Umbral Mods vs Primed

[Goober Mensch]

Which one should I invest in more? I have enough to max out either one primed mod or one Umbral mod and I don't want to regret this later.

[DragonNewTech]

start with primed than do umbra

umbra mods are more the 'special case' while primed mods have a widespread usage

[Meowser has not]

max the primes youll get more mileage

[vid23]

Primes, Umbra is only slightly better if you use more than 2, the only exception is the power strenght one, but using that would mean +1-2 forma depending on your build, in my opinion, using Umbra mods alone not worth it, and if you go for 2, then you really need to be commited for it, since you will fill up your frame with formas which means youre gonna be stuck with a single build

[Tigerlight]

Originally posted by vid23:

Primes, Umbra is only slightly better if you use more than 2, the only exception is the power strenght one, but using that would mean +1-2 forma depending on your build, in my opinion, using Umbra mods alone not worth it, and if you go for 2, then you really need to be commited for it, since you will fill up your frame with formas which means youre gonna be stuck with a single build

You use just 2 and it's a straight buff. Umbral Vitality + Umbral Fiber beats Vitality + Steel Fiber. So it's a buff at 2...not more. Mounting 3 is pointless and a huge trade-off elsewhere. I'm not trying to be pedantic about wording, more establishing for OP. Anyway...

As for which to rank up first? Primed, definitely.

[Pakaku]

Overall you'll be using primed mods more just because of forma slots that aren't exclusive, so invest into them first. You won't be using Umbral mods unless you run Excal Umbra and his katana a lot, or if you have very specific builds for other melees/frames in mind. If you are, you will be dedicating a ton of mod space to the umbral mods, and possibly a lot of forma to other slots for other mods, which ends up to be very expensive and time-consuming (but potentially worth it)

[Spook]

it's worth pointing out that the final two ranks of either case account for 75% of the total cost to max it. The last rank alone is 20k endo. While obviously you'd want to max everything you'll use eventually, you might be a lot better served short term by having four good prime/umbral mods or whatever at rank 8 instead of one at rank 10.