Mod Balance (not just about rivens)

[(PSN)NemitheNem]

The community seems to have a lot of complaints and issue with rivens and modding in general--usually in response to mandatory mods.

One thing that has come my attention is the imbalance between mods and mod catagories. To illustrate this I am going to give up one of my darlings.

Fury: 9 Drain, +30% speed, silver mod

Primed Fury: 14 Drain, +55% speed, platinum mod

For fury that's 3.3 speed per drain. For Primed fury that's 3.9, not much improvement but there's also theoretically saving a mod slot.

But then there's Quickening: 9 drain, +40% speed, +20% combo chance. Gold mod.

On speed alone it out does Primed Fury at 4.4 per drain, and gives us that sweet sweet combo chance on top of that.

A gold mod should be between a silver and a platinum mod, so 40% speed is right on target. But it should not be  better than a platinum mod.

Now then, corrupted mods, these are a little...on one hand they what you need to finish off the build, on the other sometimes it seems odd that sometimes the corrupted mod doesn't give you as much goodies as a non corrupted mod despite having an extra cost. Overall I'd say they are about right? Maybe? Perhaps though it is an influence from riven a making me feel like having a 'curse' should make the bonuses more powerful.

Now to bring Rivens into the equation. I don't mind the rebalances of rivens. The pure RNG is a bit annoying, but eh.

But here's the thing, a riven mod should never be worse than a regular mod, but often they are for low disposition weapons. 

[DeckChairVonBananaCamel]

Yyou make some good points.

The only thing i would say in counter to this is that, barring exalted weapons, melee weapons are not really constrained by mod capacity once you start really trying to optimise their build.
This is due to the combination of forma and the stance mod.
As a result, at the high end it really comes down to what you can fit in the 8 slots so the choice is really just between Quickening, Primed Fury, Gladiator Vice and Berserker.
Is your weapon's critical chance high enough to get the best attack speed with berserker?
Would you rather a slower max attack speed without the need to build it up by using Primed Fury?
Or do you want to sacrifice attack speed further but gain other bonuses instead by using Gladiator Vice or Quickening?

[taiiat]

you have a point in a way, but in this game we're restricted mainly by Mod Slots (ever since the introduction of Forma in U8), rather than Mod Points.

and for that matter, Primed Mods are special exceptions to everything since they're Stat upgrades with the intention of being basically Overpowered.

Edited June 5, 2020 by taiiat

[Kayll]

3 hours ago, (PS4)NemitheNem said:

But here's the thing, a riven mod should never be worse than a regular mod, but often they are for low disposition weapons. 

Is that not the entire point of Rivens?
Why would a low disposition weapon have rivens that rival or that are better than generic mods?

[Andele3025]

9 hours ago, (PS4)NemitheNem said:

On speed alone it out does Primed Fury at 4.4 per drain, and gives us that sweet sweet combo chance on top of that.

A gold mod should be between a silver and a platinum mod, so 40% speed is right on target. But it should not be  better than a platinum mod.

You are missing a crucial thing here. Slot efficiency is as important if not more than drain.

Now to be fair, in the case of quickening its a slight overperformance in slot efficiency too but thats only relevant when one adds BR and Berserk into the calculation.

Quote

Now then, corrupted mods, these are a little...on one hand they what you need to finish off the build, on the other sometimes it seems odd that sometimes the corrupted mod doesn't give you as much goodies as a non corrupted mod despite having an extra cost.

The non-damage weapon corrupt mods do need buffs.

Quote

But here's the thing, a riven mod should never be worse than a regular mod, but often they are for low disposition weapons. 

A riven should also never be better than 2 regular mods, not be tradeable, get a better select aquisition route and they should have stat locking and their value rng ranges removed or made tweakeable, sadly its not in DEs financial interest to make them actually healthy as a "customizable corrupt mods".

Edited June 5, 2020 by Andele3025

[(XBOX)Calliber]

12 hours ago, DeckChairVonBananaCamel said:

Yyou make some good points.

The only thing i would say in counter to this is that, barring exalted weapons, melee weapons are not really constrained by mod capacity once you start really trying to optimise their build.
This is due to the combination of forma and the stance mod.
As a result, at the high end it really comes down to what you can fit in the 8 slots so the choice is really just between Quickening, Primed Fury, Gladiator Vice and Berserker.
Is your weapon's critical chance high enough to get the best attack speed with berserker?
Would you rather a slower max attack speed without the need to build it up by using Primed Fury?
Or do you want to sacrifice attack speed further but gain other bonuses instead by using Gladiator Vice or Quickening?

In regards to specifically speed mods, one thing to consider is that there is a lot of variably in regards to the stances.  Some stances have faster attack animations than other, so that you could comfortably go with a different mod, though faster is better for top-end obviously. Is there any information in regards to break-points on attack speed with stances?  would be difficult since you have to take into account FPS along with PC versus console.

[(PSN)NemitheNem]

12 hours ago, taiiat said:

you have a point in a way, but in this game we're restricted mainly by Mod Slots (ever since the introduction of Forma in U8), rather than Mod Points.

*hand waggle* there's the mandatory mod issue though, and forma investment.

I prefer crit melee because I have the acrolyte mods. Crit means more speed, means faster combo count, means more crit, and status on top of that.

(which opens up another conversation on the derth of effect-on-status mods)

But let's say I was going to walk the path of primed Fury, I'd probably have to sink at least one more forma into my weapons, further constraining my builds.

(I got like fifty forma sitting built, but that doesn't mean I don't worry.)

12 hours ago, taiiat said:

and for that matter, Primed Mods are special exceptions to everything since they're Stat upgrades with the intention of being basically Overpowered.

But primed Fury isn't, and neither are some other primed mods.

11 hours ago, Kayll said:

Is that not the entire point of Rivens?
Why would a low disposition weapon have rivens that rival or that are better than generic mods?

??? The point of Rivens is strength and to consolidate Mod slots.

Rivens are big plat sinks, big time sinks for rolling etc. Imagine dripping 1k plat on a riven, but a year later you're better off putting a bronze mod on. This breeds discontent in the community, especially in players who sink money into the game.

Note, I don't mean all Rivens should be useable, you got to roll for that.

5 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

Now to be fair, in the case of quickening its a slight overperformance in slot efficiency too but thats only relevant when one adds BR and Berserk into the calculation.

Which are, depending on the weapon, mandatory mods.

[Andele3025]

11 minutes ago, (PS4)NemitheNem said:

Which are, depending on the weapon, mandatory mods.

Doesnt matter if they are "almost mandatory" as only Pressure Point is a true mandatory mod for a melee weapon (however it too isnt actually used on tool weapons, which is a sadly small category when it comes to melee compared to primary and especially secondary weapon options as tools like pox and zakti).

[taiiat]

38 minutes ago, (PS4)NemitheNem said:

*hand waggle* there's the mandatory mod issue though, and forma investment.

I prefer crit melee because I have the acrolyte mods. Crit means more speed, means faster combo count, means more crit, and status on top of that.
But let's say I was going to walk the path of primed Fury, I'd probably have to sink at least one more forma into my weapons, further constraining my builds.

all of the Attack Speed Mods and all of the Crit Mods (well, Sacrificial Steel is an exception but that's to be considered a Primed Mod) have the same Polarity. what are you even talking about.

39 minutes ago, (PS4)NemitheNem said:

But primed Fury isn't, and neither are some other primed mods.

Primed Fury is significantly stronger than Fury, and it's the strongest non conditional Attack Speed Mod in the game.
how does that not qualify for that.

• Primed Continuity is the strongest non Corrupted Duration Mod.
• Primed Flow... well, duh.
• Primed Vigor has no competition except its own weaker version of itself.
• Primed Sure Footed has no competition except its own weaker version of itself.
• Primed Ravage happens to be stronger than even the conditional Crit Damage available for Shotguns.
• Primed Point Blank is the strongest generic Damage Mod for Shotguns.
• Ammo Mutation Mods... well, duh.
• Primed Elementals.... how is that not extremely obvious that they qualify.
• Primed Anti-Faction Mods.... how is that not extremely obvious that they qualify.
• Primed Reach has no competition except its own weaker version of itself.
• Primed Heavy Trauma is stronger than Collision Force.
• Primed Pressure Point is the strongest non conditional generic Damage Mod for Melee Weapons.
• Primed Fast Hands is the strongest Reload Speed Mod for Primaries that isn't Weapon specific.
• Primed Shred can completely replace Metal Auger, and is almost always worth taking over Speed Trigger despite the 5% deficit.
• Primed Pistol Gambit has no competition except its own weaker version of itself.
• Primed Slip Magazine is the second strongest Magazine Capacity Mod for Secondary Weapons, however realistically the strongest because Tainted Clip is objectively bad even if other Magazine Capacity Mods didn't exist.
• Primed Target Cracker happens to be stronger than even the conditional Crit Damage available for Secondary Weapons.
• Primed Quickdraw is the strongest Reload Speed Mod for Secondary Weapons.
• Primed Morphic Transformer has no competition except its own weaker version of itself.
• Primed Regen has no competition except its own weaker version of itself.
• Primed Animal Instinct is a mandatory Mod.
• Primed Pack Leader is unquestionably stronger than its weaker version, even if the amount that it is stronger is effectively irrelevant.
• Sacrificial Steel is obviously better than True Steel.
• Sacrificial Pressure is either slightly stronger or slightly weaker than Pressure Point depending on how you want to look at it. this gets complicated since this is the only case where we have two Primed Mods competing for the same Stat and aren't stackable.
• don't even try to pretend that Umbral Mods don't exist with the intention of being significantly better (but requiring the use of multiple of them).

so with Pack Leader you might be able to have an argument via technicality, but even that is stretching it.
so that leaves Sacrificial Pressure the only one that you could make that argument for, out of literally all of the others.

so what Primed Mods are you thinking of that don't qualify for this when i just went over literally every single Primed Mod in the game?

[Kayll]

2 hours ago, (PS4)NemitheNem said:

...

Pretty sure their main purpose is to be used on under used weapons that players find weak so there is more incentive to use them.
That's why they have had disposition from the start.
Imagine they removed disposition riven's would become mandatory for every weapon, even a 1.00 disposition riven can get more damage than a Serration,the mod I see people complaining about all the time how its stupid that they are mandatory.

I think Riven's current position in the game is fine,for popular weapons you can use them to get more of a specific stat if that's what you desire,and they enable weaker weapons to be used by having powerful rivens that are rolled properly.

[(PSN)NemitheNem]

6 hours ago, taiiat said:

all of the Attack Speed Mods and all of the Crit Mods (well, Sacrificial Steel is an exception but that's to be considered a Primed Mod) have the same Polarity. what are you even talking about.

Because of the drain? 7 is still more than 5 and melee wise I think the most I forma'd something was maybe three times? In more complicated situations 55 is close to sixty so that means Gladiator Vice can take a hike and then something else, that usually has more drain and so high ho forma away.

Honestly as we chat about this I start to think rather than a straight percentage boost it could have atiny-small flat extra boost in addition to percentage, on fast weapons it wouldn't amount to anything, on slow weapons it would make it competition for other speed mods. Primed mods being a cut above.

[taiiat]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)NemitheNem said:

Honestly as we chat about this I start to think rather than a straight percentage boost it could have atiny-small flat extra boost in addition to percentage, on fast weapons it wouldn't amount to anything, on slow weapons it would make it competition for other speed mods. Primed mods being a cut above.

Attack Speed Mods are already borderline 'hyper good', they don't need any extra free stuff. getting more free stuff with Attack Speed just means increasing Melee Stats as a whole.

[DeckChairVonBananaCamel]

1 hour ago, (PS4)NemitheNem said:

Because of the drain? 7 is still more than 5 and melee wise I think the most I forma'd something was maybe three times? In more complicated situations 55 is close to sixty so that means Gladiator Vice can take a hike and then something else, that usually has more drain and so high ho forma away.

Honestly as we chat about this I start to think rather than a straight percentage boost it could have atiny-small flat extra boost in addition to percentage, on fast weapons it wouldn't amount to anything, on slow weapons it would make it competition for other speed mods. Primed mods being a cut above.

but we already established that drain is not a problem on non-exalted weapons because of forma...

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

They should reduce the drain of all under-performing bronze mods. They are the first mods new players get, but never use because by the time they get a potato or start using forma, they already have better choices for the same drain. 

None of the +30% IPS mods should be worth 9 drain. They should cost 0 at Rank 0 or better yet, give you extra capacity points like auras do with negative drain. Then they would actually have a purpose for new players who aren't swimming in potatoes.