As always, I'd love to hear what people think of the incarnons available. And don't forget to check out Arthuss's video later in the week (or from previous week 7 rotations).

This week brings us the two Nightwave headline weapons, Stalker's very own Dread and Hate, plus some others:

• Zylok
• Sibear
• Dread
• Despair
• Hate

So what makes these weapons cool?

Zylok

Has an augment, Eximus Advantage, that gives +600% secondary damage for 10 seconds when headshotting Eximus units. I use a Secondary Fortifier build on my stealth frames so I can actually land the headshots. Extremely fun since it basically turns Eximus into bombs. Crowd Control enjoyers rejoice because removing Overguard and then locking the enemy in place for headshots is a great strategy. Magus Lockdown is an option too.

The only other thing of note is that this is one of the rare hitscan radials. Blast builds can trivially trigger Eximus Advantage once overguard is gone and the eximus is susceptible to ragdolls. More funny eximus bomb setups.

Sibear

The underappreciated black sheep of the Incarnon lineup. Even before the armour nerfs, this forbidden popsicle was a monster and one of my favs on Zephyr and Kullervo. Deliciously powerful on Frost and Mag too.

Has the general utility of being both incredibly lethal and racking cold stacks and combo extremely fast. One of the best candidates for where to fit Cold into your loadout.

Instead of a crit weapon, you can also build it as a stat stick or light slam weapon with Red Right Hand; or build it as an initial combo heavy slammer with Mounting Avalanche. Both builds really want some kind of final crit though, say with Avenger or Wrathful Advance. (Or Biting Frost and Arcane Avenger ;))

As a CC utility weapon, the cold fields left by the slams, including combo slams, mean any knockdown animation is also extended. The description lies to you, the cold fields are in fact from all slams.

Okay, I had a lot to say about the Sibear. I love this weapon a lot.

Dread

Absolutely amazing. This weapon was already a beast from out of time before it got an Incarnon. The incarnon just lets it do even more damage but now with infinite body punchthrough. Modding it for cold gives you one-mod Blast, which makes this the cooler Bramma. As a bow, it also enjoys extremely hard damage scaling, with access to Longbow Sharpshot and multiplicative Galvanized Aptitude.

The coming augment, Unseen Dread, gives you both a short stealth effect as well as extra crit damage while invisible. Given Zeroed In bumps this to 4x crit damage, that's a lot.

Despair

They would be the Most Okay of Stalker's weapons if it weren't for Secondary Outburst. Despite being projectiles, not subject to multiplicative Accuracy. Not much to say here, Outburst builds are extremely spicy, and can be used to heat prime for the next weapon...

Hate

Hoo boy. This weapon will give your enemies the worst case of heartburn in their lives. Was a good scythe even before the incarnon and melee arcanes, and has only gotten better.

Shoutouts to Unified Codex for labbing that the new augment, Burning Hate, is a special kind of status vulnerability that is multiplicative to Elementalist.

I've winnowed down the builds to three main ones: Crescendo, Afflictions, and Influence.

Crescendo is just reliable, and gives up the nukes of Influence and the spicy spicy damage of Afflictions for an on-demand Incarnon and consistent good damage. Very good as a vulnerability primer for a Blast Dread. The main appeal of Crescendo is that it serves as a bank for Outburst.

Afflictions is fantastic. Reaping Spiral has two Afflictions triggers in its neutral combo, and the heavy also natively applies a 6x slash on top of... more Afflictions. This stacks up spicy heat damage extremely quickly.

Influence needs an outside source of Heat to trigger the augment, but honestly it was quite performant before it. Nezha, Lavos and Chroma all make the augment sing due to having Heat procs naturally available. Neutron Star/Molecular Fission Nova might be interesting after her update. Naturally, Ember and Blazing Pillage Hildryn are also sources of beautiful glowing Heat procs.

Closing thoughts

Probably grab the Hate and then Dread incarnons if you haven't, since they're the fun toys this Nightwave. Despair is fun, but the "Stalker's Arsenal" type evolutions won't exactly alter the course of your destiny, so don't worry if you don't have it. Sibear is my personal favourite this week, and if I could get an overpriced, oversized plushie of it I absolutely would. I need to play with the Zylok more to form an opinion on it.