So, what's the top picks (siphon, bullwark, concussive)?

Thanks.

I also am a fan of siphon (I have shadow (doesn't prime) and cyclone (does prime).

I assume snipers and some accurate weapons would be great for concussive variants?

Does anyone else feel like concussive weapons are trash? I just sniped for a whole game and didn't get a single explosion that affected another enemy, and I always aim for the head

Maybe it's more of a pc thing?

Offhost headshots.
You have to kill them with the headshot for the explosion. The orange "X" when the enemy dies. And the explosion is really really brief, like a 10/th of a second but you can hear it if you listen. (past all the dam Destroyer turrets and berserker screams....). It sounds different than any other explosion so you'll know it if you hear it. If I had means to post a video or picture I'd show you. Oldmanproblems...

Tell me more about this venom priming business...

Here is the issue, the basic weapon's effectiveness matters far more than the variant. And the character you are sticking it on matters more for the variant than the weapon it's one. And ammo use matters.

There are basic versions that are better than their variants, and there are variants that are nonsensical. 

As a rule, pistols and sniper rifles base versions prime better, and so are worth considering over their variants when you are using ammo to prime opponents. This is also true for some shotguns. Venom, Reegar, crusader.

The base versions of all assault rifles, and the Dhan are never worth using over their variant. The dahn especially so given that it's base version has worse priming than it's variants.

The Siphon variant is always very useful, especially so on any weapon that can kill multiple opponents quickly. This is almost always the best version. Getting 2/3 of your health back reliably doubles your durability in most cases. There are also specific enemies that become walking health dispensers. It has increased synergy with weapon buffs, damage reduction, and other forms of regeneration.

The bulwark variant is only worth considering on characters with little to no base damage reduction, low health, high shield and team reliance. Compared to siphon this version does far less to help your survival. It is not bad per say, it just does not help you much in ideal circumstance, and gives little to no advantage at all when it is most important.

The Concussive variant is okay on guns that have higher than average headshot reliance against ground based infantry, it does not work against large enemies who force units to be outside of the aoe through their shear size, and fliers that are seldom close enough together to matter. It is decent on gold and below, but platinum enemies very rarely group up enough to matter other than dog swarms.

TLDR Siphon is king, Concussive is niche, and bulwark is a pretender.

I disagree on these 2 points. Atm I "hope" that the current situation with variants not priming is accidental and not biowares lazy "as intended." And hopefully once its fixed, variants always will be better than a vanilla. Even in the situation now, variants are only worse than vanilla if your using a "priming" weapon, (snipers don't prime...and if your priming with a SR you are killing to slowly) On shotguns they are always better since the prime ammo is the same (cept dahn, but again, you should not be priming on dahn, or any shotgun really)

And yes concussion shot works VERY well vs large enemies, only enemy I would say fits your claim is a fiend. Turrets are 100% weakpoints, Orb is 100% weakpoint. Hydra is actually not so large other enemies can't get caught in explosion of (7.5m?) which is VERY large.  Try a turian soldier with a targeting VI build (more weakpoint damage for the explosion) you turn every mook into a biotic grenade.

Now... only if venom wasn't so slow you could use concussion on venom and just blow everything away.... :srs:

Imo Siphon is the way to go on most weapons. Being able to actively regen your health is invaluable, also as killa mentioned, using Siphon weapon on an energy drain char makes Platnum pretty much a faceroll provided that you don't get those w6 uploads on certain map spots.

Bulwark's DR is simply not enough, and for that you have to stick with teammates, which kinda wastes your chars' high mobility in this game, then again YMMV depends on playstyles, of course. I just don't think that worth it.

And Concussive? What a joke. It may look good on paper but the enemies' high mobility makes headshot kills extremely hard to achieve consistently even if you are on host, and there's absolutely no reason to pick it off-host, the netcode of this game simply denies you that ability.

Disclaimer: based on 100+ Plat runs experience, not making assumptions.

When I first read about concussive weapons I thought it would be really awesome.  Then I thought about it for a moment and realized I'd likely just be setting of cool explosions that do nothing.  And yeah, that's how it ended up.

Pretty much. It's not really often you catch a bunch humping each other. And when you do, you need to score a kill with the bullet. I pulled it off with the Cyclone a couple of times and maybe once there was anoother mook around to be affected. The radius is rather tiny.

They are all stupid.

Siphon is least stupid one of three.

i love my concussive vanquisher, the aoe does help a lot.