@DE my take on how to fix armor for "everything"

[Buzlok]

Pointless Intro! YEAH!

Armor scaling is a balancing problem that has been in the game for a while and has only increased in relevance as higher level enemies are becoming more common with newer late game content. But do not worry for DE is "fixing" it in a soon to come patch! I... am not so optimistic about this. No offense to DE but game balancing is probably the field that they are most lacking in. This is kinda obvious because there is tons of cool stuff like lore, fashion, weapons, characters, and aesthetics in Warframe but when it comes to balance, well... yeah. BUT NEVER FEAR, I a math loving/hating madman with WAY to much game time and nerdly plotting has come to save the day with a post that will never be noticed or properly evaluated!

The Simple Yet Ever So Complex Change

All you gotta do is change the math formula for armor's damage reduction or DR for short. The one here that I made is simple, but mathy and does tons of little things that are healthy for the game that i will explain after.

The Current Formula: (Armor) / (Armor+300) = (damage reduction%)   Example: 50 armor gives about 14% DR, while 300 gives 50% DR, and 10,000 armor gives about 97% DR.

My Edited Formula: (Armor+30) / ((Armor*1.2)+300) = (damage reduction%)   Example: 50 armor gives about 22% DR, while 300 gives 50%% DR, and 10,000 armor gives about 82% DR.

How Would This Effect Enemies?

For context a level 120 Grineer Trooper which is a basic unit has about 3,300 armor while a level 120 Grineer Bombard which is.. well a bombard, has about 10,700.

The trooper would go from taking about 8% of your damage to taking 22% of your damage. That is almost triple the damage without any armor reductions against a basic level 120 unit! Now let's look at the bombard. The bombard would originally take 3% of your damage. After this change the bombard would take 18% of your damage which is, well... a lot more possible to kill.

Something to note with this change is that against higher level enemies halfassed armor pen like heat status effects and a single corrosive projection aura will still help against normal enemies but will be far less effective against heavy units and bosses compared to corrosive stacking, however since enemies will take a lot more damage compared to before (especially the big guys) this is actually a good thing. Therefor armor shredding is no longer required in every single build but is still useful (which is kinda what I was going for in the first place)!

Simply put the increasing damage reduction from armor would be MUCH less effective the higher it is and would practically peak at 80% reduced damage.Another thing to note is the +30 extra after the armor in the formula. This is actually meant to make unarmored enemies tankier???!!! With this small change a unit with ZERO armor will still take 10% reduced damage, but why? Firstly I think most people that play the game can agree that Grineer units are tanky as hell but Corpus and Infested units are pushovers when it comes to killing them. With this on top of high level armored units being actually killable unarmored units would also be slightly less super easy to kill which would balance out the toughness of the different factions. Also this is a bit opinionated but I think things that can COMPLETELY remove armor are a little too strong *cough* saryn *cough* slight nerf *cough* why do I have spores in my lungs?

How Would This Effect Players?

Firstly, low armor frames would take slightly less damage meaning if your shield breaks you are slightly more likely to survive. I don't think anyone wouldn't like that. Secondly, frames that stack a literal ton of armor would take slightly more damage. Some people might not like this because it is a slight tank nerf but the [Rage] mod would give slightly more energy (is that enough to distract the tank mains from hating me?). Unarmored pets wouldn't die as much. Again another healthy positive. Defense objectives which have no armor would still get the 10% DR to health which is kinda nice.

Non of these completely fix some of the defensive problems in the game but they help a little bit in balancing things out which is a good start for such a simple and indirect change.

Basically, there is a hell of a lot of things that can be fixed or at least improved in Warframe with just a few small changes for the sake of balancing this game and I hope that DE either sees this post and takes reference to it has has something similar in mind for the armor rework. Thanks for reading and leave some feedback! 🤔

 

Edited January 26, 2020 by Buzlok

[taiiat]

tl;dr: reduce the Armor to DR curve to a shallower trend than it is currently. (super tl;dr: nerf all Armor)

 

 

though personally, i see it as simpler to reduce the Level Scaling of Armor instead, and leaving the actual Armor to DR conversion alone.
so instead of Armor * (1 + (Level − Base Level)^1.75 * 0.005 )
where a lv100 Corrupted Heavy Gunner has ~7332 Armor (96%)

something more like.... Armor * (1 + (Level - Base Level)^1.5 * 0.005)
where the same Lv100 Corrupted Heavy Gunner has ~2706 Armor (90%).

if that's still too steep, tune it down some more. try a coefficient of 1.45 or 1.4.
1.45: ~2260 (88.3%)
1.4: ~1904 (86.4%)
you could go lower i suppose if the Players really need that much help, to like 1.3: 1393 (82.3%)

45 minutes ago, Buzlok said:

Therefor armor shredding is no longer required in every single build but is still useful (which is kinda what I was going for in the first place)!

i mean, it already isn't, our Stats have gone up along with Enemy Levels going up, but eh.

45 minutes ago, Buzlok said:

Another thing to note is the +30 extra after the armor in the formula. This is actually meant to make unarmored enemies tankier???!!! With this small change a unit with ZERO armor will still take 10% reduced damage

no they won't, because they don't have any Armor so they don't calculate any Armor because they.... don't have any.
Enemies that never had any Armor or had their Armor removed, do not have that Health Type attributed to them in any way whatsoever.

45 minutes ago, Buzlok said:

Also this is a bit opinionated but I think things that can COMPLETELY remove armor are a little too strong *cough* saryn *cough*

as the Enemy Level goes up, Corrosive Status becomes increasingly weaker, the other Abilities that can remove Armor as much stronger or even fixed Percentages are much stronger than some Corrosive Status is vs extreme Level Enemies.
where there are numerous choices that will completely remove Armor in less than a second, while vs some Lv1000 Enemy 3 Corrosive Status per Second will take 16-17 seconds to remove the Armor.

even a lvl10 Corrupted Heavy Gunner would take 7-8 seconds for Spores to remove its Armor, while the other Ability choices still remove it in less than a second.
we don't and/or shouldn't even care about removing all of the Armor of an Enemy, unless the Player(s) suck, the Enemy was dead long before it even lost 3/4 of its Armor to Corrosive Status, and ideally before it lost 1/2 of its Armor to Corrosive Status.

Edited January 26, 2020 by taiiat

[Katinka]

3 hours ago, Buzlok said:

Defense objectives which have no armor would still get the 10% DR to health which is kinda nice.

I'm fairly sure defense targets have Ferrite Armour and scale with level so the only ones that would benefit would be low level or Excavation drills (which don't level up for some reason).  What might help objectives would be switching from Flesh to Machinery so they don't get hit so hard by Toxic damage.

 

[Buzlok]

2 hours ago, taiiat said:

3 hours ago, Buzlok said:

Another thing to note is the +30 extra after the armor in the formula. This is actually meant to make unarmored enemies tankier???!!! With this small change a unit with ZERO armor will still take 10% reduced damage

no they won't, because they don't have any Armor so they don't calculate any Armor because they.... don't have any.
Enemies that never had any Armor or had their Armor removed, do not have that Health Type attributed to them in any way whatsoever.

While that is true health types like flesh could still be given a 10% damage reduction along with the new the formula and it would result in the same effect essentially.

2 hours ago, taiiat said:

3 hours ago, Buzlok said:

Also this is a bit opinionated but I think things that can COMPLETELY remove armor are a little too strong *cough* saryn *cough*

as the Enemy Level goes up, Corrosive Status becomes increasingly weaker, the other Abilities that can remove Armor as much stronger or even fixed Percentages are much stronger than some Corrosive Status is vs extreme Level Enemies.
where there are numerous choices that will completely remove Armor in less than a second, while vs some Lv1000 Enemy 3 Corrosive Status per Second will take 16-17 seconds to remove the Armor.

even a lvl10 Corrupted Heavy Gunner would take 7-8 seconds for Spores to remove its Armor, while the other Ability choices still remove it in less than a second.
we don't and/or shouldn't even care about removing all of the Armor of an Enemy, unless the Player(s) suck, the Enemy was dead long before it even lost 3/4 of its Armor to Corrosive Status, and ideally before it lost 1/2 of its Armor to Corrosive Status.

While I agree with some of this I also don't agree with all of it and I think my point was half missed. I more or less think that walking into a new room you haven't been in and all of the enemies armor is already gone is kinda dumb. This happens with a lot of builds that max range and power along with having teams stacking corrosive projection. Saryn was the simplest example as her spores with a range build will shred the armor of enemies that you often don't even have vision of yet.

[taiiat]

5 minutes ago, Buzlok said:

While that is true health types like flesh could still be given a 10% damage reduction along with the new the formula and it would result in the same effect essentially.

While I agree with some of this I also don't agree with all of it and I think my point was half missed. I more or less think that walking into a new room you haven't been in and all of the enemies armor is already gone is kinda dumb. This happens with a lot of builds that max range and power along with having teams stacking corrosive projection. Saryn was the simplest example as her spores with a range build will shred the armor of enemies that you often don't even have vision of yet.

surely it would be simpler to just increase the Health Stat of everything by 10%, then, if you wanted to increase the Health of Enemies.

if the only thing 'difficult' about an Enemy was that it has Armor, that's a failure of the game to produce/provide Enemies with interesting Mechanics so that they do more than just stand around waiting to die.

[Buzlok]

57 minutes ago, taiiat said:

if the only thing 'difficult' about an Enemy was that it has Armor, that's a failure of the game to produce/provide Enemies with interesting Mechanics so that they do more than just stand around waiting to die.

I mean... unfortunately Warframe is a bit like that right now. The more new enemies added (especially in Fortuna) are pretty engaging and balanced, but the older units either one shot you without warning and/or are unkillable or they are just ammo boxes.

[taiiat]

7 hours ago, Buzlok said:

I mean... unfortunately Warframe is a bit like that right now. The more new enemies added (especially in Fortuna) are pretty engaging and balanced, but the older units either one shot you without warning and/or are unkillable or they are just ammo boxes.

sure, but i'm not going to hold some unnecessary affection towards them having or not having Armor, it doesn't matter to me. i'll Kill them just the same either way, and that's ok :p
i just wish the game would realize that it's okay that i can Kill Enemies, and just allow itself to have cool ones.