Thumpers are... Where do I even start?

[lexandritte]

THE GOOD: They are miniboss enemy that can survive for longer than 15 seconds. It's good.

THE BAD: The damage reduction, the goddamn damage reduction on those things. I swear that my 300%+ PS Chroma at maximum buff doesn't increase my damage against them. Opticor blasts start at 500-700, they are still at 500-700 when buffed.

THE GOOD: Resource drops for kills! Good for people who don't like fishing or mining! (I like fishing and mining).

THE BAD: Economy got turned so upside down you barely need new resources anymore.

THE GOOD: They drop a new weapon blueprint!

THE BAD: Blueprint drop chance is 2.5% for medium thumper or 5% for the hardest. I'm pretty sure I'm over 30 mixed kills so far and still nothing. Also, weapons stats seem to be pretty average to warrant such a gate, I'm only farming for it for that sweet, sweet MR and 100% completion.

THE GOOD: Modular enemy design! Shoot it's turrets to temporarily disable them!

THE BAD: Good fooking luck shooting those legs. Especially solo. Especially when it's two rear legs. Especially because Thumper AI constantly tries to face you so you can never get a solid shot on two rear legs. And that's 50% of it's HP in those legs. 

I get that Thumpers were probably in development at the same time Exploiter was, and it was hard to change course after overwhelming positive feedback of Exploiter fight, but fighting Thumpers feels worse than fighting Profit Taker. There is literally a considerable change in the tone of fight when it gets to the point of "two rear legs remaining". Two front legs - sure, you tank, you hit the weakpoints, you try to max your damage with different loadouts, but the back two?

Constantly trying to operator dash or bullet jump through the fooker just to have start instantly spining around hiding that weakpoint from you.
You get the bead on the weakpoint only to have the fooker jump right on you.
It pauses giving you a shot? Good luck taking advatange of those 3 seconds of stillness, because it's winding up knockdown thumping session.

CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK: The easiest way I see making Thumpers more bearable right now is two steps:
1. Wind back that damage reduction a bit.
2. MAKE THEM PAUSE MORE OFTEN. The same way Profit Taker collapses when you take all her legs out, stopping it's attacks and giving you a shot at her exposed state, make Thumpers collapse for 10-15 seconds if we deal enough damage to their non-leg or non-HP-related bits, giving us a shot at those LOTUS-DAMNED REAR LEGS.

Harder way to fix Thumpers:
1. Make not have a "front" side. They have guns sticking out everywhere, change the AI so it can walk and attack you in any direction, not try to turn to face the aggro with the "front" side all the time. That way we can switch to whatever side we want to attack easier.

TL/DR:
Thumpers are annoying bulletsponges with teeny-tiny weakpoints that have way too much damage reduction, and apart from a MR-granting weapon that's locked in their loot table there's no reason to fight the frustration of fighting them.

Edited April 14, 2019 by lexandritte

[LSG501]

Main issues for me...

• the amount of turning they do, they have 3 or 4 directions to shoot from, 4 directions they could move but they constantly insist on turning to face us with one gun... in essence more annoying than engaging.
• The hit box on the leg also seems tiny considering the size of the bit we're trying to hit
• They also seem 'too fast' for what they are, they're big hulking walkers yet they can move around so fast it doesn't seem to fit the 'model' we're fighting. 

 

As an enemy they're pretty harmless though as you have archwing to shoot from above.

Biggest annoyance though, the commonly found tusk thumper doesn't seem to drop the bp for the weapon so were 'forced' to do bounties to get the higher level to trigger and even then the drop chance for the bp is stupidly low... I get it DE wants us to play bounties on PoE so it's not empty but not all of us want to or need to do bounties...

Edited April 14, 2019 by LSG501

[Firetempest]

I would say the AI having a "front" to the player would be the biggest problem for the thumper. That one change alone can be a world of difference.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

What exactly is the problem?

Kurrudo BP was a pain I'll give you that but they're not tough. I learnt while testing frames vs them that Nova makes it a cakewalk.

I think they're great fun. Want to hear an even better one? I spawned 1 today, started fighting it and a second one popped out of the ground... Fighting 2 at once on a Nekros (despoil works on them for epic loot) plus all the grineer reinforcements was great fun. I nearly died several times lol but thankfully managed to stay upright.

Edited April 14, 2019 by Zilchy

[HugintheCrow]

9 minutes ago, lexandritte said:

THE GOOD: They are miniboss enemy that can survive for longer than 15 seconds. It's good.

THE BAD: The damage reduction, the goddamn damage reduction on those things. I swear that my 300%+ PS Chroma at maximum buff doesn't increase my damage against them. Opticor blasts start at 500-700, they are still at 500-700 when buffed.

How can it be good and bad at the same time?

[lexandritte]

Just now, HugintheCrow said:

How can it be good and bad at the same time?

It's good because it's gives you a different kind of enemy, and variety is spice of life, it's bad because it's a bullet sponge solution and reason Thumpers are hard to kill at higher levels is not because they are a challenging enemy, but because they say "fook you" to the damage you try to deal at them.

[Aldain]

1 minute ago, HugintheCrow said:

How can it be good and bad at the same time?

Making a (mini)boss fight too long tends to reveal the design flaws of said boss, its a delicate balance that is hard to achieve between "This isn't even a boss" and "This is a boring, dangerless slog".

[Firetempest]

2 minutes ago, Zilchy said:

What exactly is the problem?

You bought a eldolon killer Riven Rubico to kill a sub boss for the *flex*?

[HugintheCrow]

1 minute ago, lexandritte said:

not because they are a challenging enemy

How do you make a "challenging enemy" in Warframe without remaking the entire damage system and nerfing scalings to the literal ground?

[Aldain]

Just now, Firetempest said:

You bought a eldolon killer Riven Rubico to kill a sub boss for the *flex*?

Zilchy means well (I think), but kinda doesn't get that many people don't have that level of killing power lying around in their orbiter.

[lexandritte]

5 minutes ago, Zilchy said:

What exactly is the problem? 

The problem is that after an excellent Exploiter Orb fight, that is an actual skill test and can be done by basically anyone with any loadout as long as they know what to do, we are falling back to "you need this gear and this armor-stripping and these meta mods and this loadout and these abilities and follow this easy 13-step plan to kill this boss in 2 minutes, otherwise have fun mashing your face against it for 10 minutes with a group of 4 people, hahaha you noobs."

[lexandritte]

1 minute ago, HugintheCrow said:

How do you make a "challenging enemy" in Warframe without remaking the entire damage system and nerfing scalings to the literal ground?

Exploiter Orb.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

13 hours ago, Firetempest said:

You bought a eldolon killer Riven Rubico to kill a sub boss for the *flex*?

It's honestly not necessary, I was using it because I was trying to find the fastest way of killing them for farming purposes. You're right, it's definitely overkill, catchmoon works very well against them too or basically any non-slash based high damage weapon. The more important part is using shattering impact to remove that chunky armour, allowing you to equip 1 damage type (radiation) and using focus abilities to slow it down, or a slow nova.

Edited April 15, 2019 by Zilchy

[-CdG-Zilchy]

1 minute ago, Aldain said:

Zilchy means well (I think), but kinda doesn't get that many people don't have that level of killing power lying around in their orbiter.

You don't honestly need it. The important part here is stripping the armour because the armour is ridiculous like OP said and as you can see I used Zenuriks temporal blast to slow it right down for easy shots.

As a comparison I need to use ammo pads with that eidolon killer if I don't strip the armour, it really matters.

[HugintheCrow]

1 minute ago, lexandritte said:

Exploiter Orb.

lol

I mean, I know I made a thread where I called it the best boss in the game, but I didn't mean it in this way.

Exploiter is fun, cool as hek with the narrative and feeling of the fight, but it's literally just a waiting game. I checked to see if I can win just by running around it and not doing anything, spoilers: I can.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

Tell ya what, when I get home I'll shelve the eidolon killer and use a lex prime on it. How's that sound? I'll record it for you, it's honestly all about the armour because it has robotic armour and alloy flesh meaning you can't bring 1 damage tyoe to wreck it. And it's important to slow it down with temporal blast.

[Aldain]

Just now, Zilchy said:

You don't honestly need it. The important part here is stripping the armour because the armour is ridiculous like OP said and as you can see I used Zenuriks temporal blast to slow it right down for easy shots.

As a comparison I need to use ammo pads with that eidolon killer if I don't strip the armour, it really matters.

Yeah just looked it up on the wiki, no wonder they need armor strip, they have the same design as the Wolf, all Alloy armor, both their armor and health...

Which of course translates into absurd DR...though unlike the Wolf they don't have natural DR stacked on top, which makes them slightly less of a pain by comparison.

[Annnoth]

9 minutes ago, lexandritte said:

Exploiter Orb.

Exploiter isnt really a challenge in my opinion. Outside of the first part with the rapid fire cannon it uses it poses almost no threat at all. 

It just takes time.

Edited April 14, 2019 by Annnoth

[-CdG-Zilchy]

3 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Yeah just looked it up on the wiki, no wonder they need armor strip, they have the same design as the Wolf, all Alloy armor, both their armor and health...

Which of course translates into absurd DR...though unlike the Wolf they don't have natural DR stacked on top, which makes them slightly less of a pain by comparison.

Yeh absolutely. I scanned them into the codex the second they came out and then made that vid theory crafting on farming them fast in my clan hence the eidolon killer lol. I'll make a vid with a lex prime when I jump on in the next hour.  It'll die a little slower but not much.

Edit: hmm the wiki's wrong they have robotic armour and alloy armour flesh which means 2 differen damage resistances annoyingly. Hence stripping it.  The temporal blast is very important to stop it swivelling constantly to look at you.

Edited April 14, 2019 by Zilchy

[Aldain]

Just now, Zilchy said:

Yeh absolutely. I scanned them into the codex the second they came out and then made that vid theory crafting on farming them fast in my clan hence the eidolon killer lol. I'll make a vid with a lex prime when I jump on in the next hour.  It'll die a little slower but not much.

That would likely help players a bit more, since the Lex Prime is pretty easy to obtain.

I just hope that DE doesn't overdo it with the "All Alloy Armor" enemies in the future.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

2 minutes ago, Aldain said:

That would likely help players a bit more, since the Lex Prime is pretty easy to obtain.

I just hope that DE doesn't overdo it with the "All Alloy Armor" enemies in the future.

Yeh it seems to be their thing. Don't worry, they don't like radiation much 🙂

[Aldain]

1 minute ago, Zilchy said:

Yeh it seems to be their thing. Don't worry, they don't like radiation much 🙂

-Magnetic damage cries in corner-

[-CdG-Zilchy]

17 minutes ago, lexandritte said:

The problem is that after an excellent Exploiter Orb fight, that is an actual skill test and can be done by basically anyone with any loadout as long as they know what to do, we are falling back to "you need this gear and this armor-stripping and these meta mods and this loadout and these abilities and follow this easy 13-step plan to kill this boss in 2 minutes, otherwise have fun mashing your face against it for 10 minutes with a group of 4 people, hahaha you noobs."

Well the difference here at least is that you can choose to go fàrm these things in public or a group and choose your loadout. You think I run around most missions with a sarpa and not my beloved guandao? Nope 🙂

[-CdG-Zilchy]

OP you missed an opportunity to do the good the bad and the ugly btw. I'm sad now.

[Blackwolfe]

5 minutes ago, Zilchy said:

OP you missed an opportunity to do the good the bad and the ugly btw. I'm sad now.

For me, the ugly would be that it everyone seems hellbent on killing these things during bounties 😛

Other than that I have nothing against thumpers in their current form.