$$$ for Fix - Status vs Crit, Armor vs Health/Shields, Damage Types

[TnaneverRisen]

My biggest problem with Warframe is the terrible balance.  There are issues all over the place, but I'll post about the ones that bother me the most.
I'd literally pay $60 right now just for a good balance patch if that's what it took.
 

____Status vs Crit____
Problem:
-You can stack crit chance and crit damage with no artificial limits.
-With status, most only stack up to 10 (or 4 for certain bosses, and 0 for targets immune to status), and often even the 10 stacks are lackluster or just outright useless in some situations.  Stacking status is typically much weaker than stacking pure damage or crit.
-Due to the artificial hard limit of 10, or 4, or 0 status stacks, and built-in diminishing returns for certain statuses, it's easy to focus purely or almost purely on crit and still get most of the status-based benefit of a status-focused build.  This is especially true for weapons with high attack speeds.
-There is no difference between applying status with a slow weapon vs a fast weapon, so fast weapons have a huge advantage - especially if they are crit-focused.
-Hunter Munitions - this should be removed from the game.  It basically removes the idea of status chance even existing for crit-based builds - all you have to do is add more crit for free slash status procs.  This is the opposite of good design.  Please either remove it outright, or add an equivalent opposite mod that adds free crits based on statuses applied (which would be equally stupid).  I prefer the removal.

Possible Solution:
-All status effects should be designed to be useful against every target, just like higher crit damage is useful against every target (or make particular statuses so good against particular targets that it's worth focusing on status over crit for those targets, with at least one status being this worthy for every target possible).
-All status effects should stack infinitely, with appropriate diminishing returns if applicable.
-Certain status effects should continue to be better than others for specific targets/situations - for more interesting build options and gameplay variety.
-The duration and magnitude of a stack of status (or number of stacks applied) should be based on the damage and/or attack speed of the strike - this way heavier/slower attacking weapons will not be unfairly punished.  This is somewhat how heat/slash works already - damage of the status tick is based on the damage of the strike, unfortunately, it still unfairly punishes the fact that you can't apply stacks as quickly with a slow weapon which may allow stacks to expire.

____Armor vs Health/Shields____
Other people have done a lot of good work on this topic already.  In summary, all factions and defense types should be equally interesting and challenging.  Armor is massively overpowered compared to anything else, which is why viral/heat and slash builds are so strong (and boring).  This guy's video gives a good explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e3kF0Rdr_s


____Damage/Status Types____
Problem:
-Due to the above Armor vs Health/Shields issue, some damage types are much more preferred than others - even in situations where, for example, magnetic "should" be better, but is beaten out by the elements that are supposed to be weaker in that situation.
-Some statuses are clearly more useful than others, regardless of how broken/inconsistent the stacking situation is.  For example, viral status hugely increases damage to health, while at the same time does bonus damage to very hard targets...while magnetic only increases damage against shields, which are so weak they're mostly ignored anyway.  Slash will do unlimited stacking of damage over time that bypasses armor, while pierce will only reduce the target damage up to a hard limit...in a (mostly) horde shooter.

Solution:
-All damage types should be roughly equal in terms of how frequently they are useful vs any random enemy.  You can do this by either requiring the player to focus on damage types to be successful against particular enemies (by making all factions and health types equally fearsome, instead of just insane levels of Grineer armor), or make damage types have less of a bonus/penalty against the "wrong" enemy - which would allow for both focused and generalized builds still being in the same league.  Right now, the situation is one build (viral/heat) being the best at almost everything.  This is brainless, boring, and wastes a lot of potential content.

-Regarding all status effects being useful against any target, here are some example ideas (including that all statuses will infinitely stack)

    -Corrosive - With diminishing returns, should approach 95% armor stripping, with every stack adding corrosive damage over time (maybe half that of heat).
         Example: 10 stacks is 40% armor strip, 100 stacks is 80.00% armor strip.

    -Blast - With diminishing returns, should approach 95% accuracy reduction.  Every 10th stack could cause an small AoE damage explosion based on total accumulated blast damage.
         Example: 10 stacks is 40% accuracy reduction, 100 stacks is 80.00% accuracy reduction.

    -Impact - With diminishing returns, should approach 6% chance each time a stack is applied to stun, and take 30% total bonus damage from any source.
         Example: 10 stacks is 3.5% chance of stun for each time another stack is applied, and 12% bonus damage.  100 stacks is 5.85% chance of stun, and 25% bonus damage.

    -Pierce - With diminishing returns, should approach 50% damage reduction, and add 50% critical damage vulnerability for only pierce damage.
         Example: 10 stacks is 25% damage reduction, and take 25% more damage from pierce damage critical strikes.

    -Magnetic - With diminishing returns, should approach 200% bonus damage vs shields, and 50% bonus status chance with other statuses.
        Example: 10 stacks is 100% bonus vs shields, and 25% bonus status chance for other status effects.  100 stacks is 180% shield damage and 45% bonus status chance.

-You could also make Eximus units more interesting and powerful.  Certain Grineer Eximus units, for example, could arrive with an extra heavy overshield, and cast the shield on fellow Grineer units.  Certain Infested Eximus could grow alloy armor on themselves and others in mid-combat.  Corpus Eximus units could call in some heavily ferrite-armored armored robots that restore/recharge shields on other eximus units, etc.  Doing this would not only help fix the imbalance between damage types, but also give more of a reason for single-target focused weapons/builds/strategies to exist.

[Xzorn]

Sadly or comically depending on the mood a lot of what you mentioned is a result of "fixing" the recent status and enemy scaling.

Armor was never really much of an issue. Players have just been painfully unaware of where we stand in terms of performance.

DE didn't accommodate it either. Even before these changes majority of frames parsed about lvl 300-400 Solo. That's no exaggeration. I had literally pushed that far with every frame at one point without consumables or Specters which only increases the performance bar. I was keeping video archives of those runs for a while. Groups were and still are impossible to stop. They can level cap in both damage output and intake. The game is over when it comes to a strategically put together team.

I've not really played much since the scaling was nerfed but it seems DE has only succeeded in exaggerating the problems that were present. People used to say Status didn't matter before Sorties when Status mattered quite a lot at the higher level range. Now that DE has put caps on status I imagine all the weapons which easily mocked Armor are total overkill.
Weapons like Torrid, Pox, Quanta V, Synapse, Staticor, hybrid kitguns.

Corrosive already had diminishing returns before it was changed funny enough. Crit/Crit dmg still generally do when compared to base damage and multishot. They're all just multipliers and when one gets high the others gain more stat weight. The sad truth is the damage system actually "mostly" worked before. Everyone was just playing in the wrong level range to see it. Of course Impact / Puncture / Magnetic were trash but there was a reason to use every single other damage type.

[KitMeHarder]

1 hour ago, TnaneverRisen said:

With status, most only stack up to 10

It's only for the debuffing procs, every damaging proc is uncapped besides Gas. Personally I'm fine if reproccing debuff elements only refreshes the duration. If they stacked infinity (with or without diminishing returns), it'd just make fast weapons much stronger like you complain about.

2 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

it's easy to focus purely or almost purely on crit and still get most of the status-based benefit of a status-focused build.

Pure crit builds largely suck if the enemy is status prone. Hybrid weapons are what's strong, because crit facilitates status to be stronger than it already is. That's why bosses are given status immunity.

1 hour ago, TnaneverRisen said:

There is no difference between applying status with a slow weapon vs a fast weapon

No, the new status system helped bridge the gap. Like with Viral the first proc gives +100% damage, and every one after gives 25%. And with damage procs, slow weapons mean big damage, which mean big proc damage.

1 hour ago, TnaneverRisen said:

Hunter Munitions - this should be removed from the game.

It's only for primary weapons, and there are much worse offenders. In fact, it's basically the only thing keeping a lot of primary weapons usable.

1 hour ago, TnaneverRisen said:

it still unfairly punishes the fact that you can't apply stacks as quickly with a slow weapon which may allow stacks to expire.

This only matters with heat damage.

2 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

while magnetic only increases damage against shields, which are so weak they're mostly ignored anyway.  Slash will do unlimited stacking of damage over time that bypasses armor

Except use slash against something like a Corpus Tech, and it's kinda garbage unless you're using something like the Glaive Prime. 

2 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

All damage types should be roughly equal in terms of how frequently they are useful vs any random enemy.

I agree. Though I am fine with Radiation being very niche, but very powerful in its niche.

2 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

You can do this by either requiring the player to focus on damage types to be successful against particular enemies (by making all factions and health types equally fearsome, instead of just insane levels of Grineer armor)

Not unless they do a major overhaul to the arsenal. Like switch configs on the fly in-mission overhaul. And the factions should not all be tanky, that's the Grineer shtick. (I don't even really agree with mass enemy shield gating.)

• Grineer - "tough" by tanking
• Corpus - "tough" by nullification
• Infested - "tough" by ally buffing, tenno debuffing
• Etc...

2 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

Regarding all status effects being useful against any target, here are some example ideas (including that all statuses will infinitely stack)

Besides some of the new secondary effects, these are useless. IDK how many weapons you think can stack 100+ stacks of a proc that last 6-8 seconds. (While nerfing all the procs power by a lot compared to what they can currently get at 10 stacks.)

2 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

You could also make Eximus units more interesting and powerful.  Certain Grineer Eximus units, for example, could arrive with an extra heavy overshield, and cast the shield on fellow Grineer units.  Certain Infested Eximus could grow alloy armor..........

So interesting = bullet sponge?

47 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

Now that DE has put caps on status I imagine all the weapons which easily mocked Armor are total overkill.
Weapons like Torrid, Pox

They would, but they heavily nerfed Corrosive.

[TnaneverRisen]

4 minutes ago, KitMeHarder said:

It's only for the debuffing procs, every damaging proc is uncapped besides Gas. Personally I'm fine if reproccing debuff elements only refreshes the duration. If they stacked infinity (with or without diminishing returns), it'd just make fast weapons much stronger like you complain about.

Pure crit builds largely suck if the enemy is status prone. Hybrid weapons are what's strong, because crit facilitates status to be stronger than it already is. That's why bosses are given status immunity.

No, the new status system helped bridge the gap. Like with Viral the first proc gives +100% damage, and every one after gives 25%. And with damage procs, slow weapons mean big damage, which mean big proc damage.

It's only for primary weapons, and there are much worse offenders. In fact, it's basically the only thing keeping a lot of primary weapons usable.

This only matters with heat damage.

Except use slash against something like a Corpus Tech, and it's kinda garbage unless you're using something like the Glaive Prime. 

I agree. Though I am fine with Radiation being very niche, but very powerful in its niche.

Not unless they do a major overhaul to the arsenal. Like switch configs on the fly in-mission overhaul. And the factions should not all be tanky, that's the Grineer shtick. (I don't even really agree with mass enemy shield gating.)

• Grineer - "tough" by tanking
• Corpus - "tough" by nullification
• Infested - "tough" by ally buffing, tenno debuffing
• Etc...

Besides some of the new secondary effects, these are useless. IDK how many weapons you think can stack 100+ stacks of a proc that last 6-8 seconds. (While nerfing all the procs power by a lot compared to what they can currently get at 10 stacks.)

So interesting = bullet sponge?

They would, but they heavily nerfed Corrosive.

I don't think you really read or understood my post.  A lot of what you said doesn't make sense.

For example:

- "...every damaging proc is uncapped besides Gas..." - There are many non-damage procs, so what do you think I'm referring do?

- "Hybrid weapons are what's strong, because crit facilitates status to be stronger than it already is." - You seemed to miss the point that you don't even need to build a hybrid weapon most of the time.  Weapons with lots of crit and high attack speed already apply enough status with 0 status investment, and hunter munitions bypass any status requirement at all.

- "... can stack 100+ stacks of a proc that last 6-8 seconds..." - I never said anything about keeping status effects at the current timing.

- "So interesting = bullet sponge?" - This is the worst of your misunderstandings.  The point I was making was clearly that status effects could be used to counter specific gameplay challenges, instead of letting players choose one build that melts everything they encounter.  Magnetic, for example, would and should counter very strong shields from eximus units.

[Tyreaus]

FWIW

3 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

-All status effects should be designed to be useful against every target, just like higher crit damage is useful against every target (or make particular statuses so good against particular targets that it's worth focusing on status over crit for those targets, with at least one status being this worthy for every target possible).
-All status effects should stack infinitely, with appropriate diminishing returns if applicable.
-Certain status effects should continue to be better than others for specific targets/situations - for more interesting build options and gameplay variety.

Question: What situations? Gameplay of enemies is, generally, pretty much identical from moment to moment. There aren't major deviations beyond factions, which is what the current system (sort of) works around. And not to great effect.

3 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

Other people have done a lot of good work on this topic already.  In summary, all factions and defense types should be equally interesting and challenging.  Armor is massively overpowered compared to anything else, which is why viral/heat and slash builds are so strong (and boring).

Didn't watch video but really the main problem with armour as I see it is that you fight it in the build screen while every other health type can be handled in the mission. Viral / Heat and Slash builds are so strong because you can get away without building an anti-shield kit: any damage will handle a shield, but not any damage will handle armour (Viral basically countering armour's DR). Status will almost invariably work that way as long as armour is "untouchable" by conventional damage, which creates a natural lean toward anti-armour procs.

3 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

____Damage/Status Types____

A major issue not stated is that damage types in the current setup step on one another's toes. Hard. Blast reducing accuracy doesn't matter a ton if A: the target is dead or B: the target is stunned by an Impact / Electric / Heat proc or C: the target isn't shooting at the player because of a Rad proc. Which is better: an enemy that misses more often, or an enemy that doesn't shoot at you in the first place? Same goes for all of the damage-dealing procs: they all play the numbers game and there can be only one.

This also brings up the question of "What should status, as a whole, do?" Crit increases damage. Straightforward. Status seems to want to do everything under the sun (and yet still has duplication issues - I've yet to figure that one out...). If everything status wants to do is equal, then sure, that works. But with armour being touchable only via status, the above toe-stepping issue, and the general lean toward damage over CC, things aren't equal.

So procs as a whole should start aiming in the same direction, at least in substantial part, and should start being a lot more diverse so that they compete less. Make Blast blind enemies in an AoE - opens up finishers. Make Magnetic pull enemies together - fits with AoE weapons to increase their damage. Give them a major function that sets them apart from every other one and you'll find much better results.

[KitMeHarder]

1 hour ago, TnaneverRisen said:

There are many non-damage procs, so what do you think I'm referring do?

Except those are the only ones that matter in terms of being uncapped. And removing caps just makes the things you complain about even worse, like slow weapons.

1 hour ago, TnaneverRisen said:

You seemed to miss the point that you don't even need to build a hybrid weapon most of the time.  Weapons with lots of crit and high attack speed already apply enough status with 0 status investment

What level enemies are you fighting that pure crit (except maybe with Gunblades) is good comparatively? There's a reason people use 60/60 mods over 90s, and even Weeping Wounds over them.

1 hour ago, TnaneverRisen said:

and hunter munitions bypass any status requirement at all.

No, it still favors hybrids. Hunter Munitions just gives guns that have no hope of building for the stronger mechanic (status), the ability to. There are infinitely stronger things out there that force proc status.

1 hour ago, TnaneverRisen said:

I never said anything about keeping status effects at the current timing.

You didn't mention it either.

1 hour ago, TnaneverRisen said:

This is the worst of your misunderstandings.  The point I was making was clearly that status effects could be used to counter specific gameplay challenges, instead of letting players choose one build that melts everything they encounter.  Magnetic, for example, would and should counter very strong shields from eximus units.

So I bring a bad build for an enemy that's one in 50-300? No, that's just adding bullet sponges. You already said we already don't use magnetic for corpus, so why would we use your nerfed magnetic for one rare Grineer?

 

[TnaneverRisen]

20 minutes ago, KitMeHarder said:

Except those are the only ones that matter in terms of being uncapped. And removing caps just makes the things you complain about even worse, like slow weapons.

What level enemies are you figh...

 

 

You're literally not even fully reading my post.  I'll just stop you at your first bad point: "Except those are the only ones that matter in terms of being uncapped. And removing caps just makes the things you complain about even worse, like slow weapons. "

I specifically stated that slow weapons shouldn't be unfairly penalized, which could be done by, for example, adding more magnitude or number of stacks per application based on attack speed or damage per hit.  Dude, just read my actual post before wasting space with an irrelevant reply.

[TnaneverRisen]

45 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

Quote

FWIW

Question: What situations? Gameplay of enemies is, generally, pretty much identical from moment to moment. There aren't major deviations beyond factions, which is what the current system (sort of) works around. And not to great effect.

Right - gameplay is too homogeneous to begin with, which is another problem to be fixed.  Aside from that general issue, some deviations do exist from moment to moment.  When, for example, a juggernaut or strong eximus unit appears (I gave examples to enhance this aspect at the end of the original post).

Quote

Didn't watch video but really the main problem with armour as I see it is that you fight it in the build screen while every other health type can be handled in the mission. Viral / Heat and Slash builds are so strong because you can get away without building an anti-shield kit: any damage will handle a shield, but not any damage will handle armour (Viral basically countering armour's DR). Status will almost invariably work that way as long as armour is "untouchable" by conventional damage, which creates a natural lean toward anti-armour procs.

Clearly.  You should watch the video.  It goes into a lot of detail about that.
 

Quote

 

A major issue not stated is that damage types in the current setup step on one another's toes. Hard. Blast reducing accuracy doesn't matter a ton if A: the target is dead or B: the target is stunned by an Impact / Electric / Heat proc or C: the target isn't shooting at the player because of a Rad proc. Which is better: an enemy that misses more often, or an enemy that doesn't shoot at you in the first place? Same goes for all of the damage-dealing procs: they all play the numbers game and there can be only one.

This also brings up the question of "What should status, as a whole, do?" Crit increases damage. Straightforward. Status seems to want to do everything under the sun (and yet still has duplication issues - I've yet to figure that one out...). If everything status wants to do is equal, then sure, that works. But with armour being touchable only via status, the above toe-stepping issue, and the general lean toward damage over CC, things aren't equal.

So procs as a whole should start aiming in the same direction, at least in substantial part, and should start being a lot more diverse so that they compete less. Make Blast blind enemies in an AoE - opens up finishers. Make Magnetic pull enemies together - fits with AoE weapons to increase their damage. Give them a major function that sets them apart from every other one and you'll find much better results.

 

I gave specific examples to address these topics in my original post - did you really actually read it or just scan for a few keywords? I specifically pointed out that blast damage, for example, could activate an area damage blast every X stacks based on all the blast damage it gathered from the previous stacks.  There are many possible ways to solve this, which I hope DE is considering.

 

[KitMeHarder]

9 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

I specifically stated that slow weapons shouldn't be unfairly penalized, which could be done by, for example, adding more magnitude or number of stacks per application based on attack speed or damage per hit.  Dude, just read my actual post before wasting space with an irrelevant reply.

I understand, I was saying how the devs already balance it in the current system.

Where with yours, you punishes players for building attack speed/fire rate. And you'll completely break the balance of damage procs with those changes to slow weapons.

[TnaneverRisen]

2 hours ago, KitMeHarder said:

I understand, I was saying how the devs already balance it in the current system.

Where with yours, you punishes players for building attack speed/fire rate. And you'll completely break the balance of damage procs with those changes to slow weapons.

I have no idea what you're even talking about.  I don't think you do either. 

[Tyreaus]

On 2020-12-02 at 8:35 PM, TnaneverRisen said:

Right - gameplay is too homogeneous to begin with, which is another problem to be fixed.  Aside from that general issue, some deviations do exist from moment to moment.  When, for example, a juggernaut or strong eximus unit appears (I gave examples to enhance this aspect at the end of the original post).

Major problem with "moment to moment" deviations is that we aren't able to tweak loadouts respectively. Basically, players would still plan for the average, meaning those momentary deviations would cause a bit of a hiccup in a given weapon's performance - but without much we can do about that.

That's what we have now, actually. Eximus units, for example, have 50% DR. Noxes are even more hardcore than that. One would think that would encourage the use of single target weaponry - but as we can tell in the current gameplay meta, it hasn't worked out. I'm not going to get into hypothesizing why that's the case, only point out that we have momentary deviations and the game is in its current state. Trying to ramp up that dial doesn't seem likely to work.

Though I recognize that was already mentioned, as well.

On 2020-12-02 at 8:35 PM, TnaneverRisen said:

I gave specific examples to address these topics in my original post - did you really actually read it or just scan for a few keywords? I specifically pointed out that blast damage, for example, could activate an area damage blast every X stacks based on all the blast damage it gathered from the previous stacks.  There are many possible ways to solve this, which I hope DE is considering.

I think I could ask the same thing about "did you actually read it or just scan for a few keywords?" because the added Blast damage only puts it in competition with other elements like Electric - and the very first sentence I wrote was "damage types in the current setup step on one another's toes". That addition to Blast doesn't circumvent that issue, it only adds another dance partner to step on it - namely the other damage-dealing procs, primarily the AoE ones like electric (substantially since it also staggers the affected target) and gas.

And the point was that they should be substantially different, ideally to the degree that picking an element is based more on what could work with other elements of a given setup. For example, Blast being able to blind targets might have some fancy sync-up with Nezha - but would be useless on Wisp or Excal, who already have blind abilities. They might pick Magnetic to group enemies together, which isn't useful for Nidus (or someone running the new Proboscis Cernos) because they have a pocket form of that already. So the element chosen is decided more by "what else are you using?" and not "what gets the most damage?"

Your suggestion is prone to the same minmaxing that makes Viral king over Magnetic. There are still direct DPS and CC comparisons that, after all the math is done, is going to put one element as inferior to another.

[TnaneverRisen]

2 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

I think I could ask the same thing about "did you actually read it or just scan for a few keywords?" because the added Blast damage only puts it in competition with other elements like Electric - and the very first sentence I wrote was "damage types in the current setup step on one another's toes". That addition to Blast doesn't circumvent that issue, it only adds another dance partner to step on it - namely the other damage-dealing procs, primarily the AoE ones like electric (substantially since it also staggers the affected target) and gas.

And the point was that they should be substantially different, ideally to the degree that picking an element is based more on what could work with other elements of a given setup. For example, Blast being able to blind targets might have some fancy sync-up with Nezha - but would be useless on Wisp or Excal, who already have blind abilities. They might pick Magnetic to group enemies together, which isn't useful for Nidus (or someone running the new Proboscis Cernos) because they have a pocket form of that already. So the element chosen is decided more by "what else are you using?" and not "what gets the most damage?"

Your suggestion is prone to the same minmaxing that makes Viral king over Magnetic. There are still direct DPS and CC comparisons that, after all the math is done, is going to put one element as inferior to another.

The whole point of the damage type system is to allow players to focus damage types against certain targets - even though it's badly implemented which makes one or two damage combos superior in almost all situations.  This design decision has to be included with the crit vs status problem.  This is why all my status examples added damage in one way or another (magnetic would enhance damage from other statuses).  If you think damage types should be separated from status effects, then that's a different discussion.

Given the current framework, of course people will minmax for damage.  That's how it's supposed to work.  The problem is that everything is easy compared to grineer armor/hp scaling, so of course there are only ~1.5 meta builds.  If factions/shields/health are balanced, then it would encourage other builds.  If all status effects were seriously useful and had unlimited stacking, just like all extra crit damage is seriously useful, then it would further encourage different damage types.

You stated, "Major problem with 'moment to moment' deviations is that we aren't able to tweak loadouts respectively."  I think a lot of players think that's an issue, but do you know why? It seems that it's only an issue because people have been programmed by Warframe's bad balance to have essentially the same damage setup for their entire build.  There's no reason to think we need to tweak loadouts on the fly.  Players have warframe skills, companions, and three weapons - that gives PLENTY of opportunity for players to build out their setup and have fun by being either hyper-focused or more general, and be successful in either case. It also allows for players to coordinate and synergize their loadouts.

For example, in a high level Grineer mission with appropriately rebalanced status effects and interesting heavy eximus units:

• Primary - Rubico Prime (viral/heat crit) - for heavy units
• Secondary - Rattleguts (corrosive status) - for fast killing of weaker units, and armor strip of heavy units
• Melee - Fragor Prime (impact/magnetic crit/status) - for slam attacks again groups of shield-enhanced targets

Alternate example loadout, to show variety in player choice:

• Primary - Ignis Wraith (heat/corrosive status) - for mass CC (from burning effect) and mass armor stripping
• Secondary - Euphona Prime (impact crit) - for killing hard targets after armor strip, and high damage via impact against heavy overshields
• Melee - Guandao Prime (magnetic/blast crit/status) - for high AOE damage against masses of weaker units (magnetic would increase # of blast procs)

 

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

Easiest solution:

1. Remove armor scaling from enemies. They have flat armor values period. Only scale health.
2. Make Critical Multipliers and Viral procs additive with Base Damage to flatten player damage scaling.

4.0x Crit multiplier just increases damage by +400% Base Damage additive with Serration on Critical hit.

First Viral proc just increases damage to health by +100% Base Damage additive with Serration.

This would solve the complaints about "Mandatory" base damage mods and normalize the ehp of armored vs unarmored enemies.

[Xzorn]

20 hours ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

Remove armor scaling from enemies. They have flat armor values period. Only scale health.

 

Scaling Health is what players felt at higher levels not the Armor.
Any Armor at all in the 2.0 system would result in the same conditions of some status effects just not being useful. The biggest difference needed to drop Armor was between lvl 30-100. After that the number of procs drops off.

A lvl 30 Napalm took 25 procs to red-line a lvl 100 Napalm took 32. 70 Level difference; 7 proc difference. A lvl 250 Napalm took 37 procs while a lvl 320 Napalm took 39; a 2 proc difference. Same 70 level difference between the two. It's why I mentioned in my first post here that Corrosive already diminishing returns. Once you drop enemies to hundreds of armor it took a lot of procs and wasn't usually needed unless you built around it.

In Damage 1.0 every enemy had armor but no armor on their weak points. In many ways this was a better system since it rewarded aiming but I also enjoyed the more faction based damage system. Neither were perfect though. Just a comparison that Armor isn't the easy fix to problems with the damage system.

Haven't really played the new system much. Not much reason I feel. Seems like they just made everything even easier.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

29 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

 

Scaling Health is what players felt at higher levels not the Armor.
Any Armor at all in the 2.0 system would result in the same conditions of some status effects just not being useful. The biggest difference needed to drop Armor was between lvl 30-100. After that the number of procs drops off.

A lvl 30 Napalm took 25 procs to red-line a lvl 100 Napalm took 32. 70 Level difference; 7 proc difference. A lvl 250 Napalm took 37 procs while a lvl 320 Napalm took 39; a 2 proc difference. Same 70 level difference between the two. It's why I mentioned in my first post here that Corrosive already diminishing returns. Once you drop enemies to hundreds of armor it took a lot of procs and wasn't usually needed unless you built around it.

In Damage 1.0 every enemy had armor but no armor on their weak points. In many ways this was a better system since it rewarded aiming but I also enjoyed the more faction based damage system. Neither were perfect though. Just a comparison that Armor isn't the easy fix to problems with the damage system.

Haven't really played the new system much. Not much reason I feel. Seems like they just made everything even easier.

The issue of scaling armor isnt that we can't drop enemies in reasonable time, but that it biases the game towards armor stripping and armor ignoring damage types. In 2.0, if you didn't bring a weapon that could deal with armor at high levels, you aborted mission.

That was the biggest issue with the Wolf of Saturn Six. If you didn't bring Shattering Impact, a Kavat or Radiation damage, you extracted. 

PS: The status rework put a cap on Corrosive's armor strip at 80%. We can't red line enemies anymore. Viral Slash is the undisputed king now.

[Xzorn]

5 hours ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

The issue of scaling armor isnt that we can't drop enemies in reasonable time, but that it biases the game towards armor stripping and armor ignoring damage types. In 2.0, if you didn't bring a weapon that could deal with armor at high levels, you aborted mission.

That was the biggest issue with the Wolf of Saturn Six. If you didn't bring Shattering Impact, a Kavat or Radiation damage, you extracted. 

PS: The status rework put a cap on Corrosive's armor strip at 80%. We can't red line enemies anymore. Viral Slash is the undisputed king now.

 

I'm one of the people who enjoy modding for a mission but I'm also used to missions lasting longer than 2 minutes. The whole "If you aren't geared to deal with Armor" argument doesn't really resonate with me but that's also why I mentioned Damage 1.0 where every enemy had armor and there were generally two options. Aim for the weak points and be good at the game or stack Armor Piercing / Use Puncture and ignore Armor.

Not a huge difference really from what we have now with Armor but it was a global enemy issue. Unlike now though good aim could overcome that.

Personally I used the MK1-Braton through the entire game back then because it had 40 Accuracy and could head-shot from 2 rooms away.

Wolf was Damage Gated much like Nox. It wasn't as much an armor issue though obviously not stripping the base layer made it worse. Damage gating is kind of a trick from Damage 1.0 if Puncture / Armor Pen wasn't a thing. You'd do 1's and 3's for damage unless you hit weak points but it's mostly just bad design.

In the end I always felt enemies having Armor on their weak points was a serious oversight in the damage system since Damage 1.0.

[ShortCat]

5 hours ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

The issue of scaling armor isnt that we can't drop enemies in reasonable time, but that it biases the game towards armor stripping and armor ignoring damage types.

Problem is not armur, but other protective means not being as effective. If shields were more sturdy and not undermied by Toxin; Infested not turned off with one random Radiation proc, fighting other factions would be more challenging. At this point Corrupted would represent a real threat, since they combine everything from every faction.

[TnaneverRisen]

On 2020-12-06 at 11:14 AM, ShortCat said:

Problem is not armur, but other protective means not being as effective. If shields were more sturdy and not undermied by Toxin; Infested not turned off with one random Radiation proc, fighting other factions would be more challenging. At this point Corrupted would represent a real threat, since they combine everything from every faction.

Yes, all the factions need to be balanced to be interesting/challenging....but that wouldn't solve the problem of crit stats being stacked without limit, vs hard-limits and effectiveness on status stacking.

[Bakaguya-sama]

I agree with the general sentiment that status should be more useful agaisnt more enemy types. However Hunter Munition is the only thing keeping many older primaries viable right now. Without it, primaries would become completely useless vs higher level mobs. Yes, including the Kuva Bramma. 

Primaries are already, on average, lagging far behind other modes of dealing damage (2ndaries, melee and warframe nukes). Just compare primary vs secondary kitguns and you can see the big difference in power. Might as well not bring any Primaries if Hunter Munition is removed.  

I don't see why we cannot have a Status equivalent for Hunter Munition. Give some kind of proc burst damage to status weapons. Something akin to Exodia Force (the Zaw Arcane). The exact number and mechanics are subjected to tuning. It's not as ridiculous as it sounds. Would give primary weapons a much needed buff IMO.  

[MacIntoc]

On 2020-12-05 at 5:44 PM, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

This would solve the complaints about "Mandatory" base damage mods and normalize the ehp of armored vs unarmored enemies.

That would just make multishot and elemental mods the new mandatories mods.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

47 minutes ago, MacIntoc said:

That would just make multishot and elemental mods the new mandatories mods.

They already are, but there is diminishing returns for stacking more of it. Like Condition Overload VS Pressure Point for Base Damage. If crit was additive with base damage, it would be Blood Rush + Organ Shatter Vs Condition Overload VS PPP.

For guns, fire rate would probably become the new mandatory mod.

[TnaneverRisen]

4 hours ago, Bakaguya-sama said:

I agree with the general sentiment that status should be more useful agaisnt more enemy types. However Hunter Munition is the only thing keeping many older primaries viable right now. Without it, primaries would become completely useless vs higher level mobs. Yes, including the Kuva Bramma. 

Primaries are already, on average, lagging far behind other modes of dealing damage (2ndaries, melee and warframe nukes). Just compare primary vs secondary kitguns and you can see the big difference in power. Might as well not bring any Primaries if Hunter Munition is removed.  

I don't see why we cannot have a Status equivalent for Hunter Munition. Give some kind of proc burst damage to status weapons. Something akin to Exodia Force (the Zaw Arcane). The exact number and mechanics are subjected to tuning. It's not as ridiculous as it sounds. Would give primary weapons a much needed buff IMO.  

That makes it very clear that hunter munitions is overpowered and out of place.  It also makes it clear that most primaries need to be buffed significantly.

Forgot to add - Yeah, an Exodia Force style of primary mod for status would be neat, assuming they keep hunter munitions as is.  Still, I'd rather it be gone completely.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

2 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

That makes it very clear that hunter munitions is overpowered and out of place.  It also makes it clear that most primaries need to be buffed significantly.

Forgot to add - Yeah, an Exodia Force style of primary mod for status would be neat, assuming they keep hunter munitions as is.  Still, I'd rather it be gone completely.

Hunter Munitions being as good as it is has more to do with armor being broken, invalidating most damage types and weapons that don't have an answer to it.

At 95% damage reduction, a 35% base damage tick as true damage is equivocal to a 700% base damage tick as neutral damage.

[ShortCat]

22 hours ago, TnaneverRisen said:

but that wouldn't solve the problem of crit stats being stacked without limit, vs hard-limits and effectiveness on status stacking.

On this topic I have an unpopular opinion, as so often.

All crit stats are basically +damage boosts with a different wording. Especailly weapons which can reach 100% transform CC & CD in Serration4.0 that takes up 2 slots. Call me oldschool, but for me crit should embody a playstyle with high damage spikes at the cost of much lower overall damage. Or have a skill component attached to it. (personaly i like that one more)
Given the power, I would entirely remove crit chance from all guns. Instead weapons deal bonus damage if the player shoots weakspots (also add more weakspot to enemies). Critical damage indicates how big the boost is. Critical damage mods would increase weakpoint damage. Critical chance mods would function as visual aid and highlight weakspots (kinda like Banshee's Sonar) if you zoom. No more RNG, all down to player skill. Would also make crit stats entirely a player choice on any weapon, if the player feels confident in his skills.
This obviously does not work on melee, and I do not have a solution for it. All I know is, n-tier crits is retarded.

Furthermore, status is actually more powerfull, thus status has caps and VIPs are immunte to status, but not crits.

[TnaneverRisen]

3 hours ago, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

Hunter Munitions being as good as it is has more to do with armor being broken, invalidating most damage types and weapons that don't have an answer to it.

At 95% damage reduction, a 35% base damage tick as true damage is equivocal to a 700% base damage tick as neutral damage.

That's also an issue, but it's still true that many primaries are too weak due to only being viable with hunter munitions, while other primaries are still strong without having to rely on hunter munitions.  Both defense mechanics and weapon balance need to be improved.