So why are bosses always immune to ability damage? It is getting boring.

[Sykar]

It is getting frankly tiresome and boring that players like me who prefer to use ability damage frames like Blazing Artillery or plain Ember get screwed over by this lazy design the every major boss introduction. It is especially grating considering that weapon damage scales way better than ability damage in the first place. Where are my bosses immune to weapon damage by the way?

[Chewarette]

Mesa.

[Sykar]

Yes, Mesa too gets screwed and cannot aim her Peacemakers at The Fragmented One so all she is good for is clearing trash which with the abundance of brain dead AoE weapons like the Zarr is a non-issue in the first place.

[Chewarette]

I was just saying that the reason why bosses are immune to abilities is likely because of Mesa (main offender) and other scaling abilities (such as the weird period of time where Trinity was deleting Kela with her 2).

[Sykar]

Regulators do not scale as hard as for example Phenmor. Why prohibit Mesa but not Phenmor? Oh and Mesa does not even target weak spots, just shoots center mass which is terrible to begin with on many bosses.

Edited December 21, 2023 by Sykar

[Voltage]

1 hour ago, Sykar said:

Regulators do not scale as hard as for example Phenmor. Why prohibit Mesa but not Phenmor? Oh and Mesa does not even target weak spots, just shoots center mass which is terrible to begin with on many bosses.

Mesa is a poor example. It's likely more because of abilities like Smite and Energy Vampire. It's easier for DE to disable abilities than create an exception for every creative setup that makes use of scaling damage.

[Sykar]

We are talking about ability damage. As in abilities that directly damage bosses. Like Ember with Fireball and Meteors. I am also not aware of a setup with Trinity and Oberon that would trivialize any encounter more than any other setup. So still not a convincing argument why DE time and again screws over frames like Ember which is not even the best at trash mob clearing.

[(NSW)Greybones]

Could always do some kind of attenuation.

Lovely Attenuation, where the designers try to keep the boss whose health is tied to their level alive but still give players who don’t even know what level they’re built for the chance to do damage

[Tsukinoki]

5 hours ago, Sykar said:

. I am also not aware of a setup with Trinity and Oberon that would trivialize any encounter more than any other setup

Oberons smite releases orbs that deal a percentage of the mobs maximum health.

You get the new "super boss" by itself and cast smite?  oh well, watch 35% of its maximum health disappear every single cast....and you can cast that very rapidly.
So for just the low-low cost of 75 energy at base you can destroy any boss in 3 casts.

 

Or take Trinities "Well of Life".
If you are within the wells effect and would take a status effect instead the status effect is negated and the enemy affected by well of life takes 10% of it's maximum health as damage.
Staggers count as "status effects", as do a number of other things.

Just need one eximus enemy and watch a boss melt in seconds as you sit there and let enemies hit you to kill the boss 10% of its maximum HP at a time!
Or better yet self staggers (from shooting your feet with explosive weapons) count as negated status effects and will chunk out 10% of the enemies maximum HP as well! (even if you have PSF on meaning you don't stagger anyways)  Meaning you shoot your own feet 10 times to kill any enemy regardless of HP.

 

Then there is "Energy Vampire" which hits for 6.25% of the health per pulse, while CCing the enemy for the entire duration.
Won't take long to seriously chunk on the enemy....especially for a minimum duration trinity since you are guaranteed 4 pulses per cast regardless of duration (so less duration means more nuking!).
And once the enemy drops below 25% health it takes 1.5ish% of it's maximum health as damage, meaning only 16 pulses or 4 casts and the boss is dead at that point.

 

5 hours ago, Sykar said:

We are talking about ability damage. As in abilities that directly damage bosses.

And those are just three examples of "ability damage".

DE has admitted that warframe is a mess of spaghetti code, so it's probably easier (and causes way less bugs) if they just blanket ban ability damage instead of going "Ok, this ability can hurt the boss, but this one can't.  Oh and this one can and this other one can't.   Oh did we release a new frame and forget to make bosses immune to some of their abilities?"

Edited December 21, 2023 by Tsukinoki

[Qriist]

5 hours ago, Tsukinoki said:

Staggers count as "status effects", as do a number of other things.

Fun fact, auto-blocking bullets with a melee weapon counts as a status effect. I learned this while using Rhino's Iron Skin to crack a riven that cared about not getting status effects.

[Sykar]

Last time I have checked, there is damage attenuation. Furthermore despite Oberon's and Trinity's supposed "imba" damage, hardly anyone plays them, now why is that? Oh right, because weapon damage still vastly out scales ability damage due to the fact that. Furthermore that still does not excuse the fact that caster frames like Ember still get massively shafted. They put in so much effort for defences on bosses against weapon damage but they cannot be bothered to do the same for ability and you think that is a good excuse? What a joke.Oh and to Oberon, the damage from max health does not apply to the boss anyway. You would have to hit a minion which have pitiful health by comparison and trash gets cleared fast anyway. So again, not an argument.So they have "spaghetti code" well I guess instead of just pumping out more mindless power creep they should start fixing their game and not just add lazy band-aid after band-aid.

Edited December 21, 2023 by Sykar

[ShogunGunshow]

14 hours ago, Chewarette said:

I was just saying that the reason why bosses are immune to abilities is likely because of Mesa (main offender) and other scaling abilities (such as the weird period of time where Trinity was deleting Kela with her 2).

Trinity can still do this to minibosses ofc, like the zariman angel.

I use her with an epitap and Marked for Death. Hit with Viral, Mark, Vampire. Bam, whole group of enemies instantly explodes. 

[Tsukinoki]

15 hours ago, Sykar said:

Furthermore despite Oberon's and Trinity's supposed "imba" damage, hardly anyone plays them, now why is that? Oh right, because weapon damage still vastly out scales ability damage due to the fact that.

It's only "imba damage" against single targets....and how often do we fight single targets with larger health pools?
Oh yeah, just bosses.  For most of the game their damage is fairly balanced because we are fighting large groups of enemies, not single high value and high health targets. (Sure you can make it work in other situations but it requires a lot more work than other easier options so most people don't bother)

And their abilities don't work on the bosses currently....and your threads entire point is to change that so that their damage does work on bosses!

15 hours ago, Sykar said:

.Oh and to Oberon, the damage from max health does not apply to the boss anyway. You would have to hit a minion which have pitiful health by comparison and trash gets cleared fast anyway.

And again: You want to change this so that Oberon can do that to bosses!
I mean it's your main threads point to make bosses vulnerable to all of these abilities!

That does include oberon and Trinity and other situations!

Edited December 22, 2023 by Tsukinoki

[(PSN)Sentiel]

I understand the frustration behind not being able to affect the boss with your abilities, especially if the said ability is the key theme of your Warframe or you rely on it for survivability.

On the other hand, I wouldn't appreciate having a Kullervo one shot the boss with his ludicrous damage. I enjoy doing that and I'm sure others do as well, but it doesn't make for a good gameplay experience in the long run and for others as well.