Is it time to rework Armor for enemies yet?

[TKDancer]

8 hours ago, ShortCat said:

Why is it so hard for you guys to separate hypothetical scenarios, like the one you refer to, from imbalanced real ones? In an ideal world Viral, an anti flesh damage type, would not outperform anti armor damage types against heavely armored targets.

that ideal world wont come if armor remains as is or in any way similar to what it currently is

in an ideal world removing 80% of a targets armor should mean they are basically naked, but because numbers scale up with each level that reamaining 20% is generally more than anything we can get for ourselves without stacking every possible armor boost via skills, mods and arcanes on already armor-tanky frames

 

and so people simply came to the obvious conclusion that stripping 50% of the armor via Heat and getting huge multipliers via Viral is more optimal and thats continue being the case unless we get a fundamental change to how armor works on enemies, which would then allow these 2 elements to be toned down without breaking our dmg output
 

8 hours ago, ShortCat said:

But I litterally showed that you do not need unreasonable damage numbers here...

yeah, just need to use the 1 dmg type that completely bypasses DR, so i ask again, why should we use anything except viral + slash? it gets around DR and multiplies the dmg of each DoT when hitting red health, since it deals True dmg it doesnt get penalties against shields even if it cant bypass those anymore

again, why do we even have 13+2 dmg types if 2 are enough for all content that doesnt have arbitrary slash immunity?

8 hours ago, ShortCat said:

Persistent armor allows additional health modifiers over the entire life span of a unit with the possibility to remove those modifiers if necessary via armor-strip. This interaction is not possible with "yellow shields". Therefore, armor is not just a health multiplier @Teridax68 to which it would be truly reduced with a yellow bar.

it very much is a health multiplier, thats how %DR works, we do have means of bypassing the DR via slash DoT and finishers but it doesnt change how the DR actually functions in this game

the interaction you defend so thoroughly isnt anything special and is already present on every unit in the game thanks to dmg type disadvantages anyways, "yellow shields" as you call them wouldnt remove this interaction, would just move the focus from exponentially scaling DR to the innate DR each health-type has against specific dmg types

 

8 hours ago, ShortCat said:

That's the whole point! You should not use unfavored/wrong damage type against a health type! This is the reason I sound like a broken record when I say Corpus are not working because they can be killed by anything.

and i say you have it backwards, its not corpus who are broken, its mainly the grineer, who pushed our dmg numbers higher to deal with them at the cost of the survivability of the other factions that are mostly unarmored

8 hours ago, ShortCat said:

That's the whole point! You should not use unfavored/wrong damage type against a health type!  eHP is an artificial barrier to punish wrong damage type choices and hardly means anything for a prepared build.

its not a barrier its simply a rough indicator of how tough a unit is, and as i've already said, complete bypass of an enemy's defenses via one(1) dmg type is bad design, specially as it makes the other damage types meant to combat the defenses be useless, why reduce defenses if you can ignore them?

again a "prepared" build is a cookie cutter build usually with viral+heat +multishot +crit(if applicable) of the same mods, theres a reason build variety is mostly non-existent at the moment, cause as i and others have said, multiple times, the things that work on armored enemies also work on non-armored enemies, even if not as optimally, but since they wont have DR it'll actually work better than against armored enemies

 

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

The issue is that high level armor is practically immunity to all damage except a few. Prosecutors aren't fun. Shedinja with Wonder Guard in Pokemon is a gimmick, but in Warframe, an entire faction sports that gimmick.

It doesn't just punish players for bringing the wrong damage, it makes the mission unplayable.

Making shields immune to all damage except for damage types with bonuses against it would make them more in line with Grineer, but that won't make the game better. Most weapons have impact damage innately right, so like Grineer, any weapon can take them out with enough time eventually?

[ShortCat]

3 hours ago, TKDancer said:

again, why do we even have 13+2 dmg types if 2 are enough for all content that doesnt have arbitrary slash immunity?

I have a few theories why you keep asking the same question, twice, even though I answered it in the part you did not quite. As the saying goes: Don't feed the troll.

 

[Teridax68]

5 hours ago, ShortCat said:

Why is it so hard for you guys to separate hypothetical scenarios, like the one you refer to, from imbalanced real ones? In an ideal world Viral, an anti flesh damage type, would not outperform anti armor damage types against heavely armored targets.

You are the one confusing hypotheticals with reality. Viral + Heat is currently the dominant elemental combination, and with full Viral stacks more than quadrupling damage against unshielded enemies, including armored ones, it outperforms Corrosive status up to levels that would take players a long time to reach in endless missions. 

Quote

This hypothetical unit would be succeptible to Viral, not because Viral is as broken as in the live version atm, but because it is primerely a fleshy unit. Additionally, this unit would be vulnerable to whatever damage type its armor is succeptible to, without the need to actually strip or ignore said armor. On the contrary, armor-strip or ignore would be ineffective against such unit.

It does not seem we are disagreeing here.

Quote

Persistent armor allows additional health modifiers over the entire life span of a unit with the possibility to remove those modifiers if necessary via armor-strip. This interaction is not possible with "yellow shields". Therefore, armor is not just a health multiplier @Teridax68 to which it would be truly reduced with a yellow bar.

So armor is different to health... because it features a similar bunch of damage modifiers? How does that make armor distinct, pray tell? From what you're telling me, all it does is make armored enemies a mess of damage modifiers on top of multiplying their health, which I don't think is really a positive.

It also seems you're severely tunnel-visioning this argument, because "yellow shields" would in fact still be very capable of having their own damage modifiers, just as regular shields do. There is also nothing preventing the implementation of mechanics that would bypass that armor bar (i.e. Slash status), reduce it by a percentage (i.e. current Corrosive), or amplify damage against it (which Magnetic and Health do to their respective bars): really, there would be many more potential things that could be done with "yellow shields" compared to armor as a multiplier, not fewer.

 

Quote

That's the whole point! You should not use unfavored/wrong damage type against a health type!  eHP is an artificial barrier to punish wrong damage type choices and hardly means anything for a prepared build.

But it's not the point at all, the point is that IPS is impossible to balance precisely because armor means Slash inevitably becomes the best choice by default.  It doesn't help that Puncture is supposed to be the anti-armor physical damage type due to its armor penetration, yet still loses to Slash because bypassing all armor beats partial armor pen and a damage increase when armor matters. That's not conducive to smart building, it's plainly reductive. EHP isn't an "artificial barrier", it's the bedrock of enemy durability and one of the defining factors of our metagame, and the only time it punishes "wrong damage type choices" is when someone doesn't go for the generic meta build that will melt through everything effortlessly, and instead only deals a fraction of the immense damage we're capable of outputting. If you don't believe me, I invite you to play the game and get out of the realm of hypotheticals, as that is how I came to my own assessment.

[TKDancer]

3 hours ago, ShortCat said:

As the saying goes: Don't feed the troll.

you're free to leave, bye, dont come back i guess, or you'll be feeding me, the nasty troll

[ShortCat]

19 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

You are the one confusing hypotheticals with reality. Viral + Heat is currently the dominant elemental combination, and with full Viral stacks more than quadrupling damage against unshielded enemies, including armored ones, it outperforms Corrosive status up to levels that would take players a long time to reach in endless missions. 

I am aware how Viral stacking works and how it outperforms Corrosive. At that point discussion was on a hypothetical plane.

I weill jump here as this issue needs to get resolved first.

40 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

But it's not the point at all, the point is that IPS is impossible to balance precisely because armor means Slash inevitably becomes the best choice by default. That's not conducive to smart building

Slash is the best choice, because all other alternatives are bad. For Slash to not dominate the landscape the entire damage system needs an overhaul with enemy compositions in mind. If I stick to already established themes, Impact should be primarily good vs shields; Puncture vs armor; Slash vs flesh. 3 main health archetypes with 3 corresponding base damage types serving as antagonists. Same rule applies to elements, each element should be a valid option against at least 1 health type.
As long as each health type offers sufficient protection from unfavoured damage types the system works. An example: lets say Puncture ignores armor. It would be best to pair highly weighted puncture weapon with an element that somehow increases damage to maximise the armor ignore result. On the other hand Slash [insert bad effect here] with health, but cannot deal with armor. Thus it would be wise to mod a such a weapon with an element that strips armor and enables Slash in the proces. It doesn't have to be exactly like that, but the general idea is that element A has a strenght and if you combine it with G&H it performs well against E1 and if you combine A with K&S it performs well against E6.

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

it's plainly reductive. EHP isn't an "artificial barrier", it's the bedrock of enemy durability and one of the defining factors of our metagame, and the only time it punishes "wrong damage type choices" is when someone doesn't go for the generic meta build that will melt through everything effortlessly, and instead only deals a fraction of the immense damage we're capable of outputting.

But the damage system was designed in the way to punish wrong damage types. How else would you explain health type resistences? You are not supposed to melt armored Grineer with Magnetic modded weapon, instead Magnetic is supposed to melt shielded enemies. It all runs down to faulty faction unit composition and useless elements.

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

If you don't believe me, I invite you to play the game and get out of the realm of hypotheticals, as that is how I came to my own assessment.

It is not me who playes the game in the realm of hypotheticals. I am using armor ignore because it is supposed to ignore armor. I am not asking Magnetic to be good against armor, because it should not be.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

So armor is different to health... because it features a similar bunch of damage modifiers? How does that make armor distinct, pray tell?

It's all in the 2 lines you quoted.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

because "yellow shields" would in fact still be very capable of having their own damage modifiers, just as regular shields do. There is also nothing preventing the implementation of mechanics that would bypass that armor bar (e.g. an armor version of Toxin), reduce it by a percentage (i.e. current Corrosive), or amplify damage against it (which Magnetic and Health do to their respective bars): really, there would be many more potential things that could be done with "yellow shields" compared to armor as a multiplier, not fewer.

I never denied that "yellow shields" cannot have their own modifier or be ignored, don't project fictional arguments on me The unit I described previously cannot be recreated with a yellow bar, because you cannot not attack it. While "many more potential things" can still be done with regular shields.

[TKDancer]

12 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

But the damage system was designed in the way to punish wrong damage types.

you keep somehow missing the point that the design is extremely flawed thanks to making *most* damage types be the wrong damage type

the emphasis on our dmg going higher and higher to deal with armor caused the current meta of viral multipliers + heat armor-strip/DoT to develop

DE's answers have been mostly to cover these flaws with band-aids to allow us to continue being able to deal with armored foes both with weapons that can fully bypass armor via slash DoT and those that cant, causing the wild discrepancy of eHP(which regardless of how much you want it to be so, it is not irrelevant or misleading) between enemies

you've suggested that the answer lies in bloating the survivability of the other factions to match and i say thats just the kind of band-aid i'd expect of a non-fix from DE

 

17 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

 For Slash to not dominate the landscape the entire damage system needs an overhaul with enemy compositions in mind.

Yes, thats is what im suggesting, an overhaul of both enemy survivability and player dmg output, to create a more level playing field, something i've mentioned many times

Due to this desire comes my belief that "yellow shields" mechanically and thematically would be a better alternative to the current system of armor giving enemies more DR that goes up with their levels on top of their health which also goes up with their levels


As i've already said every health type except tenno flesh is DR neutral, we take neither more nor less dmg based on dmg types hitting us, shields getting a universal 20% DR(and being fully bypassed by toxic)

This is why it makes sense for armor to work the way it does for us, it acts as a 'customizable' resistance for our red health



enemies on the other hand, have resistances and weaknesses depending on the dmg hitting their health/armor and shields, this is good, and why i think "yellow shields"  wont take away from grineer's theme of having chunky armor nor take away from the need to match the correct dmg types for optimal dmg, the opposite, since i'm also for a change to our dmg numbers i'd rather enemy survivability be simplified to raw health (including shields and 'yellow shields as you call this) numbers + their innate resistances and weaknesses

to me this would greatly improve the way the game can be balanced if the necessary changes accompanied it

8 hours ago, ShortCat said:

Persistent armor allows additional health modifiers over the entire life span of a unit with the possibility to remove those modifiers if necessary via armor-strip. This interaction is not possible with "yellow shields".

26 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

I never denied that "yellow shields" cannot have their own modifier or be ignored, don't project fictional arguments on me The unit I described previously cannot be recreated with a yellow bar, because you cannot not attack it. While "many more potential things" can still be done with regular shields.

again, all enemies already have  persistent innate resistances(and weaknesses), using the correct dmg type works similarly to what armor stripping allows, improving our dmg output/reducing the enemies survivability against our dmg, maybe this should be the only fully passive form of DR for enemies rather than current scaling armor on top of it

also unless slash was also changed, it would remain possible to not attack the 'yellow shields' too, but maybe a complete bypass of barriers/DR shouldnt be a thing anyways, maybe that only serves to keep damage types unbalanced and favor one over the others

[Teridax68]

39 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

I am aware how Viral stacking works and how it outperforms Corrosive. At that point discussion was on a hypothetical plane.

One in which we did not appear to disagree. Why the focus on this hypothetical scenario over what actually happens in-game? Are we discussing the game or a thought experiment?

39 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Slash is the best choice, because all other alternatives are bad. For Slash to not dominate the landscape the entire damage system needs an overhaul with enemy compositions in mind. If I stick to already established themes, Impact should be primarily good vs shields; Puncture vs armor; Slash vs flesh. 3 main health archetypes with 3 corresponding base damage types serving as antagonists. Same rule applies to elements, each element should be a valid option against at least 1 health type.
As long as each health type offers sufficient protection from unfavoured damage types the system works. An example: lets say Puncture ignores armor. It would be best to pair highly weighted puncture weapon with an element that somehow increases damage to maximise the armor ignore result. On the other hand Slash [insert bad effect here] with health, but cannot deal with armor. Thus it would be wise to mod a such a weapon with an element that strips armor and enables Slash in the proces. It doesn't have to be exactly like that, but the general idea is that element A has a strenght and if you combine it with G&H it performs well against E1 and if you combine A with K&S it performs well against E6.

I'll skim over the details, because I agree with your assessment, but then it seems you too agree that IPS is poorly balanced, with armor a major reason why.

39 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

But the damage system was designed in the way to punish wrong damage types. How else would you explain health type resistences? You are not supposed to melt armored Grineer with Magnetic modded weapon, instead Magnetic is supposed to melt shielded enemies. It all runs down to faulty faction unit composition and useless elements.

The damage system may have been intended to punish "building wrong", but as you and I both know, intent and result often differ. As it stands, the damage system in its current state discourages using most elements in any situation. When one isn't building a weapon for Viral + Heat, one's making a low-status weapon deal primarily Radiation damage, and there isn't really that much nuance in-between.

39 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

It is not me who playes the game in the realm of hypotheticals. I am using armor ignore because it is supposed to ignore armor. I am not asking Magnetic to be good against armor, because it should not be.

Neither am I or anyone else in this discussion, but I do believe that if anti-shield damage and status are to ever have a chance at viability, shields ought to not be so irrelevant in the face of armor, which means armor ought to be rebalanced or redesigned to dominate the metagame less than it has for the past several years. I don't see why we aren't aligning on this.

39 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

It's all in the 2 lines you quoted.

Which I pointed out in my subsequent reply actually reinforce my point, rather than refute it.

39 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

I never denied that "yellow shields" cannot have their own modifier or be ignored, don't project fictional arguments on me The unit I described previously cannot be recreated with a yellow bar, because you cannot not attack it. While "many more potential things" can still be done with regular shields.

You are the one trying to claim that "yellow shields" do not offer interactions currently possible with armor as we have it now, which as pointed out is a false claim. I am not projecting anything onto you, merely answering points you have made. It would also be easy to recreate a unit with high health and low armor with "yellow shields", as well, so I really don't see what your point there is either.

[TKDancer]

4 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

 It would also be easy to recreate a unit with high health and low armor with "yellow shields", as well

not only that but theres nothing stopping DE from creating new health-types with new sets of resistances and weaknesses that dont scale with enemy level

they made a new one for tenno/frames/Railjacks, they can do it for future units, or change existing health-types, or make new ones to add for existing units, sky's the limit here

[XaoGarrent]

An easier way to solve this, as I've said before, is to simply make armor values flat, and only scale HP. Shields are based off a flat percentage of health, armor should be a flat damage reduction. Then you just adjust HP and that scales EHP across the board. Keeps the numbers from ever blowing up such that corrosive becomes useless compared to viral, too.

[TKDancer]

1 minute ago, XaoGarrent said:

An easier way to solve this, as I've said before, is to simply make armor values flat, and only scale HP. Shields are based off a flat percentage of health, armor should be a flat damage reduction. Then you just adjust HP and that scales EHP across the board. Keeps the numbers from ever blowing up such that corrosive becomes useless compared to viral, too.

while its not the worst possible option it would still require other changes, particularly to statuses and player weapon dmg output

but i think at the point its better to just do away with it altogether too

[XaoGarrent]

Just now, TKDancer said:

while its not the worst possible option it would still require other changes, particularly to statuses and player weapon dmg output

but i think at the point its better to just do away with it altogether too

Not really, you can just adjust HP at that point since it's mechanically agnostic.

Independently scaling armor, especially in the manner they've done so, was a bad idea that did nothing but complicate balancing in the long run.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

6 minutes ago, XaoGarrent said:

Not really, you can just adjust HP at that point since it's mechanically agnostic.

Independently scaling armor, especially in the manner they've done so, was a bad idea that did nothing but complicate balancing in the long run.

 

 

[XaoGarrent]

1 hour ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

 

 

Steve's judgement isn't exactly very good.

[ShortCat]

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Why the focus on this hypothetical scenario over what actually happens in-game? Are we discussing the game or a thought experiment?

We need a guiding thread. The hypothetical scenario was first mentioned by me to highlight, how the suggested "yellow shields" cannot recreate certain interactions. Instead of discussing this point, every poster explained how Viral works. Completely missing the point and deflecting in the process.

11 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

You are the one trying to claim that "yellow shields" do not offer interactions currently possible with armor as we have it now, which as pointed out is a false claim ...  It would also be easy to recreate a unit with high health and low armor with "yellow shields", as well, so I really don't see what your point there is either.

The point is, that a unit with a large HP pool and low "yellow shields" would not function as the unit I described. Since "yellow shields" are supposed to be expendable, any damage (except ignore) would deplete them and by doing so remove a modifier layer, whch added vulnerabilities. While those extra vulnerabilities make the unit itself succeptible to a new damage composition, not the usual armor-ignore & armor-strip, as well as even penalized usage of said anti-armor strategies. You agreed on that point.

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I'll skim over the details, because I agree with your assessment, but then it seems you too agree that IPS is poorly balanced, with armor a major reason why.

Partially. IPS is just poorly balanced. Not because of armor. Just poorly balanced. Replace every "armor" in that part with "shields" and it would not change the concept.

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

The damage system may have been intended to punish "building wrong", but as you and I both know, intent and result often differ. As it stands, the damage system in its current state discourages using most elements in any situation.

That's my point. The entire time.

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

but I do believe that if anti-shield damage and status are to ever have a chance at viability, shields ought to not be so irrelevant in the face of armor, which means armor ought to be rebalanced or redesigned to dominate the metagame less than it has for the past several years. I don't see why we aren't aligning on this.

In the current state anti-armor damage is necessary, because armor actually punishes wrong damage types. If we circle back, the intendention was to punish usage of wrong damage types. Thus armor is the only health type which achieves intended goal.
Then in one breath you say shields need to be relieved from their misery by... rebalancing armor? Hence, the intent is to drag down a performer instead of working on a loser? Because this is how I interpret red marked sentence. I do not comprehend this conclusion. I do not agree with it. I do not alighn on it.
Instead, shields need to be made more resilient, more durable, they need to actually punish wrong builds as intended. When this happens anti-shield strategies will become relevant.

[Teridax68]

55 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

We need a guiding thread. The hypothetical scenario was first mentioned by me to highlight, how the suggested "yellow shields" cannot recreate certain interactions. Instead of discussing this point, every poster explained how Viral works. Completely missing the point and deflecting in the process.

And what exactly then was the "interaction" you were trying to showcase? What is so unique about an enemy with high health and low armor?

55 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

The point is, that a unit with a large HP pool and low "yellow shields" would not function as the unit I described. Since "yellow shields" are supposed to be expendable, any damage (except ignore) would deplete them and by doing so remove a modifier layer, whch added vulnerabilities. While those extra vulnerabilities make the unit itself succeptible to a new damage composition, not the usual armor-ignore & armor-strip, as well as even penalized usage of said anti-armor strategies. You agreed on that point.

Wait, so this is the reason you're against the idea? Because you genuinely think it's a good thing to have a double layer of modifiers on armored enemies? Why is this a good thing?

55 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Partially. IPS is just poorly balanced. Not because of armor. Just poorly balanced. Replace every "armor" in that part with "shields" and it would not change the concept.

Perhaps, but the very nature of armor warps IPS along with most other damage types, so that even in a hypothetical perfect balance, Slash would still end up dominating against higher-level enemies.

55 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

That's my point. The entire time.

And that's something you actually want? Why defend an incredibly rigid metagame?

55 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

In the current state anti-armor damage is necessary, because armor actually punishes wrong damage types. If we circle back, the intendention was to punish usage of wrong damage types. Thus armor is the only health type which achieves intended goal.
Then in one breath you say shields need to be relieved from their misery by... rebalancing armor? Hence, the intent is to drag down a performer instead of working on a loser? Because this is how I interpret red marked sentence. I do not comprehend this conclusion. I do not agree with it. I do not alighn on it.
Instead, shields need to be made more resilient, more durable, they need to actually punish wrong builds as intended. When this happens anti-shield strategies will become relevant.

This all assumes armor is doing something right, which it clearly isn't, as it's done far more harm than good to enemy scaling and the metagame around it. In one breath you admit that armor makes most damage types redundant, rigidifying our meta in the process, and in the next you glorify it, as if its harmful consequences upon our freedom to build were a good thing. If we were to make shields scale in the same ridiculous manner as armor, we'd just end up with even more balancing problems on our hands. It is also worth noting that if we were to make regular shields scale on par with armor, there is no reason why that same procedure couldn't be applied to "yellow shields" either. Thus, your opposition here seems to stem more from sheer contrarianism than any truly founded criticism of the OP's proposal.

[Loza03]

IMO, the issue isn't scaling, or lack thereof. It's that everything scales at a different rate, and nothing runs on the same rules

 

Armoured enemies scale differently to unarmoured enemies. Some mods or powers scale (all using different formulas, of course), and some don't. Warframe's don't scale at all, and all player EHP progression is optional, making enemy damage scaling pointless too. And only 1/3 of the default primary/secondary/melee has any kind of scaling built into its design.

 

Player health, armoured enemy health, unarmoured health, ranged weapon damage, melee weapon damage, and different powers all work on different rules. And they're all crammed into the same game. Is it any wonder things are broken?

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

The first clue that armor scaling is flawed is because it renders "resistances" irrelevant unless status immune, which is supposed to be the foundation of the damage system. 

Sirens should be blaring when Slash, the damage type that's specifically resisted by armor is also inexplicatly the best against armor because of its proc. Puncture which actually has bonuses against armor is terrible in comparison. 

Before Corrosive was capped, we used it against Bombards. Alloy armor is technically weak to Radiation, but Corrosive downed them faster. With Corrosive capped, Radiation should have become less niche outside status immune Alloy armored bosses right?

No, we just use Viral Slash to avoid the distinction between Ferrite and Alloy resistances.

Slash doesn't care about silly resistances. It's proc ignores the thing that resists it.

 

[TKDancer]

31 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

IMO, the issue isn't scaling, or lack thereof. It's that everything scales at a different rate, and nothing runs on the same rules

well to me it sounds like the issue is scaling then, just in more ways than one, but yes the the huge discrepancies is what made me make this thread, cause while 'yellow shields' might make enemies more 'samey' i think thats a good thing, making enemies act as if they're from the same game

[fr4gb4ll]

On 2020-11-27 at 11:13 PM, Traumtulpe said:

That sounds like a good idea, surprisingly enough. Except the entire game would have to be rebalanced, most enemies, most status, most weapons. Not gonna happen, is it?

Also, the damage type to bypass armor should be Impact by the way.

indeed, the more logical effect against armor would be impact. even corrosive is more logical armor counter and some extent even radiation (though with a strong enough radiation, everything from shield to armor and ofc heath would be influenced...). gas should be used against circumventing shield (since i guess even corpus would need to breath through their shields) and viral then against armored enemies, meaning damaging them, and ignoring the armor... but i guess that was seen as too effective by DE and so they choose a rather lame way of using viral, which is still pretty powerfull, no doubt... but it shows how DE struggles with their own creations - a bit like frankenstein, eh? ^^)

the enemy scalling was always a big problem in warframe and it was mostly because they didn't want to do the 'logical' way of dealing with players who can sustain very long missions - by overwhelming them with sheer numbers (meaning: more and more enemies spawn the longer the mission goes - like they getting more reinforcements over the time). instead, we get the equivalent of the enemies driving in as tiger-panzers against us (still overpowered) infantry until at least we either run out of ammo, our weapons finally won't scratch them anymore or our abilities stop working again them... truely, i wonder how many meter of armor a level 500 grineer has to carry around and why the heck they can still move as a level 3 of the same type...

and yes, i know the reasons to why DE didn't do what other games do: first of, the computers of most players won't handle such amount of enemies at some point and also, we could grind insanely much affinity and thus focus this way (not that we still have other gamemodes where we can do this  ^^)

 i doubt that DE will (or can) bother with reworking this whole problem but maybe if they ever intend to create a 'warframe II' they keep this problem in mind and think of a better right from the start...

[Drasiel]

Warframe actually tried this already and decided it didn't want it to be that way. This would have been back after damage 2.0 launched and armour was removed from nearly all enemies and put on pretty much only the grineer as their main defence. I don't even remember the reason it wasn't kept maybe something about it just being orange health? Man it's so many years ago now.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

5 hours ago, Drasiel said:

Warframe actually tried this already and decided it didn't want it to be that way. This would have been back after damage 2.0 launched and armour was removed from nearly all enemies and put on pretty much only the grineer as their main defence. I don't even remember the reason it wasn't kept maybe something about it just being orange health? Man it's so many years ago now.

The writing was already on the wall from the beginning exactly 7 years ago.

[TKDancer]

5 hours ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

The writing was already on the wall from the beginning exactly 7 years ago.

jesus the receipts

[Tyreaus]

Just a random thought: perhaps it could be more effective to give enemies a single health type? For example, Viral has such a massive impact because every enemy has health, and against many Corpus and in combination with Slash, it becomes the fastest way to handle most enemies. But if, for example, many if not all Corpus enemies only have shields as a health type (and we assume Toxin doesn't bypass that for an instant kill), Viral ends up about as useful as Corrosive, and Magnetic nudges toward top spot against that faction. Conversely, elements intended to be strong against armour aren't superceded by Slash's bypass.

[TKDancer]

55 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

Just a random thought: perhaps it could be more effective to give enemies a single health type? For example, Viral has such a massive impact because every enemy has health, and against many Corpus and in combination with Slash, it becomes the fastest way to handle most enemies. But if, for example, many if not all Corpus enemies only have shields as a health type (and we assume Toxin doesn't bypass that for an instant kill), Viral ends up about as useful as Corrosive, and Magnetic nudges toward top spot against that faction. Conversely, elements intended to be strong against armour aren't superceded by Slash's bypass.

feels like what you really want is just to remove complete barrier bypass, which is a valid idea