Making Blast and Magnetic status effects good

[motorfirebox]

Magnetic is mostly useless, and so is blast. Theoretically magnetic could be useful for enemies with high shields that somehow resist toxin, but... DE tried that with hounds and those coin guys, and we still just liquefy them with whatever elements we happen to have equipped. And blast has always been bottom-tier.

To boost them up closer to the level of viral, or even just radiation/corrosive, take advantage of the nature of Warframe gameplay: incorporate AOE. But in order to not make them vastly overpowered, modulate their AOE capabilities relative to a) whether or not the weapon applying them is AOE itself, and b) fire rate.

First, blast. In order to make blast useful, it should proc an AOE effect. Nothing big, maybe 1m. Damage based on some percentage of the hit that procced it, and—this is important—the same status chance. A blast proc can itself proc status effects on nearby enemies (probably excluding another blast proc, but who knows, that could be fun).

AOE weapon blast procs would be greatly reduced in range, damage, and follow-on status chance. Similar to the Hemorrhage and similar mods, weapons with below 2.0 firing rate would have an increased follow-on status chance.

Magnetic would be almost the inverse. Instead of creating an AOE, magnetic procs would create a field in which damage applied to nearby enemies would get sucked in and hit the mob with the magnetic proc. So if you land a magnetic proc on Mob A, and a headshot on Mob B right next to him, Mob A would also get hit with headshot damage (reduced by a number of factors). Similar to blast, if B gets hit with a fire proc, A would also have a chance to get hit with a fire proc. Also similar to blast, this would probably exclude other magnetic procs—if Mobs A and B have magnetic procs, and A is in range of B but not in range of C, and C takes a hit, B would take damage but A would not).

Again, AOE magnetic procs would be greatly reduced in range, damage taken, and status chance of procced damage; and weapons with less than a 2.0 fire rate would have an increase in procced status chance.

 

So TLDR: blast creates an AOE, magnetic creates an inverted AOE.

[Birdframe_Prime]

Argument in favour of Magnetic? The newer Corpus enemies, particularly the Treasurers, Hounds and Sisters, are absolutely devastated by it. Whenever you actually take missions at the level of Steel Path or rank 5 Sisters, these are genuinely as useful as having Viral is for Grineer.

I have a distinct love for actually modding for the enemies I'm facing, rather than simply pouring in Damage and expecting it to work, and current Magnetic and the enemies it's best against is DE's attempt to have an option to do that.

Could it be better? Sure. But it's got a distinct use, and that's all it really needs.

Blast, though... I know they couldn't figure out what to do with it after people finally agreed that knock-down was not helpful for a game that has a lot of hitscan weapons... but I'm with you on the point that it needs a bit of a boost.

Giving Blast an innate AoE, at least on the level of Gas, would be great as a damage tool in a lot of ways. So while Gas can stack up and remains as a lingering effect, having Blast do consistent AoE damage per hit (as long as the Status proc'd) would be a fantastic boost.

Heck, do you know what Blast would be amazing as? A catalyst for other damage.

If Blast status procs, the AoE inherits the damage types, crit, and status of the original shot at a reduced base damage.

Putting Blast onto a standard Crit/Bleed rifle, for example, would make that rifle an AoE weapon instead of a basic hit scan and allow it to clear groups.

And, just like you said in yours, if the weapon is already AoE and you have Blast, or add Blast to it, the status basically doesn't exist, because the weapon's AoE is literally a guaranteed Blast status effect over a larger area.

So yeah, I agree with the AoE Blast procs and want something that could be even more powerful on there than your own suggestion, but I disagree that Magnetic needs as much of a buff given its niche, but powerful, use already exists.

[BiancaRoughfin]

47 minutes ago, motorfirebox said:

Magnetic is mostly useless, and so is blast.

Considering the fact that Magnetic suffers no penalties against most enemy/health/armor types aside Alloy which it deals -50% damage and that there are many Primary/Secondary with innate Radiation damage to compensate, i see no real issues with Magnetic as it currently stands. My Tenet Arca Plasmor for example has both Radiation and Magnetic, being Magnetic the highest damage by a large amount, it is easily shredding Grineer, Corpus and Infested alike.

As for Blast i have to agree it is currently the most useless damage type in the game as it only decreases enemy accuracy with is crap when it used to both deal a Bonus damage and Knockdown in an AoE which made it great for crowd control in some weapons.

I really wish DE would bring Blast and Gas back to how they used to be... 😭

[Lutesque]

My Solution is just to Delete All Damage Types ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Tiltskillet]

23 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

I have a distinct love for actually modding for the enemies I'm facing, rather than simply pouring in Damage and expecting it to work, and current Magnetic and the enemies it's best against is DE's attempt to have an option to do that.

Could it be better? Sure. But it's got a distinct use, and that's all it really needs.

I can respect that pov.  But it bothers me that only magnetic and corrosive status are specialized in this manner.   Every other status has some use against most enemy types, even if it's a weak use. So I suppose a question is, do you like hyper specialized status so much that you wish more of them were like magnetic?

Personally I think this gearing need is addressed well enough by damage type itself, with status being just a bonus. So I'd rather the two outlier status had at least a weak use against non-shielded / non-armored opponents. 

Since armor is a bigger deal and is somewhat more common than shields, Magnetic cries out for this even more than corrosive.  But adding some versatility to both would be ideal IMO.

[Tiltskillet]

20 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Considering the fact that Magnetic suffers no penalties against most enemy/health/armor types

That's a good point, and a similar thing could be said for corrosive.

But to me, damage type effectiveness is a related but -somewhat- tangential issue to status effectiveness.  

[Katinka]

One of the issues I have with Magnetic is that the status effect just improves what it's already doing and unless you have a very high status chance or a very high level enemy it's procs rapidly become redundant and the shields are gone before I have a decent stack of Mag procs.  Coupled with the fact that Toxin ignores shields on most things so Electric/Cold combos are competing with Toxin/Corpus Damage combos and Magnetic just isn't that attractive (no pun intended).  I'd still recommend it for high level Sister fights in it's current state but I would like to see it do something more interesting.  Even swapping the Magnetic and Void Status effects could work, making Magnetic the Bullet Attractor bubble and Void the boosted Shield Damage (which would make Status Chance on Amps actually matter for taking down Shields on Eidolons, or at least it would matter for people like me who insist on trying to solo them...).

[Wyrmius_Prime]

Every damage type outside of Slash and Toxin are bad against regular enemies. Slash procs with enough damage multipliers can be used to instakill level capped Grineer, and Toxin procs can do the same to Corpus units. The only situations where you actually need to mod for other elements are when bosses are immune to status effects, and you need to think about enemy weaknesses.

Blast status procs have always been CC status procs, I doubt DE will ever change that. Magnetic on the other hand is equivalent to Viral procs, since instead of increasing damage dealt against health, Magnetic procs increase your damage dealt to shields by up to 325%. If you are arguing that Magnetic is useless because of reason X, Y or Z, you should be arguing the same thing for Viral, because it is equally useless because of the existence of Slash procs.

Corpus units do have much larger shield pools than health pools, so modding for Magnetic does increase the direct damage you deal against them. Corpus being weaker than Grineer on the other hand is just a general game difficulty and balance issue, and it has nothing to do with Magnetic damage itself.

[motorfirebox]

2 hours ago, Wyrmius_Prime said:

Blast status procs have always been CC status procs, I doubt DE will ever change that. Magnetic on the other hand is equivalent to Viral procs, since instead of increasing damage dealt against health, Magnetic procs increase your damage dealt to shields by up to 325%. If you are arguing that Magnetic is useless because of reason X, Y or Z, you should be arguing the same thing for Viral, because it is equally useless because of the existence of Slash procs.

Magnetic is mostly useless because when you burn down an enemy's shield, they're still there shooting at you. Viral is useful because when you burn down an enemy's health, they stop shooting at you because they're dead. 

Shields have never been as much of an impediment to doing health damage to a unit as armor. With the S-curving of armor, that's less true than it used to be, but it's still true, especially since you can simply equip a toxin weapon and ignore most shields completely. At nearly any point where shields become such an important fact that you'd want to mod to strip them more quickly, you're better off simply equipping a toxin weapon.

So no, viral is vastly superior to magnetic.