Secondary Enervate - Use Cases and Comparisons (U38.0.5)

U38: Warframe 1999 brought a great deal of content, including but not limited to yet more Arcanes. Providing a unique flat Crit Chance bonus effect, Secondary Enervate was immediately singled out for the already powerful and popular Kuva Nukor. I wanted to take a deeper dive and figure out what other weapons also benefit and can make good use of it.

Acquisition

Secondary Enervate can be acquired in various ways from playing 1999 missions, including but not limited to in-mission caches, and as a drop from the Assassinate boss. It can also be purchased from Eleanor in Hollvania, but only once you are Rank 5 with the Hex.

Game Effect

Upon hit, Secondary Enervate increases its weapon's Crit Chance by 10%, as an absolute post-mod bonus. Keep in mind that this seems to be once-per-instance, like Secondary Encumber. Multishot does not increase the number of Sec Enervate stacks gained, nor does hitting multiple enemies with a single shot.

The bonus Crit Chance will reset after inflicting up to 6 "Big" Critical Hits, increasing with Arcane rank. A "Big" Crit is any Crit higher than the first tier of initial Crits, possible starting above 100% Crit Chance, and guaranteed at and above 200%. By default, a "Big" Crit is coloured orange or red on the UI, depending on exact tier. Higher tier Crits will also start displaying "!" next to the damage numbers.

To simplify, Sec Enervate increases a weapon's Crit Chance on each hit until it inflicts a bunch of big Crits, then resets the Crit Chance.

Methodology

Unlike the other Arcanes I've covered, I couldn't figure out a neat way to compare Secondary Enervate using a convenient formula or simple set of formulae. Instead, I chose to figure it out manually with a table of numbers.

Assumptions:

• The only Damage and Crit mods installed on weapons are Galvanised Shot, Primed Pistol Gambit, and Primed Target Cracker, to maintain mod parity. This is not precisely accurate, since weapons with Sec Enervate would not equip Primed Pistol Gambit, but instead something like Magnetic Might or Merciless Gunfight.
• For AoE weapons and other weapons which do not use Galv Shot effectively, they are simulated with Hornet Strike instead by using 2 stacks of Galv Shot. While not strictly equal (+240% vs 220%), it is close enough to not make a significant difference, and it made spreadsheet setup a lot easier.
• For weapons which use Galv Shot effectively, they are typically estimated with 4 or 5 unique procs, depending on the number of native damage types. Granted, in today's meta with the huge range of status priming methods, that is perhaps an underestimate.

This is an example of the table I developed, using the Kuva Nukor as the subject weapon.

• The green section covers basic stats, with base Crit Chance/Damage, number of procs used for Galv Shot +Damage bonus, and the corresponding modded Crit Chance/Damage.
• The light orange section maps out the weapon's Crit Chance corresponding to Sec Enervate stacks. In particular, it looks at the chance of inflicting a "Big", or as my spreadsheet calls it, "Super" Crit. It also calculates an overall average Crit Chance, though more on that below.
• The blue section estimates overall damage multipliers for comparing the Arcane options. I2 identifies the damage multiplier with Sec Merciless/etc, J2 with Cascadia Flare. J5 uses the previously calculated average Crit Chance to determine the average damage multiplier with Sec Enervate.

There were two issues with calculating the effect of Secondary Enervate. The first was figuring out, on average, how high it stacks before being reset. The second was figuring out what the corresponding average damage increase is.

To achieve the first, I decided to calculate the Expected Value of number of Big/Super Crits, by using cumulative Big Crit Chance - see column E. I used whichever row exceeded 600% cumulative Big Crit Chance as the hit at which a weapon would, on average, inflict its sixth Big Crit and thus reset Secondary Enervate.

To achieve the second, I calculated the mean average Crit Chance across all hits up to and including the hit where Secondary Enervate resets (on average). This was then used to calculate the average effect of Crit on damage when using Sec Enervate, and finally to calculate J5.

Ultimately, the average Crit Chance for weapons sat around the 125%-145% range, depending on base Crit Chance.

Use Cases

I put through a number of different weapons through this methodology, and produced the above table and graph. The four groupings are as follows:

• Well above Flare - weapons for which Sec Enervate offers at least ~25% more overall damage than Casc Flare. These are all weapons which would, barring other specific interactions, greatly favour Sec Enervate over Casc Flare.
• Slightly above Flare - weapons for which Sec Enervate offers a little more overall damage than Casc Flare, up to ~20%. On paper DPS these weapons would prefer Sec Enervate over Casc Flare, but the difference is small enough that other factors can swing it the other way.
• Between Flare/Merc - weapons for which Sec Enervate offers less overall damage than Casc Flare, but still more than Sec Merciless/etc. For these weapons, other factors should be considered for deciding Arcane choice, and Sec Enervate is not an obvious favourite.
• Below Merc - weapons for which Sec Enervate offers less overall damage than even Sec Merciless/etc. Barring specific interactions or preferences, you should generally not use Sec Enervate on these weapons.

From these examples, I came up with the following approximate guidelines:

• If a weapon has lower than 15% base Crit Chance, it greatly benefits from Sec Enervate, even if its Crit Multiplier is poor (e.g. Quatz Full-Auto and Telos Akbolto).
• If a weapon has between 15-25% base Crit Chance, Sec Enervate is a solid option but not necessarily best - exact weapon specifics will affect the results.
• If a weapon has above 25% base Crit Chance, Sec Enervate is not the strongest option, and Casc Flare, and sometimes even Sec Merciless/etc, are stronger.

These groupings have a much lower threshold for AoE weapons, more like 10% and 15% respectively.

As mentioned previously, the Kuva Nukor is probably the poster child for this Arcane. Its measly 7% Crit Chance but insane 5× Crit Multi give it absurd benefit from absolute Crit Chance increase, as already seen when paired with equipment such as Arcane Avenger, Adarza Kavat, and Harrow's 4.  This results in Sec Enervate being the clear best-in-slot for it by a hilarious margin.

Similarly, the Catabolyst's 11%/2.9× Crit is a prime candidate for Sec Enervate, albeit it has a unique Augment Critical Mutation which throws a wrench in the calculations which I haven't considered. The Zylok Prime with its (pre-Incarnon) 12%/2.4× is also a great option.

The Kompressa's multiple delayed-explosion bubbles seem to bypass the once-per-instance rule. While the initial shot can only get one stack of Sec Enervate, the subsequent explosions all seem to count individually, perhaps because their Embed Delay is not exactly identical. Additionally, the delayed explosions seem to not consider the Sec Enervate reset until a new burst is fired. I don't quite understand it but the net result is that the Kompressa can reach crazy red Crits, far beyond what Sec Enervate "should" be able to reach.

The Pox is another AoE weapon that works well with Sec Enervate. Its lingering toxic clouds are both able to Crit with Sec Enervate, as well as quickly rack up Sec Enervate stacks, giving it very good uptime and overall benefit. The Zakti Prime also gets good benefit despite its poor Crit and AoE nature.

The Zymos has wacky interactions with this Arcane, as it does with many other Crit Chance effects. The Crit Chance bonus from Sec Enervate is applied twice to the Zymos' on-headshot extra spores, resulting in comically high Crit numbers.

Other Considerations

Much of the Arcane's consideration comes from the weapon effectively using Galvanised Shot as its +Damage source. If the weapon is a majority-AoE weapon or has special multiplicative effects with Galv Shot, Secondary Merciless/etc and Cascadia Flare tend to be better, as Hornet Strike is significantly weaker than a stacked Galv Shot.

A perfect example of this is the Staticor, which on-paper would seem like a great candidate - 14%/2.2× Crit. However, as it is mostly an AoE weapon, its benefit from Galv Shot/Hornet Strike is fairly small, and thus its benefit from Sec Merciless/etc and Casc Flare is significantly higher. Indeed, by my calculations, the Staticor would prefer Casc Flare over Sec Enervate, with Sec Merciless/etc not far behind.

The different stack conditions and secondary benefits are all worth considering as well.

• Secondary Merciless reduces Reload Time, which can be greatly beneficial for some weapons. However, it stacks only on kill, and its stacks decay quickly, so it is only regularly at full power on AoE weapons.
• Secondary Deadhead reduces Recoil and increased Headshot damage, while also having the longest-lasting stacks of any of these Arcanes. However, it only stacks on Headshot kills, which can be difficult against some enemies due to obscure (or even no) head hitboxes.
• Cascadia Flare stacks on any Heat proc, which is great for any loadout with Heat procs equipped, but obviously worthless for a loadout that does not.
• Secondary Enervate stacks on any hit, but does not include (most) Multishot, so is best used on high-Fire Rate weapons. Additionally, by its nature, it regularly fluctuates between peaks and troughs of damage potential, which can be slightly inconvenient if you are relying on consistent kill power.

Conclusion

Overall, Secondary Enervate is a strong, if somewhat unusual, addition to the Secondary Arcane pool. It provides greatest benefit for those weapons with low Crit Chance but high Crit Multiplier, however with the way Warframe scales its Crit Multiplier, can still be effective even on weapons with low Crit Multi.

In particular, weapons with base Crit Chance below 15% immensely benefit. Weapons between 15-25% Crit Chance can also use it effectively, albeit with much smaller margin over the next better options.

I find Sec Enervate to be more consistent on faster-firing weapons, to more quickly stack Sec Enervate and thus minimise time between peak and trough Crit Chance.

Sec Enervate is less desirable on AoE weapons and weapons with weak or multiplicative Galvanised Shot bonus, as those weapons gain far greater benefit from a +Damage Arcane like Sec Merciless or Casc Flare.