Rebalance concern: Underperforming melee weapons being made useless.

[Lancars]

I don't like that DE needs to nerf melee to bring up the primary and secondary weapons. So far its been many bandaids to bring them up and it raises flags that this rebalance will go poorly.

I didn't mind the original nerf to the stagger cause it didn't effect the damage but by the vague sound of what's going on the numbers are gonna be lowered and with how many melee weapons there are they might just blanket nerf them to save time as they would have to test and mod each and every weapon in different ways and count any rivens people add to them. Plus i've seen some melee builds they don't even include the base damage mods but they wreck face.

I am worried that melee weapons i like to use that aren't the meta weapons are gonna be effected poorly by the nerfs. I myself love to use the Machete style weapons the most cause i like how they feel. I've been able to get the most out of them with the Zaw's but i don't want the time I invested in them to be voided. I don't want to have to use the Meta weapons to keep a good damage output.

DE set a bar. A lot of melee could get over that bar. If these nerfs happen poorly i feel like the Meta weapons will be the only one to reach the bar and options on playstyle will die to cookie cutter.

[bubbabenali]

There are underperforming melee weapons? 

I mean, yeah there are clunky stances that got butchered with the last melee update like the two handed Nikana stance and Cyclone Kraken for machetes, but there is no melee weapon that cannot melt enemies in seconds as of my knowledge, mk1 weapons aside. 

[Andele3025]

7 hours ago, bubbabenali said:

I mean, yeah there are clunky stances that got butchered with the last melee update

I really want Tempo Royale to return (sprint influencing dash distance and having keyboard steer inlcuded). Or at least made into something similar to what it was.

[(XBOX)Big Roy 324]

10 hours ago, bubbabenali said:

There are underperforming melee weapons? 

I mean, yeah there are clunky stances that got butchered with the last melee update like the two handed Nikana stance and Cyclone Kraken for machetes, but there is no melee weapon that cannot melt enemies in seconds as of my knowledge, mk1 weapons aside. 

More like a nerfing of melee will make the stats of a weapon matter more. So when you see something with crit and/or status under 20%. Slapping on the meta mods will be meaningless or having damage under a certain threshold will matter when it didn't before.

Berserker and condition overload are the two mods in the crosshairs to my understanding.  So anything that uses those to feel fun will be no fun after the assumed nerf. 

No one knows what form the nerfs will take yet though so who knows what impact they will have. 

[Lancars]

44 minutes ago, (XBOX)Big Roy 324 said:

More like a nerfing of melee will make the stats of a weapon matter more. So when you see something with crit and/or status under 20%. Slapping on the meta mods will be meaningless or having damage under a certain threshold will matter when it didn't before.

Berserker and condition overload are the two mods in the crosshairs to my understanding.  So anything that uses those to feel fun will be no fun after the assumed nerf. 

No one knows what form the nerfs will take yet though so who knows what impact they will have. 

No one may know but these kinds of things always happen. You're doing fine one day then the patch hits and your weapon of choice is now hitting like a wet noodle. It will become like melee 1.0 where melee was just there to finish things off.

[Duality52]

11 hours ago, (XBOX)Big Roy 324 said:

Berserker and condition overload are the two mods in the crosshairs to my understanding.  So anything that uses those to feel fun will be no fun after the assumed nerf. 

No one knows what form the nerfs will take yet though so who knows what impact they will have. 

Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds are the more criminal mods that should be readjusted. Providing essentially an easy 660% Crit Chance and 440% Status Chance makes them way too overpowering over any mods in the game honestly. Furthermore, certain Stances (Sovereign Outcast, Swirling Tiger) needs to be toned down on the amount of forced Slash procs. It's excessive.

[Attel_Malagate]

While I understand your concern, a good half of all ranged weapons are straight up unsalvageable even with a godlroll riven at maximum disposition, so in my opinion, it has less to do with the melee rebalance and more with what stats are acceptable for a weapon ( a lot of older weapons are basically due for a stat bump).

As long as blood rush, condition overload and the like will exist, even the worst melee weapon will still be leagues better than most ranged ones so I wouldn't worry too much.

[Loza03]

On 2021-06-08 at 8:32 AM, bubbabenali said:

melee weapon that cannot melt enemies in seconds as of my knowledge, mk1 weapons aside. 

Eh, throw on Blood Rush Weeping Wounds, Mk1 Skana with no forma and no potatoes can handle early-tier Steel Path, so it should be able to tear up regular levels no problem.

[Andele3025]

6 hours ago, Duality52 said:

Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds are the more criminal mods that should be readjusted. Providing essentially an easy 660% Crit Chance and 440% Status Chance makes them way too overpowering over any mods in the game honestly. Furthermore, certain Stances (Sovereign Outcast, Swirling Tiger) needs to be toned down on the amount of forced Slash procs. It's excessive.

Actually not true on both accounts.

Well the easy bit yes, but thats its own problem DE added by massively squishing the skill floor and ceiling to the middle with melee 2.99998, however the difference of the 200 crit vs 660 is on average a 36~42% dps increase. A broken stance modifier (not the forced procs) like with SO or BJ or even FH meanwhile are 100%+ dps increases. A weapon with double buffed/that got overstatted for category like gram prime on its own is about as good as the difference between base crit mods vs BR. That isnt saving heavy blades as their stances got gutted/are surviving in meta via rending crane headshots (something that melee isnt even balanced around doing with semi-consistency).

2 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Eh, throw on Blood Rush, Mk1 Skana with no forma and no potatoes can handle early-tier Steel Path, so it should be able to tear up regular levels no problem.

BR wont do much in terms of performance on a Skana (or even Prisma skana) other than be a wasted mod, slap on regular Pressure point, Berserker and P Reach with IP stance tho then spamming static poke will kill the non-heavy non-eximus units in circa 10-11 hits. Then again a crit gun with HM and 2 60/60s for viral will do the same in that timeframe without the guaranteed impact staggers.

[Loza03]

Just now, Andele3025 said:

BR wont do much in terms of performance on a Skana (or even Prisma skana) other than be a wasted mod, slap on regular Pressure point, Berserker and P Reach with IP stance tho then spamming static poke will kill the non-heavy non-eximus units in circa 10-11 hits. Then again a crit gun with HM and 2 60/60s for viral will do the same in that timeframe without the guaranteed impact staggers.

Ah. checking back on my pictures for it (I did this as a look at this absurdity challenge run, so I have pictures) I used Weeping Wounds not Blood Rush. I'll update my original post, sorry for the confusion.

[Andele3025]

2 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

Ah. checking back on my pictures for it (I did this as a look at this absurdity challenge run, so I have pictures) I used Weeping Wounds not Blood Rush. I'll update my original post, sorry for the confusion.

Fair, just wanted to nitpick and augment the point prior in that decent multiplier stance and high base damage with no multi-rng layers matter more in the end.

[Loza03]

1 minute ago, Andele3025 said:

Fair, just wanted to nitpick and augment the point prior in that decent multiplier stance and high base damage with no multi-rng layers matter more in the end.

Thank you for fact checking me.

[Famecans]

I support your thinking after all the game doesn't need nerfs but new and stronger enemies

The Comunity Balance:

• Weapons nerf = wrong, we need an weapon buff...
• Weapon buff = wrong, we need a an weapon nerf...
• Enemy numerical armor increased = outdated...

The META:

• Damage resistance reduction to weapons = future
• Damage resistance to enemies = future
• Enemy resistance linked to health and not armor = future
• New augment mods to outdated weapon = future
• New augment mods to outdated weapons category = future

For all build creators, you can try to change my mind but: Nox >>> Heavy Gunner

[Tyreaus]

On 2021-06-07 at 10:33 AM, Lancars said:

DE set a bar.

It's also been moving. We didn't have Steel Path, so prior to that, the typical benchmark was Simulacrum maximum - ~L185 maximum or so. We have Steel Path so it's a new bar. And we'd probably get some other "new bar" sometime in the future that might end up overshadowing those sub-par weapons anyway. It's an unfortunate inevitability.

Also important to consider that, for better or worse, weapons tend to be hyped and sold based on power. It's hard to sell power if a player's extant equipment wipes the floor just as easily as the new stuff, but with the player's investment already made. So there needs to be room for new stuff if that model is to work.

(Likewise the game is kind of designed around item obsolescence and progression. Again, for better or worse - I have my personal opinions on how things function. Your mk-1 gear is meant to be sub-par, and your MR14 gear is meant to beat out your MR5 gear. That doesn't work if there's little to no tangible difference between those echelons because the stats on even the weakest kind are high enough to tackle just about anything.)

[TheLexiConArtist]

Radical idea: Maybe Steel Path modifiers, especially the double-scale from armour, could be less needlessly excessive so that nerfed melee output mods matters less and guns are automatically more usable.

 

Melee with nerfed attack speed is going to be miserable. Too many stances have horrible delays and general jank, that only becomes comfortable by adding tons of attack speed to shorten the down-windows.
This is especially bad with the stagger removal we already got. Who's going to melee if you get your face ripped off in the middle of a single combo because your frame decided they just have to do a pretty little dance in front of the enemy's gun barrel instead of actually stabbing them?

(Melee Range/Area has similar issues in some cases as well, where the swing hitbox of some strikes in some combos are laughably minuscule, and you really need to hurry past those duds to the strikes that actually hit more than a pinprick of area in front of you)

[Famecans]

9 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Radical idea: Maybe Steel Path modifiers, especially the double-scale from armour, could be less needlessly excessive so that nerfed melee output mods matters less and guns are automatically more usable.

wtf mess, more mess...

nerf armor and enemies? nop, units based on armor are not elite as the slash status bypasses the armor.

melee nerf? nope, the most recent elite units on steel path are "not" dominated by melee.

cabion drift infesteds are an example of elite units, so increasing or decreasing armor is an outdated mechanic.

we don't need to nerf enemies globally(again?), we don't need to nerf melee, just add damage rediction to more units and melee will be downgraded; and finally improve wepon mechanics similar combo system.

[TheLexiConArtist]

2 hours ago, Famecans said:

wtf mess, more mess...

nerf armor and enemies? nop, units based on armor are not elite as the slash status bypasses the armor.

You're practically obliged to bypass the armour because Sponge Path modifiers are so needlessly high. Melee does this easier and more effectively, and it can still do so in groups and without ammo constraints. Since DE are calling it a 'steel path problem', then we should be considering that Steel Path's design is part of the equation too.

Quote

melee nerf? nope, the most recent elite units on steel path are "not" dominated by melee.

cabion drift infesteds are an example of elite units, so increasing or decreasing armor is an outdated mechanic.

we don't need to nerf enemies globally(again?), we don't need to nerf melee, just add damage rediction to more units and melee will be downgraded; and finally improve wepon mechanics similar combo system.

Melee is unfortunately bound to be nerfed. It's probably going to be miserable and ruin some of the interesting build dynamics as well. So at the same time I'd at least like to see the Sponge Path not made even more unsatisfying by leaving it at its current over-sponge level too.

What is functionally different between "damage reduction you have no agency over" and "just make the base health bigger"? What makes CD infested less susceptible to melee? There is arguably the Saxum having weakpoints in the shoulderpads, but since popping them is still part of the health bar, by the time you exposed the 'weakness' aspect it's already close to dead. And they still get cleaved through by melee just as easily as taking the trouble to shoot.

In fact, the 'difficulties' of 'elite' CD infested are:

• They have armour. (And inherit double-scaling SP modifiers as a result)
• They ignore Viral procs for no adequately explained reason (just another arbitrary gotcha for your build choices)
• They have an unsolvable resistance matrix between their Armour and Health:
  • Radiation is the highest weakness for the Infested Sinew armour (and only 50%, unlike other armours having a 75% weakness) but then the damage after armour gets reduced by 75% for the base Fossilised health type of the same unit.
  • Corrosive is the highest weakness for the Fossilised health type, but is neutral and therefore fully damage-reduced by the Infested Sinew armour on top.
  • Other faction armours (Ferrite and Alloy) are not present on any units whose underlying health types are resistant to their main weakness (Corrosive and Radiation respectively). Only 'shield' health-types otherwise resist these, which is OK because shields aren't also affected by the armour.

So, the best option against them is probably to sunder off their armour, backed up with corrosive damage. And melee has Shattering Impact for this.

[Famecans]

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

What is functionally different between "damage reduction you have no agency over" and "just make the base health bigger"? What makes CD infested less susceptible to melee?

don't need to control/modify damage reduction because damage reduction is a universal mod unique to DE, it's a modifier to consistently rebalance everything. I suggested just above mods to do this but the damage reduction mod should be under DE control. I don't like faction mods, they are bandaids for damage system failures and shouldn't even exist(if the damage system were effective).

Simply DE doesn't need to change status effectiveness, doesn't need to apply status immunities(on certain factions), all enemies must be affected by multshot and status effects (including boss), so all weapons are viable, and the only modifier that will make a boss/enemy difficult is damage reduction.

the only "root modifiers" that should be accessible by us(players) are:

• increase damage RAW = critical.
• increase hit per second = multshot.
• damage type = bypass damage reduction
• trigger status effect = buff damage RAW
• armor reduction = buff damage RAW

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

They ignore Viral procs for no adequately explained reason (just another arbitrary gotcha for your build choices)

particularly i like the theme that infested ignores viral status, after all they are the virus. other factions must also receive the same mechanics; grineer should be resistant to radiation status(enemies exposed to visually radioactive combustion equipment, they live in slave experiments and know how to resist radiation); corpus showld be resistant to magnetic status (experienced highly tech enemies with everything electrical they know how to master electricity)

 

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Melee is unfortunately bound to be nerfed. It's probably going to be miserable and ruin some of the interesting build dynamics as well. So at the same time I'd at least like to see the Sponge Path not made even more unsatisfying by leaving it at its current over-sponge level too.

I understand the term "sponge path", yes, it's tedious to shoot an enemy and realize they're absorbing damage; for me, this feeling is associated with the game progression: we are trying to kill an enemy that there is no way to kill effectively because the game did not have progression or equipment increase to make it effective.

if we had more content to amplify our equipment the feeling of "progressed play" would be a pleasure; this is like finishing leveling the necramech and seeing the full power of that thing(ok, leveling a necramech has a very poorly designed and tedious learning curve but the ultimate power is rewarding)

in the current situation when it comes to weapons, adding new prime mods or nerfing enemies won't make gameplay any more pleasurable as the "kill effect" will be the same with no progression because all players can kill as well.

[Tyreaus]

13 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Radical idea: Maybe Steel Path modifiers, especially the double-scale from armour, could be less needlessly excessive so that nerfed melee output mods matters less and guns are automatically more usable.

Or just armour itself getting tweaked in some way, be it numerical or mechanical. Always has been kind of crazy how much armour plays into things versus literally every other health type, and SP just highlights the underlying problem.

20 minutes ago, Famecans said:

corpus showld be resistant to magnetic status (experienced highly tech enemies with everything electrical they know how to master electricity)

Okay, the others I can (kinda) get behind, but making the shield-based faction resistant to the anti-shield element? Huh?

[Famecans]

42 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

1 hour ago, Famecans said:

corpus showld be resistant to magnetic status (experienced highly tech enemies with everything electrical they know how to master electricity)

Okay, the others I can (kinda) get behind, but making the shield-based faction resistant to the anti-shield element? Huh?

in my crazy head the damage system is in chaos (ignore it), so each faction should have its damage buff and debuff, even if that would change the game's story. 😅

for this (hypothetical) situation the corpus shields should be damaged by three types of damage:

• Impact (physical damage): impact damage hits large areas of energetic shield and this action depletes the energy efficiency of this technology.
• Heat (uncombined elemental): Heat overheats electronic equipment and microchips causing overall system energy confusion.
• Corrosive (combined elemental): Similar to oxidation caused by water, the corrosive fuses or disconnect conductors in electrical systems.

corpus are electrical and technological, visibly experimenting with electricity, cold, cooling

[TheLexiConArtist]

5 hours ago, Famecans said:

don't need to control/modify damage reduction because damage reduction is a universal mod unique to DE, it's a modifier to consistently rebalance everything. I suggested just above mods to do this but the damage reduction mod should be under DE control. I don't like faction mods, they are bandaids for damage system failures and shouldn't even exist(if the damage system were effective).

Simply DE doesn't need to change status effectiveness, doesn't need to apply status immunities(on certain factions), all enemies must be affected by multshot and status effects (including boss), so all weapons are viable, and the only modifier that will make a boss/enemy difficult is damage reduction.

 

But adding DR to an enemy (with no weakpoint mechanism like the Saxum tries to be) is functionally identical to just increasing the base values of health (and shields, not armour) by the same factor. With a +150% (total=2.5x) multiplier to health and shields, Steel Path functionally equates giving all non-armoured units 60% global damage reduction. Armoured units in SP effectively get an extra stack of that unless you remove/bypass it, for an effective 5x health multiplier (=80% global damage reduction).

It all becomes the same thing in the end: Effective HP.

Quote

particularly i like the theme that infested ignores viral status, after all they are the virus. other factions must also receive the same mechanics; grineer should be resistant to radiation status(enemies exposed to visually radioactive combustion equipment, they live in slave experiments and know how to resist radiation); corpus showld be resistant to magnetic status (experienced highly tech enemies with everything electrical they know how to master electricity)

Actually, they are A virus. There are many strains of many viruses, so there's still no inherent reason why the Technocyte Infestation Virus would be selectively immune to whichever not the Technocyte Infestation Virus that we put on our weapons. It's also not even consistent among all of them, and there are other units from other factions (hi Acolytes) which are also arbitrarily Viral immune, so we can infer that it was never 'silent lore' but DE pulling a fast one to limit build options without causing an outcry by changing Viral's effect again - for which they'd have to give patch notes.

Quote

I understand the term "sponge path", yes, it's tedious to shoot an enemy and realize they're absorbing damage; for me, this feeling is associated with the game progression: we are trying to kill an enemy that there is no way to kill effectively because the game did not have progression or equipment increase to make it effective.

if we had more content to amplify our equipment the feeling of "progressed play" would be a pleasure; this is like finishing leveling the necramech and seeing the full power of that thing(ok, leveling a necramech has a very poorly designed and tedious learning curve but the ultimate power is rewarding)

in the current situation when it comes to weapons, adding new prime mods or nerfing enemies won't make gameplay any more pleasurable as the "kill effect" will be the same with no progression because all players can kill as well.

I don't mind Sorties occasionally having Augmented Armour, but we never asked for permanent Aug Armour. Enemies receiving are as relevant as the output we can potentially cause, so in a 'Steel Path Problem' it's absolutely fair to say that instead of huge gun buffs + the inevitable key melee output (and reliability) nerfs, we could have smaller buffs to the guns and some nerfs to the SP enemies so the lesser-reliable melee in weapons/builds that weren't god OP tier aren't completely trashed in the process, and guns aren't made ludicrously OP outside sponge path as well.

It shouldn't be forgotten that 4-Corrosive-Projection was removed and armour rebalanced because it was so obligatory (and unfair to partial squads / solo players). Sponge Path never should have brought the same sort of obligation back as a permanent part of it.

Shields aren't as much of an issue; you can bypass them but it's not too hard to just punch through them with non-Toxin damage. _{With some exceptions, like Treasurers and cases where units have persistent shield regen, but those aren't caused by the SP multipliers, just made worse by them.}

[Famecans]

4 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

But adding DR to an enemy (with no weakpoint mechanism like the Saxum tries to be) is functionally identical to just increasing the base values of health (and shields, not armour) by the same factor. With a +150% (total=2.5x) multiplier to health and shields, Steel Path functionally equates giving all non-armoured units 60% global damage reduction. Armoured units in SP effectively get an extra stack of that unless you remove/bypass it, for an effective 5x health multiplier (=80% global damage reduction).

It all becomes the same thing in the end: Effective HP.

 

yes technically in warframe.exe dressing room damage reduction will be identical to additional health but damage reduction's term is feasible when developers need to add new layers of resistance than health or armor; all numbers will be linked to enemy health but will be sorted into different modifiers; an enemy can have more than one damage reduction layer for different damage types and this dont change the enemy lvl.

in short, the code can add health but the term used refers to a new (hypothetical) layer of resistance that modifies armor and health.

this situation below shows the viability of negative and positive modifiers, the cap maximum of numbers in the program;
gigantic and unnecessary numbers for the program, unnecessary to calculate mathematically because the display cannot show:

Spoiler

 

Gara broke the display and made negative numbers, resetting the counter causing false damage.
The program does not need to calculate larger numbers because in mathematics and physics the space between numbers is infinitely empty.