Sister's fight is a proper challenge we haven't seen in a long time

[Leqesai]

1 hour ago, MinecraftGangsta said:

u can just use nyx and press 2

This works for removing shields and armor but sisters and liches have another form of damage reduction on top of armor and shields. This is what makes them super annoying because it invalidates certain weapons. Super high damage weapons like stropha do nothing to sisters and liches because of this mechanic. Using relatively weak weapons ends up being more effective.

The new tenet spirex, for example, shred a level 5 kuva lich while my high damage grattler, envoy and stropha did piss-all to it.

[Prexades]

Actually, they suck, a lot.

The sisters are just extreme bullet sponges. They also highlight problems that should have been adressed ages ago, like rad procs on players.

[xcrimsonlegendx]

I haven't really seen any challenge, they're just bullet sponges.

Edit: That being said, I suppose its certainly more challenging than if we could one-shot them but they could be a lot better.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

5 hours ago, zuraja said:

Both of those statements are objectively correct.  There is absolutely nothing challenging about Sisters and frankly the only boss fight I can think of from any video game I have ever played that is more boring than they are is Patchwerk.

OP literally says the opposite of you. EVERYTHING in Warframe is subjective though. Players would cry bloody murder if bosses were done "correctly" (as in, every subjective player's version of correctly). Profit-Taker and the Tri-dolons, IMO, are fantastic boss battles but people had fits over them as well. 

So, what is a great boss battle that fits Warframe's model?

[MqToasty]

Well, I would not say the Sisters are actually more difficult, but they do offer a different kind of challenge, allowing a different set of frames and abilities to shine.  For the longest time, it seemed like enemies are so weak that only tanky or buffing frames/abilities made any sense at all.  With the Sisters, they have so much defense that debuffing frames/abilities now make sense.  If nothing else, I'm pretty sure this will improve Banshee and Nyx usage, which is a good thing.

[Perfectly_Framed_Waifu]

1 hour ago, Leqesai said:

Armor is not the only damage reduction you should be using though. Due to diminishing returns you are getting less benefit from armor. It would be better to equip adaptation since the damage reduction it gives is added on top of the damage reduction from armor, making it almost universally more useful than stacking armor mods.

Also, cc is something a lot of people dont think about when it comes to damage reduction.

Subsume shooting gallery or resonator on your excal and the ranged damage you take will drop. 

 

Honestly we have so many options to reduce damage nowadays. If you are getting crunched by enemies it is likely your build is not well crafted or optimized. Ineffective builds may be star chart and sortie viable but once you get into the meaty, harder content, the holes in ineffective builds become more obvious.

Counter point:

2 hours ago, Aldain said:

Infinitely CCing things or having an invincibility button are solutions to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

 

[Tesseract7777]

I'm glad others are enjoying them. 

I am enjoying them too, although I cannot say I have found them particularly challenging so far. I let like one get up to 4 and another to five to see how tough they are, and maybe they just didn't have the tougher abilities or resistances, but it was a short fight in proxima... 

I'll make a bunch more when I'm not so busy, maybe with the right resistances or abilities they will be a bigger nuisance, perhaps I haven't come across the right sister yet... I'll rank up some more to five and see what happens. 

[Vahenir]

I've taken down quite a few of these and I cant say I'm a fan of how that damage reduction works at all. It gets to absurd levels when the lich/sister goes past rank 3, then the only real way to drop them quickly is to bring banshee and /only/ banshee. That is because her sonar applies its damage increase after the damage reduction is all done, thus breaking stuff. Nuking their shields and armor with Nyx is another option, but its not even in the same league when it comes to effectiveness. 

The main problem is that bringing a high damage weapon or any kind of status weapon is completely counterproductive. When the only way to effectively get through their hp quickly is to basically exploit the game mechanics by going completely out of the game and building weapons specifically to fit into the lowest tier of damage reduction but still do decent damage you know stuff is broken. As for using their weakness, i basically don't notice any difference whatsoever because the other damage reduction is so extreme. Its basically the difference between doing 200 and 205 damage. I assume its like where you are better off bringing corrosive on a crit build in almost all cases anyway.

Apart from the excessive teleporting, random oneshots, radiation procs, bugs and general extreme chaos of the fights they are good. I really wish they were properly structured fights more like the jackal or a proper raid/dungeon boss in an MMO, especially the final one in railjack. Anything but the inconsistent mess they are now.

[sitfesz]

10 hours ago, RichardKam said:

We are so get used to being the most powerful being in warframe that we either can finish a mission in 3 mins or do a survival for 18 hours or nuke the whole map with a click. We can even cheese SP after melee 3.0.

Now that DE introduced one mini-boss with DR and some abilities and shield gating and suddenly the builds that you used to obliterate everything do not work. Suddenly you cannot do the "offense is the best defense" tactics and kill stuff before they kill you. Suddenly survivability, CC, armor strip and all the stuff that were widely considered useless, become the most useful.

I enjoy Sister fight because it forced me to be tactical, to consider my options and to balance damage output and tankiness.

Probably we play the game differently but for sisters, how I already did to kuva liches, I just used the most raw crit damage I could slap on some stuff. It still works, I still use that, which is an augment of weapon damage buffer frame (after helminth with even roar), and another possible damage/damage support ability, or even two.

Now you just need a non-niche, reliable raw damage weapon. Sisters and liches suddenly had A LOT OF undocumented melee resistance, which is #*!%ed up, because now I just don't ever use melee against liches.

I just shoot the S#&$ out of it while comically running after the idiot, while it is teleporting wherever and keep insulting me.

Liches and sisters are better than before, but nothing more than a fly that you devote 5 minutes of your attention to concentrate and finally kill it. They are just annoying.
Well, I know being annoying is their job and while being annoying to me, they are impossible to others, but shouldn't liches have some well telegraphed stance to which attack you shouldn't do, else you get counterattacked and take serious % damage to hp and shield? The lich melee combo is the only that #*!%s players, because it animation locks and does a few of big damage, so skips even shield gating.

The other things #*!%s players are radiation and magnetize, which are both players killing each other/themselves. That's not much ingame mechanics.

INB4 "but players can heal themselves whenever they want and it would make lich kills easy anyway"
Yeah, then they would make a loadout that could sustain and damage too instead of full damage, but they at least have to think about that. They are also cheeky like me and often lazy to change/make a specific loadout and try to push through with their current stuff anyway.

I'm not talking about wolf of the saturn six kind of "hard", because that was easy too if you prepared with at least one weapon against it which is not a leveling stuff and if you had enough ammo. That wasn't hard, that was just uhhhhhhhhhhh hard to tolerate and nothing more than a lvl500 juggernaut behemoth put in a simulacrum.

TLDR Sisters/liches are not hard, just cumbersome, so not much of a proper challenge. You were out of touch of this game if you thought "survivability, cc, armor strip" were considered useless. That could explain why are they a proper challenge to you, going "tactical".

Edit: @JarriagaAbout bullet sponges, and difficulty. Almost exactly like you said, because there is no pattern, no signature attack to learn except stay the #*!% away from them (or else they grab you into animation lock), while bulletting their sponge. It is difficult to some, but there is really nothing more than stay away and shoot it, get back to line of sight and shoot it before it regens shields (and stay away, stay away).

[(PSN)Kakurine2]

I have not had an issue. Cc them with khora beat them up well they are stunned. Mission accomplished.

[DarknessNightshade]

I'd agree with OP if Nyx's 2 or Banshee's Sonar, or Sevagoth's Bloom, or Mesa's 4, or Helminth Invigorations, etc were accounted for.

Damage attenuation was "fixed" (even though it's not been a problem with literally any other boss for years), a wave of people complained about it, it got ignored until near Tennocon where a note was attached to the Trello Board for bug fixes to "Tune damage attenuation", and have heard nothing about it since.

Meanwhile, people have been building around the Attenuation, abusing abilities and oversights to let them just walk all over what was meant to be a challenging fight, people in general will gravitate towards the fastest solution for everything (as seen with Profit Taker runners getting their kill within 1 and a half minutes.).

In my honest opinion, attenuation is a (hopefully temporary) bandaid to cover up that Liches/Sisters don't really scale well for their level, or that their element strengths even matter in most cases.

The main problem I feel with Lich/Sister confrontations, is that they have no gimmick to pad out the fight time, while every other boss does. Between invulnerability stages, stage hazards, puzzles, having to fire at specific spots (which would've been cool given the comments about hitting them in the bits they've had replaced), they have nothing to pace out the fight other than the Thralls and the Hounds.

While annoying, they provide the fight time DE are looking for, and provide a bit more engagement other than "left click for a few seconds", making them bullet sponges isn't really difficulty, it doesn't take skill to hold down a button.

I hope they revise on it in the future, before or after New War, as at the moment it doesn't feel as fleshed out as it could be.

[RichardKam]

8小时前 , (PSN)GEN-Son_17 说:

OP literally says the opposite of you. EVERYTHING in Warframe is subjective though. Players would cry bloody murder if bosses were done "correctly" (as in, every subjective player's version of correctly). Profit-Taker and the Tri-dolons, IMO, are fantastic boss battles but people had fits over them as well. 

So, what is a great boss battle that fits Warframe's model?

I don't think it is possible to find the greatest common factor in warframe that are challenging to all playstyles and builds. Like many people said here, Sister is hard for some people while being a piece of cake for others. 

At least, Sister and Lich are "proper" challenge. They are tough. They require you to consider your builds. They are bullet sponge but not "too" spongy. Their damage reduction is annoying, but not annoying enough to make people rage quit and has a solution for it.

Some frames and builds can cheese them. But if you consider the fun factor, with appropriate builds, second tier stuff can also fight them with an enjoyable process. 

Granted, they are not the best, but they are proper, hence the title. DE can do better than this. Let's see if future updates will cover them.

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

16 hours ago, Jim22 said:

I also like the fact that they don't have a invulnerable phase like every other boss in warframe.

You sure about that?

If you damage them too much, they build up 99.999999% damage reduction. That’s functionality identical to being invulnerable.

Even just with my Rubico, the first shot will deal a couple of thousand damage, and by the end of the clip I’m down to hundreds of damage or even less.

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

41 minutes ago, RichardKam said:

I don't think it is possible to find the greatest common factor in warframe that are challenging to all playstyles and builds. Like many people said here, Sister is hard for some people while being a piece of cake for others. 

At least, Sister and Lich are "proper" challenge. They are tough. They require you to consider your builds. They are bullet sponge but not "too" spongy. Their damage reduction is annoying, but not annoying enough to make people rage quit and has a solution for it.

Some frames and builds can cheese them. But if you consider the fun factor, with appropriate builds, second tier stuff can also fight them with an enjoyable process. 

Granted, they are not the best, but they are proper, hence the title. DE can do better than this. Let's see if future updates will cover them.

What’s the solution for the damage reduction?

[TheMostFrench]

It's a bit weird how some of them can disarm you suddenly without any serious indication. Like "Oh there's an icon over there like an objective marker, wait that's my gun?"

 

[Hypernaut1]

7 hours ago, Vahenir said:

 

The main problem is that bringing a high damage weapon or any kind of status weapon is completely counterproductive. When the only way to effectively get through their hp quickly is to basically exploit the game mechanics by going completely out of the game and building weapons specifically to fit into the lowest tier of damage reduction but still do decent damage you know stuff is broken. 

So you have to mod specifically for them and look at your arsenal in a different way? That sounds awesome to me. 

I was hoping steel path would've forced us to consider our weapons more than it currently does. Hopefully DE is going in that direction for sentients, as long as it's not too extreme. 

[Matt_328]

Except they aren't. I was able to obliterate them pretty easy.

[dEjAvU5566]

No it is not a challenge , it is an annoyance.

It is DE giving up on the damage balance and just want to kill arquebex, and kills many other weapons at the same time.

After players figure out the DR formula and use a correct setup, sisters still die in a instant.

In the end, DE's effort to nerf instant kill weapon is a total failure. It just change from insta-gib weapon A to insta-gib weapon B.

But I don't blame them, how can you make sure all situation are considered when you don't play the game, right?

[Yamazuki]

I personally found nothing challenging about them, they're basically just a Corpus unit that dies slower and comes with the obnoxious ability to teleport spam.

The teleport spam contributes to the time they survive more so than their stats do.

[Butterfly85]

2 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

It's a bit weird how some of them can disarm you suddenly without any serious indication. Like "Oh there's an icon over there like an objective marker, wait that's my gun?"

 

If it's a Sister fight, one of the possible Hound precept mods disarm you. I got around this by basically doing a full hunt using an archgun if the murmur hounds had this precept as they can't rob them from you

[Deminisis]

If you prepare with armor strip and/or some powerful weapons that can take advantage of an element weakness, then its easy.

The only time sh** hits the fan is when a lich with radiation abilities makes your squad kill each other.

[pook-pook]

My experience with the Sisters has been that they're either pretty easy or they're a challenge up to the point of being frustrating. In particular at level 5 a Cold Sister with undertow can be paaainful to take down because if they're not teleporting away to regen their shield they're plopping into a hydroid puddle to regen their shield.

I learned to really pay attention to the vulnerabilities and immunities after that one :)

I would love for there to be more mini bosses in the game like this.

[Paradoxity]

21 hours ago, zuraja said:

Both of those statements are objectively correct.  There is absolutely nothing challenging about Sisters and frankly the only boss fight I can think of from any video game I have ever played that is more boring than they are is Patchwerk.

Being fair to Patchwerk, he was only ever just a gear check. Most, if not all, of them were really *really* mechanically simple fights. 

Though, full disclosure, I stopped raiding post WotLK, so maybe they got better later? 

[Venus-Venera]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb pook-pook:

My experience with the Sisters has been that they're either pretty easy or they're a challenge up to the point of being frustrating. In particular at level 5 a Cold Sister with undertow can be paaainful to take down because if they're not teleporting away to regen their shield they're plopping into a hydroid puddle to regen their shield.

I learned to really pay attention to the vulnerabilities and immunities after that one :)

I would love for there to be more mini bosses in the game like this.

actually most of them are super easy. what is annoying is this teleport in a complex map. then I have to look for it all the time. absolutely boring! but the fights have been far too easy so far.
the npc can't win at all, I don't run out of ammo and the fighting actually lasts very quickly.

[Tsukinoki]

8 hours ago, _R_o_g_u_e_ said:

What’s the solution for the damage reduction?

Two things can "defeat" the damage reduction off the top of my head:

-Anything that adds damage that isn't on the weapons card.
For instance: Volts shield, Banshee's sonar weakpoints, and other related interactions.  This does include the new arcanes BTW.  Mods that have additive effects depending on circumstance (such as status effects or combo counter) seem to be able to push past some of the DR threshholds as well.

-Rapid striking lower DPS weapons.  IF they have a low enough damage the mitigation applied to them is pretty much non-existant...and if they hit rapidly enough they will outdo the higher damage weapons in TTK.  Weapons with high pellet counts also can work well here

 

For instance your Rubico is a horrible weapon to use against sisters.  Its damage is high enough that it goes into one of the higher DR "tiers" that builds up faster than some of the other tiers.
Meanwhile a dex furis build that isn't particularly strong will just murder a level 5 sister quite quickly as long as you exploit the sisters elemental weakness due to it being in a tier with next to no DR and a slow DR build up.

 

The system largely puts your weapons into various "tiers" of DR depending on how much damage it can do per bullet.  The higher this value the more DR is applied to your weapon.  This is roughly a static check though of when you load into the mission.  As you hit the sister depending on how quickly you are shooting her the DR applied to your weapon will creep up to a maximum value, if you stop shooting it'll go back down after a while.
The biggest issue with this system is that some of the higher tiers are too wide, and a lot of snipers and other weapons were lumped into the arquebex tier and as such have a very high DR floor and it builds up really quickly.
The other issue with this system is that it can't account for damage that isn't on the weapon itself.  Volt shield is a great thing to have as it is a sizable damage increase against the sister because her DR doesn't account for it.  Same with sonar weakpoints.  Same with the new arcanes, which means if you have one of the new arcanes in your gear you can easily kill the sisters as long as you get a few stacks of the arcane going.