The Vectis

Back when I was new in Warframe and running around as Volt all the time, I mostly relied on the Ignis Flamethrower. In those days, it had a much lower Mastery Rank requirement, and I spent a long time farming for parts so I could build it. I mean, it’s a flamethrower, what’s there not to like? Back then, the Ignis also shot through walls, which amused me greatly. On my older yet newer account, Phovos the Excalibur, he doesn’t have such luxuries. Mainly because the Ignis requires Mastery Rank 6 now. But also because he picked up a potentially better weapon.

Phovos’s main weapon these days is the Vectis Sniper Rifle.

I know what you’re thinking. Actually, I don’t. I’m not a telepath. But if you’ve read my articles for long enough, you’ll realise that I can’t aim for shit. Can’t hit the broad side of the barn. Most of the time. So me using a sniper rifle as my main damage-dealing weapon does sound a little weird.

It’s even more weird when you realise that the Vectis is locked at Mastery Rank 3 and requires materials from Saturn to build. Well in 2017 there was a code which allowed anyone to obtain the Vectis and a nice skin for it for free. Not needing the Vectis on my normal account, I used the code on Phovos. So he had a gun aside from the MK1-Braton. I never imagined myself actually using it.

What’s so special about the Vectis? Not much, really. It has both pretty high Critical Chance and Status Chance, easily reaching 100% Status Chance with just your basic mods and getting 75% critical chance with Point Strike, the critical chance mod. But the Vectis is unique as it only has a clip size of 1 bullet, meaning it can effectively use the mod Charged Chamber (and its ultra rare variant Primed Chamber), which grants extra damage on the first weapon in a clip. The Vectis also reloads really fast when scoped in, so only having one bullet before reloading isn’t that bad.

Alright, Phovos doesn’t have a Charged Chamber, and he won’t get one from Retvik because those two accounts don’t talk to each other at all. But despite that, Phovos and his Vectis are still going strong, effectively dealing with up to level 30 enemies.

The only downside to the Vectis is its lack of ammo. Sniper rifle ammo isn’t that common, and the Vectis comes with 90 ammo plus its original clip of 1. That’s 91 shots. You’d think I’d miss most of them, but no, I actually quite regularly get headshots. And even if I don’t get a headshot, that 75% critical chance (or 50% with Phovos’s half-leveled Point Strike) does wonders.

Actually, there’s another issue. The Vectis, just like most single-shot weapons, struggles with a large number of enemies. Even more so when there’s a LOT of enemies around and non-scoped shots don’t reload as fast.

Still, the Vectis has served me well. And it’s a good excuse to improve my aim. Which I’m pretty sure it’s already doing, since my accuracy has gone up a lot lately. I don’t miss nearly as much as I used to…