Archon Hunts Midcore player experience (Rant)

[Julican]

So after 6 hours of attempting to get an Archon kill, trying both solo and in a squad, I can officially say that Archon Hunts ARE #*!%ING HARD, I have great mods but holy #*!% why is this fight unnecessarily tedious

Why is the Archon getting tickled by my 5 forma'ed weapons?

Why does the Archon have random invulnerable windows?

Why is there a cap on the status stacks?

Why does the Archon keep healing?

Why is dying extremely punishing?

Why am I punished for my squad mates' mistakes?

Why are NONE of the Warframe abilities working on the boss?

Why are there add phases?

Why are almost ALL the enemies Eximus?

Why are objectively weak Warframes getting a bonus in health and damage?

 

I don't care who exploited this fight and when they did so DE "had" to buff the fight

I don't care if the top 0.02% would get bored if this fight was made more reasonable

I don't care which Twitch stream that no-lifed this game thinks about content

 

This crap needs a nerf in any capacity, I don't even care how they nerf it but at this point; I will take anything

[Leqesai]

It may be helpful to look at what strategies are most effective against Archons. You're struggling because you're likely not using the right type of weapon. 

 

Archons are in the endgame content category. You're expected to know how they work in order to do them effectively. 

[VibingCat]

They have a special damage reduction system such that certain weapons are nerfed considerably more than others. Use something with high innate multishot, crits and base damage, low fire rate, and mod for radiation, so Kuva Hek is a perfect candidate. Then use a Warframe that can survive well, such as Zephyr and Revenant. Equip a primer with heat and corrosive, the arcane Primary Deadhead and the mod Galvanized Savvy and get stacks before trying to oneshot the archon. Use the alt-fire on a headshot and you'll surely notice a difference. Good luck!

[Julican]

2 minutes ago, VibingCat said:

They have a special damage reduction system such that certain weapons are nerfed considerably more than others. Use something with high innate multishot, crits and base damage, low fire rate, and mod for radiation, so Kuva Hek is a perfect candidate. Then use a Warframe that can survive well, such as Zephyr and Revenant. Equip a primer with heat and corrosive, the arcane Primary Deadhead and the mod Galvanized Savvy and get stacks before trying to oneshot the archon. Use the alt-fire on a headshot and you'll surely notice a difference. Good luck!

Will give that a shot

[(XBOX)elementXGHILLIE]

The system is called Damage Attenuation. 

It basically limits you to 5-10 viable weapons to kill Archons.

You have to use weapon's that "jumpscare" the enemy which basically means hit them hard and with a ton of Multishot then wait for it's resistances to diminish. 

[DeckChairVonBananaCamel]

That damage attenuation is a tricky bugger. Strangely is only seems to take into account the modded damage of the weapon, not crits/buffs/conditionals.

I haven't seen the build that allows for 1-shotting archons with the kuva hek, but i HAVE seen its effect and it is glorious!

The build i use is a magnus prime build that goes all-in on crit, multishot, and radiation:

Edited September 1, 2023 by DeckChairVonBananaCamel

[Surbusken]

The one for this week, Nira, is particularly annoying since they heal but also have MOA's show up and heal them.

But yeah overguard and archons are just HP sponging at its finest. I get people cursing in the chat everytime I play it and also leaving a lot.

 

You just end up standing there clicking one button to shoot for 20 minutes because you can't do much else.

One guy even said you should use Ivara and sit on a wire above ground behind stealth... lol, exciting.

[ReddyDisco]

Meanwhile archon fight takes 4-5mins with kuva hek. Damage attenuation is horrible and bypassing it is the only way. 

Edited September 1, 2023 by ReddyDisco

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

I know you framed this as more of a rant, but you seem open to some advice, so hopefully below may help as well. Though also, essentially what VibingCat and some others wrote will get you through. 

A Warframe with good survivability isn't absolutely necessary, but will help you learn and practice the fight, make it feel easier then over time you can experiment and change it up, possibly go back to your favs. Revenant, Rhino, Nezha, Wukong, are all good choices. Citrine, Wisp, Protea as well. I personally like the latter 3, because they can buff team mates and help them survive better, and offer some other sorts of utility (though so can Revenant and Nezha with their Augments). 

In solo, Ivara can be excellent since her Stealth ability comes with a buff that can help with your gun damage. Though, in group play it can be risk, because you may get caught by stray damage intended for allies. Being able to not worry about dying, can remove a lot of pressure and internal stresses with having to do something you find annoying, tedious, hard, frustrating etc. 

Weapon wise, Archons employ a few different types of damage attenuation. Short version though, some weapons are better than others at killing them. Kuva Hek alt fire has a lot of multishot, general damage, crit damage. If you can get a clean direct headshot, you can often one tap the Archons. Mind you, even if you don't, you will still remove a lot of their health. I'd recommend waiting a few seconds, because Archons attenuation will start to decay, and then you can potentially land heavier "fresh" damage. Though sort of depends. If you are in multiplayer, many people often are just firing away, and you will still do damage, if you don't wait, just your damage may do less than certain hypotheticals around waiting. You can test this more clearly in solo. Also, sometimes easier to hot headshots in solo as well, since Archons can move around a bit and thus be harder to hit. Kyva Hek isn't the only option. Laetum, Phenmor are good choices. I believe/hear Felarx is, but I am not sure if the weapon by itself is, I would assume so, but something else worth mentioning, is Xata's Whisper is pretty potent with many weapons, the three most recent mentions especially. 

I found Boar Incarnon (the regular mode) decent, as it does have decent multishot and is a buffed version of the weapon. I wouldn't say its better than Kuva Hek, but if you are the type that prefers doing continuous damage, instead of waiting around wondering if its the right time to fire another Kuva Hek alt fire, you may find it more fun. 

The Warframes that get the biffs are mostly RNG (may be a weighting system involved, I am not sure). 

Sorry to hear the fight is giving you grief, hope you give it another shot and kick theit butt! Good luck and take care! 

[wodanclay]

I use Felarx and Frost. My Frost has Freeze Force and Roar. I can almost reliably one shot a phase with all my buffs up. Haven't tried with kuva hek though.

[Waeleto]

Just used kuva hek with radiation and revenant with subsumed roar

[(PSN)robotwars7]

20 hours ago, Julican said:

This crap needs a nerf in any capacity, I don't even care how they nerf it but at this point; I will take anything

this will be a hard pill to swallow, but it's a skill or gear issue; the fights themselves are not that hard, even without one-shot builds (which don't seem to be as common anymore from what I've been seeing, done like 5 weeks of hunts and not seen a single Kuva Hek!)

20 hours ago, Julican said:

Why does the Archon keep healing?

Nira is probably the worst for healing, and by far the toughest of the 3 Archons; between the invis, evasion and healing she can be a pain if she isn't dealt with quickly. Boreal has his moments too but he's not nearly as bad; Amar is a total pushover as long as you avoid his 360 attack, and he doesn't have any healing. with the 2 that heal, you have to disrupt them by dealing enough damage to them. 

20 hours ago, Julican said:

Why is dying extremely punishing?

because DE wanted this to be the next "endgame" mode, and to be fair, it's one of only 2 places that punishes you for dying, the other being Arbitrations which are way easier.

20 hours ago, Julican said:

Why am I punished for my squad mates' mistakes?

that's co-op gaming for you, you either win or lose, succeed or fail, as a team. a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

20 hours ago, Julican said:

Why are NONE of the Warframe abilities working on the boss?

because it would trivialize them. some abilities do work, particularly if they deal direct damage, but they obviously won't be as effective as you might hope. it's mainly your weapons that deal the DPS when it comes to bosses, so your choice of weaponry is crucial. 

20 hours ago, Julican said:

Why are there add phases?

bosses these days aren't honorable/brave enough to fight one on one, they gotta be wimps and hide behind their friends (but also because it pads the fight out and adds artificial difficulty. personally I'm of the opinion that if a boss fight is done well enough it doesn't need adds, and I do appreciate a classic 1v1.)

21 hours ago, Julican said:

Why are objectively weak Warframes getting a bonus in health and damage?

speak for yourself, it's totally random and there have been times where Mesa, Saryn, Protea etc. - frames that don't really need any help - have popped up for me. a couple of times I also got an invig for the same frame and they stack; it's very unlikely to happen but absolutely nuts when they do lol.

I've done every archon hunt since they were first released, and honestly I love them: it's sometimes the only thing I'll log in to do. the only thing I don't like is having to do the prerequisite missions first.

[(PSN)Unstar]

21 hours ago, Julican said:

I don't care who exploited this fight and when they did so DE "had" to buff the fight

I don't care if the top 0.02% would get bored if this fight was made more reasonable

It's been like this since release.  And it's something nearly everyone complained about.  I've personally never seen anyone speak positively about Damage Attenuation (which is what makes the Archons bullet sponges if you aren't using the "right" weapons).  But we've been given no indication there will be any nerfs, so all we can do is know what the "right" weapons are, keep using them, and share that information with new folks when they hit the same wall all of us did.

 

In case any of it helps, here's the setup I use to make Archons into pushovers.  You can certainly do it with less than this, but a setup like this will leave you overgeared to the point where you won't really have to try.

For the Warframe, get yourself a Baruuk Prime.  Full Umbral Build with Adaptation.  Arcane Grace.  Pack on some additional Power Strength to give yourself a surplus of floating defense knives.  Congratulations, you are now unkillable in an Archon Hunt, especially if you start the match by using Lull to max out your Fist Meter for the additional defense.  This means that while you are fighting Archons, you don't need to care at all about trying to stay alive, because you simply will be.

For your primary, there aren't many weapons that work great on the Archons, and most of them are Incarnons.  Personally, I've found great results with the Phenmor when it's built with its level 4 upgrade that gives +2000% damage.  Weapons like these effectively bypass the Archons' defensive attenuation, meaning your gun will still feel like it's doing damage to them instead of doing next to nothing.  It'll kill pretty quickly!

I like to bring a secondary that makes Boreal's Aerolysts less of a pain.  For me, that's the Catchmoon , as its fat projectile pierces through multiple Aeroylst belt canisters with every shot; I just walk right up to them and blast away at their tummies.  I also have it set with the arcane that makes it a recharging weapon so it never runs out of ammo.

Finally, I am always equipped with a two-handed Nikana because of my arthritis.  This is great for killing everything that's not the Archon and the Aerolysts and doesn't require aiming.  I like this weapon because it maximizes damage-per-button-press, thus minimizing the amount of buttons I need to press to kill enemies.  I use a heavy attack build where the only button you need to press is heavy attack to delete anything you can hit:

• Wise Razor (the best and indeed only choice for a stance)
• Primed Reach (+range)
• Killing Blow (+Heavy Attack damage, +Heavy Attack speed)
• Corrupt Charge (+increases starting combo, meaning more damage on Heavy Attacks)
• Sacrificial Pressure (+damage)
• Sacrificial Steel (+crit chance, doubled for Heavy Attacks)
• Amalgam Organ Shatter (+crit damage, +Heavy Attack speed)
• Gladiator Might (+crit damage)
• Spoiled Strike (+damage, -attack speed)

You don't need that exact build, as there are lots of ways to adjust this and still have it do the same thing.

But anyway, if you enter the Archon Hunt with that setup, you will be overgeared for Archons.  Regardless of what you end up trying, good luck!

[(PSN)Lollybomb]

19 hours ago, Surbusken said:

The one for this week, Nira, is particularly annoying since they heal but also have MOA's show up and heal them.

Seriously, who's idea was it to give them an action that just instantly regenerates like 90% of the damage you've done with absolutely no way to stop it?

The idea with the damage attenuation seems to have been to get people to stop killing the bosses in an instant, and instead only encouraged it more while narrowing the field of options to almost nothing.

[Lilybun]

The archon damage attenuation is very counterintuitive and hard to plan around because it's different to most other damage throttled targets like acolytes which you get to face more often. Would be cool if DE gave us a way to test our weapons against a damage attenuation dummy in the simulacrum. Also would be cool if they could throw a bone to some weapon classes you would think that would be ok given the problem space of "you need big damage per shot" but underperform massively thanks to low multishot.

As is you're best off sticking to the handful of weapons that ignore the mechanic.

Edited September 2, 2023 by Lilybun

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

6 hours ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

I've personally never seen anyone speak positively about Damage Attenuation (which is what makes the Archons bullet sponges if you aren't using the "right" weapons). 

 

Hey, thats me. Don't want to stray away from the main focus of the thread too much, but thought it could be nice to give you at least one example of someone who is positive about this type of damage attenuation. 

To be clear though, I get why so many are negative and critical of it, and think such takes are fair, valid and perfectly fine to have. I definitely believe that as far as expressions on Forums, my stance is on the minority side and less popular. Though I also don't think the subject is as one sided as many people think. I also know there are a few others like me too. Also, when the subject does pop up, I don't have any particular need to remind people I feel positive about it. When people are critical about something, i can think its valid, and sometimes the sentiment of "well I personally think its fine/great" doesn't seem relevant or important to bring up. Save for threads where the topic is self express or asking people about their opinions/thoughts. 

Its also just the style and way I approach Warframe, I am not too fussy and I value the ability to be flexible, even at the potential expense of narrowing choice selection, because this can give more value and purpose to different tools, which creates a dynamic of a type of variety I can like. For example, single shot sniper rifles aren't necessarily the best or most effective/efficient weapon for say... Survival. AOE weapons, or weapons with AOE elements or weapons with high fire rates, or weapons with continuous damage instances (beam weapons), so on are. Especially in co-op mode, if other players are running those weapons. However in Warframe, snipers can be more effective or efficient in plenty of other instances. Certain bosses, Eidolons especially. Before Archons were a thing, I hunted quite a lot of Liches and Sisters, and Kuva Hek was one of the more effective weapons. Like snipers, its traits (low fire rate, small magazine) its... not that effective/efficient for quite a lot of Warframes modes, especially co-op, but its a very effective boss killer. So when Archons arrived, it was an easy transition for myself, since they share a bit with Liches/Sisters. 

Lephantis, Nullifier Bubbles, Acolytes, Stalkers all have flavours of damage attenuation. Personally, the one that I like least is probably Lephantis, because it puts a maximum damage cap on you. So weapons like Pyrana Prime, or Titania and Dex Pixia are good, because you will also want decent fire rate for that encounter, especially the Steel Path versions. 

That also being said, the way I view it, is that there are negatives and positives. I can hunt Tridolons with a few different Warframes, but I instinctively tend to default to Volt, Trinity and Wisp. Which I think can be a bit of a shame. I'd love if DE introduced one or two more Warframe, that had the ability to rival Volt's ability to provide a buff to Operator damage, to increase that selection/pool of Eidolon hunting meta... but I imagine that might be hard to do in practice, because it would be easy for them to just replace Volt instead if their new ability is much better, or fail to rival, if their ability is too weak/worthless. I may personally love the Kuva Hek, but I can empathise and sympathise with people not having more choices options that they feel are as viable and effective, and thus feeling herded or forced to use gear that they rather not. 

So in the end.. I am mostly happy I personally am not in charge of Warframes balancing or trying to accommodate all players preferences/playing habits ha. 

[Silligoose]

On 2023-09-01 at 3:06 AM, Julican said:

So after 6 hours of attempting to get an Archon kill, trying both solo and in a squad, I can officially say that Archon Hunts ARE #*!%ING HARD, I have great mods but holy #*!% why is this fight unnecessarily tedious

Why is the Archon getting tickled by my 5 forma'ed weapons?

Why does the Archon have random invulnerable windows?

Why is there a cap on the status stacks?

Why does the Archon keep healing?

Why is dying extremely punishing?

Why am I punished for my squad mates' mistakes?

Why are NONE of the Warframe abilities working on the boss?

Why are there add phases?

Why are almost ALL the enemies Eximus?

Why are objectively weak Warframes getting a bonus in health and damage?

 

I don't care who exploited this fight and when they did so DE "had" to buff the fight

I don't care if the top 0.02% would get bored if this fight was made more reasonable

I don't care which Twitch stream that no-lifed this game thinks about content

 

This crap needs a nerf in any capacity, I don't even care how they nerf it but at this point; I will take anything

Your weapons don't do much damage because DE makes use of damage attenuation formulas in lieu of proper balance.

The various invulnerability phases are there to artificially attempt to prolong the fight.

There are caps on status effects because DE didn't feel like balancing that.

Dying is extremely punishing as a means to up the ante. I'm actually ok with this one, except for the balance in relative frame durability being terrible.

Warframe abilities don't work because DE doesn't want to balance them.

 

tldr; Archon fights are the way they are, because DE prefers to use band-aids in an attempt to bypass having to balance the game. It results in more imbalances, confusion and frustration on the player's part, erosion of depth (seeing as many mechanics that grants this game depth, such as Warframe abilities don't work on the bosses), and makes the encounters tedious. It was lightly touched on shortly after release, but the excuse was that they didn't pay much attention to the encounters, as they were focussed on Duviri.

[Jylon]

Nira is the worst of them generally, she tends to make most rage because of her diverse, and ouchy, skillset

archons can be done solo without much problem to those experienced.  i always play zephyr for everything unless requested by friend to be something else, so nohing special was used of her skills except tornado for quick dispatch of deacons and their groups, and archon summoned pals

archons seem to be weak to void damage as sentients tend to be. use Xata Whisper with xaku or as a subsumed ability

use weapon with immense radiation damage, critical-based, good multishot too

Madurai's Void Strike will buff so so well  (btw, i notice when activating this nowadays if not done very early in fight, archons tend to go into a defensive/invulnerable stage most of the time.  nice obvious script-activating event for adding more 'difficulty' :P )

i could mention which weps are the best, but try some out, see for yourself.    i actually like a particular incarnon-type when charged up the most when i do these solo.  i nerf myself to other equipment when i play with the randoms on sundays to make the experience more intense for them

[Dunkelheit]

Ok, let me say something positive about Dmg Attenuation: I think we can all agree that Warframe is a bit more on the easy side. So I think it is good to make boss fights harder. And I think it is better to use Dmg Attenuation on the bosses instead of overall ner%&^e.

There, I said it :D

Btw, I don't have any problems at all.

[BroDutt]

I always succeed one shot Kuva Hek only on solo. Apparently if another player use Kuva Hek without buffing it and shot it before you, the damage attenuation will affect your shot.

Tips:

On solo use Kuva Hek+buff

On group use Zariman Incarnon like Felarx + xata whisper

 

Edited September 3, 2023 by BroDutt

[Yulfan]

Kuva Hek is quite the meta weapon for a oneshot strat against them. I solo them with Ivara since her Prowl give a nice headshot multiplier, coupled with Roar (and i recently added Empowered Quiver in my build. Optional, but still nice). In addition, Nira and Boreal don't do anything when entering the fight while invisible, so you can take your time to buff yourself and land your headshot. Only Amar is always in a detected state, i don't know why, so you must be quick before he start his mechanics (or just wait for a good opportunity).

[Drachnyn]

Archons are badly designed unfortunately. Damage attenuation is a terrible system. Fortunately for us it does not work perfectly in what it is designed to do. My archon hunter setup is nezha (with roar and madurai) and a kuva hek (with radiation). If I hit the head with the kuva hek alt fire it will allow me to one shot an archon phase. It's very much a specific gear check as not many weapon lend itself very well to archon hunting. If they ever fix damage attenuation to do what it is meant to do, the archon fights will become so much worse because they fights themselves are not interesting at all.

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

En 1/9/2023 a las 3:06, Julican dijo:

So after 6 hours of attempting to get an Archon kill, trying both solo and in a squad, I can officially say that Archon Hunts ARE #*!%ING HARD, I have great mods but holy #*!% why is this fight unnecessarily tedious

I wouldn't call them "hard" necessarily, more punishing and tedious than anything else, but the definition of "difficulty" varies from user to user.

En 1/9/2023 a las 3:06, Julican dijo:

• Why is the Archon getting tickled by my 5 forma'ed weapons?

Two reasons;

First pretty much everyone else has already mentioned; DA/DR.
Second, more forma doesn't inquire your weapon to be good enough.

A Staticor, as many Formas as it may have, won't cut it against an archon.
Yes, I am sure you're not talking about the Staticor, would like to know what weapons you use normally for this though.

En 1/9/2023 a las 3:06, Julican dijo:

• Why does the Archon have random invulnerable windows?
• Why is there a cap on the status stacks?
• Why does the Archon keep healing?

• Because he's a boss - It is either a special move like in the case of Amar & Boreal, or summoning adds when it feels overwhelmed.
• Because he's a boss - If you could apply all statuses at max stacks, the fight would be a joke. Remember that cold slows down up to 90% now.
• Because he's a boss - I don't really have a reason for this but I've only experience it with Nira, Boreal and Amar don't seem to heal, so I presume it is to make up for the lack of a "longer" invulnerability phase Nira has.

En 1/9/2023 a las 3:06, Julican dijo:

• Why is dying extremely punishing?
• Why am I punished for my squad mates' mistakes?

• Because this is meant to be high tier content where the player should be prepared to (not) die.
• How? No seriously, from the many archon hunts I've done, I've never been punished for my team's "mistakes" if I've ever seen someone commit an action that could be branded as such, could you elaborate on this point a bit further?

En 1/9/2023 a las 3:06, Julican dijo:

• Why are NONE of the Warframe abilities working on the boss?

Uh, I wonder why a Sevagoth with Pillage & Shadow Haze shouldn't be allowed to make use of his abilities on the Archon. :|

En 1/9/2023 a las 3:06, Julican dijo:

• Why are there add phases?
• Why are almost ALL the enemies Eximus?

• Because it is a boss. Ever played Fanatic prelate? Tyl Regor? Ambulas?
• Normally while fighting the archon only one enemy spawns, an eximus unit. I presume it is to bring more difficulty than something you can dismiss with a lost shot.

En 1/9/2023 a las 3:06, Julican dijo:

Why are objectively weak Warframes getting a bonus in health and damage?

That is absolutely random. There's nothing that determines what frame whether it is "good or not" gets chosen for the hunt the same way it happens for Arbitrations.

 

En 1/9/2023 a las 3:06, Julican dijo:

I don't care who exploited this fight and when they did so DE "had" to buff the fight

I don't care if the top 0.02% would get bored if this fight was made more reasonable

I don't care which Twitch stream(er?) that no-lifed this game thinks about content

The fight was made like this from the get go as explained by Rebecca, showcasing a Chroma with a Glaive for exemplification purposes.
It was toned down from the initial release so it was more "affordable".

A reasonable fight doesn't have to be boring.
As a matter of fact, the top 0.02% probably find the fight boring already since they are most surely one-shotting archons in solo and spending little time on these.

Questions here is, would you care if the streamer agreed with you on that subject?
Would you care if someone else who has a different opinion despite being on the same level as you argued against what you've said?
This last part sounds too much like a random attack for no particular reason probably provoked by the heat of frustration.

You might not be fully prepared to tackle this content yet, be aware of that, but that doesn't subtract from the fact that, indeed, Archon hunts are tedious and mostly uninteresting.
Following recommendations from other users and learning about the hunts should overall "ease" the process, we will be glad to help.

[(PSN)rexis12]

Archon Hunts continue the baffling trend of Warframe continuously punishing us for playing in multiplayer.

This time, instead of adding in multiple stages while still giving the same amount of rewards, what it does is when other players damage the Archon this causes  the DA of Archons to trigger universally.

This is a BAFFLING choice that literally makes me wonder if DE wants multiplayer to be hated.

Like imagine if DA is applied separately on each player with a gauge it tell you how much your DA is currently ramping up and how much it has left, that way you cycle amongst the group.

While Player 1's DA is at max, he breaks off and takes care of the fodder while the others deal with the Archon when their DA is at the lowest. Then you cycle between the players to actually have an actual Multiplayer Orientated Boss.

[(XBOX)Player244024418]

On 2023-09-01 at 6:03 PM, (PSN)Unstar said:

I use a heavy attack build

Silly question from a MR30 but a build like this does, or does not, need to build combo count first, to be effective? I duplicated this on my azothane and didn't worry about building combo, went into ESO and the blue shield eximus were still standing after three heavy attacks, then i shot them dead. 

56 minutes ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

care of the fodder while the others deal with the Archon when their DA is at the lowest

So if you were the boss would this make sense? If this were a real boss would that make sense? I think it is appropriate for the archon to damage attenuate based on the archon getting hit, by anyone and anything.

On 2023-08-31 at 8:06 PM, Julican said:

I can officially say that Archon Hunts ARE #*!%ING HARD

Seriously, they are supposed to be. Archons are literally the toughest bosses in the game. You expected to cheese it first try? LOL Part of the attraction is figuring out the method and the satisfaction of success. I didn't even bother w archons until i thought i had some stuff seriously figured out.