The damage column is the least useful number on the page
Open any Warframe weapon table and the first column is base damage. It is also the column that lies the most.
Kuva Nukor has 21 base damage. It is one of the most recommended secondaries in the game. Meanwhile Aegrit sits at 806 base damage, nearly forty times higher, and most players could not tell you what it does.
Base damage is a starting number. What decides a weapon is how that number gets multiplied — crit chance, crit multiplier, status, multishot and the shape of the hit — and none of that is in the damage column.
How this ranking is calculated
Every weapon below is scored with one formula, applied identically across the whole dataset:
score = base total damage × (1 + crit chance × (crit multiplier − 1))
That second bracket is the average damage multiplier a crit build gets before any mods. A weapon at 35 percent crit and 2.1x returns 1.385; a weapon at 9 percent crit and 2.0x returns 1.09. Multiply by base damage and the order changes.
All values are base stats, no mods and no Incarnon Genesis. The dataset is the warframe-items build shipped with this site, and you can recompute every figure on this page from the primary, secondary and melee databases.
The top primaries, two ways
Read the two tables together. The names do not stay in place.
| # | By raw damage | Raw | Crit | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kuva Bramma | 1026 | 35% @ 2.1x | 1421 |
| 2 | Opticor | 1000 | 20% @ 2.5x | 1300 |
| 3 | Nataruk | 900 | 20% @ 1.8x | 1044 |
| 4 | Coda Bassocyst | 808 | 18% @ 2.2x | 983 |
| 5 | Cinta | 800 | 20% @ 2.0x | 960 |
| 6 | Purgator 1 | 781 | 31% @ 2.3x | 1096 |
| # | By crit-weighted score | Score | Raw | Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kuva Bramma | 1421 | 1026 | 35% @ 2.1x |
| 2 | Opticor | 1300 | 1000 | 20% @ 2.5x |
| 3 | Daikyu Prime | 1170 | 750 | 40% @ 2.4x |
| 4 | Purgator 1 | 1096 | 781 | 31% @ 2.3x |
| 5 | Tenet Envoy | 1072 | 740 | 28% @ 2.6x |
| 6 | Kuva Tonkor | 1063 | 733 | 30% @ 2.5x |
Daikyu Prime has 150 less base damage than Nataruk and still scores 126 higher. Coda Bassocyst drops from fourth to tenth. Nothing about either weapon changed except which column you read.
Kuva Ogris is the clearest warning. It looks like a top-ten launcher at 714 raw damage, but 9 percent crit drags its score to 778 — below Daikyu at 700 raw and Evensong at 650 raw, both of which carry less base damage than it does. It is a status launcher, not a damage launcher, and building it like a crit weapon wastes it.
Best primary by the job you are doing
Tier lists fall apart because “best” changes with the mission. Here is the pick for each job, with the number that justifies it.
| Job | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Room clear | Kuva Bramma | 1026 base as an explosion, 35% crit at 2.1x. The highest score in the set. |
| Single target | Opticor | 1000 damage in one charged shot at 2.5x crit multiplier. |
| Boss and crit stacking | Daikyu Prime | 40% crit at 2.4x with 50% status on the same bow. |
| Status and armour shred | Coda Sporothrix | 55% status, the highest base status chance in the primary set. |
| Wide close-range clear | Tenet Arca Plasmor | 760 radiation damage across a wide fan, 34% status. Full page |
| Free early power | Nataruk | 900 base, 50% status, mastery rank 0, given by The New War. Full page |
The Nataruk line matters more than it looks. A mastery rank 0 bow with 900 base damage and 50 percent status is the single best thing a new account can hold, and it costs one quest.
Secondaries: the Kuva Nukor paradox
Aegrit tops the secondary damage ranking at 806 raw, and it earns that number through remote detonation — you throw it, then trigger it where you want the explosion. Huge hit, manual timing, small magazine.
Kuva Nukor does not appear in the top fifteen by damage at all. It sits at 21.
It is still the secondary most builds reach for, because its value is in three things the damage column cannot show:
- 50 percent status chance, so it applies effects on nearly every tick.
- 5.0x crit multiplier, the highest in the secondary set, which turns a 7 percent crit chance into a real damage source once a crit mod lands.
- A chain that reaches two additional targets, so one beam feeds a crowd.
That combination makes it a primer — the weapon you fire first so your real damage weapon hits a debuffed target. The Kuva Nukor page covers the build.
| Job | Secondary | Number |
|---|---|---|
| Biggest single hit | Aegrit | 806 raw, remote detonation |
| Priming | Kuva Nukor | 50% status, 5.0x crit multiplier, chains to 2 |
| Crit sidearm | Euphona Prime | 30% crit at 2.5x |
| Status sidearm | Coda Catabolyst / Coda Tysis | 50% status each |
| Free primer | Epitaph | 300 raw on a charged shot, wide area |
Melee: the same inversion, twice
Raw melee damage tops out at 360, shared by Arca Titron and Innodem. Add crit and the order rewrites itself: Ekhein sits fourth by raw damage at 340 and first by score at 483, while Gram Prime goes from tenth to second — 300 raw at 32 percent crit and a 2.6x multiplier returns 454, above Arca Titron’s 446.
Fragor Prime is the biggest climber in the whole set. It carries 270 base damage, which ranks 26th of 224 melee weapons. Its 40 percent crit at a 2.5x multiplier lifts it to 8th by score, ahead of Slaytra at 333 raw and Cobra & Crane Prime at 300 raw.
| Melee | Raw | Crit | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ekhein | 340 | 30% @ 2.4x | 483 |
| Gram Prime | 300 | 32% @ 2.6x | 454 |
| Arca Titron | 360 | 24% @ 2.0x | 446 |
| Karyst Prime | 344 | 24% @ 2.2x | 443 |
| Innodem | 360 | 22% @ 2.0x | 439 |
| Fragor Prime | 270 | 40% @ 2.5x | 432 |
Reach and stance matter as much as the score does. A weapon you cannot land combos with will lose to a lower-scoring one whose stance you know.
Picks that work before mastery rank 8
Most tier lists assume a finished account. These three do their job on an account that has none of that.
| Weapon | MR | Raw | Why it works early |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nataruk | 0 | 900 | Quest reward, 50% status, no rank gate at all |
| Cinta | 6 | 800 | 800 base damage on a bow at mastery rank 6 |
| Xoris | 4 | 120 | Glaive melee, throws and detonates, from Deadlock Protocol |
| Angstrum | 4 | 450 | 450 raw damage on a rank 4 secondary |
| Magistar | 1 | 210 | Usable at rank 1, hammer reach, cheap to build |
The gap between a rank 0 account holding Nataruk and one holding a mid-tier rifle is larger than the gap between most top-ten weapons.
What actually decides Steel Path
Steel Path does not reward the biggest number. It rewards armour handling and uptime.
Two things separate weapons that survive there:
- Status application rate. Armour reduction and damage-over-time effects scale with how often you apply them, not with how hard one hit lands. High-status weapons keep working when raw damage stops being enough.
- Sustained output. A launcher with a one-round magazine wins the burst comparison and loses the mission. Reload time and ammo economy decide long fights.
That is why Kuva Ogris earns a Steel Path slot its score does not explain — 47 percent status on an area weapon applies effects across a whole room per shot.
See the Steel Path guide for the mission side of that, and the damage types guide for which status to apply.
The four upgrade paths, and what each one changes
| Path | What it is | Where to read |
|---|---|---|
| Prime | A stronger version of a base weapon, from relics | Relics and Prime guide |
| Kuva / Tenet / Coda | Adversary weapons with a 0–60% elemental bonus | Kuva and Tenet guide |
| Incarnon | Turns an old weapon into a different weapon in Incarnon form | Incarnon weapons guide |
| Riven | A mod that fills a weapon’s weakest stat | Riven mods guide |
Incarnon is the path that breaks this ranking the most. Several weapons that score poorly here have Incarnon forms that move them into the top tier, because the Incarnon form has its own damage and crit profile. If a weapon you like ranks low on this page, check its Incarnon form before you write it off.
Specific weapon pages
Five weapons have full pages with builds, acquisition and element choices:
- Kuva Sobek — shotgun, 77 base across five pellets, Acid Shells build
- Amprex — chain beam, 32% crit at 2.2x
- Kuva Nukor — the primer
- Nataruk — the free quest bow
- Tenet Arca Plasmor — wide radiation blast
Three mistakes this page is meant to prevent
Building around the damage column. A 900-damage weapon at 20 percent crit loses to a 750-damage weapon at 40 percent crit on any crit build. Read the score, not the first column.
Copying a tier list from a different patch. Weapon values change with updates. The numbers here are recomputed from the shipped dataset, so they match the data on the database pages rather than a screenshot from last year.
Ignoring the delivery. AoE, chain beams, projectiles and hitscan solve different problems. A single-target monster in a room full of enemies is the wrong tool, and no score fixes that.
Compare the full sets in the primary database, secondary database and melee database, and see which Warframe carries the weapon in the tier list.