Please do another balance pass on status effects

[Flying_Scorpion]

I know you guys are busy with a lot of stuff and you need to keep pushing out new content, but please, status effects deserve another balance pass. It's one of those foundational systems in the game that requires attention.

[Voltage]

I agree, especially taking a second look at Void, Viral (yes, this damage type is just a ridiculous outlier with enemy eHP nerfs), and Gas (Look how they massacred my boy).

I totally missed Blast too. :(

[DrakeWurrum]

I'm still hoping they go the Railjack route. They need to get rid of the "combo" elements.

That cuts down the number of elemental status effects to balance from 13 to 7. Plus Void, of course.

[Flying_Scorpion]

1 minute ago, DrakeWurrum said:

I'm still hoping they go the Railjack route. They need to get rid of the "combo" elements.

That cuts down the number of elemental status effects to balance from 13 to 7. Plus Void, of course.

I hesitantly acknowledge that you make a good point.  However this would require a LOT of work.

[DrakeWurrum]

Just now, Flying_Scorpion said:

I hesitantly acknowledge that you make a good point.  However this would require a LOT of work.

I dunno. Would it? They've already done the main work: https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Damage#Empyrean_Damage_System

I think they could improve on that some, but they basically already have it set up.

[Emolition]

3 minutes ago, DrakeWurrum said:

I'm still hoping they go the Railjack route. They need to get rid of the "combo" elements.

That cuts down the number of elemental status effects to balance from 13 to 7. Plus Void, of course.

From the start there was no combos and we had the so called rainbow build you would just add all elements on every gun. But this combo system they adde to counter that not sure how it changed stuff beside what combo you have. I still adding all 4 elements on pretty much every gun.

[keikogi]

11 minutes ago, Emolition said:

From the start there was no combos and we had the so called rainbow build you would just add all elements on every gun. But this combo system they adde to counter that not sure how it changed stuff beside what combo you have. I still adding all 4 elements on pretty much every gun.

The raibow build was not a result of available elements it was a simple consequence of math. Elemental mods had the best dps per slot so all 4 of them made the cut.if elemental mods converted damage types that would not have been a issue.

[Rawbeard]

1 hour ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

you need to keep pushing out new content

would be nice if they did that a bit more regularly than "once a year and then nothing for the next year"

[DrakeWurrum]

28 minutes ago, Emolition said:

From the start there was no combos and we had the so called rainbow build you would just add all elements on every gun. But this combo system they adde to counter that not sure how it changed stuff beside what combo you have. I still adding all 4 elements on pretty much every gun.

Yes, I remember that.

They could perhaps include some extra incentive to using a minimal number of elements, instead of stacking as many as possible. Maybe individual mods adding the same element add a multiplier or something.

[lukinu_u]

il y a 33 minutes, DrakeWurrum a dit :

I'm still hoping they go the Railjack route. They need to get rid of the "combo" elements.

That cuts down the number of elemental status effects to balance from 13 to 7. Plus Void, of course.

They initially introduced combined element to avoid rainbow builds.
Before damage 2.0, you were able to have IPS + all 4 elemental mods, each having their own damage modifier and effect. This mean your weapon was a bit less effective at doing one task, but always had at least one damage type effective against a specific health type and trigger all elemental effects (which weren't really status at that time).

With the new damage system, you are not able to do so, because no combination is verstatile enough, to be super effective against everything. Viral + heat is definitely the go-to option for most players because it give a sweet damage multiplier and reduce armor but this is not a perfect combo : both aren't good against shields and armor, some enemies are imune to viral status, etc...
Overall, the combined element system encourage swapping weapons if you multiple damage type and their status effect, even this way you won't be able to get them all so you still need to make choices between focusing on one faction or having a less generic loadout for all faction.

Removing the combo elements as you suggest would be a huge step backward.

However, status effects really need a huge rework and we really need to get rid of stuff like viral and magnetic, which are just damage multiplier instead of being game mechanics.

[DrakeWurrum]

12 minutes ago, lukinu_u said:

They initially introduced combined element to avoid rainbow builds.
Before damage 2.0, you were able to have IPS + all 4 elemental mods, each having their own damage modifier and effect. This mean your weapon was a bit less effective at doing one task, but always had at least one damage type effective against a specific health type and trigger all elemental effects (which weren't really status at that time).

With the new damage system, you are not able to do so, because no combination is verstatile enough, to be super effective against everything. Viral + heat is definitely the go-to option for most players because it give a sweet damage multiplier and reduce armor but this is not a perfect combo : both aren't good against shields and armor, some enemies are imune to viral status, etc...
Overall, the combined element system encourage swapping weapons if you multiple damage type and their status effect, even this way you won't be able to get them all so you still need to make choices between focusing on one faction or having a less generic loadout for all faction.

Removing the combo elements as you suggest would be a huge step backward.

However, status effects really need a huge rework and we really need to get rid of stuff like viral and magnetic, which are just damage multiplier instead of being game mechanics.

I remember the rainbow builds all too well. Hell, I've recently brought some old weapons off the shelf that still had it, intending to Forma them. Had to update so many builds in the past month.

I really don't think removing combo elements would be a step backward, so much as recognizing that it solved one problem by creating another. The problem being that there are too many damage types to effectively balance. It's way past time they try a different solution.

Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't just forcibly limit how many elements we can add to a weapon. Would've been the easier solution.

If they make it so combo elements are gone, and we can only add two elements max to a weapon, that would end rainbow builds while making elements easier to balance. And it would mean we don't waste so many mod slots on elemental damage.

12 minutes ago, lukinu_u said:

Viral + heat is definitely the go-to option for most players because it give a sweet damage multiplier and reduce armor but this is not a perfect combo : both aren't good against shields and armor, some enemies are imune to viral status, etc...

  Actually, Viral+Heat is the best damage type in all possible scenarios, outside of being immune to Viral (i.e. Deimos enemies), which is REALLY a terrible solution to the problem.

People have done the math on this. Against shielded enemies, it still beats out Magnetic, even though that's the only place Magnetic is useful.

Corrosive still falls behind Viral against armored targets, even if only slightly.

And that all ignores the fact that Gas is too weak to be useful.

Not to mention that Cold, Electric, and Blast are pointless.

 

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

I agree, especially taking a second look at Void, Viral (yes, this damage type is just a ridiculous outlier with enemy eHP nerfs), and Gas (Look how they massacred my boy).

So you’re saying they should nerf Viral to be a bad as gas and keep gas exactly the same.

And have you forma’d this opinion 6 times?

[lukinu_u]

il y a 5 minutes, DrakeWurrum a dit :

Actually, Viral+Heat is the best damage type in all possible scenarios, outside of being immune to Viral (i.e. Deimos enemies), which is REALLY a terrible solution to the problem.

People have done the math on this. Against shielded enemies, it still beats out Magnetic, even though that's the only place Magnetic is useful.

Corrosive falls behind Viral against armored targets, even if only slightly.

Depending on the shield size, toxin might be more effective than viral + heat, so it's not true.

Also, viral + heat is the best considering you can only have 2 elemental damage types, but that's not always true. Some weapons have innate combined element, some warframe have elemental buffs and you can also easily combine melee and gun without swap animation, which make other combinations possible.

Considering the last option which apply to every warframe, there are a lot morepossibilities, and their use will really depend on what you target (again, specfic faction or versatile build). If you have one weapon with viral + heat, on your second weapon you might want to have corro + heat against armored target, but prefer full toxin against heavily shielded targets.
Also, the viral + heat is not always wanted depending on what else you can have, for example, my go-to loadout is viral + corro + electricity + toxin over two weapons with shattering impact, where viral + corrosive is more effective than viral + heat and I don't need the heat because I completely strip armor with corro + shattering impact and have electricity and toxin for the DoT.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

5 minutes ago, DrakeWurrum said:

I remember the rainbow builds all too well. Hell, I've recently brought some old weapons off the shelf that still had it, intending to Forma them. Had to update so many builds in the past month.

I really don't think removing combo elements would be a step backward, so much as recognizing that it solved one problem by creating another. The problem being that there are too many damage types to effectively balance.

  Actually, Viral+Heat is the best damage type in all possible scenarios, outside of being immune to Viral (i.e. Deimos enemies), which is REALLY a terrible solution to the problem.

People have done the math on this. Against shielded enemies, it still beats out Magnetic, even though that's the only place Magnetic is useful.

Corrosive falls behind Viral against armored targets, even if only slightly.

 

Well, single elements usually have +25% bonuses, vs the +75% bonuses combined elements have. Throw in the fact that armor class modifiers double dip by mitigating the same percentage of armor not to mention the loss of Viral and Corrosive status effects would result in a huge nerf in our damage if the single elements were left as they are. 

The bright side of this is that this makes IPS more appealing with the +50% bonuses. Without Viral, people will want to proc more Slash against armored targets.

Most modern builds can't fit more than 2 elements anyways with all the Crit, Hunter Munitions, etc that didn't exist before.

Most of the combined elements were designed to have anti-synergy with procs that competed with each other.

• Corrosive+Blast: Corrosive good against armor, Blast is worse than heat against armor.
• Magnetic+Gas: Gas used to proc Toxin that ignored Shields that Magnetic was supposed to tear through
• Radiation+Viral: This one's an outlier.

Single elements with lower bonuses offered supplemental procs.

In the Case of Corrosive Vs Viral:

At 6000 armor which Sortie Level Heavy Units have are at 95% Damage Reduction.

80% strip is 1200 remaining armor which is still 80% Damage Reduction, aka a 4x Multiplier.

Viral's effect is always stronger than Corrosive before Sortie armor levels, Corrosive gets marginally better after, but Viral synergizes with Slash which ignores armor completely.

Viral is an outlier. It could be toned down to make it like Heat. Make Viral's +100% damage against health a delayed effect like Heat's armor strip, while giving it a Puncture esque debuff as its main effect.

Puncture could receive Viral's current effect at a reduced effectiveness in exchange for working against Shields too.

 

 

[DrakeWurrum]

7 minutes ago, lukinu_u said:

Depending on the shield size, toxin might be more effective than viral + heat, so it's not true.

Also, viral + heat is the best considering you can only have 2 elemental damage types, but that's not always true. Some weapons have innate combined element, some warframe have elemental buffs and you can also easily combine melee and gun without swap animation, which make other combinations possible.

Considering the last option which apply to every warframe, there are a lot morepossibilities, and their use will really depend on what you target (again, specfic faction or versatile build). If you have one weapon with viral + heat, on your second weapon you might want to have corro + heat against armored target, but prefer full toxin against heavily shielded targets.
Also, the viral + heat is not always wanted depending on what else you can have, for example, my go-to loadout is viral + corro + electricity + toxin over two weapons with shattering impact, where viral + corrosive is more effective than viral + heat and I don't need the heat because I completely strip armor with corro + shattering impact and have electricity and toxin for the DoT.

This guy did a good demonstration of the problem.

Hell, Magnetic only barely works out better than Corrosive for TTK on Corpus targets, and is actually less effective than using Heat by itself.

He probably should've included Toxin, for the sake of how it bypasses shields.

[BoomyGordo]

54 minutes ago, lukinu_u said:

Before damage 2.0, you were able to have IPS + all 4 elemental mods

small correction: there was no IPS before 2.0 , each weapon had a certain damage type leading to some being vastly superior to others.

[Voltage]

2 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

So you’re saying they should nerf Viral to be a bad as gas and keep gas exactly the same.

You completely missed the point of why I think they should look at Viral a second time. Gas is in a very bad spot along with multiple other damage types. However, Viral (and Slash as usual) are such enormous outliers that it removes any reason to use something else unless you get poorly designed enemies like Deimos Infested that just simply ignore Viral in order to have a chance at living for a few seconds. Some damage types being better than others will always be the case. However, I would argue pre-Warframe Revised damage types were much more interesting than now. Before, Corrosive, buffed Heat, Gas, and Viral + Slash were all compelling choices for various mission types. Now, with the exception of Deimos enemies that resist Viral, you are now basically restricted to Viral, Slash, and Heat as the only relevant damage types. The only reason to ever bother with someone else right now is 1-shot stat sticks that use Corrosive, and using Condition Overload primers to make your real damage types like Slash hit more like a truck.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

49 minutes ago, Voltage said:

You completely missed the point of why I think they should look at Viral a second time. Gas is in a very bad spot along with multiple other damage types. However, Viral (and Slash as usual) are such enormous outliers that it removes any reason to use something else unless you get poorly designed enemies like Deimos Infested that just simply ignore Viral in order to have a chance at living for a few seconds. Some damage types being better than others will always be the case. However, I would argue pre-Warframe Revised damage types were much more interesting than now. Before, Corrosive, buffed Heat, Gas, and Viral + Slash were all compelling choices for various mission types. Now, with the exception of Deimos enemies that resist Viral, you are now basically restricted to Viral, Slash, and Heat as the only relevant damage types. The only reason to ever bother with someone else right now is 1-shot stat sticks that use Corrosive, and using Condition Overload primers to make your real damage types like Slash hit more like a truck.

I didn’t miss anything.

You forget DE doesn’t buff they only nerf now. So in order for Viral to be “balanced” it must be made garbage tier like Gas Damage.

[kgabor]

They should take balancing advices from Sauron, regarding Void status;

 

[DrivaMain]

6 hours ago, Voltage said:

I agree, especially taking a second look at Void, Viral (yes, this damage type is just a ridiculous outlier with enemy eHP nerfs), and Gas (Look how they massacred my boy).

No mention of blast? Well that proved my point that Blast is the worst damage type in the game.

[Voltage]

5 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

No mention of blast? Well that proved my point that Blast is the worst damage type in the game.

I genuinely forgot. I proved your point didn't I. Atleast Gas is a "popular bad". Blast is just forgotten.

[Tiltskillet]

Yes, please.  Preferably -without- cutting the number of different damage types.*

 

 ^{* I really don't understand the appeal of that.  Maybe if I were new to the game. Or in the DE Marketing Dept. and thought that WF could achieve dramatically better market share if it were dumbed down a lot.   Or a senior designer whose ideas have dried up and wanted to move the game toward maintenance mode.  😉}

[taiiat]

7 hours ago, Voltage said:

I agree, especially taking a second look at Void, Viral (yes, this damage type is just a ridiculous outlier with enemy eHP nerfs), and Gas (Look how they massacred my boy).
I totally missed Blast too. :(

Gas and Blast being made largely useless is certainly boo. but the plus side is that Fire and Elec are stronger than they were (even just talking about the Damage, not the Utility). though i thought Electricity was already good but i can't say it isn't objectively better now, just don't really think it needed it but w/e.

with Viral being what it is, tbh i'd just (i mean i would either way since it was pointless) revert the Enemy EHP nerfs. shallowing the Level Scaling at higher Levels (as long as the cutoff was 100 since that makes more sense than 80) is alright i guess, but there wasn't any reason to both make it easier to Kill Enemies with Status and also reduce the EHP of Enemies by anywhere from 5x to ~16x >.>

now the only way they can make an Enemy that survives more than a second or something is to make Enemies immune to Status (gg, after putting effort into making Enemies less immune to it, 600IQ), or.... just giving them all that Health back anyways (Dropships and such, as well as Enemies that just have a base Health in the ballpark of 2000 when Minibosses would have been around that point before and Bosses 2500-5000).
i imagine we're in the same boat of not seeing the point of changes that just spin everything in a circle where a lot of stuff changes but then ultimately nothing much actually ends up changing in the grand scheme anyways. i.e. stuff that's just a waste of time.

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

I genuinely forgot. [...] Blast is just forgotten.

i didn't forget :(
^{never forgetti my spaghetti}

 

- - - - - 

7 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

I dunno. Would it? They've already done the main work:
I think they could improve on that some, but they basically already have it set up.

 

7 hours ago, Emolition said:

From the start there was no combos and we had the so called rainbow build you would just add all elements on every gun. But this combo system they adde to counter that not sure how it changed stuff beside what combo you have. I still adding all 4 elements on pretty much every gun.

still having 4 Elements on your Weapon is dramatically different from how it was before, however. you have 2 Damage Types then, not 4(if we were to pretend we had back Toxin then, instead we had a Damage Mod in place of the 4th Elemental but i digress). and using 4 Elementals is pretty rare overall, the common number is 2-3.

however yes, currently not having Combined Elemental Damage Types means that either we have twice as many Elementals for the same Element (so that we end up with 180% Fire/Elec/Toxin/Ice), or we end up with less Elemental Damage overall.

the former means having seemingly redundant Mods to keep the same Modding structure that we have now.
the latter means having to retool the entire game to accommodate that Players will:

• have significantly lower Damage on their Weapons
• potentially a hole in Modding (Players complain if they don't have 7-8 essentially Mandatory Mods)
• retooling every Status Effect so that the Utility Status offers now can still exist in some way (hah, i'm funny - if the last Status adjustments are anything to go by, deleting useful but not even very popular features from Status is just fine with them)
• have higher access to Slash Status again, after it being pretty directly nerfed

Et Cetera.

 

- - - - - 

7 hours ago, keikogi said:

The raibow build was not a result of available elements it was a simple consequence of math. Elemental mods had the best dps per slot so all 4 of them made the cut.if elemental mods converted damage types that would not have been a issue.

actually most of the Elementals back then had terrible Damage results. Electricity was excellent against Corpus but meh everywhere else. Fire and Ice were a bit useful sometimes but undesirable otherwise(with Fire being strong vs Light Infestested but you could easily oneshot Light Infested up towards Lv500 so that was irrelevant - and Ice Damage being good vs Shields though Level Scaling like always made Shields not the most important thing).
Fire and Ice was entirely just about having the Mod on at all, unranked or fully Ranked was essentially the same vs higher Level Enemies. Electricity fared better since it had a higher average increase across all Enemies, but even that wasn't something one could consider great, or even particularly good.

the Elements back then were absolutely not for Damge, but for permanently stunlocking any Enemy you were attacking. Armor Piercing, Physics Impact, and Serrated Blade Damage was where all of your actual Damage came from, the rest was insignificant.

7 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

They could perhaps include some extra incentive to using a minimal number of elements, instead of stacking as many as possible. Maybe individual mods adding the same element add a multiplier or something.

that would incentivize you to not use all of them, however Players would just take whichever one adds a bit of CC and whichever one adds the most extra direct or DoT Damage, and get a bonus for taking less Elementals when it was already somewhat mathematically superior to take just 2 of them anyways.

6 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

Actually, Viral+Heat is the best damage type in all possible scenarios, outside of being immune to Viral (i.e. Deimos enemies), which is REALLY a terrible solution to the problem.
Against shielded enemies, it still beats out Magnetic, even though that's the only place Magnetic is useful.

Corrosive still falls behind Viral against armored targets, even if only slightly.
And that all ignores the fact that Gas is too weak to be useful.
Not to mention that Cold, Electric, and Blast are pointless.

Viral+Elec would be preferable against Shields due to the types of Enemies that have Shields in this game.
and Toxin is very effective here, if the Enemy is high enough Level pure Toxin would be more effective than using Viral+anything to beat down the Shield. (see further down where i talk about Viral/Corrosive for how significant this necessarily is)
Electricity is definitely not pointless, it's just the niche Damage Type it always was. but now even more powerful. every Enemy with Elec Status separately makes an AoE DoT - if you're grouping Enemies together then it deals a lot of Damage.

Viral is superior against low-mid Level Armored Enemies, but when Enemy Levels get very high, Corrosive will still end up outperforming. you'd be right if you were to interject that the highest level Enemies any Player will ever see within the 'intended content zone' is about Lv140 so it's sortof a moot point, however it is still a true point.

Ice isn't strictly useless, but having to apply it half a dozen times or more for it to have much use when previously a single Ice Status was useful - is something of a metaphor for the Status changes.
the stacking that was added only served to nerf that Damage Type, and nothing more. and also nerfing low Rate of Fire Weapons, pushing everything more towards higher Rate of Fire Weapons. as if W+M1 type Weapons needed more encouragement to be used, but whatever i can't fix their game for them.
atleast stacking didn't nerf most of the Damage Types, but that it nerfed any of them is kinda wut.

 

 

 

 

 

 

6 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

The problem being that there are too many damage types to effectively balance.

kinda off topic, but i'll mention that technically, before Damage v2 - we had more Damage Types than we had now. we had almost 40 Damage Types in the game, actually. you just didn't have Mods for most of them. but those Damage Types did exist.
i.e. technically Damage v2 did simplify Damage in the game, with having less Dork Souls type one off situations of this Damage Type is extra good against this specific type of Enemy, and such.

this is more of a Trivia thing than a useful thing, so don't read into this that much.

[Flying_Scorpion]

4 hours ago, Voltage said:

I would argue pre-Warframe Revised damage types were much more interesting than now.

I agree with this. And from what I can tell, so does Leyzar gaming (popular Warframe youtuber).

[Flying_Scorpion]

2 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

Well that proved my point that Blast is the worst damage type in the game.

Yeah blast has never been particularly popular as far as I can remember. But honestly, I think it's new status effect is interesting, especially with the new mods and abilities that give Warframes more evasion. Maybe in the future, evasion builds that utilize blast status effect might be a thing.