(Some Spoilers for anyone that has not gotten this far in the game)
An overview of Amps and how they perform when using Madurai, Eternal Eradicate and Eternal Onslaught and some info on where to get these components and my very brief opinion on how they feel to use.
A lot of this post will be aimed more at people who have recently unlocked Operators/never really bothered with Amps. You may still find the brief captura previews helpful if you wanted to see an Prism/Scaffold’s fire-mode though.
Video showing how various Amps perform when buffed. The first Shield Break after a captura preview shows damage with Void Strike while the second Shield break does not use this buff.
Table of Amp Components
*Numbers represent parts in this order. A 1-2-3 Amp would have the Raplak Prism, Shraksun Scaffold and the Lohrin Brace.
This should only be considered a rough guide for Amp performance for various reasons:
- Overflow damage is hidden (if the boss has 10k shields, 10k is the highest damage number you will see)
- After breaking the first synovia, the Eidolon only recovers 50% of its shield
- Teralyst has ~29k shields, Gantulyst has ~41k shields, Hydrolyst has ~52k shields
What’s boosting my Amp’s damage:
- Void Strike (Madurai’s 1, Only on first shield break after captura previews)
- Contamination Wave (Madurai’s 2, every shield break)
- Volt’s shield boosts Crit Damage as long as the beam/projectile passes through it
- Eternal Eradicate (Zaramin from Thrax/Void Angel or purchased from Cavalero)
- Eternal Onslaught (Zaramin from Thrax/Void Angel or purchased from Cavalero)
For newer players with only a Mote Amp, roam around the Plains of Eidolon at night and hunt for Vomvalysts. Return to Cetus and fast travel to Quill Onkko to trade in the Sentient Cores for standing. You want to replace the Mote Amp with anything else as fast as possible but do not sell the Mote Amp until you have finished Guilding it and finished ranking it back up to 30. Prisms are the only Amp Component that count towards mastery, Scaffold and Braces are ignored.
The easiest place to level an Amp would be Sanctuary/Elite Sanctuary Onslaught, you must be in operator mode for affinity to go to your Amp. Return to Onkko to Guild your Amp and level it back to 30 one more time to get all the mastery from it.
First start with the first Amp you can craft, and continue ranking up your standing with the Quills until you reach rank 3 (Adherent) to unlock Guilding and the Lohrin Brace becomes available which is the best Brace that will be available to you (for the majority of Amps) until you get into ranking up Vox Solaris on Fortuna. In the meantime build an Amp with your favorite Prism + Scaffold + Lohren Brace (x-x-3), and if you have extra Quills standing consider picking up Magus Nourish, Virtuous Strike or Virtuous Shadow.
Find a guide for capturing the first Eidolon that focuses on basics not doing it fast (first you get good then you get fast). The Sentient Cores dropped from the Eidolon are worth more than what come from Vomvalysts, so its worth it to try taking down this Boss for its drops (Arcane Nullifier can be farmed here, and is helpful for anyone starting out Eidolon hunting). Public lobbies usually aren’t too bad for this bounty, and tend to go faster than solo. Eidolon Shards are also one of the possible ways to can rank up your focus schools, the others being killing Thrax on the Zaramin/Duviri or Focus Lenses.
Once you get to Fortuna and rank up Vox Solaris (one of the harder Syndicates to rank up, try farming for Toroids if you have a resource drop booster from Sortie, Special Event, or get a Relay Blessing) you will have access to the Amp components 4-7 on the table linked earlier. The Certus Brace (x-x-7) is generally considered the best brace for most Amps.
Play missions on the Zaramin to farm Eternal Onslaught/Eradicate as well as Amp Arcane Adapters which can be purchased from Cavalero to fit an extra Amp Arcane.
Here is a link to the previous Amp video I made which is closer in line to the damage newer players can expect without the damage boosts from Madurai, Eternal Onslaught, or Eternal Eradicate. If any Prism/Scaffold seems to take an excessively long amount of time to break shields/misses often, you might want to consider using a different Prism/Brace.
If you want to build an amp aimed towards Void Angels, you will want to take into account the range required to hit the Void Angel depending on where it in the Arena as some amps may have issues hitting it depending on where it is in the arena.
For most missions, you probably won’t have any issues killing a Void Angel, but if you’re doing Steel Path/Void Armageddon, you may want to increase your damage a little more to deal with scaling. I’m not sure if this is an oversight but inside the arena, Void Angels have the Flesh health type. This means that you can use Virtuous Trojan to convert some of your amp’s Void Damage into Viral which does 50% damage to Flesh. You can inflict up to 4 stacks of Viral on a Void Angel. *Avoid using a Maxed ranked Virtuous Trojan as you will be reducing the amount of damage that can be done to a Thrax in its spectral form.
Another Arcane that you can use is Magus Melt which will add Heat to your operators attacks on Void Sling. This Arcane does not convert a portion of your Void Damage the way Virtuous Trojan does, so you will not have any issues using a Maxed Ranked Magus Melt. The 4 status cap still applies to this status type.
Notes about Prisms/Scaffolds:
Cetus Prisms
Raplak 1-x-x:
- Semi-Auto with reasonable damage and very accurate
- Long Range
- No Punch Through
Shwaak 2-x-x:
- Arca plasmor like projectile with infinite body punch through and able to hit multiple limbs
- Medium Range, able to reach Void Angel in center of arena
- Infinite Body Punch Through
Granmu 3-x-x:
- A three round burst of grenades with a small explosion which will detonate on contact or after a certain amount of time
- Medium-Long Range but aiming may be difficult due to arc and travel speed
- No Punch Through
Rahn 4-x-x:
- Fully automatic projectiles with reasonable damage
- Long Range and Good Accuracy
- No Punch Through
Fortuna Prisms
Centric 5-x-x:
- Three round burst fire mode
- Projectiles are similar to Rahn Prism’s
- No Punch Through
- Medium Long Range and Good Accuracy
Lega 6-x-x:
- Flamethrower with very slow tick rate. Not very fast for taking down Eidolon Shields
- Good Status Chance making it easier to proc Void Status compared to other Amps
- If built around procing Void Status, it pairs well with Phahd Scaffold (x-4-x) to trap Glaive projectile around enemies and Lohrin Brace for higher base Status Chance (x-x-4)
- Infinite Body Punch Through
- Medium Range, able to hit Void Angel on the perimeter
Klamora 7-x-x:
- A wide beam with low range. Quickly drains ammo but does a lot of damage to shields in a short amount of time.
- Not a great Amp for Ropalolyst fight, but great for Eidolons
- Infinite Body Punch Through
- Short Range, still able to hit Void Angel if it is in the center of the arena and does decent damage to it, but not enough range if it teleports to the perimeter
Cetus Scaffolds
Pencha x-1-x:
- Opticore like beam with reasonable damage
- Long Range (40m) and Accurate
- No Punch Through
Shraksun x-2-x:
- Arca plasmor like projectile with infinite body punch through and able to hit multiple limbs
- Medium Short range Prism, can’t reach Void Angel in center of arena but not on the perimeter
- Projectile is similar to Shwaak Prism’s
- Infinite Body Punch Through and Detonates at end of Projectile lifespan or on collision with Terrain. Able to Self-Stagger if detonated on terrain.
Klebrik x-3-x:
- Tethers to single enemy, low damage and does not always latch onto the enemy you want it to
- No Punch Through
- Medium Range, is able to hit Void Angel on perimeter
Phahd x-4-x:
- Bouncing Glaive projectile with decent damage and some homing capabilities, similar to the Cedo’s Alt-Fire
- Easier to use up close because of projectile’s travel time
- Works well for dealing with tanky enemies if you are able to proc Void Status on them first to trap the projectile. You will notice a faint green orb around an enemy if it has Void Status applied to it, or in the case of an Eidolon, the orb can spawn around a limb that was hit by your Amp. 6-4-3 is what I would probably use for priming, the primary fire has good status chance and ammo efficiency, while the Lohren Brace boosts both Crit Chance and Status chance.
- Long Range
Fortuna Scaffolds
Exard x-5-x:
- A very high recoil, low accuracy fire mode that mag dumps
- No Punch Through
- Long Range but unable to make good use of it due to low accuracy
Dissic x-6-x:
- Slow grenade projectile which detonates on contact, consumes 50 ammo per shot
- Low Damage Bomblets after initial explosion
Propa x-7-x:
- A sphere that does high damage when it collapses, easy to self-stagger.
- Very low range, not suitable for Ropalolyst and unable to reach Void Angels in center of arena
Mote Amp:
- Very low damage and long recharge, you will probably hate using this Amp
- Medium Range (30m)
- Constant Beam fire mode and no Alt-Fire
- No Punch Through
Sirocco:
- Semi-Auto pistol with a perfect reload gimmick, no Alt-Fire
- Better than the Mote amp but still not great for sustained damage
- Long Range and good Accuracy
- Considered a different weapon from the one used on Duviri, Arcanes will not carry over
- No Punch Through
Last Gasp/Killing Regular Enemies
The Focus School which works best for this is probably Unairu, thanks to its ability to spawn Wisps which double your Amp’s Damage, and its Abilities which fully strip Armor and Shields.
Madurai comes in second for making use of Last Gasp/Killing Regular Enemies. While it has higher peak damage than Unairu thanks to Void Strike, it only has this buff for 8s followed by a 40s cooldown. Madurai also has the Contamination Wave ability which makes enemies hit by it take 50% more vulnerable to Void Damage. At higher levels Madurai starts to fall off due to Scaling Armor/Shields.
Naramin’s Void Levitation + Lethal Levitation is similar to Madurai’s Contamination Wave, boosting damage for each lifted enemy (+50% each stack) up to 4 stacks. The enemy must be damaged while lifted to grant a stack. Enemies with Overguard cannot be lifted.
Zenurik/Vazarin don’t really have any abilities that make it easier to kill an enemy with an Amp.
Arcanes like Magus Melt and Virtuous Trojan will make it easier to kill enemies with an Amp, and Debuffs like Banshee’s Sonar also work to boost Amp Damage.
*Virtuous Troja converts a portion of Void Damage to Viral, this means you will do less damage to anything that requires Void Damage to be damaged.
You’ve been a bit unfair in your short assessment of Phahd - it automatically homes on nearby enemies and each shot will bounce multiple times so the damage per shot ends up very high (either spread across multiple enemies or repeatedly hitting one enemy when trapped in a void bubble). In your preview video you can see it even trapping itself and bouncing multiple times on the Teralyst on the non-VS shield. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it miss. The automatic homing does mean it sometimes targets an enemy that is closer rather than the one you’re purposely aiming at, though
Ya, I could have worded that description better. These descriptions were written to describe how a component performs on its own because I thought diving into mechanics like priming with Void Status might have been out of the scope of a general amp guide. The homing does require it to bounce off a surface first though like the Cedo, and will occasionally bounce off into nothing without Void Status trapping it.
Still a good guide - although you were probably trying to keep it as brief as possible I think it’ll be even better if it does go into more depth to highlight differences between general play and Eidolons. The preview vid against Teralyst does a great job of showing why Raplak, Klamora, and Propa are typically chosen for tridolons with their clean and quick performance compared the others, but there’s different things to consider in general play, with aoe situations vs single target situations, and different arcanes (like Melt and Logisitics), and pulling off Last Gasp, etc. Atm it is pretty much an Eidolon Amp guide, rather than an overall Amp guide
Great guide!
This is super helpful, literally started the amp grind today and had no clue what I was doing. Currently using the drifters pistol, in your opinion how does it rank compared to the others?
That amp is an okay stopgap if you haven’t ranked the Quills up far enough to reach the Lohrin Brace (Tier-3 Quills Adherent) which gives you a very noticeable boost to your damage. 1-2-3 or 2-1-3 would be the the first Amp I build. (1-1-3/2-2-3 are kind of redundant as both primary and secondary fire are pretty much the same)
The other thing to focus on would be your Focus Schools. Use Zenurik if you want energy management for regular content, Madurai if you want damage specifically for dealing with Eidolons, or alternatively Unairu which has some useful abilities for both Eidolons and regular content.
Rank up a focus school through Lenses/killing Thrax on the Zaramin/Duviri (there’s a Daily Focus Cap doing it this way).
You can also rank up focus schools through Eidolon Shards, from defeating Eidolons and gaining standing in this way is not subject to the daily standing cap, so if on a whim you want to max out a focus tree and you have the resources to do so, you can dump your shards into the specific school you wanted to upgrade. <School you want to rank up> -> Focus Conversion -> select the shards you want to convert into focus and convert. Try to save ‘Brilliant Eidolon Shards’, you need 10 in total, one for each Waybound which is a special node that is shared between Focus Schools.
Good to know. Thank you for the detailed response and the tips. Are you by any chance in the technical writing field? Your posts convey a lot of information that is all explained without being overly lengthy. It’s very well done
Thanks for letting me know you found the post helpful! For the most part, I’ve been trying to structure the post in a way that’s easy to skim through and find what you need. Some extra formatting elements like Headers and some other minor edits would make it easier for people to find the parts they’re really interested in but that’s for future me to deal with.
My main goal was to have a guide put out while this week’s twitch drop campaign was still active, as it has an ‘Amp Arcane Adapter’ as it’s 3rd drop and I felt having something as a reference would be helpful for anyone trying to figure out if they wanted to use the Adapter now or hold off until they build an Amp they’re happy with.
*relative links to posts don’t look like they’re not implemented yet, but does seem to be an open issue on the lemmy github
That video is awesome, thanks for putting it together!
Is it reasonable to build just one multi-purpose amp, and have it be effective for eidolons/angels/last gasp? Obviously, specialized amps are better, but I won’t remember to swap them out. WTB operator loadouts.
I usually stick with 7-x-7 with Eternal Eradicate + Onslaught and Madurai for most content.
For Focus Schools, stick to the one you think you will get more use out of:
Use Madurai if you think you will be doing Eidolons more, it still does okay for killing regular enemies for Last Gasp. Unairu is better for Last Gasp because of its ability to armor strip and other passives, while still able to do reasonably good damage to Eidolons thanks to the Unairu Wisps. If you aren’t going to touch Eidolons then this is probably the better School to pick.The amp does Void Angels reasonably well but does lack range if the Angel teleports to the outer edge of the platform. As soon you enter the Void Dimension for the first time, use Madurai’s 2 on the Angel and then activate Void Strike with 1, and the Angel should be dead almost instantly. When you enter the Void the second time, Void strike will probably still be on cooldown, spam your 2 to drain all of your operator’s energy to activate your Arcanes and you should do just enough damage to almost kill it before the Dimensional Orbs spawn if you’re playing solo, if you’re public then there’s a reasonable chance that your squad did enough damage to skip this and kill the Angel.
While it doesn’t happen too often, the Angels with 3 health phases will occasionally teleport out of the center of the ring, to the outer perimeter after a certain amount of time. This is out of the range of the 7-x-x Amp to reach with its primary fire but you can use a Scaffold which does have enough range to reach the perimeter, or just wait for it to teleport back to the center of the map. I would recommend against using the Phahd Scaffold for this, because it has a bug where it self-staggers if you try to use it within one of the yellow fields, but if you are aware of this or if this gets patched then its really a non issue. 7-1-7 works fine for covering the short range of your primary fire mode. I’m not sure how often you’re fighting Void Angels though for range to be that much of a concern for you though, and you may opt to just pick a Scaffold you like to use instead.
For general content/Last Gasp, the damage boost from Madurai’s abilities is okay for killing most enemies, but your 1 does have a cooldown on it so this is where Unairu is really able to outperform Madurai. It has a passive to increase your operator’s damage while in Last Gasp, Caustic Strike to fully strip enemy armor (and its upgrade to spawn Unairu Wisps for even more operator damage), and Magnetic Flair to strip enemy shields when they’re relevant.
My operator Arcanes are Magus Repair fore healing and Emergence Dissipate as a way to generate energy and replace Zenurik but this can be replaced with other things like Energy Generator or Exodia Brave. For Amp Arcanes, I use Eternal Onslaught/Eradicate, but Virtuous Shadow/Strike are also good options if you need to substitute, and are a lot easier to get early on.
Wow, thank you for the detailed reply! 7-1-7 was kind of what I was leaning toward after reading your post, so I think that’s what I’ll end up building to replace the… whatever monstrosity I have now. Appreciate the arcanes recommendations, too!
