Simple buff for guns (Primary and Secondary): 1 EXTRA MOD SLOT and + 5(10) free Mod Capacity

[Bakaguya-sama]

I think that most people can agree: In terms of raw killing power, primary and secondary weapons are falling behind melee and warframes nukes. With a few exception like the Kuva Bramma or Kuva Nukor of course.  

So I have a simple buff idea for guns: Give them 1 extra modding slot. And give them 5 free Mod capacity (Doubled to 10 with Orokin Catalyst installed).

This does not include Exalted Guns like Mesa's and Hildryn's.  

 

What are the pros of this suggestion?

This should be a noticeable buff for guns. Ever felt bad that you have to sacrifice the neat extra Multishot from Vigilante Arnament for a Riven? Or unable to fit Argon Scope into a Heat/Viral Hunter Munition build? Or simply want some extra firing speed with Vile Acceleration / Vigilante Fervor without tanking ammo economy? With 1 additional mod slot, you do not have to make these trades.  

It allow for increased build diversity, partially making up for the mandatory slot taken by Serration and Hornet Strike.  

The 5(10) extra capacity is so that most builds do not have to cram more forma in to get another mod slot.  Warframes has aura, and, melee get stances, both increase mod capacity. I think it's fair that guns get some additional capacity too. This would be nice to help new players out with modding also.  You can still forma it to fit more expensive mods (>10 cost) if you wish.  

This is a (supposedly) easy change to implement, a blanket buff for all guns.  Seeing that stuff like Necramechs already has additional mod slots.  

For the most part, I do not think something gamebreakingly overpowered will emerge from this change.    

What are the cons?  

As I said from the beginning, there are some outliers that are much stronger then the rest like the Bramma and Kuva Nukor. Perhaps they can be nerfed by a little bit. A few percent off their base damage should do the trick (nothing needlessly complicated like making the Bramma 5 ammo, which is fully negated by Vigilante Supplies anyway).  

This will likely not be enough to bring guns up to a fully even playing field as the meta melee weapons and AoE nukeframes. However, I think this is a good starting point. DE really need to be careful managing the powercreep.  

This is a blanket buff. Some guns will remain incredibly bad even with an additional mod slot. This does not replace individual weapon revision and buffing.  

Thoughts?  

[(XBOX)Skippy575]

Obligatory power creep comment. 

[(XBOX)Rez090]

I'd rather see ammo mutation be its own slot, would give less reliance on Carrier.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

It's just that melee is overtuned with Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds, Condition Overload, though the stance slot giving extra capacity doesn't hurt. Guns need more forma for worse performance.

[Benaful]

Guns do need more formas to be just weaker than melee weapons, i think the extra slot will make a lot of guns viable and cool, ironically, they also should nerf hunter munitions, is a  very powerful mod, and the reason all new weapons dont have high critical chance. also we need primed mods for primary weapons like primed split chamber, primed hammershot, primed vital sense, isn't like the guns are going to replace melee like that.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

5 hours ago, Benaful said:

Guns do need more formas to be just weaker than melee weapons, i think the extra slot will make a lot of guns viable and cool, ironically, they also should nerf hunter munitions, is a  very powerful mod, and the reason all new weapons dont have high critical chance. also we need primed mods for primary weapons like primed split chamber, primed hammershot, primed vital sense, isn't like the guns are going to replace melee like that.

Hunter Munitions is a bandaid that keeps non-slash primaries relevant. Impact and Puncture need buffs. Slash being better than Puncture against armor because of procs needs to be addressed. The fact Slash is neutral against Shields too..

[DALOS]

Modding is almost never fun, not unless the gun is radically different. It's all the same stuff; first you put on your damage and multishot mods, then elemental mods, then crit mods if the weapon has a good chance. At this point we're at the crossroads of either removing essential mods, or adding more slots and capacity. The latter may be power creep, but the former is orders of magnitude larger and more complicated.

The only brief fix to this I can see involves something the devs said along time ago about multi-shot. It was supposed to consume extra ammo but the code was bugged and decided to keep it. If this is implemented and enemies have health and armor halved, then multi-shot will effectively be a mod that increases TTK at the expense of efficiency and time before reload.

[Nailclipper]

On 2020-09-08 at 9:58 AM, Bakaguya-sama said:

This should be a noticeable buff for guns. Ever felt bad that you have to sacrifice the neat extra Multishot from Vigilante Arnament for a Riven? Or unable to fit Argon Scope into a Heat/Viral Hunter Munition build? Or simply want some extra firing speed with Vile Acceleration / Vigilante Fervor without tanking ammo economy? With 1 additional mod slot, you do not have to make these trades.  

It allow for increased build diversity, partially making up for the mandatory slot taken by Serration and Hornet Strike.  

You can't have more build diversity by allowing guns to cram more mods, it would instead reduce the diversity because now you can have almost everything on a gun.

The problem with guns vs melee vs frame abilities is that they scale differently. On weak enemies guns (and some frame abilities) are king because you can wipe them from far away but on steel path they become glorified super soakers against Grineers. Melee are always strong damage wise, but you need to get close to the enemies - on the normal start chart this is enough to balance them against guns.

I guess it's a difficult balance problem to tackle. If you buff guns across the board then they become ridiculously strong on normal contents.

[DALOS]

2 hours ago, Nailclipper said:

You can't have more build diversity by allowing guns to cram more mods, it would instead reduce the diversity because now you can have almost everything on a gun.

The problem with guns vs melee vs frame abilities is that they scale differently. On weak enemies guns (and some frame abilities) are king because you can wipe them from far away but on steel path they become glorified super soakers against Grineers. Melee are always strong damage wise, but you need to get close to the enemies - on the normal start chart this is enough to balance them against guns.

I guess it's a difficult balance problem to tackle. If you buff guns across the board then they become ridiculously strong on normal contents.

I fail to see how one extra slot would result in even less build diversity.

[Nailclipper]

1 hour ago, DALOS said:

I fail to see how one extra slot would result in even less build diversity.

He's suggesting not just that, but also additional 5 cap (10 with a potato), which means that the additional mod slot is meant for an extra mod without too much sacrifice (if any).

Technically, it would indeed provide more build diversity because there would be more possible mod combinations in a gun (the maximum combinations is where the number of mod slots is half the number of available mods). But in reality we also have capacity to consider and mods have ranks in their values (e.g. Serration is a must have) so my gut tells me that giving players the ability to put a "free" extra mod is not the best way to achieve more build diversity. Buffing guns across the board, sure (you can just put an extra 60/60 mod for more damage).

[Andele3025]

18 hours ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

It's just that melee is overtuned with Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds, Condition Overload, though the stance slot giving extra capacity doesn't hurt. Guns need more forma for worse performance.

Its not, Melee does have some overtuned stances (SO and BJ), but that should be fixed when the butchered stances get their mechanics back (keyboard steer, movement slows, fixed hitboxes, etc). And recent gun trends show AOE is no longer taboo like it was with the Plasmor and even prior Tonkor. Issue with guns is they dont really have a ammo economy anymore/effectively dont care about ammo on 19/20 guns, thus cant have their floor raised to near melee (that are in turn unreliable as far as headshots go).

[DALOS]

6 hours ago, Nailclipper said:

He's suggesting not just that, but also additional 5 cap (10 with a potato), which means that the additional mod slot is meant for an extra mod without too much sacrifice (if any).

Technically, it would indeed provide more build diversity because there would be more possible mod combinations in a gun (the maximum combinations is where the number of mod slots is half the number of available mods). But in reality we also have capacity to consider and mods have ranks in their values (e.g. Serration is a must have) so my gut tells me that giving players the ability to put a "free" extra mod is not the best way to achieve more build diversity. Buffing guns across the board, sure (you can just put an extra 60/60 mod for more damage).

Guns being underpowered is only part of the argument here. The other half is that there is no creativity or thought going into weapon modding. On average, essential mods take up between 6-8 slots. At that point why do we even bother going through the effort of manually modding a new weapon? The game might as well subtract all the slots and capacity from a weapon knowing that we're always going to equip Serration and Split Chamber.

Even if we just buff gun damage, it won't change much. People will start to complain that melee isn't worth it any more and needs a buff too. It's just another form of power creep. Like I said, we either remove essential mods, or we add more space and capacity. The latter is far easier. It's still power creep, but the difference is it makes modding more fun and engaging.

[Tyreaus]

I'm confused. Melee has:

1. The combo system, which not only greatly increases power via acolyte mods, it ups build diversity (heavy attack / combo builds on top of crit / status considerations)

2. Effectively in-built AoE

3. Mods that counter scaling like Shattering Impact

4. Stances that not only have bonus damage on some moves but forced procs on others

And this thread seems to address none of the above, nor even work towards any of them. The OP admits that this doesn't bring guns up to par with melee - and I agree. So what's the purpose of such a buff? To make guns stronger - but to what end? The end clearly isn't to put them on par with melee. But then...what's the point?

Being honest, given the above advantages of melee, this proposition feels like a bandaid. I'd much rather see a solution that works at and addresses the problem at its core.

[DALOS]

2 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

I'm confused. Melee has:

1. The combo system, which not only greatly increases power via acolyte mods, it ups build diversity (heavy attack / combo builds on top of crit / status considerations)

2. Effectively in-built AoE

3. Mods that counter scaling like Shattering Impact

4. Stances that not only have bonus damage on some moves but forced procs on others

And this thread seems to address none of the above, nor even work towards any of them. The OP admits that this doesn't bring guns up to par with melee - and I agree. So what's the purpose of such a buff? To make guns stronger - but to what end? The end clearly isn't to put them on par with melee. But then...what's the point?

Being honest, given the above advantages of melee, this proposition feels like a bandaid. I'd much rather see a solution that works at and addresses the problem at its core.

You're very right. Problem is in order to address the problem at it's core, it would probably mean damage 3.0, which is like moving mountains for DE I haven't touched my Loki Prime in years, and I won't until his first and third ability are buffed/reworked. That's an issue 7 years old. If they can't do something that simple while keeping the updates going, then can they rework damage?

[Nailclipper]

Guns power curve is a bit weird: At the beginning when you start the game they are weak and you wonder what the point of having guns is. Then at MR 8 you get Fulmin, finally a gun that can kill! It then ramps up from there with guns like Ignis Wraith, Acceltra, Staticor and other decent guns from the dojo, not to mention Kuva weapons. Then you try steel path and your guns become weak again like when you first start the game.

Melee are always strong, though they become backup weapons at "mid level content" because you can wipe the area clean of enemies faster with guns (that's why people use Ignis Wraiths at Sanctuary Onslaught).

So it would be best not to buff guns across the board because they will become ridiculously strong at mid level content. Ideally DE does a rework of the damage system.

[Tyreaus]

1 hour ago, DALOS said:

You're very right. Problem is in order to address the problem at it's core, it would probably mean damage 3.0, which is like moving mountains for DE I haven't touched my Loki Prime in years, and I won't until his first and third ability are buffed/reworked. That's an issue 7 years old. If they can't do something that simple while keeping the updates going, then can they rework damage?

While Loki hungering for an update is definitely a thing, they did rework damage from 1.0 to 2.0, and even did some other adjustments in 3.0. They at least used to be able to do that, and show some fractions of capability in that direction, so I'd say they're able to rework damage. Willing to, on the other hand...

[(PSN)AccursedImmortal]

They shouldn't increase the power of weapons.

Steel path are for players who maxed mastery rank, have the top warframes, have all the top tier weapons, arcanes, mods. It's basically hardmode for players who've done everything. It's supposed to hard. Players are supposed to figure out how to beat it with everything they currently have. If players can't beat it, that means they haven't figured out how to strategize warframe abilities. I saw some people using wukong and baruuk. They really know what they're doing to turn it into easy mode.

[Redpaws]

Eehhh... I'd rather see the removal of base damage mods (and weapon damage increased to compensate) over an added slot. Though even then, I do love my amalgam serration enough that I ALWAYS use it. Feel so slow without it now that I've gotten used to it.

What I DO think would be a nice addition to mod slots: Add an "optics" slot that are similar to aura/stance mods (so they can only go into that slot), except instead of giving added capacity, they should just be free. Optics mods would obviously be anything that gives or removes zoom, and speaking of which, we need a -zoom mod that works when on the ground, and not just when in the air. Sometimes you want to use argon scope/laser sight or some other "while aiming" mod, but the gun just has too much zoom for it to be all that practical or enjoyable to use. Even if a dedicated slot isn't added, just a -zoom mod for every weapon class would be really nice, and not just for Rubico. In fact, just make Ambush Optics be for all snipers, and add mods for rifle/shotgun/pistol that does the same.

[Andele3025]

23 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

The end clearly isn't to put them on par with melee. But then...what's the point?

The good guns already are on par tho.
Combo counter on its own no longer offers any advantages with aco mods and stances being compensation for stat differences and lack of ability to reliably go for headshots and multishot. Cleave should in theory be there as to make up for speed/fire rate gap between guns and melee, but since it is a horde looter its in practice the real big benefit as people tend to not mod for PT and on some guns PT doesnt behave by the same rules as bullets do for enemies.
And SI isnt a anti scaling mod as in the 17+ swings it takes for even mooks to actually lose armor you'd just kill the enemy, hell most enemies are dead after the 8~9 it takes for it to just barely be better than proper element use/good modding.

[DALOS]

22 hours ago, (PS4)AccursedImmortal said:

They shouldn't increase the power of weapons.

Steel path are for players who maxed mastery rank, have the top warframes, have all the top tier weapons, arcanes, mods. It's basically hardmode for players who've done everything. It's supposed to hard. Players are supposed to figure out how to beat it with everything they currently have. If players can't beat it, that means they haven't figured out how to strategize warframe abilities. I saw some people using wukong and baruuk. They really know what they're doing to turn it into easy mode.

Yeah, SP is for minmaxers. I never done a single mission on it.