Precision-Guided Elephant Gun: another half-sane build, Ivara this time!

Hello again everyone! I'm back with another ethically-questionable, far-from-optimal, but probably viable build, on the off chance that someone with more Corrupted mods feels like giving it a shot before I grind up to that point.

Today's build was inspired by the honourable Qwertys118, who posed an interesting question about a week ago: can Ivara potentially break multiple Eidolon parts with one shot using Navigator? Naturally this silly, yet fascinating, question sparked my imagination, so I began to theorize. Now, obviously the fact that you can only break one part per phase throws a bit of a wrench into this idea, but I suspect that with a competent team to get the shields down ASAP and good aim to make sure you don't hit it from an angle you don't have enough Punchthrough for it should be entirely possible. I posted a rudimentary version of this build in a comment on Qwerty's post, but after some deliberation and a fair bit of math I have a more refined version for your delectation. As before, I will make the disclaimer that this build is entirely theoretical, and I may have done some math wrong somewhere, although I am once again mostly certain I haven't. With that said, I present the Big Game Eidolon Hunter Ivara (OC, Do Not Steal).

Part 1: The Ivara

Right, here we go. Aura is Dead Eye, Exilus is Power Drift, the rest are Transient Fortitude, Primed Flow, Primed Continuity, Blind Rage, Fleeting Expertise, Augur Secrets, Streamline, and Intensify. You will no doubt notice the utter lack of any sort of defensive mods on this build; this is by design. Ideally, you will be spending the entire fight a good distance away and/or invisible and/or in Operator mode, making defensive mods largely unnecessary. Another important point is the very low Ability Duration. To those unfamiliar with the unique aspects of Ivara's Navigator Ability, allow me to enlighten you: in simple terms, it allows you to control the flight of a single fired projectile, while also increasing the final damage of that projectile over time as it is controlled. The interesting aspect is that how quickly this damage bonus ramps up is inversely proportional to you Ability Duration, such that having a reduced Duration will cause the damage bonus to cap out faster. The counterbalance to this is that reduced duration will also make the Ability cost more; I will cover this in more depth later, but by my assessment Primed Continuity strikes the best balance between the two.

Part 2: The Elephant Gun

An elephant gun, for those among us who aren't history and/or firearms nerds, is a weapon designed for taking down large game such as, well, elephants, from a time when hunting elephants was more socially acceptable and less evil, the only way to make a gun powerful enough to kill one was to make it very very large. For this build we will be using the Lanka as our boomstick of choice due to its strong crit stats and potential for 100% Radiation Damage, however in practise any projectile weapon capable of hitting 100% crit chance and modded for Radiation will get the job done. Our build is Serration, Heavy Caliber, Point Strike, Vital Sense, Stormbringer, Hellfire, Charged Chamber, and either a Riven or Primed Cryo Rounds depending on your resources. Due to using Navigator (which can only control one projectile), Multishot is useless to us and the lowered accuracy from Heavy Caliber is a non-issue. Charged Chamber may seem like an odd choice on a weapon with a 10-shot clip, but we don't care about shots 2 through 10, so it serves our purpose quite well.

Now, the tricky part: the Riven. Normally I wouldn't suggest a Riven for this sort of build, and it is by no means required to get good results, however in this instance we are interested in the negative stat. The Lanka's base 200 meter per second projectile speed is technically controllable, but you'll need a long run up, good planning and a fair bit of both luck and skill to make it work. As such, I strongly recommend using a Riven that reduces that speed. For reference, The best possible positive stats for this oddball Riven are Damage, Critical Damage and Electricity and/or Heat Damage, in that order. I will be assuming an ideal Riven for this build (unrealistic perhaps, but it helps get the point across), but even without one it will still get the job done.

Part 3: The Numbers

Now, what sort of results can we expect from this madness? Well, our Ivara build gives us +223% Ability Strength and -32.5% Ability Duration, plus 743.75 Energy to work with. This means that Navigator's damage bonus increases by 148.15% per second over slightly more than 11 seconds, so a cap of a whopping 1615% final damage. Prowl also costs about 1 Energy per second when not moving, which might come in handy when waiting for shields to go down. Our Lanka, meanwhile, starts off with 525 damage on a fully charged shot. I'll mention at this point that our Riven has the optimised stats of +188% Damage, +136.7% Critical Damage and +102.6% Electricity Damage (UPDATE: My original numbers here were incorrect, so I may change this later, as a 2-positive Riven may prove more effective). This plus Serration and Heavy Caliber boost our base damage to 3520.125 pure Electricity damage, which our elemental mods will kick up to 13468 Radiation damage. Charged Chamber will increase that by an additional 40%, up to 18855.2. Vital Sense and our Riven will increase our crit multiplier to 7.134x, making our final shot a respectable 134,513 damage. But we aren't finished yet.

Now we stack our 1615% Navigator bonus onto this, which pushes the damage through the stratosphere. Factor in Armor and an Eidolon's double weakness to Radiation damage (note that this is all calculated off of a Teralyst), and we end up with an astonishing 2,524,862 damage. This is before buffs, by the way, as I'm not entirely sure how the crit damage bonus from Volt's Electric Shield applies. Ignoring that, if we add in (assuming all support builds have at least 100% additional Ability Strength) 200% Radiation damage from Smite Infusion and 100% Electricity damage from firing through two shields (which would go up to 300% if the Volt runs Shock Trooper) we spike up to over 4.5 million damage, with the potential to go even higher with the addition of other damage buffs such as Roar or Fireball Frenzy, not to mention any boosts available from various Focus trees.

Part 4: Support Options

No specific examples here, the course should be obvious. Oberon and Volt add a lot of damage, as does Ember and really any Warframe that makes the damage bigger. Even if you don't have a perfect Riven, the previously stated buffs will push your damage to about 1.6 million, not counting the extra damage from a Primed Cryo Rounds and the crit bonus from Electric Shield (if anyone knows when that gets factored in do let me know so I can update my math, the wiki is very unhelpful), so 3-4 million or so is an entirely reasonable possibility depending on how that balances out.

Part 5: Final Thoughts

First, the most important question: will it kill in one shot? Well, sure, provided you don't mess up your Punchthrough or run out of energy, and even if it doesn't the damage is still more than enough for the job in more conventional runs. With that in mind, I offer two variations: for maximum one-bullet shenanigans swap Primed Continuity for Narrow Minded, which will increase your ramp-up time by 60% or so but slash your energy cost by about a third, letting you keep Navigator running for longer. Alternatively, you can ditch your Duration mods entirely for something else, which nearly doubles your energy cost but cuts your ramp-up time to a hair over 2 seconds, which is much more practical for a one-shot-per-limb strategy. Ultimately you'll have to tune your Ability Duration to suit our situation and preference, there isn't really a "right answer."

Anyway, that's my bit, I hope you find it amusing or enlightening, or maybe both. Any criticisms or suggestions are welcomed, although I would appreciate anyone who feels the need to say "Just use Chroma, he's more practical" kindly not bothering. I'm well aware that this isn't practical or optimal; it isn't supposed to be. I'm aiming for viable and different and interesting, in the hopes of perhaps inspiring some people to learn how to vary from the meta, and of course having a good time. Let's not get grumpy just because this isn't a .5% improvement on what everyone is already doing, alright? Alright. Also, special thanks to (again) Qwerty118 for the inspiration, and lolmagic1 for putting me on the scent of a couple optimisations. Good hunting, fellow Tenno.

EDIT: Left out a mod, incorrectly sourced my Riven data and miscalculated some scaling, thanks to ChristopherKlay for pointing that out. Everything should be correct now (or at least less wrong).