Got A Bow. Helped Clarify A Basic Frustration...

[Michkelz]

I recently got the Paris Prime, which is obviously armor ignore, but previously used Dread as my main wep. 

What I did to better suit the fast pace was simply to put on speed trigger - Making the charge rate so fast that I can easily run around, fire multiple arrows during short time, and easily get some well-aimed shots among them. 

[Voidflow]

Scaling of difficulty is also problematic. It is:

- higher armor

- more enemies

summarized quantity not quality.

A better scaling would be not even more enemies, no more armor scaling (better flat shield scaling), less damage scaling of our weapons

and more inteligent enemies better Ai, better tactics, abilities (kind of elite special units).

[[DE]Momaw]

 Out of curiosity - what would you do to fix this little weirdness with the bow?

 

It's not specifically and uniquey the bow, it's pretty much all the things that aren't DPS engines. Like, the Latron. It's a sweet little rifle that can pull off some really pin point shots and drop enemies at a respectable distance. A sniper rifle without the clumsiness, basically. But, it rarely gets to really shine for the same reason that the bow has trouble: by the time you're lining up precision shots and dropping enemies from a safe distance, somebody else is already up there rolling over the enemy with zero effort.

 

As for how to fix, it's not a simple one shot fix. These are fundamental issues here.

 

I'd start by roughly normalizing DPS versus range. If you want to kill at range, you sacrifice deeps. Assault rifles should not be as accurate as precision weapons like bows and sniper rifles, and pistol bullets shouldn't even FLY as far.

 

I would give rapid fire weapons and shotguns badly reduced armor penetration. The higher the power of your round, the more you get through armor. Using a machine pistol on a Grineer Heavy Gunner should be a complete waste of time no matter how awesome a machine pistol it is. On the other hand, *light* enemies should have almost no armor whatsoever.  This is to encourage a diverse loadout and squad makeup: You need punch weapons to kill the heavies and DPS weapons to kill the hordes. Currently this mechanic doesn't exist since armor piecing costs little and scales perfectly with DPS.

 

I would look at creating more wide-open map tiles where a well placed sniper can give significant and worthwhile covering fire. Currently there's only a few places where a long range weapon is truly desirable, like the wastelands on Phobos.

 

On the social engineering end of things, I would make an effort to duplicate mission reward *types* across a variety of battle levels, but have the *quantity* scale with level. In other words, you can farm resource X one at a time by fighting way below your level or farm it 3 and 4 at a time by challenging yourself. This is in a bid to stratify players by equipment and and discourage the rather frustrating mixing of newbies with maxed out superveterans.

Edited October 18, 2013 by Momaw

[tomhrio]

Isn't that a bit insane? You're suggesting that arrows puncture, home in, rapid fire, ragdoll, stagger and have a high crit. rate? Does that even make sense for bows? Pretty sure most bows wouldn't be able to easily puncture blocks of metal, nor do they home in, and if they're fired at such a high velocity then you're basically suggesting we turn the Paris into an overpowered Boltor.

 

...

 

Never mentioned rapid fire. Or firing speed. At all.

And if you are trying to limit what a wepaon in this game does by what its rl counterpart can do, then you should know that there is no rifle that can freeze and electrocute in real life.

[Relkin]

If you really love your bow, I reccomend using a banshee with +100% power range and max focus to offset the decrease in power.  This should allow you to remain reasonably competitive - also note that at very high levels bows can be useful for taking out heavies with a banshee while you let the lulzbrigade deal with the mooks. 

[Sebastianx]

Add a new bow mod that turns the arrow head into splitting bomblets, much like a cluster bomb,that way people can still use the bow as the silent weapon they like,or slap on that mod and use it like a strange variant of a shotgun,firing at close range at more enemies the explosive AoE (although much smaller than thunderbolt) will clump the damage against more enemies,and at longer range the spread is big enough that 1 bomblet should kill an enemy (and I mean like in your situation,low level enemies that get instantly vaporized by full-auto users). There,problem solved.

 

EDIT: About charging and non-charging shots. Non-charge shots shoot 3 times less pellets than a charged shot,so let's say a normal shot shoots 1 arrow that splits into 10 explosive pellets after 0.1 seconds travel time,a charged shot splits into 30 pellets.

Edited October 18, 2013 by Sebastianx

[Stakhanov]

I agreed all the way up to the point where you said that Solo players get shut down. I've played 1000 missions now, probably 850 of them solo, and I much preferred them over group play; less enemies to spawn, more time to think, and space to play smart enough to kill them properly.

 

I don't know if you're just having trouble with solo play or whether there is a genuine problem, but I never have a problem playing solo.

 

Other than that, you're right with bows and to some extent snipers, it feels as though there is not much space for them in this game in it's currently state, but I still play them just for variety's sake.

[NIL0S]

I know I might be a bit late to the party, but just got a Lanka, and discovered it has a bow like charge mechanic, that was a bummer.

[Azure_Kytia]

I may be behind the times, but isn't Damage 2.0 whacking elements onto proc chances tied to crits?

 

Not sure what they're doing with elements, but here's an idea.

 

If Damage 2.0 hypothetically prevents the rainbow mod system, then let Bow users alternate between a number of elements or something. They'd have a stock of generic arrows which are instilled with an element upon firing, as the bow infuses them with elemental power. The bow would have a naturally higher chance to proc most status debuffs and effects that is not related to critical hits (say, 35-50% proc rate on Paris, with different chances per bow). The player would switch between elements using the <G> or <5> keys.

 

Certain bows could have a default infusion or two that are always active with the bow, but if you add an element card to the bow, it powers up that element's proc rate or effect.

 

e.g.

Bow with Fire element: 150 damage over 10 seconds

Bow with Fire element + Hellfire mod: 150 + <Percentage of Enemy's health determined by Hellfire mod rank> damage over 7-10 seconds, with a +10% chance to proc as long as the Hellfire mod's equipped.

 

Rough idea, may work on it later once I sleep (4:50am here, I need to pokemon less)

[d1ru]

 The pace is Warframe right now is odd.

 

 On one hand, you've got a game that gives of the outward appearance of being very, very fast. And many people choose to play it as such. Flips, slides, shotguns and a suicide sprint playstyle.

 

 On the other, you've got straggling little bits of the game that all seem to move so much slower. The enemies aren't very good at handling anything moving particularly quickly and certain weapons really don't like being used on the run. Not to mention that, over time, changes to the speed players move have been made and shortly reverted or changed.

 

 

 It goes back and forth all the time.

 

 

 Out of curiosity - what would you do to fix this little weirdness with the bow?

 

 I ask you, how would you make the Bow fit the faster pace the players normally adopt?

 

design a bow with multiple strings. (can hold 4 strung arrows at once) and make it so that its charge time is long, but once charged can shoo t 4 arrows (seperately) in quick succession. or make it that theres an aoe slow effect on enemies. whichever.