There was once a time that the Arca Plasmor was a beloved shotgun by many. Sad to say those days seem to have passed as the recent changes have nerfed the weapon to a shadow of what it once was. That’s not to say it’s a totally useful weapon now, but it’s just not up to par with some of the other choices out there.
Still, it’s an interesting weapon to have in your arsenal because of its free Radiation damage type which also makes it one of the easier primary weapons to upgrade. It also makes it very unique in that you can have three elemental damage type, the trick is finding the right combination of elements.
Additionally, the Arca Plasmor also comes with two innate Madurai polarities which are usually mods that focus on damage and power. Although it’s only available through the Tenno Lab, that shouldn’t be a problem since by the time you hit the required Mastery Rank of 10 you’re already part of a Clan.
Arca Plasmor Boomstick
There’s really no point in stacking Critical Chance nor Critical Damage for that matter, even trying to boost Status is also not such a good idea. Because the Arca Plasmor has a poor falloff point, it’s better off to focus on pumping up its damage output for a bathtub-in-your-face kick.
With the most basic mods, you can see you’re already slamming 11.5k worth of damage. On top of that are the accuracy and armor debuffs granted by the Blast and Corrosive elemental damage types. Effectively making the Arca Plasmor a natural bane to the Grineer, which is especially good on the Helene and Hydron missions where you’ll literally mow down mobs.
Hell’s Chamber is about the only rare mod on the base build, with everything else easily obtainable. It’s pretty important so you can pump out that extra multishot, but if not, Vigilante Armaments is also another option.
Once you’ve been able to Polarize the Arca Plasmor, things get a little more interesting. The next two mods you’ll need to obtain are Blaze for maximum damage output and Chilling Reload to for a slightly reduced Reload Speed. With a bit of moving elements around, you’ll end up with 16.8k damage output and damage-over-time Status Effects from the Heat and Viral elements.
Personally, I prefer this combination of elements since Heat also has the secondary effect of stripping some armor. This way, the Arca Plasmor is much more useful for a wider variety of enemies including the Corpus.
Of course, there is still lots of room for improvement once you start getting Primed mods adding more Polarization slots. But in that case, it may be wiser to spend Forma on other primary weapons because of Arca Plasmor’s nerfed status. Let me know in the comments below, how you build your Arca Plasmor.