A smooth-brain take on Damage

[Gamer_Auto]

SPOILER TAG IS SERIOUS. I need to talk about the whole game in it's current state in order to prove my point. And thank this video for giving me this idea.
TLDR: Damage 2.0 is bloated and easily exploited to make highest-level gameplay trivial, so it could probably use some simplification and fat trimming.

---------------------------

By playing Warframe for even a few hours, you'll come across Damage Types. Physical, Basic & Combo Elemental, and Unique.

• Physical is IPS: Impact, Puncture, Slash.
• Basic Elemental is HCET: Heat, Cold, Electric, Toxin.
• Combo Elemental is (there's no snappy acronym for these): Blast, Corrosive, Gas, Magnetic, Radiation, Viral. These are special because you cannot utilize two combos that share a parent. Example: You cannot mod both Blast (Heat + Cold) and Viral (Cold + Toxin) onto your weapon.
• Unique is special stuff: Void, Tau, True, and the background info that actually makes the game do the funny number thing.

You'll also come across the Health Types once you start filling in your Codex and actually look at it for any amount of time. And this is where the game starts to get complicated, because Health Types have various resistances and weaknesses, enemies can pack more than one Health Type, and none of the Health Types are truly unique to each faction.

• Grineer, Corrupted Grineer, and Narmer Grineer have some combination of Cloned Flesh, Ferrite Armor, Alloy Armor, and Machinery (used by Grineer robots and vehicles).
• Corpus, Corrupted Corpus, and Narmer Corpus have some combination of Flesh (a distinct flesh different from Cloned Flesh), Shields, Proto Shields (supposedly stronger Shields), Ferrite & Alloy Armor, and Robotic (a distinct Robotic from Grineer Machinery).
• All forms of the Infestation have some combination of Infested, Infested Flesh (as if the other "Infested" wasn't already Infested flesh), Fossilized, Infested Sinew (yet another type of flesh used exclusively by Cambion Drift heavy units), and Ferrite Armor.
• Sentients have some combination of Flesh, Robotic, Ferrite & Alloy Armor, and Shields.
• The Murmur recently introduced with Whispers in the Walls introduced one new health type, Indifferent Facade, and otherwise have some combination of Ferrite Armor, Infested, and Machinery.
• Lastly, there's Overguard, used by Eximus units and certain other minor pains in the neck that are intended to slow us down but ultimately don't.

Now, your average player who just plays casually and doesn't take the game too seriously would think to mod their weapons for engaging with whatever specific damage types a faction is weak to. You do have three weapon slots and a Companion and a Warframe to use, after all. And for the vast majority of the content, raw damage and big thicc crit sticks are all you need. But people who have studied this game inside and out have found that it's easiest now more than ever to utilize only two Damage Types through the highest levels of content: Viral and Slash. That's because you're not going for the raw damage like a casual would think. You're specifically going for the status effects.

Each Damage Type has it's own status effect (called "proc" for short). Viral amplifies damage to a target's health by upwards of 325% if you have a stack of ten procs on one enemy. Slash deals damage directly to a target's health over time, with a higher stack increasing it's duration. And while a casual would say that Armor would reduce the damage of Slash and Shields would absorb it, that's where they're wrong.

I have no idea how or why it works this way, but from what little I understand, "armor" isn't exactly "armor" in this game. "Armor" doesn't traditionally reduce or negate damage. It more or less turns "damage reduction" into "bigger health pool" (Effective Hit Points). In short, Overguard is actually traditional armor, and Armor is just increased health. And this is where we exploit how the game is programmed.

Slash procs don't deal damage like the other damage over time procs (Heat, Elec, Tox, Gas) do. Slash uses a special background mechanic called Cinematic Damage. Cinematic Damage bypasses armor in the damage calculations. Thus Viral+Slash is so good because Viral's proc reduces an enemy's non-armor health stat and will still effect things it logically shouldn't (like Machinery, Robotic, and Indifferent Facade), Cinematic Damage bypasses the armor stat entirely and effects literally everything, and the many forms of Shield and Armor stripping available to us in the modern game can make quick work of any defenses that could slow us down. And adding an Anti-Faction mod just makes the Slash proc double dip on a damage bonus.

So basically, whenever DE tries to combat the Viral+Slash meta, they don't take into account the status effects. Just the raw damage. So even when they deploy new Health Types to specifically combat the player meta strat, like Indifferent Facade which is 50% resistant to both Viral and Slash, it doesn't make a difference because procs. And I'm just a layman, but I don't think that's healthy for the game.

So, in my layman's opinion, here's what I would do.

1. Bring Slash in-line with how the other DoT procs work.
2. More widely implement Status Effect Resistances beyond this pathetic little pool.
3. (Optionally) Overhaul into Damage 3.0 by making all Health Types and their weakness/resistance spread exclusive to each faction. Example: Cloned Flesh, Ferrite Armor, Alloy Armor, & Machinery - and their specific weakness/resistance spreads - become exclusive to the Grineer Faction. Corrupted and Narmer variants would then get their own types (Corrupted Flesh/Armor, Veiled Flesh/Armor, whatever) with their own weakness/resistance spread.

Again, this is coming from my very layman's understanding of this game's complicated programming and how it's supposed to work. If anyone has corrections and suggestions on making the damage system more streamlined, toss it in a comment.

[Mizar5129]

Armor is just badly implemented all around, it is just HP bloat. The effective HP of a basic lancer at level 100 is around 60,000. In contrast a crewman at the same level has 14,000 and a charger has 8,000. In steel path it gets worse with the lancer having over 335,000, while the crewman has 35,000 and the charger 21,000.
This is completely absurd and basically ensures you will never build for anything besides viral-slash. Because why bother? It kills everything just the same. (Also how do viral, toxin and gas procs affect machines and robots?)

The overguard system could serve as a basis for a revamped armor system. In this case some percentage of the damage could go through the armor while the armor itself takes some damage instead. Perhaps instead of going away entirely it just loses effectiveness, with corrosive causing it to lose effectiveness much faster, and puncture having higher bypass.

Honestly the sheer number and damage of enemies at high level is more than enough to keep things interesting without giving the grunts hundreds of thousands to millions of hitpoints. The challenge should be that you killed a dozen but there's a hundred more still coming. Not that the enemies have armor made of neutronium that eats 99% of your damage and it takes five minutes to kill one guy.

[Xzorn]

What you're comparing isn't technically Damage 2.0. It's whatever this Damage 2.999 is.

Literally every damage and/or status type was not only useful but had  conditions for being the best scaling option in original Damage 2.0.
Except Magnetic. It's always sucked.

First thing to swap is that Bleed isn't the problem. Not the main one at least. It's Viral status. Bleed was almost never the best scaling option before Viral was changed. Yes, it killed level 100-300 Armored enemies fine but in the end other options were better. Pure Elemental weapons for example.

I still have old calcs between Viral + Bleed and Corrosive + Bleed builds and Corrosive eventually wins because you start dealing more full damage + bleeds instead of base damage + bleeds. Gas and Blast were great status effects. I have no idea why they slaughtered them. It will be controversial of me to say but Heat status is too strong also.

The faction damage bonuses is something DE scuffed over a longer period. Adding more Alloy enemies and giving Corpus / Infested Armor. There was never anything super wrong with armor other than it being used on other factions. People talk eHP but Corrosive status does eHP damage to Armor. Exactly why Pure Elemental was good.

[Gamer_Auto]

12 hours ago, Mizar5129 said:

(Also how do viral, toxin and gas procs affect machines and robots?)

Right? Logically they should be immune to biological warfare. The only explanation I could pull out my rear-end is that Toxin, Gas, and Viral damage dealt by Tenno is somehow derived from the Helminth. Otherwise, non-organic enemies should be immune to the procs as well as the damage.

12 hours ago, Mizar5129 said:

Honestly the sheer number and damage of enemies at high level is more than enough to keep things interesting without giving the grunts hundreds of thousands to millions of hitpoints. The challenge should be that you killed a dozen but there's a hundred more still coming. Not that the enemies have armor made of neutronium that eats 99% of your damage and it takes five minutes to kill one guy.

I don't necessarily want it to take 5 minutes to kill one Lancer. I just want the spread to make sense. That's why I said this was smooth-brain level. I would have to get someone who actually knows this system inside and out to draft up an actual revamp.

11 hours ago, Xzorn said:

What you're comparing isn't technically Damage 2.0. It's whatever this Damage 2.999 is.

Literally every damage and/or status type was not only useful but had  conditions for being the best scaling option in original Damage 2.0.
Except Magnetic. It's always sucked.

First thing to swap is that Bleed isn't the problem. Not the main one at least. It's Viral status. Bleed was almost never the best scaling option before Viral was changed. Yes, it killed level 100-300 Armored enemies fine but in the end other options were better. Pure Elemental weapons for example.

I still have old calcs between Viral + Bleed and Corrosive + Bleed builds and Corrosive eventually wins because you start dealing more full damage + bleeds instead of base damage + bleeds. Gas and Blast were great status effects. I have no idea why they slaughtered them. It will be controversial of me to say but Heat status is too strong also.

The faction damage bonuses is something DE scuffed over a longer period. Adding more Alloy enemies and giving Corpus / Infested Armor. There was never anything super wrong with armor other than it being used on other factions. People talk eHP but Corrosive status does eHP damage to Armor. Exactly why Pure Elemental was good.

It's not at all controversial to say Heat is good, because Heat procs also have temporary armor strip.

[Xzorn]

One of the beefs I have with Gas change is that it's a state of matter not a damage type.

Gas is commonly used to disperse something. The Damage 2.0 version was Toxic which was fine and made sense. It was biological. Gas could be dangerous to machines. Just depends what it's spreading. You could argue the gas itself is super heated and thus the Gas itself does damage but that seems like a stretch and a bit silly.

Me saying Heat Status being too strong as controversial is just me assuming the playerbase has used it as a crutch against armor for a long period since Corrosive could only strip 80% of armor. Previously Corrosive could fully strip. Heat was still used at times because of it's extra damage against Flesh on fully stripped and it's CC.

[Gamer_Auto]

2 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

One of the beefs I have with Gas change is that it's a state of matter not a damage type.

Gas is commonly used to disperse something. The Damage 2.0 version was Toxic which was fine and made sense. It was biological. Gas could be dangerous to machines. Just depends what it's spreading. You could argue the gas itself is super heated and thus the Gas itself does damage but that seems like a stretch and a bit silly.

Me saying Heat Status being too strong as controversial is just me assuming the playerbase has used it as a crutch against armor for a long period since Corrosive could only strip 80% of armor. Previously Corrosive could fully strip. Heat was still used at times because of it's extra damage against Flesh on fully stripped and it's CC.

If one were to ask me, Gas should really only be super effective against Infested (Grineer & Corpus organics have filtration tech, and their machines are...well, machines). I know that the Infestation is supposed to be this hyper-adaptive biomass, but we have Helminth. It could be very easily explained that Helminth can alter the chemical makeup of the Gas to keep pace with the rest of the Infestation adapting to it. Same with Viral and Toxin. And fire should obviously be hyper effective.

We don't even really need Corrosive on weapons anymore, though. Not with all the Armor stripping abilities on the Warframes themselves (Styanax, Kullervo, Hydroid).

[Xzorn]

1 hour ago, Gamer_Auto said:

We don't even really need Corrosive on weapons anymore, though. Not with all the Armor stripping abilities on the Warframes themselves (Styanax, Kullervo, Hydroid).

 

I'm actually on the opposite side of the court. Now with a Tau Emerald +3 we can strip armor to 1% or 0.8% with Corrosive Projection at 13 procs.

You actually don't want to fully strip Ferrite armor when using Corrosive. Alloy is fine. When an enemy is at 1% Ferrite armor you will deal ~58% more damage with your Corrosive since it has the +75% Modifier and double dips armor reducing what's left by another 75%. Results vary on how much Corrosive you actually deal.

It's an old endurance runner trick. The generalized parse is you don't want to fully strip with head-shots but body shots should strip at ~30% HP left.

Much like before all the Armor Strip skill additions when Corrosive wasn't capped. You can just attack again. There are cases when you would build around Armor strip. I did that back in the day but it's a very custom loadout. There's also skills with decent enough range justify their use. In the end, enemies are so easy to kill now that I kinda just can't be bothered to try special loadouts anymore. Soft capping enemy HP/Shields was a big mistake IMO.

[Gamer_Auto]

18 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

 

I'm actually on the opposite side of the court. Now with a Tau Emerald +3 we can strip armor to 1% or 0.8% with Corrosive Projection at 13 procs.

You actually don't want to fully strip Ferrite armor when using Corrosive. Alloy is fine. When an enemy is at 1% Ferrite armor you will deal ~58% more damage with your Corrosive since it has the +75% Modifier and double dips armor reducing what's left by another 75%. Results vary on how much Corrosive you actually deal.

It's an old endurance runner trick. The generalized parse is you don't want to fully strip with head-shots but body shots should strip at ~30% HP left.

Much like before all the Armor Strip skill additions when Corrosive wasn't capped. You can just attack again. There are cases when you would build around Armor strip. I did that back in the day but it's a very custom loadout. There's also skills with decent enough range justify their use. In the end, enemies are so easy to kill now that I kinda just can't be bothered to try special loadouts anymore. Soft capping enemy HP/Shields was a big mistake IMO.

Y'know, you post that, and I'm just thinking "I wonder why they made enemies so dumb".

Like, we have three weapon slots. In my own ideal version of Warframe, you would have one weapon for multiple enemy types. Melee for the enemies that get close, Secondary for light ranged enemies, Primary for heavy enemies; and you should only have to do a meticulous build for a particular boss type like Liches/Sisters or Eidolons or Spider-Mamas.

And then you come in here posting that and it's like...with the right setup, that's all contained to one weapon. Probably either an explosive Primary or a Melee. And that leads me to why I initially made this post: we need more diversity in combat, because Warframe's mechanics as they are now are stupid.

[Xzorn]

4 minutes ago, Gamer_Auto said:

Y'know, you post that, and I'm just thinking "I wonder why they made enemies so dumb".

Like, we have three weapon slots. In my own ideal version of Warframe, you would have one weapon for multiple enemy types. Melee for the enemies that get close, Secondary for light ranged enemies, Primary for heavy enemies; and you should only have to do a meticulous build for a particular boss type like Liches/Sisters or Eidolons or Spider-Mamas.

And then you come in here posting that and it's like...with the right setup, that's all contained to one weapon. Probably either an explosive Primary or a Melee. And that leads me to why I initially made this post: we need more diversity in combat, because Warframe's mechanics as they are now are stupid.

 

You aren't wrong. Despite a lot of players enjoying single target guns. The game doesn't. Most evident in Steel Path.

I used to use all my config slots and even made more custom ones for specific long test runs trying to fish the most synergy I could out of it.

One example was a Volt run with a Viral Bleed Amprex. The weapon only has 20 base damage, eats ammo like crazy and this was before beam weapon buffs. It did have very high Crit stats. 200% x8. Volt's passive adds 1000 base damage to the weapon with Transistor Shield augment and shooting through his shield doubles Crit Damage. So I was doing little tap shots for massive bleed procs thanks to Hunter's Munitions and Bane mods. Alone none of these really stand out.

It's what I miss about the older systems. You could get very inventive to overcome obstacles.

Originally Primary Vs Secondary use was the opposite but had that interaction. Primaries had better AoE options but didn't have the status rates or damage to deal with a heavy so you'd swap to your secondary which often had much higher single target damage and status rates. That's sorta still there but few notice because enemies poof. Though when it comes to different status effects on different weapons and melee. That was a thing with Condition Overload. Prime with statuses them smack then with melee.

They've tried to replace that with Arcanes but it's not enough.

[Gamer_Auto]

6 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

 

You aren't wrong. Despite a lot of players enjoying single target guns. The game doesn't. Most evident in Steel Path.

I used to use all my config slots and even made more custom ones for specific long test runs trying to fish the most synergy I could out of it.

One example was a Volt run with a Viral Bleed Amprex. The weapon only has 20 base damage, eats ammo like crazy and this was before beam weapon buffs. It did have very high Crit stats. 200% x8. Volt's passive adds 1000 base damage to the weapon with Transistor Shield augment and shooting through his shield doubles Crit Damage. So I was doing little tap shots for massive bleed procs thanks to Hunter's Munitions and Bane mods. Alone none of these really stand out.

It's what I miss about the older systems. You could get very inventive to overcome obstacles.

Originally Primary Vs Secondary use was the opposite but had that interaction. Primaries had better AoE options but didn't have the status rates or damage to deal with a heavy so you'd swap to your secondary which often had much higher single target damage and status rates. That's sorta still there but few notice because enemies poof. Though when it comes to different status effects on different weapons and melee. That was a thing with Condition Overload. Prime with statuses them smack then with melee.

They've tried to replace that with Arcanes but it's not enough.

I think one of the meta strats is using Epitaph to mass-prime, then use a high-crit Melee to wipe out entire squads via Condition Overload.

[Mizar5129]

3 hours ago, Gamer_Auto said:

Y'know, you post that, and I'm just thinking "I wonder why they made enemies so dumb".

Like, we have three weapon slots. In my own ideal version of Warframe, you would have one weapon for multiple enemy types. Melee for the enemies that get close, Secondary for light ranged enemies, Primary for heavy enemies; and you should only have to do a meticulous build for a particular boss type like Liches/Sisters or Eidolons or Spider-Mamas.

And then you come in here posting that and it's like...with the right setup, that's all contained to one weapon. Probably either an explosive Primary or a Melee. And that leads me to why I initially made this post: we need more diversity in combat, because Warframe's mechanics as they are now are stupid.

Game AI is difficult to nail just right, and you have to consider that each smart agent will draw more computational resources to itself, vs a bunch of dumb agents.
However you can use both. Leave the basic enemies as they are and give the uncommon elite types the good AI instead of just relying on bigger health.

But yeah as it stands there's not really much incentive to go out of the box with builds and weapons since the game's systems heavily favor only a few builds. While the majority of frames can totally do end game content, the weapons are mostly garbage, with some being almost completely unsalvageable. I wanna use sun and moon but it's performance is so mediocre.

[taiiat]

22 hours ago, Xzorn said:

First thing to swap is that Bleed isn't the problem. Not the main one at least. It's Viral status. Bleed was almost never the best scaling option before Viral was changed. Yes, it killed level 100-300 Armored enemies fine but in the end other options were better. Pure Elemental weapons for example.

this is indeed true, though i think we create a catch22 now where it's hard to touch either without breaking them. nerfing Viral also nerfs everyone that... isn't using Slash Status, and nerfing Slash just removes one of the playstyle options from being an, uh, option.

22 hours ago, Xzorn said:

It will be controversial of me to say but Heat status is too strong also.

it indeed is, but also... Fire Inherit is fun - and honestly without it, Fire Status is just a pretty minor amount of extra Damage and would only really be good in the hands of Warframes that do special things with Fire Status.
Fire could do entirely different things and be more relevant, but it doesn't currently. the Armor weaken is nice for earlier in the game but later it's not doing much if the DoT gets weakened (or uh, probably made intentional to the way it was supposed to work).
without Inherit, at higher Level honestly.... i think Electricity is just better. because we're always debuffing anyways, regardless of what we're using.
another catch22 i guess

6 hours ago, Xzorn said:

It's what I miss about the older systems. You could get very inventive to overcome obstacles.

i don't think we've lost that, we just have more and more options poured on, so any particular one is less, uh, 'necessary', i guess you could say. i do miss the hilarity of using Ballistic Battery to make a Soma deal a couple Million in a single Shot without even building that hyperniche into it - but also that wasn't actually like, good, it was just giggle huehue i can pop things with my LMG for a Mission or two and then put that back away and go use something that's actually practical to use.

options by volume is ok i think - anytime new stuff is added there's always a few silly options that suddenly appear that didn't before. can always have more of this than we currently have.
Abilities too anyways, making every Ability Kit do very similar things is uh... one way to make everything feel viable but that's definitely a House of Mirrors like you're grumbling about - that's where the options are getting confusingly narrow despite trying to widen them.

 

6 hours ago, Gamer_Auto said:

And then you come in here posting that and it's like...with the right setup, that's all contained to one weapon. Probably either an explosive Primary or a Melee. And that leads me to why I initially made this post: we need more diversity in combat, because Warframe's mechanics as they are now are stupid.

yesn't - it's a complicated landscape because if someone likes a Weapon they should be able to use it - we may have 3 Weapon Slots but the things that fit in them certainly don't all work the same. so if you want to bring whatever because you like the way it works, the best way to support this in a game that's about collecting and hoarding Gear for no reason is to let you make it viable enough that you can take things that you like to use. 
otherwise, that heavily devalues any purpose to new Gear being added to the game if it isn't at bare minimum equally as powerful as like the top10% of Weapons, or even just better than everything else - and that's not good, that's boring.

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Mizar5129 said:

Game AI is difficult to nail just right, and you have to consider that each smart agent will draw more computational resources to itself, vs a bunch of dumb agents.

Enemies already have a lot of behaviors in general - but most of these tactical strategies involve locomotion and other setup processes, because they uh, abide by the laws of Physics more than we do.
not that they actually abide, but they abide by them MORE than we do, so if they want to make a Formation or whatever, they have to Walk over to each other and do it. or it's based on the RNG of what Enemy Types end up actually Spawning. Et Cetera.

[Xzorn]

45 minutes ago, taiiat said:

this is indeed true, though i think we create a catch22 now where it's hard to touch either without breaking them. nerfing Viral also nerfs everyone that... isn't using Slash Status, and nerfing Slash just removes one of the playstyle options from being an, uh, option.

 

It's the lesser evil in this case. IPS still has issues. While I like what Puncture does I think it should be added to Impact. Puncture, as so many others have suggested would do better with a more offensive feature like taking the place of Heat's Armor reduction in stages. This would leave the single element options more open for arcanes and weapon specific features. Ideally, you pick your combo element then you pick an custom single element that goes with your config.

I've always said Bleeds should not bypass shields. They suddenly don't for players and having two different rule sets is a red flag IMO.

When it comes to the synergy I described it's more about rewarding the effort I guess. Enemies had more meat on them and it felt like, no. There were more viable methods of playing. So many frames all do the same thing at this point with a different paint job. Insert survival thing, insert damage thing, insert small CC feature, insert armor strip.

I played Nyx for years without Armor Strip and she was wonderful. Where did all my pure elemental weapons go =(

[Birdframe_Prime]

Right, I'm with you.

However, I think you need to go deeper.

We don't need just the damage to be reworked, we need the targets we're hitting to be simplified too.

So, here's the short version for damage:

Spoiler

IPS: Level out the procs, don't worry about bringing their DoT in line with the other elements, just level out what the three do and concentrate it around dealing damage. Slash expands its damage with DoT ticks that deal bonus damage. Impact staggers and then 'concusses' an enemy causing a concussed enemy to take a solid multiplied damage hit from the concussion causing hit. Puncture provides damage ramp up as you re-damage consecutive hits, allowing for an inbuilt damage multiplier on any puncture damage, reducing enemy resistances to Puncture as well.

HCET: Make this consistent to itself. DoT procs for all four, with each able to proc a short CC (electrified, burning, frozen and nauseous) that has a cooldown before it can be re-proc'd. Each of these elements is effective and not effective against the different factions, balanced like a larger game of rock-paper-scissors.

Combined: Make these almost all utility. Ensure that each combined element has a damage multiplier against a specific faction, and each element has a utility against a different faction such as reducing their defense (shield/armour/whatever). Do not make these damage-based at all, so no more discussion about how much damage we get out of Gas, it's not for that anymore, it's for spreading the effect that Gas will spread. No more 'viral is the best because all enemies have health' because it will be sorted into a specific faction.

Unique: These can largely stay as-is, because they're basic functions in the back-end apart from Void, which already has specialised uses.

But here's why it's important to do this, and it's because of the Enemies:

Spoiler

Simplify all the enemy Health types.

Flesh is Flesh, Robotic is Robotic.

Each enemy type has only two basic flesh types, you can call them what you want, but the idea is that the basic units have basic Flesh, the unique units have a special type, like Robotic, Mechanical or Sinew.

Each enemy type has one form of Defense stat, it functions like an Overguard bar in that it must be broken or removed in order to damage the enemy underneath, no more shield bypass or True Damage bypass. Armour for Grineer, Shields for Corpus, Chitin for Infestation. The other factions can have combinations, but each individual enemy can only have one type of Health and one type of Defense, no more Corpus Oxium drones that have Aloy Armour and Shields on top.

Each enemy can become an Eximus that has actual Overguard and buffs other units around it, or uses effects on us.

In this situation, we then have the raw damage to get rid of Overguard, the combined elements to buff our damage against the faction and reduce the faction's defence type, single elements to provide rock-paper-scissors type damage against the factions, and IPS to chew through the enemy Health when we crack open their defenses.

The idea is that yes, we can build for the effects we like, similar to now, with Radiation offering Confusion, or Gas and Blast offering AoE, with Magnetic turning off enemy abilities (because it drains their 'energy' for them) and so on. But each combined element also offers damage boosting against a faction, so it's wise to play the match-up game with a loadout.

Same with single-elemental types. Because these will offer DoT regardless, you can use any of them against any faction, but they're also better used against specific factions.

And finally with the enemy Health simplified into only a basic and an 'elite' version, you can play match-up with IPS, or you can take advantage of each of the different damage boosting procs that ramp up your damage the more you use them, because now Impact and Puncture ramp in an equivalent way that Slash does.

We could get all new weapon combos, all new metas against specific factions, have strategies for bringing Primers and Damage Dealers that allow for us to consistently apply a faction boost, or a faction debuff, then bring in a generic damage dealer, or even to use the Primers for specific utility effects, then bring out your tailored and optimised damage dealer for that faction.

Combine that with Warframe abilities that add specific elements, separately or combining, and you've got just as much flexibility, but far more direction on both what enemy you're hitting and what you're hitting with.

Edited March 3 by Birdframe_Prime

[taiiat]

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

While I like what Puncture does I think it should be added to Impact. Puncture, as so many others have suggested would do better with a more offensive feature like taking the place of Heat's Armor reduction in stages. This would leave the single element options more open for arcanes and weapon specific features. Ideally, you pick your combo element then you pick an custom single element that goes with your config.

i wouldn't mind moving Armor weaken from Fire to Puncture, sure. if i assume we're going to 'fix' Fire Inherit, what is Fire going to do that's useful now, however. it wouldn't really do anything useful anymore, over other Status Effects.
unless you mean move the Armor weaken but leave it as is. in which case IMO i don't think anything really changes. the Armor weaken doesn't really do much in lategame, it's good because of the peculiar way the DoT works.

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

I've always said Bleeds should not bypass shields. They suddenly don't for players and having two different rule sets is a red flag IMO.

wait, huh? it doesn't bypass anyones' Shields now, i don't follow. 

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

There were more viable methods of playing. So many frames all do the same thing at this point with a different paint job. Insert survival thing, insert damage thing, insert small CC feature, insert armor strip.

oh, okay. we're both saying the same thing, then. every Warframe is Weapon buffs, DR, Status spam, and Armor remove now. 
the game has walked itself into this corner i suppose, making so many Enemies that are immune to everything but.... Bullets and Swords, so now Abilities can't really do much other than make your Bullets and Swords better. otherwise the Ability just wouldn't work on... anything that matters.

even my favorite Warframe has been that way for Years longer than this even became the norm - literally nothing usetul to offer other than Weapon buffs and a cool looking distraction/speed Abiilty. the direct intended uses of... two of the Abilities being completely meaningless in almost every Mission, nobody needs to Kill a bunch of Lancers at a moderate speed.
i can live with it, the core combat Gameplay is most of why i played the game longer than a Day or two in the first place (came for the "everyone is Talking about the game", stayed for the Gameplay, especially in later Years) - but it's also not exactly the most creatively wide landscape, there. 'i Cast Gun' is okay, but it's not going to get me excited really.

[Mizar5129]

13 hours ago, taiiat said:

Enemies already have a lot of behaviors in general - but most of these tactical strategies involve locomotion and other setup processes, because they uh, abide by the laws of Physics more than we do.
not that they actually abide, but they abide by them MORE than we do, so if they want to make a Formation or whatever, they have to Walk over to each other and do it. or it's based on the RNG of what Enemy Types end up actually Spawning. Et Cetera.

Hence why I suggest giving the elites unit types the better AI and leaving the grunts/trash mobs as is. Maybe make them a bit more likely to evade if they detect a projectile coming at them. Would also suggest giving the grunts more flanking behavior.
Depending on unit class and role, elites should be able to better dodge/block incoming attacks and try to out maneuver the player. I wouldn't have them be outright immune to abilities but rather somewhat resistant depending on what that ability is, the unit's role (Tanky elites might be more resistant to abilities that induce knockdown or stun, etc), and also fit in more with faction theming,
For context I use elites to refer to units like bombards, techs and ancients.

[Gamer_Auto]

23 hours ago, Mizar5129 said:

Game AI is difficult to nail just right, and you have to consider that each smart agent will draw more computational resources to itself, vs a bunch of dumb agents.
However you can use both. Leave the basic enemies as they are and give the uncommon elite types the good AI instead of just relying on bigger health.

Please note that I was NOT referring to enemy AI. Just enemies in general. On one hand, they're absolutely brilliant (example: unique factions with unique takes on similar ideas, similar yet distinct health types that have their own weaknesses and resistances). On the other hand, they're really stupid (example: cross-pollination of health types even if it doesn't make sense, some enemies are specifically made to be a metaphorical (or with WitW,a literal) brick wall that prevents players from doing what the game is made for players to do (see Nullifiers, Overguarded enemies, and anything with knockdown/stagger/otherwise action impairing attacks)).

While an entire conversation on this topic has probably been had since the game began and will continue to be relevant for it's entire lifespan, this thread is specifically looking at enemy health types, how they're copy-pasted between multiple factions instead of being unique to a single faction, how weaknesses and resistances are inconsistent (sometimes the resistance includes a proc, most times it's just the raw damage), and how resistances are only a minor inconvenience in the rare moments they happen to be any kind of factor in the overall gameplay because in 2024 big number go brr.

[taiiat]

14 hours ago, Mizar5129 said:

Hence why I suggest giving the elites unit types the better AI and leaving the grunts/trash mobs as is. 

but they all already have this stuff
well, not all, not every Unit Type qualifies for each behavior, and some Varients have behaviors that others do not. but all of the behaviors they have are already running at all times now, anyways. nothing is being kept off.

7 hours ago, Gamer_Auto said:

this thread is specifically looking at enemy health types, how they're copy-pasted between multiple factions instead of being unique to a single faction

how weaknesses and resistances are inconsistent (sometimes the resistance includes a proc, most times it's just the raw damage)

and how resistances are only a minor inconvenience in the rare moments they happen to be any kind of factor in the overall gameplay because in 2024 big number go brr.

for the most part i think this works out acceptably - the Factions tend to have different Health Types, but they do overlap a few of them. if they were all unique it'd likely just end up being bloat, honestly. because the types couldn't be too different from each other as otherwise we'd need more Damage Types than we have now, and that would just add permutation bloat without really making anything better.
Enemies are capable of providing "different experiences" within the Damage Types and Health Types that we have now, if you ask me. they don't always do that, but the capability is there.

the game not indicating Status immunity certainly isn't great, plus that being immune to Game Mechanics just cuz is....... well, that's not a Mechanic, that's an absence of a Mechanic.
plus ofcourse the age old issue of the UI indicating with +/- ticks in a number of increments while there are actually more increments than that in existence.

i mean, Health Types are still quite significant even with giant Stats, the Enemy has just died anyways despite it. that's to be expected in a Gear hoarding type of game. that's why we have Missions that wildly vary in Level, as well as Modifiers. if you're 'lategame' and are playing an early game Mission, then it's inevitable that your Stats will be 'bigger than the Enemy'. 

[Ghastly-Ghoul]

Kullervo doesn't have an armor strip ability. His 3 allows the damage you deal to target to spread to linked enemies as true damage which bypasses armor but unless you're armor stripping the initial target, the damage spread won't be very high. I mean, you're still one-shotting enemies at level cap with it and a meta weapon, but armor stripping the initial target can be beneficial at level cap when you're not incorporating viral into a build and are using weapons without slash.

On 2024-03-02 at 6:13 PM, Gamer_Auto said:

If one were to ask me, Gas should really only be super effective against Infested (Grineer & Corpus organics have filtration tech, and their machines are...well, machines). I know that the Infestation is supposed to be this hyper-adaptive biomass, but we have Helminth. It could be very easily explained that Helminth can alter the chemical makeup of the Gas to keep pace with the rest of the Infestation adapting to it. Same with Viral and Toxin. And fire should obviously be hyper effective.

We don't even really need Corrosive on weapons anymore, though. Not with all the Armor stripping abilities on the Warframes themselves (Styanax, Kullervo, Hydroid).

 

[Gamer_Auto]

4 hours ago, taiiat said:

for the most part i think this works out acceptably - the Factions tend to have different Health Types, but they do overlap a few of them. if they were all unique it'd likely just end up being bloat, honestly. because the types couldn't be too different from each other as otherwise we'd need more Damage Types than we have now, and that would just add permutation bloat without really making anything better.
Enemies are capable of providing "different experiences" within the Damage Types and Health Types that we have now, if you ask me. they don't always do that, but the capability is there.

We have 14 different damage types accessible to players (including Void, not including True or background calculation types). DE could (and probably should) make a unique combat experience for each faction. Let's use the two most common enemy factions, Grineer and Corpus, as an example.
Grineer could easily have Cloned Flesh or Machinery as their "under the armor" health type depending on if the enemy is organic or mechanical, and can then have Ferrite or Alloy armor layered on top of it if the enemy is a Light or Heavy unit. And no Grineer enemies except Liches or other types of Bosses could have Shields (not Proto Shields, just basic shields).
Similarly, Corpus can have Flesh or Robotic (organic or robotic) under a layer of Shields or Proto Shields (Light or Heavy). And no unit other than bosses or Sisters could have Ferrite Armor.
This not only fits with the lore behind each faction, but it would make you think a bit about what you're bringing to the mission regardless of whether you're a newbie just starting out or a veteran going into his daily five hour Steel Path Survival run.

4 hours ago, taiiat said:

the game not indicating Status immunity certainly isn't great, plus that being immune to Game Mechanics just cuz is....... well, that's not a Mechanic, that's an absence of a Mechanic.
plus ofcourse the age old issue of the UI indicating with +/- ticks in a number of increments while there are actually more increments than that in existence.

Like I said in the top post, there are only a handful of enemies immune to status: Grineer Regulators, Desert Skates, the Eidolons and Vomvalysts, the two Orb Mothers, Ropalolyst, Arbitration Shield Drones, and the three Thumpers.
After that, the only enemies with partial immunity (to only Viral, btw) are Ambulas, the Deimos Heavy units (Carnis, Genetrix, Jugulus, Leaping Thrasher, Therid, Saxum, Boiler), and the Demolisher Leaping Thrasher.
Now, I'm not saying every enemy needs a full immunity. But each unit could have resistances to procs with the same intensity they resist that proc's associated damage type. It makes you think first instead of bring your mass status spreader and your Condition Overload crit stick to literally everything.

4 hours ago, taiiat said:

i mean, Health Types are still quite significant even with giant Stats, the Enemy has just died anyways despite it. that's to be expected in a Gear hoarding type of game. that's why we have Missions that wildly vary in Level, as well as Modifiers. if you're 'lategame' and are playing an early game Mission, then it's inevitable that your Stats will be 'bigger than the Enemy'. 

Perhaps, but people at the current endgame have mod setups that completely outclass whatever they fight. The only way those people get any challenge is extremely long Solo Steel Path Survival; and that's just a band-aid fix because all that does is spawn more enemies. The stats get massive, but are largely irrelevant because they're still one-shot with Crit-based Condition Overload Smite Melee.

 

3 minutes ago, Ghastly-Ghoul said:

Kullervo doesn't have an armor strip ability. His 3 allows the damage you deal to target to spread to linked enemies as true damage which bypasses armor but unless you're armor stripping the initial target, the damage spread won't be very high. I mean, you're still one-shotting enemies at level cap with it and a meta weapon, but armor stripping the initial target can be beneficial at level cap when you're not incorporating viral into a build and are using weapons without slash.

Thank you for the correction. For some reason I thought Kullervo had an ability that stripped armor.

[taiiat]

9 hours ago, Gamer_Auto said:

Grineer could easily have Cloned Flesh or Machinery as their "under the armor" health type depending on if the enemy is organic or mechanical, and can then have Ferrite or Alloy armor layered on top of it if the enemy is a Light or Heavy unit. And no Grineer enemies except Liches or other types of Bosses could have Shields (not Proto Shields, just basic shields).
Similarly, Corpus can have Flesh or Robotic (organic or robotic) under a layer of Shields or Proto Shields (Light or Heavy). And no unit other than bosses or Sisters could have Ferrite Armor.

so..... exactly how the game is now, aside from like, a couple specific Enemies? 😕
those specific Enemies are doing good too - a surprise Enemy in a Faction that has different Health Types is a way to spice things up. usually this has been done in an interesting way when a Corpus Unit has a different Armor Type or such, not saying that Corpus Units should suddenly be appearing with Cloned Flesh. i'd like a bit more of that rather than less if anything - since we  have almost none of these anomalies, and they are a good sticker shock as long as they're occasional, IMO.

9 hours ago, Gamer_Auto said:

Now, I'm not saying every enemy needs a full immunity. But each unit could have resistances to procs with the same intensity they resist that proc's associated damage type. It makes you think first instead of bring your mass status spreader and your Condition Overload crit stick to literally everything.

eh... being able to use a Status Effect even if the Enemy isn't weak to that Damage Type is quite important to the Damage system - it allows more options to be useful against an Enemy than just the one or two things they're weakest to.
having Status susceptibility follow their Health Types would Kill like half of the Damage Types from being useful. the 'non meta' Damage Types already take considerable effort to be good despite their disadvantages, they don't need additional ones.

9 hours ago, Gamer_Auto said:

Perhaps, but people at the current endgame have mod setups that completely outclass whatever they fight.

which is fine, as it allows the other Gear choices to be able to be viable. in your "ideal game design", basically everything other than the 'current meta' would be functionally useless, and so we'd have less Gear diversity than we have now.

[Gamer_Auto]

4 hours ago, taiiat said:

in your "ideal game design", basically everything other than the 'current meta' would be functionally useless, and so we'd have less Gear diversity than we have now.

You're totally misunderstanding me, but I'm tired of trying to explain myself. Go ahead and believe whatever you want to believe I meant. Makes no difference.