Status: A Holistic Essay

[(NSW)Greybones]

On 2023-09-02 at 9:23 AM, Drasiel said:

I would qualify that I like making more than just a few builds with goals but overall that is correct.

I make... a lot. 

  Reveal hidden contents

I also agree that every combination will not fit. I add to that, that while loadouts do work effectively as full loadout quick swaps, they fail to include archwing, necramechs, and vehicles (which causes problems in areas that can utilize those in addition to our normal loadouts)  and individual item configs are very cumbersome to change between missions. 

I can’t quite remember what my point was going to be after two weeks, but I’m looking at your loadouts and am thinking that’s not a lot. And that the thought of trying to keep those updated according to variations of different leveled enemies or enemy types or weapons or playstyles or content must be a nightmare and that it’s just so much easier and faster even to just replace a few mods if there’s going to be any experimenting going on

[Drasiel]

5 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

I can’t quite remember what my point was going to be after two weeks, but I’m looking at your loadouts and am thinking that’s not a lot. And that the thought of trying to keep those updated according to variations of different leveled enemies or enemy types or weapons or playstyles or content must be a nightmare and that it’s just so much easier and faster even to just replace a few mods if there’s going to be any experimenting going on

It's 42 loadouts I don't think most people would consider that a small amount lol. I have more individual builds but those are entire sets that tend to depend on each other for full functionality.

Yeah, that's kind of the pain point of the entire system: Loadouts make switching items easy but they are harder to maintain (I have a bunch of loadouts I need to update and I've been putting it off for 2 years now). Configs are Easy to maintain but harder to swap out. 

Experimenting is always going to be easier with manual individual management. You start running into annoyance and frustration when you've got a set build and/or purpose for a single item and just want to swap it around depending on the situation. you're going 3 menus deep just to manage that unless you want to physically walk to the arsenal and then it's only 2 menus deep but burns time. 

You could read our earlier exchanges but I think you were trying to break down where the disconnect between what you think I want and what I actually want are. 

I think the underlying issues with enemy defences and damage bonuses that lead to viral and armour stripping being so prevalent as the go-to solution and path of least resistance are harming the game by making it unappealing and disadvantageous to use anything else. I also think that due to changing individual configs and keeping load-outs updated being cumbersome it further funnels players into the mindset of using one-size-fits-all builds. The best one-size-fits-all build just happens to be Viral and armour stripping, due to the underlying issues with the prevalence of armour and the specific damage type bonuses to health being abysmally inferior to Viral's general bonus. 

I don't want to make it easier to make one-size-fits-all builds, I would like to point out the issues that cause those status effects to be so "meta" so they can be addressed and the "best" builds aren't just the path of least resistance. It would be nice to return to arguing about the best builds for specific situations and not have every other option overshadowed by the massive mechanical advantages that viral and armour strip offer due to the pitfalls generated by the updates and evolutions (or the lack thereof) of these 3 interlocking systems. 

[(NSW)Greybones]

4 hours ago, Drasiel said:

It's 42 loadouts I don't think most people would consider that a small amount lol. I have more individual builds but those are entire sets that tend to depend on each other for full functionality.

Yeah, that's kind of the pain point of the entire system: Loadouts make switching items easy but they are harder to maintain (I have a bunch of loadouts I need to update and I've been putting it off for 2 years now). Configs are Easy to maintain but harder to swap out. 

Experimenting is always going to be easier with manual individual management. You start running into annoyance and frustration when you've got a set build and/or purpose for a single item and just want to swap it around depending on the situation. you're going 3 menus deep just to manage that unless you want to physically walk to the arsenal and then it's only 2 menus deep but burns time. 

You could read our earlier exchanges but I think you were trying to break down where the disconnect between what you think I want and what I actually want are. 

I think the underlying issues with enemy defences and damage bonuses that lead to viral and armour stripping being so prevalent as the go-to solution and path of least resistance are harming the game by making it unappealing and disadvantageous to use anything else. I also think that due to changing individual configs and keeping load-outs updated being cumbersome it further funnels players into the mindset of using one-size-fits-all builds. The best one-size-fits-all build just happens to be Viral and armour stripping, due to the underlying issues with the prevalence of armour and the specific damage type bonuses to health being abysmally inferior to Viral's general bonus. 

I don't want to make it easier to make one-size-fits-all builds, I would like to point out the issues that cause those status effects to be so "meta" so they can be addressed and the "best" builds aren't just the path of least resistance. It would be nice to return to arguing about the best builds for specific situations and not have every other option overshadowed by the massive mechanical advantages that viral and armour strip offer due to the pitfalls generated by the updates and evolutions (or the lack thereof) of these 3 interlocking systems. 

I’m kind of blown away by the concept of 42 loadouts being a lot. I could make up a chunk of that with one loadout just through builds alone and they’d sit in different levels of content and perform differently and interdepend differently. That means that the players who are impressed are using even less; no wonder they’re gravitating towards one-size fits all.

Which isn’t even necessarily a bad thing, which is why I’m kind of confused by the idea of sticking to one-size-fits-all all the time. You say you’re experimenting, but what experimenting are you doing? Experimenting to find those one-size-fits-all? Because you’ve got a whole slew of alternative options to play around with that would show how much of a non-issue Viral/Slash can be, and how other status effects have their place when building from the ground up for various content using various equipment and various playstyles.

The players who stick to the Meta options are specifically looking for those options, looking up guides and builds that give them what they want if not making the builds themselves while they chase the grind for things they never use because they’ve already got what they want. I’ve seen the “Best Builds” and they’re just not for me because it’s blindingly obvious what they’re meant to do and be. It’s so blindingly obvious what they are meant to be and do that I would be hard pressed to believe that there’s not other players out there who would also look at them and be like “That looks pretty boring; I’m gonna do my own thing” who would then start branching out into alternative ways to play that can easily not even factor Viral/Slash in. Even if I were to use them I’d set them aside pretty quickly and build in other ways to attain my own goals, and part of that is using the status effects that currently exist in the way they work for the content being done, and if you’re going to make changes to status effects you need to understand there’s more to this game than whatever a bunch of players who want to turn the game off use and your changes will permeate across the range of 42+ builds/loadouts we can make for the various content we do. But you’re acting like 42 is a lot and it’s too much hassle to explore beyond when it’s using the loadouts that makes it so fiddly to do so but you insist on using them, and I’m sitting here thinking you’re coming from a narrow perspective and making judgement calls that affect the whole game from within a small portion of it while you’ve already found what you wanted

Edited September 4, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[(NSW)Greybones]

3 hours ago, Drasiel said:

It's 42 loadouts I don't think most people would consider that a small amount lol. I have more individual builds but those are entire sets that tend to depend on each other for full functionality.

Yeah, that's kind of the pain point of the entire system: Loadouts make switching items easy but they are harder to maintain (I have a bunch of loadouts I need to update and I've been putting it off for 2 years now). Configs are Easy to maintain but harder to swap out. 

Experimenting is always going to be easier with manual individual management. You start running into annoyance and frustration when you've got a set build and/or purpose for a single item and just want to swap it around depending on the situation. you're going 3 menus deep just to manage that unless you want to physically walk to the arsenal and then it's only 2 menus deep but burns time. 

You could read our earlier exchanges but I think you were trying to break down where the disconnect between what you think I want and what I actually want are. 

I think the underlying issues with enemy defences and damage bonuses that lead to viral and armour stripping being so prevalent as the go-to solution and path of least resistance are harming the game by making it unappealing and disadvantageous to use anything else. I also think that due to changing individual configs and keeping load-outs updated being cumbersome it further funnels players into the mindset of using one-size-fits-all builds. The best one-size-fits-all build just happens to be Viral and armour stripping, due to the underlying issues with the prevalence of armour and the specific damage type bonuses to health being abysmally inferior to Viral's general bonus. 

I don't want to make it easier to make one-size-fits-all builds, I would like to point out the issues that cause those status effects to be so "meta" so they can be addressed and the "best" builds aren't just the path of least resistance. It would be nice to return to arguing about the best builds for specific situations and not have every other option overshadowed by the massive mechanical advantages that viral and armour strip offer due to the pitfalls generated by the updates and evolutions (or the lack thereof) of these 3 interlocking systems. 

Is all of this coming from unbalanced Steel Path? You keep mentioning armour stripping, and in general Viral/Slash tends to find its stride the most in unbalanced Steel Path

Edited September 4, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[CatboyPrincess]

almost nothing of vanilla starchart requires thoughtful modding to get thru. It does mean that fun mods are more viable.

[Drasiel]

I have had to rewrite this multiple times as the forums repeatedly eats the post.

On 2023-09-04 at 4:24 AM, (NSW)Greybones said:

I’m kind of blown away by the concept of 42 loadouts being a lot. I could make up a chunk of that with one loadout just through builds alone and they’d sit in different levels of content and perform differently and interdepend differently. That means that the players who are impressed are using even less; no wonder they’re gravitating towards one-size fits all.

Which isn’t even necessarily a bad thing, which is why I’m kind of confused by the idea of sticking to one-size-fits-all all the time. You say you’re experimenting, but what experimenting are you doing? Experimenting to find those one-size-fits-all? Because you’ve got a whole slew of alternative options to play around with that would show how much of a non-issue Viral/Slash can be, and how other status effects have their place when building from the ground up for various content using various equipment and various playstyles.

<snip>

42 loadouts is a lot of loadouts, that's on average going to be 168 builds (ignoring duplicated weapon builds are balanced by not including necramech and heavy weapon builds in the count). Believe it or not making builds and experimenting is not what most of the playerbase spends their time doing, in fact for a lot of them making builds gets in the way of what they considering the real game: completing missions and getting rewards. The majority of players just keep a few weapons and warframes on hand that they really like, perform very well, or meet both criteria. Those are the players that follow build guides and check the meta when their builds stop working. 

One-size-fits-all builds are not at face value a bad thing, they become a bad thing when they are mechanically superior to every other option by too wide of a margin. The next best damage bonus to health is 1.75x and only applies to that specific damage type, Viral is 4.25x and applies to every source of damage. It's not just several orders of magnitude better than the next best option in damage it's better in application as well, amplifying everything instead of just say your slash damage. 

Okay look, It's getting really frustrating to repeatedly tell you the different kinds of builds I make only to get "No true Scotsmanned" at every turn. I don't know what kind of secret handshake or passphrase I need to perform to meet your standards but you either need to make it a hell of lot more clear what you actually consider experimenting or drop it, because this is going nowhere and wasting my time. Here, enjoy yet another list of things I've built that probably won't meet whatever your secret criteria is. 

• Solo Teralyst build - limbo, Voidrig, Operator 777. Limbo to collect and protect the tethers, voidrig's guard mode modded for synova's. 
• Solo Profit taker build - Rhino, Battacor, Tombfinger Secondary, Redeemer, Imperator heavy weapon, Void rig, fluctus. Contains every single element
• Solo Exploiter build - any High DR frame, Long range hitscan primary and secondary. Dealing with the coolant raknoids and making it easier to hit the canisters in the air. 
• Sisters of parvos build - High DR or alternative tanking Frame (ie oberon), Tenet crycron magnetic, armour focused primary. 
• Flexcalibur steel path build - Excalibur prime, braton prime, Lato vandal, Skana prime. Just to prove I could
• Hunter Ivara conservation, mining, and fishing build -  Ivara, Baza prime, spira prime, minion knife (zaw), Oxylus
• Harvester volt rare crate and wisp farming build - Volt built for speed, volnus, akarius, ignis wraith and carrier for breaking crates.
• Nova
  • Speedva for speeding up defence negative powerstrength
  • tanking with large duration and minimun range to maintain nullstar for the dr
• Railjack
  • Corpus - Lavos, tenet cycron magnetic
  • Sentient - Wukong, Tenet cycron impact, Scourge prime, paracesis
  • Orphix - bonewidow specced into high durability and mobility
• Deimos - Rhino, Bubonico, Tombfinger Secondary, Glaive prime
• Frost 
  • small globe, high defence, mobile, crit focused
  • big globe, low energy costs, built to stay in on place, spam that globe your life depends on it. 
• Tombfinger Primary Internally bleeding build - Just seeing if you could make a viable weapon using the tombfinger's guaranteed impact proc on it's projectile without triggering the explosion. 
• Fatal Teleport ash - Ash, minion knife (zaw)
• Atlas Toroid build - Atlas, hirudo, high damage; long range; hitscan primary, magnetic secondary, huras kubrow. Cannot be knocked over, doesn't use energy, doesn't use abilities, crits heal me and huras, cannot die while using melee, cannot jump, mini desecrate from huras. 
• Atlas index build - Atlas, cedo, fragor prime. Atlas built for tectonics with augment to block off the goal, Cedo for status painting and in built condition overload, Fragor prime heavy attack build. Can hold 10 financial stress max, but no enemy can score as long atlas doesn't go down. 
• Demolisher
  • Xaku Turret mode - Xaku, sly vulpaphyla. Focused into maximising his grasp of lock and maintaining it with the vast untime, takes advantage of nearly 100% dodge from vulpaphyla. Built because I can't hear the demolisher beeps
  • weapon set for each faction's demolishers with primary and secondary split between the 2 sets of defences in use for each demolisher.

There's more but if those aren't enough of an example then there will never be enough. The builds I've kept are also only the ones that have ended up working, there have been far more failures have no reason to be remembered let alone mentioned. 

On 2023-09-04 at 4:24 AM, (NSW)Greybones said:

<snip>

The players who stick to the Meta options are specifically looking for those options, looking up guides and builds that give them what they want if not making the builds themselves while they chase the grind for things they never use because they’ve already got what they want. I’ve seen the “Best Builds” and they’re just not for me because it’s blindingly obvious what they’re meant to do and be. It’s so blindingly obvious what they are meant to be and do that I would be hard pressed to believe that there’s not other players out there who would also look at them and be like “That looks pretty boring; I’m gonna do my own thing” who would then start branching out into alternative ways to play that can easily not even factor Viral/Slash in. Even if I were to use them I’d set them aside pretty quickly and build in other ways to attain my own goals, and part of that is using the status effects that currently exist in the way they work for the content being done, and if you’re going to make changes to status effects you need to understand there’s more to this game than whatever a bunch of players who want to turn the game off use and your changes will permeate across the range of 42+ builds/loadouts we can make for the various content we do. But you’re acting like 42 is a lot and it’s too much hassle to explore beyond when it’s using the loadouts that makes it so fiddly to do so but you insist on using them, and I’m sitting here thinking you’re coming from a narrow perspective and making judgement calls that affect the whole game from within a small portion of it while you’ve already found what you wanted

Did you not read the essay at all? This isn't about what players subjectively find interesting or fun, this is about the mechanical performance of damage types and status effects. There should not be clear mechanical "best builds" There should be multiple different mechanical side-grades for all levels of play that encourage picking the best option for your play style and not just the one set of options that is more than 4x as effective as the next option. 

Some players such as you or I will branch out, but that doesn't mean that we should ignore the negative psychological effects such a powerful game spanning FOO strategy presents. There are going to be a lot of players who want to branch out and try things that could be more fun but will be unable to becuase they cannot stomach the drop in performance or they simply lack the skill (or just never developed it in the first place) to deal with enemies without that crutch. 

Let me say it again louder and in bold....  DID YOU NOT READ THE ESSAY AT ALL?

I'm not just looking at status effects I'm looking at enemy defences the changes to them over time, how that affects the goals of modding, the behaviour of the damage types without status effects, how the way the math for physical damage types works and hampers their desirability, the way elemental damage types combine and their hidden opportunity costs for the usage of one element over another, and how the status effects finally come in on top of all of that and what they bring that further biases players choice for weapon modding and leads to the current meta. I LITERALLY went through this POINT by POINT I showed my work and you are still stuck on this idea that I'm using only-one-size-fits all builds and trying to get viral nerfed because I don't like it.  

*deep breath* you are trying my patience considerably so I'm going back to capslock and bold to see if you will actually read and absorb it this time:

LOADOUT MANAGEMENT AND CONFIG SWITCHING BEING CUMBERSOME IS A SEPARATE ISSUE FROM THE MECHANICAL ISSUES BETWEEN ENEMY DEFENCE AND PLAYER DAMAGE TYPES AND STATUS EFFECTS

Loadout managment and config switching being cumbersome will contribute to players utilising one-size-fits-all builds BUT IT IS NOT THE SOURCE OF THE ISSUE. If the systems we are discussing were a cake then the Defense, damage, and status systems would be cake itself, while the over-performing options would be icing, and loadout/config management would be a light dusting of sprinkles on top. This cake always has icing, but sprinkles are optional. 

*pinches bridge of nose* I use the loadouts because they are better than not using them. when I want to swap out entire sets they work fine, even if I have to review them every 3 months to keep them updated or adjust them because a better or more fun alternative presented itself. Loadouts just don't work for switching out individual options like only your frame or only a secondary or melee weapon etc. Honestly you could fix that by having an equipment option for wildcard, or some other name, a placeholder where it doesn't change whatever you have equipped in that spot when you swap loadouts. 

 

On 2023-09-04 at 4:30 AM, (NSW)Greybones said:

Is all of this coming from unbalanced Steel Path? You keep mentioning armour stripping, and in general Viral/Slash tends to find its stride the most in unbalanced Steel Path

No, you already run into the prevalence of armour outside of the steel path especially if you play any endless missions. Once enemy damage reaches a high enough point the best defence is killing things before they can hit you, this threshold can vary quite a bit between player skill levels, chosen warframes and builds, and ones currently available mod options.

Specifically in the case of endurance runs: With some enemies gaining immunity to CC effects and some other changes that reduced the effectiveness of CC in general people doing endurance runs have very firmly shifted into "the best enemy is a dead enemy, the faster they die the better" mindset. 

• Zarimon
• Arbitrations
• Archon hunts
• Liches/Sisters
• High level Open world Bounties (they scale differently than the starchart and end up tougher at a lower level)
• Narmer bounties
• Railjack
  • even more so railjack fissures which further scales the enemy levels
• Any endurance run endless mission

all start to run into high enough levels of armour that even the least mechanically inclined player will notice. Whenever you see the term "bullet sponge" applied you can be sure that there is armour involved. 

Steel path just makes it really obvious with the doubling of armour and health (and shields but that's not applicable here)  but armour starts becoming an issue on the high end even before then. A level 130 Heavy gunner has nearly 1 million EHP and It's getting 96% DR from it's armour. When you modify that gunner for the steel path you end up with nearly 6 million EHP but doubling it's armour only increases it's DR to 98%. If you strip the armour from the normal Heavy gunner they only have about 35 thousand health. If you strip the armour from the Steel path Heavy gunner they only have about 70 thousand health. 

Edited September 8, 2023 by Drasiel
formatting

[(NSW)Greybones]

1 hour ago, Drasiel said:

I have had to rewrite this multiple times as the forums repeatedly eats the post.

42 loadouts is a lot of loadouts, that's on average going to be 168 builds (ignoring duplicated weapon builds are balanced by not including necramech and heavy weapon builds in the count). Believe it or not making builds and experimenting is not what most of the playerbase spends their time doing, in fact for a lot of them making builds gets in the way of what they considering the real game: completing missions and getting rewards. The majority of players just keep a few weapons and warframes on hand that they really like, perform very well, or meet both criteria. Those are the players that follow build guides and check the meta when their builds stop working. 

One-size-fits-all builds are not at face value a bad thing, they become a bad thing when they are mechanically superior to every other option by too wide of a margin. The next best damage bonus to health is 1.75x and only applies to that specific damage type, Viral is 4.25x and applies to every source of damage. It's not just several orders of magnitude better than the next best option in damage it's better in application as well, amplifying everything instead of just say your slash damage. 

Okay look, It's getting really frustrating to repeatedly tell you the different kinds of builds I make only to get "No true Scotsmanned" at every turn. I don't know what kind of secret handshake or passphrase I need to perform to meet your standards but you either need to make it a hell of lot more clear what you actually consider experimenting or drop it, because this is going nowhere and wasting my time. Here, enjoy yet another list of things I've built that probably won't meet whatever your secret criteria is. 

• Solo Teralyst build - limbo, Voidrig, Operator 777. Limbo to collect and protect the tethers, voidrig's guard mode modded for synova's. 
• Solo Profit taker build - Rhino, Battacor, Tombfinger Secondary, Redeemer, Imperator heavy weapon, Void rig, fluctus. Contains every single element
• Solo Exploiter build - any High DR frame, Long range hitscan primary and secondary. Dealing with the coolant raknoids and making it easier to hit the canisters in the air. 
• Sisters of parvos build - High DR or alternative tanking Frame (ie oberon), Tenet crycron magnetic, armour focused primary. 
• Flexcalibur steel path build - Excalibur prime, braton prime, Lato vandal, Skana prime. Just to prove I could
• Hunter Ivara conservation, mining, and fishing build -  Ivara, Baza prime, spira prime, minion knife (zaw), Oxylus
• Harvester volt rare crate and wisp farming build - Volt built for speed, volnus, akarius, ignis wraith and carrier for breaking crates.
• Nova
  • Speedva for speeding up defence negative powerstrength
  • tanking with large duration and minimun range to maintain nullstar for the dr
• Railjack
  • Corpus - Lavos, tenet cycron magnetic
  • Sentient - Wukong, Tenet cycron impact, Scourge prime, paracesis
  • Orphix - bonewidow specced into high durability and mobility
• Deimos - Rhino, Bubonico, Tombfinger Secondary, Glaive prime
• Frost 
  • small globe, high defence, mobile, crit focused
  • big globe, low energy costs, built to stay in on place, spam that globe your life depends on it. 
• Tombfinger Primary Internally bleeding build - Just seeing if you could make a viable weapon using the tombfinger's guaranteed impact proc on it's projectile without triggering the explosion. 
• Fatal Teleport ash - Ash, minion knife (zaw)
• Atlas Toroid build - Atlas, hirudo, high damage; long range; hitscan primary, magnetic secondary, huras kubrow. Cannot be knocked over, doesn't use energy, doesn't use abilities, crits heal me and huras, cannot die while using melee, cannot jump, mini desecrate from huras. 
• Atlas index build - Atlas, cedo, fragor prime. Atlas built for tectonics with augment to block off the goal, Cedo for status painting and in built condition overload, Fragor prime heavy attack build. Can hold 10 financial stress max, but no enemy can score as long atlas doesn't go down. 
• Demolisher
  • Xaku Turret mode - Xaku, sly vulpaphyla. Focused into maximising his grasp of lock and maintaining it with the vast untime, takes advantage of nearly 100% dodge from vulpaphyla. Built because I can't hear the demolisher beeps
  • weapon set for each faction's demolishers with primary and secondary split between the 2 sets of defences in use for each demolisher.

There's more but if those aren't enough of an example then there will never be enough. The builds I've kept are also only the ones that have ended up working, there have been far more failures have no reason to be remembered let alone mentioned. 

Did you not read the essay at all? This isn't about what players subjectively find interesting or fun, this is about the mechanical performance of damage types and status effects. There should not be clear mechanical "best builds" There should be multiple different mechanical side-grades for all levels of play that encourage picking the best option for your play style and not just the one set of options that is more than 4x as effective as the next option. 

Some players such as you or I will branch out, but that doesn't mean that we should ignore the negative psychological effects such a powerful game spanning FOO strategy presents. There are going to be a lot of players who want to branch out and try things that could be more fun but will be unable to becuase they cannot stomach the drop in performance or they simply lack the skill (or just never developed it in the first place) to deal with enemies without that crutch. 

Let me say it again louder and in bold....  DID YOU NOT READ THE ESSAY AT ALL?

I'm not just looking at status effects I'm looking at enemy defences the changes to them over time, how that affects the goals of modding, the behaviour of the damage types without status effects, how the way the math for physical damage types works and hampers their desirability, the way elemental damage types combine and their hidden opportunity costs for the usage of one element over another, and how the status effects finally come in on top of all of that and what they bring that further biases players choice for weapon modding and leads to the current meta. I LITERALLY went through this POINT by POINT I showed my work and you are still stuck on this idea that I'm using only-one-size-fits all builds and trying to get viral nerfed because I don't like it.  

*deep breath* you are trying my patience considerably so I'm going back to capslock and bold to see if you will actually read and absorb it this time:

LOADOUT MANAGEMENT AND CONFIG SWITCHING BEING CUMBERSOME IS A SEPARATE ISSUE FROM THE MECHANICAL ISSUES BETWEEN ENEMY DEFENCE AND PLAYER DAMAGE TYPES AND STATUS EFFECTS

Loadout managment and config switching being cumbersome will contribute to players utilising one-size-fits-all builds BUT IT IS NOT THE SOURCE OF THE ISSUE. If the systems we are discussing were a cake then the Defense, damage, and status systems would be cake itself, while the over-performing options would be icing, and loadout/config management would be a light dusting of sprinkles on top. This cake always has icing, but sprinkles are optional. 

*pinches bridge of nose* I use the loadouts because they are better than not using them. when I want to swap out entire sets they work fine, even if I have to review them every 3 months to keep them updated or adjust them because a better or more fun alternative presented itself. Loadouts just don't work for switching out individual options like only your frame or only a secondary or melee weapon etc. Honestly you could fix that by having an equipment option for wildcard, or some other name, a placeholder where it doesn't change whatever you have equipped in that spot when you swap loadouts. 

 

No, you already run into the prevalence of armour outside of the steel path especially if you play any endless missions. Once enemy damage reaches a high enough point the best defence is killing things before they can hit you, this threshold can vary quite a bit between player skill levels, chosen warframes and builds, and ones currently available mod options.

Specifically in the case of endurance runs: With some enemies gaining immunity to CC effects and some other changes that reduced the effectiveness of CC in general people doing endurance runs have very firmly shifted into "the best enemy is a dead enemy, the faster they die the better" mindset. 

• Zarimon
• Arbitrations
• Archon hunts
• Liches/Sisters
• High level Open world Bounties (they scale differently than the starchart and end up tougher at a lower level)
• Narmer bounties
• Railjack
  • even more so railjack fissures which further scales the enemy levels
• Any endurance run endless mission

all start to run into high enough levels of armour that even the least mechanically inclined player will notice. Whenever you see the term "bullet sponge" applied you can be sure that there is armour involved. 

Steel path just makes it really obvious with the doubling of armour and health (and shields but that's not applicable here)  but armour starts becoming an issue on the high end even before then. A level 130 Heavy gunner has nearly 1 million EHP and It's getting 96% DR from it's armour. When you modify that gunner for the steel path you end up with nearly 6 million EHP but doubling it's armour only increases it's DR to 98%. If you strip the armour from the normal Heavy gunner they only have about 35 thousand health. If you strip the armour from the Steel path Heavy gunner they only have about 70 thousand health. 

You want an example of an alternative build that doesn’t use Viral/Slash? And I think if this is explored, you’ll understand where I’m coming from when I say you can’t balance this build-crafting game around players who do not want to build-craft and who do not want balance, and why Steel Path, unbalanced as it is, is doing what it’s meant to do. And why when you say you’re coming from a holistic view and are trying to save players from themselves, I’m thinking it’s not holistic and you can’t save players from themselves through brute force in this particular game (though again, if Viral were reduced in impact I wouldn’t mind seeing how it plays out, and if armour were adjusted slightly I wouldn’t mind seeing how that plays out; it only needs to go as high as the non-SP content asks).

As part of a loadout of gear I’m leveling, I’m leveling a rank 28 Tombfinger kitgun (I don’t remember the pieces, but it’s a charged explosive shot with traveltime) with Speed Trigger, Rifle Aptitude, Hammershot, High Voltage, and Stormbringer.

Two questions; where do you think I’m taking it, and why do you think I’ve built it that way?

edit: Incidentally, I quickly jumped into Simulacrum and shot a non-SP 140 Heavy Gunner with a Corrosive build on my Argonak, and it looks fine; she’s tougher than the grunts around her, but she dies at an okay rate for a heavy unit from a semi-auto assault rifle. Trying to sit there and out-damage her is going to go about as well as you’d expect, but I wouldn’t recommend standing around trying to out-damage the bad guys before they out-damage you in the first place

Edited September 8, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[Drasiel]

27 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

You want an example of an alternative build that doesn’t use Viral/Slash? And I think if this is explored, you’ll understand where I’m coming from when I say you can’t balance this build-crafting game around players who do not want to build-craft and who do not want balance, and why Steel Path, unbalanced as it is, is doing what it’s meant to do. And why when you say you’re coming from a holistic view and are trying to save players from themselves, I’m thinking it’s not holistic and you can’t save players from themselves through brute force in this particular game (though again, if Viral were reduced in impact I wouldn’t mind seeing how it plays out, and if armour were adjusted slightly I wouldn’t mind seeing how that plays out; it only needs to go as high as the non-SP content asks).

As part of a loadout of gear I’m leveling, I’m leveling a rank 28 Tombfinger kitgun (I don’t remember the pieces, but it’s a charged explosive shot with traveltime) with Speed Trigger, Rifle Aptitude, Hammershot, High Voltage, and Stormbringer.

Two questions; where do you think I’m taking it, and why do you think I’ve built it that way?

edit: Incidentally, I quickly jumped into Simulacrum and shot a non-SP 140 Heavy Gunner with a Corrosive build on my Argonak, and it looks fine; she’s tougher, but she dies at an okay rate. Trying to sit there and out-damage her is going to go about as well as you’d expect, but I wouldn’t recommend standing around trying to out-damage the bad guys before they out-damage you in the first place

So that's it, you're just assuming all the different builds I describe are viral slash, you don't listen to what the build is for or how it functions you're just assuming It's all viral slash because I didn't give you literal configs. 

No, you don't get it, you have to balance looters around the maximum performance available to the player even if you don't want to that's why we have damage attenuation, that's why we have enemies with immunity to viral, that's why we have bosses that ignore status effects or take severely reduced effects from them, that's why there are special enemies that can only have their armour stripped by one specific mod. The reason such massive outliers in performance necessitate balancing to compensate for them is because the faster you can clear content the faster you can farm the new thing, the faster you can get the better items, the sooner you can sell items on the market, the quicker you can burn through the content. It unbalances player progression, the player marketplace, and the necessary speed you have to maintain when producing new content for a life service game.

Right now we are seeing more and more additions to the game being balanced around the damage expectations of the current outliers in damage performance, and the longer this state of affairs continues the more the game will end up funnelling players into those builds because new end game or simply the next expansion of content will add more items that were designed with that outlier in mind until eventually more of the game "requires" those outliers than doesn't.

I know what a tombfinger kit gun is, I listed two of my builds containing it in primary and secondary form, since you said it's charged it must be the primary version since the secondary doesn't need to charge. Even without seeing the stat bias for the parts you chose you're clearly building for status although I'm not sure why you're not using galvanized aptitude in place of the base, gonna guess you don't have it yet. it's got high inherent radiation and you've modded in electricity, there's a few places this build could be utilised. You could be pairing it with a high amount, but not total, armour strip and taking advantage of the alloy armour bonus from radiation against grineer while using the electricity's status effect to double dip and spread a second layer of that damage through the electric proc. You could have built this specifically to deal with low shield but high health armoured corpus and corpus robotics units doubling up on the bonuses from rad and viral against robotic health, and radiation against alloy armour. Or you could be utilising the wide area of effect of the tombfinger primary (although not listing firestorm here is odd if that is the case) to create a large crowd control effect split between the effects of confusion from radiation and the tesla coil from electricity's status effect. You could even have built this for the very niche case of disabling ancient infested auras via radiation procs with a nice hit of CC from tesla coil that the disruptors won't be immune or apply diminishing returns to. 

Greybones. You.... do you even know why what you said in your edit proves my point about armour stripping? Like I've been trying really hard to maintain a certain standard of dialogue but that statement is damn hard not to call belligerently uninformed. You used a corrosive build on a status biased weapon against a heavy gunner and it performed fine. Of course it performed fine!

Again: DID YOU NOT READ THE ESSAY? CORROSIVE IS ONE OF THE OTHER HIGH TIER META OPTIONS.  

Not only does corrosive have a bonus against the ferrite armour which means that it ignores 75% of the gunners armour before you apply the 75% bonus damage to your corrosive damage it's going to strip up to 80% of the remaining armour if you apply corrosive status. Even if you don't mod for status on the argonak it's going to proc corrosive at least a few times and further lower the the total EHP you have to chew through. 

[(NSW)Greybones]

9 minutes ago, Drasiel said:

So that's it, you're just assuming all the different builds I describe are viral slash, you don't listen to what the build is for or how it functions you're just assuming It's all viral slash because I didn't give you literal configs. 

No, you don't get it, you have to balance looters around the maximum performance available to the player even if you don't want to that's why we have damage attenuation, that's why we have enemies with immunity to viral, that's why we have bosses that ignore status effects or take severely reduced effects from them, that's why there are special enemies that can only have their armour stripped by one specific mod. The reason such massive outliers in performance necessitate balancing to compensate for them is because the faster you can clear content the faster you can farm the new thing, the faster you can get the better items, the sooner you can sell items on the market, the quicker you can burn through the content. It unbalances player progression, the player marketplace, and the necessary speed you have to maintain when producing new content for a life service game.

Right now we are seeing more and more additions to the game being balanced around the damage expectations of the current outliers in damage performance, and the longer this state of affairs continues the more the game will end up funnelling players into those builds because new end game or simply the next expansion of content will add more items that were designed with that outlier in mind until eventually more of the game "requires" those outliers than doesn't.

I know what a tombfinger kit gun is, I listed two of my builds containing it in primary and secondary form, since you said it's charged it must be the primary version since the secondary doesn't need to charge. Even without seeing the stat bias for the parts you chose you're clearly building for status although I'm not sure why you're not using galvanized aptitude in place of the base, gonna guess you don't have it yet. it's got high inherent radiation and you've modded in electricity, there's a few places this build could be utilised. You could be pairing it with a high amount, but not total, armour strip and taking advantage of the alloy armour bonus from radiation against grineer while using the electricity's status effect to double dip and spread a second layer of that damage through the electric proc. You could have built this specifically to deal with low shield but high health armoured corpus and corpus robotics units doubling up on the bonuses from rad and viral against robotic health, and radiation against alloy armour. Or you could be utilising the wide area of effect of the tombfinger primary (although not listing firestorm here is odd if that is the case) to create a large crowd control effect split between the effects of confusion from radiation and the tesla coil from electricity's status effect. You could even have built this for the very niche case of disabling ancient infested auras via radiation procs with a nice hit of CC from tesla coil that the disruptors won't be immune or apply diminishing returns to. 

Greybones. You.... do you even know why what you said in your edit proves my point about armour stripping? Like I've been trying really hard to maintain a certain standard of dialogue but that statement is damn hard not to call belligerently uninformed. You used a corrosive build on a status biased weapon against a heavy gunner and it performed fine. Of course it performed fine!

Again: DID YOU NOT READ THE ESSAY? CORROSIVE IS ONE OF THE OTHER HIGH TIER META OPTIONS.  

Not only does corrosive have a bonus against the ferrite armour which means that it ignores 75% of the gunners armour before you apply the 75% bonus damage to your corrosive damage it's going to strip up to 80% of the remaining armour if you apply corrosive status. Even if you don't mod for status on the argonak it's going to proc corrosive at least a few times and further lower the the total EHP you have to chew through. 

Oh sorry, I used Radiation against Bombards too and it worked fine. And then I tried Viral and it worked… okay. Not as nice as the other two.

Argonak has status-based full auto and crit-based semi-auto firemodes. I was using the semi-auto

I can’t fully read your post just yet, but a quick skim and I saw you seemed to be under some sort of wrong impression. I’ll finish reading when I get a chance

Edited September 8, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[(NSW)Greybones]

25 minutes ago, Drasiel said:

I know what a tombfinger kit gun is, I listed two of my builds containing it in primary and secondary form, since you said it's charged it must be the primary version since the secondary doesn't need to charge. Even without seeing the stat bias for the parts you chose you're clearly building for status although I'm not sure why you're not using galvanized aptitude in place of the base, gonna guess you don't have it yet. it's got high inherent radiation and you've modded in electricity, there's a few places this build could be utilised. You could be pairing it with a high amount, but not total, armour strip and taking advantage of the alloy armour bonus from radiation against grineer while using the electricity's status effect to double dip and spread a second layer of that damage through the electric proc. You could have built this specifically to deal with low shield but high health armoured corpus and corpus robotics units doubling up on the bonuses from rad and viral against robotic health, and radiation against alloy armour. Or you could be utilising the wide area of effect of the tombfinger primary (although not listing firestorm here is odd if that is the case) to create a large crowd control effect split between the effects of confusion from radiation and the tesla coil from electricity's status effect. You could even have built this for the very niche case of disabling ancient infested auras via radiation procs with a nice hit of CC from tesla coil that the disruptors won't be immune or apply diminishing returns to. 

And yet I’ve built it this way. Tell me where I’m taking it, and why I’m not overbuilding it. Though my capacity is filled, I have in my Orbiter the mods to make it hit harder, I make alternative builds using them and can push it as far as possible right now and yet I’m not

Edited September 8, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones
I guess you did come up with a few ways to use it

[Drasiel]

2 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Oh sorry, I used Radiation against Bombards too and it worked fine. And then I tried Viral and it worked… okay. Not as nice as the other two.

Argonak has status-based full auto and crit-based semi-auto firemodes. I was using the semi-auto

I can’t fully read your post just yet, but a quick skim and I saw you seemed to be under some sort of wrong impression. I’ll finish reading when I get a chance

*incoherent frustrated noises* RADIATION DOES THE SAME THING FOR ALLOY ARMOUR THAT CORROSIVE DOES FOR FERRITE. Radiation ignores 75% of alloy armour the same way corrosive ignores 75% of ferrite armour. The only reason Radiation is deemed inferior to corrosive in the community is because it doesn't offer an armour strip on top of that baseline negation and some players find the confusion effect messes up spawn flow which is considered too big of a detriment. WHICH WAS COVERED IN THE ESSAY that you clearly did not read.

Semi-auto with 19% status chance, assuming you didn't happen to use the dual status and elemental mods for electricity and toxin which would increase it to 41% is more than enough to get a few stacks of corrosive going, especially if it's "corrosive focused" and the status is biased towards corrosive from the higher damage value. It also doesn't need to trigger any status to just ignore 75% of the armour with corrosive damage itself, the status effect is just gravy that makes it even better at dealing with a heavy gunner.

5 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

And yet I’ve built it this way. Tell me where I’m taking it

Dude, I gave you 4 directions you could be taking it, get your eyes checked. 

[(NSW)Greybones]

7 minutes ago, Drasiel said:

Dude, I gave you 4 directions you could be taking it, get your eyes checked. 

What level of content and what content in general am I taking it to

[Drasiel]

4 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

What level of content and what content in general am I taking it to

I'm not going waste time playing into your "gotcha" moment you can respond in good faith or I can stop wasting time with you, I gave you four directions you could take it that are level agnostic, even if less effective at higher levels or on the steel path, than other builds that just kill enemies, so kindly take yourself somewhere private if you're going to indulge in that kind of self gratification, I don't need or want to be part of your kink.

Any player can take whatever build wherever they want, the efficacy of your build doesn't matter if that meets whatever build requirements or fun level you set for yourself. Preference and play style still don't change the cold hard math that viral is 4 times better than the next health bonus or the mechanical decisions that have lead to high level and heavy units all having armour. No matter how much you want dance around player preference and intentionally choosing sub optimal build paths those are facts. I get it you don't build that way, and I have feeling you would never build anything purely for performance to begin with or at least not numerical and mechanical superiority because quite clearly that's not the type of player you seem to be, but your aggressive denial that those facts are true and that the fallout from that negatively affects the psychology and build diversity of players in the game is frankly ludicrous. 

24 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Oh sorry, I used Radiation against Bombards too and it worked fine. And then I tried Viral and it worked… okay. Not as nice as the other two.

<snip>

I was editing this in before you posted but so it can go here: Also no duh armour strip is going to be more effective against heavily armoured enemies than only viral. Viral is the best health damage bonus in the game but armour still reduces all non bonus against armour sources including any values derived from Viral's status effect. That's why you always see it paired with Heat or Slash damage which both deal with armour in their own way. Some players pair it with Radiation, on certain weapons where you can build both viral and corrosive it's one of the best modding options. Viral not being effective against armour doesn't change it's effectiveness against health, and armour strip being better than just viral WAS ALSO COVERED IN THE ESSAY.

[(NSW)Greybones]

1 hour ago, Drasiel said:

I'm not going waste time playing into your "gotcha" moment you can respond in good faith or I can stop wasting time with you, I gave you four directions you could take it that are level agnostic, even if less effective at higher levels or on the steel path, than other builds that just kill enemies, so kindly take yourself somewhere private if you're going to indulge in that kind of self gratification, I don't need or want to be part of your kink.

Any player can take whatever build wherever they want, the efficacy of your build doesn't matter if that meets whatever build requirements or fun level you set for yourself. Preference and play style still don't change the cold hard math that viral is 4 times better than the next health bonus or the mechanical decisions that have lead to high level and heavy units all having armour. No matter how much you want dance around player preference and intentionally choosing sub optimal build paths those are facts. I get it you don't build that way, and I have feeling you would never build anything purely for performance to begin with or at least not numerical and mechanical superiority because quite clearly that's not the type of player you seem to be, but your aggressive denial that those facts are true and that the fallout from that negatively affects the psychology and build diversity of players in the game is frankly ludicrous. 

You don’t know how far it can go, do you?

Because there is a limit for that build on that gun, and the game is absolutely designed to support being within that limit even as you claim the game needs to or is designed around the maximum amount of power some number crunchers come up with (which incidentally I’d use those builds too and not have a problem either using them or not using them).

The game is already designed around whatever level of content we can do or build/loadout we can make and combine with said content, and it’s a complicated thing that some power chaser who feels pressured into squashing themselves into the top cannot understand until they actually take a holistic perspective and see what works and what doesn’t for the sake of build variety and how the game facilitates more than the Meta

Your players you’re trying to save are inventing problems for themselves while they convince themselves that it’s all about power and then wonder where the game, with all its build and gameplay variety, went while they grind away for things they never use because the rest of the game is the other way from the direction they’re trying to go. I’ll have a second look at your essay, but I know that it’s going to be limited in scope

edit: feh. Impact stagger can be good as micro CC and landing shots isn’t that problematic, but some power junkie Meta-chaser wouldn’t know anything about that

Edited September 8, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[(NSW)Greybones]

All in all, I think DE would benefit from looking through the OP. But they’ll be making decisions that may or may not align with expectations and may be downright esoteric in ways that may not make sense to your standard Warframe player

[Drasiel]

1 hour ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

You don’t know how far it can go, do you?

Because there is a limit for that build on that gun, and the game is absolutely designed to support being within that limit even as you claim the game needs to or is designed around the maximum amount of power some number crunchers come up with (which incidentally I’d use those builds too and not have a problem either using them or not using them).

The game is already designed around whatever level of content we can do or build/loadout we can make and combine with said content, and it’s a complicated thing that some power chaser who feels pressured into squashing themselves into the top cannot understand until they actually take a holistic perspective and see what works and what doesn’t for the sake of build variety and how the game facilitates more than the Meta

Your players you’re trying to save are inventing problems for themselves while they convince themselves that it’s all about power and then wonder where the game, with all its build and gameplay variety, went while they grind away for things they never use because the rest of the game is the other way from the direction they’re trying to go. I’ll have a second look at your essay, but I know that it’s going to be limited in scope

I don't like explosive weaponry so it's not a weapon I've used extensively outside of specific and weird builds but even a poorly built Tombfinger has very solid base stats, you can use it for most of the content in the game depending on your tolerance for performance. You still haven't deigned to tell me what that partial build is actually for, what the full build will be or which of the 4 directions I outlined apply or not, so NO, I can't tell you "how far it can go" because you haven't given me all the information you strange mentally pernicious gremlin of a tenno. Do I have to answer your riddles 3 or perform some other esoteric fetch quest before you will for the love of god, tell me what you actually mean instead of useless leading questions and assumptions about my intentions?

You can't know ANYTHING if you refuse to read literally what this entire topic is about. What you "know" is nothing more than a baseless assumption. You are starting from a hostile position based on that assumption and have thus far refused to engage with an open mind because you've decided I'm wrong before even reading or acknowledging the points of data I provided to support my arguments.

This reply was a lot harsher and far less kind towards you originally but at very least with this response:

1 hour ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

All in all, I think DE would benefit from looking through the OP. But they’ll be making decisions that may or may not align with expectations and may be downright esoteric in ways that may not make sense to your standard Warframe player

It seems you may have actually read and absorbed some of the essay. I don't expect any of my proposed suggestions to be the right or the best options, as I mentioned previously I mostly added them to stave off complaints that this isn't real feedback if it doesn't include solutions. The main goal of this was to outline the underlying issues and mechanics that have led to some status effects being labelled as good, bad, or best in the community and the full circle return in the Meta to the modding behaviour that was deemed so unhealthy for the game that they redid the entire damage system 1 and a half times. We got damage 2.0 to get away from every endgame enemy having armour and how that resulted in the only builds people used ignoring or bypassing that armour. Well, there was actually one other goal too, killing "rainbow builds" which used every element to just stack more damage, they didn't combine so you could have cold, heat, and electric on the same weapon (toxin didn't exist as a mod then). Although I've never been totally sure the sheer amount of elements we ended up with was a great alternative there, but I digress. 

There are a lot of overlapping behaviours and mechanics in the the three core systems of Enemy Defences, Player Damage types, and Player Status effects and you absolutely cannot just jump in and "fix" one of them without regard to the others because they are interlocking and can have extremely widespread ripple effects that affect the entirety of the game. The simple buffs we got to viral, slash, and eventually fire that helped steer the community into the current Meta are a good example of that. Just nerfing the over-performers won't solve the issue and neither would buffing everything else to work like them, because neither of those changes address the underlying issues that leads to players choosing them in the first place. 

[Drasiel]

3 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

You don’t know how far it can go, do you?

Because there is a limit for that build on that gun, and the game is absolutely designed to support being within that limit even as you claim the game needs to or is designed around the maximum amount of power some number crunchers come up with (which incidentally I’d use those builds too and not have a problem either using them or not using them).

The game is already designed around whatever level of content we can do or build/loadout we can make and combine with said content, and it’s a complicated thing that some power chaser who feels pressured into squashing themselves into the top cannot understand until they actually take a holistic perspective and see what works and what doesn’t for the sake of build variety and how the game facilitates more than the Meta

Your players you’re trying to save are inventing problems for themselves while they convince themselves that it’s all about power and then wonder where the game, with all its build and gameplay variety, went while they grind away for things they never use because the rest of the game is the other way from the direction they’re trying to go. I’ll have a second look at your essay, but I know that it’s going to be limited in scope

edit: feh. Impact stagger can be good as micro CC and landing shots isn’t that problematic, but some power junkie Meta-chaser wouldn’t know anything about that

Are you seriously editing your older posts to make backhanded insults towards the strawman you've constructed? Impact stagger is nice CC on a fully automatic bullet hose, on a semi-auto spam weapon or one with low firerate that isn't hitscan it's a massive PITA to have enemies randomly jerk this way and that because of an impact proc you couldn't get rid of or is applied by an ally. 

[(NSW)Greybones]

1 hour ago, Drasiel said:

I don't like explosive weaponry so it's not a weapon I've used extensively outside of specific and weird builds but even a poorly built Tombfinger has very solid base stats, you can use it for most of the content in the game depending on your tolerance for performance. You still haven't deigned to tell me what that partial build is actually for, what the full build will be or which of the 4 directions I outlined apply or not, so NO, I can't tell you "how far it can go" because you haven't given me all the information you strange mentally pernicious gremlin of a tenno. Do I have to answer your riddles 3 or perform some other esoteric fetch quest before you will for the love of god, tell me what you actually mean instead of useless leading questions and assumptions about my intentions?

You can't know ANYTHING if you refuse to read literally what this entire topic is about. What you "know" is nothing more than a baseless assumption. You are starting from a hostile position based on that assumption and have thus far refused to engage with an open mind because you've decided I'm wrong before even reading or acknowledging the points of data I provided to support my arguments.

This reply was a lot harsher and far less kind towards you originally but at very least with this response:

It seems you may have actually read and absorbed some of the essay. I don't expect any of my proposed suggestions to be the right or the best options, as I mentioned previously I mostly added them to stave off complaints that this isn't real feedback if it doesn't include solutions. The main goal of this was to outline the underlying issues and mechanics that have led to some status effects being labelled as good, bad, or best in the community and the full circle return in the Meta to the modding behaviour that was deemed so unhealthy for the game that they redid the entire damage system 1 and a half times. We got damage 2.0 to get away from every endgame enemy having armour and how that resulted in the only builds people used ignoring or bypassing that armour. Well, there was actually one other goal too, killing "rainbow builds" which used every element to just stack more damage, they didn't combine so you could have cold, heat, and electric on the same weapon (toxin didn't exist as a mod then). Although I've never been totally sure the sheer amount of elements we ended up with was a great alternative there, but I digress. 

There are a lot of overlapping behaviours and mechanics in the the three core systems of Enemy Defences, Player Damage types, and Player Status effects and you absolutely cannot just jump in and "fix" one of them without regard to the others because they are interlocking and can have extremely widespread ripple effects that affect the entirety of the game. The simple buffs we got to viral, slash, and eventually fire that helped steer the community into the current Meta are a good example of that. Just nerfing the over-performers won't solve the issue and neither would buffing everything else to work like them, because neither of those changes address the underlying issues that leads to players choosing them in the first place. 

What information would you ask for? Here’s a build: take it places, shoot dudes, how far will it go? You don’t know because you don’t do sub-par? It’s got two damage mods and does a certain type of damage, you could at least guesstimate the level of enemy it kills. So far I’ve taken it through level 30-40 content, but I may see whether I can go higher still though I’m not expecting miracles for level 50 (may be a point where I start working into the mix other parts of my kit). Poorly-built? It’s a build you power junkie, made of a mix of damage and customisation due to how power has a literal cost, it’s one of the ones this game is designed to cater to, builds like that one are why the game isn’t designed completely around the Meta because it’s too busy giving a place for that build to find use, and it’s builds like that that are fine (though they can always be adjusted for better overall balance) while you try and fix the “Meta Problem” that a bunch of players who don’t want to make builds or play the game only grind like it’s a second job are clinging to like it’s the only thing worth doing and they will bare their teeth and fight you if you either try to convince them otherwise or force them to stop using the options that let them turn the game off because they are literally chasing the grind even when it doesn’t make sense to do so.

Yeah I read your post, and it’s got points, but when DE are focusing on all the builds we can make while you’re focusing on the small subset at the top, that means that there’s going to be changes made that don’t influence the Meta or influence the Meta in unexpected ways because they’re affecting more than the Meta, and they know better than to start at the end when it comes to balance decisions that permeate through every build we can make when they can start at the beginning

1 hour ago, Drasiel said:

Are you seriously editing your older posts to make backhanded insults towards the strawman you've constructed? Impact stagger is nice CC on a fully automatic bullet hose, on a semi-auto spam weapon or one with low firerate that isn't hitscan it's a massive PITA to have enemies randomly jerk this way and that because of an impact proc you couldn't get rid of or is applied by an ally. 

Yeah I added a snarky remark aimed at your meta friends. I agree, and would most likely use it on a bullethose over something slower, though the something slower can benefit as well to give that breathing room to take more shots. Do you know what stood out even more than the impact thing though? Complaining that Radiation’s confusion slowing down enemy flow is a bad thing! What warped sense of gameplay are you drawing from when a CC effect stopping the enemy from overwhelming the player is a bad thing? Could it be the grindset talking?

Edited September 8, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[(NSW)Greybones]

2 hours ago, Drasiel said:

You still haven't deigned to tell me what that partial build is actually for, what the full build will be or which of the 4 directions I outlined apply or not, so NO, I can't tell you "how far it can go"

What are you talking about “Partial built”? That build consumed all the capacity on my gun, if I end up with more capacity I’ll probably spend it on something like projectile speed increase. The build’s made. And why would I not use it for all of the directions? The use case can vary, the level of content will be where it doesn’t kill or work so well anymore

Edited September 8, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[rainmaker170]

24 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

What information would you ask for? Here’s a build: take it places, shoot dudes, how far will it go? You don’t know because you don’t do sub-par? It’s got two damage mods and does a certain type of damage, you could at least guesstimate the level of enemy it kills. So far I’ve taken it through level 30-40 content, but I may see whether I can go higher still though I’m not expecting miracles for level 50. Poorly-built? It’s a build you power junkie, made of a mix of damage and customisation due to how power has a literal cost, it’s one of the ones this game is designed to cater to, builds like that one are why the game isn’t designed completely around the Meta because it’s too busy giving a place for that build to find use, and it’s builds like that that are fine (though they can always be adjusted for better overall balance) while you try and fix the “Meta Problem” that a bunch of players who don’t want to make builds or play the game only grind like it’s a second job are clinging to like it’s the only thing worth doing and they will bare their teeth and fight you if you either try to convince them otherwise or force them to stop using the options that let them turn the game off because they are literally chasing the grind even when it doesn’t make sense to do so.

Yeah I read your post, and it’s got points, but when DE are focusing on all the builds we can make while you’re focusing on the small subset at the top, that means that there’s going to be changes made that don’t influence the Meta or influence the Meta in unexpected ways because they’re affecting more than the Meta, and they know better than to start at the end when it comes to balance decisions that permeate through every build we can make when they can start at the beginning

Yeah I added a snarky remark aimed at your meta friends. I agree, and would most likely use it on a bullethose over something slower, though the something slower can benefit as well to give that breathing room to take more shots. Do you know what stood out even more than the impact thing though? Complaining that Radiation’s confusion slowing down enemy flow is a bad thing! What warped sense of gameplay are you drawing from when a CC effect stopping the enemy from overwhelming the player is a bad thing? Could it be the grindset talking?

 

My dude, you have written half of the comments in reply to this topic, and supposedly read the original post multiple times now. How do you think an explanation of how different damage types work (which is not accurately displayed in game, as for most things) and the disparity between them, is a personal attack on the size of your kubrow nuggets?

It really seems like you are more focused on making sure that everyone knows that you are proudly a solo player that can barely even choke out the word meta. More power to you, playing the way you want is great. It's just not what anyone is talking about.

This is the same topic as any in warframe. The game is 10 years old. What once may have made sense, now may not as much, for any number of reasons. There is room for improvement.

[(NSW)Greybones]

2 minutes ago, rainmaker170 said:

 

My dude, you have written half of the comments in reply to this topic, and supposedly read the original post multiple times now. How do you think an explanation of how different damage types work (which is not accurately displayed in game, as for most things) and the disparity between them, is a personal attack on the size of your kubrow nuggets?

It really seems like you are more focused on making sure that everyone knows that you are proudly a solo player that can barely even choke out the word meta. More power to you, playing the way you want is great. It's just not what anyone is talking about.

This is the same topic as any in warframe. The game is 10 years old. What once may have made sense, now may not as much, for any number of reasons. There is room for improvement.

What are you talking about personal attack?

If some change is made for the sake of the Meta, that’s going to impact me and my gameplay and anyone elses gameplay who also makes alternative builds to the Meta.

Get out of here with your peen measuring contest, this is about how the game works right now

[rainmaker170]

4 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

What are you talking about personal attack?

If some change is made for the sake of the Meta, that’s going to impact me and my gameplay and anyone elses gameplay who also makes alternative builds to the Meta.

Get out of here with your peen measuring contest, this is about how the game works right now

...everything is about how the game works right now. In said game. In which said things work.

Which is going to change. Including the meta. Which happens all the time. You are the one that started up about how all of your builds are so amazing without slash and viral, which was then incorporated (nicely) into the point, to make it sound like its an actual opinion that had actual merit in relevance to this topic. You then decided that the people trying to work with you weren't worthy of your time, nor anyone they associate with. If you read the thing from the beginning, you may realize that its actually more in support of your points than not.

What is currently happening, is that you are looking a compilation of data. Like, say, if you did on the wiki. You are screaming at the wiki page because you don't enjoy how (you think) its being presented.

So reread the post again, for the first time, and you may understand where its coming from. Reread your own comments, and you may understand where I am.

[(NSW)Greybones]

1 hour ago, rainmaker170 said:

...everything is about how the game works right now. In said game. In which said things work.

Which is going to change. Including the meta. Which happens all the time. You are the one that started up about how all of your builds are so amazing without slash and viral, which was then incorporated (nicely) into the point, to make it sound like its an actual opinion that had actual merit in relevance to this topic. You then decided that the people trying to work with you weren't worthy of your time, nor anyone they associate with. If you read the thing from the beginning, you may realize that its actually more in support of your points than not.

What is currently happening, is that you are looking a compilation of data. Like, say, if you did on the wiki. You are screaming at the wiki page because you don't enjoy how (you think) its being presented.

So reread the post again, for the first time, and you may understand where its coming from. Reread your own comments, and you may understand where I am.

I’m not saying my builds are amazing, I’m saying they are valid alternative builds. Which are not Meta, but will be affected by changes made for the sake of the Meta because we’re all using the same components, arranged in different ways.

It’s a compilation of data, but action is being called using it, and solving for the Meta does not equal balancing for the rest of the game. The Meta is the outlier, not the baseline, but because it’s made of what we all use, changing fundamental components that make it up will also be changing those same components that are used elsewhere in other ways.

And trying to solve the meta for the sake of the players who adhere to it will not solve anything; they want the meta. If you’re going to solve anything, solve from the beginning, make adjustments accordingly, don’t try and work from the top down, work from the bottom up, because while your standard player may be flabberghasted that there are alternative ways to build and play, they do exist and the game concerns itself with them even if you don’t, and you will be affecting those ways while you try and deal with the Meta

[Drasiel]

On 2023-09-08 at 2:02 AM, (NSW)Greybones said:

What information would you ask for? Here’s a build: take it places, shoot dudes, how far will it go? You don’t know because you don’t do sub-par? It’s got two damage mods and does a certain type of damage, you could at least guesstimate the level of enemy it kills. So far I’ve taken it through level 30-40 content, but I may see whether I can go higher still though I’m not expecting miracles for level 50 (may be a point where I start working into the mix other parts of my kit). Poorly-built? It’s a build you power junkie, made of a mix of damage and customisation due to how power has a literal cost, it’s one of the ones this game is designed to cater to, builds like that one are why the game isn’t designed completely around the Meta because it’s too busy giving a place for that build to find use, and it’s builds like that that are fine (though they can always be adjusted for better overall balance) while you try and fix the “Meta Problem” that a bunch of players who don’t want to make builds or play the game only grind like it’s a second job are clinging to like it’s the only thing worth doing and they will bare their teeth and fight you if you either try to convince them otherwise or force them to stop using the options that let them turn the game off because they are literally chasing the grind even when it doesn’t make sense to do so.

Yeah I read your post, and it’s got points, but when DE are focusing on all the builds we can make while you’re focusing on the small subset at the top, that means that there’s going to be changes made that don’t influence the Meta or influence the Meta in unexpected ways because they’re affecting more than the Meta, and they know better than to start at the end when it comes to balance decisions that permeate through every build we can make when they can start at the beginning

"I don't know" because I don't know what your standards are.

"I don't know" what the purpose of this build is, is it primarily for damage? Was it built for CC? Is it only intended for 1 Faction? You never provided any clarity on the purpose of the build.

"I don't know" what you consider acceptable performance for your weaponry. Is emptying the entire mag to kill a heavy unit acceptable to you? How many shots should it take to kill a common enemy?

Just from your statements in this post I can tell that we already have wildly different standards for what a complete build looks like, although, I don't think anyone else is only using 5 out of 8 mod slots and calling a build "finished". You aren't even using base damage mods or multishot which means you are not only using what most players would consider an unfinished build, you are using a build that is intentionally under-powering itself because you don't want to add forma or a potato. I said it was a partial build because that's exactly what you gave me, it's the kind of "build" I might slap on weapon I'm not sure I like while levelling it before deciding if I actually want to make a build for it.

Yes, it is poorly built if that is supposed to be a full build and it has nothing to do with the meta. You haven't used any of the pax arcanes, you haven't included a base damage mod or multishot, you are wasting half of hammershot's potential without a crit mod. That build falls off at level 50 vs unarmoured infested and at 40 vs armoured grineer, Which means it's only good up to about pluto and useless for Deimos' open world. 

Your Partial Build

An actual "Full Build" that could still be pushed higher with galvanized mods, a weapon arcane, and exilus mod.

that full build taken to full power

That's a lot of damage right, but guess what? if you drop hammer shot and vile acceleration for vital sense and and malignant force and swap high voltage and stormbringer for rime rounds and thermite rounds respectively you are going to be dealing a bit over 1 million damage, assuming you crit and have your viral and merciless stacks. To put into perspective what this change is capable of killing:

it should be close to one-shotting a level 57 Thrax Centurion or a level 60 Thrax Legatus once you reach their health.

As I said before, the newer content is being balanced around the outliers because it has to be, for player progression, expected difficulty, and reward acquisition the new content will always have to take the top end of what you can build into consideration. You know what would be more effective if those outliers didn't exist? Partial builds like you displayed here, because we wouldn't be facing enemies with millions of EHP to compensate for the bonuses and advantages of the Meta options.

 

On 2023-09-08 at 2:02 AM, (NSW)Greybones said:

Yeah I added a snarky remark aimed at your meta friends. I agree, and would most likely use it on a bullethose over something slower, though the something slower can benefit as well to give that breathing room to take more shots. Do you know what stood out even more than the impact thing though? Complaining that Radiation’s confusion slowing down enemy flow is a bad thing! What warped sense of gameplay are you drawing from when a CC effect stopping the enemy from overwhelming the player is a bad thing? Could it be the grindset talking?

Who are you even talking about? Are these meta friends in the room with us right now?

I strongly disagree with the slower weapons benefiting from impact procs because the Lex was my favourite pistol for years. I played with it before impact procs existed and after they were added. They are nothing but a detriment, they didn't grant breathing room because sticking an impact proc on one enemy doesn't stop any of it's buddies from filling you full of lead or lasers. Impact procs just wasted time when an enemy needs more than one shot to kill. If you are using a slow firing high accuracy weapon an enemy shaking their head around is nothing but a negative and having to wait for them to stop is a PITA. The impact procs don't last long enough to allow you to effectively target another enemy enemy and kill it before the first one goes back to shooting you. 

Your ineptitude in regards to reading comprehension is showing again. Slowing down the enemy flow is not the only thing that radiation accomplishes, it can damn near stop the flow of enemies and create such bad pathing issues between where enemies spawn to where the rest of the players are that you can fail survivals, cause defence missions to take more than 3 times as long as normal, inhibit the proper completion of rounds in void cascade, stop the flow of power carriers to extractors, and burn massive amounts of air in conjunction survival. Cold slows enemies, Radiation causes enemies to attack each other and move away from or never come close to players causing pathing and enemy flow issues that are detrimental to many missions.

[(NSW)Greybones]

 

17 minutes ago, Drasiel said:

"I don't know" because I don't know what your standards are.

"I don't know" what the purpose of this build is, is it primarily for damage? Was it built for CC? Is it only intended for 1 Faction? You never provided any clarity on the purpose of the build.

"I don't know" what you consider acceptable performance for your weaponry. Is emptying the entire mag to kill a heavy unit acceptable to you? How many shots should it take to kill a common enemy?

Just from your statements in this post I can tell that we already have wildly different standards for what a complete build looks like, although, I don't think anyone else is only using 5 out of 8 mod slots and calling a build "finished". You aren't even using base damage mods or multishot which means you are not only using what most players would consider an unfinished build, you are using a build that is intentionally under-powering itself because you don't want to add forma or a potato. I said it was a partial build because that's exactly what you gave me, it's the kind of "build" I might slap on weapon I'm not sure I like while levelling it before deciding if I actually want to make a build for it.

Yes, it is poorly built if that is supposed to be a full build and it has nothing to do with the meta. You haven't used any of the pax arcanes, you haven't included a base damage mod or multishot, you are wasting half of hammershot's potential without a crit mod. That build falls off at level 50 vs unarmoured infested and at 40 vs armoured grineer, Which means it's only good up to about pluto and useless for Deimos' open world. 

Your Partial Build

An actual "Full Build" that could still be pushed higher with galvanized mods, a weapon arcane, and exilus mod.

that full build taken to full power

That's a lot of damage right, but guess what? if you drop hammer shot and vile acceleration for vital sense and and malignant force and swap high voltage and stormbringer for rime rounds and thermite rounds respectively you are going to be dealing a bit over 1 million damage, assuming you crit and have your viral and merciless stacks. To put into perspective what this change is capable of killing:

it should be close to one-shotting a level 57 Thrax Centurion or a level 60 Thrax Legatus once you reach their health.

As I said before, the newer content is being balanced around the outliers because it has to be, for player progression, expected difficulty, and reward acquisition the new content will always have to take the top end of what you can build into consideration. You know what would be more effective if those outliers didn't exist? Partial builds like you displayed here, because we wouldn't be facing enemies with millions of EHP to compensate for the bonuses and advantages of the Meta options.

 

Who are you even talking about? Are these meta friends in the room with us right now?

I strongly disagree with the slower weapons benefiting from impact procs because the Lex was my favourite pistol for years. I played with it before impact procs existed and after they were added. They are nothing but a detriment, they didn't grant breathing room because sticking an impact proc on one enemy doesn't stop any of it's buddies from filling you full of lead or lasers. Impact procs just wasted time when an enemy needs more than one shot to kill. If you are using a slow firing high accuracy weapon an enemy shaking their head around is nothing but a negative and having to wait for them to stop is a PITA. The impact procs don't last long enough to allow you to effectively target another enemy enemy and kill it before the first one goes back to shooting you. 

Your ineptitude in regards to reading comprehension is showing again. Slowing down the enemy flow is not the only thing that radiation accomplishes, it can damn near stop the flow of enemies and create such bad pathing issues between where enemies spawn to where the rest of the players are that you can fail survivals, cause defence missions to take more than 3 times as long as normal, inhibit the proper completion of rounds in void cascade, stop the flow of power carriers to extractors, and burn massive amounts of air in conjunction survival. Cold slows enemies, Radiation causes enemies to attack each other and move away from or never come close to players causing pathing and enemy flow issues that are detrimental to many missions.

The crux of this is that you are needlessly obsessed with damage, insisting on burning mod slots and capacity and investing time and resources even when unnecessary, and that’s why you’re only thinking in Meta-adjacent concepts and is why we’re not on the same page when I talk about alternative ways to build. It’s a perfectly fine build, I don’t need to invest Forma if I don’t need to, the point of Hammershot is the status which yes, I could probably use something else depending on capacity and effect but maybe that bit of crit is giving me that bit more of an edge in damage and even then if I replaced it it would still be for the sake of Status and the gun would still sit in a certain level of content, the gun shoots at a good rate and does what I want and achieves the goal I set out to do within the limits I’m fine with.

You’re a power junkie, Drasiel. You may turn your nose up at alternatives (and then weirdly insist that other players are mere victims of their success), but the game doesn’t, and you’re being selfish to only think of what you consider is “The right way to play” when your way to play is one approach and I’m guessing doesn’t have much gameplay tied to it and I would probably try, decide it’s not fun, then not use and thus find that balancing around the Meta isn’t so important, especially when balancing for the Meta will influence everything else that uses those components in other ways

Edited September 12, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones