The Helstrum is a robotic launcher weapon that burst-fires four small homing missiles that explode and deal 
Heat damage. This weapon accepts rifle mods.
It can be sold for 
7,500.
Characteristics[]
- This weapon deals primarily
Impact damage. - Shots explode in a 3 meter radius on impact with a surface or enemy.
- Explosions deal Heat damage.
- Initial hit and explosion apply status separately.
- Explosion does not need direct line of sight to deal damage and will penetrate walls.
- Explosions deal
- Innate polarity.
Advantages:
- Second highest status chance of all robotic weapons, behind Cryotra.
- Pinpoint accuracy.
- Missiles will home in on a target that the companion aims at.
Disadvantages:
- Low critical chance.
- Low critical multiplier.
- Low fire rate.
- Explosion has a headshot multiplier of 1x and cannot trigger headshot conditions.
- Explosion has linear Damage Falloff from 100% to 75% from central impact.
- Projectiles have travel time with slow speed.
Acquisition[]
The Helstrum's blueprint can be purchased from Legs in Fortuna for 
10,000, requiring the rank of Old Mate with Solaris United. Note that this weapon also takes up one Sentinel inventory slot.
| Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 50,000 |
 10 |
 10 |
 10 |
 1 |
Time: 24 hrs |
Rush:  25
| |||||
 Market Price: N/A
|
 Blueprints Price:  10,000
| ||||
Notes[]
- Fires in a quick 4-round burst, but then has a burst cycle time of 4 times the inverse of the Firing Rate, otherwise known as the Seconds Per Shot. The delay in seconds between the first shot of each burst = 4 / (modified firing rate), e.g. with a maxed Speed Trigger the cycle time is 4/(0.91 x (1 + 0.6)) = 2.75 seconds between bursts. The default rate is one burst every 4.4 seconds.
- Missiles have homing properties, allowing the whole salvo to reliably hit small and/or agile targets such as Ospreys.
- In the event the target dies before the missiles reach it, the missiles will continue to travel in a straight line.
- Given the homing properties, it can accurately land hits even when equipped on a very long range companion like Diriga using Calculated Shot, however the long travel time in this situation can still cause difficulties since the enemy may have time to move and get a terrain obstacle between it and the missiles at a safe distance.
- Note that MOAs will 'lose interest' in a target if the player does not continue to target it. This appears to happen faster than with other companions, with MOAs firing, on average, three bursts, and sentinels firing approximately five before losing interest.
Tips[]
- Firestorm and Primed Firestorm will increase the small blast radius on impact, increasing it to 4.32 meters with the Primed version.
- With the Helstrum's very low base damage/crit stats but good status chance, it can be built into an extremely effective Status Effect inflictor if raw damage-per-shot is ignored completely.
- It is not difficult to have the Helstrum simultaneously surpass 100% status chance, have 2 additional elements (including both being combination elements by adding all four base element types) and then filling the remainder of available mod slots with the best multishot and fire rate mods you have available. Building for Radiation and Viral will allow for good crowd control and assist in boosting damage from Viral, but Corrosive with Heat for heavy armor removal and crowd control or Viral with Heat for a combination of armor removal, health damage boost, and crowd control are also good options.
- It is not difficult to have the Helstrum simultaneously surpass 100% status chance, have 2 additional elements (including both being combination elements by adding all four base element types) and then filling the remainder of available mod slots with the best multishot and fire rate mods you have available. Building for
Patch History[]
Update 32.0 (2022-09-07)
- Headshot Damage Changes
During playtesting, the ammo changes alone weren’t enough to significantly change things for AoE weapons. So instead of tightening these values to be overly restrictive, we chose to address other factors that make these weapons so strong, such as headshot damage.
Our approach here is two-fold, to reduce the impact of headshots for AOE weapons, but to also make precision headshots pack a larger punch overall.
- Radial damage no longer gains extra headshot damage or triggers headshot conditions.
- This is primarily targeted at the Ignis Wraith - as a “flamethrower” weapon, it’s hard to imagine a blanket of elements being precise enough to target weak points specifically. Explosive projectiles themselves can still land headshots, so there is still a reason to aim with most weapons for maximum damage.
Update 30.9 (2021-11-11)
- Fixed the Terminal Velocity Mod not applying projectile velocity changes to Sentinels using the Helstrum weapon.
Hotfix 29.1.2 (2020-09-22)
- Fixed some Sentinel and Moa Weapon types not getting affected by Magazine related Mods (notably Helstrum).
Hotfix 28.0.2 (2020-06-11)
- Fixed Helstrum missing from the Codex and an inability to Chat link it.
Update 28.0 (2020-06-11)
- Introduced.
Last updated: Update 28.0 (2020-06-11)
