Remove Warframe Ability Damage Reduction On Enemies?

[Kalthea]

How would you feel about this? I'm kind of sick of going into a mission with a 299% Power Strength build against level 60+ enemies just to get laughed at when the power of my ability gets reduced down to like 400 damage. I can do more damage than that with one mod on a gun!

I'm unsure how this would affect things though. For certain frames, it would be a great boon. Resonating Quake on Banshee, bleed ticks on Equinox, Oberon's 1 and 4 being actually usable. But then when it comes down to it, it could also cause issues, say with Saryn, where here damage is ramping up so hard that it just wipes people out completely (not that it isn't an issue for some already, just more exacerbated).

I dunno. It's just really strange to run around on frames that are gear up to the teeth, and using an ability on something just causes it to plink off like a rubberband.

[[DE]Grzegorz]

Disruptor aura is precisely there to force the player to vary their tactics a bit instead of relying on a single combo to steamroll through the game.

Edited November 25, 2018 by LeeHarveyOswald

[Kalthea]

Just now, LeeHarveyOswald said:

Disruptor aura is precisely there to force the player to vary their tactic a bit instead of relying on a single combo to steamroll through the game.

Nono, I don't mean that. I'm fine with nullifiers and disruptors, I have no issue with them. I like having to work around them, and while I can also find them extremely annoying, the varied gameplay is fine.

My issue is solely the damage numbers. If I'm running around on Oberon and my ult ability says that it's going to hit for 4,000 damage with a radiation proc, but when I use it just does 1,200, that's a MASSIVE amount of damage reduction.

[taiiat]

there's many ways to weaken Armor or combat Infested Ancient Auras. pick whatever methods you like.
picking none will just mean your Damage will be ineffective.
there's plenty of ways to be effective, but you'll have to use some of them. whether that be to not use Damage Types Enemies are resistant to and expect it to deal a lot of Damage, or to use the INFINITY Stats we have to make anything deal incredible Damage, pick something(s).

 

on a side note it's funny you say whatever you're looking for would be 'great' for Maim, Smite, and Sound Quake, but that Saryn would be a problem? your statement is quite contradictory there, to say the least.

Edited November 25, 2018 by taiiat

[Kalthea]

2 minutes ago, taiiat said:

there's many ways to weaken Armor or combat Infested Ancient Auras. pick whatever methods you like.
picking none will just mean your Damage will be ineffective.
there's plenty of ways to be effective, but you'll have to use some of them. whether that be to not use Damage Types Enemies are resistant to and expect it to deal a lot of Damage, or to use the INFINITY Stats we have to make anything deal incredible Damage, pick something(s).

 

on a side note it's funny you say whatever you're looking for would be 'great' for Maim, Smite, and Sound Quake, but that Saryn would be a problem? your statement is quite contradictory there, to say the least.

Those were just examples, honestly. It's mostly the flat, raw-damage numbers that show a huge reduction in the usage of abilities. You don't really see an Oberon in late game for anything other than his 3+2 combo for the regen and armor. Maybe you'll see the 1 and 4 for the CC, but other than that I can't really say the damage adds much (though radiation is very strong in late-game)

And yes, I'm aware of the means of reducing armor. I run Corrosive Projection on pretty much every frame, and I've got a fully build Saryn and a bunch of weapons with Corrosive on in order to strip that armor. All I'm saying is that these abilities are never really used for their damage at late-game anyway, so why even bother reducing the amount of damage they do to armored targets? In early game, you're wiping enemies out no issue anyway.

The ONLY reason I can think of is the mid-game. It would make it too easy, more than likely. You've found some nice mods, and weapons. And your frame is at max rank, so your abilities are doing full damage to the targets who don't really have as much health as they do in late game.

This is why I offered it as a question, cuz I wanted to hear other opinions. I'm not completely sure how it would work out.

[WhiteMarker]

16 minutes ago, Kalthea said:

My issue is solely the damage numbers. If I'm running around on Oberon and my ult ability says that it's going to hit for 4,000 damage with a radiation proc, but when I use it just does 1,200, that's a MASSIVE amount of damage reduction.

Just use Oberon's Ult as it's meant to be used. To strip armor and to apply Rad-procs.
It's not an ability for straight up damage.
And if you want to get more damage out of it, just cast it again. Thanks to the armor-reduction you will do more damage...

[Acersecomic]

YES PLEASE! I'd love for abilities to feel devastating as advertized.

[Kalthea]

2 minutes ago, WhiteMarker said:

Just use Oberon's Ult as it's meant to be used. To strip armor and to apply Rad-procs.
It's not an ability for straight up damage.
And if you want to get more damage out of it, just cast it again. Thanks to the armor-reduction you will do more damage...

See, that's the issue. If it was just meant to be used to strip armor and apply rad-procs, why give it any damage at all?

[WhiteMarker]

4 minutes ago, Kalthea said:

See, that's the issue. If it was just meant to be used to strip armor and apply rad-procs, why give it any damage at all?

Because reasons.
Taking away all the damage reduction from enemies would be stupid and make the game even easier...
Why does Ember take Fire-Damage? Or why does Frost take Cold-Damage?
Why do Grineers not just activate the self-destruction on one of their ships while we run a mission there? It would be easy to kill us this way.

All these questions...
The explanation to all of them: DE wants it to be this way.

And why wouldn't radiation be damaging? I mean, if you swallowed some Uranium, would your body remain undamaged?

[Birdframe_Prime]

All damage caps out, my friend, anything with fixed numbers on it will stop scaling, fact of Warframe.

The way to do anything after a certain point is to combo. A straight-up damage ability simply won't do anything, but with Status and Mechanics? It works amazingly.

For example, the new Warframe Garuda; Her 1 ability actually scales indefinitely, it's fun. But if you try to unleash that orb with a million damage against a level 120 Heavy Gunner? It won't kill them because that Gunner has a scaled health (thanks to Armour) of more than that.

What do you do then? Use Garuda's 4. Let your damage charge up, mark enemies for the bleeds with her 4, and then throw that orb at them. Because this then causes Bleed too, and a Bleed that's formed from even 50k damage will eat enemies for breakfast every time (6 ticks of 17,500 True damage will finish off a ridiculous amount of enemies thanks to the armour ignore).

But you do raise one good point:

3 minutes ago, Kalthea said:

See, that's the issue. If it was just meant to be used to strip armor and apply rad-procs, why give it any damage at all?

Two reasons.

1. Effects on enemies are keyed in the game engine off Damage happening. It's why Loki's Radial Disarm actually deals 500 Damage and why Banshee's Sonic Boom deals 50, because they need a damage number to go off.

2. Because for people just picking up the frame and not attempting Sortie level and above, the damage that Reckoning is fully capable of clearing up trash mobs and even heavy units through Star Chart levels, allowing it to have something for those players, namely the Health Orb drop on death of enemies. That function is only useful at the low end where enemies don't deal enough damage to strip massive chunks of your health off, and so is matched to a condition that only happens at low end.

When our friend up there said 'use it as intended', this doesn't limit it to just the procs, blinds and armour strip, it's also intended to have a use killing low level enemies over a wide area.

Just because all of the intended uses of an ability are not directly geared around scaling to high level does not make them invalid.

Plus, they weren't wrong either. Two casts being able to do the job, or even three, is still applicable, because if you're stripping off armour by combining it with Hallowed Ground, then you're actually not just helping yourself, you're supporting the entire team by providing CC, Status and Armour Strip. Energy is not a rare resource, it's literally ammo for your abilities, use it when you have it ^^

True damage on our abilities would be ridiculous, though, you're literally asking for the actual damage numbers on every ability to be massively nerfed as a response.

[taiiat]

12 minutes ago, Kalthea said:

See, that's the issue. If it was just meant to be used to strip armor and apply rad-procs, why give it any damage at all?

because you can make anything in Warframe deal a lot of Damage.

[Kalthea]

30 minutes ago, WhiteMarker said:

Because reasons.
Taking away all the damage reduction from enemies would be stupid and make the game even easier...
Why does Ember take Fire-Damage? Or why does Frost take Cold-Damage?
Why do Grineers not just activate the self-destruction on one of their ships while we run a mission there? It would be easy to kill us this way.

All these questions...
The explanation to all of them: DE wants it to be this way.

And why wouldn't radiation be damaging? I mean, if you swallowed some Uranium, would your body remain undamaged?

1) I'm not saying to take away enemy damage reduction for everything, as the title of this topic states. I'm wondering why it isn't removed for Warframe Abilities.

2) A frame being themed one particular was does make it seem like they should be immune to that particular damage. However, I can just as easily say that the frames are made of the same stuff as the other frames, so are still susceptible to those types of damage. I don't so much mind these things, as they can be explained plenty well.

3) We do. We have a mission called Sabotage where we essentially activate a self-destruct sequence in order to destroy Grineer and Corpus ships. 

Whether or not DE wants something to be in place doesn't mean we shouldn't question why they are in place. There's nothing wrong with speculation.

25 minutes ago, Thaylien said:

All damage caps out, my friend, anything with fixed numbers on it will stop scaling, fact of Warframe.

The way to do anything after a certain point is to combo. A straight-up damage ability simply won't do anything, but with Status and Mechanics? It works amazingly.

For example, the new Warframe Garuda; Her 1 ability actually scales indefinitely, it's fun. But if you try to unleash that orb with a million damage against a level 120 Heavy Gunner? It won't kill them because that Gunner has a scaled health (thanks to Armour) of more than that.

What do you do then? Use Garuda's 4. Let your damage charge up, mark enemies for the bleeds with her 4, and then throw that orb at them. Because this then causes Bleed too, and a Bleed that's formed from even 50k damage will eat enemies for breakfast every time (6 ticks of 17,500 True damage will finish off a ridiculous amount of enemies thanks to the armour ignore).

-----------------------------------------------------------

But you do raise one good point:

Two reasons.

1. Effects on enemies are keyed in the game engine off Damage happening. It's why Loki's Radial Disarm actually deals 500 Damage and why Banshee's Sonic Boom deals 50, because they need a damage number to go off.

2. Because for people just picking up the frame and not attempting Sortie level and above, the damage that Reckoning is fully capable of clearing up trash mobs and even heavy units through Star Chart levels, allowing it to have something for those players, namely the Health Orb drop on death of enemies. That function is only useful at the low end where enemies don't deal enough damage to strip massive chunks of your health off, and so is matched to a condition that only happens at low end.

When our friend up there said 'use it as intended', this doesn't limit it to just the procs, blinds and armour strip, it's also intended to have a use killing low level enemies over a wide area.

Just because all of the intended uses of an ability are not directly geared around scaling to high level does not make them invalid.

Plus, they weren't wrong either. Two casts being able to do the job, or even three, is still applicable, because if you're stripping off armour by combining it with Hallowed Ground, then you're actually not just helping yourself, you're supporting the entire team by providing CC, Status and Armour Strip. Energy is not a rare resource, it's literally ammo for your abilities, use it when you have it ^^

True damage on our abilities would be ridiculous, though, you're literally asking for the actual damage numbers on every ability to be massively nerfed as a response.

Good response here. For the first half, let me respond by saying that i have no issue with there being damage falloff at all. Armor could use a bit of tweaking, sure, but I don't see any reason to remove it entirely. I don't mind having to strip armor, I don't mind having to work around heavily armored enemies. I have zero issues with it. My issue here is that Warframe abilities have a listed damage number that doesn't directly translate the way it should, especially considering it's mystical magical void energy that we're throwing around.

As for the second half:

1) In the most recent change to the kitgun Pax Seeker arcane, they stated that the projectiles it launches do 50% Slash and 50% Puncture. However, when these projectiles collide with enemies, you can see that they do Impact damage. You don't need to deal damage in order to proc an effect. If they just showed the Radiation icon on the enemies to let us know that it proc'd, then that would be perfectly fine.

2) As I stated above, I can see where this type of change could cause a problem in mid-game, where you've got some decent stuff and it can over perform in certain scenarios. But I am talking entirely about high-end stuff. If I'm going to kill a mid-level enemy with 1 or 2 casts of my 4 anyway, and enemies scale pretty heavily down the line with more HP and armor, why even bother reducing the amount of damage I'm doing? You're doubling down on the damage reduction by that point, so having a flat damage number shouldn't be an issue at late game when an enemy has 1 million HP and my ability is doing 4,000. That's the point I'm trying to get across. EDIT: I forgot the mention that that 4,000 would be reduced by 80-90% at the late-game point, making it a paltry few hundred against a million.

Edited November 25, 2018 by Kalthea

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

1 hour ago, Kalthea said:

Nono, I don't mean that. I'm fine with nullifiers and disruptors, I have no issue with them. I like having to work around them, and while I can also find them extremely annoying, the varied gameplay is fine.

My issue is solely the damage numbers. If I'm running around on Oberon and my ult ability says that it's going to hit for 4,000 damage with a radiation proc, but when I use it just does 1,200, that's a MASSIVE amount of damage reduction.

Have you heard of this thing called corrosive? I hear it’s all the rage these days.

[Kalthea]

8 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Have you heard of this thing called corrosive? I hear it’s all the rage these days.

Yep, mentioned below that post that I'm perfectly fine with how armor works in the game. Personally, I think the damage types need a bit of changing around, cuz almost every build in the game is Corrosive or Viral (though Fortuna is making Gas and Magnetic look more friendly now as well). Should read more, it gives a bit more context. I'm not the best at explaining things the first time around.

[peterc3]

You want frame abilities to do X damage even if they do a specific type of damage that enemies with Y type of health or armor are strong against?

[Kalthea]

2 hours ago, peterc3 said:

You want frame abilities to do X damage even if they do a specific type of damage that enemies with Y type of health or armor are strong against?

Essentially, yes. Most damaging abilities at late-game won't even do much after building for max damage, so it makes little sense that they scale the damage down. For example, Ember without any mods in her will do a flat 400 damage, multiplied by 2.5 with her 2, making it a total of 1,000 damage overall. That's not really a lot when you consider it. With a Strength modifier of 200%, that gets bumped up to 800 x 5x multiplier, for a total of 4,000. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that this would also nerf damages that are strong against particular enemies, since it would just be a flat damage overall.

[peterc3]

46 minutes ago, Kalthea said:

Essentially, yes. Most damaging abilities at late-game won't even do much after building for max damage, so it makes little sense that they scale the damage down. For example, Ember without any mods in her will do a flat 400 damage, multiplied by 2.5 with her 2, making it a total of 1,000 damage overall. That's not really a lot when you consider it. With a Strength modifier of 200%, that gets bumped up to 800 x 5x multiplier, for a total of 4,000. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that this would also nerf damages that are strong against particular enemies, since it would just be a flat damage overall.

Then there's 0 point to having abilities do certain types of damage which then essentially creates Ability Damage. Sorties would need another look. Frames would absolutely have numbers changed, and probably not raised at all. This is a fundamental part of how frames are balanced.

Frames are just as much a part of you choosing what to bring to a mission as the weapons are. Why are you bringing a frame with a damage type that is weak against the enemies you are going up against?

[Kalthea]

Just now, peterc3 said:

Then there's 0 point to having abilities do certain types of damage which then essentially creates Ability Damage. Sorties would need another look. Frames would absolutely have numbers changed, and probably not raised at all. This is a fundamental part of how frames are balanced.

Frames are just as much a part of you choosing what to bring to a mission as the weapons are. Why are you bringing a frame with a damage type that is weak against the enemies you are going up against?

It's less a matter to do with weaknesses, and more a matter of damage reduction. Sure, I can bring Ember to an Infested mission to deal a crap ton of damage to them. That's not my issue. My issue is when I take Ember into a Grineer mission, and no matter what level they are, they get Damage Reduction to her fire simply because they have armor on that just reduces the damage they take overall. I suppose a better way to word the title would be "Stop making armor work against warframe abilities because it makes them completely useless at later levels", but that's long and as stated earlier, it takes me a get to properly word what I mean.

[peterc3]

3 minutes ago, Kalthea said:

My issue is when I take Ember into a Grineer mission, and no matter what level they are, they get Damage Reduction to her fire simply because they have armor on that just reduces the damage they take overall.

Then you want to deal with that armor with the other parts of your loadout.

[Kalthea]

8 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Then you want to deal with that armor with the other parts of your loadout.

Yes, I know. As stated above, I use Corrosive and Viral on almost all of my weapons. I'm MR24, I know how to use weapons and loadouts properly. That's not what I'm saying though. Of course you want a well-rounded loadout to deal with pretty much any situation, or focused on what you're currently running. I'm not arguing that at all. My argument is that it's dumb for there to be any damage reduction on wibbly-wobbly magic abilities from creatures that are supposed to be the most powerful things in the universe, and it's even more dumb considering that in later content where those armors reach 80-90% reduction, you might as well just remove the damage from the abilities entirely. It sends a different message when you have abilities with damage on them, instead of just an effect proc.

EDIT: And before you respond with "But corrosive removes armor", I'm aware. Enemy health also scales higher and higher as you progress, which is the other reason for my issue. If I'm fighting a Corpus with 1 million HP, my 4K damage/second isn't going to really contribute more than my weapons would at that point, so it makes little sense to even bother providing it with DR on them.

Edited November 26, 2018 by Kalthea

[peterc3]

6 minutes ago, Kalthea said:

I'm not arguing that at all. My argument is that it's dumb for there to be any damage reduction on wibbly-wobbly magic abilities from creatures that are supposed to be the most powerful things in the universe, and it's even more dumb considering that in later content where those armors reach 80-90% reduction, you might as well just remove the damage from the abilities entirely. It sends a different message when you have abilities with damage on them, instead of just an effect proc.

Then there's no point to DE doing anything. Just give us infinite damage and enemies 1 HP. I mean, we are the most powerful creatures in the universe, so why bother with all this nonsense?

[Kalthea]

2 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Then there's no point to DE doing anything. Just give us infinite damage and enemies 1 HP. I mean, we are the most powerful creatures in the universe, so why bother with all this nonsense?

I'm talking only about the Warframe abilities. JUST the Warframe abilities. I'm not talking about guns, damage types, or any of that. I just don't see a reason for Damage Reduction to apply to Warframe Abilities, especially when some of those abilities do barely any damage anyway. If, as stated above, abilities are meant to be used a certain way simply because they don't deal damage at later points in the game, then why even bother having damage on them in the first place? Why not just put the proc in and have it as a part of the ability that it just applies that proc, instead of dealing nothing for damage anyway?

The "there's no point in DE doing anything" or "that's the way the devs want it" arguments don't stop you from thinking about the reasoning behind them, or the reasons why they have them the way they do. Honestly, I mostly just consider it to be a leftover from the damage reworks they did ages ago.

Let me simplify this as much as I possibly can, down into a single statement:

Warframes need to be balanced to stand on their own at later points in the game, or Armor needs to be balanced to not reduce damage so much.

Period. Full Stop. Etc.

No weapons involved. Of course weapons are going to carry you through stuff, they're you primary source of damage.

And no, I don't expect to run into a massive gaggle of Eximus Heavy Gunners at level 90 with no mods on and expect to survive for much longer than 5 seconds. But I also don't feel that the DR should be so high at that point that we aren't able to at least deal SOME damage to the enemies. Warframes should be able to stand on their own, alongside guns.

[MickThejaguar]

13 hours ago, Kalthea said:

For certain frames, it would be a great boon. Resonating Quake on Banshee, bleed ticks on Equinox, Oberon's 1 and 4 being actually usable.

While I have next no experience with Banshee and therefore cannot speak towards her, this change would have absolutely no effect on Equinox because slash procs ignore armor already. It's why she's one of the top nuking frames. As for Oberon, I play him extensively. He's a support debuffer/healer. He buffs ally armor, provides constant healing, cures status from allies, strips enemy armor, etc. He already does so much, he doesn't need to deal more damage. If you're building power strength on Oberon you're not doing it to increase his damage, you're doing it to increase his healing, armor buff, and armor stripping. His abilities do damage but his damage isn't his selling point.

13 hours ago, Kalthea said:

But then when it comes down to it, it could also cause issues, say with Saryn, where here damage is ramping up so hard that it just wipes people out completely (not that it isn't an issue for some already, just more exacerbated).

Congrats, you answered your own question. Doing this this would likely cause more harm than good. Warframes that are meant to be able to kill a wide spread group of enemies all have the tools to do so. We don't need the support frames ignoring armor to deal damage because that's not their job. 

[(PSN)Herrwann69]

The problem is not that some frames ability suffer of damage reduction, it's that not all frames suffer from it.

It's not a problem to have damage dealer type frame but it's a probleme when it's too much compare to the others.

[Kalthea]

7 hours ago, MickThejaguar said:

While I have next no experience with Banshee and therefore cannot speak towards her, this change would have absolutely no effect on Equinox because slash procs ignore armor already. It's why she's one of the top nuking frames. As for Oberon, I play him extensively. He's a support debuffer/healer. He buffs ally armor, provides constant healing, cures status from allies, strips enemy armor, etc. He already does so much, he doesn't need to deal more damage. If you're building power strength on Oberon you're not doing it to increase his damage, you're doing it to increase his healing, armor buff, and armor stripping. His abilities do damage but his damage isn't his selling point.

Congrats, you answered your own question. Doing this this would likely cause more harm than good. Warframes that are meant to be able to kill a wide spread group of enemies all have the tools to do so. We don't need the support frames ignoring armor to deal damage because that's not their job. 

Equinox is considered one of the best nuke frames in the game because of her re-cast 4 after building up damage from killing enemies, not from her slash procs. And while slash procs may "ignore armor", they in fact don't. The bleed tick does. It damages health directly. The slash proc itself is actually reduced by armor. In fact, Equinox's first cast of her 4 past level 60 is damn near useless, because if it damages an enemy within her range, they cannot get slash proc'd again. As for Oberon, I'm well aware that he's a support frame. And it may not be his job, but it still doesn't make sense to apply the DR when you have damage on the ability. Trinity is the perfect example of this, since the only way her abilities can deal damage is via Link, and that requires enemies to shoot her. You can make a full on support frame without the damage, so why bother putting damage on a frame that's supposed to be support?

7 hours ago, (PS4)Herrwann69 said:

The problem is not that some frames ability suffer of damage reduction, it's that not all frames suffer from it.

It's not a problem to have damage dealer type frame but it's a probleme when it's too much compare to the others.

This is kind of true. While it may seem like some frames completely ignore armor values, the fact is that they just do such a ludicrous amount of damage that those armor value may as well not even exist. The frames that come to mind with this are Mesa, Excalibur, Ivara, Titania, Valkyr, basically any frame that uses mods directly on their abilities, except for Ash because True Damage. Then there's Nidus, Garuda and even Gara with their damage ramp up that can go to extremely high levels. But in those examples, Nidus actually falls of far earlier than the other two, since his will cap out and DR applies to his 1.