Bronco Prime is a half-decent weapon and it does feel kinda outdated. While there are better options for secondaries, Bronco Prime at least isn’t a trash tier. You can still two-shot level 100 elite Lancers with it.
The best thing about Bronco Prime before the shotgun update was the fact that it hit a 100% status chance per pellet. And actually, it did pretty good damage. But now it’s not that great anymore, especially being an impact shotgun. Even with 6 status mods equipped, we can’t hit 100% status chance per pellet.
If you’re looking to just boost the damage output of your Bronco Prime, a Riven would be the best bet considering it has a disposition of 1.4. If you’re running a DPS boosting frame like Chroma or Banshee, then you could potentially inflict some serious damage too. However, it’s not worth building solely for damage anymore. The weapon only has four rounds, low crit chance, low-status chance and a two second reload every time you shoot those four shots.
After four formas, an orokin catalyst, and a few hours of trying to find a purpose for the Bronco prime, we finally did it.
Dizzying rounds: Bronco Augment
How about just using the weapon as a way to give any Warframe the ability to instantly kill any enemy that you want?
Ignore the weapon, just look at the Dizzying rounds mod real quick. This mod is a niche, but not something to disregard.
There are two things we’re gaining with Dizzying rounds: 200% status chance and the ability to open up enemies to finishers.
Bronco Prime has a base status chance of 12.9%, thus 200% multiplicative (not additive) value won’t turn your Bronco to Catchmoon in terms of DPS.
Stunning enemies and opening them up to finishers is the best part about this mod. It doesn’t matter how hard you hit an enemy, it doesn’t matter if you hit them with one pellet or few, they are instantly dazed and are opened up to being killed by a finisher.
I could see this sort of a setup barely useful for Equinox or Excalibur mains, but in contrast to their case you don’t have to put enemies to sleep or cast a spell: simply shoot them and stab them in the back… or front.
But there’s more to it. Marked enemies are open for finishers forever. It doesn’t matter what animation they are in. You can come whenever and kill them instantly. These finishers are the same as Inaros’, meaning that marked enemies can be hit continuously with finishers until they die, forever.
Dizzying rounds mod pairs well with Arcane Trickery or Skiajati passive – basically any frame can become invisible, making 100min in Survival no sweat. Also, it’s a good utility to activate arcane Ultimatum.
Bronco Prime: “Finish Him” Gas Build
Regarding the Finisher Build, damage mods are unnecessary. This way you have a lot of room to put on mods. Considering the purpose of the weapon is to simply stagger an enemy to perform finishers, I’d suggest the following:
Punch through enables fewer shots and more enemies opened up to finishers. Procing Gas helps the effect of the Dizzying Rounds spreading to enemies 6 m around the target hit by pellets. Electric damage can cause Tesla Chains and create more procs for Gas.
This build makes the Dizzying Rounds more efficient and allows spending less time shooting one enemy at a time.
Bronco Prime has fall-of damage and is pretty weak in terms of how far it can shoot. Just in case you need to shoot enemies from afar, Lethal Momentum is a must for Exilus slot.
Unfortunately, nothing is perfect. Some enemies are just immune to finishers, stuff like bursas, ambulas, some of the amalgam units. Dizzying rounds is also useless against demolysts and sentients, of course.
Closing Thoughts
A weapon doesn’t always have to one-shot a level 170, but sometimes a utility weapon is more important.
The mod itself is a nice option and honestly, it’s not about a weapon, it’s more about what the Dizzying Rounds brings to your loadout. It allows you to run around with your melee weapon killing almost everything with just one hit.
