The Dominance of Slash and Hunter Munitions

[Pizzarugi]

Slash is so prominent, because it's good at dealing with armor EHP which is above and beyond absurd compared to Corpus which are easily countered with toxin damage. Viral damage means nothing if only 0.07% of your damage is getting through their armor. You have two options: Defense strip abilities or slash. Defense strip has the benefit of also wiping out Corpus shields.

[nslay]

Just now, Pizzarugi said:

Slash is so prominent, because it's good at dealing with armor EHP which is above and beyond absurd compared to Corpus which are easily countered with toxin damage. Viral damage means nothing if only 0.07% of your damage is getting through their armor. You have two options: Defense strip abilities or slash. Defense strip has the benefit of also wiping out Corpus shields.

Corrosive + Viral + Heat works well enough to enable Toxin from Cerata to kill off armored enemies even a 1-2 hours of SP endurance missions... that's more than most players play I'd say.

This combo also works nicely on those beefy robots in SP Index John Prodman runs (Index still follows old exponential scaling).

[Hexerin]

On 2023-08-20 at 11:30 AM, -Krism- said:

I don't know if you noticed, but last update brought changes to Puncture & Cold

Which doesn't matter on SP+, because of how armor works.

[-Krism-]

4 minutes ago, Hexerin said:

Which doesn't matter on SP+, because of how armor works.

Armor isn't the only enemy defense in the game, Corpus & Infesteds work differently, & other elements have their uses

[(NSW)Greybones]

14 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

Armor isn't the only enemy defense in the game, Corpus & Infesteds work differently, & other elements have their uses

Yes, but StEel Path is the entire game and thus requires balancing around. And if SP’s weird unbalanced modifiers that warp gameplay are telling us that direct damage isn’t an option because of Armour, by god DE need to do something about that.

Preferably by making SP as friendly to a completely modless loadout (and thus maximum build variety) as the rest of the non-SP game

[Hexerin]

22 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

Armor isn't the only enemy defense in the game, Corpus & Infesteds work differently, & other elements have their uses

Literally anything works against Infested at any level, so that's not really supportive for any argument. The faction as a whole is honestly kind of pathetic considering it's supposed to be some universe ending threat by lore. Only exception being Deimos Infected, but that's literally because they have armor so we circle back around to my initial statement. Corpus are in a similar boat to Infested, but they at least have threatening damage output while they're alive (short time though that may be).

There's a reason that anybody who makes visual tests for discussing balance, use Grineer as their dummies. It's the only faction that's actually truly threatening. It's also why any balance discussion revolves around "how does this fare against armor", because everything else instantly evaporates to a slight breeze.

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

2 hours ago, nslay said:

Compare that with Slash which only works well against armor and is terrible for shields and Overguard.

The only thing slash is bad for is corpus. Everything deals same damage to overguard except void damage. So correction, slash is only bad for shields.

[PollexMessier]

Wouldn't it have been great if they didn't nerf gas and corrosive? You know, the two things that were somewhat competitive with slash and viral before?

[nslay]

27 minutes ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

The only thing slash is bad for is corpus. Everything deals same damage to overguard except void damage. So correction, slash is only bad for shields.

This video sums up my experience (with an exaggerated cohort of enemies)... now I don't have a nice Riven for Glaive Prime so I did an initial demonstration with Cerata's Riven. Then I did it with the Riven and even though it's one of the milder Riven with no negatives, it does make a big difference!

Spoiler

 

Notice how Glaive Prime Slash procs seems to be slower at removing the Overguard for some reason. Maybe I shouldn't have the Viral mods on the Glaive Prime because I have my priming weapons doing that. Or maybe it has to do with the 0.35 multiplier on the Slash DoT math vs Toxin's larger 0.5 multiplier... or both.

Related... which damage type generalizes better to all factions/types of targets? The Cerata needs a little help, but it's like night and day between the two weapons and it does manage to clear an exaggerated cohort of enemies... and this will will scale for a little while! It will break down when even 10% enemy armor is a relatively large number. I guess Glaive Prime could be helped with a Viral/Magnetic weapon... but the magnetic status does nothing to unshielded targets while Corrosive/Viral/Heat works the same for Toxin regardless of shield presence! Yeah, I don't think Slash is amazing though it is useful for one type of enemy.

Now imagine if those Guardian Eximus Techs' DR effects were affecting the Exo Gokstadt Officers? Yeah, Slash is painfully bad in that kind of situation with Corrupted enemies (where Guardian Eximus would affect their comrade Corrupted Bombards/Corrupted Heavy Gunners). So I tend to use Cerata, Phage and Catabolyst in all SP content since this single combo works well enough for all enemies.

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

1 hour ago, nslay said:

This video sums up my experience (with an exaggerated cohort of enemies)... now I don't have a nice Riven for Glaive Prime so I did an initial demonstration with Cerata's Riven. Then I did it with the Riven and even though it's one of the milder Riven with no negatives, it does make a big difference!

  Hide contents

 

Notice how Glaive Prime Slash procs seems to be slower at removing the Overguard for some reason. Maybe I shouldn't have the Viral mods on the Glaive Prime because I have my priming weapons doing that. Or maybe it has to do with the 0.35 multiplier on the Slash DoT math vs Toxin's larger 0.5 multiplier... or both.

Related... which damage type generalizes better to all factions/types of targets? The Cerata needs a little help, but it's like night and day between the two weapons and it does manage to clear an exaggerated cohort of enemies... and this will will scale for a little while! It will break down when even 10% enemy armor is a relatively large number. I guess Glaive Prime could be helped with a Viral/Magnetic weapon... but the magnetic status does nothing to unshielded targets while Corrosive/Viral/Heat works the same for Toxin regardless of shield presence! Yeah, I don't think Slash is amazing though it is useful for one type of enemy.

Now imagine if those Guardian Eximus Techs' DR effects were affecting the Exo Gokstadt Officers? Yeah, Slash is painfully bad in that kind of situation with Corrupted enemies (where Guardian Eximus would affect their comrade Corrupted Bombards/Corrupted Heavy Gunners). So I tend to use Cerata, Phage and Catabolyst in all SP content since this single combo works well enough for all enemies.

Your cerata has higher damage and cd then your glaive. Of course it's going to remove overguard faster. Also Status dots are not important when destroying overguard, your are removing it so you can apply dots.

[CatboyPrincess]

13 minutes ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Your cerata has higher damage and cd then your glaive. Of course it's going to remove overguard faster. Also Status dots are not important when destroying overguard, your are removing it so you can apply dots.

you were not paying attention

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

1 minute ago, CatboyPrincess said:

you were not paying attention

Thanks for your input care to explain? They were talking about how slash probs removed overguard slower then toxin which is irrelevant to removing overguard.

[nslay]

17 minutes ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Your cerata has higher damage and cd then your glaive. Of course it's going to remove overguard faster. Also Status dots are not important when destroying overguard, your are removing it so you can apply dots.

That sounds plausible, though the raw numbers for charged throw/recall explosion damage looks similar between the two Glaives. The DoT procs do indeed drain the Overguard shields IIRC... although for whatever reason, Slash feels slower at doing that. I do get the impression that Cerata is stripping the Overguard faster (usually one hit) than the Glaive Prime.

Anyway, that Corrupted reference with the Guardian Eximus affecting beefy armored units is one of the reasons I re-thought Slash weapons. When you can't kill a Guardian Eximus, then your Glaive Prime does reduced damage to everyone nearby the Guardian Eximus and it's very annoying. And if a little shield drone comes by... all those little Slash tics on the shields are for naught. The other reason being that when I started to try to solo non-SP/SP John Prodman, I discovered some of those robot enemies are immune to Slash procs.

[CatboyPrincess]

8 hours ago, (XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom said:

And therein lies the point. Non-armored ehp is just that much lower that Slash's lowered DoT multiplier isn't relevant; they'll just die. Hunter Munitions is simply the best catch all. Other DoT procs "need" more actions (grouping, armor strip, etc) to reach the level. If you're stripping, proc DoT isn't very meaningful as they'll just die to the initial shots.
Armor needs to be answered, and HM provides the best answer for a gun by itself.

Magus Accelerant is extremely tedious to use. This is also overvaluing Heat Inherit. It's not much more damage unless you have a decent riven for your primer or your weapon's base damage type is heat.

i'm trying to point out that in higher end content, you don't need to rely on slash. in fact, in infinite-ended content, slash will just be straight up worse than a lot of other options. If you don't need to consider your kit outside of a single weapon, then either the content you are using as reference isn't high end or the highest ends of warframe are shallow relative to what the existing mechanics are capable of. The truth is somewhere in between: most content that will constitute "high-end" that most players engage with will be in a range in which all quests are completed, most or all gear is acquired, and all modes and nodes have been unlocked. In this range, levels in any given mission will not grow to be more than double than what they start at by the end of 1 or 2 Rotation Cs. ex. Yuvarium Steel Path is level 180-200 but I don't notice them being much higher at the end of 1st rotation C.

"high-end" or "end game" content in Warframe, then, would have much higher starting levels and the level growth would be probably 5-10x faster than current. Ex. level 500 would be the baseline for an "end game" node, 1st rotation C (~20 min) lvl 1000, 2nd C (~40 min) lvl 2000, 3rd C lvl (~60 min) 4000.

There's a lot of level range that Warframe simply doesn't use though, which is partly why slash is perceived as being so strong (when mechanically, it's situated at a pretty midling level).

I can't casually spawn in level 500-9999 enemies with SP modifiers to show what I mean, sadly.

1 hour ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Thanks for your input care to explain? They were talking about how slash probs removed overguard slower then toxin which is irrelevant to removing overguard.

1 hour ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Your cerata has higher damage and cd then your glaive. Of course it's going to remove overguard faster. Also Status dots are not important when destroying overguard, your are removing it so you can apply dots.

i was talking about the slash vs toxin against the corpus eximus units after overguard + in the video, the riven mod of the cerata was taken off before going into testing, resulting in its stats being close to the Glaive Prime's (i.e. Cerata in fact had lower damage, and slightly higher critical damage)

slash is strong but its limitations are going to be felt the higher the level you fight, even if you assume no armour and no shields. slash procs feel awful vs shields, and in a situation where you assume yes shields + no armour + viral and magnetic proc parity + no toxin bypass, then it's worse than every other DOT by a fair margin

Edited August 22, 2023 by CatboyPrincess

[(XBOX)Mastermitchel89]

wow its like as if there could be an armor rework that could supress slash and give room for other damage builds and potentially solve other issues on top of it aswell

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

58 minutes ago, CatboyPrincess said:

 

i was talking about the slash vs toxin against the corpus eximus units after overguard + in the video, the riven mod of the cerata was taken off before going into testing, resulting in its stats being close to the Glaive Prime's (i.e. Cerata in fact had lower damage, and slightly higher critical damage)

Critical damage affects toxic dot damage and ya, toxin is better for corpus noone is debating that. Were you paying attention?

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

On 2023-08-20 at 1:20 PM, (PSN)Unstar said:

The other day I took some time in the Simulacrum to do some testing and optimize the builds of some of my Incarnon weapons, with the intent of making my overall Arsenal better suited for SP Circuit — meaning each weapon needed to be entirely self-sufficient.  I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was definitely disappointed by the overwhelming amount of weapons that killed faster and more efficiently when equipped with Hunter Munitions (or Hemorrhage, when applicable).  In most builds, Heat took both more time and ammo to achieve kills.  Even Slash-weighted weapons with high status — modded with a pair of 60/60 mods to give Viral — generally seemed to be more effective when modded with Hunter Munitions than simply relying on Slash to occur via "natural" procs.

Previously I had known that Slash was easily one of the most powerful statuses in the game, but this left me feeling like Slash — and in particular, Hunter Munitions — isn't simply powerful, but that it's currently so dominant in higher-end content that it may limit build and weapon variety.  That's just my perspective based on my experiences though, so I'm curious to hear what others feel.

"Viral hunter munitions build" has been the go to for long enough i dont see it changing any time soon.

On 2023-08-20 at 1:30 PM, -Krism- said:

I don't know if you noticed, but last update brought changes to Puncture & Cold

I dont know if you noticed, but it wasnt enough to change the meta. 

On 2023-08-20 at 1:32 PM, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

Did you try comparing it to internal bleeding? 

 

Also, phenmor.

Internal bleeding/hemorrhage are only worth using on the few weapons that have forced slash procs imho.

On 2023-08-20 at 1:37 PM, 0_The_F00l said:

Slash procs are the most effective at killing pretty much anything in the game cause it has the nasty benefit of simply ignoring the most prevalent means that enemies have to reduce damage, that is armour.

And hunter munitions triggers on another thing that has some special properties of its own - critical damage. Irrespective of the actual weapon having any slash weightage.

So you pair the two together and you have a recipe for game breaking damage output.

It definitely added more punch to weapons that were ignored before when hunter munitions was released , but it made other weapons obsolete as well.

Overall I think its ok , but i also think it's time slash got some changes.

Im afraid DE would screw up the game somehow if they touched it. They seem to act like the only tool in the chest is a hammer sometimes.

12 hours ago, m_a_r_c_h_ said:

Is multi-shot more powerful than HM? I didn’t test properly, but on my Boar Prime, replacing Galvanized Hell with HM seemed to be less effective.

You want both.

[CatboyPrincess]

2 minutes ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Critical damage affects toxic dot damage and ya, toxin is better for corpus noone is debating that. Were you paying attention?

that's not what i'm talking about. i'm talking about how you pointed out video poster's Cerata had better damage and critical damage than their Glaive Prime, when in fact the Cerata in testing did not have better damage and had marginally better critical damage. Base damage and critical damage both affect slash and toxin equally.

additionally:

4 hours ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

The only thing slash is bad for is corpus. Everything deals same damage to overguard except void damage. So correction, slash is only bad for shields.

slash is also bad for sentients as it's weak vs robotics health.

Toxin's better innate DOT multiplier also means it's better than slash's bleed for taking out overguard. (I don't remember if any DOTs affect overguard.)

[Tiltskillet]

55 minutes ago, CatboyPrincess said:

(I don't remember if any DOTs affect overguard.)

They affect enemy Overguard as normal.

[0_The_F00l]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA said:

Im afraid DE would screw up the game somehow if they touched it. They seem to act like the only tool in the chest is a hammer sometimes.

The game is already screwed up plenty.

I dont think DE only uses hammers - i think DE uses whatever is the newest shiny they get their hands on. Then they forget about it and move on.

[FA22_RaptoR]

Lol @ more people asking to nerf the best damage type so you have to stand there for 20 seconds unloading into an enemy to kill it, while the 30 others destroy your objective 😝

Man oh man, it's like some people are literally masochists and just want to ruin the fun of this game by nerfing everything.

How about bringing back corrosive to completely and permanently strip armor? or Gas doing toxin damage through shields. There are a TON of ways to theoretically deal with armored enemies in this game but they have all been nerfed into uselessness.

They even made many warframes have an easily achievable "full armor strip" ability because armor levels are so goofy into high levels, but not all warframes have that luxury.

If you want more options to be available, they REALLY need to look at every status effect and look at ways to make them better. Corrosive was always the way to deal with armored enemies. Now it's fine for base star chart and okay base steel path missions, but it falls off VERY quickly if you do any endurance. I still remember when the Kuva Quartakk came out and I could shred a steel path bombard or heavy gunners armor in like 2 shots. (pre galvanized mods). Ya know what though? Nowadays a HM viral kuva Quartakk can one shot them if you get enough slash procs. If one doesn't kill them, 2 WILL.

I have seen what happens when a company starts obsessing with Meta Stomping. Warframe literally cannot lose that many players right now. A balanced approach is necessary, not mindlessly swinging the nerf hammer. Slash has been meta in this game for a VERY long time, and if they come out and stomp it, it's going to damage pretty much every strategy to engage higher level content in this game. I'd really like to see other status types more prevalent, but I also don't want to see what happens when people's weapons and builds get nerfed into obscurity. AGAIN. I used to play with a good 10-15 guys on warframe, now I'm down to ONE other guy...

[leachPrime]

Slash shouldn't be nerfed. The only thing the game needs is the return of other status full effectiveness. If slash was nerfed then I can't imagine how many players DE would lose.

[RichardKam]

9小时前 , (NSW)Greybones 说:

Yes, but StEel Path is the entire game and thus requires balancing around. And if SP’s weird unbalanced modifiers that warp gameplay are telling us that direct damage isn’t an option because of Armour, by god DE need to do something about that.

Preferably by making SP as friendly to a completely modless loadout (and thus maximum build variety) as the rest of the non-SP game

DE stated explicitly, the game is not balanced around SP. It is balanced in regular starchart.

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

25 minutes ago, RichardKam said:

DE stated explicitly, the game is not balanced around SP. It is balanced in regular starchart.

Show me where they said the game is balanced around regular start chart. Absolutely nothing points to this.

[(NSW)Greybones]

31 minutes ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Show me where they said the game is balanced around regular start chart. Absolutely nothing points to this.

Oh there’s balance in there. Most players just don’t go looking for it because they’re searching for decidedly unbalanced solutions that, unsurprisingly, result in unbalanced gameplay and in some particularly strange cases, players who talk about balance when they’ve no idea where it is or what it looks like.

It’s not exactly common for a player to be like “I got not too much and not too little power for this content that asks for X amount of power”, which isn’t necessarily a problem, but it does result in some odd conversations 

Edited August 22, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones