Warframe Epitaph build guide: How to get, mods, mechanics, and more

Even though sidearms are called 'secondary' weapons in Warframe, it does not imply their lack of viability as primary damage dealers. The Epitaph, however, truly falls into the category of a dream secondary weapon. It is capable of amplifying damage you deal with other weapons and abilities, while the Gun-CO mod, otherwise known as Galvanized Shot for secondaries, also gives the leeway to deal damage on its own.

The Epitaph's reputation as one of the top secondaries in Warframe comes from its versatility in both departments. Its charged shots boast the highest critical chance in the game and present a great deal of damage potential if built around.

However, the best utilization of this sidearm is as a status spreader. Thanks to the wide-spread carpet-bombing nature of its fast uncharged shots, the Epitaph can drench several affected targets with multiple status types in one go, opening them up to lethal levels of damage.

Thanks to the buffs to the Cold status type in update 33.6, the Epitaph is now stronger than ever in Warframe. On its uncharged shots, it now also applies a guaranteed Cold proc to all targets, thus crowd-controlling them beyond the status types you have placed.

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Warframe Epitaph farming guide

Void Storms are the only direct source of Epitaph components (Image via Digital Extremes)

Like the Warframe Sevagoth, all of the Epitaph's components have a chance to drop at the end of a successful Void Storm extraction.

The main Epitaph blueprint, alongside its two components, Epitaph Barrel and Epitaph Receiver, have a roughly 10% chance to drop in any Void Storm mission. The locations involved are Venus Proxima, Earth Proxima, and Saturn Proxima.

All of these components are also tradeable between players. This means you can also obtain any or all of them from others in exchange for Platinum.

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Warframe Epitaph primer secondary build in 2023

A standard primer build for Epitaph in Warframe (Image via Digital Extremes)

The general idea for a primer is to 'prime' enemies with 10 Viral status stacks. This is so they take extra damage from all sources, as well as other damage types, to feed into Gun-CO or Galvanized Mods such as Galvanized Aptitude.

To that end, a primer Epitaph utilizes only the quick attack and stack status types. Unlike Kuva weapons, the lack weapon progenitor status type bonus limits the amount of different status types you can proc. However, the Epitaph's single-shot area coverage more than makes up for this.

Generally, the best combination to this end is a Viral and Heat elemental combo. The rest of the mod slots can be filled out with Multishot, Fire Rate, and Status Duration mods for maximum utility from a Primer. If you are going to be using this weapon as a source of damage, swap out the Augur Seeker in the build for Galvanized Shot, and the Amalgam Barrel Diffusion for Galvanized Diffusion.

Due to its popularity, the Epitaph's Riven Disposition is extremely low (0.55x). If you still must use a Riven, the best-case stats you should look for are Status Chance, Multishot, and Fire Rate.