Does anyone actually bother with elemental matching?

[Raarsi]

4 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

I really like the addition of combined element mods, I wish there were more. I use those new rad ones on utility primers, more status types for CO type mods.

Yes, I too wish for more gas mods.

/sarcasm

[Berzerkules]

28 minutes ago, Raarsi said:

Yes, I too wish for more gas mods.

/sarcasm

Stacking gas clouds on armor stripped enemies ain't bad.

I had 11.5k kills in a 1h solo SP Circulus run with Nova running an argonak + gas/electric dagger set up. The RDD riven I used in that run was tox/heat/range. Most people would call that riven garbage, because most people wouldn't know what to do with it. 

I now use a speed/range/electric/- riven but having a gas melee mod would allow me to drop both 60/60 mods used to make gas and run something like spring loaded blade for just under 9m range on my RDD. 

That's just one use for a single gas mod. I'm sure we could dream up all sorts of uses for the other combined elemental damage types if they came on a single mod. 

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, Raarsi said:

Yes, I too wish for more gas mods.

/sarcasm

Standalone gas mods would be niche, but still could be pretty awesome, depending on secondary stats.

/not sarcasm

One less mod needed, Opens up corrosive or viral combos.  These are two basic issues with the element that'd be solved.

And best of all we'd finally have an answer to the age-old question, "Would gas damage be increased by elemental damage if gas mods actually existed."

[Berzerkules]

1 minute ago, Tiltskillet said:

And best of all we'd finally have an answer to the age-old question, "Would gas damage be increased by elemental damage if gas mods actually existed."

Dude!! I didn't even think about that. 

[(PSN)Sentiel]

Matching elements is only worth for fights like TFO or Eidolons, otherwise, the usual Viral+Slash / Viral+Heat is good enough for everything except Deimos open world Infested which are immune to the Viral status.

[Hayrack]

7 hours ago, Hexerin said:

In my experience, elemental matching is super tedious with its micromanagement, but yields negligible results (or is actively worse in some cases).

Are you using viral+heat+slash against Indifferent Facade????

[(PSN)Sentiel]

18 minutes ago, Hayrack said:

Are you using viral+heat+slash against Indifferent Facade????

That can work with Shock Trooper, just saiyan.

[Hayrack]

31 minutes ago, (PSN)Sentiel said:

That can work with Shock Trooper, just saiyan.

There we have it. WF community likes to make bold claims how something is weak/useless or OP, without including all relevant factors. Elemental swapping is absolutely neccessary on SP if you are playing outside the meta.

[(PSN)Sentiel]

3 minutes ago, Hayrack said:

There we have it. WF community likes to make bold claims how something is weak/useless or OP, without including all relevant factors. Elemental swapping is absolutely neccessary on SP if you are playing outside the meta.

I don't speak for the entire community and never even claimed elemental swapping is weak or useless in the first place. It's a waste of time for 99% of the game's content, including SP, and that's a fact. Viral + Heat or Viral + Slash will handle that 99% easy peasy. Poor game balancing but it is what it is.

 

Elemental swapping is necessary only in Deimos Open World SP because the enemies are immune to Viral status while also being quite tanky, so you're likely to fail any bounty that requires killing under a time limit thanks to that.

It is highly beneficial for Eidolons, Profit Taker, and TFO but certainly not necessary. TFO doesn't have a time limit, so you can kill it but it'll take a while. Eidolons are a different story since they despawn once the day cycle starts but you can still do a Tricap without Rad. Profit Taker shield elemental weakness can be reset with Void, so it'll take a bit longer to destroy but still doable within the time limit.

Regarding TFO, the Indifferent Facade is resistant to Viral damage but not immune to the status effect so Viral is still a valid and effective choice to use.

Plus, you can always just make a pure Rad or Corrosive / Rad Archgun and use it in these niche scenarios instead of swapping elements on your usual Arsenal. That's what I do and never ever have to swap elements because Imperator Vandal is enough for Eidolons and the like.

 

My second post, which you quoted, points at a versatility option of adding Electric to Heat, so your usual Viral + Heat can turn into Viral + Rad during the mission, to quickly deal with bosses as mentioned above. Again, not necessary but beneficial (doesn't work on Archguns btw), but also quite situational since it require Shock and it's augment, so either a specific frame or a ability sacrifice paired with a Warframe mod slot sacrifice. I would also advise against using Shock Trooper in public matches because you can royally screw up your teammates weapons elemental composition, especially weapons from Liches or Sisters. All in all not worth using it but the possibility exists.

[Thorham]

9 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

Like if you run a grineer mission are you building for corrosive because most grineer have ferrite armor and take +75% from that or are you taking radiation for the alloy armor bombards? Or do you take 2 different weapons to deal with each type? 

I use corrosive + radiation + heat on my Exalted Blade build against the Grineer.

Edited February 18 by Thorham

[Raikh]

7 hours ago, Xzorn said:

Against Armor in the new status system, Slash is only dominant because of how powerful Viral status is. In the old status system it simply wasn't.

Might be one part of it, but the largest factor remains armor. Its not like Slash brutally outperforms other status dmg effects fundamentally, but it ignores armor. So as long as you dont bring Armor stripping there is no comparison against high level armored targets in tersm of status dmg. Ofc as you mention, now that Corrosive can strip armor fully again with Green Shards alternatives may and will appear, which just shows its more the armor than the viral factor.

7 hours ago, Xzorn said:

This does support your proposal that enemies should have higher scaling HP though Viral being able to amp damage intake by 325% is simply stupid.

I don't understand why they buffed it. It was already strong before and the only reason it wasn't as popular back at "only" a 100% more damage was simply again, armor. Removing armor scaling or capping it significantly early would definitey require adjustments to both status effects again, and also armor stripping abilities to keep these things relevant and not let just everything become single elements and viral or maybe occasionally Gas for AoE.

The Murmur faction is actually showing us that non-armored high HP enemies can work, kinda hoping that they are experimenting with that idea since that stood out to me pretty significantly.

7 hours ago, Xzorn said:

The previous status/damage system was better in literally every way.

I think the current one has its merits but they buffed the wrong things and left the already lacking things behind. I do appreciate the single elements more now than back then, to a point where I'd like to be able to circumvent elements combinign altogether sometimes. Stuff like Blast and Magnetic on the other hand were left as silly and ultimately pointless, while viral just fed into the balance issues coming out way too strong. Even if they got rid of armor scaling yesterday and Slash was less powerful it would still increase the dmg of other stuff just the same. Although I recon some elements would like to stack themselves enough that we could see some more pure single element setups in general play.

[ReddyDisco]

I changed a few builds briefly to blast when the new shards gave shields with blast status, however that was quickly fixed and i went back to viral slash, how fun. /s

[SneakyErvin]

Matching to faction? No. Matching to individual frames? Yes.

For my frames that are built with nourish or have access to viral elsewhere and/or defense/armor strip I tend to go either gas+cold+HM or toxin+HM these days. Works great on frames like Hydroid and Saryn, but is also solid on frames like Frost.

Both Toxin and Cold are also nice elements to build arcane stacks on your promary, so no need to kill, which makes them work on nearly everything.

[sly_squash]

I match for some bosses, usually coupled with faction mods.  Vay Hek, Lephantis, Ambulas, Profit Taker, etc.

[UnstarPrime]

Whispers in the Wall content is the only place that I've found it to be meaningful, since the Murmur seem to have been specifically designed to resist the current elemental meta.  But even then, I only did that change in the early days of the expansion when I was playing a ton of Lab missions.  Now that I've farmed everything I'm going to farm from there outside of Netracells (...), I'm back to using generalist builds.

Though that said, my generalist build for all melees is now Viral + Electricity, because Melee Influence is amazing.

Edited February 18 by UnstarPrime
typo

[TARINunit9]

16 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Speaking from a standpoint of Steel Path, to be clear.

Ah that would do it

SP Grineer have such ridiculous armor values that no, using their supposed weakness of Radiation doesn't help (part of why I loathe Steel Path and avoid it when possible). Everywhere else, elemental weaknesses still matter. SP Corpus will effortlessly shrug off Corrosive/Heat, so make sure you have your Magnetic builds still on hand. SP Infested Bosses will die measurably faster to Gas damage, I personally tested this. Netracells and Archon Hunts laugh at your Viral spam, so they still require Radiation. 

[Hexerin]

11 hours ago, Hayrack said:

Are you using viral+heat+slash against Indifferent Facade????

Yes, why wouldn't I? They go down from that faster/better than they do from properly matched elements. Additionally, if you match elements to Indifferent Facade, you end up doing significantly less to the Rogues. Conversely, if you match elements to the Rogues, the Indifferences still take neutral damage (and since they're basically just Infested v2.0, they go down quickly regardless). The Murmur are the faction I was referring to when I mentioned "actively worse" in the OP, by the way.

Spoiler

 

 

2 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

SP Corpus will effortlessly shrug off Corrosive/Heat, so make sure you have your Magnetic builds still on hand.

As the meme goes, "Are you sure about that?"

Spoiler

 

 

2 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

SP Infested Bosses will die measurably faster to Gas damage, I personally tested this.

Gas only gets a bonus against basic Infested health, of which only two Infested bosses use: Mutalist Alad V (only if you full strip his armor), and Zeloid Prelate. In both cases, they are invulnerable except for short windows of opportunity. During those windows of vulnerability, whatever health is allowed to be taken from them (because enforced scripting on what are effectively fodder enemies is oh so fun, don't'cha know?) is taken instantly regardless of elemental matching or not.

2 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

Netracells and Archon Hunts laugh at your Viral spam, so they still require Radiation. 

Once again, "Are you sure about that?" You only get a video of Netracells, but I take the same build into Archon Hunts with the same results.

Spoiler

 

 

[TARINunit9]

2 minutes ago, Hexerin said:

During those windows of vulnerability, whatever health is allowed to be taken from them (because enforced scripting on what are effectively fodder enemies is oh so fun, don't'cha know?) is taken instantly regardless of elemental matching or not.

Look, if you're using builds that can deal 2.14 billion damage using the element the boss is immune to, this thread is literally beneath you. I'm responding from the perspective of someone who still measures time-to-kill in periods longer than femtoseconds

[Hexerin]

2 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

Look, if you're using builds that can deal 2.14 billion damage using the element the boss is immune to, this thread is literally beneath you. I'm responding from the perspective of someone who still measures time-to-kill in periods longer than femtoseconds

You don't need anywhere near that level of output to do so, honestly. Those bosses are old, so they don't have modern nonsense like damage attenuation, allowing significantly more tame weapon builds to shred them. All my stuff is built for post-game Steel Path though, so I can't really demonstrate that. That's partially the reason for the lack of vid response to that particular part of your post (it's mostly that I kinda dislike those fights, so try to avoid doing them).

[TARINunit9]

1 minute ago, Hexerin said:

All my stuff is built for post-game Steel Path though

Look, I'm sorry a filthy casual like myself tried getting involved. If I had known you could one-shot lvl9999 acolytes I wouldn't have posted at all

[DrivaMain]

13 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

Standalone gas mods would be niche, but still could be pretty awesome, depending on secondary stats.

/not sarcasm

One less mod needed, Opens up corrosive or viral combos.  These are two basic issues with the element that'd be solved.

And best of all we'd finally have an answer to the age-old question, "Would gas damage be increased by elemental damage if gas mods actually existed."

Gas would still be terrible because of the arbitrary 10 stack limit. It makes gas useless when it's build on high status proc rate weapons. That limit needs to be removed. I am okay having to sacrifice the 6 meter max range as compensation, but keep the lingering clouds on target death as its unique gimmick.

Edited February 18 by DrivaMain

[Hexerin]

1 hour ago, DrivaMain said:

Gas would still be terrible because of the arbitrary 10 stack limit. It makes gas useless when it's build on high status proc rate weapons. That limit needs to be removed. I am okay having to sacrifice the 6 meter max range as compensation, but keep the lingering clouds on target death as its unique gimmick.

They would also need to update its damage formula to properly scale off modded elemental damage (50% each from heat and toxin, to keep it even with the other damage procs).

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, DrivaMain said:

Gas would still be terrible because of the arbitrary 10 stack limit.

No.  It's a challenge, certainly.  But gas can be strong even now. I cannot say the same of Blast or Magnetic.

1 hour ago, DrivaMain said:

It makes gas useless when it's build on high status proc rate weapons.

More or less.  But there are already some exceptions, and  decent standalone gas mods would expand them.

[Aldain]

2 hours ago, Hexerin said:

They would also need to update its damage formula to properly scale off modded elemental damage (50% each from heat and toxin, to keep it even with the other damage procs).

And also not have 50%/25% of its damage resistance (Grineer/Corpus respectively) on non-Infested Health types because that alone is a bigger drawback to using it than anything else imo.

It's the same reason Impact is mediocre outside of forcing Slash procs with that mod, Gas and Impact are the only two damage types that lose damage on flesh types, the gains it gets on Infested is also complete overkill considering they're already made of paper.

[Marvelous_A]

The game is currently flooded with defence-stripping options. Viral-slash also ignores all kinds of armor types and works just as well. Other than a few exceptions, there is virtually no reason to build for any other kind of elements.