IceJolt
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Posts posted by IceJolt
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A major reason damage abilities scale so poorly is their inability to deal with armor. Weapons can be customized to use an elemental damage type that deal with certain armor types better, such as corrosive against ferrite armor, but a Warframe like Ember is stuck with fire and therefore sees a huge damage reduction against armored enemies (around 95% damage reduction against level 100 enemies).
One solution to this is simply to make direct damage powers ignore armor.
It shouldn't affect their performance against low level enemies since their armor is low to begin with but would make a huge difference against high level enemies (upwards of 20x more damage). Many powers would still need buff to their base damage and this doesn't solve the many other issues with direct damage abilities but it could certainly help them scale better.
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Reducing energy efficiency is a nerf across the board for all powers and really only a few need it. Energy vampire, rage and to some extent energy siphon could still give you lots of energy as well.
I'd rather they gave the few powers that need their ability to be spammed reduced some form of cool down, like Rhino stomp has or Blessing use to have. It would be easier for DE to implement, can't be circumvented and affects only the powers that need it.
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Had that in closed beta, people would just wait in rooms till the cooldown expired.
Is there a particular reason this happened in Warframe? I mean lots of games have cool downs and don't have this issue. Were abilities much more powerful than weapons at the time for example? If they reintroduced cool downs now I couldn't imagine people would bother waiting.
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Most abilities deal fine damage or too much damage. Armor scaling is what kills many abilities when facing heavy Grineer. Infinite content is, of course, irrelevant.
Weapons deal far more damage than any direct damage ability. A synapse with corrosive will kill a heavy gunner far quicker than miasma, which also deals corrosive damage, or bladestorm, which ignores armour completely. Once enemies are a high enough level that the difference in damage between powers and weapons becomes apparent and meaningful, there is no reason to use powers.
I wouldn't say infinite is irrelevant either as many would consider it the current endgame but that's a different discussion.
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You have a very good point here, but I think there's one more thing that's wrong with abilities in general in WF which you briefly touched upon: it's their spammability.
Personally I think it should be:
energy cost = (base cost) / (100% + x)
This would make efficiency a lot less powerful. Maybe the mod values would need to be tweaked to balance things out, but the ridiculous scaling would not occur with this formula. It would also be no longer necessary to have the arbitrary 75% cap on the bonus efficiency.
Yes, being able to spam abilities really is the core issue in trying to balance warframe powers and the energy system in general becomes fairly meaningless once you have the right mods. However if you change it then quite a lot of powers and by extension warframes would need to be tweaked since a lot of skills can be spammed but aren't necessarily overpowered. Caster frames would also suffer the most when it takes longer to kill enemies and therefore less energy is available, such as in endless defence missions or boss fights. It could work though but it might mean more effort is needed to balance everything.
Another option is to perhaps remove energy orbs and just use the more traditional system of having energy slowly regenerate over time like mana bars in most RPGs, although that would require even more time and effort to implement.
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In the game’s current state the vast majority of direct damage Warframe abilities simply become useless as enemy health and armor increases past the level these skills can remain effective. DE doesn’t seem to want to address this issue and instead is opting for the easy ‘fix’ by looking to give these skills some utility as well. While I’m all for making skills more interesting and multifaceted, I think it is unfortunate the playstyle direct damage abilities offered should have to be left behind. I posted a similar topic on the subreddit but I thought it was worth discussing here too.
Problems
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Low damage
Direct damage skills like fireball and radial javelin don’t do enough damage against high level enemies. Weapons can achieve far greater DPS and even with these skills’ large area of effect they are still worthless here. The damage has to be bumped significantly so they are competitive with weapon damage.
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No way to deal with armour scaling
However this may not be enough. The main reason heavy gunners are so hard to kill at higher levels for example is their huge amount of armor. Weapons can partially deal with this by creating elemental damage types like corrosive for example, which not only deals more damage to armored enemies but can also ignore armor. Warframe abilities on the other hand are stuck with their set damage type and have no way to deal with armor scaling. Even if their damage was bumped up considerably they’d still lag behind weapons against heavily armored opponents.
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Spamming powers
Currently, with the right gear, you can spam abilities virtually indefinitely. This means that rather than being some burst damage or short term buff you need to save for the opportune moment, Warframe abilities are something you can have active constantly. Consequently this raises several issues in balancing and designing these skills. Something like radial blind isn’t inherently overpowered but the fact we can have it active all the time does. Similarly if spamming miasma could deal the as much damage as your gun then why use anything else? In most other games for example your weapons serves as a relatively low but consistent source of damage while your abilities serve as a source of burst damage. They fill different roles and therefore both remain useful.
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Redundant abilities
For many Warframes their 1, 2 or 3 abilities can often be a simply inferior version of their 4th skill and consequently min-maxing a build usually means leaving these skills out. Moreover it also means a lot of warframes are a one trick pony whose playstyle revolves around spamming the same ability over and over again because it is just a better version of their other skills. While this is a separate issue I think it is a problem many warframes suffer from and is certainly something to be looked at to bring more variety to play. Again I think the issue here is a lack of role diversity.
Possible Solutions
These are really just meant as some ideas than a serious proposal to fix everything.
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Buff the damage but limit the frequency of use for some abilities.
By this I’m mainly talking about ult abilities like miasma. If you buff the damage to be competitive with weapon damage, ult abilities with a huge range could be overpowered. If you implemented a form of cooldown however, like Rhino stomp already has, you could change this skill into a form a burst damage and therefore keep it useful without being OP. There are many ways to do this such as having skills deal damage overtime or build up in strength. Miasma could deal more damage with each tick for example but over a longer period of time, which again would stop this skill from being spammed but still be useful.
Many abilities wouldn’t need a form of cooldown however as they are still balanced even if you spam them.
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Have more skills that work together with your weapons.
Antimatter drop or Roar for example either increase the damage of your weapons or have their damage increased by them. This means that they can be directly balanced around your weapons and instead compliment one another to create abilities that are always useful.
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Synergistic abilities.
Accelerant and WoF are an example of this. Have more skills interact with one another to increase their effectiveness. This could fix the issue of redundant skills while adding much more depth to playing these frames. Accelerant is perhaps the most boring way to implement this but you could do lots of cool things to alter the function of abilities. Hitting your snowglobe with freeze causes it to explode, damaging and freezing all surrounding enemies for example.
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Greater ability customization.
Limiting abilities to fairly weak damage types like fire means they are greatly affected by armour scaling with no way to deal with it. You could introduce a new aura mod that makes weapons deal +10% damage as corrosive and makes all of your warframe abilities deal their damage as corrosive instead for example.
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Just have all ability damage ignore armor.
This could possibly be easier to implement than the suggestion above and would makes a huge difference to how well abilities scale, as seen by bladestorm.
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Don’t make content more difficult through health/ armour scaling.
Rather than changing abilities to deal with absurd armour and health, change the way enemies are made tougher such as having more leader types or giving enemies interesting mechanics to kill them. The ability to spam abilities could still lead to balance problems however.
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Low damage
Direct Damage Abilities Should Ignore Armor
in Warframes
Posted
I remember them saying that they wanted to give damage powers some utility so they were more useful late game but I didn't realise the lack of scaling was 'intentional'.
Making damage abilities, entire Warframes and the play style they support become ineffective and non-viable in high level content is just poor design imo and it feels more like they didn't want the hassle of balancing them.