Idea: a new meta for physical damage

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

Slash is king, Puncture is weak, Impact is useless. Every weapon build ends up Viral + Slash, (either from crit or impact conversion mods).

This is boring. It results in a very stale meta. I'm so sick of Viral + Slash on everything.

The root of the problem is that damage will always be more desirable than crowd control. Why stagger an enemy when they could be dead? This is a hoard shooter, we need to clear hoards fast, not stagger them temporarily and then need to stagger them again.

So, an idea for a new design, that's much closer to a rock-paper-scissors approach: all physical procs do more damage, just in different contexts...

Slash - as now has a damage over time effect, but now can never proc when shields are up and reduced by armour (no longer True damage type)

Puncture - blocked by shields, but each puncture proc causes 10% of total damage to bypass armour for 6s. An enemy with no shields and 10x Puncture procs takes damage as if they had no armour.

Impact - blocked by armour, each Impact proc causes 10% of total damage to bypass shields for 6s.

So Puncture does more damage to armoured targets, Impact does more to shielded targets, Slash does more damage overall and stacks past 10x, but does less damage to armoured or shielded targets.

This would be a nerf to all the Slash weapons, but that's needed to get any kind of balance between these types. Impact and Puncture weapons are going to become a lot more effective, especially for Corpus and Grineer respectively.

[MaxTunnerX]

As much as it would make sense for puncture damage to destroy armored targets etc., slash damage is not all that good. on SP you need armor strip or viral + slash + heat to do any good. Just viral slash alone is good for normal missions and SP infested. For corpus theres toxin and for grineer armor strip. as for crowd control, DE killed crowd control with the eximus rework and I hate them for that. Sadly it seems Im in the minority so nobody cares.

Edited July 7, 2023 by MaxTunnerX

[AntifreezeUnder0]

The problem is no crowd is a form of crowd control too.

And each of the ips do their job. Just sadly viral slash and if manage to squeeze in heat its great for everything if dont want to min max. And just go for bigger dmg numbers.

[Pakaku]

I've suggested something like this before, basically make impact and puncture damage types more consistent and focused on their strengths. The problem people kept bringing up is how armour is the only obstacle to damage, shields are nothing in comparison, so we'd need to buff enemy shields and nerf enemy armour. I definitely agree with those points, but I don't think DE agrees enough to do a total overhaul anytime soon if ever.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Pakaku

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

4 hours ago, MaxTunnerX said:

DE killed crowd control with the eximus rework and I hate them for that

This feels a little strong but I take your point. Eximus added some much-needed variety to enemy swarms, but they wreck every CC frame in scaling content.

4 hours ago, MaxTunnerX said:

slash damage is not all that good. on SP you need armor strip or viral + slash + heat to do any good

It's still what you want. Late SP you need armour strip, but you'll always take a Slash proc over an Impact one.

3 hours ago, AntifreezeUnder0 said:

And each of the ips do their job.

They really don't. If they did then -Puncture or -Impact on a Riven wouldn't double its value.

I've build some Impact based weapons - I have a stunlock Gorgon build that can immobilise and burn down any non-eximius enemy. Even back before eximus it was useless, slap on crit and Hunter Munitions and it's 20x as effective.

1 hour ago, Pakaku said:

The problem people kept bringing up is how armour is the only obstacle to damage, shields are nothing in comparison

SP Treasurers exist, and enemies tend to have a lot more shields than armour.

But it's a solvable problem, just make Impact better against shields than Puncture is with armour.

1 hour ago, Pakaku said:

I don't think DE agrees enough to do a total overhaul anytime soon if ever

Yeah, you're probably right there.

[MaxTunnerX]

5 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

It's still what you want. Late SP you need armour strip, but you'll always take a Slash proc over an Impact one.

Yep.

[Famecans]

Thoughts:

Impact is only useful when combined with elemental cold damage, basically the weapon will turn into a mercy trigger on single targets, the target also becomes easier to hit and the stun animation is greatly delayed. This damage combo is also useful for AoE weapons but the META always shows us that slowing down enemies is a useful strategy only for difficult targets or complex missions.

Puncture damage should be the main damage for AoE weapons as Puncture reduces the damage dealt by enemies i.e. it works similar to the Adaptation mod by triggering the damage reduction directly on the sending enemy. I already suggested to the DE to make Vulpaphylax Crencent similar to Panzer's AoE damage mechanic, unfortunately the DE is too busy to read the forum.

[AntifreezeUnder0]

8 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

They really don't. If they did then -Puncture or -Impact on a Riven wouldn't double its value.

I've build some Impact based weapons - I have a stunlock Gorgon build that can immobilise and burn down any non-eximius enemy. Even back before eximus it was useless, slap on crit and Hunter Munitions and it's 20x as effective.

Buts thats the thing, its not that puntcture and impact arent great. Its the fact that viral + slash and heat on top is best pick overall for everything in game, and if even add on corrosive or plain armor strip  make game mostly childs play.

Remove viral status 10 stack dmg multiplier and see how great the bleeds work! It still would do ok against armored enemies, and in sp after certain lvl everything comes with armor.

Its in a way similar to shieldgating. Its not obsulete mechanic, but required to make certain things have viability. You can go for non slash build, do great dmg . But viral is needed for the dmg amplification. 

Then again i play in sp with hirudo... You wont see slash proc from it, and instead go for long run and endure untill enemy is dead. But its just mean slower kill time.

No one wants to kill slowly, instead they like to suggest that nerf slash, and make punture and impact as pre-nerf slash. Each of the ips do their work, but people care about is how quickly enemy dies, not if it removes accuracy or staggers enemy.

Slap impact and puncture to aoe with good range and you have decent Crowd control which do 75% less dmg to you, but none cares about that. People care about dead enemies.

 

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

7 hours ago, AntifreezeUnder0 said:

Slap impact and puncture to aoe with good range and you have decent Crowd control which do 75% less dmg to you, but none cares about that

Given the ammo economy for AoE weapons you can't use them for CC, because you'll need to reapply it and keep reapplying it.

This is why crit explosive weapons that you can put Hunter Munitions on are such a fixed boring meta.

7 hours ago, AntifreezeUnder0 said:

But its just mean slower kill time

Meanwhile your defence objective is dead, or the next wave of enemies starts or whatever.

While I don't mind killing enemies a little slower while playing with a fun new weapon or frame, I'm always going to go back to something that is at least somewhat competitive.

7 hours ago, AntifreezeUnder0 said:

No one wants to kill slowly, instead they like to suggest that nerf slash, and make punture and impact as pre-nerf slash

I'd rather not nerf Slash to be honest, but the fact that Bleed does True damage will always make it overpowered. If it did the Slash damage type it would do ½ the damage in many cases.

It does seem strange to me that Slash is so much more effective against armour than Puncture.

I think we need a kind of rock-paper-scissors approach - that definitely seems the intent of the underlying damage types. The status procs should magnify that.

There are two ways to do that - either nerf Slash and boost Impact and Puncture, or don't nerf Slash and Impact and Puncture need to do insane amounts of extra True damage too.

The latter is possible, say Puncture does 1 tick of 100% True damage etc, but they all end up ridiculous and enemies will have to scale to fit it anyway.

[AntifreezeUnder0]

40 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

This is why crit explosive weapons that you can put Hunter Munitions on are such a fixed boring meta.

Yes , but not obligatory. Its still an option.  There are ways that does things better and some do average and some ... do something.

Then again it be ridiculous of me to ask that stug do same headshot dmg as something like knell. But then again having options to do so would be great, in a way.

45 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

It does seem strange to me that Slash is so much more effective against armour than Puncture.

One is like dmg over time other is debuff. So difficult to compare. Slash should be compared to electricity, toxin, fire.

And impact punture compared to radiation, cold, blast and few others.

It be better to have more worth in the other puncture and impact, but dmg over time always are better than raw , capped debuff like type.

To make other dmg types or debuff types , all enemies nearly need to act like profit taker, cycling throught dmg type which can harm it. 

Or make that slash is purely melee exlusive... But it wont change the viral slash meta.  Just kills many weapons choices and kind of reverts back to melee rework.

In the end the status effects are great as they are, what we need are more weapons to have variety in killing enemies a lot and fast, yet not be that everyone runs with same gun.

Mayb its the ips needed the change, maybe its the viral giving the insame dmg multiplier needs change and reduced stacking or its effect, but i guess none wants that since it would just kill more builds than save other things.

 

 

 

 

[Zaghyr]

IPS and Elements need to be rebalanced again. As much as the community hates 'Nerfs' it needs to happen for game health. Viral/Slash/Heat is too mandatory, and even then some status effects just feel useless anyway (cough *blast* cough). What would help is redoing IPS mods. Instead of them just increasing the their own damage type, it would work with the full base damage like Elemental mods, and then add/rework IPS mods to give better and more unique effects. Like a Puncture Mod for Primaries that increases damage to enemy weakpoints. Something, to give players a reason to build for IPS and care about it.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

16 hours ago, Zaghyr said:

Viral/Slash/Heat is too mandatory, and even then some status effects just feel useless anyway (cough *blast* cough)

Yup. Blast needs fixing too, but I think combined elemental effects are OK being extra to damage, at least until we can fix IPS.

16 hours ago, Zaghyr said:

Like a Puncture Mod for Primaries that increases damage to enemy weakpoints

That might work too, but we already have headshots penetrating enemy shield break and getting a damage buff (on most weapons).

On 2023-07-08 at 12:11 PM, AntifreezeUnder0 said:

Then again it be ridiculous of me to ask that stug do same headshot dmg as something like knell

I don't think anyone is asking for that, but the Knell is amazing and the Stug is garbage has nothing to do with IPS. The Stug does low damage, with low crit chance+damage and low status, but also with a delayed explosion that does extremely low damage. 

Fixing the Stug would be easy - it should be a beginner's status spreader. Guaranteed Corrosion proc on hit and explosion, high chance of additional procs (say 30%) but keep the low crit and no headshots. Then it would be a viable step on the way to later star-chart stat spreaders.

On 2023-07-08 at 12:11 PM, AntifreezeUnder0 said:

One is like dmg over time other is debuff. So difficult to compare. Slash should be compared to electricity, toxin, fire.

And impact punture compared to radiation, cold, blast and few others

I disagree: loads of weapons come with IPS, almost none come with combined elements (and when they do Blast is the most common).

But my point is they don't compare. One does damage and the others don't, end of discussion. If you could pick would you ever, EVER, pick Impact over Slash?

Impact isn't entirely useless. It's fine in the mix or on a high crit weapon that gets its Slash from Hunter Munitions, or even good if guaranteed on a secondary so Haemorrhage can add Slash.

I'm bored of the Viral+Slash meta. It's boring. I don't care if Impact compares OK to Blast, it's still the same boring builds.

It needs a shake up.

[AntifreezeUnder0]

7 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

But my point is they don't compare. One does damage and the others don't, end of discussion. If you could pick would you ever, EVER, pick Impact over Slash?

They cant be compared. 1 has 10 stack cap to max debufs. Other is uncapped and has dot effect. Puncture reduces accuracy and 10 stacks by 75%, impact staggers and lowers mercy counter at 10 stacks. Bleeds are DoT. 

Take any builds which can just keep stacking status untill you get bored- electric, fire, toxin, slash , and compare to others which are capped at 10 stacks.

Of course 200 stacked toxin, electric, fire, bleeds do more dmg in long run,with scaling and other multipliers, than hard capped at 10 of rest of things. 

To change viral slash meta there are few options:

a) cap slash at 10 stacks,but then all ofthers elements should get same treatment- electricity, fire, toxin all should be capped at 10, but outrage would be greater and even then nothing in meta changes, just reduces dmg and shortets viable options even more.

b) cap slash at 10 stacks and viral does not give dmg multiplier, but like at 10 stacks give 100% headshot dmg increase, but this would kill way more builds than help out balance things.

c) leave everything as is, since you can make overkill builds easely and its not a must to use viral slash, its most efficient way, but viral jobs is to make more dmg and slash toxin fire and electric just best picks to combine with the un capped status stacks.

 

7 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

the Knell is amazing and the Stug is garbage has nothing to do with IPS

Yea and same impact and punture has nothing to do with DoT such as bleeds(slash procs). 2 of them are debuffs capped at 10, other is dmg over time. 999 stacks of heat be better than 10 stacks of corrosive, but 999 stacks of fire and 10  corrosive and10  viral and  999 slash would be amazing dmg.

Good thing game has enough of overkill available you dont realy need changes, hunter mumu and internal bleeding/hermo thingy is the shieldgating of lesser viable weapons to make them viable options. 

 

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

15 hours ago, AntifreezeUnder0 said:

To change viral slash meta there are few options:

Or, like I suggested, have all 4 do extra damage because extra damage is always preferred, and just make them situational.

15 hours ago, AntifreezeUnder0 said:

Good thing game has enough of overkill available you dont realy need changes

It's boring though. Burning down a single enemy with Impact stagger-lock is slow and becomes boring fast, but every build being the same because you need Viral and you need Slash is boring too.

[Frendh]

I like the current armor system. But I think shields should be buffed and infested given higher threat level. Like giving them more toxin. Or some cancer ability like flashbangs.

Before Duviri I rarely ever used hunter munitions and the like.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Frendh

[AntifreezeUnder0]

7 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

t's boring though. Burning down a single enemy with Impact stagger-lock is slow and becomes boring fast, but every build being the same because you need Viral and you need Slash is boring too.

Well many things are boring, sad part its always come down to ourselves to either make game harder or fun by our own twisted ways and pretty much dont pick best choices(mostly same as meta) or just simply try diff things. 

Well like me i play using stug(main secondary, just because why not), hirudo (breakdancing through start shart while healing), Grendel and primary is like kuva quartak(sound great, and can pack a punch, but tough to keep up the kills in survival missions) or convertrix fun wep, but killing enemies 1 by 1 aint as usefull. 

Like my convertrix combined with grendel is bit of a twisted weapon, it withing few shots have 10 stacks of punture,impact, viral, corrosive and 200+ heat and slash and they keeep increasing the more i shoot the enemy and higher lvl it goes. When going agaisnt like archon well , i may eventualy tickle it till death with the cap of statuses it gets and the dmg attenuation.(bulletsponge on bulletsponge mechanic). But having all enemies hard cap of let say 4 stacks of each status effect maximum, is not fixing thing in general either.

My hirudo is punture weighted ,corrosive build wep, do ok in sp up to certain point. Yea it does not kill as fast as glaive, due to not being aoe slash spreader explosion wep, but still im staying full hp and enemy gradually dies.

Stug is built corrosive heat... and we all know how well stug applies statuses and do dmg!

But in the end it still same thing, puncture and impact are debuff like cold/blast/radiation

Bleeds are dmg over time- like electric/toxin/heat. 

Since nowadays every warframe gets free armor strip directly in his kit or from helminth only way to kill viral slash meta is to kill both status effects in their core(bleds be ticking for 4 secs and cap at 10, viral no longer give dmg increase), which in the end lead again to just pick the overused meta(frames or weps) since they are great on their own and the elemental ips combo is just a cheryy on top. 

[MaxTunnerX]

I actually played conclave for the first time a few days ago, and it has very similar system to what the OP suggests. So we can just copy paste it and be done with it.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

On 2023-07-15 at 7:29 PM, Frendh said:

infested given higher threat level. Like giving them more toxin. Or some cancer ability like flashbangs

At high enough levels they do, with lots of AoE that kill you from across a tile set.

I think the fix for Infested is really simple - just double the spawn rates. Where 1 Grineer or Corpus would spawn, spawn 2 or 3 infested. A level 20 Infested mission should spawn as many enemies on the map at once as level 200 Steel Path (though still at level 20).

On 2023-07-16 at 3:22 AM, AntifreezeUnder0 said:

its always come down to ourselves to either make game harder or fun by our own twisted ways and pretty much dont pick best choices(mostly same as meta) or just simply try diff things

I've been here a decade, what do you think I've been doing? I have over 100 viable riven builds on all kinds of weapons, I've made all kinds of gimmick builds that were fun to try out.

But every build ends up the same. Sure, there are a few builds that a QoL builds for mashing Gifts of the Lotus and the like, but they're the exception and if they come up in Teshin's cave they are rarely a good pick.

Everything else ends up Slash + Viral. Even with galvanised mods, Arcanes, etc my top 20 weapons all have almost identical builds. And if it doesn't have either high crit (for Hunter Munitions), high status+Slash (just add Viral) or a guaranteed Impact proc (for Haemorrhage) it just doesn't end up usable.

That burns me out. Variety is what keeps us here long term, a fixed meta is the opposite of that.

[AntifreezeUnder0]

5 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

But every build ends up the same. Sure, there are a few builds that a QoL builds for mashing Gifts of the Lotus and the like, but they're the exception and if they come up in Teshin's cave they are rarely a good pick.

Everything else ends up Slash + Viral. Even with galvanised mods, Arcanes, etc my top 20 weapons all have almost identical builds. And if it doesn't have either high crit (for Hunter Munitions), high status+Slash (just add Viral) or a guaranteed Impact proc (for Haemorrhage) it just doesn't end up usable.

That burns me out. Variety is what keeps us here long term, a fixed meta is the opposite of that.

I mean even for warframes most builds are same mods, abilities arcanes and pets....

And if it wont be viral slash, it be back to corrosive heat,  or armorstrip toxin. Same thing. 

Im using stug for fun, hirudo cause why not, quartak/convertrix depending on mood, pet is vizier predasite, and frame is grendel. But for me rest of frames aint much of a fun , not saying they bad, but grendel has something which doesnt make him boring to play... Even after nerfwork and being put on diet and removed scaling of dmg

[Traumtulpe]

On 2023-07-07 at 2:25 PM, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

Slash - as now has a damage over time effect, but now can never proc when shields are up and reduced by armour (no longer True damage type)

Puncture - blocked by shields, but each puncture proc causes 10% of total damage to bypass armour for 6s. An enemy with no shields and 10x Puncture procs takes damage as if they had no armour.

Impact - blocked by armour, each Impact proc causes 10% of total damage to bypass shields for 6s.

In this scenario you have simply switched the function of Slash and Puncture, doing nothing meaningful.

Slash no longer bypassing armor already makes it 100% obsolete, the inability to proc on shields just adds insult to injury.

Puncture is the new Slash, because armor is the only thing that matters.

Impact makes no sense at all, by the time you have 10 procs there are no shields left anyway, and it just doesn't work when a shielded enemy also has armor??

By the way, your suggestion for Puncture is way stronger than the old version of Corrosive (which was nerfed heavily).

Edited July 22, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

15 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

In this scenario you have simply switched the function of Slash and Puncture, doing nothing meaningful

Currently Slash procs do True damage - it does the same damage to robots as Infested, which feels wrong.

Meanwhile

15 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

Puncture is the new Slash, because armor is the only thing that matters

How? I'm suggesting that both would block Slash procs. Bring Puncture on a Corpus mission and you aren't going to hurt enemies with procs.

Slash would still do the most damage, over time. Puncture and Impact would do more burst damage to Grineer and Corpus respectively.

Maybe it needs tweaking, but the basic idea is: Slash is no longer universally the best, but still does the most DoT, Puncture beats armour, Impact beats shields. Basic rock paper scissors game design stuff.

[Traumtulpe]

5 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

Currently Slash procs do True damage - it does the same damage to robots as Infested, which feels wrong.

Meanwhile

How? I'm suggesting that both would block Slash procs. Bring Puncture on a Corpus mission and you aren't going to hurt enemies with procs.

Slash would still do the most damage, over time. Puncture and Impact would do more burst damage to Grineer and Corpus respectively.

Maybe it needs tweaking, but the basic idea is: Slash is no longer universally the best, but still does the most DoT, Puncture beats armour, Impact beats shields. Basic rock paper scissors game design stuff.

That's not how Warframe works. At low levels nothing matters. At high levels enemies that don't have armor don't matter, while enemies that do have armor take zero damage.

Apart from dealing true damage, Slash has the weakest damage over time effect. If it was affected by armor it would instantly be irrelevant. Especially when puncture procs allow direct damage to bypass armor.

[(PSN)rexis12]

Nerfing Slash and Viral is dumb, because it implies that Puncture and Impact, additionally Magnetic and Blast for elemental status, are viable but less viable compared to Slash and Viral.

Newsflash, it isn't.

And even if you decide to do something like Nerf Slash and Viral and buff the others.

What you're doing is just what happened to Corrosive when it was nerfed from an infinite 100% Strip, to a 80% strip on armour where values can still reach to about 1000 armour post Armour Reduction meaning that enemies have 75% DR. The only reason status that are anti armour are still 'relevant' is because they double dip in their bonuses.

Aka Ignore 70% plus an additional 70% damage increase.

You'd just shift the Meta/mandatory statuses somewhere else until DE decides to make another open world that ignores the buffed statuses and you go right back to the old ways. Like how Deimos made all the enemies there e immune to Viral, so people just went back to Corrosive + Heat.

[Zaghyr]

On 2023-07-21 at 2:44 PM, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

That burns me out. Variety is what keeps us here long term, a fixed meta is the opposite of that.

And a fixed meta shoots DE in the foot. They could add some really cool IPS and elemental mods to spice up our builds, but if they're not better than Slash/Viral/Heat, then it's just a waste of development time.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

16 hours ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

Nerfing Slash and Viral is dumb, because it implies that Puncture and Impact, additionally Magnetic and Blast for elemental status, are viable but less viable compared to Slash and Viral.

Newsflash, it isn't

Er, mate, it is. It so is. Impact is useless. Nobody needs an Impact proc unless it's guaranteed so they can use Haemorrhage to reliably get Slash. I've tried Stagger builds and sure, you can stun lock an enemy with it. I'd still rather kill the enemy.

Likewise Puncture, it's not useless, but it's not good either. Most of it comes from Puncture being a good damage type, even though its proc sucks.

You can argue about it if you want, but you'd still be wrong. You can complete the Star Chart fine with anything, but ultimately a build with Slash+Viral will perform better, and a weapon with Slash+Viral will perform better, and you can go all casual and "I don't need the best builds when this kills level 50 enemies just fine" and sure, go for that if you want.

But I want to get the most out of my weapons, take on the toughest content I can (SP Circuit and endless modes) and I find it always, always comes down to the same builds.

Then I burn out and stop playing for a bit.

16 hours ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

You'd just shift the Meta/mandatory statuses somewhere else

Do you know how to play Rock Paper Scissors? Everything gets to be strongest in context, but nothing is universally the best option. It's vasic game design and IPS damage types actually follow it - ignoring procs, Slash for flesh, Puncture for armour, Impact for shields.

Conclave is still kinda like this because procs are nerfed in PvP.

At some point this game design element got broken - I suspect Bleed never should have done true damage (Slash procs do more damage than the Slash damage type can), and CC was much more powerful in the early days where you couldn't just jump, slide or Operator mode out of there.

Anyway, my case is we need that rock paper scissors balance between the types. Not to just make another one of the IPS types the strongest.

3 hours ago, Zaghyr said:

but if they're not better than Slash/Viral/Heat, then it's just a waste of development time

Exactly. I suspect this means either a nerf to Slash, or boost everything else and then make enemies tougher so you end at the same point with bigger numbers.