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Primary Merciless is a Primary Arcane that on kill increases primary weapon damage for 4 seconds and stacks up to 12 times. At max rank, it also passively increases reload speed.
Can be sold for 
1,000.
Effect[]
| Rank | Damage per Stack | Total at 12 stacks | Reload Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 5% | 60% | - |
| 1 | 10% | 120% | - |
| 2 | 15% | 180% | - |
| 3 | 20% | 240% | - |
| 4 | 25% | 300% | - |
| 5 | 30% | 360% | 30% |
Acquisition
Awarded for defeating Acolytes in The Steel Path.
| Item | Source | Chance | Expected | Nearly Guaranteed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Mania | 16.67% | ~ 5 Kills | 37 ± 12 Kills |
|
Angst | 16.67% | ~ 5 Kills | 37 ± 12 Kills |
|
Violence | 16.67% | ~ 5 Kills | 37 ± 12 Kills |
|
Torment | 16.67% | ~ 5 Kills | 37 ± 12 Kills |
|
Misery | 16.67% | ~ 5 Kills | 37 ± 12 Kills |
|
Malice | 16.67% | ~ 5 Kills | 37 ± 12 Kills |
All drop rates data is obtained from DE's official drop tables stored on Module:DropTables/data.
See Mission Rewards#Standard Missions for definitions on reward table rotations.
For more detailed definitions and information,
visit here.
Notes[]
- When the buff times out, one stack is lost and the buff duration resets.
Tips[]
- Useful on weapons that can already kill groups of enemies quickly, such as most explosive weapons or weapons that chain between targets. Less useful on slow firing weapons that rely on status effects to kill their targets like single shot rifles.
Patch History[]
Update 32.0 (2022-09-07)
- Primary Merciless Arcane: Removed its +100% Ammo Maximum bonus.
Update 30.5 (2021-07-06)
- Introduced.
 Arcanes
| ||
|---|---|---|
| Eidolon • Arcane Helmets • Ostron • Operator • Amp • Solaris United • The Holdfasts • The Quills • Vox Solaris | ||
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
36 comments
Still bitter over the ammo maximum bonus removal..
I wish this would get a buff on its timer, a measly 4 seconds. maybe boost it to 8? deadhead has a whole ass 24 seconds and only takes 3 kills to max out.
I know this is meant for aoe weapon or things that dont kill with headshots, but 4 is just, disappointly short, and i find myself struggling to keep it up rather than keeping it going
Re: "48 seconds. What's the problem?" Although it says "+30% Damage for 4s. Stacks up to 12x.", it appears that the damage is what is stacking and NOT the duration.
It kinda does stack in duration. Like... each stack will have the 4 sec duration and everytime you lose a stack, the timer resets to 4 sec. Still not great and should be buffed.
Honestly if you can't get a kill every 3 seconds in WARFRAME then that is just a skill/build issue and nothing more.
Game's basically a horde shooter for a reason guys. Shoot that horde.
Update: This is a great arcane.
This is so bad with its 4 second duration. Deadhead is better on almost everything.
Weapons that kills with slash benefit from this as they cant proc deadhead with a slash kill.
Did the nerf kill the value of this? just snatch a R5 for a measly 20p
Let people have fun
Just plat solo Mr. Smartypants? You can't go solo because of your gear? Git gud
Velosofyy why so salty? some Bramma Kuva d*cked u momma?
"Let people have fun" - the people that ruin the multiplayer experience for others
DE really Is the fun police.
Are
My bad.
Is
Not my bad, DE is a singular Mr. English Major
De is a group, "them", so "they are" rather then "They is"
It's 'is'. A single Google search and Grammarly would've told you. If you don't believe a large multi-billion dollar company, then you can head over to various educational sites and they will concur. 'Is' is used when referring to the whole of a group, as that is singular. 'Are' is used when referring to individual parts of a group, as that is plural.
No reload speed bonus anymore! Update the description please.
You can literally check in game yourself. at Rank 5: +30% reload speed
I feel like the max ammo nerf is probably a good idea. The whole point of weapons without high max ammo is that it's supposed to be a DOWNSIDE that you pay for having high damage/AoE/whatever. Obviously there should be ways to circumvent this, but a secondary effect on an arcane is too easy to fit into a build. Use your exilus mod slot for an ammo mutation or max ammo mod if you really want to run high ammo on a launcher or giga-bow or Kohm or whatever.
This being said I do have sympathies for the people who grinded it specifically for the max ammo boost. Both you and the time you spent on this are valid. I feel you should be reimbursed in some way. I'm pretty sure they used to do a thing where when they adjusted riven dispositions they would give a discount on rerolling affected rivens? Or when they reworked a weapon they would give you a free forma to adjust your polarities to match the new stats? Perhaps they could have done something like that, allowing you to temporarily transmute your copies of merciless into one of the other steel path arcanes.
No its cringe
Killing enemies is also a kind of crowd control. What are supposed to do when you're surrounded by mobs in game mode like arbitrations and archon hunt? Kill them one by one? Oh right, we can use warframe abilities to crowd control! Oh wait, does that still even works on eximus units? What you need to do to deplete eximus units' overguard? Damage it. What if you're surrounded by a sea of eximus units?
Eximus are just dumb in general, way too tanky for being similar levels
Oh no, less ammo... did we really need that ontop of the 360% base damage boost?
Edit: Did anybody even ever use +Ammo max mods? No, because +Ammo Max is a useless stat :/
Crying in kuva kohm :(
Eximus stronghold defense/disruption sorties, arbitration, archon hunt : allow us to introduce ourself
Hmm yes I seem to have spotted the people crying they cant cheese the game anymore.
People are "crying" probably because many like playing a game the way THEY like to and not having someone dictate how they do so. Taking away the ammo buff also takes away the fun of what this game is about....... Blowing stuff up! ....... Oh yeah, and the mindless grinding, but thats besides the point.
Excalibur players are the one who cry about cheese stuff when they still stuck their blade in the anus
Which anus? Uranus?
J'anus key
Could've atleast gave us multishot, firerate, or something in place of the ammo passive as replacement.
RIP fun... I quit with this game
Why did u remove the +100% max ammo? It is so pointless and useless
They make it difficult for us to play, DE nerf wukong and AOE weapons. They reduced primed firestorm and fulmination to 66% to 44%.
Well, F**K.
The +100% max ammo was the reason I spent killing acolytes for months and cursing all the other arcanes I got instead.
Doing it to this and the secondary counterpart makes me feel like taking half a year off this game and then see if I feel like playing again.
About 60-100 hours of farming - flushed away! I'm with ya bud - time to play something else.
They should name the game NERFRAME instead
At this point just use primary dexterity and stropha...
What's the point of adding primary and secondary guns into the game then? MR fodder?
No reason to use this over deadhead now, even on aoe
I dunno, the reload speed buff is pretty nice on some weapons, especially those with a low headshot multiplier in the first place. And the fact that the stacks wear off one after the other rather than all at once means it lasts for around the same time as deadhead total, it just fluctuates a bit more. It rewards rapid, less precise kills rather than careful aim (which on some weapons is easier said than done when you have 3 other space ninjas staggering and ragdolling people all over the place). In theory deadhead reaches max damage quicker in any situation where the enemy has a critspot, so if you really want to maximise damage per shot it'll usually be the best choice, but for something like the supra vandal the quicker reload and looser kill requirements can make merciless just... feel nicer.
Why oooh why did they touched this.. ffs
They always touch everything that is fun
Just like they touched Mirage/Synoid Simulor, or Ember's old WoF? I sure remember the days where some maniac would activate one ability and then bullet jump through the level nonstop, killing everything instantly without even looking at them so no-one else in the squad got to actually play the video game. If you want to use heavier weapons either get creative with your build, craft ammo restores, or just use an exilus mod slot to equip max ammo or ammo mutation (based on your preference of reserves versus long term sustainability).
If you REALLY want a lot of ammo and don't currently use all the abilities on your frame of choice there's a helminth ability that gives you a brief burst of X0.25 ammo consumption. Not only is that BETTER than +100% max ammo (assuming you have it active more than 50% of the time when firing), but it also equates to X4 magazine size while active, so you can keep a kohm or twin kohmak at full spool for far longer, or fire 20 cannonballs from a kuva zarr before reloading for the price of 5 ammo, or... I dunno, spam Kuva Brama shots at things?
I'm not trying to shut down discussion. It's important to be critical of the decisions made in media we enjoy. But in this scenario my opinion is that this change is fine. It just forces people to use one of the many, MANY other options available to boost a weapons available ammo. Options that involve either specializing your build towards ammo, or just crafting a few batches of a relatively cheap consumable that you can carry several hundred of into a single mission.
They can nerf the shit out of aoe weapons for all I care but why did they have to drag other weapons into the crossfire? I have a 207 roll +Dmg+Ms+Sc-Max Ammo phantasma riven and this was my fix for the negative but then they shat all over it.
Not that your riven matters, but all those who spent time and efforts farming and getting this maxed, have all the rights to deserve that +100% ammo bonus. period.
No, they really don't. A 100% ammo bonus is not a "right". The job of the designer is to try and make the game work as well as possible for as many people as possible, not to make sure they never ever ever nerf anything you really really liked having. It's OK to be upset, it's OK to think the best design is something different, but calling it a "right" is just ridiculous entitlement.
When an entire system is reworked, as ammo just was, everything interacting with that is going to be reworked alongside. That's part of what rework means. It would have been nice to cut the bonus to 10-20% instead of removing it entirely, I agree.
They really have to ruin everything...
Yeah, they make it difficult for us to play
They seem to have removed the 100% max ammo in the Veilbreaker update. Rip.
Right as i get my final arcane too. what the fuck DE
Seems like steve & scott were holding back on nerfs
Damn I thought Rebecca liked us.
Now only stacks to 5x
Now that I need just a handful to max it out, it stopped dropping. Fuck this game, fuck math, fuck RNG. Eat that 16% drop chance, puke it on a plate, eat it again, then repeat the cycle.
Twenty-four hours later, I still haven't gotten another one of these. Fuck.
Does the merciless type arcane affect bow charge rate? Because the bow charge speed is only affect by charge rate and I wonder if bows can be benefitted from the reload speed bonus
This Arcane will not affect a bows charge rate. Bow attack speed increases recharge rate, while reload speed affects the time it takes you to draw the next arrow.