Why does Innodem's ground finisher seem to kill every enemy nearby?

[(PSN)Unstar]

A few weeks ago, I discovered that Innodem was a great weapon to use with Mag: you cast Pull, every enemy in the zip code lands in a pile at your feet, and then you do a single melee attack that kills them all.  It's only now that I realize I have no idea why this happens.

The motion that Mag makes when doing this single attack is to hold the dagger in her hands and do a downwards stabbing motion that has "stabbing my downed enemy in the heart" vibes, so my assumption is that this attack is her ground finisher.  And given that daggers have a particularly deadly ground finisher, it makes sense that the enemy being "finished" would die.

The part that I don't understand is why the whole group of enemies dies.  Do ground finishers not just hit a single enemy, but rather have a range like normal melee attacks?    Alternatively, is this a unique feature of the Innodem?  I've noticed that there's a "fiery explosion" visual effect that accompanies this attack animation, which seems odd, though I wasn't able to find any mention of that on the Innodem's wiki page.

Anyway, if anyone can explain the details of this phenomenon, I'd love to understand it better!  Thanks!

[(PSN)Apoleon_amarr]

Innodem main here, the fire explosion is from the perk stunning brutality, it stuns/ opens alerted enemies nearby to finishers, the explosion itself does no damage.

You are hitting several enemies on ground finishers because ground finishers have the same range as normal swing,its basically just a swing at an awkward angle, try putting all range mods on the innodem,it will be even easier to notice it, since its one of the longest weapons in the game

Edit: the fire explosion from stunning brutality has fixed colors, there is no way to change it

Edited December 8, 2023 by (PSN)Apoleon_amarr

[Rathalio]

I don't think that a specificity of the Innodem.

I remember being able to kill multiple enemies with a single finisher attack with any melee weapon in Vauban's vortexes because they were all stack in the same spot. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what you are experiencing with Mag.

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

Two general explanations. Ground finishers as far as I know and am aware, should hit multiple enemies. There was also a change, somewhat recently, like sometime this year (maybe the last big update? Quick Google search shows maybe 2 months ago?), where ground finishers now do "true damage" where previously they did not, instead doing a weaker version in the past. So essentially they were buffed. 

So it might just be that you are now noticing this newly buffed type of ground finisher? I can't account for the accompanying fiery explosion. Does it match your Warframe's energy colour or the Innodem? 

Hope that other bit helps though. Ground finishers being buffed was quite nice. I have been doing a lot more recently myself, with Furax Wraith Incarnon. Fun times. I'll try with Mag and Innodem too, that also sounds fun. 

[(PSN)Unstar]

4 minutes ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

I can't account for the accompanying fiery explosion. Does it match your Warframe's energy colour or the Innodem? 

That's the weird part, it matches neither!  The energy colors I use on both are blue and neon pink, but the explosion seems to be a very normal reddish color (if I recall correctly there's some yellow in there, too).

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

Ground finishers, unlike stealth finishers/standing front finishers, have a hitbox, rather than dealing damage to a specific enemy though a scripted animation. Anything the hitbox touches takes the ground finisher damage of the weapon performing the attack.

As far as the "explosion", assuming it does not match enemy highlight color or any energy/emissive colors, it could be an effect based on your modded elements on the weapon. all weapons that deal fire damage have very small burst of flame particles when they hit (assuming that neither elemental weapon fx nor particles have been turned off). If this happens to a dozen enemies at once, it could end up looking like an explosion. Might not be the cause, but it's a possibility.

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

That's the weird part, it matches neither!  The energy colors I use on both are blue and neon pink, but the explosion seems to be a very normal reddish color (if I recall correctly there's some yellow in there, too).

Is it different than your normal swing effect colors?  When I use the Innodem, I get my energy colors on both normal swings and ground finishers.  (Regardless of modded elements.)  The ground finisher effects do kind of look like explosions.

[taiiat]

as mentioned, Ground Finishers can hit multiple Enemies if they're close enough (or on top of each other) so that your attack goes through all of them. plus that Damage composition change for Ground Finishers.
it's probably just that. pair that with Innodem is a Weapon with pretty high Stats all around.

 

1 hour ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

where ground finishers now do "true damage" where previously they did not, instead doing a weaker version in the past. So essentially they were buffed. 

me, someone who specced into Ground Finishers sometimes, adding extra Status Effects and DoT's to capitalize on how effective Ground Finishers were: in shambles
(raising the minimum lowering the maximum IMO, and also making Modding for Ground Finishers as boring as standing Finishers)

[Tiltskillet]

28 minutes ago, taiiat said:

me, someone who specced into Ground Finishers sometimes, adding extra Status Effects and DoT's to capitalize on how effective Ground Finishers were: in shambles
(raising the minimum lowering the maximum IMO, and also making Modding for Ground Finishers as boring as standing Finishers)

It's true.  Even though I was, and kind of still am pretty excited about the change.

[(PSN)Unstar]

20 hours ago, -AoN-CanoLathra- said:

As far as the "explosion", assuming it does not match enemy highlight color or any energy/emissive colors, it could be an effect based on your modded elements on the weapon. all weapons that deal fire damage have very small burst of flame particles when they hit (assuming that neither elemental weapon fx nor particles have been turned off). If this happens to a dozen enemies at once, it could end up looking like an explosion.

This was a good theory!  I tested it after work though by removing the Heat mod from my weapon (leaving Viral as the only modded element) and the explosion still happened.  Now that you mention it though, it does seem like the explosion effect plays for every individual enemy that gets hit by the finisher.  The explosion effect is already pretty sizeable, but with certain configurations of enemies this can lead to very wide patches of simultaneous explosion effects.

19 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

Is it different than your normal swing effect colors?  When I use the Innodem, I get my energy colors on both normal swings and ground finishers.  (Regardless of modded elements.)  The ground finisher effects do kind of look like explosions.

Yes, my swing colors don't have any red or yellow in them; the explosions are the only part that's colored this way.

 

After sleeping on it, my best guess is that it the explosion effect may be related to this Innodem passive ability:

Finishers grant Incarnon Resilience, increasing Damage Reduction by 10% up to four stacks. These stacks are multiplicative to each other and last for the duration of Incarnon Form. Mercy finishers with a Parazon do not apply a stack of Incarnon Resilience.

My guess is that when Incarnon Resilience triggers, it is playing this visual effect.  It's kind of a weird effect to play because an explosion effect has the vibe of being more destructive when it's just a normal dagger finisher, but it's the only thing that makes sense to me given what everyone has said here.

[Tiltskillet]

55 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

After sleeping on it, my best guess is that it the explosion effect may be related to this Innodem passive ability:

Finishers grant Incarnon Resilience, increasing Damage Reduction by 10% up to four stacks. These stacks are multiplicative to each other and last for the duration of Incarnon Form. Mercy finishers with a Parazon do not apply a stack of Incarnon Resilience.

My guess is that when Incarnon Resilience triggers, it is playing this visual effect.  It's kind of a weird effect to play because an explosion effect has the vibe of being more destructive when it's just a normal dagger finisher, but it's the only thing that makes sense to me given what everyone has said here.

Do you have Evo 5 Stunning Brutality selected? 

When I turn that on, with AI turned on I get orange-ish explosion effects on massed ground finisher clumps in the Sim  even though my weapon has green energy colors and pure toxin mods.  With either of the other two options under the same conditions, nothing but green.

[(PSN)Unstar]

Thanks to everyone who shared their knowledge and theories in this thread; I appreciate it!

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

On 2023-12-08 at 10:28 AM, taiiat said:

me, someone who specced into Ground Finishers sometimes, adding extra Status Effects and DoT's to capitalize on how effective Ground Finishers were: in shambles
(raising the minimum lowering the maximum IMO, and also making Modding for Ground Finishers as boring as standing Finishers)

 

Ah, sorry to hear that. That would be pretty frustrating I think. 

Personally I never really got that invested into Ground Finishers until quite recently Around when some Incarnon Melees had that as an evolution requirement, so I had to learn ways to make it consistent and convenient, and started to enjoy and appreciate some of the animations involved with the finisher. Given a few months and I probably would have started investing time into optimising and been in the same boat, but the change happened. Granted, I am still mostly enjoying them more for the animations themselves at the moment than anything else. 

[(XBOX)Player244024418]

On 2023-12-07 at 3:58 PM, Tiltskillet said:

It's true.  Even though I was, and kind of still am pretty excited about the change.

Wiki states: 

Ground Finishers do NOT inflict DmgTrueSmall64.png True Damage, but rather retain their damage spread as normal. As a result, they are not considered Finisher attacks for some in-game challenges such as Nightwave daily challenges.

[Tiltskillet]

3 hours ago, (XBOX)Player244024418 said:

Wiki states: 

Ground Finishers do NOT inflict DmgTrueSmall64.png True Damage, but rather retain their damage spread as normal. As a result, they are not considered Finisher attacks for some in-game challenges such as Nightwave daily challenges.

That's out of date as of AoD.  Weapons inflict no status on ground finishers unless they have a forced proc.

[taiiat]

10 hours ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

Ah, sorry to hear that. That would be pretty frustrating I think. 

Personally I never really got that invested into Ground Finishers until quite recently Around when some Incarnon Melees had that as an evolution requirement, so I had to learn ways to make it consistent and convenient, and started to enjoy and appreciate some of the animations involved with the finisher. Given a few months and I probably would have started investing time into optimising and been in the same boat, but the change happened. Granted, I am still mostly enjoying them more for the animations themselves at the moment than anything else. 

the greatness mainly came from Prolonged Paralysis, ever since the Week it was added to the game 🤘
just move all of the Enemies on top of each other and Kill the entire room with one Ground Finisher 😎

with some other honorable mentions like Vortex kinda being able to be used for Ground Finishers.