New Augment: Airburst Rounds

[Traumtulpe]

7 hours ago, (XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom said:

You've chosen a benchmark that is weighted against most guns by design, and then complain that they can't keep up with melee.

No, I've chosen a benchmark that is actually used. If you add an augment to the game to enhance something that was previously deemed subpar, and it ends up still beeing subpar despite a niche build, the augment, and Arcanes, you obviously missed the mark with said augment.

Base damage on a secondary is not the way to go. It's that simple. I don't know why you are defending a barely usable mod that you haven't even had the chance to test.

[bnuy]

16 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

No, I've chosen a benchmark that is actually used. If you add an augment to the game to enhance something that was previously deemed subpar, and it ends up still beeing subpar despite a niche build, the augment, and Arcanes, you obviously missed the mark with said augment.

Base damage on a secondary is not the way to go. It's that simple. I don't know why you are defending a barely usable mod that you haven't even had the chance to test.

Acolytes are a horrible benchmark. I believe they have the damage reduction that scales inversely to your damage per second, which means the higher your dps the more damage they resist. It's either that or randomly tacked on immunities that are ignoring the enemy health/armour/shield types, which are bad design. They also have the arbitrarily tacked on debuff proc cap, which is a horrible mechanic that should not exist at all in the game. The mod would be better as multiplicative damage yes, I personally dislike having to change up my weapon builds just to fit an augment effectively, but saying the augment is bad because you can't notice the difference against an Acolyte is ridiculous. Not to mention of course, the Viral proc immunity due to the sheer overwhelming power of how overtuned viral procs are. Viral procs need a nerf/rebalance, not to have bosses and specific enemies be entirely immune to them. Acolytes are poorly designed, they're not engaging at all. Well designed units are things like Nox, Saxum, Nullifier, they reward you for playing to the enemy's weak points and are engaging to fight, not with infinite random reductions and resistances that are used to artificially make them a challenge.

[Traumtulpe]

47 minutes ago, scam said:

Acolytes are a horrible benchmark. I believe they have the damage reduction that scales inversely to your damage per second, which means the higher your dps the more damage they resist. It's either that or randomly tacked on immunities that are ignoring the enemy health/armour/shield types, which are bad design. They also have the arbitrarily tacked on debuff proc cap

This applies to all enemies beyond regular fodder. Anything where your damage actually matters has arbitrary immunities, proc caps, armor DR, DPS diminishing returns, extraordinary DR, etc. You can instakill fodder without the augment.

[bnuy]

4 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

This applies to all enemies beyond regular fodder. Anything where your damage actually matters has arbitrary immunities, proc caps, armor DR, DPS diminishing returns, extraordinary DR, etc. You can instakill fodder without the augment.

Not at all. The Saxum does have these, yes, but it allows you to negate these resistances and such by targeting and breaking the weak points, much like the Nox. It's engaging design, something that the Acolytes lack. If there were weak points or ways to effectively interact with them to negate these resistances, then they would be well designed. In their current form their design is abysmal, it doesn't reward you for anything aside from just shooting at it.

Also you saying you can kill fodder without the augment, well of course you can, up to a point. After some point in time, some level in enemy scaling, you won't be able to instakill, and the augment would be a boost to your damage allowing you to increase the level cap your weapons are effective up until.

[Traumtulpe]

So, after talking the talk, how many of you are actually using the augment?

I have used it; Best case scenario is a Catchmoon with Hemorrhage. This best case scenario is, compared to the alternatives, fine. I still don't see the appeal of building around a gimmick, only to have it be ~okayish but still worse than other stuff by default.

[quxier]

21 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

So, after talking the talk, how many of you are actually using the augment?

I have used it; Best case scenario is a Catchmoon with Hemorrhage. This best case scenario is, compared to the alternatives, fine. I still don't see the appeal of building around a gimmick, only to have it be ~okayish but still worse than other stuff by default.

In Simulcarum but it might worth nothing:

I'm trying Azima it with Viral/Heat, 50 status 45% crit 4.2x 170 damage + 2.1 punchthrough.

And Zephyr: Dur: 150%, Eff: 130%, Range: 100%, Strength: 130%.

 

Cast Tornadoes, slap Airburst (few times if necessary) at enemies, shoot tornadoes. Even his Disc is doing a lot.

I tried changing Heat > Electricity. It melts them faster.

 

Now, weapon isn't fully forma'ed (It needs probably 1-2 forma) and it's old weapon. So I didn't expected too much but... it's nice.

Now... if someone has some chaining 2nd'ary (Kuva Nukor?) then s/he can try it. It might be interesting.

On 2021-05-13 at 1:50 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

.

Your thoughts?

 

And as for normal (non defense) mission... I've tried it and... it's:

- hard to gather more enemies

- cumbersome to maintain it (e.g. shoot Airburst every 15s)

By the time I gather buff I could just kill enemies using other methods.

 

 

[Traumtulpe]

So nobody uses it at all? Unfortunately DE doesn't care about usage statistics for augments, or maybe they don't have them. Next time someone tries to explain why an augment needs to be better, don't just say no out of reflex...

[Birdframe_Prime]

On 2021-05-16 at 12:51 PM, quxier said:

Your thoughts?

On 2021-05-17 at 8:35 AM, Traumtulpe said:

So nobody uses it at all?

Unfortunately, I have played nothing but Mass Effect Legendary Edition for the last five days of my limited gaming time.

I'll get to the augment in a bit... honest... ^^

[Traumtulpe]

On 2021-05-19 at 12:50 AM, Birdframe_Prime said:

I'll get to the augment in a bit... honest... ^^

Actually, you might not have to bother. Depending on your weapon, the augment is likely to add 0 (none) damage. I'm not even kidding.

On 2021-05-19 at 5:40 PM, Traumtulpe said:

Using only a modded secondary and Arcane Precision, I noticed by accident that I had reached the DPS cap. Even Vex Armor (which is also base damage, just more) added not a single point of damage to relevant enemies.

You might think "use a different Arcane then", unfortunately Arcane Velocity actually reduces DPS. Again, I am not joking.

Of course this only applies to enemies with a DPS cap... but everything else is utterly irrelevant, and get's vaporized 50 times over by the heat procs...

[Birdframe_Prime]

21 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

Of course this only applies to enemies with a DPS cap

Interesting...

I say this because Zephyr's other ability, Tornado, with lots of enemies in it and an Electric weapon can literally melt those same enemies... So maybe the augment is more to take advantage of the damage that you put into those in order to get more damage out of those... It's an odd one.

Still, seems like a bug, so I think a report is in order.

[Redfeather75]

I just learned about this damage cap thing. If I use this augment it will lower my damage somehow? Is it possible?

[Traumtulpe]

25 minutes ago, Redfeather75 said:

If I use this augment it will lower my damage somehow?

No, the worst that can happen (and does happen, as you can see in this video, where the buff runs out and the damage stays the same), is that it has no effect.

On 2021-05-13 at 7:37 PM, Traumtulpe said: