Warframe Revised: Armor, Health & Shield Changes Megathread

[SilverBones]

Armor Health Shield Changes
This section will go over before and after scenarios with our enemy Armor, Health, and Shield changes. Reading this section should give you a conceptual and on-paper understanding of what we’re changing and why, but practical experiences will tell the full story here. You may need to refresh some aspects of your Builds to truly optimize your power against your enemies.

• Before: Armor, Shields and Health on an Exponential Curve
• After: Armor Shields and Health on an S curve 

Damage Changes:

Enemy Damage output should still be close to what is currently on the Live version of the game, but we have made a few changes that will affect how players take Damage in-game. 

Damage-Type Changes:

Slash Status now does not bypass Shields and instead deals damage over time to Shields. Slash Status still bypasses Armor. 
Toxin Damage used to apply to Armor with a 25% bonus. Now it is neutral. For role distinction, Toxin bypasses Shields (but not Armor) where as Slash Status bypasses Armor but not Shields. 

Player Changes:

Player Shields, Health, and Armor used to be shared with all AI, so they had all the weaknesses and resistances that their AI counterparts did.

Now Players have their own unique Shield, Health, and Armor type classified as TENNO! These have all weaknesses and resistances neutralized (for now). Player Shields now reduce 25% of incoming damage. Player Shields now recharge with custom player-only logic. Shield recharge delays are based on depleted or partial depleted shields. Partially depleted shields (any amount) is a 1 second recharge delay. Full depletion is a 4 second recharge delay. 

These changes to Player shields are in addition to coming Shield Gating changes, which you can read about in our Shield Gating section!

Why:
Armor Scaling and enemy Damage Reduction was the nucleus for this change. For years Tenno have had the tools to deal with these things, but the tools were uniform: Use Corrosive Projection, or else. While this is a simplification, it removed the feeling of choice. With these changes, we hope players experience a feeling of variety and choice when taking on enemies. By changing the scaling for Armor, we could consistently change the scaling for all! \

Please remember to leave your feedback in a constructive and civil manner! Remember, this thread is for FEEDBACK ONLY. If you have a bug, please make sure you submit your bug on this thread and follow the new guidelines!

[(XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom]

Can we get the new armor scaling formula please? 

[SaidTheRogue]

Corrosive procs on enemies should not have a limited duration. That screws up some gameplay based things and ruins many rivens, among other things. Leave it unlimited duration, as is

[RobertTheKomodoDragon]

Before: 

Current Health = Base Health × ( 1 + ( Current Level − Base Level )² × 0.015 )

Current Shield = Base Shield × ( 1 + ( Current Level − Base Level )² × 0.0075 )

Current Armor = Base Armor × ( 1 + ( Current Level − Base Level )^1.75 × 0.005 )

After:

Current Health = ?

Current Shield = ?

Current Armor = ?

So what exactly are the new formulae for enemy level scaling?

[Fellas92]

With the new armor scaling, so far most of the weapons feel better, since they deal more damage. (Simulacrum testing)
I'll need to test it out in a long survival afterwards, see how it feels in a proper situation.

[Ketec]

The 25% damage reduction on shields applies to all damage before it is reduced from the shield pool? Or does it just reduce 25% and everything else goes through?

Can't try, not at home for a while.

[CatNV]

Please add the hard numbers in the OP, thank you. Or at least explain what exactly is mean by an S-curve in this context.

[EnvoyOne]

There wasn't a link that I could find to a Status Chance specific discussion, so I'll post my thoughts here.

1- Gas damage needs to be spreadable toxin, not a spreadable heat. I like that Gas has it's own damage type, but it still needs to bypass shields (but not armor, cus that's what it does now)

2- I don't like not being able to see every tick of damage. There should be an option to turn it on. There also needs to be a damage recount in the simulacrum, but we've been asking for that forever.

3- How do the "bane of grineer" and "smite infested" mods interact with the new math? Gas damage used to have a percent damage increase on every step and instance of damage, is this still true?

Thank you! I'm loving the update so far!

[PurpleNyxPrime]

is there an ETA on a fix for the bug of warframes having reduced armour effectiveness that was introduced in the patch that reduced railjack fighter armour yet or are we still in the dark on that one?

Edited March 5, 2020 by PurpleNyxPrime
spelling correction

[DeathHymnal]

Since trying out the changes, is there any word about Hildryn? Now everyone has a version of her shield gate and now her passive is now literally non-existent, are we going to see a revised passive for her? Longer shield gate? Better chance for insta full shield? Etc.

Edited March 5, 2020 by DeathHymnal

[nslay]

I like what you've done with Corrosive Projection. The 30% before didn't make a huge difference but players made a big deal about it. Now that it's 18%, I think everyone will feel just meh about it missing in games.

I guess the Eidolon crowd will be a little upset about the CP. With Coaction Drift and CP on all 4 players, we're looking at about 82% armor strip. That and they are now missing fully buffed Chroma. But maybe the armor balance will counteract these nerfs!

[SprinKah]

I have a problem with the Shield changes to the CORPUS.

While I like that you guys are making the Corpus more in lined with Grineer in terms of....difficulty to kill. I really like that but it has ruined my absolute favorite thing to do in Warframe. And that is going to Simulacrum and spawning Grineer vs Corpus for mock battles.

It used to be very balanced before the Shield changes to the Corpus. But now they regenerate their shield almost CONSTANTLY, that the Grineer units can't even bypass 1/5 of their shield. Making the fights rather one-side towards the Corpus.

I know this isn't something that's core in Warframe and to be honest, I don't think the shield changes to the Corpus really does much of anything in terms of making them harder to kill. We mostly just shoot them in the head or use Gas in the end anyway.

Personally, I think changing ONLY CORPUS's shield so that once you deplete their shield, they will have a period of invulnerability, very short, like 0.5 - 1 second. 

This makes it so that the you can't just mow through them like butter anymore because let's be honest, the new shield-gating for the Corpus won't really change how easy it is to kill them, but this would make it so that they take a little longer to kill. And make it so that the whole Grineer vs Corpus is rather balanced. 

 

I'm not just saying this because of the whole SImulacrum mock battle Grineer vs Corpus that I mentioned at first. This would make it so that AI NPCs would have a hard time all together against Corpus NPCS and every NPC with shield because generally, AI NPCs just don't have the same firepower we have, they don't deal in millions of damage. And the shield will just keep regenerating without end. 

I tried going to Invasion and siding with the Corpus, with Grineer having higher level, my Corpus allies just mow through them like no tomorrow simply because the Grineer NPCs cannot get through a single one of the Corpus NPCs' shield. And tbh, if you spend enough time, you don't even need to do anything, just sit still and let the CORPUS NPCs handle everything because there's no going through their shield. 

Edited March 5, 2020 by SprinKah

[Redfeather75]

I don't know where to put this. I'm using hystrix and fire quills are doing better CC and damage against robots than electric quills.

edit: Electric seems to be good for people as the shock makes them stand with their head back which is good for headshots. I am not sure why robots are dying faster to heat quills than electric ones.

Edited March 5, 2020 by Redfeather75

[GKP_light]

"After: Armor Shields and Health on an S curve" :

It sound bad. With a good weapon, the game was already too easy up to level 130. (without armor,) all die very fast.

(we nead the new formulas)

edit : i did tests, and yes, it is really bad :

-the infested are now really fragile. (but have very high damage. it is now near of : one-shot or be one-shot)

-the corpus have now the invulnerability at the end of shield, but it change nothing with weapon with high fire rate, and for the other, to have some Toxin damage also one-shot them.

-for the greener, even if we can not remove all the armor, i think that they are weaker than before.

edit 2 : the new formula for HP is approximately :

Base Health × ( 1 + Min( 0.015 * ( dif Level ) ^ 2 ; 11.5*( dif Level ) ^ 0.5 )

instead of : Base Health × ( 1 + 0.015 * ( dif Level ) ^ 2 )

(With : dif Level = Current Level − Base Level)

It mean that : to have an ennemis with as mush HP as before at level 150, the actual ennemis need to be level ~900.

edit 3 : the "S" curve :

Graphic of by how much the HP are multiply, depending of the level.

In bleu, the old scaling ; in orange, the new scaling.

Edited March 7, 2020 by GKP_light

[Briaray]

So - based on the boost of the enemies shields - wouldn’t it be logical to return Mag 3 skill (Polarize) not a fixed but a percentage value? Let it be only in relation to shields - not armor and damage in general - but "very very long time ago" - she cut off a fixed percentage of shields from a mob of any level, even if the skill has a cap of 20-30% shields left, but it will still be better than now!

Edited March 5, 2020 by Briaray
upd

[Thrymm]

I ran a dozen(couple dozen?) missions, all either requiem relics in the Kuva Fortress or Lich territory missions, with the exception of one Neo relic. My current lich is only rank two, so not terribly high level enemies.

I used a large mix of different status types, but primarily played with the traditional corrosive/heat build, as these where still anti-armor style missions, for the most part.  As this feedback thread is about the armor/health/shield change, I'll try to stick with my observations about that in total.

For my own survivability, I was using Frost with no shield mods, adaptation, health conversion, steel fiber, and vitality.  This yields 630 armor(plus any that health conversion gives), 740 health, and 525 shields.

Enemies had noticeable trouble eating through my shields that they did not have before.  The combination of damage reduction and shield gating meant that enemies where into my health drastically less than they have been in the past, and instances in which I was burst down in the past simply didn't happen, for the most part(I was downed twice in a couple hours, both being stupid high risk melee on my part that got me swarmed).  My own ability to handle hits seems to be drastically increased because the large, full shield+some health wiping attacks simply weren't accomplishing that.

Enemy survivability seemed very comparable to what it had been, perhaps slightly better(hard to tell, I used many different weapons and some of them may have simply lacked effectiveness).  Shield gating on the corpus let them stay in the fight a little better, as they didn't just disappear from the map at the first sign of AE attacks.  Enemies rarely survived long enough that I would have expected their health bars to go red in the past(not a possibility with my build now, if at all).

Enemy survivability appeared to be a combination of factors.  Armor reduction was extremely effective, as always, and heat was noticeably more effective whereas corrosive appeared similar at best.  Slash damage didn't appear to be nearly as effective against them as it had been in the past, though it was still quite functional.  Viral seemed extremely effective against armored enemies, I'm planning to test that more to see if it holds true.  Enemy armor versus gas damage made it laughably bad against these primarily Grineer missions.

The overall package made the missions play out really well, in my opinion.  I no longer took the random downing that I barely saw coming, but if I was careless I could indeed still let myself be overwhelmed by enemy damage.  The enemies survived well enough to put up a fight, and honestly I didn't find a clear cut winner between crit and status strategies. 

Overall, the total survivability factors appear to have favored me more than they did pre-patch, but combat flow in general seemed more enjoyable.

[(NSW)The_Complex]

Could you please put in graphs of the before and after values?

[Philogosten]

Harrow definitely could use a shield buff since he's still too squishy. By far the coolest warframe in my opinion but he always feels so much weaker than the rest. I would be so happy if he became like Inaros but with high shields instead of high health. 

[ShortCat]

If the focus of this update was to tremendously lower the difficulty at every lvl, then you achieved it.

Combined changes to Tenno health, accuracy and Shield Gate increased our survivability by a huge margin. On the other hand, enemies got even weaker, at least Grineer did. LVL 170 armored units feel like 70s now. Viral+Slash is the dominant combination and utterly murders them.
Sneaky Gas changes make the element pretty weak and almost irrelevant now, because everything but light Infested have resistance to it.

 

[FeJoToRe]

Wanna point out that the invul time is too little (can we raise it to 2 secs at least) so we can get a safelock, also put the graybar when shields get depleted as Hildryn has it (its hard to notice when this triggers)

[crackspider]

So does the S curve in % reduction mean that it flatlines at a specific level? If so what % does it flatten out as if not then please impliment that but when it does flatten out double the hp gain of all enemies so while they dont reduce the incoming damage anymore it does mean the health they get goes up. Making it a fair and understandable way that they are tougher.

[(XBOX)Sage Prinny]

Would it be possible (for enemies) to apply location based damage, in the sense that depending on the enemy certain body parts have higher/Lower armor value 
Example Grineer Forces their models hint that their chest is significantly more armored then their legs or arms so using their new base armor the chest region has 125% of that value while the arms and legs have 75%-80% rounding out the Armor. OF course that doesnt have the be the values you use it was just an example, it could make where you shoot enemies not just what you shoot matter a little more. You could go a little further and say certain body parts have unique tilted resistances for instance Corpus helmets can have better puncture resistance then their body suits.

[Mindbane]

on Titania if you use Aerodynamic + Aviator + Agility Drift while in razorwing combined with the new 25% damage reduction on shields mean that you take 101% less damage. I have tested against lvl 170 enemies and you are straight up indestructible. While dope its probably not what you had in mind.

[CRAFTTHIS]

I feel like the corrosive proc duration should be increased from 8 seconds to maybe a longer duration where it will become irrelevant if players don't kill the enemies. Maybe like 40 seconds?

 8 seconds time to kill encompass some of the lower tier weapons like a lato or the stug, which ends up capping them a little to the point where they are hard stuck in the low tier where they already are.

[Badger]

Many elements were made worthless by these changes, but that hardly matters now because this removed any sense of difficulty from the game.