Single-target weapons with no innate punch through should be given punch through.

[Skoomaseller]

Tl;dr: Give single-target weapons that currently have no way of dealing with crowds unless modded for, innate 1.5m (minimum) body punch through, to at least keep up with current powerful weapons like the Tenet Arca Plasmor, Phantasma, Kuva Zarr and so on. Weapons that deserve such a buff are weapons like the Prisma Gorgon, Twin Grakatas, Soma Prime, and so on.

Over the years more and more guns have been added to the game, and each and every one of them, generally speaking, is much better at dealing with the enemies thrown at us compared to their predecessors.

Such is the natural consequence of a game such as this one, where newer tools get added to further empower us, the players, so we can keep playing. Power creep, as many call it. Not necessarily a bad thing if handled right.

However, I believe the time has long since passed to give older weapons a boost in power to at least keep up with the meta.

Weapons like the Tenet Arca Plasmor do not need to be modded for punch through as the projectile hits and goes through multiple mobs.

However, weapons like the Prisma Gorgon or Twin Grakatas have to be modded for punch through if they want to be able to effectively deal with crowds, thus burning a mod slot that could have been used for something else, like another element. It does not have the innate privilege of being AOE, and thus is less effective in the current state of the game where guns with innate AOE are the best since there are multiple enemies all the time.

ST weapons are definitely not useless; they can become absurd monsters in the hands of Tenno who know what they're doing. My point is that the investment needed compared to the results is not that great when compared to more modern options.

Note that I'm not asking for ST weapons to overtake AOE weapons as the kings of killing. I am merely asking that they get a small yet significant bump in power so they can keep up, at the very least.

This has actually been implemented somewhat in more powerful variants of ST weapons, such as the Kuva Karak and the Kuva Hek, however their punch through values are so low that it might as well have been 0. It is unfortunate that it is so, and more unfortunate that newer ST weapons (like the brand new Afuris Prime) did not even receive, or perhaps were not even intended to, receive innate punch through, in a meta and state of gameplay where as mentioned before, weapons with some form of innate AOE are much preferred over weapons with none.

That's all. Thanks for reading.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

It's a good idea, but I'm not sure one solution fits all guns. I mean, weapons like the Gorgon or the Tenora would still be relatively useless - they can already spray bullets over everything, the problem is each bullet does very little damage, status capped at the number (not the size) of procs. I think auto weapons need their own solution.

For semi weapons punch through it nice, but nowhere near enough. Lots of them already have innate punch through and we still don't use them. However, as they often pack a punch they can use things like Slash procs against status capped enemies.

If we're going to try and fix both problems I'd add a combo counter (similar to melee, rather than snipers, so a miss doesn't end it, you have a timer) and mods that boost it. Bows get 10x, semi gets 5x, auto gets 2x, AoE can't use them. Like melee, one mod to massive boost crit and another for status, but you could also get bigger boosts for headshots, or combo adding headshot damage, or innate punch through scaling with combo.

[Pakaku]

17 minutes ago, Skoomaseller said:

This has actually been implemented somewhat in more powerful variants of ST weapons, such as the Kuva Karak and the Kuva Hek, however their punch through values are so low that it might as well have been 0.

It's useful in some cases, like piercing through standard Grineer shields. It's possible that's a limiting factor, maybe thanks to outdated design, but then all they would have to do is tweak how much extra punchthrough is required to pierce their shields.

I'd also like to bring up the idea of allowing Puncture damage to live up to its name...

[Skoomaseller]

20 minutes ago, Pakaku said:

It's useful in some cases, like piercing through standard Grineer shields. It's possible that's a limiting factor, maybe thanks to outdated design, but then all they would have to do is tweak how much extra punchthrough is required to pierce their shields.

I'd also like to bring up the idea of allowing Puncture damage to live up to its name...

But see, that only adds to my point. The benefit from the miniscule amount of PT is so niche it might as well not exist. Plus in my experience using both it's been a bit inconsistent.

Oh yes definitely. I would love if IPS got reworked (slash can stay as is though). It's kinda sad to see impact only being useful by means of bandaid (not shattering impact, hemorrhage gives it the effect of the most powerful physical damage type, lol) and puncture being completely useless.

[Tiltskillet]

I agree with the general sentiment.  Although I'd say it should be innate -body- Punch Through. And only a small amount,  less than 1m. Then make the pure PT mods exilus. 

That leaves infinite body PT weapons, innate true PT weapons, and PT mods with useful qualities of their own.

My goal wouldn't be to make generalist build ST weapons better or equal to AoE weapons in content that emphasizes killing hordes. Only to make them more useful than now in these missions.

More than that I feel is best approached through new content, and a few tweaks to some existing enemies. More missions that emphasize ST kills,  and more enemies that reward ST killing power.  

[Tyreaus]

30 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

More than that I feel is best approached through new content, and a few tweaks to some existing enemies.

I think tweaks to existing enemies would be both more welcome and more effective. New content doesn't always have the best shelf life—I'm already finished Conjunction Survival and have no need to go back—and even when it does, it can often be corralled into one little corner. Compare that to a change to enemies, which almost certainly would encourage ST usage just about everywhere. Including the missions you—yes, you—want to play.

Doesn't have to be buffs to enemies, either, like with weakpoints or anything. Maybe Bombards have a backpack that explodes and blows up him and his buddies. Seems to work pretty well for Arbitrations, and if that explosion damage scales based on weapon damage and / or enemy level, it could be a potent addition.

There's also some potential for ability tweaks or new Warframes to encourage ST usage, here or there. As an example, while Octavia is OP as hell already, if her Mallet were to absorb direct damage from the player as well, you get a pretty solid reason to use precision weapons with her. (Nevermind a reason to do something other than sit there, cough cough.)

They're small things, individually, but a bunch of small things can add up.

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

20 hours ago, Pakaku said:

I'd also like to bring up the idea of allowing Puncture damage to live up to its name...

Like please? Idk why its used for damage reduction. Cold could reduce damage, make enemy projectiles more brittle on top of the slow, that'd be nice as its still like 5x more useless than viral and slash procs right now. Nice slowing eximus down but it still ends up being 5x easier to just kill the thing most times. 

20 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

It's a good idea, but I'm not sure one solution fits all guns. I mean, weapons like the Gorgon or the Tenora would still be relatively useless - they can already spray bullets over everything, the problem is each bullet does very little damage, status capped at the number (not the size) of procs. I think auto weapons need their own solution.

This is often the issue too. Like i dont care how well i mod most auto weapons they wont match up to top teir AoE weapons due to their kps potential. DE is horrified of nerfing the ammo of AoE weapons and putting them in a special weapon class with archguns where i they really should be, and its like since they wont, Fully automatic weapons will always suck in comparison to AoE. Fully automatic weapons whole purpose of existence in games is that they are designed to take out groups of enemies repeatedly, with mid damage as a tradeoff to semi auto weapons, and more ammo as a tradeoff to AoE weapons extremely low ammo pools.

AoE weapons in warframe just say "lol" to the lower damage trade off to semi autos, and lol to low ammo, so that they can just be spammed over n over and achieve high kps and dps with ease. Fully autos become near completly useless, heck all weapons start becoming useless in comparison, as while they all have downsides AoE still stands tall with nearly no downsides.

Said it before and will say it again, that if DE wants other weapons to have purpose, they will either have to nerf the dps or kps of this weapon so much to where its really no longer worthy of being a primary weapon anymore. They dont want to nerf its dps so that it can still be used as a powerful explosive high level missions which i respect and support, but nerf its kps. Tank its firerate or ammo pool, its the only way, and then put it in special weapon category so it isnt costing people a weapon slot.

 

Or i guess make fully automatic or high firerate weapons even better at debuffing enemies? AoE caps at 5 procs and instantly proc all 5, Semi and Fully autos cap at 15. Full armor strip possible with corrosive, freezing possible with cold, even more damage from viral and magnetic procs, etc. Idk. Its just since fully automatic weapons have high hits per second, maybe they should benefit off hits in some way?

[Tyreaus]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

Like please? Idk why its used for damage reduction.

I think it a mistake for weapon procs to relate to damage reduction at all. Weapons are offensive, not defensive. CC like Cold or Electric or Impact makes some sense, since slower / stationary targets are easier to hit, and it just so happens to lower their damage output too. Dedicated damage reduction, like on Puncture or Blast, doesn't have even that to lean on.

To loop around back to the topic, something that could be considered is leveraging "direct hit damage" attributes, alongside innate effects (like Toxin's shield bypass, something which I think is sorely underutilized). For example, perhaps Blast procs from direct hit damages deal the weapon's total Blast damage to all enemies in a 3m radius. Maybe Puncture damage has infinite body punch-through, so bullets can travel through multiple enemies with pure Puncture damage (perhaps more readily proccing whatever new Puncture proc replaces the current one?). AoE weapons tend not to benefit from PT, nor do they have a lot of Puncture damage to begin with, so this is almost a pure win for ST weapons.

We could go on with other elements and procs, too. Maybe direct hit damage allows Magnetic procs to trigger a grouping effect, which is good either by itself (with some PT or with Gas, which really just needs to scale with elemental mods) or when paired with an AoE weapon in the other slot. Maybe, just for Xata's Whisper, Void procs from direct damage also lower the enemy's level, reducing their health, armour, shields, and damage output. Quite literally degrading the target with concentrated Void energy. Perhaps his buddies nearby, too. On and on it can go. We don't need to rely on just the well-tread avenues of damage or punch-through to improve precision weapons. There are a lot of different mechanics that can be leveraged and tucked behind a direct hit condition, making single-target weapons, if not better by themselves, much better complements to AoE ones.

[Skoomaseller]

On 2022-12-24 at 5:57 AM, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

It's a good idea, but I'm not sure one solution fits all guns. I mean, weapons like the Gorgon or the Tenora would still be relatively useless - they can already spray bullets over everything, the problem is each bullet does very little damage, status capped at the number (not the size) of procs. I think auto weapons need their own solution.

For semi weapons punch through it nice, but nowhere near enough. Lots of them already have innate punch through and we still don't use them. However, as they often pack a punch they can use things like Slash procs against status capped enemies.

If we're going to try and fix both problems I'd add a combo counter (similar to melee, rather than snipers, so a miss doesn't end it, you have a timer) and mods that boost it. Bows get 10x, semi gets 5x, auto gets 2x, AoE can't use them. Like melee, one mod to massive boost crit and another for status, but you could also get bigger boosts for headshots, or combo adding headshot damage, or innate punch through scaling with combo.

Oh absolutely, this is tbh just a first step of sorts towards bringing old weapons forward.

I think reworking of IPS procs (specifically impact and puncture) could be a next step, in addition to giving base damage buffs.