Enemy armor scaling may need a new calculation

[TheArmchairThinker]

Seeing how armor scale with the current scaling

When Current Level - Base Level < 70

When Current Level - Base Level > 80

There's a big gap between enemies where butcher gets only 25% damage reduction at level 175 compared to basic lancer with 87% damage reduction at the same level. Add steel path multiplier and the gap gets bigger with weapons not being able to deal bleed to bypass armor or proc corrosive reliably will have a bit of a struggle to fight them.

I think, the armor scaling can be made linear further with calculation as following

Armor = Base armor + (current level - base level)/A
Where A = armor variable

A is based on level range as follows

Level 1 - 200 : 1 (1 armor point per 1 level)

Level 201 - 500 : 2 (1 armor point per 2 level)

Level 501 - 800 : 3 (1 armor point per 3 level)

Level 801 - 999 : 4 (1 point per 4 level)

With this model, enemy armor still scale but at a linear level and the scaling will be flatter on higher level, making them still tough but not at 3000+ armor where stripping their armor with corrosive still leaving them at near 80% damage reduction, making corrosive a bit more viable compared to bypassing them entirely with bleed

[Infirito]

*laughs in armour stripping abilities*

[Tyreaus]

Or maybe armour just shouldn't scale at all.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

33 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

Or maybe armour just shouldn't scale at all.

The biggest issue with armor is that their is no mechanical way to fight it outside of modding. 

Shield gating can be bypassed via head shots. Toxin can make things easier though.

Auras can be beaten by prioritizing the source of the aura. Radiation can make things easier though.

Armor, you need to mod against it. No ifs or buts.

Here's an idea:

Maybe DE could tie armor scaling to Grineer Propaganda Drones as a precursor to Arbitration Drones?

Armored units around the Propaganda Drone get armor scaling applied. Without the Propaganda Drone, Grineer just have their base armor values. 

 

[Famecans]

1 hour ago, Infirito said:

*laughs in armour stripping abilities*

Armor stripping is not a reality for common builds, few frames do this and most of them remove armor temporarily.

It is functional but not common to build.

[PublikDomain]

Ditching the S-Curve and setting the exponent to 1.00 is probably all that really needs to happen. You're missing parts of the formula:

This is the Armor formula for levels below 70, and was all the game used to have. 1 + 0.005(x - Base Level)^1.00would produce armor that linearly adds 50% Armor per 100 levels above the base level. A lvl8 Heavy Gunner would have 500 Armor like it does now (62.5% DR), and a lvl108 Heavy Gunner would have 750 Armor (71.4% DR for 113k EHP, compared to a lvl108 Tech's 85k EHP). Right now a lvl108 Heavy Gunner has 6,824.56 Armor (95.8% DR for 771k EHP). It's almost like exponential scaling is a bad idea for a stat with a multiplicative effect on EHP... 🤔

[Infirito]

43 minutes ago, Famecans said:

Armor stripping is not a reality for common builds, few frames do this and most of them remove armor temporarily.

It is functional but not common to build.

What are common builds? Also, with Helmut you can put those abilities on any frame.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Corrosive, armor strip, and abilities that make enemies "susceptible to more damage". I.e. Nezhas 2, Novas 4 etc.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

50 minutes ago, Famecans said:

Armor stripping is not a reality for common builds, few frames do this and most of them remove armor temporarily.

It is functional but not common to build.

Every frame has 4 abilities and 3 weapons capable of holding multiple elements though. You can figure it out with any frame. Pick one and I'll help you out lol.

[Famecans]

10 minutes ago, Infirito said:

What are common builds? Also, with Helmut you can put those abilities on any frame.

common builds are the ones that most players can play.

well. we have some skills in hellmint but i don't see anyone recommending it because the combination of mods changes the game strategy

[Famecans]

24 minutes ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

Every frame has 4 abilities and 3 weapons capable of holding multiple elements though. You can figure it out with any frame. Pick one and I'll help you out lol.

come on... to make it easier I will choose a frame that already has the ability, it will be a challenge for you. 🧐

Frame: Nyx
Mission: Survivor
Purpose: lvl9999

what do you recommend?

[Infirito]

18 minutes ago, Famecans said:

common builds are the ones that most players can play.

Most players never reach The War Within and drop out, I doubt armour scaling is a big problem for them.

21 minutes ago, Famecans said:

well. we have some skills in hellmint but i don't see anyone recommending it because the combination of mods changes the game strategy

That's the point, though, you can build a frame for killing stuff, or you can build it for avoiding stuff, ability swapping alows you for some middle ground on specialized frames.

[Famecans]

2 minutes ago, Infirito said:

Most players never reach The War Within and drop out, I doubt armour scaling is a big problem for them.

really, this is a great argument. 👍
I think the idea of the topic is to increase our challenge.

[Infirito]

4 minutes ago, Famecans said:

really, this is a great argument. 👍
I think the idea of the topic is to increase our challenge.

People who have trouble with armour scaling are going for hours long runs, almost nobody does this, game does not encourage this in any way (quite the opposite in fact) and as such should not be balanced around it. 

Can it be better overall? Sure, but for overwhelming majority of players it's unlikely to metter.

Also just bringing back old corrosive proc will remove armour scaling as a topic entirely. :P

[Danielw8]

Corrosive should strip 100% of the armor like the old corrosive.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

1 hour ago, Famecans said:

come on... to make it easier I will choose a frame that already has the ability, it will be a challenge for you. 🧐

Frame: Nyx
Mission: Survivor
Purpose: lvl9999

what do you recommend?

Lol well level 9999 is a bit high as most people don't play at that level, but Nyx can take advantage of the armor bonus damage by stripping to 99% with augur secrets, or full strip. Subsume Ensnare or shooting gallery. Shooting gallery also gives a weapon damage bonus based on strength.

[Azamagon]

The issue is multi-faceted.

Since armor still scales pretty heavily, everything needs to deal true-damage (i.e. slash-procs) to be a worthwhile lategame weapon. It's one extreme to solve another extreme. Imo, armor shouldn't scale hard at all AND bleeds shouldn't ignore armor (nor should toxin ignore shields).

----

As a sidenote, does no one else think that SLASH being the anti-armor damage is weird?

Shouldn't PUNCTURE be the status to help against armor? Like, say, what if Puncture-procs let attacks (including the triggering one) ignore X% of the target's defenses for Y seconds. More stacks = higher bypass.

This also makes for a less "passive" armorbypass. Bleed is BOTH armorbypass AND damage at once - once you apply a heavy enough proc, you can stop attacking the target and let it bleed out. Compare that to the suggested Puncture proc where once you proc Puncture, you need to CONTINUE shooting to benefit, making for a more active playstyle.

 

[Corvid]

When one faction is a literal order of magnitude more spongey than the others with equivalent units at the same level, something has gone wrong.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

1 hour ago, Azamagon said:

The issue is multi-faceted.

Since armor still scales pretty heavily, everything needs to deal true-damage (i.e. slash-procs) to be a worthwhile lategame weapon. It's one extreme to solve another extreme. Imo, armor shouldn't scale hard at all AND bleeds shouldn't ignore armor (nor should toxin ignore shields).

----

As a sidenote, does no one else think that SLASH being the anti-armor damage is weird?

Shouldn't PUNCTURE be the status to help against armor? Like, say, what if Puncture-procs let attacks (including the triggering one) ignore X% of the target's defenses for Y seconds. More stacks = higher bypass.

This also makes for a less "passive" armorbypass. Bleed is BOTH armorbypass AND damage at once - once you apply a heavy enough proc, you can stop attacking the target and let it bleed out. Compare that to the suggested Puncture proc where once you proc Puncture, you need to CONTINUE shooting to benefit, making for a more active playstyle.

 

Paradoxically, with the upcoming change to Impact and Parazon Finisher thresholds, Puncture will be the worst physical type against armor scaling.

I have a similar idea for Puncture:

The status effect of Puncture damage is Weakened. It causes the victim's attacks to deal 30% less damage and victim gains +15% weakness to all damage types for 6 seconds. Subsequent procs add 5% reduced damage up to 75% and +1% weakness up to +24% in total after 10 stacks, with each proc having their own duration. Affected enemies will have a yellow aura.

This change will make Puncture a weaker more niche variant of Viral that is especially synergistic with Corrosive and Radiation as armor class modifiers apply twice. A % boost and % armor mitigation. Note that health modifiers still apply to armored units as armor only provides damage reduction.

Both Corrosive and Radiation have +75% against different armor types.

• No proc: +75% against armor, 1.75x Damage and 75% Armor Mitigation
• First proc: +90% against armor, 1.9x Damage and 90% Armor Mitigation plus +15% against health, 1.15x
• 10th proc: +99%, 1.99x Damage and 99% Armor Mitigation plus +24% against health, 1.24x

Example, against 6000 Alloy armor (95% DR), 100 Radiation will deal:

• No proc: 29.1 Damage
• First proc: 72.8 Damage, +150% Increase from No proc, 
• 10th proc: 205.6 Damage, +606.5% Increase from No proc

Bonuses are less pronounced when Corrosive and Radiation are against neutral targets.

For unarmored enemies, neutral damage types simply gain +15% on first proc and +24% on 10th.

For armored enemies, neutral damage types gain bonuses against armor and health, so against 6000 armor, first proc grants +44.9% and 10th grants +52.5%.

[Orokin]

There is no reason why armor should scale. Scaling armor does not make things difficult as long as slash procs are the way they are.

If they remove armor scaling they have to nerf viral, buff corrosive, revert back to old health scaling

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Armor used to scale linearly.

it shouldnt return to that.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

14 minutes ago, Orokin said:

There is no reason why armor should scale. Scaling armor does not make things difficult as long as slash procs are the way they are.

If they remove armor scaling they have to nerf viral, buff corrosive, revert back to old health scaling

 

[Loza03]

9 hours ago, Infirito said:

*laughs in armour stripping abilities*

This isn't a question of 'armour is too hard', because as you point out, we've got means of dealing with. The problem is that one third of the game necessitates we build for several orders of magnitude higher than the rest of it. Which causes all sorts of problems of its own.

[--END--Rikutatis]

10 hours ago, Famecans said:

Armor stripping is not a reality for common builds, few frames do this and most of them remove armor temporarily.

It is functional but not common to build.

Full armor stripping builds are very easy to achieve for many, many frames. It's just not the usual cookie cutter copy-paste builds youtubers post and the masses copy. Some frames can achieve full strip with 100% STR, others with 200-250%, etc. It's not that hard to build for it. Also many are permanent strips. The only full armor strip that is super hard and niche to achieve is Hildryn's. The only reason people don't bother with full armor strip is because bleed is so trivial to achieve, specially with melee stances. 

9 hours ago, Famecans said:

come on... to make it easier I will choose a frame that already has the ability, it will be a challenge for you. 🧐

Frame: Nyx
Mission: Survivor
Purpose: lvl9999

what do you recommend?

Shield gating cheese, as usual, can make basically any frame in the game invincible. Just build her for shield gating with rolling guard and brief respite (add a decaying dragon key if you want extra cheese), 125% STR for full armor strip. Chaos range shouldn't be extremely high, just enough that enemies are still within killing range. Helminth could be anything, like eclipse for damage buff and then you build for more STR. Then just grab a strong melee and go for it (the bleed oriented melees even bypass the need for armor strip). I mean, level cap these days isn't really any feat to achieve, enemies are weak enough that the strongest melees will kill them and survivability can be achieved with shield gating.

But without shield gating you could do an assimilate high efficiency build and still go to level 400ish with her by just face tanking everything. Which I find a lot more fun for Nyx. 

I mean, honestly, I get it. Armor isn't super balanced in the game, Warframe math is all over the place. But asking for MORE armor nerfs when enemies already melt like paper since the last nerfs... I don't know where people wanna get, really. At this point we just need Warframe 2 for a complete rework of the entire combat system and formulas. 

[SneakyErvin]

Static armor and scaling HP is what DE should have used. Then they could have tailored all armored units to values they think are acceptable to reach when an enemy of a certain type is debuffed to the max by corrosive + heat. Then the combat experience would be the same at all levels and give the same reason to use strippers early on aswell as later on.