DevWorkshop Aftermath/Meta Predictions

[ShortCat]

Recently released DevWorkshop shed some light over the upcoming changes and made it possible to make predictions with regards to its aftermath.

Melee
As expected CO, BR & Berserker took a hit. Is it substantial? Not really.
Melee weapons deal enough overkill damage, so that even planed damage cut won’t make melee less valuable. Popular weapons like Kronen P. Nikana P, Guandau P or Gramm P will remain top dogs.
Hybrid weapons, mostly with intermediate crit stats, like Lession, got hit harder and will be less competitive. However, those off-meta weapons are already under the radar and largely ignored by the community.

Berserker change is not impactfull enough to cause big ripples. (Unless the math application is altered, otherwise it could be more noticeable)
Max AS cut from 75% to 70% is inconsequential. Stacking restriction with Fury is pointless, because other AS mods exist. Lastly, stacking AS mods always was a suboptimal solution, since A.Strike or abilities are a better option and still remain one. In regular missions, like survival, we are fighting never ending stream of enemies, thus 10s AS boost will be up-time indefinitely. In isolated scenarios, like certain boss fights, it could become a disadvantage, however 95% of the content remain not affected.

Most Thrown Melee are actually not all that great, it's Glaive P pulling the weight for the whole weapon type. With 1.2s charge time Glaives might become unwieldy. It all depends on how charge time reduction mods will affect the endresult.
All in all a sledge hammer approach against a whole weapon category, due to 1 outlier. No hostages were taken.

Guns
New Arcanes & Galvanized mods infuse a hefty dose of power creep into the game. Since all Galvanized mods provide the same buffs, expect Rifles to get the most out of them, because Rifles have the worst base mods and will gain the most stats.
Planed changes won’t make under-performing or unpopular gun archetypes, like semi-auto or ARs, shine though, because Bramma and Braton get the same amount of power. Increased dominance of low effort AoE weapons like Bramma, Ogris or Ignis are easily foreseeable. Get ready for strengthened AoE gun spam meta.

Arcane Merciless will be used almost exclusively, especially on AoE guns.

Arcane Deadhead will collect dust because it is aimed at single target guns and has a steeper skill requirement, while offering mostly the same damage boost.

Arcane Dexterity will be used as a stat stick for melee only playstyles because according to the tooltip in the video it also provides melee combo duration (do primary & secondary versions stack?). Otherwise kinda pointless becasue if I already can kill enemies with melee, why should I switch to a gun later on? Primary/Melee Charger Arcanes follow the same logic and fail to insipre multi-weapon playstyle.

Helminth
New abilities will be added.
Weekly Warframe Rivens Invigorations will have an effect. Certainly not the intended “play unused Frames more” though. DE tried this approach twice already – Arbitrations & Rivens – and it didn’t work out.

 

All in all this is an MVP (as minimal valuable product). This rework does not address a single core issue, but instead resorts to the same unimaginative solutions, which failed over the last years – more stats in form of more band-aid mods, which might be addressed years later, when ducking is not an option anymore.
I do not see any creativity or progress. Changes for the sake of changes, that do not change much. F for eFFort.

Sorry for the long post, here is a potato

[--END--Rikutatis]

I agree with your assessments, just not your conclusions. The goal of this balance update wasn't to do a global balance pass on all weapons and try to make underperforming weapons shine again. The devs never said that. I can understand that's desirable and that's what a lot of ppl want, but I think it's unfair to judge the update based on that standard, since that wasn't the goal. The devs clearly stated the goal was simply to make primary and secondary weapons more viable in Steel Path, since melees were so much stronger there. And I'm fairly confident the update will succeed in that, those new mods and arcanes look extremely powerful. 

But yea, I agree with everything else you said. AoE will still be king, it is a horde shooter after all, and Steel Path in particular is packed with tons of enemies. Although I won't lie, I'm pretty excited about those headshot mods and arcanes with my vectis prime, since that's one of my favorite weapons.

As far as melee goes, the nerfs aren't that bad. WORST case scenario, you can replace berserk for primed fury, replace CO for primed pressure point and start using the gladiator mods to offset the bloodrush nerf. It'll still be a small loss of dps on melees, but most of it was overkill anyways. 

 

[keikogi]

19 minutes ago, --END--Rikutatis said:

But yea, I agree with everything else you said. AoE will still be king, it is a horde shooter after all, and Steel Path in particular is packed with tons of enemies. Although I won't lie, I'm pretty excited about those headshot mods and arcanes with my vectis prime, since that's one of my favorite weapons.

Hate breaking it to you but it probably going to suck. More often than not the first tick off the slash proc kill the enemy and not the headshot so it will be unreliable aff. Unless you strip enemies first it wont do much and if you are stripping then first why use the vectis 

 

[--END--Rikutatis]

2 hours ago, keikogi said:

Hate breaking it to you but it probably going to suck. More often than not the first tick off the slash proc kill the enemy and not the headshot so it will be unreliable aff. Unless you strip enemies first it wont do much and if you are stripping then first why use the vectis 

 

Damn, you're right. Most of the effects come from headshot kills, with the exception of the initial 120% cc from the mod, which seems to be just headshot hit. RIP the sniper dream 😐

Funny thing is, they designed this with precision weapons in mind, but thinking about it, spammy beam weapons are probably going to be the ones more easily benefitting from it LOL. I wish proc kills that were initiated from a headshot would count, but I doubt the game's code can account for that. 

[ShortCat]

3 hours ago, --END--Rikutatis said:

I agree with your assessments, just not your conclusions. The goal of this balance update wasn't to do a global balance pass on all weapons and try to make underperforming weapons shine again.

"Underperforming" was a poor choice of words on my side and I will revise it.
With this part I was mostly reffering to the repeated attempts to underline how "fundamentaly more varied" guns are and how players "choose to get there" messages, sprinkled through out the post. DE made an attempt to cater to differnt gun archetypes and playstyles by pointing out on multiple occasions how many choices there are. Yet, they gave a rocket launcher the same power boost as a handgun and expect players to experience enhanced divercity. Not going to happen. 

Global pass or not, if A. Deadhead had a bigger unconditional headshot multiplier (even without base dmg boost) or some other new mod with similar functionality had been added to non AoE weapons, it would have been a massive improvement for precision weapon. As it stands, they cannot compete.

[--END--Rikutatis]

4 hours ago, ShortCat said:

"Underperforming" was a poor choice of words on my side and I will revise it.
With this part I was mostly reffering to the repeated attempts to underline how "fundamentaly more varied" guns are and how players "choose to get there" messages, sprinkled through out the post. DE made an attempt to cater to differnt gun archetypes and playstyles by pointing out on multiple occasions how many choices there are. Yet, they gave a rocket launcher the same power boost as a handgun and expect players to experience enhanced divercity. Not going to happen. 

Global pass or not, if A. Deadhead had a bigger unconditional headshot multiplier (even without base dmg boost) or some other new mod with similar functionality had been added to non AoE weapons, it would have been a massive improvement for precision weapon. As it stands, they cannot compete.

I totally agree with you on that.

But tbh I don't think extra damage on precision weapon mods compared to AoE ones would cut it. Even if it was a massive difference. My current kuva brahma, pre-buff, is already enough to blow through and kill hordes of enemies  in baseline Steel Path level, almost as well as my better melees can. It's already enough if I don't push it into long endless, it'll be even better with the new mods. Even if my vectis prime (for example) did 100x more damage and one shot any level 9,999 enemy, it still wouldn't be more meta than an AoE weapon that is already good enough to clear hordes of enemies in baseline level by just firing a few shots into the crowd with near zero aiming required. They'd need some sort of serious rework on how weapon and enemy types behaved, I'm not even sure how they could do it. 

[Traumtulpe]

10 hours ago, ShortCat said:

DevWorkshop Aftermath/Meta Predictions

Glaive Prime is as strong as before, just less fun.

Meta shifts towards heavy attacks, and a lot of melee weapons with mediocre crit will drop in usage - resulting in future nerfs for high crit melees.

Bramma is back, a couple of meta guns will become super popular, people will complain, and there will be nerfs. Yes, Bramma will get nerfed again.

New Helminth abilities are completely ignored, most people won't even reach rank 15. Invigorations get used by 1% of the playerbase for clickbait.

Parazon finishers will immediately be purged from our collective memory until their next rework.

[DrivaMain]

1. Heavy Attacks will be more meta than before. Expect DE is going to nerf Sacrifical Steel+Sacrifical Pressure combo because it's better than a full stack bloodrush or buff Bloodrush slightly.

2. Glaives are mostly fine, just less spammable.

3. The addition of the galvanized mods makes off meta weapons from "meh" to "somewhat usable". However, meta weapons will be even more "braindead". Galvanized Acceleration for example extends beam length, which means Kuva Nukor's nerf will be non existant. Players can stack with sinister reach to snipe enemied before they even get close to them.

[Traumtulpe]

13 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

Galvanized Acceleration for example extends beam length, which means Kuva Nukor's nerf will be non existant.

Beam length and number of chains have nothing to do with each other. Also, the Kuva Nukor is not a primary shotgun.

[Viges]

On 2021-06-19 at 2:10 PM, ShortCat said:

All in all a sledge hammer approach against a whole weapon category, due to 1 outlier. No hostages were taken.

DE balancing is a meme anyway. They just prove it once again.

Weapons that you need to charge, aim and detonate at the right time got deleted while e-spam stays absolutely the same. Good job DE

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

Mesa would be top dog with those stacking kill mods. Then again Peacemaker is an Exaulted Weapon. Doubt DE is going to allow those mod to be on Exaulted Weapons. There goes my hopes for Dex Pixia.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

After the attack speed mod nerfs

Lesion, with its innate speed buff (on status proc)

will become very good

 

Eventually DE will remember it exists and kill it too

[Deminisis]

18 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

Glaive Prime is as strong as before, just less fun.

Meta shifts towards heavy attacks, and a lot of melee weapons with mediocre crit will drop in usage - resulting in future nerfs for high crit melees.

Bramma is back, a couple of meta guns will become super popular, people will complain, and there will be nerfs. Yes, Bramma will get nerfed again.

New Helminth abilities are completely ignored, most people won't even reach rank 15. Invigorations get used by 1% of the playerbase for clickbait.

Parazon finishers will immediately be purged from our collective memory until their next rework.

This man can see the future.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

How do get gun buff at higher levels of gun buff require kill and the whole reason gun buff was added was because gun cannot kill higher level!?

[ShortCat]

17 hours ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

After the attack speed mod nerfs

Berserker cap going from 75% to 70% and its stacking restriction with Fury can hardly be called a nerf, since there are other attack speed mods, Arcanes & abilities which still stack with it. For more in-depth explaination read OP again.

[ShortCat]

16 hours ago, (XBOX)GearsMatrix301 said:

How do get gun buff at higher levels of gun buff require kill and the whole reason gun buff was added was because gun cannot kill higher level!?

Guns actually can kill, just not at the same speed and with the same convenience as melee. New mods/Arcanes will "solve" it.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

55 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Guns actually can kill, just not at the same speed and with the same convenience as melee. New mods/Arcanes will "solve" it.

So if they can kill then they don’t need the mods, and if they don’t need the mods melee doesn’t need to be nerfed.

[ShortCat]

On 2021-06-19 at 11:42 PM, Traumtulpe said:

Meta shifts towards heavy attacks

On 2021-06-20 at 12:47 AM, DrivaMain said:

1. Heavy Attacks will be more meta than before.

While heavy attack set-ups remain untouched, I doubt proposed chages are impactfull enough to create serious competition for quick melee.

 

[(PSN)Vexx757]

Imo the meta needs to change, 7 years ago the meta was cc to the point where ppl were saying "Vauban is king" and ppl were not obsessed with damage. Ever since sorties came out, that`s when the damage meta started the helminth system is the worst thing to be made as the same for steel path, reason being is coz it will exacerbate the damage meta which will lead to DE nerfing things coz ppl keep talking about it.

One suggestion to change the meta would be to make mission/game-modes that evolve around the warframes then it will create different metas within them that`s not about damage.

 

Here are two examples:

This is pretty much your typical mission types except you can only kill the enemies if there are affected by cc abilities first.

Effective warframes:

Vauban - 1st 2nd 4th

Hydroid - 1st 2nd 4th

Nyx - 3rd

These warframes have cc abilities that can cover a wide area and affect a lot of enemies which can make them kill enemies efficiently making them the top choice.

 

This is a mission where you use operators that can benefit from warframe abilities however you can only use operators and the only thing your chosen warframe can do in the mission is sprint can cast abilities that can affect operators.

Effective warframes:

Volt - 2nd 3rd

Wisp - 1st

Harrow - 2nd 3rd 4th

These warframes provide useful buffs or abilities that operators can use while in the mission from ranging from damage to survivability.

 

The point of this is to make warframe that ppl consider as "useless" to have a use in that mission/game-mode, this simple change will be one step in the right direction.

[deothor]

On 2021-06-19 at 1:10 PM, ShortCat said:

This rework does not address a single core issue, but instead resorts to the same unimaginative solutions

It's difficult to come up with creative solutions when the only reason you keep your job is by nodding at everything bald brothers say and you have no right to speak up with your opinion/suggestions about the matter, because anything that's being changed/added is both created and filtered by bald brothers.

The whole top brass in DE have just as much meaning as democracy in china (where's only 1 party).

Are rivens going to change in any way btw? As much as i love the rivens, their design is kind of outdated at this point. Some changes would be welcome.

[ShortCat]

On 2021-06-21 at 12:12 PM, (XBOX)GearsMatrix301 said:

So if they can kill then they don’t need the mods   .... if they don’t need the mods melee doesn’t need to be nerfed.

There is no logical connection here.

[--END--Rikutatis]

On 2021-06-19 at 7:47 PM, DrivaMain said:

2. Glaives are mostly fine, just less spammable.

Actually I'm fairly certain glaives will be nerfed again LOL. This nerf won't  even scratch them. I hope not, because I love glaives. But if they're concerned glaives are too overpowered (and let's be honest, they are), this nerf won't be enough. 

[Joezone619]

Hey i made it before this post was moved into the comments of the workshop unnecessarily.

 

As for melee: Not much of a hit, i'd say proper nerfs, so long as all they've mentioned is all there is (no hidden nerfs DE)

As for guns: Failed before launch, "we will not be going in and changing the stats of every gun in the game", to which i say why not? you did this with melee, and now melee is too strong, simply arcanes and mods don't work if you need to have +damage on every single one of them.

As for helminth: Abilities are nice, invigorations? Not so much. Get rid of the invigorations, scrolling through comments on the workshop its clear many agree its not a good feature for warframe and will bring further unbalance.

Overall: I'd say if launched as is, it will cause more problems then it solves.

[ZenHare]

On 2021-06-20 at 8:55 AM, Viges said:

DE balancing is a meme anyway. They just prove it once again.

Weapons that you need to charge, aim and detonate at the right time got deleted while e-spam stays absolutely the same. Good job DE

You want Glaive P hard mode. Forgot I had my energy color set to black on my Mirage P and copied the colors over to my glaive. Wow, really make hitting things much tougher when you can't even see the explosion.