Solution to Current Unfolding Events: A "Council of Design"

[(PSN)Crixus044]

Here's an example where a Council of Design would come in handy.

"We would like to rework the damage system. Gas damage is currently not to our liking since it only relies on toxic damage. How can we rework it. We're thinking of making is a cloud that procs on effect."

And we'd respond with "NO, that is a terrible idea. Here's why."

This is gonna be a minor copypasta rant with updates here and there about gas damage since I've covered it in explicit detail.

Spoiler

 

If you consider the average high level infested enemy diversity, you got an ancient healer (usually caustic eximus as well), an ancient disruptor, 1 boiler and/or brood mother, 1 toxic ancient, 1 tar mutalist, 2 swarm mutalist, 2 mutalist ospreys, 4 crawlers, 2 volatile leapers, 1 runner and leapers as well as 2 chargers (usually 1 parasitic charger as well). That's 21-22 enemies, whereas the game has up to 25-35 enemies on the map at once, depending on game mode. Of those, 34% of the EHp is built with gas as a focus. The other 66% is weak to corrosive and those weak to corrosive are far more important, since they are the higher tier enemies with auras and negation. This means. strictly on terms of damage weaknesses, gas is NEVER the best option. At best, it's a 26% more effective damage type with a hard negative to everything else. Let's then move onto the the status proc.

Most enemies group up in pairs and groups of 3 with spacial groups of 4. With this, we can multiply the power of gas damage. Turns out that DE did a double stealth nerf for Gas. the recent change to make its radius expand ALSO nerfed the number of stacks you can get, which is 10. Meaning, you can only do a total of 10x base damage x number of enemies hit. LEt's do this comparison against grineer, since they are the most unified faction in terms of EHp types and have the simplest formulas. The new radius usually means that we can get an average of 3 enemies per proc in a mission. With that in mind, we get a total of 30x base damage. Let me be the first to tell you that is is terrible. An Aksomati Prime built for gas will be dealing an average of ~60k dps on body shots.Gas procs stacked up to 10 would be +4513 dps x number of enemies hit. In missions, you'll get an average off 3 enemies per grouping, thus dps is +13539. (13539+59281)/59281 = 1.23x dps. This is utterly criminal. That same build with viral damage instead of gas at max stacks does 4.25x dps. And guess what, it's viral, which has bonuses to all flesh. IT has a negative to only 34% of infested EHp, and excels at single target DPS. To get gas at the same level as viral, you will need to hit exactly 42 enemies every single encounter. You take on at most 15 enemies in a single room!

"Well let's nerf viral then" Put down the pitchforks. Corrosive ALSO has roughly the same amounts of effect. I will discount damage type weaknesses as a FAVOR to gas. A level 70 Corrupted Heavy Gunner has 4025 armor. That same build after 1 second of firing removes 80% of armor for a total armor value of 805, yes I round up for the sake of lowballing. That's a dps multiplier of 3.82x dps. Pretty close to viral, and scales better, the higher the enemy level. A level 100 CHG dps multiplier would be exactly 4.25x dps and it keeps scaling here.

"Nerf them both!" Hold on. Heat damage on that same weapon at min power (2 second armor strip +damage stack on 89560.154 dps) against a level 100 CHG would be 2.3c dps. Because of build options, the comparison to the gas build would actually be 3.45. This scales endlessly and at 5 seconds, matches Corrosive and Viral against a level 100 CHG, getting better over levels. Electricity is current bugged, but it would fair well in the same situation, sitting at 2.1x dps on bodyshot with 4.2x on headshot, right up there with the other heavy hitters. Either way, gas has been destroyed.

 

Here's what you should do.
Councilor A: Make radius scale off heat damage weight while damage scales off toxin like it is now
Councilor B: I don't like mutalist cernos on every weapon. Make it scale off total damage
Councilor C: Love it. Gimme more
Councilor 😧 What they said
Councilor E: It's fine as is

DE: Well, I see a lot of suggestions here. LEt's make a poll. The winning votes gets the change.

DE: Looks like councilor A won. Heat will affect the radius of gas, starting at 2m. Radius follows the formula of R = 2*(1+Heat Damage mods)

Community: YAYYYY!!!!

Councilors: YAYYYYYY!!!!

DE: YAYYYY!!!!!