4FA nor Galv Apt seem to take into account the extra damage from the E2s.

Absolute Valor is the obvious choice, as it again is a base stat increase - Base form increases from 18% to 40%, and Incarnon form increases from 28% to a colossal 50%. Both Reaver's Rapture and Fatal Afflication are very weak and not impactful for many reasons.

Builds

NOTE: Overframe.gg, which I've used for this build example, does not include any of the Evolutions. As a result, neither the massive base Damage increase from E2 nor the Crit Chance increase from E4AV are applied in this image.

Galvanised Build

Because of how lategame the Incarnon Genesis adapters are acquired, I've skipped straight to more advanced builds.

Galv Chamber and the Crit mods are auto-includes, of course. Critical Delay offers extra Crit Chance over Point Strike, and the Fire Rate penalty is easily offset with a +Fire Rate mod.

At the moment, Galv Aptitude does not apply its +Damage bonus to the E2 extra base Damage, which since they are the vast majority of base Damage for Incarnon form, makes Galv Apt near-useless. Instead, I've slotted in Serration for some unconditional +Damage. If you are at this level though, you can consider not having Serration at all. Its overall damage increase alongside a +Damage Arcane is relatively small, and there are much stronger options from a peak DPS perspective (notably Galv Scope, a [Primed] Bane, and Bladed Rounds).

Galv Scope as just mentioned is a strong option, offering a colossal increase in Crit Chance if you regularly aim and land killing headshots. It is very strong alongside or even instead of Critical Delay. The risk of running only Galv Scope is that its unstacked Crit Chance is smaller than Crit Delay, so it is not ideal if you struggle to land killing headshots and/or prefer not to zoom.

For elemental setup, as usual Viral is a good catch-all. It combines very well with the base Heat to hit most targets effectively, and Hunter Munitions can be added for Slash procs to eat through heavily armoured enemies faster. Corrosive deals much better direct damage against Ferrite-armoured targets and most Infested, especially those on the Cambion Drift who are immune to Viral procs. Both can alternatively be augmented with even more Heat damage and procs from a +Heat mod if so desired. Viral + Heat in particular is much stronger than Viral + HM if you have ways of reducing enemy armour.

Radiation deals strong direct damage against Alloy-armour, however its proc is not as useful as Corrosive. Notably however, Radiation enables a three element Radiation + Toxin combo, which can be very strong against most Corpus targets. Most armoured Corpus use Alloy-armour, which Radiation is very strong against, and anything unarmoured is vulnerable to Toxin damage bypassing their Shields entirely.

Recommended Elemental Setup: Viral + HM/Heat vs everything, Corrosive (+ Heat) vs Infested, Ferrite-armour, Radiation (+ Toxin) vs Alloy-armour, Corpus

Due to Incarnon's nature as a hitscan weapon, its explosive effect is not ruined by Punch Through. Instead, it will detonate on the first object it hits, even if it can penetrate that object. Additionally, base form really appreciates Punch Through for use against groups of enemies. As such, I really like (Primed) Shred on the Burston. Vigilante Offence or Metal Auger can be used instead if you want Punch Through without Fire Rate.

As also mentioned previously, a (Primed) Bane can be a very strong mod option, particularly as it applies twice to damage-over-time procs like Slash and Heat. In an optimised build with a +Damage Arcane, it will be much stronger than Serration. The conditional Bladed Rounds will also be stronger than Serration (especially if alongside Galv Scope), while also being Faction-agnostic.

There are a couple of other mod options, however I would consider them less useful/effective as the aforementioned ones.

(Primed) Firestorm can be used to slightly increase AoE, however due to the various factors mentioned previously, the AoE is already very small and weak, so not worth augmenting further in my opinion.

Hammer Shot offers some unconditional Crit Damage and Status Chance, but is not especially strong.

A pure +Fire Rate mod can be used to crank up Incarnon's DPS significantly, and of course its ammo is replenished just from landing headshots with base form anyway, making ammo largely a non-issue. Vile Acceleration is the strongest +Fire Rate mod, however Gilded Truth is only slightly weaker and offers the Truth Syndicate effect which can be useful. However, I personally consider the +Punch Through from (Primed) Shred to be far more valuable than just more Fire Rate.

Finally for the Exilus slot, there are a few options, though nothing really stands out. Though ammo is not a concern especially if focusing on Incarnon form, Vigilante Supplies can be used for its marginal DPS increase. Stabiliser can be used to greatly reduce base form's recoil, though Incarnon form has very little recoil to start with. Cautious Shot could be used to reduce Incarnon form self-stagger, however the self-stagger range on it is already so low that I don't think it is worth using.

Arcanes

Finally, for Arcanes. There are a lot of Arcanes to go through now.

+Damage Arcanes:

• Primary Merciless - standard +Damage Arcane, simple and easy to trigger although it decays very quickly. +Reload Speed is nice but does not significantly affect Incarnon.
• Primary Deadhead - +Damage arcane that stacks on headshot kills. Takes slightly more skill to stack, but stacks much faster and decays much slower. Offers higher peak damage with its +Headshot Damage effect, and -Recoil is particularly nice for base form.

Others:

• Fractalised Reset - +Reload Speed on Ability cast. Pointless for Burston Incarnon as reloading is rather infrequent, and the loss of damage potential is not worth it.
• Primary Frostbite - +Multishot/Crit Damage from inflicting Cold procs. Quite strong as the Burston Incarnon has great Crit, however not ideal in this case. Incarnon's pure base Heat makes inflicting Cold procs very restrictive (only possible with Radiation + Cold), which it doesn't want to build for. As such, you'd need to rely on other equipment to apply Cold procs (e.g. Abilities, Companion). Additionally, a +Damage Arcane still significantly outdamages it anyway.
• Primary Plated Round - +Damage from reloading, scaling with Mag Capacity. Bad for several reasons. It does not trigger from transforming to/from Incarnon, only triggering from base form's small Mag Capacity which will offer very little damage.
• Primary Exhilarate - Energy regen from Impact procs. Incarnon form cannot inflict Impact procs at all, making it a non-starter. Base form technically can, but would much rather have a damage boost instead.
• Primary Obstruct - Magnetic procs jam nearby enemy weapons. Another one that adds no damage, and relies on building for a generally undesirable damage type (Magnetic).

In short, I recommend one of the +Damage Arcanes, and I favour Deadhead.

As always, take note that the "on headshot kill" conditions like Galv Scope and Pri Deadhead do not stack from kills by certain damage-over-time procs like Heat and Slash. This can make using those effects more difficult at very, very, very high levels, though I use them and personally find them quite reliable.

My Build

Thanks to the +Damage from Pri Deadhead and my Riven, there is no need for Serration. As such, I've opted for Galv Scope as the final mod, to crank the Crit Chance up to absurd levels. At full stacks, it will constantly red-Crit (peaks at 310% Crit Chance).

Combat Use and Summary

BurstonP Incarnon excels against all manner of targets. Its immense Mag Capacity and high Fire Rate allow it to tear through groups of enemies with ease by just holding down the trigger and sweeping across. At base stats it takes a good 30 seconds to deplete Incarnon form even in sustained fire. Its only notable weakness here is that its AoE is quite small and weak, and does not benefit from Multishot, so it will still fall behind proper explosives or beam-chaining wepaons.

With absurd Burst DPS, BurstonP Incarnon excels against unarmoured and Status-resistant/immune enemies. There are few weapons that deal more single-target damage. With pure base Heat damage, high Fire Rate, and high Status Chance, it also performs well against heavily armoured enemies. BurstonP Incarnon can almost instantly max Viral/Corrosive procs, and then drown its victims by stacking increasingly strong Heat procs.

Against the heaviest armoured units, Hunter Munitions can be used to make Incarnon form inflict Slash procs, triggering constantly off its colossal Crit Chance. With such a build, any enemy that survives the initial burst of direct damage will almost certainly die immediately after once the Slash procs start dealing damage ticks.

Charging Incarnon form is relatively easy for the Burston. While it takes 20 headshots for max charge, Multishot will count as extra, and each single headshot adds 30 ammo to Incarnon which is a lot. With a max stack Galv Chamber, on average two full bursts will be enough to reach max charge, and even with just one burst, 300 ammo in Incarnon form is a very respectable amount.

Overall, BurstonP Incarnon is an absolute terror. Its huge Fire Rate and Mag Capacity, coupled with a small AoE, allow it to tear through large numbers of enemies without even blinking. Its colossal direct damage and incredible Status output let it tear through all manner of heavier enemies, especially with Hunter Munitions installed for heavily armoured ones.

BurstonP Incarnon is the Full-Auto that all other Full-Autos (except perhaps Phenmor) wish they were, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Scores

Vs Trash Mobs: 4.5/5 - With colossal Fire Rate and even a little bit of AoE, the BurstonP Incarnon tears through groups of enemies with ease. It still lags behind high explosive and chaining weapons for clearing crowds, but is far ahead of pretty much anything else.

Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 5/5 - BurstonP Incarnon deals an absurd level of direct damage, only really eclipsed by the true Incarnon weapons, Snipers with built-up combo, and perhaps some Shotguns for pure burst damage. It absolutely slaughters anything that it needs to deal direct damage against.

Vs Armoured Heavies without Forced Slash: 4.5/5 - With base Heat damage on both damage instances, very high Status Chance and colossal Fire Rate, the BurstonP Incarnon can instantly max Viral/Corrosive procs, and stack colossal Heat procs on enemies. Alternatively, base form can be used to inflict decent Slash procs very reliably, which with the Evolution buffs can be surprisingly strong as well.

Vs Armoured Heavies with Forced Slash: 5/5 - Given that both forms can reach well over 100% Crit Chance with E4AV, HM is a no brainer, triggering constantly for a deluge of moderately strong Slash procs. Anything that survives the initial burst is bled out almost immediately by the next damage tick.

Vs Variants

There are two Burston variants currently - Burston and Burston Prime. Base Incarnon actually has marginally higher Crit Chance than Prime Incarnon (30% vs 28%), however its base Damage is a measly 3 per instance vs 13 per instance.

I do not know if the Base Evolutions have higher values than the Prime - as of writing Incarnon Genesis is not removable yet and I wouldn't waste it on a base form weapon. If the trend for most of the other weapons I've seen holds true, the Prime should end up the overall better Incarnon, even if Base's Evos are stronger.

Competitors

In base form, the Burston Prime's primary competitor is the Kuva Hind. Before Incarnon Evolutions, the KHind comes out far superior to the BurstonP, only coming out worse in Fire Rate and Reload Speed. Incarnon Evos make it far more competitive, giving the BurstonP much higher base Damage and Crit Chance as well. The KHind retains its advantages in Crit Multiplier, Mag Capacity, Slash bias, and multiple firing modes for greater versatility.

BurstonP Incarnon goes up against other Full-Auto weapons, of which there are a lot in Warframe. However, on a pure firepower scale, almost nothing else even comes close. Even something like the Braton (Prime/Vandal) Incarnon, which is a very powerful weapon in its own right, deals roughly half the DPS of BurstonP Incarnon.

The only other Full-Auto that legitimately competes with BurstonP Incarnon for DPS is the Phenmor's own Incarnon form, thanks primarily to its Devouring Attrition Evolution. Between the two, I think Phenmor comes out ahead in DPS because E5DA is just that strong, however I find BurstonP Incarnon much more comfortable to use.

Rivens

I don't know how DE will manage Riven Dispositions for Incarnon Genesis weapons - they are vastly stronger than their base forms, and thus basing Disposition on the Incarnon'd form will leave the base form in the dust - though this may be the intent. 

In any case, I expect Burston Incarnon's Disposition to plummet from its current values (5/5 [1.35] for Prime, 5/5 [1.45] for base). It is an incredibly powerful weapon, I'd argue among the strongest Primaries in the game currently.

+Damage/Multishot/Crit Chance/Crit Damage are the usual good stats, with the former two becoming much less valuable with Galv mods and weapon Arcanes in the mix. +Elemental Damage can be useful to save a mod slot. +Faction Damage can be a very strong multiplier of damage-over-time procs like Heat and Slash, most useful against the Grineer. +Mag Capacity/Reload Speed can be nice quality-of-life for base form, but have no effect on Incarnon (barring faster transformation). -Recoil can also be nice to control base form, but again has minimal impact on Incarnon. Due to Incarnon's nature as a hitscan weapon, +Punch Through is very useful for both forms.

-Impact/Puncture are great negatives for both forms. Incarnon is completely unaffected, and base form appreciates the increased Slash bias and loses very little damage. -Slash is much more detrimental for base form, but again does not affect Incarnon. -Faction Damage to the weaker factions (mainly Infested, arguably Corpus) can be manageable with good positives, and of course has no effect on other targets. -Fire Rate in smaller amounts can be easily counteracted with a +Fire Rate mod. -Mag Capacity/Reload Speed can be troublesome for base form, but have no impact on Incarnon (barring slower transformation). -Ammo Max/Projectile Speed are both non-issues. +Recoil can be manageable for Incarnon due to its low base recoil, but base form has significant recoil already. -Zoom can be useful for close quarters, although Incarnon already has low zoom.