Warframe: Complete Laetum build guide

In the current year and era of Warframe, a proper Laetum build easily takes the top spot for high raw-damage secondaries. It does not have the gusto or kick of Lex Prime in its ordinary form, but make no mistake: its needle-like precise shots kick like a mule with the right Incarnon Talents. The Incarnon form is another story altogether, taking everything good about the Laetum and sticking it on a bullet-hose machine.

In this guide, we'll go over the mathematically best build for Laetum in Warframe.

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How does the Incarnon form of Laetum work in Warframe?

Like with any other Incarnon weapon in Warframe, the Laetum comes with a two-in-one flavor. The original firing mode is a semi-auto pistol, and headshots with it build up the Incarnon meter below the crosshair. After it's partially or fully charged, you can press alt-fire to switch to the Incarnon mode, which functions like an auto-trigger assault rifle such as Soma.

In this Incarnon mode, the Laetum comes with 200 bullets in the chamber (if the mode is fully charged) and fires roughly 6.67 rounds per second. Each projectile hits base Impact damage but also has an AoE upon contact that has base Radiation damage, making it even better against clumped-up enemies.

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Best Incarnon Talents to pick for a Laetum build in Warframe

Devouring Attrition is no joke (Image via Digital Extremes)

The best Incarnon Talent path for Laetum in Warframe is the following:

Rapid Wrath > Lethal Rearmament > Elemental Excess > Devouring Attrition

Laetum comes with a good amount of base critical chance and status chance, but the main gimmick here is to sacrifice critical chance altogether. This would seem counterintuitive to someone unfamiliar with how Laetum's Incarnon Talent works, so here's the quick explanation: Devouring Attrition (Evolution V) gives you a flat +2000% outgoing damage boost on 50% of all non-crit hits.

Granted, there's also Overwhelming Attrition with a similar gimmick, but Devouring Attrition is much easier to proc thanks to Elemental Excess (Evolution IV). While crit is still a viable path, the non-crit approach provides mathematically superior sustained as well as burst DPS.

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Best Laetum build in Warframe (4-Forma, Viral-Heat setup)

Here's the build I use (Image via Digital Extremes)

Note that this Laetum build is only mathematically best for single-target DPS in Warframe. There are other use cases for the Laetum, such as sacrificing some up-front damage for better crowd-clearing ease. Thankfully, you can switch it around with this 4-Forma setup.

Mods used:

• Galvanized Shot
• Galvanized Diffusion
• Frostbite
• Pistol Pestilence
• Lethal Torrent
• Hornet Strike
• Scorch
• Primed Heated Charge

Arcane used:

• Use Secondary Dexterity or Secondary Merciless for regular mobbing
• Cascadia Flare if you are using it for VIP targets

Build variation depending on the target:

Laetum is so good with Gun-CO because Devouring Attrition multiplies properly with the per-Status damage bonus. In other words, if you run with a different primer like a Diriga modded with other disparate Elements (e.g. Cold, Magnetic, Corrosive, and anything that is not on Laetum's mod setup), you get bigger damage numbers. There's unfortunately no Heat-Inherit shenanigans possible without a Sentinel weapon Riven.

The one big mod variance to note here is the use case. If you are not using Laetum as a main damage source and instead just a DPS option exclusive to VIP targets (Acolytes and Demolisher units), drop Galvanized Diffusion for Barrel Diffusion and use Cascadia Flare.

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What's the best Riven for Laetum in Warframe?

With Devouring Attrition, the most important thing on a Laetum build is negative Critical Chance, so that's what you're looking for on a Riven. Due to low Riven Disposition, this affix won't go too low, but it's still one way to min-max. For your other rolls, you're looking for at least three of these:

• Multishot
• Fire Damage
• Fire Rate
• Damage
• Status Chance

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Check out our other guides on the game:

• All Warframes tier list
• Incarnon weapons tier list
• How does the Calendar system work?
• How to get the Safe Biocode
• All new Mods in Warframe 1999