Please Add More Helminth Armor Strips

[Ghastly-Ghoul]

Adding another ability for armor stripping won't add more build diversity. People will just choose the best one. Play a frame that has armor strip innately or build for slash or use Unairu or use some of the available helminth abilities. You don't need 100% armor strip in 99.99% of content. I run negative strength builds that fully strip armor after Molt Augmented builds up. Using Avalanche at negative strength for less than Frost's intended armor strip amount is more than effective for level 200 enemies even if you don't use viral, heat, or slash. It's even ok if I die fighting level 9999s and have my Molt Augmented stacks reset because I carry another weapon with viral/slash just in case that happens.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Ghastly-Ghoul

[ShogunGunshow]

On 2023-09-29 at 8:08 AM, CrownOfShadows said:

We need armor strip available for most warframes in high content. Please provide more options.

I have a better idea: how about DE address this by not making armor strips so necessary.

[CrownOfShadows]

19 hours ago, Ghastly-Ghoul said:

Adding another ability for armor stripping won't add more build diversity. People will just choose the best one. Play a frame that has armor strip innately or build for slash or use Unairu or use some of the available helminth abilities. You don't need 100% armor strip in 99.99% of content. I run negative strength builds that fully strip armor after Molt Augmented builds up. Using Avalanche at negative strength for less than Frost's intended armor strip amount is more than effective for level 200 enemies even if you don't use viral, heat, or slash. It's even ok if I die fighting level 9999s and have my Molt Augmented stacks reset because I carry another weapon with viral/slash just in case that happens.

Hmm going to have to disagree with this. If Fire Blast and Terrify were on par with Tharros and Pillage I would 100% be using them in my builds. Like I mentioned earlier, I actually was using Terrify on a lot of frames in the beginning, but because of it's various problems was forced to replace it with Pillage or Tharros.

If they make secondary advantages to armor strip abilities like we see with pillage and tharros, that also would help diversity. If I'm running a frame that loves shields, such as Mag, Pillage is the better option, because of the synergy. Whereas if I'm running a melee armor frame like Excal then Tharros is more desirable to me. So if they built in things for different play styles then they would be situationally preferred rather than just picking the overall best option. Like if there was an energy-focused armor strip that would be the obvious choice for energy hungry frames.

19 hours ago, ShogunGunshow said:

I have a better idea: how about DE address this by not making armor strips so necessary.

To make this happen they would have to completely refactor the entire game and multiple frame kits. Considering how getting a fix for Hydroid was like pulling teeth, I have a hard time believing they would rebuild the kits of every warframe with an armor strip, much less refactor the entire damage and scaling system. Way way way way easier to just make new enemy types that have a different scaling mechanic than armor.

And as long as it's predominantly tied to abilities, I actually think it's healthy in the current system, it breaks up the monotonous slaughter by requiring people to pay attention and react to heavily armored enemies instead of blindly bulldoze through everything.

[Pizzarugi]

11 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

To make this happen they would have to completely refactor the entire game and multiple frame kits. Considering how getting a fix for Hydroid was like pulling teeth, I have a hard time believing they would rebuild the kits of every warframe with an armor strip, much less refactor the entire damage and scaling system. Way way way way easier to just make new enemy types that have a different scaling mechanic than armor.

And as long as it's predominantly tied to abilities, I actually think it's healthy in the current system, it breaks up the monotonous slaughter by requiring people to pay attention and react to heavily armored enemies instead of blindly bulldoze through everything.

It doesn't have to be that difficult. DE just needs to massively turn down the armor scaling. The difference between the EHP of a Grineer Lancer and a Corpus Crewman on Steel Path is like night and day. One has a couple tens of thousands while the other has ten times as much. Grineer EHP scales exponentially higher than any other enemy in the game.

For example, a Crewman at level 195 according to the wiki has an SP EHP of 54k. A Grineer Lancer is 720k. On the far extreme end, a level cap SP Crewman's EHP goes up as far as 761k. The Lancer is 89.9m. The scaling grows out of control the higher level they are.

The solution isn't to make armor strip more necessary, but for DE to re-analyze enemy armor scaling and tone it down by a factor of ten to bring them more in line with Corpus and Infested. With the level 195 example, for a Lancer to have the same EHP as a Crewman on SP, they would just need to reduce their armor to mitigate 72.3% of damage instead of 87.9% like they have right now. Yes, a small amount of damage reduction makes a lot of difference. They could then maybe look at nerfing viral since it's no longer necessary, same as slash. That should take a great deal less time and manpower than rebalancing warframe abilities.

Edited October 16, 2023 by Pizzarugi

[SteveCutler]

Didn't read the whole thread, but I'd rather see more Helminth survivability/tanking powers. We have plenty of armor strip options already, but no good DR power. Defy is worthless. Eclipse is unreliable. Null Star only works on health and needs a max duration build that only really fits on Gauss. All we really have is Gloom, which is powerful, but isn't exactly a tanking power; it's just CC and healing. I want actual DR.

Sometimes on dev streams they release usage stats, showing the popularity of weapons, warframes, etc. I'd like to see stats like this for Helminth powers and Archon Shards...

Edited October 16, 2023 by SteveCutler

[ShogunGunshow]

7 hours ago, SteveCutler said:

Didn't read the whole thread, but I'd rather see more Helminth survivability/tanking powers. We have plenty of armor strip options already, but no good DR power. Defy is worthless. Eclipse is unreliable. Null Star only works on health and needs a max duration build that only really fits on Gauss. All we really have is Gloom, which is powerful, but isn't exactly a tanking power; it's just CC and healing. I want actual DR.

Sometimes on dev streams they release usage stats, showing the popularity of weapons, warframes, etc. I'd like to see stats like this for Helminth powers and Archon Shards...

Agreed.

Also, they could easily unnerf Defy on the Helminth without issue. The idea that 1500 armor would be OP in Warframe in 2023 is just such a relic. 

[Pizzarugi]

40 minutes ago, ShogunGunshow said:

Agreed.

Also, they could easily unnerf Defy on the Helminth without issue. The idea that 1500 armor would be OP in Warframe in 2023 is just such a relic. 

In a game where we have Revenant, 1500 armor is absolutely nothing.

Which is why I'm still confused why DE nerfed Styanax and Kullervo's previously uncapped overguard, and why they haven't reverted Valkyr's 4 nerf.

[SteveCutler]

1 hour ago, Pizzarugi said:

why they haven't reverted Valkyr's 4 nerf.

What nerf?

[Pizzarugi]

13 hours ago, SteveCutler said:

What nerf?

Way back yonder, DE didn't like Valkyr players being in Hysteria all the time, so they made it have an escalating energy cost the longer you stayed in it.

You'd think that would be fair, but fast forward a year or so (I lost track of time), and we get Revenant. He's got Valkyr-like invulnerability and doesn't have to babysit the energy capacity to stay that way nor is he forced into melee. Revenant's Mesmer Skin then gets buffed in wake of the eximus rework to grant 1 second of invulnerability whenever a stack is lost on top of everything else it offers. Valkyr's Hysteria remains nerfed, an energy sink stuck in the shadow of Revenant's superior defensive ability.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Pizzarugi