Does anyone actually bother with elemental matching?

[Venus-Venera]

Am 18.2.2024 um 03:03 schrieb Hexerin:

In my experience, elemental matching is super tedious with its micromanagement, but yields negligible results (or is actively worse in some cases). I find that running corrosive/heat, or viral/heat+slash, is generally just the way to go for pretty much everything. Speaking from a standpoint of Steel Path, to be clear.

The problem is that there are different opponents. You can pimp a weapon against a faction with primed dmg mod against this faction. But this is more for new players who have problems with dmg and farming for a long time.

I have now converted my 3 favorite warframes for Acceltra Prime. and viral+slash+max crit performs best there. I'd rather use another dmg mod instead of heat proc. and with combat disc aura+arcane evenger I almost only have orange+red crits. and dmg boosting with primary frostbite does the rest and always has my companion at 40x stacks when there are any opponents nearby.

and dmg is impressive. The enemies in netracell or sp are wiped out at turbo speed. Performance and clear speed can be compared in Simulacrum.

So I don't have a tunnel view and consider the builds with many votes from Overframe to be in the trash.

[MrDugan]

I have a fairly long, involved process for determining what I consider to be base line weapon viability while making builds.  I test against a variety of opponents.  There are times where corrosive is more effective than viral in a given build, and that same build (if found to be viable at all against armored targets.) will kill quick enough against things like unarmored, shielded targets that swapping isn't needed. 

But from testing I can tell you that magnetic is practically worthless.  TTK on heavily shielded enemies either doesn't really change much or even drastically slows down when you use magnetic.  Because it's neutral against health types, and useless against alloy armor, which most shielded and armored enemies will have.  It's easier to brute force shields and then take health down almost instantly than it is to take shields down slightly faster and then stall on health.  Gas is of course very strong against infested, but most infested go down so easy that you can literally have -infested damage on a riven and still kill quickly with that weapon.  Outside of purposefully grouped, tight packs of enemies and specific niche set ups, gas fails hard against armor.  There's a place for it in builds, but viral and corrosive are the top for a reason.  They're both universal enough that even considering running magnetic, blast or radiation as your primary damage element (outside of specific fights.  Rad has it's place.) seems like a laughable idea.  You don't get enough bonus damage from damage type weaknesses to make up for lack luster status effects and low effectiveness against changing health types (shields down, now health is getting hit with magnetic and has no bonus.) and a mix of health types like some corpus having armor.

Testing I've done across over over 1k forma applied and a couple hundred weapons with full builds on them has shown me that against the enemies that actually matter enough to build for, viral, corrosive, slash and heat are the only thing you really need.  With certain set ups that usually require utility outside the weapon itself, gas can be effective.  And certain fights, you want primarily rad damage because of status immunity or limited status, making raw damage your best bet.  But for the most part, the status quo remains unchanged.  

The one caveat to this, are the exceptions, like deimos enemies being completely immune to viral.  But there's still corrosive, and it still works fine.

Edited February 19 by MrDugan

[MrDugan]

21 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

I had 11.5k kills in a 1h solo SP Circulus run with Nova running an argonak + gas/electric dagger set up.

That's a completely broken combo though, and even though I don't want it to be, and don't think it should be nerfed, I already feel the nerf bat swinging on it.  Yes, I know it's been around for a while.  But melee influence is making it popular, and DE will notice eventually and nerf it into the dirt.

DE if you read this:  leave it alone please.  It requires a fair bit of investment and it takes up the primary weapon slot with the Argonak to work.  And it's not doing anything a dozen other things can't already do.

[Venus-Venera]

vor 19 Stunden schrieb Hayrack:

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.

works but doesn't have to be.
In Warframe it's almost always just about 1x carry + 3x followers, because group content is also easy to solo. Later, no support + loot warframe is needed because everything falls over so quickly and you're swimming in resources.
That's why I have to smile every time someone talks about meta.

and who farms in the hard premade group? These are almost always just newbies who need resources or whatever.

[Venus-Venera]

vor 9 Minuten schrieb MrDugan:

That's a completely broken combo though, and even though I don't want it to be, and don't think it should be nerfed, I already feel the nerf bat swinging on it.  Yes, I know it's been around for a while.  But melee influence is making it popular, and DE will notice eventually and nerf it into the dirt.

DE if you read this:  leave it alone please.  It requires a fair bit of investment and it takes up the primary weapon slot with the Argonak to work.  And it's not doing anything a dozen other things can't already do.

they don't read the forum. and they have stats and everything popular gets ruined on a regular basis. that is fact.

In addition, so many kills are only needed at the beginning when the new account lacks mats for blueprints. later there are always useful rewards after x-xx minutes of playing time.

[Berzerkules]

21 minutes ago, MrDugan said:

That's a completely broken combo though, and even though I don't want it to be, and don't think it should be nerfed, I already feel the nerf bat swinging on it.  Yes, I know it's been around for a while.  But melee influence is making it popular, and DE will notice eventually and nerf it into the dirt.

DE if you read this:  leave it alone please.  It requires a fair bit of investment and it takes up the primary weapon slot with the Argonak to work.  And it's not doing anything a dozen other things can't already do.

That was straight camping a spot with incredibly good enemy flow just to see what could be done. It's boring to camp like that but I was curious. 

If I was just playing normal survival like I do and moving around a good tile it would probably top out around 9k/hour. That's still incredibly good but can be accomplished on multiple builds and many frames. You could probably pull off similar kps averages with almost any frame using nourish, nautilus, green shards and ocucor(or anything that can apply mass status). It all requires a decent investment but we have options. 

Edited February 19 by Berzerkules

[Novashank]

On 2024-02-18 at 3:27 AM, (PSN)Sentiel said:

...except Deimos open world Infested which are immune to the Viral status.

Wow, wish I knew that years ago. That explains a lot!

[helioth137]

On 2024-02-18 at 3:03 AM, Hexerin said:

In my experience, elemental matching is super tedious with its micromanagement, but yields negligible results (or is actively worse in some cases). I find that running corrosive/heat, or viral/heat+slash, is generally just the way to go for pretty much everything. Speaking from a standpoint of Steel Path, to be clear.

yup.

for now anyway, big armour and damage changes coming, see dev shadows workshop post in the dev section

[-ShadowRadiance-]

Nope and yes.

What my primary doesnt take out. My melee will.

Primary: Phantasma modded for  corrosive. With two 2× extra stack shards to full strip. 

Has innate rad and impact.

 

Melee. Venka prime.

High slash. + modded for pure toxin.

Crit at 100.8% (chefs kiss) with melee duplicate. 

Crit dmg mods and 3x crit dmg purple shards.

Nourish to add viral.

No need to change any loadouts xD

[Hexerin]

11 hours ago, helioth137 said:

yup.

for now anyway, big armour and damage changes coming, see dev shadows workshop post in the dev section

Their changes won't change anything, especially since they explicitly stated they aren't going to change the meta elements. You still run the things I mentioned because they just burn through everything, and let you ignore the tedious micromanagement of the element system (which will still return negligible results, due to them keeping the percentages low).

[PR1D3]

Yes and no? I generally make generalist builds that can handle all enemies. The thing is that the whole armor stripping and viral damage boost, especially viral, is too strong. Then I'll also consider my frame and if it has some kind of buff or debuffing ability. I use the Astilla Prime with Grendel with straight toxin as the only thing. It works on Corpus due to the toxin bypass and the slash and toxin DoTs deal with most things, but I still get the Viral effect due to Nourish. So I don't concern myself with Armor's weaknesses cause I just strip anyways.  I keep Zylok Prime with Corrosive and Radiation for stuff I can't strip, and Wolf Sledge mainly for Infested with Gas, Corrosion from Arcane, and innate Blast. Plus with all the diverse Status Effects I can benefit more from Condition Overload/Galvanized mods. Then I pair up a Kuva Seer with Magnetic Valence Bonus with Viral and Electric with my Fracturing Crush Mag. It handles everything. I could list all my builds but I think this gets it across. I kind of use them but try to be super flexible with it. I do admit that I've been using the Radiation mods to deal with Murmur enemies more times than not. I only truly feel the bonus when I'm trying to hunt Gruzzlings in Netracells and DA. Their massive HP makes it  where its actually noticeable when you don't have it. So the updated HP numbers might actually make a difference in the new system despite the changes to Armor.

I do have some qualms about Magnetic in the new system cause quite honestly Toxin just completely kicks Corpus in their balls so easily. The only time where you can't*(you can but you have to have someone who can strip armor and you have to get tons of stacks going to make it do anything due to it being immune to Viral procs) use it is when you're fighting the Kyra Raknoid. It can charge up and create a massive over shield that you have to break. But again, the new HP numbers might make this not as effective and balance it all out. Only time will tell when we get it in our hands.

1 hour ago, Hexerin said:

Their changes won't change anything, especially since they explicitly stated they aren't going to change the meta elements. You still run the things I mentioned because they just burn through everything, and let you ignore the tedious micromanagement of the element system (which will still return negligible results, due to them keeping the percentages low).

On your point, that is my fear. I've mention the Toxin and Magnetic conundrum but the other meta element. Viral. They're going to have to address it. Viral's HP damage amplification is just too good. The solution to this that immediately popped up in my head is one I don't think anyone is going to like. Making the next QoL change is enemy organization and their resistances. Having true Elite enemy classes that have additional resistance. There are some in the game that have Ability Strip Resistances, Status Stack Limiters and Viral Proc Immunity. Maybe a standardization of this might need to be in order. With maybe some enemy type rebalancing. Cause one of thing things I do love about the update are how Necramechs are. They used to be kind of annoying but their current state makes them a threat that won't fold like a wet napkin to us. Status Stack Limiters with Damage Attenuation but you could still do respectable large damage if you're willing to position better and hit their weakspots. 

Edited April 28 by PR1D3

[Mr.Holyroller]

We stopped doing element matching around the time steel path came out.
Slash continued to become more prominent, especially with hunter munitions and now there's so much weapon damage power creep in the game its completely irrelevant.

When damage 2.0 first came out in like 2013 we used to typically run rad/viral for grineer, mag/toxin or gas/ele for corpus, and corrosive/heat or gas for infested.