Boomkong – The Joy of Wukong and Exploding Bows
I’ve never been a fan of exploding weapons in Warframe. Explosive weaponry is simply too scary for the average Tenno. Because of how much damage explosive weapons do, we blow ourselves up. A lot. To the point that we leave most explosive weapons to one side. In fact, the only really popular explosive weapons were originally weapons like the Tonkor… which had next to no self-damage. Which was removed.
The Exceptions to the Rule
The Kuva Bramma on the other hand is quite a popular weapon. While it IS a Kuva weapon and requires killing a Lich to obtain, it’s somewhat easy to get, since you can run Larvaling missions until you get what you want. Forma-ing it doesn’t seem to be that required though – my single Forma Kuva Bramma will still blow most things up, myself included.
What makes the Bramma stand out though is that, unlike most explosive weapons, it’s somewhat predictable. The barrage of explosions can be seen almost as cleanly as the Lenz. Because it’s a Kuva weapon, has good innate crit and innate status, making it a versatile weapon.
Really, the Kuva Bramma is just a Grineer version of the Lenz, but it’s more… explode-y. It’ll also blow you up just as well as the Lenz can.
But how can we use it?
Simple. Let AI do the work. And by AI, I mean Wukong’s Celestial Twin. You see, the Celestial Twin doesn’t get automatically blown up the same way players do. So the Celestial Twin can do all the work while you melee things to death. Sure, Wukong’s buddy is a bit wonky and weird and will happily fully charge the Kuva Bramma just to shoot out a single Corpus camera, but it does the job well. More importantly, the Celestial Twin doesn’t instantly die.
So you end up with a ton of massive explosions, pretty much everywhere. While the Celestial Twin will slowly get worn down by enemy fire, there won’t be much left alive! Everything just… dies… Actually, everything dies so quickly that you sometimes run out of enemies! Meanwhile you can sit back and relax.
You could alternatively use Excalibur Umbra or Equinox’s Duality augment, but they aren’t as good. Excalibur Umbra does take damage and can die, while Equinox’s Duality only lasts for a maximum of 40 seconds. And requires ignoring all her other abilities.
We need more monkeys.
Way more.
Unfortunately, Wukong Specters aren’t as good as I had hoped. They don’t do anything. Actually, all they seem to do is cast Defy occasionally. This makes a Wukong Specter only slightly more useful than a Limbo Specter. Slightly. I do recall Wukong Specters being able to cast Celestial Twin, but it’s probably just me mis-remembering things.
There IS an alternative though. In Railjack, with the right Intrinsics unlocked, you can actually give a Celestial Twin to another player via a ship ability. Assuming that everyone brings a Wukong, you can increase the number of Celestial Twins up to 8 – one for each player, plus a Railjack copy. If you really wanted to, you could also have everyone equip a Wukong Specter each, but you won’t get more Twins.
For now, you just have to convince team mates to also play Wukong with a Kuva Bramma.
This doesn’t solve the problem though!
While Celestial Twin (and AI in general) allows you to use the Kuva Bramma without blowing yourself up, this doesn’t solve the issue of using the bow yourself. Apparently a Bow-variant of Cautious Shot is in the works, but Cautious Shot 1. is an Arbitration shop reward, 2. takes up a mod slot and 3. WILL STILL KILL YOU ANYWAY.
Because of how much damage explosive weapons do, the damage reduction on Cautious Shot isn’t enough!
Either way, if you use the Kuva Bramma, you die. Yet I have no idea how to fix this issue, aside from playing Wukong and letting my Twin do the work. We could just say “fuck it” and remove all explosive self-damage. Alternatively, we could just change explosive damage to a percentage of our health. We have a lot of options, but the devs seem to be happy with just Cautious Shot. Which doesn’t fix the issue.
While the problem with explosive weapons still exists, at least we have good old Wukong and his Celestial Twin to use the Kuva Bramma for us.