New Primed Mods for Secondaries, Primaries, and Shotguns (it's time to buff non-melee)

[TenTonneSkeleton]

I hear a lot of people complaining about needing to invest 5 forma into Kuva Weapons in order for them to be "mastered" Only when you've done that is the weapon considered mastered in your profile. I DO believe this should be changed so that bringing the weapon to lvl 30 is sufficient to be considered mastered, however there are other issues at play here.

Side issues are: the relative difficulty of optaining forma, and the time investment required to actually level the weapon. It's a grind, but ultimately IT IS OPTIONAL. No one is forcing you to do this, and it is not necessary to reach MR30. If you have a few extra forma for some reason, equipping a kuva weapon to simply level it in normal play isn't going to hurt.

The real issue here is that comapred to melee weapons, primaires, secondaries, and shotguns just aren't that efficient or effective, especially in Steel Path. Investing 5 forma into a non-melee kuva weapon doesn't actually give you much of a benefit to the weapon itself. We don't have a Sacrifical Pressure or a Sacrificial Steel for primaries and secondaries, so the extra capacity for non-melee weapons is even less useful. Yes, there is an exilis slot now, but most exilis mods aren't that helpful.

In my opinion, secondaries, primaries, snipers and shotguns are due for a buff.

This buff could be handled by simply introducing more Primed mods into the mix. Doing this would give you a motivation to add additional capacity to Kuva weapons and would buff those weapons in a balanced way. One would actually need to work towards maxing out a weapon's potential, rather than getting a straight buff right out the gate.

I believe primed mods are actually a pretty elegant and balanced way to indirectly buff those weapon types.

Here are some of the ones I would suggest. These all increase the weapon's damage directly:

Primed Vital Sense

Primed Point Strike

Primed Barrel Diffiusion

Primed Hell's Chamber

Primed Split Chamber

Primed Hornet Strike

Primed Blunderbuss!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

These could be available through Baro as normal, but better yet, PUT THEM IN THE STEEL PATH STORE or the ARBITRATIONS HONORS store. Regular forma should also be available through both of these stores in my opinion and for less resources than they currently cost.

Furthermore, most weapon augment mods should be exilis mods. Kuva weapons that don't already have exilis augments should get them. Fomorian Acellerant is a good example of a mod that is done right. It's not amazingly powerful, but it does help the weapon slightly and is worth consideration. The added capacity of the Kuva Drakgoon makes slotting this in more attainable.

 

[Kaggelos]

6 hours ago, TenTonneSkeleton said:

PUT THEM IN THE STEEL PATH STORE or the ARBITRATIONS HONORS store.

Yes please, especially for this one ^^

[Tiltskillet]

I like the idea generally.  We're overdue for a few of these in any case.  Two observations:

 - Focusing on primed mods to find the disparity between melee and ranged unduly favors a very few weapons that tend to least need the help: Kuva weapons, because they've got the capacity.  There are hundreds of other weapons that need that help more.  The larger problem has to be addressed at a larger level than primed mods.  Another systemic rebalance of range weapons and/or their regular mods, a nerf of melee, a way to upgrade non-Kuva ranged weapons with more capacity...just to name some options.

 - it's a little jarring to have these mods only be accessible through the modes that make them necessary.  I think this would result in people continuing to focus on melee in those modes. Again, a large scope balance review would help here.  If that doesn't happen, I'd  suggest some at least be accessed through Baro and maybe some other, mid-level means.  They could still be available more economically  or reliably in the SP/Arb stores though.

[TenTonneSkeleton]

13 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

- Focusing on primed mods to find the disparity between melee and ranged unduly favors a very few weapons that tend to least need the help: Kuva weapons, because they've got the capacity.  There are hundreds of other weapons that need that help more.  The larger problem has to be addressed at a larger level than primed mods.  Another systemic rebalance of range weapons and/or their regular mods, a nerf of melee, a way to upgrade non-Kuva ranged weapons with more capacity...just to name some options.

You bring up some good points. I agree that we are due for wide sweeping rebalance of ranged weapons in general. New primed damage mods are only a part of what needs to happen. I'm not expecting every single weapon to be viable for high level content, but a lot of primed weapons, kuva weapons, and special variants should do more damage in general, or just fulfill their niches better.

And I don't necessarilly think the fact that new primed damage mods favor weapons with more capacity is a bad thing. These weapons are hard to get, and a pain the butt to level up. They should be better than normal weapons.

However, that said, ranged weapons are already at a disadvantage in capacity because they neither have stances or auras to boost that capacity. I would propose that especially since we've been given an additional exilis slot, there should be some way to further increase the capacity of these weapons if we do indeed get new primed mods.

Primed mods are all over the place in terms of drain, especially when you look at their non-prime counterparts, but none of them surpass 16 drain, however, yes adding 2 or 3 primed mods on average to any weapon would be hard to do, especially if you also want to slot in an exilis mod AND a riven.

The best way to add more capacity to these weapons doesn't easily come to mind. To be in line with melee, we need 10 extra capacity. I'm not sure that buffing the default capacity to 35 is the right answer. Perhaps there could be an aura/stance slot for ranged weapons. Maybe the exilis slot can be changed to that function. It's fairly difficult to get a exilis adaptar for weapons, and to forma it to the right polarity is another step. Most of my weapons don't have or need the exilis slot, but if it actually provided more capacity, then I would do it if I could fit more primed mods in.

But when you look at auras/stances these slots come unlocked by default, so I'm not sure that's the answer either.

A simple solution would be to give the kuva forming mechanic to EVERY ranged weapon. Forming a weapon also raises its maximum capacity by 2 each time, for a maximum of 5 times, totaling that magic 10 extra capacity. If they did this, they would need to change the mechanic so that a weapon is technically still maxed at 30. Then maybe kuva weapons could get 74 capacity instead or something.

 

13 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

- it's a little jarring to have these mods only be accessible through the modes that make them necessary.  I think this would result in people continuing to focus on melee in those modes. Again, a large scope balance review would help here.  If that doesn't happen, I'd  suggest some at least be accessed through Baro and maybe some other, mid-level means.  They could still be available more economically  or reliably in the SP/Arb stores though.

Yeah, I think the answer is that yes, these should be available through Baro as normal, but also in the Steel Path/Arbitrations store, especially if they were released en-masse.

 

[Tiltskillet]

32 minutes ago, TenTonneSkeleton said:

A simple solution would be to give the kuva forming mechanic to EVERY ranged weapon.

Yeah, I only mentioned that in passing, but I think it really has no downsides from a player standpoint.  I believe we love new ways to optimize our old weapons almost as much as we love getting new ones.  Just considering all the ranged weapons I'd personally spend time and resources to "kuva up" if I could...   If I'm at all representative, that's a potentially huge win for DE, as long as they do it right.

edit:

Quote

Forming a weapon also raises its maximum capacity by 2 each time, for a maximum of 5 times, totaling that magic 10 extra capacity. If they did this, they would need to change the mechanic so that a weapon is technically still maxed at 30.

Honestly, I'd expect it to be a new process on top of the current system, not a retroactive one.

[MonsterOfMyOwn]

I want a primed hunter munition /s

[Teliko_Freedman]

Looks like you're getting Primed Firestorm and Primed Fulmination?

 

[taiiat]

only really seems feasible for Kuva Weapons. if you have other Weapons that you enjoy using, you'll end up making them obsolete to yourself with these, because those Weapon will be able to Equip them, but the rest not.

[TenTonneSkeleton]

5 hours ago, taiiat said:

only really seems feasible for Kuva Weapons. if you have other Weapons that you enjoy using, you'll end up making them obsolete to yourself with these, because those Weapon will be able to Equip them, but the rest not.

Yeah, we discussed that. Other ranged weaons need increased capacity as well.

[taiiat]

4 hours ago, TenTonneSkeleton said:

Yeah, we discussed that. Other ranged weaons need increased capacity as well.

sure, but i see that as a reason to not fill up with piles more Primed Mods, rather than to change stuff so that we can.

[Razhius]

As much as I'd love more Primed Mods for Primaries and Secondaries, I don't think they will fix the problem. The reason melee outclasses ranged is because of scaling mods like weeping wounds and bloodrush, as well as mods like condition overload. 

If we want ranged to scale better, I would suggest we add a ranged version of condition overload and some type of variant of the other two.

maybe add some form of combo counter, maybe increased with every headshot (like snipers have).

 

Thoughts?

[TenTonneSkeleton]

2 hours ago, Razhius said:

As much as I'd love more Primed Mods for Primaries and Secondaries, I don't think they will fix the problem. The reason melee outclasses ranged is because of scaling mods like weeping wounds and bloodrush, as well as mods like condition overload. 

If we want ranged to scale better, I would suggest we add a ranged version of condition overload and some type of variant of the other two.

maybe add some form of combo counter, maybe increased with every headshot (like snipers have).

 

Thoughts?

YES! This idea did cross my mind, and when you say it like that it makes sense. I think if ranged weapons also had a combo counter, then we'd be in business. Snipers already do, but killing one enemy at a time is rarely how you want to be playing, lol.

I think changing some existing mods to act like Blood Rush and Condition Overload would be a great improvement.

But then we get into the debate of wether or not this is a good thing for the diversity of the game. I guess my feeling is that I want all weapons to be viable for something. Maybe not all weapons are good at slaughtering hundreds of enemies... but perhaps shotguns at least could be viable for killing a single highly armored target at point blank range.

[TheLexiConArtist]

It's hardly as simple as Shooty Bad Melee Good, nor even just finger-pointing at the combo-scaling mods. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Alone, none are making the difference spectacular.

Melee generally hits an area and you don't run out of swinging. Most guns are more targeted and have bullets that you can run out of. But there's an Ignis, there's Kuva Nukor and explosives, etc. Bring a Carrier and ammo woes are mostly out too.

Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds exist for melee, and give a respective maximal bonus of 660% crit chance and 440% status chance.
That Blood Rush multiplier seems immense compared to Point Strike! ...But in practice, crit chance doesn't scale very well, so you're getting an average improvement of maybe double to triple damage because crit-damage multipliers aren't exponential as you pass yellows up to orange and red. Vital Sense beats Organ Shatter or Glad Might, and you're quite possibly dropping slots for Berserker in there where a gun doesn't have that need to speed, and Primed Reach to do the area thing. Damage can more or less even out, from that.
440% status in Weeping is better than a build of dualstats, but you shoot bullets faster than most melees strike, so that too can even out.

Condition Overload beats Serration like it beats Pressure Point, but it needs you to work up to those statuses before it pays dividends, so you need to either mix weaponry or have a status-viable melee to get there.

 

When you add them all together and also lean onto the strongest statuses (most melee can Slash better than most guns, then Viral stacks onto both) you get the drastic results.

Even a Redeemer Prime isn't mowing down Sponge Path enemies if you take out a piece of the puzzle. I've seen it myself when I left a wrong config active. Could barely even kill a Ferrite-Armour enemy in a respectable time with Corrosive on the weapon and ten Corro procs on the unit. Why? Well, it was my Profit Taker config, so it didn't have all the other scalars on. Petey doesn't need a million damage, just the right damage, and it can't take statuses, so ConOver and Weeping are unnecessary.

[Leqesai]

On 2020-12-05 at 12:03 PM, TheLexiConArtist said:

It's hardly as simple as Shooty Bad Melee Good, nor even just finger-pointing at the combo-scaling mods. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Alone, none are making the difference spectacular.

Melee generally hits an area and you don't run out of swinging. Most guns are more targeted and have bullets that you can run out of. But there's an Ignis, there's Kuva Nukor and explosives, etc. Bring a Carrier and ammo woes are mostly out too.

Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds exist for melee, and give a respective maximal bonus of 660% crit chance and 440% status chance.
That Blood Rush multiplier seems immense compared to Point Strike! ...But in practice, crit chance doesn't scale very well, so you're getting an average improvement of maybe double to triple damage because crit-damage multipliers aren't exponential as you pass yellows up to orange and red. Vital Sense beats Organ Shatter or Glad Might, and you're quite possibly dropping slots for Berserker in there where a gun doesn't have that need to speed, and Primed Reach to do the area thing. Damage can more or less even out, from that.
440% status in Weeping is better than a build of dualstats, but you shoot bullets faster than most melees strike, so that too can even out.

Condition Overload beats Serration like it beats Pressure Point, but it needs you to work up to those statuses before it pays dividends, so you need to either mix weaponry or have a status-viable melee to get there.

 

When you add them all together and also lean onto the strongest statuses (most melee can Slash better than most guns, then Viral stacks onto both) you get the drastic results.

Even a Redeemer Prime isn't mowing down Sponge Path enemies if you take out a piece of the puzzle. I've seen it myself when I left a wrong config active. Could barely even kill a Ferrite-Armour enemy in a respectable time with Corrosive on the weapon and ten Corro procs on the unit. Why? Well, it was my Profit Taker config, so it didn't have all the other scalars on. Petey doesn't need a million damage, just the right damage, and it can't take statuses, so ConOver and Weeping are unnecessary.

Crit chance, as a solo modifier doesn't scale super well but higher crit chance essentially makes crit damage mods much more valuable since the bonuses are additive with themselves as you go up in crit levels. 100% crit damage is 200% crit damage at orange and 300% crit damage at red (This is why people heavily emphasize crit stats on rivens, because the benefit from both stats when you are able to go up a crit level is very valuable).

From yellow to orange you get double the crit damage multiplier

Yellow to red is 3x the crit damage multiplier (2.0x at yellow is 6.0x at red)

When you start getting into heavy attack builds the crit multipliers can go well beyond red crit. Crit is extremely important when factoring in a weapon's burst DPS potential. Heavy attack melee weapons is almost unequivocally stronger than burst DPS primary and secondary weapons (in damage numbers not necessarily in utility).

 

Pure crit weapons suffer the issues you describe but crit/status hybrids have much higher DPS potential due to the interaction between status effects, high crit stats, and condition overload. Melee has an advantage over primary/secondary weapons because slow and fast melee weapons can be effective in hybrid builds. Primary and secondary weapons are restricted heavily by the type of projectile, weapon mechanics and lack of scaling potential related to combo multiplier mods (blood rush and weeping wounds). 

 

Also... Condition Overload only beats Pressure Point on status/hybrid builds. I is isn't true that it always beats pressure point... And for heavy attack builds Sac pressure + Sac steel always beat out condition overload (condition overload is pointless on 99% of heavy attack builds because heavy attack builds are entirely burst DPS). This is why stropha is king of melee heavy attack weapons (and thus top of the barrel compared to all other melee weapons, as well).

 

A basic rundown of how to assess build importance:

Primary/secondary weapons:

Slow fire rate, low projectile count? Go for Burst DPS (pure damage or pure crit)

Slow fire rate, high projectile count? Can be burst or sustain dps

Fast fire rate, low projectile count? Go for sustain DPS (Pure status)

Fast fire rate, high projectile count? Sustain DPS without a doubt

Melee weapons:

High crit, low status? Burst DPS (pure damage or pure crit)

High status, low crit? Sustain DPS (pure status)

Moderate crit and status? Hybrid DPS (both crit and status should be built)

 

In almost all cases hybrid builds are going to be the meta due to how viral status interacts with damage sources. On targets with viral immunity burst DPS will outperform sustain DPS in most cases. 

 

 

[TheLexiConArtist]

28 minutes ago, Leqesai said:

Crit chance, as a solo modifier doesn't scale super well but higher crit chance essentially makes crit damage mods much more valuable since the bonuses are additive with themselves as you go up in crit levels. 100% crit damage is 200% crit damage at orange and 300% crit damage at red (This is why people heavily emphasize crit stats on rivens, because the benefit from both stats when you are able to go up a crit level is very valuable).

From yellow to orange you get double the crit damage multiplier

Yellow to red is 3x the crit damage multiplier (2.0x at yellow is 6.0x at red)

The point I was making is that crit damage ceases to influence the resulting net gains as you progress into orange and onwards, and as a result crit chance scales less well than an equivalent proportional gain of base damage or crit damage stats.

An orange crit is always less than twice the damage of yellow crit. Past 100% Crit Chance, the crit damage stat (at positive values) just controls how much is 'skimmed' off the top (how much weight the base damage has). First-tier red crit is not 150% of orange crit.

So, to give a baseline example:

A 4.4x crit damage multiplier (fairly basic 2.0x plus a Vital Sense for primaries) gives a yellow crit of 440% as expected, but then falls to delivering 177% of a yellow crit on an orange crit and 143.5% of an orange crit on the first red. The second red (400% CC) still only gives 187% the damage of an orange crit (200% CC). Crit chance tiers are diminishing returns.

If, instead, you can double your crit damage stat, you get double the outcome, no questions.

When speaking in terms of mods, the stats are also baseline-weighted so modding 150% Point Strike is a total of 250% CC, while maxed 660% Blood Rush is 760% CC; the ratio of statistical advantage between melee and primary crit chance mods is cut from 4.4x to 3.04x. 

All together, that's why Blood Rush in itself hasn't actually given up as crazy an advantage as a superficial look suggests. Using that example again, let's say that 4.4x crit multiplier weapon starts at a fair 25% crit chance. Point Strike improves the base damage by 312.5% while Blood Rush caps out improving the base damage by 746% - a gain of 238.72% over point strike, and right in that 'double to triple' area I originally mentioned.

 

Anyway, long story short: I don't want to see blind nerfs to melee mods nor buffs to gun mods which are ultimately targeting only incomplete pieces of the overall puzzle, so I was framing the big picture better.

[Leqesai]

54 minutes ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

The point I was making is that crit damage ceases to influence the resulting net gains as you progress into orange and onwards, and as a result crit chance scales less well than an equivalent proportional gain of base damage or crit damage stats.

An orange crit is always less than twice the damage of yellow crit. Past 100% Crit Chance, the crit damage stat (at positive values) just controls how much is 'skimmed' off the top (how much weight the base damage has). First-tier red crit is not 150% of orange crit.

So, to give a baseline example:

A 4.4x crit damage multiplier (fairly basic 2.0x plus a Vital Sense for primaries) gives a yellow crit of 440% as expected, but then falls to delivering 177% of a yellow crit on an orange crit and 143.5% of an orange crit on the first red. The second red (400% CC) still only gives 187% the damage of an orange crit (200% CC). Crit chance tiers are diminishing returns.

If, instead, you can double your crit damage stat, you get double the outcome, no questions.

When speaking in terms of mods, the stats are also baseline-weighted so modding 150% Point Strike is a total of 250% CC, while maxed 660% Blood Rush is 760% CC; the ratio of statistical advantage between melee and primary crit chance mods is cut from 4.4x to 3.04x. 

All together, that's why Blood Rush in itself hasn't actually given up as crazy an advantage as a superficial look suggests. Using that example again, let's say that 4.4x crit multiplier weapon starts at a fair 25% crit chance. Point Strike improves the base damage by 312.5% while Blood Rush caps out improving the base damage by 746% - a gain of 238.72% over point strike, and right in that 'double to triple' area I originally mentioned.

 

Anyway, long story short: I don't want to see blind nerfs to melee mods nor buffs to gun mods which are ultimately targeting only incomplete pieces of the overall puzzle, so I was framing the big picture better.

Gotcha!

Sorry if I misunderstood your point.