Do primaries/secondaries need a buff?

[Vit0Corleone]

In recent times, I've been increasingly depending more and more on melee for pretty much everything that is high level content.

That isn't to say that primaries/secondaries aren't able to do the job, but rather that melee is so OP currently, that ends up being the logical choice as primary means for dealing with most enemies.

I'm sure I'm not alone here, is this the general feeling around the community as well?

If so, do you think DE should consider buffing primaries/secondaries to balance things out?

 

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Sounds like you just need a better primary and secondary.

[Vit0Corleone]

5 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Sounds like you just need a better primary and secondary.

No, I have pretty much all guns available.

I think you missed the point. I'm not saying primaries/secondaries are bad, not at all. I'm saying that melee is, at last for me, usually a better choice if I want to do things efficiently. Or rather, the default choice.

[angias]

I got plenty of strong primary and secondary. They are very strong.

 

It may just be a gameplay preference.

I build my melee to become strong in aggressive gameplay.

 

My suggestion is to find what fit you.

Shotgun and sniper make quick work of anything you shoot at.

Assault rifle and beam weapons are also very strong.

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

Or you could...you know....use all 3 weapons synergistically instead of assuming you have to use 1 weapon per mission.

You should be able to kill anything if you're stripping armor in higher levels. And if you're not even going that high in level then you shouldn't have a problem at all.

[HugintheCrow]

I like how literally everyone is missing the point or making some sort of random strawman, as if OP insulted them or something.

 

It's a straight up fact that melee weapons have way higher damage ceiling than any gun. You cannot dispute that.

You CAN dispute whether or not such state is bad (e.g. aoe guns have better clear potential than melee at lower levels, because raw damage isn't as important in many cases, and that's a fact too).

Edited January 26, 2020 by HugintheCrow

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

19 minutes ago, Vit0Corleone said:

No, I have pretty much all guns available.

I think you missed the point. I'm not saying primaries/secondaries are bad, not at all. I'm saying that melee is, at last for me, usually a better choice if I want to do things efficiently. Or rather, the default choice.

Melee has always been the stronger choice. The higher damage output was to compensate for the fact that melee weapons have less range than guns.

And then that goes into the debate of Melee phase 2 lowering the performance ceiling of melee weapons because they were “too good”. There was a reason they were strong, celebrating their nerf is dumb.

Edited January 26, 2020 by (XB1)GearsMatrix301

[kapn655321]

Some of em', undoubtedly do. There are others that get outrageous, and others that never can.. and this difference is not determined by MR lock. It's closer than it was previously with the MRs, but that doesn't stop the fact that you can get 8 forma/catalyst/Wexilus deep into a build to find out at best they tickle level 60s without high money riven rolls (if you're so lucky. I'm lookin' at you Flux Rifle..)

I anticipate this to be reviewed some time around or after Primary Kitguns, likely being after the 2 main updates this year. So long as they're working on it, I'm not sweating it. ...My fav melees were junk for 5 years, but they got good eventually.

This may also in large part be resolved with armor and enemy health system changes. "Yeah, but you can just use this instead," doesn't jive with why we have hundreds of options, more than half of them we all know are pointless time and resource vampires worth little more than mastery fodder.
 

Spoiler

What we seem to want in large part, is to be able to customize things into a good spot. What we instead have is, "Sounds like you're not using the meta weapon and mod combination that wins, duh. Why aren't you just using that instead? Why would they need to have hundreds of options if you can just Arca Plasmor or Rubico Prime?" ...because I wanna, and those aren't the things I find fun. It's a game, not a job.. and I'd like to explore options rather than get pigeon hole'd or funneled into a meta to have a good time.

There should be a reasonable expectation that an 8 forma Dera Vandal isn't a liability in a sortie without an xthousand plat max damage only riven. If folks disagree, so be it, but that's certainly now and has always been my stance on it.

[Loza03]

I'd say it's less that Primaries, Secondaries and Melee weapons need any particular balancing than the overall damage and health of both players and enemies needs a rework. DE is already looking at the latter apparently, but I hope they're not going to ignore players in the process.

Basically, balancing has been screwy for years. Enemies with armour have so much more health than enemies without it, that they basically require different balance scaling. No amount of armour stripping will change that. The only damage options that matter are damage options that deal with armour. Yes, it's optimal to have damage options that bypass shields, but let's not kid - one of the ways to bypass armour (true damage, primarily through bleeds) also bypasses shields, and Corrosive options, thanks to years of scaling around Armour, can usually brute-force their way through anyway.

This has resulted in most recent attempts to make Warframe 'difficult' having enemies with STACKS of effective health and/or an increase in damage. For the former, that's why your primaries and secondaries are most likely feeling weaker. They work just fine in regular content, but in Empyrean, the most recent of these? They're as far above regular Grineer as regular Grineer are above Corpus. Probably why your weapons are feeling weak. Player effective health, in the same way, except in reverse - DE had to scale player damage around the low end because getting one-shot from the slightest mistake isn't fun for most people. With Empyrean and possibly liches, they seem to have changed that, and, yeah... there's talk about the perceived 'armour nerf'.

 

DE really needs to tighten EHP variance across the board before they do any large-scale rebalancing. There's only so much balancing you can do when the scales themselves are messed up. If nothing else, it does help make all the cheese strategies more popular, because more fun and interactive ones are almost always much less effective in every way, because DE has no idea how much damage enemies should deal and how much they should take because what's fair for one is ludicrously unfair for another, either in or out of favour. So, as a consequence... it isn't fair. And the best way to fight unfair tactics is with more unfair tactics. And thus the cycle repeats.

[(XBOX)Skiller115]

50 minutes ago, Vit0Corleone said:

In recent times, I've been increasingly depending more and more on melee for pretty much everything that is high level content.

That isn't to say that primaries/secondaries aren't able to do the job, but rather that melee is so OP currently, that ends up being the logical choice as primary means for dealing with most enemies.

I'm sure I'm not alone here, is this the general feeling around the community as well?

If so, do you think DE should consider buffing primaries/secondaries to balance things out?

 

Acceltra and Kuva Karak disagrees with you.

[Corvid]

27 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

melee weapons have less range than guns.

But also tend to cover a much wider area, and in a game with as much mobility as this, range isn't really a limiting factor.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

1 minute ago, Corvid said:

But also tend to cover a much wider area, and in a game with as much mobility as this, range isn't really a limiting factor.

You still have to get relatively closer to the enemies to damage them with a melee than with a gun.

[(XBOX)Skiller115]

3 minutes ago, Corvid said:

But also tend to cover a much wider area, and in a game with as much mobility as this, range isn't really a limiting factor.

Kuva Ogris covers a wide area as well, and you don't have to get close to do damage.

[Aldain]

I'm pretty sure the point of this thread is talking about the several metric tons of weapons that are basically terrible to the point where they were on the same tier as some melee weapons before the melee stat changes from 2.0 happened.

I mean the list can go on, the Stug, Dual Toxocyst, Harpak, Hind, Acrid, the entire Bronco line, Flux Rifle, and so on.

The point being that there are many guns on the same "LOL" level as there were many melee weapons before melee got a stat boost across the board at the lower levels.

Even some of the old useless melee weapons like the Pangolin Sword are now significantly more usable due to their base damage being actually high enough to scale with mods in a meaningful fashion. Meanwhile a gun like the Flux Rifle? A "massive" TWENTY TWO BASE DAMAGE, even for a slash status weapon this thing tickles enemies, especially armored enemies, and this isn't a low-MR gun like the Hind (which outdamages it in both fire modes) this thing is at MR 6.

Even with range as a factor, there are many primaries and secondaries that are now behind even the weakest melee weapons by many degrees.

[Midas]

1 hour ago, Vit0Corleone said:

In recent times, I've been increasingly depending more and more on melee for pretty much everything that is high level content.

That isn't to say that primaries/secondaries aren't able to do the job, but rather that melee is so OP currently, that ends up being the logical choice as primary means for dealing with most enemies.

I'm sure I'm not alone here, is this the general feeling around the community as well?

If so, do you think DE should consider buffing primaries/secondaries to balance things out?

 

absolutely, write up a feedback forum statement as well!!! Melee DOMINATES the damage section, primary and secondaries are designed to literally buff condition overload/apply certain statuses.

This may potentially piss a ton of people off but, guns need a kill combo setup like melee to compete correctly for true balance.

Edited January 26, 2020 by Midas

[(PSN)Silverback73]

48 minutes ago, Vit0Corleone said:

No, I have pretty much all guns available.

I think you missed the point. I'm not saying primaries/secondaries are bad, not at all. I'm saying that melee is, at last for me, usually a better choice if I want to do things efficiently. Or rather, the default choice.

This is the result of scaling content being added over the last 24 months.  The “inefficiency” you feel is from it taking greater sustained DPS for stronger enemies.

The only real solution I’ve contemplated is a DPS primary/secondary version of Combo-Crit multiplier where successive/sustained hits from semiauto/automatic fire scale as you tear apart an enemy.

I think this might already be a thing with one of the newest weapons?

[GPrime96]

I can see more Primaries being buffed than Secondaries. There’s Secondaries that can do Primary’s damage or better (Staticor/Kuva Brakk say hi) but therr’s plenty of stronger Primaries like Snipers, and Shotguns. Problem with Snipers is they are more comfortable when you are miles away and Shotguns make you be in Melee Range unless you use Corinth, Astilla, and Tigris. 

[Midas]

Highest hit with melee that i've seen is 80 million after rework.

For primaries secondaries probably 3 million highest single hit

[(XBOX)Deputy Facepain]

I like using primaries/secondaries for priority targets. Like having a high crit radiation/viral weapon for Nox’s, or something with a lot of corrosive for heavy gunners, or Oxium Ospreys, etc. there haven’t been many weapons I’ve invested in that can’t preform well enough to be satisfying. I have dozens of primaries/secondaries with 6+ Forma, and Hikou prime would be the only utter disappointment. Darn stars need a riv with -puncture...

Melees I generally build to deal with hordes. I really like using gas on melee. It can even be used effectively against grinner. Slash/Viral is a got-to as well. Nothing cuts through armor like red-crit slash procs. 

Edited January 26, 2020 by (XB1)Deputy Facepain

[(PSN)robotwars7]

I suppose it's balanced in the sense that you have to get in close, and more often that not use a tankier frame, to efficiently melee at higher levels. melee also affects a much smaller area than what AoE ranged weapons can achieve, but guns also don't have a combo counter, save for the ones that snipers have, but they are also single-target weapons, like most Melee weapons.

some are definitely stronger than others though, ranging form pure trash (Stug) to ungodly strong (Kuva Kohm), and many levels of effectiveness in between.

[BDMblue]

Yes melee is well beyond anything else. T2K is 1 sec for a level 90 heavy gunner on a Railjack guns take longer in all cases as far as I can tell. Maybe some riven is faster but then on a melee it would be even faster. As well as the melee clearing all the pawns around it while you hit it.

could just add combo to everything snipers have it so all guns could?

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

No, but all main base damage mods need to go away, including the Primed ones. Amalgam Serration then becomes -10% Damage. Heavy Caliber, Spoiled Strike, and Magnum Force are untouched. 

[(XBOX)Demon Intellect]

20 hours ago, Corvid said:

But also tend to cover a much wider area, and in a game with as much mobility as this, range isn't really a limiting factor.

You must be new here. 

[AltheusV]

I think they need a rebalance, similar to what was done with melee so that there are no bad primaries, just varying degrees of good.

[(XBOX)SupremeMorph]

21 hours ago, Vit0Corleone said:

do you think DE should consider buffing primaries/secondaries to balance things out?

No. Archguns need a buff first, and even then the power of melee is a tradeoff for the risk you take in getting right up close to your enemy.

As it currently stands, archguns serve as a way to round out a loadout with a temporary summon of a weapon that is generally less powerful than your primary or secondary, mostly due to the mods being far less powerful across the board than their regular counterparts (with the exception of sabot rounds and possibly marked target) as opposed to the "moment of power" they were intended to be. Which is why I believe archguns, or more specifically the mods for archguns, need a buff first