About Proto shields

[evilChair]

The corpus are jello, and that leaves the grineer as the only faction that is genuinely challenging. The proto-shield category that already exists should be able to mend this. As a health category, proto-shields act like normal shields which... isn't the point, if they're supposed to be equivalent to alloy armour.

My proposal for a rework:

1) Proto-shields should overlay the entire health bar, the same way eidolon shields are a separate health bar that overlays the base one and prevents damage to base health.

2) Proto-shields should, just like eidolon shields, prevent toxin, gas and slash from circumventing regular shields, basically placing the enemies in a protective jar. As long as proto shields are up, there can be no such circumventions.

3) Once proto-shields are exhausted, the normal health bar is revealed. It is the usual 1/2 shields+1/2 flesh health bar. At this point, slash, gas, toxin can circumvent regular shields, as they do now. Any of those procs will apply only to protos, and if a proc destroys the proto-shield, it goes out and does not carry over to the regular shield/flesh health bar.

4) Proto-shields should have a shorter recharge pause and faster recharge. Magnetic procs will not half regular shields on proto-equipped units, but will instead only delay the recharge initiation.

5) Units with proto-shields should have visible shielding around them as a visual cue, and visuals and a sound of glass shattering to signal that they've been broken.

6) Proto shields should prevent one-hit kills. If you land a 1.5M red-crit on a mob with just 1 point of proto remaining, only the proto will go, and nothing else.

Opinions appreciated, be they friendly, hostile or word salads.

Edited October 6, 2019 by evilChair

[krc473]

18 minutes ago, evilChair said:

isn't the point, if they're supposed to be equivalent to alloy armour.

Who said they are? Why do the two factions need to have an equivalent difficulty level?

As to your suggestions:

• Why are options one and two sensible? You are giving enemies an immunity to stuff that they really don’t need. 
• Why are you making this this so complicated? You are saying give the enemies a barrier, their normal shields and health. Wouldn’t the proto-shield barrier just be the only shields they have?
• Magnetic procs are fairly useless as they are. You are suggestion further limitations to them. 
• I do like points five and six. 

[evilChair]

2 minutes ago, krc473 said:

Who said they are? Why do the two factions need to have an equivalent difficulty level?

As to your suggestions:

• Why are options one and two sensible? You are giving enemies an immunity to stuff that they really don’t need. 
• Why are you making this this so complicated? You are saying give the enemies a barrier, their normal shields and health. Wouldn’t the proto-shield barrier just be the only shields they have?
• Magnetic procs are fairly useless as they are. You are suggestion further limitations to them. 
• I do like points five and six. 

For one and two, the corpus are too squishy. Uranian grineer nodes are much more difficult that Plutonian ones, and that's a jump two planets ahead. Corpus enemies must have some kind of damage mitigation that can't be sidestepped, the same way grineer armour reduces all damage. For my #3, I suggest that because proto shields are relatively rare and should be used by high-ranking enemies such combae, scrambi, bursas. We shouldn't be allowed to off a bursa head-on with a gas-based vanilla Lex. Let's maintain a challenge. What I said for magnetic damage should only apply to proto-shielded units. I placed that there in order to make sure that you will have to use magnetic to get through tougher corpus waves, that is to say, to give magnetic damage something to be used against. The same would also preclude the usage of viral and rad on most weapons which don't have it as an intrinsic damage type (like the hema). In this way, magnetic and impact would be relevant again, and we would finally be forced to differentiate between anti-corpus (impact/slash 50/50+toxin+electric) and infested (slash+gas) loadouts.

The grineer have good faction design because their main strength is damage reduction. The corpus are squishy as they are and their main strength should be varied damage resistances. Ideally, the corpus would still have resilience traded away for a more complicated playstyle; the grineer would be somewhere in the middle with impact+rad or corrosive, being fought with raw firepower and some cover-taking; the infested even now require the simplest of loadouts and depend on sheer numbers to pose a threat. The whole point of the post is to make corpus enemies a legitimate enemy-type.

[krc473]

39 minutes ago, evilChair said:

I placed that there in order to make sure that you will have to use magnetic to get through tougher corpus waves, that is to say, to give magnetic damage something to be used against.

I get that is the idea, but do you actually think it would happen? Why do I want to slow the regeneration of a shield when I can kill the enemy instantly after the shield goes?

• Shields cannot recharge while being hit. So all we need is a rapid fire, high crit weapon and there is no need for Magnetic at all. You prevent the regeneration by shooting, then kill the enemy in two seconds after the shield drops. 

41 minutes ago, evilChair said:

The grineer have good faction design because their main strength is damage reduction.

I was of the impression that this was considered bad and DE was looking into ways to 'fix' it. Apparently the exponential growth of Armour scaling is not the best model, and may get replaced at a later date. 

43 minutes ago, evilChair said:

The whole point of the post is to make corpus enemies a legitimate enemy-type.

But who actually wants that? Remember how OV Corpus were strong and actually able to kill you? People complained and they got nerfed. Many people just don't seem to want harder enemies. 

• I don't think you will achieve the goal with these suggestions. As you said, a very limited number of Corpus use Proto-shields. How will this make the Corpus faction as a whole more challenging? If the enemies are rare it is not going to make a difference.

[(NSW)ToadBlue]

2 hours ago, krc473 said:

I was of the impression that this was considered bad and DE was looking into ways to 'fix' it. Apparently the exponential growth of Armour scaling is not the best model, and may get replaced at a later date. 

The idea of "Grineer wear armor to reduce incoming damage" is good, it gives them flavor and identity as a faction, it presents an obstacle to overcome. It's the numbers involved that have turned out to be screwy and in need of a rework. Corpus on the other hand present shields as an obstacle, but... they aren't. They're weak, almost beneath notice.

2 hours ago, krc473 said:

But who actually wants that? Remember how OV Corpus were strong and actually able to kill you? People complained and they got nerfed. Many people just don't seem to want harder enemies. 

OV Corpus spammed knockdowns, nullifiers, and hit far harder than their levels suggested they should. They still weren't tough to kill once you got around all that, with a couple of exceptions (those Trencher jerks can really soak it up). They were just extremely annoying, but that's just how the open-world enemies are designed; I loathe the Tusk Grineer just as much.

Corpus in general are a cakewalk compared to the Grineer, despite supposedly being more intelligent and having more sophisticated technology. The Grineer and the Corpus are the two major factions of the star system, shouldn't they be on relatively equal footing?

On a side note, I find it a little strange that Elite Lancers get upgraded Alloy Armor, but Elite Crewmen still use normal Shields, not Proto Shields. And it's only a marginally bigger shield, too.

[Avienas]

9 minutes ago, (NSW)ToadBlue said:

The idea of "Grineer wear armor to reduce incoming damage" is good, it gives them flavor and identity as a faction, it presents an obstacle to overcome. It's the numbers involved that have turned out to be screwy and in need of a rework. Corpus on the other hand present shields as an obstacle, but... they aren't. They're weak, almost beneath notice.

Honestly if all the factions were designed correctly, Grineer would be the durable ones but not have a bunch of frustrating tricks on them, but they have noxes, the kavat ladies, the F-ing bombards, heavy gunners, butchers, etc.

While on the other hand Corpus should be squishie, but have the tricky parts, which they do in the form of bursas, nullifiers, ospreys (especially MINE ONES), etc. Which would balance them out properly.

If everything had some absurd damage resistance gimmick then i would like to say warframe would lose `plenty` of players because people are not a fan of damage sponges in a game where your normally suppose to be killing hundreds of them every rotation of a endless mission or so. Especially when said damage sponges have the ability to destroy you even before hitting level 30, mostly because they have the ability to straight up negate warframe abilities and barely shrink to gunfire unless you hound on them or they can just auto lock you and put you in a auto cc`d position for a great number of seconds with you being unable to flip outta it or maybe do a roll to counter the grapple to fking fling the turd instead!

9 minutes ago, (NSW)ToadBlue said:

Corpus in general are a cakewalk compared to the Grineer, despite supposedly being more intelligent and having more sophisticated technology. The Grineer and the Corpus are the two major factions of the star system, shouldn't they be on relatively equal footing?

Again, Corpus have some of the most frustrating elements between the nullifiers, Osprey grenades, those skating turds even if they got revamped a bit, bursas and some other elements. They get to screw people over with tricky stuff that would likely let them bull-doze the grineer if said grineer did not have ridiculous damage resistance to middle finger tech while also having their own batch of easy killer mobs if they aren`t getting bulldozed by a flying tenno who just spin slashes their heads off after being stacked up by a blood rush build or something similar after killing 30 other squishier`neers.

9 minutes ago, (NSW)ToadBlue said:

On a side note, I find it a little strange that Elite Lancers get upgraded Alloy Armor, but Elite Crewmen still use normal Shields, not Proto Shields. And it's only a marginally bigger shield, too.

Honestly instead of fussing about why corpus are not as durable as grineer and without thinking about the fact that would make nullifiers even more ridiculously frustrating to deal with. You should honestly be more focused on asking questions to have d.e. rebalance how enemy E-health works so they would be around the same as the tenno while weapons were balanced around such also so things like self-damage could not just be insta-kill stuff and it would be easier for people to manage things with numbers all kept in a more constrained digit value then us having to reach 10k~100k+ numbers once enemies start getting in the level 40~80 region just so we can keep a consistent kill speed on loads of foes.

I mean if we get into the LORE bit, Grineer should honestly have absurdly low health pools due to being deteriorated clones so soon as a good deal of the armor is taken off, they should be the ones that should die rather fast. With probably Corpus having more durability since they have a shield to eat most of the damage they can take before they get to die off next.

[Steel_Rook]

11 hours ago, evilChair said:

1) Proto-shields should overlay the entire health bar, the same way eidolon shields are a separate health bar that overlays the base one and prevents damage to base health.

2) Proto-shields should, just like eidolon shields, prevent toxin, gas and slash from circumventing regular shields, basically placing the enemies in a protective jar. As long as proto shields are up, there can be no such circumventions.

Bit of an aside, but both of these are an illusion. Eidolon shields overlapping their health is just a cosmetic change in how those are represented. Due to the size of Eidolon shield and health pools, using the entire bar for both makes it easier to see your attacks making a dent. Additionally, due to how Eidolon stages work it's easier to track shields and health. Additionally, Eidolon shields don't block status effects. The Eidolon itself is simply immune to them altogether, like a lot of bosses. I know that's not the entirety of your post, but don't get hung up on cosmetic implementation.

 

11 hours ago, evilChair said:

4) Proto-shields should have a shorter recharge pause and faster recharge. Magnetic procs will not half regular shields on proto-equipped units, but will instead only delay the recharge initiation.

I'm of the opinion that shield recharge delay should simply be removed altogether, for both players and enemies. I'd say up the recharge, as well. Shields as a whole are a broadly pointless mechanic in Warframe. Armour doesn't affect them, they don't come in large numbers and recharge is pretty slow. Unless your name is Mag, Harrow or Hyldrin, you might as well not even bother with shields. As I'm against giving damage resistance to shields, the only practical alternative is to make them a VERY fast-recharging extra health pool such that people can break sight with enemies to regain shields without having to suck on their thumb for 10-15 seconds. This also makes shield-capable enemies a lot tougher to kill since you need to out-damage their shield regen, which for tougher shields and especially bosses would NOT be trivial.

While we're at it, I'd shift the majority of Corpus Crewmen health TO shields, with health being only a small portion. I'd also pull any and all armour from ANYWHERE on the faction, including minibosses and Oxium Ospreys. Let Corpus Proxies rely on their Robotic health and large shield pool. Armour is a Grineer thing and should only ever show up on them.

[Test-995]

Honestly, i don't really think corpus are lesser than grineers, indeed they are much less tanky but they have lot more utilities and damage.

 

[(NSW)ToadBlue]

9 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

While we're at it, I'd shift the majority of Corpus Crewmen health TO shields, with health being only a small portion.

Wouldn't that just encourage more Toxin/Viral builds to bypass the shields?

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, (NSW)ToadBlue said:

Wouldn't that just encourage more Toxin/Viral builds to bypass the shields?

I should have probably mentioned that I'm generally against status effects circumventing protection. I dislike Slash dealing True damage (it should just deal a Slash DOT) just as I dislike Toxic bypassing shields. I don't see what Viral has to do with this, however, as viral only modifies health without reducing it permanently, unless I misunderstand how it works.

And before I forget - this is a bit of a suggestion I've had in the past. Another part was giving the Infested similar regenerating health. As part of that proposal, I suggested Viral be changed to halt health regeneration rather than reduce overall health. Generally speaking, I find Warframe to have far too many damage types and status effects when only a few of them are really practical.

Edited October 7, 2019 by Steel_Rook

[(NSW)ToadBlue]

30 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I should have probably mentioned that I'm generally against status effects circumventing protection. I dislike Slash dealing True damage (it should just deal a Slash DOT) just as I dislike Toxic bypassing shields. I don't see what Viral has to do with this, however, as viral only modifies health without reducing it permanently, unless I misunderstand how it works.

And before I forget - this is a bit of a suggestion I've had in the past. Another part was giving the Infested similar regenerating health. As part of that proposal, I suggested Viral be changed to halt health regeneration rather than reduce overall health. Generally speaking, I find Warframe to have far too many damage types and status effects when only a few of them are really practical.

I was under the impression that Viral bypassed shields same as Toxin but it looks like I was mistaken.

Slash dealing True damage is probably why it's part of the meta. I know trying to change that to a DOT would definitely incite a riot, but it would help make it less superior to the other options. And infested with regenerating health, that could offer an interesting change to them, as they are especially squishy.

[Steel_Rook]

18 minutes ago, (NSW)ToadBlue said:

Slash dealing True damage is probably why it's part of the meta. I know trying to change that to a DOT would definitely incite a riot, but it would help make it less superior to the other options. And infested with regenerating health, that could offer an interesting change to them, as they are especially squishy.

Yeah, I assume there would be hell to pay if the Slash proc started doing actual Slash damage rather than True damage which isn't affected by health classes. Like you, however, I'm of the opinion that this would be a minimum first step towards balancing health, damage and armour values. The more crutches that exist to bypass a broken system, the more resistant that system is to change.

As to the Infested - yup. While they're pretty good at disrupting player abilities via energy drain, I find the Infested to be the squishiest, least dangerous faction with very little threat to offer that a decent AoE gun won't fix. Giving them regenerating health such that players have to consistently deal damage to them - especially to the larger, tougher units - could make them a bit more resilient without leaning SO heavily into Ancient Healer 90% damage resistance.

Honestly, I have a problem with Warframe's Damage 2.0 system altogether. As I said - I find there are far too many damage types, far too many status effects, far too many ways to game it for the system to really do much of anything. I feel a simpler, more limited system where each individual choice actually matters would be superior... But that's a lot of work and likely to face a lot of backlash.

[Cloudyvisage]

 

6 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Yeah, I assume there would be hell to pay if the Slash proc started doing actual Slash damage rather than True damage which isn't affected by health classes. Like you, however, I'm of the opinion that this would be a minimum first step towards balancing health, damage and armour values. The more crutches that exist to bypass a broken system, the more resistant that system is to change.

As to the Infested - yup. While they're pretty good at disrupting player abilities via energy drain, I find the Infested to be the squishiest, least dangerous faction with very little threat to offer that a decent AoE gun won't fix. Giving them regenerating health such that players have to consistently deal damage to them - especially to the larger, tougher units - could make them a bit more resilient without leaning SO heavily into Ancient Healer 90% damage resistance.

Honestly, I have a problem with Warframe's Damage 2.0 system altogether. As I said - I find there are far too many damage types, far too many status effects, far too many ways to game it for the system to really do much of anything. I feel a simpler, more limited system where each individual choice actually matters would be superior... But that's a lot of work and likely to face a lot of backlash.

I don't know if I agree with giving any infested health regen, the infested seem to be chaff except for their special units, I like the idea that the unique units are the real power behind them, chargers, crawlers, leapers and the like should remain as chaff but when another infested is nearby they can be more dangerous, basically, if the infested were all like the ancient, providing a bonus to everything else, this would make them easy to deal with in small managed numbers but more difficult once they start crowding you.

As an example, the infested moa can apply an armor value to it's allies right now, this is interesting and clever, on top of it hanging back and providing traps and inconveniences to you. The healer provides an aoe damage reduction buff to all allies nearby that is significant, it also heals itself a little based on damage dealt to it's allies. The disruptor I'm not so sure about, he appears to apply a buff that reduces ability damage it's allies take + plus maybe electric damage? The toxic ancient I'm also not positive on as I'm usually much more focused on killing it before I accidentally walk into it's instadeath toxin attack at the wrong moment. I'd like it if the interconnectivity of these abilities was heightened.

As for shield regen being constant, I love that idea, it would make shield regen a stat that means something (It would be analogous to armor for health) and would make shield builds apply at all. At the moment I quite like my capacitance volt because his 4 makes it so that I functionally have constant shield regen of about a thousand shields a second which does wonders for my survivability. It wouldn't prevent you from being blown up by something that was going to kill you nearly instantly anyway and it fits the shields intended use, damage mitigation to your health from smaller constant amounts of damage. Armor is what prevents you from being one-shot, shields are what prevent you from being whittled down.

[(NSW)ToadBlue]

11 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Yeah, I assume there would be hell to pay if the Slash proc started doing actual Slash damage rather than True damage which isn't affected by health classes. Like you, however, I'm of the opinion that this would be a minimum first step towards balancing health, damage and armour values. The more crutches that exist to bypass a broken system, the more resistant that system is to change.

As to the Infested - yup. While they're pretty good at disrupting player abilities via energy drain, I find the Infested to be the squishiest, least dangerous faction with very little threat to offer that a decent AoE gun won't fix. Giving them regenerating health such that players have to consistently deal damage to them - especially to the larger, tougher units - could make them a bit more resilient without leaning SO heavily into Ancient Healer 90% damage resistance.

Honestly, I have a problem with Warframe's Damage 2.0 system altogether. As I said - I find there are far too many damage types, far too many status effects, far too many ways to game it for the system to really do much of anything. I feel a simpler, more limited system where each individual choice actually matters would be superior... But that's a lot of work and likely to face a lot of backlash.

If giving Infested a strong regeneration factor meant changing Ancient Healers' aura to something like a regeneration boost instead of 90% DR, I would be entirely for it.

[Steel_Rook]

12 hours ago, Cloudyvisage said:

I don't know if I agree with giving any infested health regen, the infested seem to be chaff except for their special units, I like the idea that the unique units are the real power behind them, chargers, crawlers, leapers and the like should remain as chaff but when another infested is nearby they can be more dangerous, basically, if the infested were all like the ancient, providing a bonus to everything else, this would make them easy to deal with in small managed numbers but more difficult once they start crowding you.

By that same token, however, giving the Infested cannon fodder inherent health regeneration isn't going to make much of a difference, though. They have barely any health, so regenerating health isn't going to stop people from one-shotting them. It's only when a Moa or an Ancient shows up and gives them extra survivability via healing or damage resistance that that health regen is going to start really stacking up. I'm OK with the Infested being designed as mostly insignificant units with a few larger more important units which debuff the player and buff their own allies, and health regen would just help highlight that difference, I think.

 

12 hours ago, Cloudyvisage said:

As for shield regen being constant, I love that idea, it would make shield regen a stat that means something (It would be analogous to armor for health) and would make shield builds apply at all. At the moment I quite like my capacitance volt because his 4 makes it so that I functionally have constant shield regen of about a thousand shields a second which does wonders for my survivability. It wouldn't prevent you from being blown up by something that was going to kill you nearly instantly anyway and it fits the shields intended use, damage mitigation to your health from smaller constant amounts of damage. Armor is what prevents you from being one-shot, shields are what prevent you from being whittled down.

That was my goal with the proposal, yes. Armour + Health gives the player a lot of EHP and the ability to absorb massive hits, but that in itself offers fairly little sustain. You have to find your own means of healing. My shields proposal would leave players with a fairly low but constantly-recharging EHP pool, effectively gating player survival behind an enemy DPS-check. If they can't outdamage your shield regen by a significant amount, you recover faster than they damage you and so remain safe. Just like an Inaros armour build has to watch out of Puncture-wielding Nullifier snipers, however, so a high-shield build has to watch out for Magnetic procs which would - under the new system - either shut down or at least debuff shield regeneration.

This kind of system would also give shield-focused Warframes a different dynamic, as well. Where health-focused ones might absorb a lot of damage but then be saddled with a lot of healing (the example being an Inaros heaily 8000 HP with Devour, then another 3000 HP for Scarab Armour), shield-focused Warframes fighting overwhelming odds could absorb a moderate amount of damage, break line of sight or block for a few seconds, then jump back into the fray. It should make for a bit more of a health yo-yo which needs to be managed and a bit more of a different playstyle, I think.

 

7 hours ago, (NSW)ToadBlue said:

If giving Infested a strong regeneration factor meant changing Ancient Healers' aura to something like a regeneration boost instead of 90% DR, I would be entirely for it.

Agreed. I recognise the need for Ancient Healers, but the damage resistance they offer is just silly. I'd personally like to drop that stat significantly - say to 25-50% - but supplement it with health regeneration. Then again, I feel that "large" Infested units like Moas and Ancients really shouldn't be affecting each other. Let them buff the rank-and-file Infested which come in large numbers, but don't let them buff other Infested, Boilers, Brood Mothers, etc. As it stands right now, fighting the Infested turns into a high-speed game of Where's Waldo. OK, I see seven identical Ancients, two of them are Healers. Can I guess which ones before I die? I STILL don't know which type of Ancient Exiumus is the healing one. Is it the Sanguine?

Point being - yes, I'd like to reduce the Infested's reliance on Ancient Healers.