Reworking Magnetic procs and Void procs, a solution.

[Dwolfknight]

I'll keep this as short as possible.

Magnetic damage is not awful, not good, but not awful. Its Disruption Proc, however, is. The new arcanes are nice, but they do not fix the problem Disruption has.

It is a proc that only has a single faction it is useful agaisnt, and a handful of other enemies, but it is surpassed by the primary elemental proc from Toxin.
The proc is similar to Viral, but Viral has a use everywhere (bar the Murmur). This is why despite not being the best choice in every scenario Viral is still used everywhere, it is about ease of use.

Magnetic has none of that, it is niche and withing its niche it is surpassed.

How to fix it:
Give Magnetic procs (Disruption) the effect of Void procs (Bullet Attractor).

Make it stackable, make the bullet attraction grow with stacks, maybe only 1 meter atraction with a single stack and then growing by 0.5 meters per stack to a maximun of 5 (3.5 Meters) or whatever ends up most balanced. Keep the disruption part of stopping shield regenerations, it is good, but the extra damage to shields could actually see the bin, the type effectiveness covers it enough.

Why:
Bullet Attractor is a good proc, not good enough as to put Xata whisper on all warframes as a helmith ability. There are some better choices, but i definitely have it in some frames. But as a magnetic proc, not only would it make magnetic damage more desirable, it would see some niches with low accuracy high status weapons, but the niche would be weapon specific instead of faction specific, giving the ease of use it deserves.

Possible criticism: Bullet Attractor on Magnetic damage would overshadow Mags Magnetize.
Xakus Xata Whisper already gives void procs to every single weapon, I don't see it overshadowing Mag. It is thematic, as mag is a Magnetic frame, it is a nice tie-in between themes and mechanics.

What about Void procs:
I never knew why Void has Bullet Attractor as a proc, it doesn't make sense in the world building, and makes very little sense mechanically too. The operator abilities dont really mesh well with it as a mechanic, it is cluncky to use it as a primer for warframe weapons, and nothing in Xakus arsenal suggests it should be the case.

I propose another proc for Void damage that is thematic with what we see in the game, being toxic to living beings and to the sentience.

New Void proc: Discordance, the anti-adaptation.
Decreases the Type resistance of the targets primary Health type by 10% increasing by 5% per stack to a maximum of 8 stacks, (50%). Effectively making them 50% more prone to damage from all sources.

To explain the way that I see it working, I'll use 2 examples: If you are attacking a Heavy gunner vs a Butcher.

Quote

Both targets have the same 2 Health types, Clone flesh and Ferrite armor.

The Heavy gunner has 300 base Cloned flesh and 500 Ferrite armor.
In this case, Discordance would target the Ferrite Armor. On max stacks it would be changing the type effectiveness from Puncture +50%, Slash -15%, Blast -25%, Corrosive +75%, and everything else 0%, to the a new effectiveness of Puncture +100%, Slash +35%, Blast +25%, Corrosive +125% and everything else to +50%.

A Butcher has a base cloned flesh of 50 Cloned flesh and 5 Ferrite armor.
In this case, Discordance would target the Cloned Flesh. On max stacks it would be changing the type effectiveness from Impact -25%, Slash +25%, Heat +25%, Gas -50%, Viral +75% and everything else 0% , to the new effectiveness of Impact +25%, Slash +75%, Heat +75%, Gas 0%, Viral 125%, and everything else to +50%.

There could possibly be a less cluncky way of doing this, but this one is the most interesting way to me.

Why:
This is mechanically a better Operator primer for Warframe weapons, while also working better with the Operators own kit. it does power up Xatas Whisper, but it is still not close to what some other Helminth Abilities can do (it also already has diminished effect when helminthed). Either way it powers up any damage type you are using.

Thematically it makes more sense with how the void behaves, removing resistances from the sentients, scrambling Profit-Takers shield vulnerability, and even makes more sense with The Indiference, who targets your weakspots, emotions, manipulates your memories, proding at the wound.

Possible criticism: Isn't this Viral 2.0?
It is not. The source of Void damage is much different and restricted than Viral's, only Operators and Xata Whisper can do void damage as of now. It should remain restrictive for the forseable future, so I do not see them in the same vein. It also works with all enemies similarly but to a lesser degree.

Edited January 16 by Dwolfknight
Grammar and Math

[Pakaku]

8 minutes ago, Dwolfknight said:

It is a proc that only has a single faction it is useful agaisnt, and a handful of other enemies, but it is surpassed by the primary elemental proc from Toxin.
The proc is similar to Viral, but Viral has a use everywhere (bar the Murmur). This is why despite not being the best choice in every scenario Viral is still used everywhere, it is about ease of use.

Magnetic is more like a “shield variant” of Corrosive, not Viral. Corrosive is still technically useless against shielded enemies and you would build differently for them if it was worth it. Viral is more for weakening their “red health”, which is always valuable for either faction

A few things are wrong with the Corpus which makes Magnetic unvaluable… Shields don’t act as a health multiplier like armour does, and Corpus red health doesn’t get tankier based on amounts of shields, so Viral is less necessary to weaken them. Armour resists direct slash damage, but not procs, so you would normally build for Viral in order to buff your Slash procs. Meanwhile Toxin ignores shields completely, so you can just throw on a Toxin mod without Cold and free up a mod slot while you’re at it, and it will do double the work in both direct damage and proc damage.

Compared to Magnetic, Corrosive damage is usually worth considering just from how armour multiplies health so tremendously. If your weapon isn’t as good at dealing a lot of slash procs, Corrosive keeps your weapon viable. Toxin will make anything more viable against Shielded enemies.

There isn’t really any need to buff Magnetic even further when fighting shielded enemies don’t require the extra buffs anyways. Shields and Armour need to be equalized first, in mechanics and damage-resistance. Magnetic would become more valuable, and we’d also become less reliant on Viral if armoured enemies didn’t scale so tremendously high 

As for void procs… it’s an awful mechanic as it is if you rely on shooting weakpoints at all. Putting it on Magnetic would put it in an even worse place than it already is, unless the mechanic is changed somehow like making all shots focus on enemy weakpoints (and not heads specifically, in the case of enemies like MOAs and their backpacks…) 

[Dwolfknight]

23 minutes ago, Pakaku said:

Magnetic is more like a “shield variant” of Corrosive, not Viral. Corrosive is still technically useless against shielded enemies and you would build differently for them if it was worth it. Viral is more for weakening their “red health”, which is always valuable for either faction

I know that is what it was supposed to be, but its not what it became. Mechanically though it is closer to Viral as it increases damage dealt to a health type by a percentage, where as Corrosive reduces a total armor value by a percentage. Originally I think that Viral was also suposed to be the Infected faction go to damage type, but the mechanics reached everyone else. Even on corpus, if you can get your weapon to do both toxin and viral, just like viral slash on grineer.
 

29 minutes ago, Pakaku said:

There isn’t really any need to buff Magnetic even further when fighting shielded enemies don’t require the extra buffs anyways. Shields and Armour need to be equalized first, in mechanics and damage-resistance. Magnetic would become more valuable, and we’d also become less reliant on Viral if armoured enemies didn’t scale so tremendously high 

Even if it were buffed, the niche aspect would remain there. I would prefer that Magnetic left that niche. Just like Radiation confusing enemies is not a faction specific effect, Magnetic should be the same.

I do not agree with the idea that it should remain a Corrosive variant for shields, shields are a different beast and I think it should remain like that. Armor is a damage reduction mechanic, where Shield are a health buffer with a fixed reduction and stops damage overflow.

31 minutes ago, Pakaku said:

As for void procs… it’s an awful mechanic as it is if you rely on shooting weakpoints at all. Putting it on Magnetic would put it in an even worse place than it already is, unless the mechanic is changed somehow like making all shots focus on enemy weakpoints (and not heads specifically, in the case of enemies like MOAs and their backpacks…) 

That is something I agree. The Microwave proc from Nukor already targets specific body parts for a damage multiplier since before void damage was a thing. I'm not sure why they don't reuse that code to make the Bullet Attractor proc target what you hit better.

[Redphienix]

On the magnetic recommendation I'm in general support.

Thematically I think it makes more sense for magnetic procs to be... well... magnetic, and I agree that void being the bullet attractor has always confused me slightly.

 

I actually agree with @Pakaku on two points, for one: in terms of where the problem with mag originates- with it being the shield version of corrosion but armor's impact is something you actually want to interact with to disrupt and shields... well shields aren't multiplicatively resistant against our weapons, and we can pierce them (as OP mentioned), so building "for shields" makes little to no sense but building "for armor" does.

But as I opened with, that's kind of why I prefer this rework concept. Because yes they COULD rework shields to be something we actually need to build against, but it's likely to just make shields "armor but blue" so I am not exactly keen on that. I genuinely think "toxin" already fulfills the role of "building for shields" beautifully- it's even different in how you usually deal with armor which is interesting (if you squint your eyes enough to forget slash ignores armor for some reason so armor has 2 work arounds but shields arguably only need the 1).

But I said I agreed on two points, the other point is that bullet attractor as it CURRENTLY is, is annoying as all heck. I see OP agrees in a response but I will reiterate for my own opinion as someone who generally supports this rework concept: As it exists now void procs are capable of hampering incarnon weapons and seeing as they don't innately increase your damage in any way, they are hampering damage in general by not allowing even non-incarnon weapons to headshot.

 

The main reasons I'm aware of to interact with bullet attractor currently are "defensively" as they do stop enemies from shooting you which is a fantastic feature that many overlook because, well duh, we're here to shoot not worry about the being shot part lol (This feature may be overpowered if applied to the basic elemental system and may need removed?)- and because Xata's whisper is such an immense damage buff that can interact funky with various sources of damage for big number fun.

IE: People aren't really using void damage for the proc, it's just a side effect of Xata being a good ability.

I genuinely don't understand why void procs seem to just randomly grab parts of the body. It APPEARS to be because, at least from Xata, it may be procing off other status effect's damage? or the fringe of an AOE portion of a weapon's damage? Or perhaps it really is random. Regardless unloading a clip into an enemy's head and seeing a bubble appear on their chest and now you can't headshot that enemy or any enemy in range of that enemy- is annoying as heck. And the awkward "well if I shoot above them it sometimes hits the head" work around isn't ideal lol.

Skill issue comment goes here<

 

So I thematically, and as a form of buffing a currently underwhelming status, entirely support making mag damage proc a bullet attractor style status.

But.

The current one in game is bad. I would not recommend that DE simply swaps the status with the current Void proc, but rather that the current "attractor" status gets adjusted to either always target weakspots, or to perhaps only affect the user's bullets (so it's still annoying in these use cases but it only helps/hinders the user and isn't suddenly a raid wide annoyance).

So I sadly think this concept still needs some workshopping in regards to how a bullet attractor v2 might avoid these issues, or it's DOA.

Edit: Though to be honest, it now being attached to a specific and easily avoided damage type rather than popular abilities etc does 'fix it' a little on its own. It does give the proc some value to some weapons and it builds a niche- I just mention that the current attractor status is a not "ideal".

 

As for the void suggestion, I sadly can't say I agree that the limited 'range' of options to proc it make it ok to be Viral 2. It's viral 2. Yes, access to this viral 2 is a bit limited for newer players as they won't reasonably get to abuse it until they get their amp and even then they won't interact much with it until they get a Xaku to feed- but that's the part I'm staring at.

Xata's Whisper is VERY popular, mostly because of how it interacts with some incarnon perks. It is used EVERYWHERE, so to suddenly make the currently "extremely meh and occasionally detrimental" status proc it adds into a VIRAL 2- that's not good in my books, too much damage suddenly added to the meta with too little downside or "cost" to using as many builds are already using Xata.

No go from me, but I appreciate the thematic draw between how it interacts with adaptability and what you want to see it do in game.

Even something far lesser than a raw 50% damage buff, like buffing damage to only the #1 weakness of a unit by like 20% at max stacks (like a reverse adaptation), would probably be far too insane, with corrosive suddenly doing a ton to armored units and the already meta viral builds suddenly doing even more damage to cloned flesh. All from one already popular helminth.

I think with Viral running rampant we can't really be too liberal with our "This status increases incoming damage by %" stats, but perhaps I'm being too stingy. Beyond that slightly mitigated and still too strong in my eyes variant, I sadly can't offer an alternative atm, but if we were to make mag truly "magnetic" then we'd have to do SOMETHING about that dang void energy lol

Edited January 16 by Redphienix

[Tiltskillet]

I sort of dislike the bullet attractor effect whether its on void or magnetic, when it comes to other people inflicting it.  Since if it's not applied or can't be applied to heads, it disrupts my ability to land headshots.  I suppose that could be adjusted maybe...  But it's already quite powerful when applied correctly, so I don't know.

Alternate idea: have magnetic inflict ability suppression--basically Silence.   The duration would need to work differently than the shield debuff--maybe something like 2 seconds per status proc.  FWIW the cool thing about this route is it parallels what magnetic procs do to Tenno: makes it harder for them to cast abilities by draining their energy.

Don't know about the specific numbers, but I like the OPs resistance suppression suggestion for Void.  (Not the first time its been suggested. Same with ability suppression or just about any idea for reworking status procs that can be imagined.)

[Fred_Avant_2019]

Just my two cents, but Melee Vortex is what I'd have expected from normal Magnetic procs, on top of the already present shield vulnerability. Sadly, because it's an arcane now, chances are it's never going to happen, since the effect is already available, and having it on base magnetic procs would render the arcane worthless mechanically speaking (since the arcane only procs on targets you kill that have magnetic on them).

Never been a fan of bullet attractor to be fair, I'd rather have it be Mag's thing and no one else's.

 

Also, Void damage is still void damage, not true damage, it's not reduced by armor types, but it's reduced by armor values, like other damage type. Dunno if you count that as "it's balanced" or "it's not balanced", couldn't decide that myself either, because I don't consider Operator gameplay to be fleshed out enough to justify it outside of voidschools shenanigans.

[Dwolfknight]

4 hours ago, Redphienix said:

Even something far lesser than a raw 50% damage buff, like buffing damage to only the #1 weakness of a unit by like 20% at max stacks (like a reverse adaptation), would probably be far too insane, with corrosive suddenly doing a ton to armored units and the already meta viral builds suddenly doing even more damage to cloned flesh. All from one already popular helminth.

This is one interesting aspect of the way I'm recomending this be done. Since it only affect the health type with the highest base, it would not affect the slash procs that are damaging the cloned health on the heavy gunner example and most heavily armored enemies. Corrosive already does a ton of damage to armored enemies, its just that its most often better to just treat them as non armored enemies.

I gues I've subestimeted how much people use Xata Whisper, I have it on Mesa instead of Ballistic Battery... and I think thats it.

[Nebula-System]

just found this searching around for some info on why void procs don't actually grab the right part of the body. i think the initial idea for them just reducing defenses, or the other idea of them always being on the head or other weakspots would prove fantastic. either way, void procs are rather useless in the current game due to their limited functionality and often buggy nature, and need some sort of fix like this

[Xzorn]

Bullet Attraction, Jamming Weapons, Pull Effect. It's all been suggested numerous times. Nothing stuck.

First thing they would need to do is revert old methods of Corpus having Armor units. This made it impossible to even consider Magnetic along with their old scaling which put even the highest base shield units with more life than shields by around level 400. In a twist of irony Toxic wasn't always the best option later in levels.

Viral + Electric surpassed it due to the health ratio. Viral itself and obviously Bleed/Gas which were removed. The only time Toxic was a superior choice in terms of scaling was when using a x3-x4 base Crit multiplier weapon which allowed you to brute force Toxic better. Any other situation there were better options.

Corpus previously actually had the most versatile damage/status options of any other factions.
Now that enemies scale like paper and Corpus health scaling was reduced. None of this really applies. Just go Toxic.

Which begs the real question. Should Toxic have ever bypassed Shields in the first place?

[Venefik]

What we have to consider though is how intrusive procs might be. +damage or -damage inflicted (viral or puncture) might rarely see someone upset (Nyx accidentally killing eximus, chroma gettin vexed [ba dum ts]) but a bullet attractor is much more likely to ruin precision shots (headshots, sonar shots, crystal shots, etc). The main point though is not being intrusive for others, but rather oneself. Much like our fellow Tenno @Tiltskillet, the only bullet attractor I tolerate is Scourge’s, and only because I rarely use it for defence (nice against eximus so they can’t shoot at you) and because it is centered on the head. So any weapon in my Arsenal with base magnetic damage would be a pain to use in case it was reworked to attract bullets. Not to mention the bad interactions that attractor bubbles have. Opticor has mag dmg on the splash, and it’s splash damage has self stagger. When it’s fired against a bubble, the splash triggers on its surface, making this weapon a poor choice for mag bubbles as it might get you constantly staggered etc.