Dps counterpart to overguard concept

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

Essentially, what if we got a dps version of overguard. Essentially eximus enemies have a 50% chance to get dps overguard over regular overguard. It is a 35-50% dmg reduction for regular missions and an 80-95% for higher end missions like steel path and level cap.

To remove it, you simply need to crowd control the enemies or (for dps only frames) apply enough impact/cold procs. (This is to mirror how cc frames also use guns to fight off eximus enemies). The enemies will then be vulnerable for you to kill them.

The reason why it's a percentage debuff is so you can still brute force the enemies as having invulnerable enemies might disrupt game flow and cause problems if you are entirely lacking on cc (like new players who lack primers or people using guns that don't have cold/impact dmg).

[Tyreaus]

Okay...

1. Differentiation is going to be a nightmare. Eximus units have pretty prevalent Overguard on their healthbars and an aura. Now we have to differentiate between regular and Overguard and...whatever this would be called. Neo-Overguard. It's going to be pretty hard to tell at a glance which kind of Overguard it has.

2. Damage and CC don't have the same level of accessibility. You have to bring a weapon of some sort, so everyone has a tool to deal damage and get through ordinary Overguard. Usually, we need to deal buckets of damage for everything else anyway. Not everything has access to Impact, Cold, or CC. It's a much more niche thing.

3. The forms of CC intended to bypass this Neo-Overguard take away from damage pretty darn hard. Common meta is Slash and Viral. That eats up Cold and preferring Impact takes away from Slash procs much of the time. That kneecaps taking care of regular Eximus units.

4. A number of people aren't fans of Overguard. I don't find it wise to double down on an idea broadly considered "bad".

5. If you want an idea of what this might look like in practice, look at Nox enemies. They have...I think 95% damage reduction on body shots. See how that feels to take one of them down in, say, a Steel Path mission without hitting the head. Personally, I think it kills the flow a lot, and the more common response is just going to be to ignore it.

In short: no. If we want CC to be effective, we should be looking at how we might update Overguard to make enemies resistant, rather than immune, to CC effects. Trying to create a niche for CC, especially in the same space as its antithesis in Overguard, is bound to create more problems.

[Leqesai]

28 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

Okay...

1. Differentiation is going to be a nightmare. Eximus units have pretty prevalent Overguard on their healthbars and an aura. Now we have to differentiate between regular and Overguard and...whatever this would be called. Neo-Overguard. It's going to be pretty hard to tell at a glance which kind of Overguard it has.

2. Damage and CC don't have the same level of accessibility. You have to bring a weapon of some sort, so everyone has a tool to deal damage and get through ordinary Overguard. Usually, we need to deal buckets of damage for everything else anyway. Not everything has access to Impact, Cold, or CC. It's a much more niche thing.

3. The forms of CC intended to bypass this Neo-Overguard take away from damage pretty darn hard. Common meta is Slash and Viral. That eats up Cold and preferring Impact takes away from Slash procs much of the time. That kneecaps taking care of regular Eximus units.

4. A number of people aren't fans of Overguard. I don't find it wise to double down on an idea broadly considered "bad".

5. If you want an idea of what this might look like in practice, look at Nox enemies. They have...I think 95% damage reduction on body shots. See how that feels to take one of them down in, say, a Steel Path mission without hitting the head. Personally, I think it kills the flow a lot, and the more common response is just going to be to ignore it.

In short: no. If we want CC to be effective, we should be looking at how we might update Overguard to make enemies resistant, rather than immune, to CC effects. Trying to create a niche for CC, especially in the same space as its antithesis in Overguard, is bound to create more problems.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

1 hour ago, Tyreaus said:

Okay...

1. Differentiation is going to be a nightmare. Eximus units have pretty prevalent Overguard on their healthbars and an aura. Now we have to differentiate between regular and Overguard and...whatever this would be called. Neo-Overguard. It's going to be pretty hard to tell at a glance which kind of Overguard it has.

2. Damage and CC don't have the same level of accessibility. You have to bring a weapon of some sort, so everyone has a tool to deal damage and get through ordinary Overguard. Usually, we need to deal buckets of damage for everything else anyway. Not everything has access to Impact, Cold, or CC. It's a much more niche thing.

3. The forms of CC intended to bypass this Neo-Overguard take away from damage pretty darn hard. Common meta is Slash and Viral. That eats up Cold and preferring Impact takes away from Slash procs much of the time. That kneecaps taking care of regular Eximus units.

4. A number of people aren't fans of Overguard. I don't find it wise to double down on an idea broadly considered "bad".

5. If you want an idea of what this might look like in practice, look at Nox enemies. They have...I think 95% damage reduction on body shots. See how that feels to take one of them down in, say, a Steel Path mission without hitting the head. Personally, I think it kills the flow a lot, and the more common response is just going to be to ignore it.

In short: no. If we want CC to be effective, we should be looking at how we might update Overguard to make enemies resistant, rather than immune, to CC effects. Trying to create a niche for CC, especially in the same space as its antithesis in Overguard, is bound to create more problems.

Ok so I'll explain my thoughts: (1) it's easy to differentiate the differing eximus cause one has a blue HP bar and the other has dmg reduction (idk what color but let's say pink),

(2) and (3) secondaries would be used for frames without cc abilities, alongside arcanes and operator abilities. Void dmg could also work for removing dmg reduction. 

(4) people complained about overguard because it nerfed cc while the more dominant dps meta became even more powerful, ESPECIALLY the AoE nukers. People were also upset that it nullified cc entirely.

(5) the 95% dmg reduction would only apply in insanely high levels such as levelcap runs, steel path eximus would only have 80-85% dmg reduction and you could just operator cc them.

[Tyreaus]

19 minutes ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

(1) it's easy to differentiate the differing eximus cause one has a blue HP bar and the other has dmg reduction (idk what color but let's say pink),

Hello, colourblindness and AoE. And mapping disparate colours to particular effects, as we totally do when switching to our Magnetic secondaries to take care of shielded enemies.

...bit of sarcasm at the end, there.

20 minutes ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

(2) and (3) secondaries would be used for frames without cc abilities, alongside arcanes and operator abilities. Void dmg could also work for removing dmg reduction. 

Good: you're increasing TTK via holster speeds and transference. I'll bring this TTK up again in a second.

21 minutes ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

(4) people complained about overguard because it nerfed cc while the more dominant dps meta became even more powerful, ESPECIALLY the AoE nukers. People were also upset that it nullified cc entirely.

See what I wrote at the end about updating Overguard to be CC resistant, rather than immune.

22 minutes ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

(5) the 95% dmg reduction would only apply in insanely high levels such as levelcap runs, steel path eximus would only have 80-85% dmg reduction and you could just operator cc them.

Your idea fights with itself here.

If the DR is high enough, you can encourage switching weapons and using transference and other such "Anti-Neo-Overguard" techniques. But you can't go too high or else you ruin the game flow, as per your statement about invulnerable enemies doing just that. So there's a sweet spot.

It's possible to hit that sweet spot - maybe your idea does - but like I said:

1 hour ago, Tyreaus said:

If we want CC to be effective, we should be looking at how we might update Overguard to make enemies resistant, rather than immune, to CC effects. Trying to create a niche for CC, especially in the same space as its antithesis in Overguard, is bound to create more problems.

I'd rather see what's implemented get touched up, rather than adding yet another knife's edge for DE to balance on.

[(XBOX)elementXGHILLIE]

41 minutes ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

(4) people complained about overguard because it nerfed cc while the more dominant dps meta became even more powerful, ESPECIALLY the AoE nukers. People were also upset that it nullified cc entirely.

People disliked the CC immunity because for some frames that completely invalidates a kit, or its implementation was not well though out as ALL CC being blocked is a hard slap. I agree with CC immunity on some abilities, but we need a CC to be recategorized into Soft and Hard CC. This as well as a relook at what CC does on all frames. Frost for example can not armor strip them because he cant freeze them. While you idea does make dps player understand CC frames perspective to a point. I dont like the solution to a problem being suffer with me, or when we are all Hard-countered, no one will be.

If they did go through with an implementation with this the debuff should be for AOE and abilities only.

[trst]

That just creates a bullet sponge for no real purpose that would still be obliterated by any decent weapon/build. While just being a worse overguard as all CC frames have damage (you can't enter a mission with no weapons) but not all frames/builds have CC, Cold, or Impact procs. Thus for those who do encounter problems with them you just limit build diversity way more than current overguard does.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

55 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

Hello, colourblindness and AoE. And mapping disparate colours to particular effects, as we totally do when switching to our Magnetic secondaries to take care of shielded enemies.

...bit of sarcasm at the end, there.

Good: you're increasing TTK via holster speeds and transference. I'll bring this TTK up again in a second.

See what I wrote at the end about updating Overguard to be CC resistant, rather than immune.

Your idea fights with itself here.

If the DR is high enough, you can encourage switching weapons and using transference and other such "Anti-Neo-Overguard" techniques. But you can't go too high or else you ruin the game flow, as per your statement about invulnerable enemies doing just that. So there's a sweet spot.

It's possible to hit that sweet spot - maybe your idea does - but like I said:

I'd rather see what's implemented get touched up, rather than adding yet another knife's edge for DE to balance on.

Well the idea is, people complained because enemies need to be stronger against AoE instakill room clearers instead of cc which is considered to be far weaker, so what if, we just make it so you have to switch between the two, using cc for certain enemies to be vulnerable, and other enemies are weaker to pure dps but resistant to cc.

Same thing with melee and guns, guns are really op rn, but if we can make scenarios where melee is important (like a system where enemies holding melee weapons are best combated with melee weapons), we can achieve a balance where both are useful.

DE has already tried to do this by implementing operator in Zariman, and a need to use powerful weapons against priority targets, but I think it's obvious we are going to need some changes against guns vs everything meta, whether that is an ammo nerf, tankier enemies, a larger damage falloff etc.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

2 minutes ago, trst said:

That just creates a bullet sponge for no real purpose that would still be obliterated by any decent weapon/build. While just being a worse overguard as all CC frames have damage (you can't enter a mission with no weapons) but not all frames/builds have CC, Cold, or Impact procs. Thus for those who do encounter problems with them you just limit build diversity way more than current overguard does.

If you read my second statement, I listed more counters that you can use for any build. I would have also listed blast and rad procs, but that would only make zarr meta more op. 

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

I prefer CC still apply the debuff but instead of causing the crowd control during overguard, it debuff with a damage multiplier. That way CC frames can do extra damage to overguard to get rid of it faster rather than having overguard ignore CC.

[gamingchair1121]

eximus should just be replaced with new enemies that are both challenging and fun

right now they're just annoyances to any cc frame and the dps frames legit don't even notice they just killed one

[Tyreaus]

23 minutes ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

Well the idea is, people complained because enemies need to be stronger against AoE instakill room clearers instead of cc which is considered to be far weaker, so what if, we just make it so you have to switch between the two, using cc for certain enemies to be vulnerable, and other enemies are weaker to pure dps but resistant to cc.

Same thing with melee and guns, guns are really op rn, but if we can make scenarios where melee is important (like a system where enemies holding melee weapons are best combated with melee weapons), we can achieve a balance where both are useful.

DE has already tried to do this by implementing operator in Zariman, and a need to use powerful weapons against priority targets, but I think it's obvious we are going to need some changes against guns vs everything meta, whether that is an ammo nerf, tankier enemies, a larger damage falloff etc.

If this is intended as some sort of AoE counter: Guardian Eximus exist. They have 90% DR against AoE. Yet "guns are really OP". In short: this idea didn't work.

In terms of "switching between the two", that was the intent for Overguard: strip it with (Operator) damage, then CC them. Clearly, step two dropped quite quickly, and so we have CC frames in a bad spot. Mind that this sort of change tries to put damage-dealing frames in a bad spot, too. They might not be quite so badly affected (many of them have good DR to boot) but I don't think it's a good sign that, rather than get CC frames out from under the Overguard rock, this says to toss more frames in.

Plus we should probably check arguments with the inverse. For example, if we're going to say "just use a secondary for CC when using a damage frame", we could start saying "just use a secondary for damage with a CC frame". If the argument doesn't work in the latter, what makes it OK for the former? It very well might not be OK for either.

Operator "works" in Zariman because it's literally forced. Can't take out Angels or Thrax without it. Unless you're going to start proposing this Neo-Overguard come with total damage immunity so it requires CC, that's a bit of a non-starter.

AoE weapons being OP is a problem with AoE weapons. No, not all guns are OP. Many melee weapons are still effective, some of which are themselves OP (Glaive Prime). Ammo reductions have been tried: ammo mutators exist to counter it. Tankier enemies have been tried, it's what Eximus are. Damage fall-off might work, but given a Bramma has higher single-target damage than a Nataruk (before element bonuses) and most of the content we play falls over from a stiff breeze, playing the numbers seems like an unlikely solution.

And to reiterate: Guardian Eximus exist. That didn't work either.

[SenorClipClop]

Respectfully, I don't think this would be a good idea.

1. Every loadout deals damage, but not every loadout packs CC. It is highly unlikely, but still possible, for a squad to have no CC moves or reliable Status of the types you specify, leading to a no-win scenario.
2. The point of CC is typically to "turn off" enemies, preventing them from acting. Current Eximus are CC-immune (while their Overguard is active) entirely so that they get to use their special actions against us for at least a couple of seconds, so you can't just shut them down with a Strangledome or sth before even seeing them. If current Exmius are bullet-sponges now, Neo-Eximus would compund the issue by mandating you turn off interaction with them and turn them into inert punching bags before engaging.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

8 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

If this is intended as some sort of AoE counter: Guardian Eximus exist. They have 90% DR against AoE. Yet "guns are really OP". In short: this idea didn't work.

In terms of "switching between the two", that was the intent for Overguard: strip it with (Operator) damage, then CC them. Clearly, step two dropped quite quickly, and so we have CC frames in a bad spot. Mind that this sort of change tries to put damage-dealing frames in a bad spot, too. They might not be quite so badly affected (many of them have good DR to boot) but I don't think it's a good sign that, rather than get CC frames out from under the Overguard rock, this says to toss more frames in.

Plus we should probably check arguments with the inverse. For example, if we're going to say "just use a secondary for CC when using a damage frame", we could start saying "just use a secondary for damage with a CC frame". If the argument doesn't work in the latter, what makes it OK for the former? It very well might not be OK for either.

Operator "works" in Zariman because it's literally forced. Can't take out Angels or Thrax without it. Unless you're going to start proposing this Neo-Overguard come with total damage immunity so it requires CC, that's a bit of a non-starter.

AoE weapons being OP is a problem with AoE weapons. No, not all guns are OP. Many melee weapons are still effective, some of which are themselves OP (Glaive Prime). Ammo reductions have been tried: ammo mutators exist to counter it. Tankier enemies have been tried, it's what Eximus are. Damage fall-off might work, but given a Bramma has higher single-target damage than a Nataruk (before element bonuses) and most of the content we play falls over from a stiff breeze, playing the numbers seems like an unlikely solution.

And to reiterate: Guardian Eximus exist. That didn't work either.

Ok so for the secondaries argument, I said secondaries because I'm the current meta, most primaries do damage, and most secondaries apply status effects to complement that damage. So a cc frame can just run a primary weapon if you want it to do damage, while if you want to apply status effects you just use a secondary.

A better idea might possibly be to have enemies that are almost entirely immune to AoE damage, and instead require direct damage in order to kill (I would say precision damage but that would mess with melee). And you can cc those enemies so they are easier to kill (whether or not cc'ing them makes them take more damage or not). It's kinda funny how as DE tries to make more things viable and more balanced, the meta becomes more limited and way more disparate.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

6 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

Respectfully, I don't think this would be a good idea.

1. Every loadout deals damage, but not every loadout packs CC. It is highly unlikely, but still possible, for a squad to have no CC moves or reliable Status of the types you specify, leading to a no-win scenario.
2. The point of CC is typically to "turn off" enemies, preventing them from acting. Current Eximus are CC-immune (while their Overguard is active) entirely so that they get to use their special actions against us for at least a couple of seconds, so you can't just shut them down with a Strangledome or sth before even seeing them. If current Exmius are bullet-sponges now, Neo-Eximus would compund the issue by mandating you turn off interaction with them and turn them into inert punching bags before engaging.

For (1) I already addressed this by saying that operator abilities and arcanes would be used in situations where you aren't running any normal cc, while lower level missions will barely have any dmg reduction for you to worry about.

(2), while I get why overguard was added to combat cc in the first place, it's still not helping with the larger problem, which is all the enemies dying before they can shoot back. Essentially your situation, except everyone is running a Bramma and now everything entering a 40m radius is instantly killed or grouped into a ball where they can be killed right afterward as opposed to being frozen in place. THIS definitely needs to be addressed, and we definitely need enemies who don't just instantly die from entering a room, something that not even mini boss enemies (acolytes and stalker) can accomplish anymore.

My idea was initially going to be enemies that you need to stun in order to open weakspots, the problem is literally everything with a suck ability is going to make that impossible, and a dmg reduction ability is something that would "kinda work" so at this point, maybe we should have enemies who are almost immune to anything AoE and require direct damage to be killed, and you can cc them to make it easier.

[Tsukinoki]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

A better idea might possibly be to have enemies that are almost entirely immune to AoE damage,

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

maybe we should have enemies who are almost immune to anything AoE and require direct damage to be killed, 

Here's the thing: We already have this!  It's called Guardian Eximus Units.

They are massively resistant to AOE damage, ontop of a general 90% damage reduction, have 3 shields circling them that ignore punch through and should require accuracy to take them out.

Except that it's not hard to build an AoE weapon that can take care of them even in higher level steel path.
Meaning your idea here would be utterly pointless.

 

The only way your idea could work is if they were essentially invulnerable without being CCd...and at that point they would just be enemies to skip over while newer players pray they don't appear as they are defending an MDef console.
Refer to how nox units were treated when the update first dropped: If they were eximus you just ignored them and ran by them because their overguard got the 95ish% damage reduction that general body attacks against them got and you couldn't break their face plate until you dealt with their overly bloated overguard.
Players just ignored them and ran by them without ever attacking them because it took way too long and they got nothing out of it.

And that would be the best outcome of an idea which is "Unless you CC this enemy good luck doing anything to them....." because they would have to be at least that tanky and nearly invulnerable to force people to actually work with that mechanic.
Otherwise they'll just blow it up with a bramma anyways because that things damage is just that high.

[LascarCapable]

16 hours ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

Essentially, what if we got a dps version of overguard. Essentially eximus enemies have a 50% chance to get dps overguard over regular overguard. It is a 35-50% dmg reduction for regular missions and an 80-95% for higher end missions like steel path and level cap.

To remove it, you simply need to crowd control the enemies or (for dps only frames) apply enough impact/cold procs. (This is to mirror how cc frames also use guns to fight off eximus enemies). The enemies will then be vulnerable for you to kill them.

The reason why it's a percentage debuff is so you can still brute force the enemies as having invulnerable enemies might disrupt game flow and cause problems if you are entirely lacking on cc (like new players who lack primers or people using guns that don't have cold/impact dmg).

I could see that fact that not every warframes has some kind hard CC built in being a problem with these kind of mechanics, plus the fact that you'd need energy to dissipate that kind of overguard (while current Overguard just requires you to shoot the darn eximus). That is unless you consider that literally any kind of effect applying the slightest of flinches is counted in the equation (weapon staggers, forced impact procs, etc...), which you do seem to consider.

While mechanics such as "destabilize the enemy to break its guard" is a common video game trope, I don't think it would suit Warframe much. If anything, I'd rather see overguard evolving towards some kind of CC resistance buildup (the more often you CC it, the more it resists) + AoE damage reduction. It makes much more sense in the current metagame that eximuses resist area of effect damage considering how widespread these are, while being more lenient against CC powers so warframes relying on these don't get too much dunked on.

That said, having multiple kind of overguards could be a nifty idea to encourage a more viaried style of approaches, and make eximuses feel even more varied than they are. The core idea isn't that bad, I just think making it based on stuns and cold/impact procs is not the way.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

2 hours ago, LascarCapable said:

I could see that fact that not every warframes has some kind hard CC built in being a problem with these kind of mechanics, plus the fact that you'd need energy to dissipate that kind of overguard (while current Overguard just requires you to shoot the darn eximus). That is unless you consider that literally any kind of effect applying the slightest of flinches is counted in the equation (weapon staggers, forced impact procs, etc...), which you do seem to consider.

While mechanics such as "destabilize the enemy to break its guard" is a common video game trope, I don't think it would suit Warframe much. If anything, I'd rather see overguard evolving towards some kind of CC resistance buildup (the more often you CC it, the more it resists) + AoE damage reduction. It makes much more sense in the current metagame that eximuses resist area of effect damage considering how widespread these are, while being more lenient against CC powers so warframes relying on these don't get too much dunked on.

That said, having multiple kind of overguards could be a nifty idea to encourage a more viaried style of approaches, and make eximuses feel even more varied than they are. The core idea isn't that bad, I just think making it based on stuns and cold/impact procs is not the way.

As already said in my reply to this post, the idea is for operators and arcanes to also deal with this like how operators can deal with regular overguard, so no build restrictions needed.

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

4 hours ago, Tsukinoki said:

Here's the thing: We already have this!  It's called Guardian Eximus Units.

They are massively resistant to AOE damage, ontop of a general 90% damage reduction, have 3 shields circling them that ignore punch through and should require accuracy to take them out.

Except that it's not hard to build an AoE weapon that can take care of them even in higher level steel path.
Meaning your idea here would be utterly pointless.

 

The only way your idea could work is if they were essentially invulnerable without being CCd...and at that point they would just be enemies to skip over while newer players pray they don't appear as they are defending an MDef console.
Refer to how nox units were treated when the update first dropped: If they were eximus you just ignored them and ran by them because their overguard got the 95ish% damage reduction that general body attacks against them got and you couldn't break their face plate until you dealt with their overly bloated overguard.
Players just ignored them and ran by them without ever attacking them because it took way too long and they got nothing out of it.

And that would be the best outcome of an idea which is "Unless you CC this enemy good luck doing anything to them....." because they would have to be at least that tanky and nearly invulnerable to force people to actually work with that mechanic.
Otherwise they'll just blow it up with a bramma anyways because that things damage is just that high.

As already said, lower level missions will barely have any dmg reduction because new players won't have a ton of energy or the operator.

The problem is when you are doing steel path and the support frames with a Zarr is outperforming your saryn. Essentially, there should be some limit to spammable room clearers as the people using these are essentially keeping everyone else from doing anything.