My addition to the Arsenal Divide wildfire. Any feedback appreciated.

[ZunLise]

You know what the Arsenal Divide is - melee good gun bad.

 

Why is melee good?

1. Stances

All stances add +10 mod capacity while buffing your damage from +400% up to +3000% and many increase slash damage heavily.

2. Combo builds

Condition Overload: +120% damage per status -> at least 360% damage, +960% if you run a priming Nukor

Weeping Wounds: +40% status per combo -> +440% status at max combo

Blood Rush: +60% crit per combo -> +660% crit at max combo

Gladiator Set: +10% crit per combo for every piece -> +330% crit for just having 3 of them on a sentinel melee

 

Berserker: +30% Atk speed on a crit up to +75% -> this actually is not a problem because we have much more powerful fire rate mods on guns and they are rarely used.

3. Heavy Attack builds

Sacrificial pressure: +220% crit (x2 on heavy attacks). -> +440% crit chance on a single mod (+550% if you equip Sacrificial Steel)

Heavy Attacks on most META weapons have 100% Slash status chance.

Corrupt Charge + Killing Blow while not strong individually are all flat damage bonuses that are equippable alongside Pressure Point, and stack multiplicatively compared to normal damage mods while also dramatically increasing wind-up speed.

 

Why are guns bad?

1. Lack of comparatively good critical options

Compared to free Sacrificial Steel "+220% critical chance", Primed Pistol Gambit is downright pathetic. We’re not even talking Blood Rush, guns just can’t do critical hits. 

2. Lack of comparatively good status options

Melee has guaranteed bleeds on heavy attacks, +440% status chance on combo builds, and guns have Hunter Munitions, Hemorrhage and Internal Bleeding, of them the only good one being a status mod based on criticals. Guns have no good status either.

3. Lack of design space

Guns are just not fun to build. The META for secondaries right now is [Damage; Multishot; Critical Chance; Critical Damage; Cold 60/60; Toxin 60/60; Lethal Torrent; Heat 165] and no mod can be taken off because there aren’t just good mods right now. And there's just not a way to prioritise any playstyle, all mods are flat unconditional increases.

 

How to make guns good? 

1. Gun Stances

If melee Stances were created to diversify functionality depending on moves, then they failed. We can build on their mistakes with Gun Stances taking into account function differences from the previous point. 

 

My proposed Stances:

All of them are Rare mods, have no polarity, provide from -4 drain at rank 0 to -10 drain at rank 6, effects shown at full rank.

They would occupy the function of both Galvanized mods and new Arcanes and as such would replace them in the Arbitration shop. 

Because of the power they can provide, locking them behind full map competition (not 20 plat unlockers, DE) would be like a milestone. 

 

Sea of Flames: For every enemy hit with a single shot gain +8% Critical Chance and Critical Damage on your next shot with any weapon. 

Example: You shoot a group of 10 enemies with a Bramma. Now you have +80% Crit Chance/Damage for your next shot with the Bramma, or even your Secondary Epitaph. 

Despite the buff having no timer you better don't miss, or the effect will be lost. It also should scale modded crit chance and not base. On shot = one click so that Multishot does not have negative effects on DPS. 

 

Tormenting Mist: +100% Damage on a damage type for every enemy afflicted with it's Status Effect.

Example: You have this Stance on a 100% radiation Lanka. You spray 8 enemies with your Rad/Viral/Heat/Magnetic Nukor. Now, while you are holding your Lanka the Heat procs would deal 9x the damage, and your Lanka also deals 9x the damage. 

 

Piercing Cyclone: On Headshot: +8% Critical and Status Chance for 12 seconds. Stacks up to +160%. On Bodyshot: can't headshot for 4 seconds, stacks up to 12 seconds. 

This is very straightforward, the buff would work on other damage sources, but they wouldn't refresh it. Bodyshot break is created to stop excessive auto-fire abuse (just does not vibe for me), and would only activate on the actual weapon shots (not Status, not Abilities, not Melee hits). Use the Synoid Gammacor to buff up the crit and status, then just destroy the room with Khora's Whipclaw. 

 

Galvanized Flare: On Hit: The enemy takes 5% more damage, stacking infinitely. The buff is reset upon hitting another enemy. 

Simple stuff, hit an enemy to then hit them harder, every hit counts: every pellet, every DOT. Other damage sources can take advantage of the buff, can't increase it but can reset it. Of course, Slash will be buffed twice. 

 

2. Just Better Mods

While the Stances are good, they are not the end. We just need to give normal Multishot and Critical Chance mods more stats, because they just don't compare to current melee mods that are created for the same things.

 

Possible changes:

Split Chamber: +90% Multishot -> +120% Multishot

Point Strike: +150% Critical Chance -> +180% Critical Chance

Critical Delay: +48% Critical Chance -> +150% Critical Chance

Blunderbuss: +90% Critical Chance -> +180% Critical Chance

Critical Deceleration: +48% Critical Chance -> +150% Critical Chance

Pistol Gambit: +120% Critical Chance -> +180% Critical Chance

Primed Pistol Gambit: +187% Critical Chance -> +240% Critical Chance

Creeping Bullseye: +187% Critical Chance -> +200% Critical Chance

 

Also, increase the effects of Physical Damage mods like Maim and Carnis Stinger, the damage buff should probably be doubled. 

 

3. Other misc. changes

Give secondaries Hunter Munitions. 

Increase weapon swap speed by 100%. 

 

Why these changes? 

1. What guns do we have?

Our choices within guns are: 

Single target, slow fire rate like Rubico and Seer

AoE, slow fire rate like Bramma and Angstrum

Single target, fast fire rate like Soma and Rattleguts

AoE, fast fire rate like Ignis and Nukor

Shotguns that fit into one or the other category depending on distance like Sobek and Pyrana

 

Single target weapons benefit from Weakspot damage, AoE benefits from range increase. 

Fast fire rate weapons benefit highly from Status Chance, slow ones incentivise using pure damage

 

2. Why these changes? 

I just thought that these 4 specific mods would a) buff up weapons individually and b) incentivise building them differently for more interesting and powerful effects. 

They also very much fit the name of Stances as they would actually change the way you play with a gun. 

 

Gun mods should be buffed because many of them are just flat worse than melee or cross-type counterparts. 

Physical Damage mods should be buffed because in the current iteration they are unusable. 

3. Would this not be OP? 

No, not in the current meta. Practically speaking, mods like Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds even after the nerf would work like "On hit: +2% Critical or Status Chance, stacks up to +440%", Stances would still buff DPS heavily and melee would still have no reloads.

 

[Venus-Venera]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb ZunLise:

You know what the Arsenal Divide is - melee good gun bad.

just ... you have already made an interesting contribution. but it shouldn't fail at the beginning!

own opinion is all well and good. only it should not be declared as truth by the last instance!

[iLikeCookiesQ]

Just imagining saryn with spore, max range build, infecting 30 enemies, using tormenting mist. 😆

Its a cool mod idea.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

let's see how the Galvanized mods work out first. if it turns out they make guns better, but still not quite as viable as melee, then "gun Auras" of some kind would probably be a good idea to bridge the remaining gap.

funnily enough I actually wondered a while back what Gun Auras would do visually, since melee stances change your attacks, maybe gun auras make you hip-fire all the time, even when aiming, or make you hold pistols sideways like a gangbanger lol. 

[chofranc]

Melee is good because it haves mods that scale with X condition and they have an innate multiplier that scales with hits, that's the big advantage that melee haves over guns. We just literally need the same for guns, its as simply as that.

They could create mods like this:

Galvanized Serration(cost 14)

60% damage

On hit: +2% damage for 10s(x4 for Bows) stacks up to x150 times, the buff decays when its duration expires instead losing it all at once.

Stacking shouldn't be that big of a problem since guns have multishoot.

[(XBOX)NuclearSquiddy]

Imagine if DE implemented this...

[Aldain]

6 hours ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

let's see how the Galvanized mods work out first. if it turns out they make guns better, but still not quite as viable as melee, then "gun Auras" of some kind would probably be a good idea to bridge the remaining gap.

Calling it now, it's just going to make already strong weapons even better and mid-to-weak weapons a slightly less unfunny joke.

The gun/melee divide is made up of two parts imo, one being the lack of mod options/space on primaries and secondaries, and the second being the game design not supporting slower and more methodical aiming/shooting, hence why the best guns usually are just big AoE blobs so you don't spend more time aiming than killing.

But I'm also in the camp wholly against the ever popular "just give guns combo mods" approach seen around these parts because all that does is encourage the same numbers bloat that people endlessly complain about whenever anything to reign it in is done.

[Dunkelheit]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb Aldain:

Calling it now, it's just going to make already strong weapons even better and mid-to-weak weapons a slightly less unfunny joke.

I see that argument everywhere.... but isn't it great that a lot more weapons become viable? At least 50% of all guns will be viable, but people are angry, because there are another 50% which won't be viable? So stop the upgrade and leave all 100% behind? What is your reasoning?

[ZunLise]

9 hours ago, chofranc said:

On hit: +2% damage for 10s(x4 for Bows) stacks up to x150 times, the buff decays when its duration expires instead losing it all at once. 

My "Gun Stances" do exactly this, but are not boring. I didn't do traditional combo because guns are alredy less diverse in playstyle than melee. All these weird snapshotting buffs were created to use guns not only as a damage tool, but as a utility, because I generally think that playing on synergy is good. 

[ZunLise]

4 hours ago, Aldain said:

Calling it now, it's just going to make already strong weapons even better and mid-to-weak weapons a slightly less unfunny joke.

That's not an argument - you are just saying that "some weapons are better than others", BUT THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS WORKS. 

4 hours ago, Aldain said:

But I'm also in the camp wholly against the ever popular "just give guns combo mods" approach seen around these parts because all that does is encourage the same numbers bloat that people endlessly complain about whenever anything to reign it in is done.

Why combo? Because it is fun. You like hitting enemies - go hit 'em harder. If done right we can create actual synergy between weapons, because using all you have is also fun. If done wrong - you create a boring one button fiesta. 

The most prevalent synergies from the current rework are: 

a) A 100% Status-built weapon for Viral/CO on your melee. 

b) Stat-sticks. 

Both of them encourage more complex playstyles alternating between equipment, which is, IMO, very cool. 

[(PSN)drpunk-yo]

Gun stances seem overly complicated when you could just reduce the cost of certain mods.

I think it's fair to say you need (at least) 5 polarity slots in a gun to fit the mods you want (ignoring that stupid exilus slot) and melee requires 3. Dunno if it's possible to find a gun that won't need at least 3 forma to get there. There are a ridiculous amount that'll need 5. Easy to find a melee weapon that'll only need 1 forma to get to where it needs to be. Broken war only needs 1 forma and that'll even let you use a bloomin' riven mod in the build.

I refuse to believe that this isn't a contributing factor to the disparity between guns and melee usage.

[0_The_F00l]

Lets not call them stances, lets call the Gun Discipline mods, stances for guns just sounds odd.

Also , please copy paste as plain text cause i couldn't read properly in dark mode.

I also feel the flat boost might be a little too much power creep so might reconsider some numbers but the concept itself might work.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

47 minutes ago, (PSN)drpunk-yo said:

Gun stances seem overly complicated when you could just reduce the cost of certain mods.

I think it's fair to say you need (at least) 5 polarity slots in a gun to fit the mods you want (ignoring that stupid exilus slot) and melee requires 3. Dunno if it's possible to find a gun that won't need at least 3 forma to get there. There are a ridiculous amount that'll need 5. Easy to find a melee weapon that'll only need 1 forma to get to where it needs to be. Broken war only needs 1 forma and that'll even let you use a bloomin' riven mod in the build.

I refuse to believe that this isn't a contributing factor to the disparity between guns and melee usage.

Melee needs 3 to 5 depending on maxed riven and primed mods including smite

[Hypernaut1]

I remember when people thought guns were good and this game was easy. I swear, once a thought takes hold, the community runs with it  

[ZunLise]

1 hour ago, 0_The_F00l said:

Lets not call them stances, lets call the Gun Discipline mods, stances for guns just sounds odd.

We can call them whatever. They just occupy the function of Stances so I called them Stances. 

1 hour ago, 0_The_F00l said:

I also feel the flat boost might be a little too much power creep so might reconsider some numbers but the concept itself might work.

Not really. Melee will still have more sources of damage, most of them still won't be skill-based or strategy-based. A fair trade-off as I see it. 

[(XBOX)Graysmog]

15 hours ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

let's see how the Galvanized mods work out first. if it turns out they make guns better, but still not quite as viable as melee, then "gun Auras" of some kind would probably be a good idea to bridge the remaining gap.

funnily enough I actually wondered a while back what Gun Auras would do visually, since melee stances change your attacks, maybe gun auras make you hip-fire all the time, even when aiming, or make you hold pistols sideways like a gangbanger lol. 

Just make them do something akin to a playstyle change. Your gun gets lowered total ammo and a reduced magazine, but higher damage on Headshots. Maybe your gun gets a much faster reload and holster speed but now the fall-off and spread is higher. Just basic stuff.

[Surbusken]

I think this is what a developer post should be like.

It was a good post, well set up and well connected. A clear disposition, where goal, problem and solution is actually layed out.

 

One of the most frequent questions on the forum is "what is the point?", like how hard do the developers think the game should be? How long should it take to kill an enemy? Is the game balanced towards solo play?

For the melee nerf they said "we feel it's too fast", "because... er... you can't see the attack animations".

I never understood what the problem was, I didn't understand what the goal was... and then I disagreed with the changes.

 

To me I'd love some clarifications and explanations that are concrete. Like OP's post.

Isn't the game a speedrun? Don't you have speed frames, speed mods? Don't we have "animation clipping" in the game, maybe even so far as core gameplay. that cancels animations?

You don't want the players to skip animations? You don't want players to focus on speed? If not, then what should they focus on? What are you focusing on? What are we doing here? Why?

I don't know where the developers are going, do you, do they?

 

Then for the mentioned problems of guns vs melee, I'd like to add 'AOE vs singleshot'.

 

You can fire something like the ignis wraith for what, 2 minutes without reloading? Not having to even aim and chain to targets out of sight, similar to other AOE weapons shooting through walls.

It's an odd feeeling, using pistol, rifle, sniper, you are mechcanically worse off aiming and connecting shots. Spray and pray with AOE weapons by radar is much faster and mobile even.

Full auto in the general direction of the radar dots, before you even make contact.

Then some poor guy has to stand there and fumble waiting for the sniper zoom effect to load. And he has 3 shots. That can shoot 1 target.

The whole rest of the team already emptied kuva bramma, lenz etc in midair, full sprint, into the wall and ran off before he even got into a firering position.

4 billion per cent extra damage isn't going to fix that.

 

Which ties into all the questions I have, they never talk about, how does a singleshot 6 round pistol fit into a horde shooter?

You need to either not have weapons that don't fit the game or change the game to fit them.

Tie status type to weapon type to enemy types, pistol projectiles can shred armor, aoe can only CC, just random examples of rock, paper, scissor, to say pistol, rifle, sniper need their own department of gameplay.

Like a defense frame belongs to a defense map, here is their speciality. Okay makes sense. Problem, solution, goal I get it.

Pistol = ... becasue (...)

Were pistol meant for a headshot layer of precision shooting in the game? Maybe we are looking at autoaim headshot to match game speed, or more bonuses or drops or any type of payoff to headshots, that aren't just +5% crit.

 

That I will also say it looks like a lack of vision or goal, when they aren't using oppertunities for connective content.

Meaning, the gameplay encouraged by the new mod's criteria, should connect broadly with the goal itself.

Hadn't we said, speed was bad for the game? But the new mods are entirely built around panic attacks, rushing and play fast? How can this possibly make the players not play fast?

I am confused. I don't get it.

"The faster you get melee kills, the more damage you do... but we don't want people playing fast with melee".

Am I reading this correctly?

That's both regular combo meter, which is a "time attack", the new arcanes AND the new mods - copy-pasted directly from the combo multiplier system, entirely based on speed.

Then you have the helminth expansion. Which is like perfect, because that's where you could patch some holes and add some bandaids, crutches, to current content and current problems.

Helminth is great because it can be anything you can think of. Terrific.

Then it's an armor buff and a status immunity?

It has no connection with the melee nerf, no connection with parazon, no connection to liches and no connection to railjack?

Feels like a missed oppertunity to connect the content?

 

I am very surprised and I am very confused and I feel like I am getting zero information from the developers.

 

[Venus-Venera]

vor 4 Minuten schrieb (XBOX)Graysmog:

Just make them do something akin to a playstyle change. Your gun gets lowered total ammo and a reduced magazine, but higher damage on Headshots. Maybe your gun gets a much faster reload and holster speed but now the fall-off and spread is higher. Just basic stuff.

does not work if weapon is not playable at all.

[Venus-Venera]

vor 6 Minuten schrieb Surbusken:

One of the most frequent questions on the forum is "what is the point?", like how hard do the developers think the game should be? How long should it take to kill an enemy? Is the game balanced towards solo play?

only devs can answer that ...
the game is balanced to make money. as long as enough people buy the stuff, everything is fine.

[(XBOX)Graysmog]

6 minutes ago, Battle.Mage said:

does not work if weapon is not playable at all.

What kind of a reply is that? You're going to be using it with the new Galvanized stuff, this would be in addition.

[Surbusken]

28 minutes ago, Battle.Mage said:

only devs can answer that ...
the game is balanced to make money. as long as enough people buy the stuff, everything is fine.

lol, yeah that's the gist of it thanks that really made me laugh, of course you are right.

But wouldn't you say, the developers at least try to pretend to want to explain themselves during posts and annoucements, or do you think even that is fake.

[(PSN)Gentleman_Raven_]

I like this idea, Gun Stances would be great! Although DE would have to create a slew of new animations but yeah it might add better balance.

[ZunLise]

1 hour ago, Surbusken said:

I am very confused and I feel like I am getting zero information from the developers.

I'd take a wild guess and say the devs just don't want us reaching the level cap under any circumstance for game difficulty reasons. Which is not in and of itself wrong IMO.

Right now you can do that with a 2-forma melee and a fast Status-built gun, which is bonkers. Which is why they are nerfing melee. Which is why they don't give increased rewards for long missions. Which is why Galvanized mods are a very weak bandaid that won't fix anything. 

And this is a bad approach. The difficulty doesn't get fixed this way. In Warframe it is probably only fixed by more complex combat.

Cast an ability, use 1 weapon as a utilitiy then use the other weapon as the damage source. Cast another ability, use another weapon as a utility to stay alive. Mix and match for personal flavor. 

For me this is a good foundation for combat, for DE it probably isn't. :c

[Digressive]

Thread cleaned. Please try to stay on topic and not attack each other, otherwise the thread will be locked.

Thanks

[Aldain]

11 hours ago, Dunkelheit said:

I see that argument everywhere.... but isn't it great that a lot more weapons become viable? At least 50% of all guns will be viable, but people are angry, because there are another 50% which won't be viable? So stop the upgrade and leave all 100% behind? What is your reasoning?

My reasoning is that it won't solve any of the root problems, only treat the symptoms.

I want the actual CORE issues with the design of the game to be addressed, I want insane power creep and/or rampant abuse of Slash procs to not be the only viable solution to dealing with armor blobs we call Grineer past star chart levels.

But perhaps most of all, I don't want the game to continue down this "nuke or be nuked" road it keeps pushing towards, I want the game to be in a state where gross overkill from enemies and players both is rare and something that is worked for, not by the grind for an enabling mod, but by actual application of effort IN the mission though methods other than just killing more so you can kill faster.

Warframe has so much potential for being something more than what it is, but so many those mechanics are buried under and pushed aside by more and more power creep and the power creep just keeps on causing DE's future content design to either fall back on either the same old "Hurry up and wait" or "Kill faster or fail the mission" type designs, or things that are unique but completely forgotten about and ignored within a week or two like Volatile.