Is there currently any intent to reverse or mitigate the AoE weapon nerf?

[Gigaus]

As title.

 

Rooted around a couple places trying to figure out why a few of my old favorites are suddenly doing next to no to effectively 0 damage after returning from forever ago, and was pointed to the self-damage removal thread. I get what you devs are trying to do, between adding shield gating and increasingly more player survivability, but this has literally-- the actual literally, not 'close enough' exaggeration-- made several AoE weapons/Alt fires unusable. I'll edit/post pictures and vods later, but I repeatedly ran into situations where, due to armor and damage resistances, I was getting 1s. Granted, armor can be stripped, but from what I understand of the new status effects, you can't counteract damage resistances. Meaning that it would take literally thousands of shots to do damage to most the enemies now, which makes me beg the question: Why was this let through without play testing? Clearly, no, you didn't play test this, unless the consensus was to intentionally make all aoe weapons useless. 

 

Putting that aside, I want to know if there's any intent to reverse this in any way, if the damage reduction will be lowered or removed given it has absolutely no purpose given there is now a worse mechanic in place of just flat dying or damaging one's self, or if some weapons will be excluded given they never had self damage mechanics before. Expressly, most of the non-explosive AoE weapons, like Ignus, M.Cern, and Torid, fairly niche weapons that filled a specific role. 

 

Or, if there isn't intent to do that, can we get confirmation that the intent was to force people away from AoE weapons entirely, and plain confirmation which weapons you want us using? Going through all the weapons just to figure which is the current favorite takes time away from actually playing the game... 

Edited March 29, 2020 by Gigaus

[kwlingo]

36 minutes ago, Gigaus said:

Meaning that it would take literally thousands of shots to do damage to most the enemies now, which makes me beg the question:

Im curious how long you have been away from this game? This update change was about a month ago.

After taking down their shields you can than do direct damage to their health with armor and resistance. Only a small % of damage goes to he health if you cannot take the shield down. If you want to bypass this and get directly the full damage you have to apply skill and aim to their weak spot (mostly head shots). If your damage is great enough the % that passes through can still insta-kill lower level enemies. Players asked for balance and more difficulty and one shotting every enemy equals no difficulty even passing lvl 300 and one shot enemies back in the day.

47 minutes ago, Gigaus said:

if there isn't intent to do that, can we get confirmation that the intent was to force people away from AoE weapons entirely,

Actually they are making more weapons with AOE. They want us to use AOE but they should not take away from the non-AOE weapons. Which at this point they still do. If they make mod they change the mechanic for weapons, this is probably the only way to fix non-meta weapons. If not we will always see meta weapons only.

[Gigaus]

8 hours ago, kwlingo said:

Im curious how long you have been away from this game? This update change was about a month ago.

After taking down their shields you can than do direct damage to their health with armor and resistance. Only a small % of damage goes to he health if you cannot take the shield down. If you want to bypass this and get directly the full damage you have to apply skill and aim to their weak spot (mostly head shots). If your damage is great enough the % that passes through can still insta-kill lower level enemies. Players asked for balance and more difficulty and one shotting every enemy equals no difficulty even passing lvl 300 and one shot enemies back in the day.

Actually they are making more weapons with AOE. They want us to use AOE but they should not take away from the non-AOE weapons. Which at this point they still do. If they make mod they change the mechanic for weapons, this is probably the only way to fix non-meta weapons. If not we will always see meta weapons only.

About a year ago or so, took a break for work and school. Came back for the space ships. 

 

As it is, I know about that, that's fairly basic mechanics....Even so, that's not what I'm talking about here at all.

Once shields are gone, and armor reductions and elemental resistances from armor type and health are applied, a number of weapons do less than 1 damage, which is what causes a crap ton of 1s to pop up in the damage numbers. And yes, before Arch Wing and Trails we could one shot enemies fairly regularly oneshot enemies; Around those updates the levels were condensed, and then condensed again from what I've seen in later PNs, and armor was reworked. I'm not talking about then; I'm talking about now, along with the fact that damage falloff for AoE weapons has been reworked and effectively nerfed. 

Launchers like Ogris and Penta do neglegable damage even with maxed damage mods, corrupted included; Continual AoEs such as Torid and Pox do absolutely no direct damage and are now heavily reliant on damage procs instead; And held-trigger AoEs like Amprex and Ignus now require that you're melee range to do damage. Only direct contact with the source of the AoE seems to do any significant damage, as even boosted damage-- Corrosive against F.Armor for example-- does next to no direct damage; The only viable damage builds I've found with them rely on Elemental DoT procs like Fire and Lightning. 

---

To my understanding, non-AoE weapons already outclass AoE weapons across the board. Hell, most the shotguns in the game are godly high DPS compared to when it was nothing but snipers and FA-Rifles. Unless there's a mod that isn't being brought up in all the AoE builds, AoE does too little damage even before the nerf to be considered meta, right? Why take a 10k damage weapon with AoE when you can take a 100k or even 1m damage weapon with higher [insert crit, RoF, anything else] and slap on punch through? 'mean, most of the options that were mandatory when I left are no longer so due to arcades alone, meaning you can trade out that one damage mod for a utility mod like PT and suddenly you have the same effect as an AoE without drawbacks? 

 

This logic does not follow. 

[kwlingo]

4 hours ago, Gigaus said:

To my understanding, non-AoE weapons already outclass AoE weapons across the board. Hell, most the shotguns in the game are godly high DPS compared to when it was nothing but snipers and FA-Rifles. Unless there's a mod that isn't being brought up in all the AoE builds, AoE does too little damage even before the nerf to be considered meta, right? Why take a 10k damage weapon with AoE when you can take a 100k or even 1m damage weapon with higher [insert crit, RoF, anything else] and slap on punch through? 'mean, most of the options that were mandatory when I left are no longer so due to arcades alone, meaning you can trade out that one damage mod for a utility mod like PT and suddenly you have the same effect as an AoE without drawbacks?

Yes this is why shotguns got a fall off damage now. Before you could shoot them the same as snipers and do crazy damage. AOE still out perform non-AOE. A Kohm can kill one enemy super quick but and Ignis can kill infinite enemies if they are in the same area of aim.

DE has done lots to balance meta weapons and when they introduced the Kuva Bramma it was too OP with the explosive AOE. It could literally one shot even most boss fights even is you miss your target. They are now trying to focus on skill over ability. This is the same reason they reworked Ember. Her old kit required no skill on level 30 missions or under with World on Fire.

This is not the first or last they will do to balance meta used weapon aka Catchmoon, Atterex, Tigris Prime, Kuva Bramma etc.

 

[Tiltskillet]

The falloff does still seem too extreme in many cases.  I think one thing is it would be better if it didn't start at zero range.  Maybe instead something like ((radius * 0.15) + 0.75m) before falloff begins.  This would help the smaller radius weapons--where it sometimes feels now like they don't have AoE at all--proportionately more than the larger, and still reward aiming in general.

And then some more hand-tuning of the falloff damage penalties on individual weapons.  

[Gigaus]

On 2020-03-29 at 10:50 PM, kwlingo said:

Yes this is why shotguns got a fall off damage now. Before you could shoot them the same as snipers and do crazy damage. AOE still out perform non-AOE. A Kohm can kill one enemy super quick but and Ignis can kill infinite enemies if they are in the same area of aim.

DE has done lots to balance meta weapons and when they introduced the Kuva Bramma it was too OP with the explosive AOE. It could literally one shot even most boss fights even is you miss your target. They are now trying to focus on skill over ability. This is the same reason they reworked Ember. Her old kit required no skill on level 30 missions or under with World on Fire.

This is not the first or last they will do to balance meta used weapon aka Catchmoon, Atterex, Tigris Prime, Kuva Bramma etc.

 

Shotguns I can sort of understand, but as I remember, the damage falloff that was added to all weapons had nothing to do with ToK of weapons and how effective they were period, but rather because open-world was absurd. Pistols and Shotguns outclassed everything because of damage mods and general mechanics. As you said, shotguns were useable as snipers with absurd damage. 

 

And I'll be honest here, I don't know what the current meta weapons are; When I last played, Soma was still a crowd favorite, and most of the damage was in rifles without AoE. My frame of reference is things like the Penta or Ignus, which were limited to specialty builds and missions. Besides the Kuva bow, have there been more busted AoE weapons?

 

And it begs the question, why nerf all of them? I mean, some of these AoEs were basically cute little secondary effects from what I can tell, now they're basically cosmetic. Then there's the stuff that again is outclassed in damage, like Torid, Pox, and Ig. You say you can use Ignis to kill infinite enemys in a small area; Up to a point, and then anything which higher base damage and punch through added become significantly more effective. Especially with the Pistoleer Arcane, which I'm finding just makes balanced shotguns with low mags utterly broken. Or FA weapons that can reach 30 RpS. Point being, I'm not seeing the weapons that suffered the most from this apart of any significant crowd or debate. 

 

Meanwhile, the weapons you mentioned are uneffected....Kuva Bramma is still as effective as it was, since the damage is fall off based, rather than just a straight nerf. If the damage source is contact, thus 0% fall off, it's still doing full damage...

[nooneyouknow13]

3 hours ago, Gigaus said:

Meanwhile, the weapons you mentioned are uneffected....Kuva Bramma is still as effective as it was, since the damage is fall off based, rather than just a straight nerf. If the damage source is contact, thus 0% fall off, it's still doing full damage...

That's how they all work. Explosions deal full damage at the center of the explosion, and fall off to the edge of the area, going as low as 10% damage at the outer edge for weapons like the Bramma.

 

On 2020-03-29 at 6:22 AM, Gigaus said:

I'll edit/post pictures and vods later, but I repeatedly ran into situations where, due to armor and damage resistances, I was getting 1s. Granted, armor can be stripped, but from what I understand of the new status effects, you can't counteract damage resistances. Meaning that it would take literally thousands of shots to do damage to most the enemies now, which makes me beg the question: Why was this let through without play testing? Clearly, no, you didn't play test this, unless the consensus was to intentionally make all aoe weapons useless. 

Almost no enemies have damage reduction other than Noxes in normal missions. Just armor, and type modifiers. Those really haven't changed in years, with the exception of toxin no longer being good against ferrite. I'm going to need those examples. I feel like you're probably seeing weak damage procs applied by the outer edge of the AoE, and not the weapons direct damage.

[Gigaus]

4 hours ago, nooneyouknow13 said:

That's how they all work. Explosions deal full damage at the center of the explosion, and fall off to the edge of the area, going as low as 10% damage at the outer edge for weapons like the Bramma.

 

Almost no enemies have damage reduction other than Noxes in normal missions. Just armor, and type modifiers. Those really haven't changed in years, with the exception of toxin no longer being good against ferrite. I'm going to need those examples. I feel like you're probably seeing weak damage procs applied by the outer edge of the AoE, and not the weapons direct damage.

 

But that's the point I'm getting at. In this and other threads, people are saying the AoE nerf was meant to nerf meta weapons, the main one getting brought up is the Bramma. Except, that none of the weapons that are affected are meta, and the Bramma is, but is unaffected. So....what was the point then?

 

Nox, Thumpers, Eids, POrbs, PoE and Orb enemies, Demos, Arena targets, and Juggs all have innate damage reduction. I don't think it's been listed anywhere, in game or on the wiki, but me and some mates did testing to confirm it; Once stripped of armor from shattering and damaged on a location the enemy can be damaged, they take reduced damage from neutral elements. Some range as low as 20%, Thumpers take 33% it seems, and open world bosses seem to take 50% less. Thing is, I don't think anyone's really noticed, since most the guide videos show people using weapons that deal in the 1M range of damage, so having it rolled down to 50% still generally one and two shots enemies. I'm assuming most are running with something similar.

'course, then there's exterms, which reduce or null damage depending on the type, and infested ancients which hand out 80% reductions across the board in some cases. 

 

As it is, all these reductions are seemingly on hit damage, not procs. Because the procs are doing more damage than the actual hits for some unclear reason. Probably a bug all things considered, but...I'm getting weapon hits, with not AoE weapons, that are doing in the 500k range when boosted with pure damage/crit on normal enemies that are getting significantly less on the enemies mentioned above. And this seems to be multiplicative with armor; Thumper takes a lot more damage when you strip it's armor, but never full. 

[VanFanel1980mx]

On 2020-03-30 at 10:04 AM, Tiltskillet said:

The falloff does still seem too extreme in many cases.  I think one thing is it would be better if it didn't start at zero range.  Maybe instead something like ((radius * 0.15) + 0.75m) before falloff begins.  This would help the smaller radius weapons--where it sometimes feels now like they don't have AoE at all--proportionately more than the larger, and still reward aiming in general.

And then some more hand-tuning of the falloff damage penalties on individual weapons.  

The falloff seems extreme but the stagger radius does the opposite, some weapons like opticor and tombfinger are a bit annoying to use because they can even collide with small props on the terrain and cause you to stagger, I tried to charge Nova's AD with a tombfinger and I get staggered if I shoot it as soon as I deploy the sphere and at least a meter away too, I can get behind having stagger on huge explosions but some of these weapons never had such a big blast radius.

[kwlingo]

9 hours ago, Gigaus said:

And it begs the question, why nerf all of them?

Simply said because if over 50% of the community is using only one weapon DE didn't intend for a weapon to conquer all other weapons in game. This was why rivens were introduced, to allow non-meta weapons a fighting chance to be usable in daily missions. This doesn't fix bad weapon design but some weapons can become monsters.

 

9 hours ago, Gigaus said:

You say you can use Ignis to kill infinite enemys in a small area; Up to a point, and then anything which higher base damage and punch through added become significantly more effective.

This is true but the number of weapons that has a high enough base damage are not many, usually snipers and bows. Most other weapons require fire-rate or multiple pellets to create the damage compounding effect. Punch through is similar to AOE effect, for the ability of one shot being able to effect more than one target.

[Marine027]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb kwlingo:

Simply said because if over 50% of the community is using only one weapon DE didn't intend for a weapon to conquer all other weapons in game. This was why rivens were introduced, to allow non-meta weapons a fighting chance to be usable in daily missions. This doesn't fix bad weapon design but some weapons can become monsters.

This sadly not fixed any at all considering the RNG factor, and even with bad disspostion stronger weapons are still the better choice then trying to make a outdated one work with "god like" rolls, it still will underperform. Rivens are a good example that they have no idea how to balance any and instead trow RNG even on stats now.

[nooneyouknow13]

15 hours ago, Gigaus said:

But that's the point I'm getting at. In this and other threads, people are saying the AoE nerf was meant to nerf meta weapons, the main one getting brought up is the Bramma. Except, that none of the weapons that are affected are meta, and the Bramma is, but is unaffected. So....what was the point then?

The change had nothing to do with nerfing meta weapons. The change had everything to do with keeping explosives form becoming the only weapon choice after self damage was removed.

 

15 hours ago, Gigaus said:

Nox, Thumpers, Eids, POrbs, PoE and Orb enemies, Demos, Arena targets, and Juggs all have innate damage reduction.

 

20 hours ago, nooneyouknow13 said:

Almost no enemies have damage reduction other than Noxes in normal missions.

You literally listed a bunch of bosses and mini-bosses, that you don't encounter often at all. Noxes and Juggernauts are the only thing on there that spawn in normal missions.

[Madway7]

I just mostly don't like that AMPs got staggers, the T2 Scaffold stagger is unavoidable, at best you can get the minimum stagger

 

 

1 hour ago, nooneyouknow13 said:

You literally listed a bunch of bosses and mini-bosses, that you don't encounter often at all. Noxes and Juggernauts are the only thing on there that spawn in normal missions.

Not sure what the conversation is really about, but all Eximus units have 50% DR

[nooneyouknow13]

39 minutes ago, Madway7 said:

I just mostly don't like that AMPs got staggers, the T2 Scaffold stagger is unavoidable, at best you can get the minimum stagger

 

 

Not sure what the conversation is really about, but all Eximus units have 50% DR

Eximus units have an additional 50% resistance to each element, summed with their normal modifiers to a maximum of 90%. At least that's how it used to work, and I'm not aware of any recent changes.

[Kamachi]

The Devs in their infinite wisdom wanted explosive weapons to behave more like single target weapons. 🧐

[Aryustailm]

Not that they rebalanced them to hit or behave like single-target weapons though. All their stats were - and remain - based on doing full damage to everything in the area.

These changes were a brutal violation of their capabilities, most especially on those not known for their accuracy; lobbing or spraying projectiles in a vast zone now results in minimal tickles here and there instead of something viable.

And that of course wasn't enough somehow: then they added the stagger.