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In Warframe, a player's loadout typically consists of a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, and a melee weapon. However, beyond these standard equipment choices, there are additional options available during missions. For example, certain Warframes have exalted weapons, such as Excalibur's Exalted Blade.
More experienced Warframe players may be familiar with another category of hidden equipment known as pseudo-exalted abilities. Excalibur's Slash Dash is one such example. Although it is self-sufficient as an ability, it also interacts with factors extraneous to ability modifiers. Slash Dash's damage is affected by both ability strength mods and mods on your melee weapon configuration.
There's a total of five such pseudo-exalted abilities like this in Warframe so far, and not all of them are affected by all melee mods. Slash Dash, for example, is unaffected by critical chance and critical damage mods. A stat stick, simply put, is a special melee configuration built with the express purpose of empowering a pseudo-exalted ability.
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The best natural stat sticks in Warframe have high Riven Disposition
The 'stat stick' itself may not be a melee weapon intended for general usage. Only the mods installed on the stat stick affect the pseudo-exalted abilities, not its actual stats as a weapon.
Stat sticks therefore tend to be melee weapons that do not see much usage in the wider Warframe community. The fundamental idea behind this is abusing the stats on its Riven mods. How big the boosts on a Riven Mod for a weapon can be depend on the weapon's Riven Disposition. The less a weapon is used in Warframe globally, the higher the numbers on its Riven mods.
One note of precaution would be that mods with on-hit trigger preconditions as well as faction-specific damage mods (e.g., Primed Smite Grineer), do not work on stat sticks. Big examples of these would be Bereserker's Fury, Condition Overload, or Shattering Impact.
With that in mind, the following are the nuances of each stat stick build in Warframe, catering to its respective pseudo-exalted ability.
Excalibur - Slash Dash
For a starter Warframe, the very first ability unlocked on Excalibur packs quite a punch. While Slash Dash does not have status chance, it does benefit from additional elemental damage. Jaw Sword, due to its unique Blade of Truth augment mod, is arguably the best stat stick for this.
- Focus on increasing: Melee Damage mods (Primed Pressure Point), extra Slash damage mods (Buzz Kill), combo duration mods (Drifting Contact), and +90% Elemental Damage mods.
- Look for riven mods with the aforementioned boosts.
- Slash Dash cannot crit, rendering all critical chance and critical damage mods worthless.
- It is also unaffected by attack speed mods.
Gara - Shattered Lash
Gara's stat sticks function exactly the same as those of Excalibur. The only key difference is that the ability itself does not increase combo count as you use it, and therefore, a high combo duration is essential. The Incarnon Ack and Brunt is likely the best stat stick on Gara for this reason.
There are two ways to use Shattered Lash: tapping the ability deals impact damage, while holding it deals slash damage. Generally speaking, the latter is much more useful and also gets bonuses from +Slash damage mods.
- Gara stat sticks are essentially similar to Excalibur stat sticks, with some more focus on combo duration (Body Count).
- Look for rivens with +Melee Damage and +Elemental Damage modifiers.
- Ignore status chance and critical-related mods altogether.
Khora - Whipclaw
Arguably the most powerful pseudo-exalted ability in Warframe, Khora's Whipclaw is functionally a Broken War on steroids. It has a 25% base critical chance as well as 20% base status chance, which respectively benefit from Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds.
With simply Blood Rush and True Steel, the critical chance on Whipclaw at 12x combo multiplier goes up to 165%, i.e., 65% chance of orange crits with an otherwise guaranteed regular yellow crit.
There are two ways to build a Khora stat stick. The simplest one aims for brute damage, i.e., Melee Damage, Critical Chance, and Critical Damage mods with +90% Elemental Damage mods to fill in the gaps.
The other method is a critical-status hybrid that drops the elemental damage mods. For this, you need a Riven mod with a +Slash Damage boost as well as Buzz Kill to skew the IPS (impact-puncture-slash) distribution to get a good Slash preference, as well as Weeping Wounds to bring the status chance to 108% at 12x combo. The rest of the build will offer improved critical chance, critical damage, Blood Rush, and base melee damage mods.
- Look for Riven mods with +Melee Damage and +Critical Damage ideally, as well as +Slash Damage if using a hybrid build.
Ash - Bladestorm
Ash's Bladestorm is possibly the most optional stat stick in Warframe, as most of its benefits are quality-of-life enhancements. For starters, Bladestorm does not benefit from any sort of damage modifier on the melee weapon. Even though the clones in Bladestorm deal finisher damage, +Finisher Damage mods like Finishing Touch do not factor into it.
What it does benefit from is a base attack damage increase from combo count, as well as attack speed. Attack speed dictates how fast the clones attack, which in turn dictates how fast the combo counter builds up. Therefore, the following are the considerations for an Ash stat stick:
- Build attack speed as well as combo chance. Fury, Gladiator Vice, and Quickening bring the attack speed up to 100%, after which diminishing returns minimize any additional attack speed boosts.
- While Ture Punishment is a good fit to easily build combo counter, it must be offset with +Combo duration mods.
- Look for +Combo Duration and +Initial Combo in Riven mods.
- Daggers are a great option for an Ash stat stick because of the +16 Initial Combo on Covert Lethality.
Atlas - Landslide
Atlas' Landslide, in practice, is Excalibur's Slash Dash with an all-Impact damage One-Punch Man twist. Unlike Slash Dash, it does have a base critical chance and status chance of 5%, but they are too low to build around. Attack speed mods and Shattering Impact do not affect Landslide.
- Even though one could mod for Combo count chance, pure damage builds are a far more effective course.
- Look for Riven mods with +Melee Damage, +Impact, and/or +Elemental bonus stats.
The chief idea is going all-in for the instant damage build. Due to its nature as a pure Impact damage ability, +Impact mods like Collision Course increase the damage greatly on top of Melee Damage mods.
Check out other guides on this game from Sportskeeda:
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