Puncture Damage Bypass Overshields and Explosive Damage reduction on Overshields

[Caelum-Warblade]

I think that with the addition of the new overshield system, special enemies like Eximus have a good opportunity to increase build diversity by using the puncture stat as a stat that deals direct damage to enemies that have overshields.

 

You can use these elite enemy types like "Leader"/"Officer" units to give buffs to surrounding regular units that helps make the game provide more engaging and challenging combat.

 

As enemies scale, sometimes you're going to want to have something that can directly and immediately deal damage to some of these new enemy types that have that layer of protection that slows the ability to kill them, especially in game modes like Cascade where these enemies can start swarming your objective, thus adding an element of pressure to player to need to deal with these enemies.

 

Having a damage that can bypass these overshields will help increase build diversity and could help encourage a bit something other than the slash/viral meta that exists currently within Warframe.

 

Also, I think that the meta of AoE damage can be evened out with some changes to how the damage affects enemies with overshields, explosive damage should be greatly reduced specifically for damage to overshields on special enemy types like Eximus units to encourage players to need weapons that deal with enemies with overshields.

[taiiat]

i guess it would be alright to give Puncture Damage that type of use. Slash has its obvious use and then i guess we're then aiming for Impact to be for the Finishers? might work out though Impact would still definitely be under utilized.

the Eximus changes already offer DR and countermeasures against AoE Weapons, we don't need to give exponential amounts of it.

[Grommile]

8 minutes ago, Caelum-Warblade said:

Having a damage that can bypass these overshields will help increase build diversity and could help encourage a bit something other than the slash/viral meta that exists currently within Warframe.

If Puncture bypasses overshields, then Puncture is the new meta everywhere that you don't care about performance against mooks.

[Tyreaus]

Puncture already has a healthy bonus against armour, which is pretty prevalent. It's issues aren't so much in the damage type but in its lackluster proc.

17 minutes ago, taiiat said:

the Eximus changes already offer DR and countermeasures against AoE Weapons, we don't need to give exponential amounts of it.

TBF it is only one Eximus type that has that DR / countermeasure. I imagine it would just be a copy-paste of that onto other Eximus units, rather than stacking a second version on top.

[Tiltskillet]

There's nothing wrong with Puncture damage--it's Puncture status that's bad.   And I suppose even that's slightly more useful now, assuming the game isn't treating it as a CC effect.

Anyway, @DealerOfAbsolutes idea of making Puncture status into Viral Lite would address this, and also not feel like something awkwardly shoehorned in specifically against the hot topic of Overguard, just  to make Puncture relevant.

 

[taiiat]

2 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

TBF it is only one Eximus type that has that DR / countermeasure. I imagine it would just be a copy-paste of that onto other Eximus units, rather than stacking a second version on top.

and it's not necessary to.

by the same extension all Specials and Heavies should be given the same form of DR as Noxes have.
making everything the same is bland.

[Tyreaus]

12 minutes ago, taiiat said:

making everything the same is bland.

You're right. Which ends up also being a decent argument for more eximus to have AoE DR, since otherwise they're like everything else. Arbitrary lines kind of suck like that.

[taiiat]

1 hour ago, Tyreaus said:

You're right. Which ends up also being a decent argument for more eximus to have AoE DR, since otherwise they're like everything else. Arbitrary lines kind of suck like that.

Enemies don't get more interesting by giving them more Health, a Lancer is still a Lancer either way.

if you want to increase the length of their Healthbars, it better be alongside making the Enemies more interesting to engage to begin with. and lean closer towards quality over quantity, rather than just spamming generic sacks that exist just to soak up a few Bullets.

 

don't waste my time with that terrible design strategy.

[(PSN)rexis12]

More health just means more power creep.

Not sure why people were to happy for Overguard when it's all just Power Creep in terms of damage or health.

[(PSN)Sentiel]

Unlike Corpus units with their weak health, Eximus units usually have massive health. This means that unlike Toxin which can bypass shields to kill the weak Corpus, using Puncture to bypass Overguard wouldn't be beneficial because the rest of the damage types on your weapon would destroy Overguard normally before Puncture can deal any significant damage to the units actual health.

Instead, we can have Puncture either do deal extra damage to Overguard or have it's proc additionally weaken Overguard the same way Magnetic does to shields and Viral does to health. This would allow even new players who do not have Operator yet or have weak Amp to deal with Eximi units much easier.

[Sojufueled]

Isn't pummeling shields impact's thing?

[Tiltskillet]

44 minutes ago, taiiat said:

1 hour ago, Tyreaus said:

You're right. Which ends up also being a decent argument for more eximus to have AoE DR, since otherwise they're like everything else. Arbitrary lines kind of suck like that.

Enemies don't get more interesting by giving them more Health, a Lancer is still a Lancer either way.

If it were just more health, I'd basically agree with that argument.  But it's specifically more durability versus AoE damage.  Or less durability versus direct damage...same difference, just a matter of what numbers go which way.    Being able to hold up to AoE better doesn't make  Enemies themselves more interesting--it makes builds and co-op more interesting.   That's the hope, anyway.

Maybe that's too big a step.  A baby step way for DE to experiment with this is to make Guardian an eligible eximus for any faction rather than just Corpus/Corrupted.  To me that wouldn't feel like it was making everything more bland, especially if Corpus got a new type that was specific to them.  

Although I have to admit, the idea of of Guardian Nox turns my stomach a little. :/

[taiiat]

1 hour ago, Tiltskillet said:

Being able to hold up to AoE better doesn't make  Enemies themselves more interesting--it makes builds and co-op more interesting.   That's the hope, anyway.

Although I have to admit, the idea of of Guardian Nox turns my stomach a little. :/

waste of time, spend time instead on making Enemies that are more engaging to fight and making individual Enemies less irrelevant so that the game doesn't inherently encourage AoE Weapons due to the game demanding high Kill rates against several Dozen Enemies, continuously, for the duration of a Mission.
the game is literally purpose built this way. doesn't matter how much Health you give something, that won't change until/unless you actually change it.

oh, let me make that mental image more fun. the if a Nox gets Overguard, their DR applies to the Overguard. :D

[(PSN)rexis12]

Man, even a Normal Nox is sometimes disproportionately tanky due to how it's DR just stacks with it's Overguard.

Maybe it was because we were at the end of mission and we were just too tired, but one time in an Arbitration mission all 8 (Surprise surprise it was a Wukong Arbitration) of us just kept blasting it for a full 30nsevonds just to get rid of the Overguard.

It died a millisecond later, once Overguard was broken.

In fact, can we add that change? Make it so that breaking Nox's helmet can be done while they're in Overguard mode?

[Tiltskillet]

27 minutes ago, taiiat said:

oh, let me make that mental image more fun. the if a Nox gets Overguard, their DR applies to the Overguard. :D

Yeah, that's got to get fixed in any case.

[taiiat]

4 hours ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

In fact, can we add that change? Make it so that breaking Nox's helmet can be done while they're in Overguard mode?

the 'problem' is that their DR applies to Overguard. the logical order would be Overguard protects them, once you break Overguard then you can break their Face, and then their Body has their DR.
that would be consistent with the games' established Rules, since the Armor on a Lancer doesn't apply to Overguard.