Archguns- What the hell is going on

[(PSN)SrebX]

In the context of Empyrean missions-

Critical seems to be heavily nerfed and not working properly
Combined elements straight up don't work, they proc nothing
Puncture, Slash and Cold seem to rule everything while the other elements barely even function
We got heavy UNDOCUMENTED nerfs for Archguns, ranging anywhere from 20% to 70%

What the hell is going on? We have no idea dmg is calculated in space, nothing that we know seem to work and none of the tests seem to make sense. How the hell has DE stayed silent so far? We really really need some clarification about this

[Orblit]

20-70% nerf? Are you using them in Railjack space? As all those enemies are heavily armored like a heavy gunner.

Edited December 19, 2019 by Orblit

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

Archguns are unfun to use atm

[OvisCaedo]

4 hours ago, Orblit said:

20-70% nerf? Are you using them in Railjack space? As all those enemies are heavily armored like a heavy gunner.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/ea35p5/all_archguns_seem_to_have_taken_a_undocumented/

They also just got severely nerfed across the board in base damage, even aside from the projectile speed and falloff nerfs DE mentioned in the patch notes. Also extending to regular archwing missions, not that there's much point to most of those.

Anyhow, I assume DE is trying to stay silent because archguns being nerfed seems like a VERY deliberate choice to make sure actually farming and using better ship guns is "mandatory". With their usual horrific balance foresight, it sounds like they've still somewhat missed the mark on this though. Seen people talk about their ideal Cyngas builds that still tear things apart because of stacking space-slash procs. Which also... don't even seem to do what the patch notes said they should, so it seems like DE also might have jumbled up their new space-status effects?

Edited December 19, 2019 by OvisCaedo

[xmegarockx]

i dont understand why we have falloff damage reduction in SPACE that is so out of place!

[SpringRocker]

4 hours ago, (PS4)SrebX said:

Critical seems to be heavily nerfed and not working properly

I thought that almost all the Archguns were not supposed to be crit weapons. The stats are different between atmos and space, in space a 15%, 2.0x, 25/sec weapon doesn't scream crits to me (compared to regular hand weapons).

[George_PPS]

These nerfs are saddening. I thought the worst moment was right after Update 26 dropped. Now even more and worse nerfs are being sipped into the new updates without even publishing them. What’s really going on in DE? Is the Chinese ownership giving DE pressure to nerf everything down and removing fun factors of warframe? Fixing one thing and breaking many more.

The way the game is being “balancing” is wrong; it is removing fun and also resetting players efforts and investments into the game. Are there DE testers who actually love the game testing the updates before they are released?

Edited December 20, 2019 by George_PPS

[(PSN)SrebX]

12 hours ago, SpringRocker said:

I thought that almost all the Archguns were not supposed to be crit weapons. The stats are different between atmos and space, in space a 15%, 2.0x, 25/sec weapon doesn't scream crits to me (compared to regular hand weapons).

That's fair enough, but it's mostly the fact that Crit doesn't seem to spew the results at all
If you're trying to somewhat predict how good an Archgun is gonna perform solely based on it's status output (I.E Status chance+Fire rate) , you'd be fairly correct in that prediction without taking Crits into consideration, they seem to not matter whatsoever at all

Cyngas currently seems to perform the best, and has a pretty fair advantage over the Imperator Vandal for example, who's status output is just a tad bit worse than the Cygnas, but the Imp.V procs more Impact + It has a lot more Crit output

Overall what we managed to figure out is-
Dual elements proc nothing. They don't exist.
Crit doesn't matter.
The best element out of the basic 4 is Frost because it has a very good CC effect, the other are pretty garbage
The statuses that seem to have the most significance over dmg output is Puncture and Slash . Couldn't determine yet which is better, but they both seem very effective

[OmegaVoid]

19 hours ago, OvisCaedo said:

I assume DE is trying to stay silent because archguns being nerfed seems like a VERY deliberate choice to make sure actually farming and using better ship guns is "mandatory".

I haven't got around to Railjack stuff yet, but in the Star Chart Archwing missons either the Arch-weapons needed nerfing, or the enemies needed buffing, 'cos even the heavies just melted, even to Archguns with zero investment in them.

That imbalance in the Archwing missions probably went unaddressed for so long because few players were inclined to build up their Archwing gear anyway.

Railjack has changed that, so Archwing weapon damage has suddenly become a focus of attention. Since Railjack missions are supposed to be high-level, it makes sense for the devs to err on the side of making them a bit hard, rather than too easy. Think of Fortuna when it first dropped, except in that case it was the Fortuna enemies stats getting tweaks, not the players (for obvious reasons).

I don't think there's necessarily more to it than that.

6 hours ago, (PS4)SrebX said:

Cyngas currently seems to perform the best

Cyngas has always been teh win for open-space Archwing missions. Imperator Vandal is better than MyFirstArchGun, but that isn't saying much. 😆

In co-op, the Grattler only ever shined in the tight Corpus AW tilesets; in open space you'd be relegated to mopping up the Shield Dargyns which the longer-range weapons couldn't deal with.

Corvas and Velocitus, which are meta for the Profit-Taker, have never fared very well in Archwing, IME (I've sorta wondered if PT was specially designed to give those weapons a reason to exist).

6 hours ago, (PS4)SrebX said:

Puncture and Slash . Couldn't determine yet which is better, but they both seem very effective

Puncture damage ignores a percentage of Armour and is buffed against Armoured targets... while Slash damage is poor against Armour but the Status DoT is a straight deduction of HP from health which ignores Armour.

Which is better depends on the ratio of Armour DR to HP, so it'll depend somewhat on the enemy's base stats and level. At higher levels Slash Status wins.

[(PSN)SrebX]

6 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

I haven't got around to Railjack stuff yet, but in the Star Chart Archwing missons either the Arch-weapons needed nerfing, or the enemies needed buffing, 'cos even the heavies just melted, even to Archguns with zero investment in them.

That imbalance in the Archwing missions probably went unaddressed for so long because few players were inclined to build up their Archwing gear anyway.

Railjack has changed that, so Archwing weapon damage has suddenly become a focus of attention. Since Railjack missions are supposed to be high-level, it makes sense for the devs to err on the side of making them a bit hard, rather than too easy. Think of Fortuna when it first dropped, except in that case it was the Fortuna enemies stats getting tweaks, not the players (for obvious reasons).

I don't think there's necessarily more to it than that.

Cyngas has always been teh win for open-space Archwing missions. Imperator Vandal is better than MyFirstArchGun, but that isn't saying much. 😆

In co-op, the Grattler only ever shined in the tight Corpus AW tilesets; in open space you'd be relegated to mopping up the Shield Dargyns which the longer-range weapons couldn't deal with.

Corvas and Velocitus, which are meta for the Profit-Taker, have never fared very well in Archwing, IME (I've sorta wondered if PT was specially designed to give those weapons a reason to exist).

Puncture damage ignores a percentage of Armour and is buffed against Armoured targets... while Slash damage is poor against Armour but the Status DoT is a straight deduction of HP from health which ignores Armour.

Which is better depends on the ratio of Armour DR to HP, so it'll depend somewhat on the enemy's base stats and level. At higher levels Slash Status wins.

You have a very good set of arguments, the only problem is that they're invalid

Archguns don't share the same stats on land, in Archwing missions. They have pretty much the same spread, but not the same values. As for railjack missions- I think the stats are different there as well, only there's no UI or wiki to tell us that so I could be wrong there. 

Anyhow I think the nerf was only to Railjack missions, not across the borad, but again- I might be wrong there. I'd love if someone could confirm or disproof my claim

As for the statuses-
The status in Railjack missions are different, Slash isn't slash, it's relpaced with different statuses. Now, they didn't Tell us specifically which is which but they listed them-

New Railjack Damage & Status Effect Types:
Throughout the COMPONENTS, ARMAMENTS, and AVIONICS options you’ll notice new Damage & Status Effect types. These new Damage & Status Effect types are unique to Railjack’s escalated combat space - things get crazy out in space!

• Particle Damage results in a Tear Status Effect:
  • Tears holes into the hull of the enemy ship. Allowing players to deal increased damage.
• Ballistic Damage results in a Concuss Status Effect:
  • Concuss the crew aboard the ship. Enemy has reduced aim and damage.
• Plasma Damage results in a Decompress Status Effect:
  • Puncture holes into the armor/shields of the enemy ship. Decreasing the overall shield/armour value.
• Incendiary Damage results in a Sear Status Effect:
  • Rounds burn through the hull of the ship dealing Damage Over Time.
• Ionic Damage results in a Scramble Status Effect:
  • Temporary disable the enemies flight controls.
• Chem Damage results in a Intoxicate Status Effect:
  • Confuses Enemy pilot. Enemy will target anyone around them.
• Frost Damage results in an Immobilize Status Effect:
  • Ship controls freeze causing the enemy ship to fly forward to a stop.

 

I think it's safe to assume that the first 3 are Slash, Impact and Puncture in that order
So, since both Slash and Puncture increase dmg and seem to stack, it's hard to determine where's the dmg coming from, and we definitely don't know which of these has a bonus dmg against the units we're fighting

[OmegaVoid]

6 minutes ago, (PS4)SrebX said:

New Railjack Damage & Status Effect Types:

Do those affect the Archguns too?

I only glanced over the RJ patch notes, and I'd supposed the new dmg & Status only applied to the weaponry mounted on the Railjack, not to the Archguns as well.

10 minutes ago, (PS4)SrebX said:

Archguns don't share the same stats on land [...] As for railjack missions- I think the stats are different there as well

I only discussed Archguns in Archwing missions, not as Heavy Weapons (apart from the remark about Profit-Taker).

I'd expected they'd be just the same in Railjack as in Archwing missions, since there's no obvious reason for them to change for RJ.

[Andele3025]

On 2019-12-19 at 11:25 PM, SpringRocker said:

I thought that almost all the Archguns were not supposed to be crit weapons. The stats are different between atmos and space, in space a 15%, 2.0x, 25/sec weapon doesn't scream crits to me (compared to regular hand weapons).

The difference between atmosphere and space AW should just be removed. Maybe keeping the ammo cap if you use a primary+secondary in the main loadout and if you go pure melee weapon swap being just to AW gun.

E.g. Regular AW velocitus was both a semi auto rifle and railgun sniper, on land it is a newspaper shooter, now its also a newspaper shooter in AW.

[(PSN)SrebX]

8 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

Do those affect the Archguns too?

I only glanced over the RJ patch notes, and I'd supposed the new dmg & Status only applied to the weaponry mounted on the Railjack, not to the Archguns as well.

Yes. They affect the entire mission . In Railjack missions- These are the only elements that exist at all no matter the source

8 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

I only discussed Archguns in Archwing missions, not as Heavy Weapons (apart from the remark about Profit-Taker).

I'd expected they'd be just the same in Railjack as in Archwing missions, since there's no obvious reason for them to change for RJ.

O but there it a reason for them to change, you mentioned that in your last post, the reason is that the scaling in Archwing didn't work very well and we had really easy enemies

Anyhow I still think they're different ... not sure where I saw that