Weapon Exilus Slots and the "QoL v.s. Damage" Ideology

[(PSN)Umbrellie]

TL;DR: For Weapon Exilus Slots, Reload speed should not be omitted, since the "benefit" it gives to Sustained DPS is negligible.

 

On the most recent Devstream I saw that the decision had been made after "internal testing" to remove mods such as Reload Speed (i.e. Fast Hands) from the Weapon Exilus pool. While I understand their intentions behind this, the decision is not backed by Warframe Exilus. Let me elaborate:

DE stated that they wanted the Exilus slot to be a "Quality of Life" slot. Something that had no real bearing on the effectiveness of a Frame or Weapon, that just makes it easier to use with certain playstyles. I would argue however that Reload Speed is such a minor increase in lethality that it shouldn't be excluded. While I agree that reload speed does allow for a marginally increased sustained DPS, it's effect is so negligible that it really isn't worthwhile excluding it. Other Exilus mods exist such as the Drift mods which give a Warframe a slight increase to it's strength or range, for example. This itself increases a Warframes damage, whether it be individual damage or area damage, albeit only marginally so why should weapon Exilus mods be any different? You could also make the argument that Magazine Capacity increases the sustained DPS of a weapon since it allows for less down-time between reloads; Silencing a weapon allows for a reduced Threat level, reducing the likelyhood that enemies would target you over other viable targets such as allies or your Companion, and allow you to maintain Stealth Multipliers more effectively; Coaction Drift can flat out increase the bonus damage given by Auras such as Rifle Amp or Steel Charge; so why aren't they removed from the Exilus pool? All of these have some affect on gameplay and damage, however their effects are so marginal that they should not be considered worthwhile removing...

For Example:

Using warframe-builder.com as a guide, a completely standard Braton with a maxed rank Serration would deal 429.528 Sustained DPS, whereas the same weapon with nothing else but a Primed Fast Hands added would deal 476.935 Sustained DPS. In practice, this difference would barely be noticeable since the difference is only 47.407 DPS, and definitely wouldn't "break the balance of the game" since enemies such as Grineer Heavy gunners, at their base, have 300 health, which obviously scales based on enemy level.

Now obviously I'm not about to turn on DE if they ship The Old Blood with Reload Speed omitted, it's just a petty gripe of mine after all, but I think consistency is important. If Warframes can have Exilus mods that can increase their damage potential slightly then why shouldn't Weapons too? As I've said already countless times, their effects are so small that they really wouldn't be an issue. Plus, it'd be extremely nice to have some extra reload speed on Weapons with long base reload times since Warframe is such a fast-paced game as it is.

[Cloudyvisage]

I think you're looking at it from the perspective of weapons with large clips being used optimally, very few players reload completely optimally, plus there are plenty of weapons which have small magazine sizes such as the new Cyanex or Tigris Prime,

In the case of the Strun series that is a straight upgrade to damage output as the reload could be improved such as to practically fire from the ammo pool instead of the magazine size.

It's not perfect but Magazine size is a little less obvious in it's effect as it has a lesser effect on smaller magazines which do reload a lot and a more notable effect on larger mags which can reload more at their leisure.

It's not perfect and magazine size is one that sits in a dubious position but it is better than reload speed which is a clear effect on dps output.

[--F--NerevarCM]

59 minutes ago, (PS4)SylvaPsycho said:

For Weapon Exilus Slots, Reload speed should not be omitted, since the "benefit" it gives to Sustained DPS is negligible.

 

Negligible DPS still is DPS. If a reload mods give +1 DPS on my Latron Prime, I will use it instead of any other mod that gives 0. And all min maxers will do the same.

[Tsukinoki]

2 hours ago, (PS4)SylvaPsycho said:

Using warframe-builder.com as a guide, a completely standard Braton with a maxed rank Serration would deal 429.528 Sustained DPS, whereas the same weapon with nothing else but a Primed Fast Hands added would deal 476.935 Sustained DPS. In practice, this difference would barely be noticeable since the difference is only 47.407 DPS, and definitely wouldn't "break the balance of the game" since enemies such as Grineer Heavy gunners, at their base, have 300 health, which obviously scales based on enemy level.

Ok, what about a weapon with a much smaller clip and a much more impactful reload time?

Take the Exergis for example, with just tactical pump and nothing else it goes from 1045 sustained DPS to 1359 sustained DPS, which is an increase of 30%...just from that one mod.

You can't just look at "Well it doesn't really benefit the DPS of a large magazine weapon, so it should be allowed!"
You have to look at other situations.

I mean a reload mod doesn't seem like it would do much to an ignis wraith...but for the Exergis, or Tigris, or Vectis it has a much larger impact.

[Avienas]

1 hour ago, Tsukinoki said:

Ok, what about a weapon with a much smaller clip and a much more impactful reload time?

Take the Exergis for example, with just tactical pump and nothing else it goes from 1045 sustained DPS to 1359 sustained DPS, which is an increase of 30%...just from that one mod.

You can't just look at "Well it doesn't really benefit the DPS of a large magazine weapon, so it should be allowed!"
You have to look at other situations.

I mean a reload mod doesn't seem like it would do much to an ignis wraith...but for the Exergis, or Tigris, or Vectis it has a much larger impact.

Outside of reload speed, not much else really stands out as possible option mods for the new slots. Since Zoom/Silencing guns is redundant in most mission types, especially public ones plus lets go over some other bits, plus me browsing over all the possible mods on a rifle that could `fit` for this new slot:

• Magazine size barely makes an impact on most guns, with the same being the ever lovable ammo drum, i am very sure people meme-ing for primed ammo drum though when acceltra came around and gave us a absurdly op gun with a bad ammo clip size though...

P.S.- I am not going to count guns like Soma or similar ones since those things are made to be hyper bullet sponges, plenty more other guns exist usually with much smaller clip sizes that give little reason to use them, till a slot exists that not many mods can be used on it to begin with.

• Mods like Continuous Misery/Catalyzer link are also in the same boat since the former would only work if you lop a grenade, have it detonate easy crits on a mob and enjoy absurd slash procs killing them, too bad hunter munitions is not all that reliable for that playstyle. With most mods that boost status chance as its only appeal being rather useless
• Punch-thru mods certainly would be nice, too bad certain guns prefer explosions on impact and very sure `shred` is not going to be allowed on this slot.
• Oh HEY LETS MEME THEY GAVE A SPOT FOR CAUTIOUS SHOT! Too bad they still have yet to completely negate the self damage on it AND it costs a whooping 12 capacity.
• Combustion beam? When have corpse bombing fixed 600 damage ever been useful past the low level tiers?
• Who the heck uses Twitch? A +200% holster rate when we already have a certain mod that does +150%~ swap and give damage bonus, even if its a warframe mod.
• Oh HEY lets do another meme poke at the BANE MODS could finally get a slot for use! Oh wait, they are `damage mods`.
• Fire storm for opticors might become a thing since they technically aren`t direct damage.
• Terminal Velocity for bows? Well that might make eidolon hunting much less of a hassle.
• Oh and also we have Sinister Reach for your amphrex guns, Agile Aim while `aiming` by a mere +20% and Rifle Aptitude for +15% status chance, but costs 9 capacity on that last one.

Anyway if this does not give out the idea, The only benefit for the exilus weapon slots is to have people make use of mods that are rather useless and its likely only because they got a slot that most everything else can`t go in, will likely be able to go in. Thought D.E. could always fk up and allow corrupted mods in like Critical Delay or even Argon Scope.

TL;DR: D.E. needs to not be greedy and let us get the useful mods like reload speed. The point should be to allow us to enjoy making absurdly strong builds with creativity in this PvE Sandbox-ish game now instead of acting like they need to rebalance it like its a competitive game. If it breaks something like Gauss able to break the screen at how fast he could dash, then sure that could use fixes, but denying one of the primo options just cause of `reasons`, feels like a jerk move, when we have yet to get to try it in action and then D.E. can see about hot fixing any of the issues that are necessary.

I mean mods like Primed quickdraw is not exactly accurate due to reload speed scaling and other shenanigan bits.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Avienas

[Tiltskillet]

3 hours ago, (PS4)SylvaPsycho said:

Using warframe-builder.com as a guide, a completely standard Braton with a maxed rank Serration would deal 429.528 Sustained DPS, whereas the same weapon with nothing else but a Primed Fast Hands added would deal 476.935 Sustained DPS. In practice, this difference would barely be noticeable since the difference is only 47.407 DPS

Look, I'm sad because I can't put an Exilus reload mod on my Argonak, so I get where you're coming from.  But you're not making a good case.  AFAIC for an ostensible utility slot, that absolutely is a significant amount, even if you quarter it to account for more realistic  DPS downtime.  And there are weapons that would benefit a lot more than the Braton.

[Andele3025]

Personally id cut the line just below reload speed, mostly because reload actually improves the feeling/handling of weapons in addition to its "pseudo DPS"/mid fight reload damage downtime reduction but mag size doesnt.do so when reloading mid combat. Same reason why IMO stuff like rapid resilience, reflex guard, reflection and the elemental resistance (like antitoxin, insulation, etc) should be exilus in a world where drifts, gale kick, aviator, heavy impact etc are.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Andele3025

[Avienas]

19 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

Personally id cut the line just below reload speed, mostly because reload actually improves the feeling/handling of weapons in addition to its "pseudo DPS"/mid fight reload damage downtime reduction but mag size doesnt.do so when reloading mid combat. Same reason why IMO stuff like rapid resilience, reflex guard, reflection and the elemental resistance (like antitoxin, insulation, etc) should be exilus in a world where drifts, gale kick, aviator, heavy impact etc are.

Honestly mods like warm coat/anti-toxin and so on are amongst those mods that really could use buffs just like RIFLE APTITUDE, SERIOUSLY D.E.! Either buff the mods and rebalance the costs of the older rather useless mods to make sense (we literally have a mod called drifting contact which gives +10 sec combo duration and +40% FREAKIN status chance!), Why should mods that give less then half of one of those effects, have basically double the capacity cost and its a UNCOMMON MOD, not a common, but a freakin silver mod, still be left untouched!?

Anyway sorry for the rant, my point is that If D.E. planned to finally give us exilus mod slots for weapons by finally caving in to give us more customization. It would of been a proper idea for them to do a check on older mods, especially if they were SETTING THEM as weapon exilus mod types and take the time to appropriately adjust them, since outside of primed mods, most exilus mods sat in the 9 capacity or lower cost, so it would make sense that plenty of them with absurdly chunky costs could use the adjustments, Which will be a massive april fools joke if they put Cautious shot as a weapon Exilus mod and left its cost the same OR did not finally change it to full self-damage immunity to justify the hugely chunky cost and losing 15% Total damage for a safety trade off.

Otherwise we are stuck with expensive mods that we are forced to cram a forma on each of the weapons just to be able to fit a DECENT weapon exilus mod on, which might be an issue if we may want to use particular mods for different builds, in said weapon exilus slot.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Avienas

[FrostDragoon]

10 hours ago, (PS4)SylvaPsycho said:

For Example:

Using warframe-builder.com as a guide, a completely standard Braton with a maxed rank Serration would deal 429.528 Sustained DPS, whereas the same weapon with nothing else but a Primed Fast Hands added would deal 476.935 Sustained DPS. In practice, this difference would barely be noticeable since the difference is only 47.407 DPS, and definitely wouldn't "break the balance of the game"

I'm going to have to say that this is a very bad example for a couple reasons.

1) warframe builder is clearly not calculating this how it should. The Braton has a reload speed of 2.0 by default and PFH gives 55% faster reload. This means roughly half the reload time, which means at least another full second of dps. Technically, it doesn't "add" any dps, but rather adds dps uptime.

2) The "only 47 extra" dps is only with Serration on. My Braton Prime does something around 4k dmg per shot, iirc (thanks to riven). Do the math from there, lol.

That said, the issue is more about what you could put in that exilus slot that has any value. Reload would be nice, but it's easy to see it always occupying that slot if it's on the table.

[Teridax68]

I have to agree, reload time does factor into DPS, so including the stat in the tentative Pexilus slots sounds risky. However, I can agree that its DPS increase is negligible relative to more direct damage increases, and more broadly I think Pexilus slots only paper over the real issue at hand, which is that weapon modding is dominated by ultimately rather boring damage increases: considering how the primary, often sole function of our weapons is merely to output damage, adding more damage is a no-brainer, which is why we fill our current weapon mod slots with damage mods. The fact that these mods multiply off of each other only worsens the issue, so really, instead of adding an extra slot for utility alone, we should probably look to changing mods so that our choices specifically come down to utility: changing the damage type we output with our weapons has strategic value, as does modifying our zoom level, or giving ourselves some situational bonus from parkouring or aiming or whatnot. Increasing our damage, however, doesn't, and the net result of a modding system primarily focused around increasing our weapon damage has mostly just been a significant negative impact on balance, due to the massive gap between weapon damage at its baseline amounts versus when fully modded, and the ease with which we end up killing enemies due to the latter. Pexilus slots I think will certainly inject some diversity into weapon modding, but ultimately it's not that great to have only one truly customizable slot out of nine.

[Tiltskillet]

5 hours ago, FrostDragoon said:

1) warframe builder is clearly not calculating this how it should. The Braton has a reload speed of 2.0 by default and PFH gives 55% faster reload. This means roughly half the reload time, which means at least another full second of dps. 

I'm not somewhere I can check the exact numbers, but reload bonus% in WF is an increase in animation speed rather than a decrease in animation time.  Which is why Harrow can't reduce reload to zero,  for instance.

5 hours ago, FrostDragoon said:

The "only 47 extra" dps is only with Serration on. My Braton Prime does something around 4k dmg per shot, iirc (thanks to riven). Do the math from there, lol.

I'm going to guess he just did that for simplicity's sake rather than to deceive anybody, although the percentage increase wasn't mentioned.  No Serration at all or fully modded would have worked too.