New Melee Changes, CO Going The Wrong Direction

[(PSN)Crixus044]

A couple hours ago, we received the newest Dev Workshop, regarding melee. The new update brought many changes to Combos, fluidity and reach. These are all fantastic changes and will definitely improve the functionality and feel of melee. While these changes have been for the better, they have certainly had their fair share of Nerfs. Some nerves are fine, but the way they're implemented is certainly far from ideal. Condition overload, bloodrush, and weeping wounds are the three biggest offenders of this issue. Here will be laid out possible results from these changes or at least a very close estimate to it it looks to be.

Condition overload:

According to the changes laid down in a workshop, condition overload is going to be limited to 3 procs. It currently gives +60% to melee damage for every proc, stacking multiplicatively. This means that the current amounts, the maximum both you may obtain is 1.6^3, which is 4.096x damage. This is still very strong for single mod, but the method of implementation and the proposed changes seem to be off. The de workshop speaks of increasing the percentage. This is done to compensate the loss of damage from current builds. The issue comes that most people stack an average a 4-5 procs at the most. The amount of damage that would be offered at 4 procs would equal an increase of the mods percentage to roughly 88%. Doubling the mods current effect would mean a damage buff equal to 5 procs of its current form.

Balance wise, this is fine, but the implementation seems to be incorrect. By increasing percentage and decreasing the number of procs required, button mashing is promoted, whereas using your entire kit and Synergy to maximize damage it's going to the Wayside. Strategy is a diminishing aspect of the game. This is most prevalent on Veterans and more astute players. The game has just implemented a weapon swap system that makes transition from Gunplay to melee very smooth, but what we see here is a regression from that idea. Currently, most players will use the primary and secondary weapon to put in some damage, armor strip, and stack procs for their melee. This level of synergy should be promoted. Thus, if power output needs to be diminished, promote it through synergy, not making it easier to get maximum output through simple button presses. Most builds already contain 4 damage types ( 3 from IPS and 1 elemental). Of those four, three are most likely to contribute to condition overload. Thus, this changes nothing. If anything, you have buffed condition overload.

Blood Rush:

With the advent of higher combo counters, bloodrush and its current form would have received a massive buff. It already has a decent amount of power, so a decrease in percentage would most likely be fine. Most builds stack up to 4x on the combo counter scale. This means that most builds receive a crit chance multiplier of 7.6x (1+1.65*4=7.6). If you were to decrease the amount to 110%, then at a 6x combo counter (assumed to be achievable), there will be a Net Zero gain. This is strictly dependent on how high of a combo counter we can achieve. More information will have to be disclosed on this. Considering the time span, this info should have been released already.

Maiming Strike:

Can I get an F? I have no issue with this change. Slide attacks already receive a damage bonus and easily spammed. Maiming strike only made this tactic more prevalent, but it was always strong, even before the mod came out. It appears that this change will make it work off base crit chance. For most weapons, this will be a very subtle nerf. The reason being that it is receiving a significant percentage buff. Atterax is a very common weapon for maiming strike. Effectively, the current mod is a buff of roughly +360% crit chance to its base. If maiming strike where to receive a buff to +200%, then on weapons like atterax, the nerf will be nigh irrelevant. On weapons like scoliac and other Low crit chance weapons, this is a massive Nerf. I assume the base damage buff will account for this, at least i hope. If it is a strict base damage multiplier across the board, that should be fine too. The developers appear to be against slide spam. A proposed fix to that would be to limit the speed at which you can do slide attacks. This is a topic for another post.

Enduring Affliction:

This mod is extremely fun to use. I would like it's mechanic to remain as is, even if activation of it changes. 

That's my full rundown of these changes, with the information given. Overall, not much to go off, but we need to make sure we go into this with the right goal in mind.

[(NSW)Katsuro]

just wait until they roll out the final stats for melee then use feedback

[Avienas]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

Snippage~

Wow you did NOT take the time to properly read the stuff did you?

• Condition Overload- They stated they are going to BUFF how much damage each stack will give to compensate for the `stack cap`, which this is actually a massive benefit cause it pushes towards one of the greater things i wanted D.E. to do: Take Steps to Create Space for Mod Build Setups, because people are not so concerned on setting up as many status types as possible on builds, this allows people to focus more on building up the raw damage to the weapons, which if the Skana post-rework change was a good example, weapons are probably going get a rough 3x times increase on base damage to compensate for combo counter finally being moved over to the heavy attack. Never the less, this also means weapons that only have Single damage element types will be able to thrive better on Condition Overload, since the number of status procs for maximum effective ness will be easier to achieve. Sure your making it sound like they need to basically double the damage potential or so, but since again, raw damage bases will greatly increase it and since people can stack more raw damage to specific elements then sacrificing slots for an extra single or dual elemental, then that can mean even better value. Especially with old channeling mods having some impressive boons that the extra mod space could be used for, such as quickening for attack speed over heavy attack focus and focus energy being a better pick for raw electrical damage and aiming for those delicious heavy attack SLAMS.

 

• Blood Rush- VERY SURE, based on the notes it sounds like they are going to give a special combo counter that is separate from the new heavy attack combo counter to basically let blood rush keep its presence. Plus they are likely going to give a CHUNKY duration boost to compensate since it likely will no longer be affected by naramon or drifting contact mods which the latter will likely end up meaning builds will get an extra slot free, meaning better building such as cramming sacrificial steel into more builds, meaning blood rush higher critical stacking, in addition to whatever the Exilus-weapon slot will cover, which i would not be amazed of Body count & Drifting contact will have room in those slots. Honestly, i stopped with my polearm blood rush mania+maiming strike frenzy gags a long time ago and now just stick to using a zaw with C.O. for fun-sies. So getting to get rid of the cold mod i use on it for that 5th or so bonus status is a nice boon, just as getting an extra slot or two freed up to put other useful mods in weapon build placements, especially my focus farming sticks/whips.

 

• Maiming Strike- For bloody cripes sakes, if a weapon has SHEET for critical chance, you should not be trying to finger it with something like Maiming strike to FORCE it to work. Honestly i rather like that Maiming strike will be gunning towards a  stackable buff that scales off the critical chance of a weapon, since it means it has a PLACE, instead of being a fits everything meme-age thing. Just as i have said in the previous 2 points, anything that creates reason to help build diversity is a blessing in my opinion, since it basically means people can have more fun finding builds they want to enjoy instead of just one-trick ponying everything. I mean, the fact we will be able to do things like a special heavy attack or use `launcher` attacks to REALLY pull some crazy DMC stuff and they even gave us a status effect to enjoy slowing enemies long enough for us to combo whale on them and mix in gunplay likely to boot? Oh and the fact they are doing things to snip at `rag dolling bits` to where i might even get to enjoy slamming the ground to lift enemies up then do a aerial mother fking spin, sounds way loads better then doing a marco-style spam pirouette o doom.

 

• Enduring Affliction- We already have something much more efficient,its called Lasting Sting, basically makes status effects last +110% longer period, sure the Affliction i assume will `reset and stack up`, but honestly if you are trying to do the same as a spam of shattering impact on a mob, then clearly you are trying to use some no-damage, skana build and trying to bleed every enemy out with slash, which anything that is below 50 will likely died in one shot or so and you still have to do it to the next 30 or so enemies again and again. Unless there was a status effect that gradually increase the drop chance of loot or credits over time, i see no point of this mod period, Just like the same sense as the mod known as Rifle Aptitude existing, which gives +15% `multiplicative` status chance, which we have LOADS of gold mods who do that way better and who really wants to avoid building elemental damage on your weapon load outs?

Overall: I enjoy for the most part on alot of the shifts on these mods since it greatly improved the potential power they bring, Quickening being the new Gladiator Vice, Spring-Loaded Blade will have 3 stacks possible of it meaning it likely will be the Augur Secrets/Message/etc. for the Reach mods in a PROPER way. Heck i even dig how Dispatch Overdrive will work now, because heavy attacks will be easier to achieve meaning speedster lovers can just do some dynamic entry directional heavy attack and then enjoy the speed boost, without really having to KILL an enemy, where the old one required channel kills. Just some of the tweaks shown without seeing the actual stats already opened up loads of opportune mod space and even better smoothed out setups, especially if we have weapons getting a sizable range increase to the BASE values to trade off for the tweaks to range mods which also might even have some scaling tweaks based on what weapons the mod is equipped to, so things like stacking range mods will be maybe even less necessary to optimize builds for particular weapons, which again to my point: Means more mod space to put other things in that could likely give more potential effective-ness to the weapon overall.

Edited October 19, 2019 by Avienas

[(XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom]

2 hours ago, Avienas said:

Enduring Affliction- We already have something much more efficient,its called Lasting Sting, basically makes status effects last +110% longer period,

Do yourself a favor and read the wiki page on enduring affliction and you’ll realize it’s effect is different from lasting sting. 

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Enduring_Affliction

Edited October 19, 2019 by (XB1)TheWayOfWisdom

[(PSN)Crixus044]

2 hours ago, Avienas said:

Condition Overload- They stated they are going to BUFF how much damage each stack will give to compensate for the `stack cap`, which this is actually a massive benefit cause it pushes towards one of the greater things i wanted D.E. to do: Take Steps to Create Space for Mod Build Setups, because people are not so concerned on setting up as many status types as possible on builds,

This makes absolutely 0 sense and I stated why. You didn't take the time to read it properly did you?

 

3 hours ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

Most builds already contain 4 damage types ( 3 from IPS and 1 elemental). Of those four, three are most likely to contribute to condition overload. Thus, this changes nothing. If anything, you have buffed condition overload.

Nothing will change. People going for maximum status stacking on a single weapon where already gimping themselves, that is a terrible idea. Optimized builds were always set up this way. Weapons with less damage types made up for that fact by having higher concentration of procs, like twin basolk, so it evened out. Also, as i stated, if you were a strategic player, you would've realized that you could easily swap weapons to build procs and swap back for damage.

Basically, your argument is that it stops people from doing what they shouldn't have been doing anyways, which is double down. They should be enticing loadout creativity instead of simple caps.

2 hours ago, Avienas said:

VERY SURE, based on the notes it sounds like they are going to give a special combo counter that is separate from the new heavy attack combo counter to basically let blood rush keep its presence. Plus they are likely going to give a CHUNKY duration boost to compensate since it likely will no longer be affected by naramon or drifting contact mods which the latter will likely end up meaning builds will get an extra slot free,

Show me exactly where they said they'll have an exclusive combo counter, otherwise you're just guessing. 

2 hours ago, Avienas said:

Maiming Strike- 

Dude what are you on about? You're ranting in my thread about stuff i didn't say.

2 hours ago, Avienas said:

We already have something much more efficient,its called Lasting Sting, basically makes status effects last +110% longer period,

As stated before, this is completely false and I urge you to do some playtesting on this mod before you make assertions.

Edited October 19, 2019 by (PS4)Crixus044

[Avienas]

1 hour ago, (XB1)TheWayOfWisdom said:

Do yourself a favor and read the wiki page on enduring affliction and you’ll realize it’s effect is different from lasting sting. 

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Enduring_Affliction

The point is you just straight up increase the status effect durations without needing to use channeling & constantly baby-sitting it, to increase the duration by hitting it constantly, which unless you are trying to multi-stack slash procs on a boss that will let you constantly hit it, would have next to no use for it. Plus if its a regular enemy, you are likely going to kill it with quite a bit sooner before slash procs can bring a fast enough benefit to kill something, Unless you are fighting noxes or bombards. Either way, both mods, pre-melee phase 2 rework, are still quite useless in most `musou killing simulators`, where the name of the game is to kill enemies fast, not torture them to death because the enemies are somehow magically a bunch of Wolf of Saturn Sixes, but you can apply status effects to them, (too bad we got Ash Fatal Teleport and other similar finisher cheese still to ruin that potential).

1 hour ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

This makes absolutely 0 sense and I stated why. You didn't take the time to read it properly did you?

Its simple, the less mods people have to cram in to get as many types of status debuffs on a enemy on their melee weapon, the more space they can have to instead stack the same elemental damage mod or utility mods to greatly benefit whatever melee weapon you are using for your condition overload setup. Plus since we are getting KUVA LICH VARIANT WEAPONS down the line, which open up the potential to cram innate elemental status chances, making it even easier to aim for the elemental bonus and have more mod space for other things.

Quote

Nothing will change. People going for maximum status stacking on a single weapon where already gimping themselves, that is a terrible idea. Optimized builds were always set up this way. Weapons with less damage types made up for that fact by having higher concentration of procs, like twin basolk, so it evened out. Also, as i stated, if you were a strategic player, you would've realized that you could easily swap weapons to build procs and swap back for damage.

If a person has to waste a weapon slot to use a weapon for a AIDS gun to get a large amount of status effects on a SINGLE enemy so thar melee weapon can hit hard enough to kill something, then your building wrong. Most melee setups that use status builds currently look like this:

1. Pressure point(or a variant of it)
2. Reach(or Primed)
3. Fury(or its Primed ver or Berserker if its crit is decent enough)
4. 2 Elemental mods (Gold ver usually for high proc chance)
5. Condition Overload
6. Bonus status chance mod to maximize Condition overload, If first 2 makes corrosive, you likely are gonna use a cold one for its slow debuff and to reach that 5th status effect.

Honestly there is actually a downside to having too many damage types on a weapon because it can mess up damage distribution and what not a bit. Granted i do not normally try to memorize these things, but the basic idea is if you want a weapon to mainly be spamming out Slash procs or a certain elemental damage type, you have to make sure it has a huge % in comparison to the other damage type values. 

Quote

Show me exactly where they said they'll have an exclusive combo counter, otherwise you're just guessing. 

 

Blood Rush - Will now scale differently, *****using a stacking multiplier based on the Combo Counter*****, raising (X)% per Combo Counter tier (something much easier to achieve in Phase 2). We will provide the final % pending more testing. 

Granted i GUESS i could be reading that section a tad too strong, but it would likely make sense that they would completely dissociate the mod from the new `heavy attack counter`, since most would likely not enjoy losing the entire combo counter every time they do a heavy attack. But since base damage is GREATLY INCREASING, it kind of is going to spike blood rush even if they nerfed it a tad too. 

Oh also lets not forget that they also mentioned changing arcanes, especially zaw ones, to give benefits that buff Lifted Status, Heavy attack, & Combo Counter Modifiers.

Quote

Dude what are you on about? You're ranting in my thread about stuff i didn't say.

You pretty much were throwing a fit that maiming strike will not grant its auto crit via +90% additive bonus anymore, which honestly, once a weapon has around 20% to 35% base crit after mod applying, Already hits between 53% to 92.75% crit chance on the first `tier` of combo counter damage bonus, via blood rush, it kind of does not need that initial auto crit as much anymore and mostly just serves to quick jump start higher tier crits a bit earlier. Though it likely depends on interaction, if maiming strike applies as a post-stacking multiplicative bonus after blood rush, this can pretty much mean it can get even to much more ABSURD LEVELS.

Which also means that Gladiator set mods and likely the change to whichever exodia arcane gets the combo counter bonus(since faster stacking= better civ then just adding roughly 1/4th to half of what blood rush would apply via the Helios `melee mod cheese`), will able to further stack it much quicker, meaning maiming strike will benefit more, whether its applying BEFORE blood rush combo counter affects it or AFTERwards where it applies its own effect after blood rush`s combo counter bonus.

Quote

As stated before, this is completely false and I urge you to do some playtesting on this mod before you make assertions.

You can test everything in simulacrum however long you want, but you are not dealing with stationary targets, your dealing with enemies constantly pouring in on maps that are never a repeat of the same map in every piece of content. If you have to take the time to unload a bunch of status effects on a single enemy just to kill it, you would be better off going with a blood rush build and have a high stacking combo counter and just brutalize thru the enemies with raw damage numbers & no elemental damage at all that keep rising while naramon and/or drifting contact keeps it alive.

As they basically say, the best CC is dead in warframe and if you are not making that dead instant, then your wasting time NOT running to the next batch of enemies to clear out and get the next wave/rotation of a mission started. Warframe is not monster hunter, So using fancy tricks or tedious setups that do NOT result in a bunch of enemies going boom, is not going to be helpful at all in warframe`s current way of playing the game on any content that does not involve bosses/mini-bosses.

Edited October 19, 2019 by Avienas

[Andele3025]

16 minutes ago, Avienas said:

Blood Rush - Will now scale differently, *****using a stacking multiplier based on the Combo Counter*****, raising (X)% per Combo Counter tier (something much easier to achieve in Phase 2). We will provide the final % pending more testing. 

Granted i GUESS i could be reading that section a tad too strong, but it would likely make sense that they would completely dissociate the mod from the new `heavy attack counter`, since most would likely not enjoy losing the entire combo counter every time they do a heavy attack. But since base damage is GREATLY INCREASING, it kind of is going to spike blood rush even if they nerfed it a tad too. 

Oh also lets not forget that they also mentioned changing arcanes, especially zaw ones, to give benefits that buff Lifted Status, Heavy attack, & Combo Counter Modifiers.

You pretty much were throwing a fit that maiming strike will not grant its auto crit via +90% additive bonus anymore, which honestly, once a weapon has around 20% to 35% base crit after mod applying, Already hits between 53% to 92.75% crit chance on the first `tier` of combo counter damage bonus, via blood rush, it kind of does not need that initial auto crit as much anymore and mostly just serves to quick jump start higher tier crits a bit earlier. Though it likely depends on interaction, if maiming strike applies as a post-stacking multiplicative bonus after blood rush, this can pretty much mean it can get even to much more ABSURD LEVELS.

Actually, unless DE actually makes the new base higher than the average or even still quite easily achievable without too long ramp up (2x and 2.5x multi) it will be a nerf due to how combo multi scaled. At whatever will be the cap for heavy attack combo "meter" would have to be between 700 to 900% bonus crit chance to be vaguely equivalent to the easily ramped up values and flat nerf to anyone with long combo duration/decay by 5 from focus setups (DE would need to make a massive chunk of the arsenal/almost everything not zaw or gram P/Para/weapons in the 150+ damage with 30+ crit and a over 2.2 crit by 3.5~4x while bumping said zaw and co by at most 2x base and no other buffs to get a mostly competing arsenal and not nerfed for a functional "long mission duration"; which to be fair they did seem to do with the skana on the devstream)

Meme strike being flat vs total multiplier is mostly a "do you want non crit weapons to crit or crit weapons to crit harder" thing, but based on wording it seems like it will work like just another base multiplier mod/like true steel. In which case it needs to be 400%+ crit chance to be around equivalent just for already ok crit weapons (maybe 300% if DE Just wants it to be a atterax mod and they bugfix all extending weapons/whips and whip&swords to not be capped at 2m range on the whip parts of attacks due to hitscan check cancelling itself off the ground). Would be cool tho if it was a actual "your total crit chance post all modifiers is now instantly DOUBLE/2.5/whatever times bigger on slide attacks!".

[Avienas]

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

Actually, unless DE actually makes the new base higher than the average or even still quite easily achievable without too long ramp up  (2x and 2.5x multi) it will be a nerf due to how combo multi scaled. At whatever will be the cap for heavy attack combo "meter" would have to be between 700 to 900% bonus crit chance to be vaguely equivalent to the easily ramped up values and flat nerf to anyone with long combo duration/decay by 5 from focus setups (DE would need to make a massive chunk of the arsenal/almost everything not zaw or gram P/Para/weapons in the 150+ damage with 30+ crit and a over 2.2 crit by 3.5~4x while bumping said zaw and co by at most 2x base and no other buffs to get a mostly competing arsenal and not nerfed for a functional "long mission duration"; which to be fair they did seem to do with the skana on the devstream)

Meme strike being flat vs total multiplier is mostly a "do you want non crit weapons to crit or crit weapons to crit harder" thing, but based on wording it seems like it will work like just another base multiplier mod/like true steel. In which case it needs to be 400%+ crit chance to be around equivalent just for already ok crit weapons (maybe 300% if DE Just wants it to be a atterax mod and they bugfix all extending weapons/whips and whip&swords to not be capped at 2m range on the whip parts of attacks due to hitscan check cancelling itself off the ground). Would be cool tho if it was a actual "your total crit chance post all modifiers is now instantly DOUBLE/2.5/whatever times bigger on slide attacks!".

Overall its basically a sheet ton of math and we do not have enough details to finalize anything, only things i can tell so far or surmise to a great deal:

• New heavy attack combo counter will scale more easily in phase 2(maybe a combo counter weight system so certain attacks/weapons get quicker ramp up?).

 

• Loads of mods/arcanes that were directed to channeling originally will now be all about Lift Status, Heavy attacks & combo count modification.

 

• One of the clearer examples being the gladiator set bonus changing from a mini-blood rush stacking effect to a increase in the gain speed on combo counter.

 

• Unless further changes are done, it looks like combo counter duration is still at 3 seconds before being reset, which could demand naramon/drifting contact still, i am hoping they plan to boost the time limit to a higher base to make it less difficult for people to `setup` for things like a heavy attack ground slam. Though if melee weapons get the exilus mod slots also, then that might partially resolve it, if plenty of mods that increase gain speed, extend duration of the counter or just give bonus combo counter on hits might likely alleviate.

 

• Weapons that likely did not scale fast with combo counter or setups that did not include drifting contact/similar mods, likely will benefit more with the extra raw damage, which at the very least, means better starting `pow damage`, but possibly being worst then the existing system if one plans to aim for a high combo counter up-keep, but that might be a different story if heavy attacks do significantly more damage, but we only really have a skana so far to get the idea on those.

 

• If weapons roughly get about a 3x base increase on raw damage with the update(based on the Skana comparison), then this matches up to a tier 4 combo counter bonus or what currently requires at least 135 hits, which is likely not something people would likely reach often or upkeep for that long in normal circumstances. Plus we all know how strong of an impact a base damage can affect a scaling damage bonus. Which in this case, even if the scaling bonus on blood rush were to be cut in half to compensate, it would likely still be scaling up faster then the original version, as long as the scale up were to be roughly the same.

 

• Well, till we get the specifics and get to actually play around with it, i would still like to believe these changes might lead to stronger/earlier ramp up power on melee weapons, and will hopefully lead to new build play-styles, especially if certain customization, become not so necessary anymore, so other setups can be made use of between arcanes & mods.

 

Edited October 19, 2019 by Avienas

[ZakosDryiakk]

I'll try to keep it as simple as I can, so:

Condition Overload: It's... technically a good idea to reduce the cap and raise the damage %, for one sole reason: speed. The faster you're killing, the less you'll have to tank, the less likely you're going to be ground-pounded and promptly killed (considering that CO should only be of interest on high level enemies), and the less you'll have to rely on tank frames since you'll be able to be on the move more often (and just to make sure you're all aware, moving decreases enemy accuracy). The most you'd be expected to proc consistently on a situation of under 5 seconds is 3-4 status. That and as stated before, getting to build just to get 8+ procs on an enemy is counter-intuitive. If you can build to get that many procs and still be practical (on a kill perspective only, not so much for time), you can most likely build to kill on less time/input requirement. But again, without numbers, the most we can do is wait and see.

Blood Rush: We seriously have no idea on how it'll work, if it's a counter of its own or if it'll be related to the new combo counter. We have no idea how these "tiers" will work, so, once again, all we can do is wait. On another note, True Punishment will actually be usable (more so if they raise the critical chance %, which I hope they do).

The other two I don't have much to say, except that slide attacking all day gets dull too fast, and enduring affliction wasn't my schtick due to being linked to channeling, so ehn 😶
 

[Steel_Rook]

Honestly, if I had my way with Condition Overload, I'd limit it to ONE stack as long as the enemy is being affected by ANY kind of status and leave it at that. This thing with min/maxing an entire build around a single mod isn't an example of "synergy" so much as an example of runaway power creep. Threading the entire melee system through one of a small handful of mods and requiring the entire rest of your build to accommodate it leads to cookie-cutter FOTM builds. The last thing I want is hard synergies between weapons in different slots because that puts a hard limit on practical build diversity.

Runaway stacking damage bonuses are THE primary source of balance issues in this game by a country mile. I understand that cutting down on buff stacking is usually a nerf, but I'd rather tackle it a little at a time than make it worse.

[Avienas]

2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Honestly, if I had my way with Condition Overload, I'd limit it to ONE stack as long as the enemy is being affected by ANY kind of status and leave it at that. This thing with min/maxing an entire build around a single mod isn't an example of "synergy" so much as an example of runaway power creep. Threading the entire melee system through one of a small handful of mods and requiring the entire rest of your build to accommodate it leads to cookie-cutter FOTM builds. The last thing I want is hard synergies between weapons in different slots because that puts a hard limit on practical build diversity.

Runaway stacking damage bonuses are THE primary source of balance issues in this game by a country mile. I understand that cutting down on buff stacking is usually a nerf, but I'd rather tackle it a little at a time than make it worse.

Exactly, Some things are better when the boosting is limited to one effect, while others are better for a stacking effect. Though mainly if its the latter, its better to have the stack effect on YOURSELF, so you can up-keep it on multiple enemies then having it reset every time you kill the target.

Honestly, when you think about it, Condition Overload is more of a boss-focused mod since it relies on applying a huge amount of status effects to the target for the damage ramp up to be good. But any boss that has the durability to actually have it matter, will likely put itself in a invulnerability state often or just be immune to status effects most of the time. So i would agree that i would not mind if say they INSTEAD have condition overload simply give 120% or 150% more damage on an enemy if it has a status effect on it while your hitting it with a melee weapon, since it would be way more efficient then what the current version is.

If warframe did not rely so heavily on a enemy scaling sort of system for its endless content, then it might not be as necessary for people to use the run-away style of infinite damage scaling to massacre everthing, which i could likely refer to plenty of recent games that one can easily have a fun game with a actual ceiling on both one`s damage potential and how powerful enemies can be, if its properly designed in the correct way and not do what i can sum up as the `lazy man`s approach` to handling a necessity for something, such as how to design a game`s entire premise.

Not to mention the punishments of said endless games could rely more on players using up limited amounts of consumables and sloppy gamer skill to keep going at a longer pace, then just having enemies scale too much for one to up-keep the same pace one had at the earlier points in a mission, which i would not mind if endless missions had less enemies showing up as you go deeper in a endless, but the scaling they receive for going in deeper, makes them much more of a threat then the mobs of enemies you were getting swarmed by early on.

 

Edited October 19, 2019 by Avienas

[(PSN)Crixus044]

14 hours ago, Avienas said:

using a stacking multiplier based on the Combo Counter

THE combo counter, not a separate combo counter like you're implying. You're adding your own ideas

14 hours ago, Avienas said:

has to waste a weapon slot to use a weapon for a AIDS gun to get a large amount of status effects on a SINGLE enemy so thar melee weapon can hit hard enough to kill something, then your building wrong. Most melee setups that use status builds currently look like this:

That's a terrible build strategy first off. Take it from me, I'm kinda renown for builds ands optimization. Cramming so much into 8 slots is pointless. Here's how a build goes

1. Primed pressure point

2. Drifting contact

3. Attack speed

4. Condition overload

5. 90% or 60/60 elemental

6. 60/60 elemental

7. Blood Rush

8. Organ shatter.

Why would you hold so dearly to blood rush and organ shatter? Because even at 10% crit chance, it is proven to be better at a high combo counter. I'll do an example at 2.5x body shots to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Crit chance: 10%×(1+1.65×2.5)=.5125

Damage Buff: (.5125×(3.8-1)+1)/(.1×(2-1)+1)=2.214 

Take away condition overload: 2.214/1.6=1.3835

Damage Buff of 3rd elemental: 2.8/2.2=1.273

And you get a higher concentration of procs.  Don't forget that blood rush makes berserker viable on weapons that weren't viable with it before, which is in effect another +13% effect. Anything below this crit chance and you swap them out for smite and maybe p reach or 90/60 of the primary elemental. If you wanna stack procs, then you can instant swap n shoot your primary or secondary like a pox, twin rogga, Tigris p, euphona p etc. That's how you build as of the next week. It's a shame you went all this time without properly getting the most out of your loadouts and now it will change.

14 hours ago, Avienas said:

You pretty much were throwing a fit that maiming strike will not grant its auto crit via +90% additive bonus anymore

Dude really? Did you read?

19 hours ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

The developers appear to be against slide spam. A proposed fix to that would be to limit the speed at which you can do slide attacks. This is a topic for another post.

19 hours ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

I have no issue with this change. Slide attacks already receive a damage bonus and easily spammed. Maiming strike only made this tactic more prevalent, but it was always strong, even before the mod came out.

I have NO issues. Case closed. In fact, that whole post was to show how little of a change it will be and how i think were have to do more.

14 hours ago, Avienas said:

The point is you just straight up increase the status effect durations without needing to use channeling & constantly baby-sitting it, to increase the duration by hitting it constantly, which unless you are trying to multi-stack slash procs on a boss that will let you constantly hit it, would have next to no use for it

Tell that to my combo building RC ash/atlas/khora. You didn't know this, but each strike is a multiplicative bonus to duration. Whaaaat? Yeah that's why i like it. Combine with a WoL trinity or use a pangolin sword and you got some serious smash after some time. 

[DatDarkOne]

47 minutes ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

That's how you build as of the next week.

Which as you already know is how I build anyway minus the need for combo counter.  😄  This is pretty much the standard case when making hybrid builds. All of us hybrid builders are like......

MWUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Edited October 19, 2019 by DatDarkOne

[Birdframe_Prime]

22 hours ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

This is done to compensate the loss of damage from current builds.

Just want to point something out, just as something to consider as to why they're changing this to only three stacks instead of just every Status as it is now; because they're buffing the melee system's base damage across the board. Literally the statement from them; 'Every weapon is going up.'

I mean, just in case you missed it, they showed the stats for the un-modded Skana on stream while showing the improved stats screen options, and it's also in the Dev Workshop when they're showing it there too. Current Skana; 35 Damage, New Skana; 120 Damage.

So even at base, if CO stacks three times at 60%, then the difference is 143.36 current, 491.52 new. To make the current CO match up, you would need 6 different Statuses to surpass this change. Meanwhile, if you put 6 Statuses on the new Damage you would get 2013.265 (because DE's calculations round down after three decimal points), which would be objectively nucking futs. Pardon my language. That's the kind of raw damage that I don't see DE letting slide too easily. Yes, with scaling from mods that are designed to exploit this new Combo Counter, but no, not just for having a multi-status inflicting weapon to prime the enemy with.

So... yeah, with this massive increase in the base stats, which we're only going to see the full extent of once the update drops (so please wait for that and don't try to debate them here because we know nothing more besides the Skana), three stacks of CO will still be better after the change than 5 stacks in the current system. And, at least to me, it does make sense that DE have done that.

::Edit:: Further point!

22 hours ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

Slide attacks already receive a damage bonus and easily spammed.

Just went back and looked at the stat screen they were showing us again; Slide attack on the Skana in the new version does not have a damage boost.

While the base Skana on current has 35 damage, it has 75 Slide Attack damage. The new version, as I said, has 120 damage, but the slide attack is... wait for it... 120 damage! It's equal!

We have seen the solution for slide-spam, it's literally now just a way to hit multiple enemies, not a way to deal better damage. Honestly, aside from the usefulness of being able to multi-hit and thus build the new Combo Counter function, it can only be a means to an end now, not the actual modding objective.

Edited October 19, 2019 by Birdframe_Prime

[Avienas]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

-snip-

K cool story, i am never one to normally blend C.D. and Blood rush builds together since they counteract each other. Plus it clutters build space a tad for other particular mods for things like:

• Sacrifical Steel & Pressure to give much higher crit base, resulting in blood rush setups scaling ABSURDLY faster. 
• Riven mod, cause even if the disposition turns to 1, EVERYONE wants a fooking riven that usually includes 2 or more of damage, range, combo duration, attack speed, Critical Chance/Critical damage.
• Till D.E. brings out phase 2 to hopefully address range issue, skipping out on range/attack speed/combo duration in any method is pretty much what ruins a blood rush build.
• C.O. build in its current state usually demands many status effects to proc and just like a certain mobile game i enjoy, the competitive element relies a WHOLE LOT on not wasting any second to be unloading massive amounts of damage. Course those enemies can actually be sturdy enough and less in abundance so if it had a similar system to Condition overload, it would actually work, unlike how C.O. works for maybe 1-2 seconds after striking a enemy and if the enemy has not died yet before then, your wasting time striking them when you should of blew its head off with a CORN-ith shot or just jam a lenz arrow down its throat.

Now why do i say the B.R. & C.O. hybrid builds are insanely redundant?

1. Blood Rush works by scaling your combo counter higher to dish out a infinitely scaling bonus crit chance to multi-stack, meaning its trash at the start and can literally reach a level where it could one shot even the most high level of enemies with little concern. But since your not auto losing the stack every time you kill the target, that lets it be functional in endless content
2. Condition overload on the other hand will spike its damage in the MIDDLE, meaning its trash at the start but also loses power after the mid-way point because your not jacking up the value much higher after you slap aids on them. But since you have to have every enemy start fresh since D.E. has yet to TRULY BREAK THE GAME and give us a mod to let us spread status effects from one enemy to another nearby enemy, when killed by say a `heavy attack`*shot*, similar to saryn spores. Ultimately it has to contest with B.R. because if you have no way to instant apply a bunch of status chances (usually why you want to have the weapon to have high S.Chance to not have to constantly poke enemies with a gun), then your pretty much wasting time trying to use C.O. on a weapon with high critical chance. Too bad damage distribution tends to mess with how your unloading those status effects on enemies, so your not able to instantly apply 3 to 5 status effects on a enemy with a 100% status chance with a single hit.

 

Course in that same sense, running a weapon with high status and low critical chance is just as stupid of an idea, since blood rush will not be able to scale strongly, sacrificial steel and/or a riven will not do much either and your only really trying to cheat with maiming strike`s current version to force any weapon to `easy crit`, but your pretty much locking yourself into slide attacks only if you rely on that constantly.

Edited October 20, 2019 by Avienas

[(PSN)Crixus044]

6 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

why they're changing this to only three stacks instead of just every Status as it is now; because they're buffing the melee system's base damage across the board. Literally the statement from them; 'Every weapon is going up.'

This is incorrect contention. They are buffing base damage because they are removing the combo counter damage multiplier. Combo counters boosted damage by 2.5x damage for simple content and an average of 4x in the levels that vets fight. This is the reason for the compensation.

They are limiting the procs to 3 AND compensating that by buffing the percentage for each proc. This means that they wanna have a net zero change, but the whole point of my post was to prove that this is a change in the wrong direction. It promotes button mashing instead of strategy.

6 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Just went back and looked at the stat screen they were showing us again; Slide attack on the Skana in the new version does not have a damage boost.

Yes I know that. I saw the devstream.  You didn't understand my point. My point was for the CURRENT game. Ever since the game started, slide spam was a viable strategy that became massive when primed reach came out back in 2015. After shadow debt came out and brought maiming strike, then it became mainstream, but because of the damage boost it currently has, it was always the most powerful tactic for many weapons. THAT was my point.

[Tyreaus]

On 2019-10-18 at 4:40 PM, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

Balance wise, this is fine, but the implementation seems to be incorrect. By increasing percentage and decreasing the number of procs required, button mashing is promoted, whereas using your entire kit and Synergy to maximize damage it's going to the Wayside.

I haven't been able to read everything in the thread, admittedly, so I apologize if this has been brought up, but isn't it possible to put CO on a crit-based weapon and utilize the same kit synergy with some decent benefit that goes above and beyond button-mashing CO? Similar sort of synergy that steps up from the baseline, but with crit-based weapons in lieu of status-based ones.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

3 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

I haven't been able to read everything in the thread, admittedly, so I apologize if this has been brought up, but isn't it possible to put CO on a crit-based weapon and utilize the same kit synergy with some decent benefit that goes above and beyond button-mashing CO? Similar sort of synergy that steps up from the baseline, but with crit-based weapons in lieu of status-based ones.

DE is punishing that and slowly taking it away instead of promoting it. Condition overload's buff was massive. That is without a doubt, but all they had to do was lower the percentage or make it stack additively to eachother. That way, it's not nearly as powerful, and strategy is still something to promote.

3 procs is easy to get on crit based weapons. The point was to go beyond that. Hybrid builds are the meta, go to the Warframe Teaching Archives (admittingly their builds could use some improvements) to see. The builds will stay the same (unless something drastic changes with the mods DE put in), but the issue is that players are simply button mashing because that's all they need to do. This is fine currently, because it's not the best way to play, thus strategy can be promoted for even stronger gameplay if you wanna be better, but this change in CO is a backtrack on that, because the button mashers are getting a buff while the strategic players are getting nerfed. This was promoted as a nerf to CO, but it's only nerfing the small community of strategic players, while the majority is getting a buff.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

22 hours ago, ZakosDryiakk said:

considering that CO should only be of interest on high level enemies),

If it's only for high level enemies, then more procs = more speed. Remember, 1 pox throw, and I got 3 procs with high corrosive/viral. 4-5 with twin rogga.  That is near instant, THEN i build 2-3 more out of my melee. There ain't much time spent and the damage from additional procs far outweighs the time that is spent. Capping the status promotes lower tier enemies, because you'll be able to get more damage out of less procs. Lower tier enemies will die out of 3-4 hits, which would only proc 2-3 status effects anyways. Now, because of this, it'll kill roughly 1-2 hits faster. Congrats DE, you buffed condition overload for the majority of your content. Most builds only have up to 4 damage types and usually, impact is the lowest and hardest to rely on because it lasts so short, so 3 is the average. Even with 2 elementals, that's maximum of 5 with average of 3-4, because of proc weight. So either way, these players that use only their melee and do lower content just received a buff.

Higher level enemies take many more swings, depending on how high you go. In that time you would've maxed out your status long ago and would be button mashing through a lot of time, whereas a smart player would stack procs on his secondary, primary, or warframe to boost the damage further and get better results. Now, that won't happen because DE made it so all you could do is button mash.

Edited October 20, 2019 by (PS4)Crixus044

[Steel_Rook]

22 hours ago, Avienas said:

If warframe did not rely so heavily on a enemy scaling sort of system for its endless content, then it might not be as necessary for people to use the run-away style of infinite damage scaling to massacre everthing, which i could likely refer to plenty of recent games that one can easily have a fun game with a actual ceiling on both one`s damage potential and how powerful enemies can be, if its properly designed in the correct way and not do what i can sum up as the `lazy man`s approach` to handling a necessity for something, such as how to design a game`s entire premise.

Personally, I feel this is where a developer's duty of care comes in. "Players will optimise all the fun out of a game if you let them." so it's usually best for developers to not let us do that. The infinite-scaling system is typically intended to provide a sliding end-point, tasking players with surviving as long as they can before evacuating, failing and losing everything if they risk more than they can handle. The point of these systems isn't to "beat" them and survive for hours, it's to cap out early and leave while you're still alive. Scaling multiplicative buffs ARE an answer to scaling multiplicative enemies, you're absolutely correct... Which is why a responsible developer shouldn't do that. Don't let your players massively overstack buffs, don't let players massively trivialise your content, force players to evac sooner rather than later.

I'll say again what I've said a lot recently - change buff stacking to always be additive and watch power creep collapse to a large extent. Not only do you nerf player damage substantially, you move from a cascading returns system to a diminishing returns one. It's unlikely to happen because it's going to hit red-crit builds MASSIVELY hard and cause comparably massive outcry, but I absolutely feel that this sort of buff-stacking is at the core of all of the issues.

[Birdframe_Prime]

10 hours ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

They are limiting the procs to 3 AND compensating that by buffing the percentage for each proc. This means that they wanna have a net zero change, but the whole point of my post was to prove that this is a change in the wrong direction. It promotes button mashing instead of strategy.

How though? I see these changes as intrinsically linked, with the buff to damage meaning that CO would be insane afterwards, yes there's the intent to have a net zero change to that. How does this promote button mashing any more than the existing one did? This problem of yours doesn't make any sense if this is your argument.

10 hours ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

You didn't understand my point. My point was for the CURRENT game.

Which is... and I feel that after this comment I have to re-iterate... going to change. The current game is being addressed. That was my point. You made especial point of saying that they're not and are unlikely to address this, and I pointed out that they are.

[Xzorn]

Condition Overload, Blood Rush and Maiming Strike were very dumb designs in the first place.

• Blood Rush was the primary contribution to reliance on combo meter and making melee binary. Do it 100% of the time for don't bother.
• Condition Overload was just idiotic in general. Spam status effects with no regard or understanding how they interact. Maybe now proper status weapons will get their value back instead of "ramp der status dmges I da win". Limiting it strictly to 3 is also dumb though. It should be related to sources of status effects.
• Maiming Strike the math was always wrong. From day one. It should have been +90% after modifiers but DE was too lazy or scared to fix it.
• Enduring Affliction I dunno what that's about. Infinity Bleed Duration is strong but few people used it and the whole "Lift" mechanic is prolly gunna flop.

"Rework" means nerf in DE speak.

[Avienas]

24 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

Condition Overload, Blood Rush and Maiming Strike were very dumb designs in the first place.

• Blood Rush was the primary contribution to reliance on combo meter and making melee binary. Do it 100% of the time for don't bother.
• Condition Overload was just idiotic in general. Spam status effects with no regard or understanding how they interact. Maybe now proper status weapons will get their value back instead of "ramp der status dmges I da win". Limiting it strictly to 3 is also dumb though. It should be related to sources of status effects.
• Maiming Strike the math was always wrong. From day one. It should have been +90% after modifiers but DE was too lazy or scared to fix it.
• Enduring Affliction I dunno what that's about. Infinity Bleed Duration is strong but few people used it and the whole "Lift" mechanic is prolly gunna flop.

"Rework" means nerf in DE speak.

Well to dumb it down, B.R. pretty much made it more of an idea to constantly slap every enemy to keep B.R. going. Where Melee was less used for a quick melee strikes(like heavy slams & mobility means) once in a while. Which would probably cause SOMETHING if we ended up getting some kind of mod that greatly boosted the first of your `melee strike` on a enemy, to likely be something to tie into a, melee first then shoot them in the face to finish them off, probably not a fun thing to keep going after the initial charm has worn off. Especially when Heavy Attack Ground Slams will kind of do that, So basically Primed Chamber for Melee weapons in a sense.

C.O. i still kept to my basic logic: Make sure the elemental i am using serves a purpose, which usually was Corosive and slap in Cold since it would slow enemies while i am meleeing them, making it easier to melee down sturdier foes like bombards/kavat ladies/noxes/ancients/etc. Which granted, not many sturdy corpus enemy types are even present and the only one being bursas, is one you normally want to shoot instead. Not many status combinations exist people want to stick to, since Radiation is more of the neutral option, Gas works better if your trying to make a gas cloud, usually for infested mobs and Viral is just extender cheese for slash, since it kind of counter-acts C.O. by making you have signficantly less window for applying statuses, though if the stacks are limited and bigger in value, then that issue is kind of negated.

If Maiming strike got modified by blood rush and the critical mods on a weapon, then i can actually imagine it being absurdly broken, since i was under the impression it simply added 90%, unmodified`able crit chance to your sliding attacks. This is kind of why i believe D.E. needs to include better tools and details such as a `FINAL MODIFIER` value on some mods which declares that said mod effects do not apply till after ll previous mod effects apply to a weapon. Plus in addition we could have a `formula view mode` so in-game we can see all the modifications applied to see how they specifically interact, to get a better idea on what is changing what on the builds. Especially for mods that are not exactly accurate on the descriptions on what they do, such as how things like reload speed mods can be rather confusing at times due to how they reduce reload speed, by speeding it up, instead of just straight up lower the time for reloading by X% amount.

Anyway, anything in a game that involves a Rework can be classified as a nerf, as long as people do not see what the actual values and how it will impact gameplay. If the effects greatly improve things, especially to have people chase better options which lead to more impressive effects, then it can be considered a success on ends. Just like by having directional ground slams now, mobility has been greatly improved, especially for those who are well-versed on traversal around locations and can capitalize on said systems (like fast going down a mountain with a directional ground slam).

[Tyreaus]

6 hours ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

3 procs is easy to get on crit based weapons.

With a hybrid build that doesn't reach maximum damage (60/60s in lieu of 90s, just for example) and might not stack 3 statuses with the same speed as a status-based firearm?

I don't disagree with the button-mashing promotion, but that's kind of what status-based CO weapons did before this change. See, e.g., CO Zaw Polearms with quick attacks. You're talking about going beyond that and having something that's better than just button-mashing, right? But a crit-based weapon with a status firearm, likewise, goes beyond that by separating the raw damage and status application roles. So far as I can tell, it keeps the same pattern - there's a button-mash, and there's an optimal alternative - just that the optimal version might use a different mod setup.

Edited October 20, 2019 by Tyreaus

[(PSN)Crixus044]

3 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

How though? I see these changes as intrinsically linked, with the buff to damage meaning that CO would be insane afterwards, yes there's the intent to have a net zero change to that. How does this promote button mashing any more than the existing one did? This problem of yours doesn't make any sense if this is your argument.

Which is... and I feel that after this comment I have to re-iterate... going to change. The current game is being addressed. That was my point. You made especial point of saying that they're not and are unlikely to address this, and I pointed out that they are.

I didn't say they're unlikely to address this, I said that they might need more.

With the removal of combo counter damage, we'll be doing a 4th of our current damage. But if you look at the base damage buffs, weapons are buffed almost 4x in base damage. It's direct compensation. 4x damage lost, 4x damage gained.

The nerf to CO was strictly to lower the power builds of melee, which were much stronger than any of the content in the game. DE basically tried to nerf super stacked 250x damage buffs, but instead of lowering the amount, they capped it and raised the amount. This means that the smart players that super stacked buffs are just tossed in the trash, while button mashers are even stronger now.

44 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

that's kind of what status-based CO weapons did before this change

Even at 10% crit chance, hybrid builds are still better than pure status builds. That was the whole point, that putting thought into it gave you more power. Going pure crit and delegating a status secondary will not give you that much power, +27.3% more to be exact, but even then, you still might need the status chance for debuffs like viral. Also, gas status is the strongest dps, so even then, going pure crit isn't the best option.