Hey guys and welcome to another Warframe article. And today we’re gonna take a quick look at Khora signature sidearm weapon - the Hystrix that was released with the Beasts of the Sanctuary update.
Hystrix Manufacturing Requirements
So, if you want to get your hands on this weapon you can simply buy the blueprint from the market for 25,000 credits. Then to build the weapon you have to invest additional twenty thousand credits, sacrifice one Bolto, one Viper, 9750 ferrite, and 15 control modules.
Hystrix Quills
The Hystrix is a fully automatic pistol that requires you to be at least mastery rank seven to use it and it can switch between four different types of Quills by pressing the secondary fire button. Each of the different types of Quills corresponds to one of the basic elemental damage types that we have in Warframe. So, there is one for toxin, one for heat, one for electricity, and finally one for cold.
Quills Mechanic
Now, these don’t actually do damage with their respective element they just force the status proc of that element with each shot. So, if for example, you’re using the ice quill it will always proc cold. Also, the accuracy of the weapon isn’t great regardless of the quill type. Now, regardless of the Quill type, the weapon will always have a fire rate of seven rounds per second with a sixteen round magazine three hundred and twenty rounds in total, reload time at 1.7 seconds, 24% crit chance, 2.2x crit multiplier, and 10% status chance.
The only thing that changes as you cycled through the Quills aside from the different status procs, of course, is the damage. So, the Poison and Ice Quill will do 36.1 damage with each shot: 31 is puncture, 2.9 slash, and 2.2 is impact. And the Fire and Electric Quill will do 40 damage with each shot: 34.4 being puncture, 3.2 being slash, and 2.4 impact.
And I think it’s also important to mention that the forced status procs will not combine with other elemental damage types that you have on the Hystrix. So, you can, for example, mod your weapon for Gas which is toxin and heat and it will proc both Gas and Toxin. If however, you mod the weapon for heat and then use the Fire Quill it will combine the two heat procs into one chunkier one.
But that’s still not it. It’s a little bit more complicated than that because if for example you mod for Radiation which is electricity and heat and you use the Fire Quill the heat from the mod that’s combining into radiation will be added to the heat proc from the Quill.
All the Quills also have travel time so you will have to lead the target a little bit. But it’s not too bad because they’re pretty fast.
And finally, the Hystrix also comes with one V polarity as standard which is always nice.
Hystrix Build
Now, since I am a really burned out on forma I’ve only added two V’s and that’s it.
Hystrix 4 Forma Build
Now, if I could I would add two more forma - one Dash and one V. And I would replace Scorch with Primed Heated Charge and Pistol Gambit and Target Cracker mods with their Primed versions. But for now, I’m using a pretty standard hybrid build.
Hystrix 2 Forma Build
I have Hornet Strike for damage, Barrel Diffusion for multishot, Lethal Torrent for fire rate and multishot, Pistol Gambit for crit chance, Target Cracker for crit damage, Scorch for heat damage and some status chance, and Pistol Pestilence with Jolt for even more status chance and corrosive damage.
Now, I was actually quite surprised how well the Hystrix performed even though I was just using two forma build with no Primed mods whatsoever. And it’s good because it’s only mastery rank 7 so you can pick it up really early if you’re willing to sacrifice a Bolto and a Viper.
I’m also a big fan of the unique mechanic and the fact that each Quill will force its respective status proc. The Toxin Quill on top of providing a ton of damage will also bypass shields so you can make yourself a Corpus killer by simply modding for Gas instead of Corrosive. That way you get Gas clouds which proc toxin and the toxin damage you use to create the Gas on the weapon well then boost the toxin proc from the Quill. So, all the Quills are useful in certain situations.
The Fire one will probably provide you with the best burst DPS. You can use the electricity one for a little bit of a splash crowd control because it will chain to nearby enemies. If you just want some single target fire control you can switch to the Ice Quill and just slow the enemy down.
The Hystrix is just really cool and very versatile so I would highly recommend you play around with different builds maybe even have multiple builds for different factions and different Quills and kind of figure out what you like the most.
So, overall I’m very happy with the weapon with the exception of the magazine size. It just feels too small for a weapon that has this much fire rate. But even with that said I still give the Hystrix a thumbs up. And I would recommend you pick it up unless you don’t want to sacrifice a Bolto and a Viper or you don’t like weapons with travel time. And that’s pretty much it. So, I thank you very much for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed the article and it was helpful and I will see you next time. Bye-bye.
