Jade Shadows - Dev Workshop: Enemy Resistances and Status Rework (LIVE!)

[ChaosDeluge]

I like a lot of this as a start, but personally I'm worried. Of late, I normally I have a lot of faith in balance passes from the team, but I feel like there are some blindspots here I wouldn't typically expect. First, I think simplifying resistances is a wonderful thing for the majority of the playerbase, even vets. Second, I love the idea of cold finally freezing and gas having a better visual (I'll wait on blast to see how it is blasty).

But the overall idea insufficiently addresses how statuses are applicable when making a build. Right now, you either build for effect, or for damage against armor, in these changes it will be effect or damage against faction. This makes the builds less dependant on anti-armor, sure, but now defaults to 1 build per faction + customization for effect.

What do I mean by effect? Universally applicable things a status can do. Electricity can stun for 3 seconds while tesla chain "chains" damage. Magnetic will do nothing to grineer or infested.

Why is that important? Because without any cross faction applicable effect, there will always be a bottom line meta for a faction, and that does not make build diversity from a place of decision making, it adds a knowledge check. As other posts have noted, toxin still makes more sense to bring over magnetic because it bypasses the shield system entirely. Even if you added a massive damage buff to factions that have shields, toxin would at least still find utility in addition to magnetic, and likely end up on some anti-corpus builds.

The ideal would be to make the utility of a proc effect not something that can be replaced, and to make it more applicable (even if not evenly) across multiple factions.

If you already have a buff to damage against factions based on element, why do you need to pigeonhole a status into factions ontop of that? Corrosive is worthless as a choice against not-grineer, and magnetic is worthless against not-corpus.

Viral is valued for the damage, yes, but also the universality of the utility it has. Heat strips armor, but also deals dots that take on starting damage no matter what refreshes it. Gas scales with enemy density. Cold slows targets. These ideas matter when combined with other tools in the sandbox. Magnetic and corrosive do not. If something changes the armor scaling (like this rework) and armor removal/bypass becomes less crucial, why wouldn't heat just overtake corrosive most of the time?

Add a small mechanical difference to the effects, and this will change. Make full stacks of magnetic trigger a pull like melee vortex. Make corossive explode with "acid" on kill that spreads the corrosive procs from the dead enemy evenly between those hit, and at max corrosive stacks additionally spreads 1 other status the enemy had on them in the same fashion. Yeah probably too complicated of a staus, but it's just an example.

The point is, build diversity because there are 3 colors of meta that you simon-says according to the faction is very different from build diversity that comes from thinking about how you want to overcome a faction with a bunch of different tools. There will always be those who take the highest damage status combination, but adding utility like status spread, freeze, chain damage, aoe zones, grouping procs, etc will give everyone else something to weigh when deciding what way they want to overcome a faction and make a build.

Magnetic as it is planned will always compete with toxin rather than be an alternative, and it will never have value outside of the context of that comparison. The statuses all need to be evaluated by what they're competing with, and by what situations they have any value to begin with. If the status effect has a very obvious argument to be used alongside or instead of the competing effects, and vice versa for those competing effects, it's at least reasonably balanced.

If the status has some (even minor) faction-agnostic application, then there is a niche to hook it into broader build-crafting. For example:

Lifted status is useful for saxum mods to chain explosions from the set bonus, impact is useful for lowering the finisher threshold which builds up melee crescendo. Sarofang can group and lift on heavy slam attack past ×6 combo, impact kuva twin stubbas can quickly build up impact to enable rapid finishers. Taken together you can easily keep enemies lifted and grouped by always being over 6x combo on Sarofang and chain explosions on the now lifted & close proximity enemies with the Saxum set.

Just like that, two of the "weakest" statuses in the game have found the seeds of an intersting and reasonably powerful build. Not every player will come up with something that specific, but the more statuses are generally applicable, the more opportunities for players to stumble into something.

Arcanes like melee vortex and mods like the saxum set are a great way to encourage this, as they essentially "add" a universally applicable effect, but impact in that example was even better because it already had the finisher threshold lowering effect without a set mod or arcane, but impact from before it's last rework would not have interacted with this outside finisher system at all, and thus would be limited to synergies explicitly stating "on impact damage/status". Thus impact is more relevant when additions to situations that specify finishers AND impact specifically, much the same way gas is relevant to grouping abilities AND gas-explicit situations (like faction damage modifiers or on gas proc effects). More possible reasons to use a tool, more ways to think about how to accomplish a goal.

I think it's an important consideration, and unless these announced changes are very much intended to act as a part 1 revision, I think it's important to consider that angle before stauses rotate back out of focus in the development priorities list.

Edited May 23 by ChaosDeluge

[Ryalgan]

Simplification is a great QoL idea as it can be done without nerfing things too much. 

Also consider switching back to actually "run on walls" (like early years) and not "jumping on walls" like a frog
 

[KindleBlaze]

On 2024-04-27 at 4:50 AM, Azalea_m said:

While there isn't anything in particular wrong with the methods currently available to us players, it is important to note they are all some form of Damage negation, instead of reduction; Meaning, there is no amount of Damage reduction that can allow you to tank anything on extremely high level contents, which is very build limiting. 

I agree on this one. Armor changes and types are fine, but on high level missions, Unless you have some of those 3 Dmg negations, You will randomly just DIE. I tested it with Armor heavy Chroma with wex armor and helminth augments and buffs. I ended up with more then 2500% armor increese from 1500 armor... AND EVEN WITH THAT, with full health and armor and shields I would randomly die, because of enemy dmg increase. SO yes... There is no way for tanking, except the mentioned 3 ways.

 

Now to adress changes with dmg types, and armors... I am one of the "lazy" players. it means I will rather have a weapon that makes decent dmg to all enemies, then to always have to swap weapons between missions. And let us not even talk with missions where you have more then one type of enemy (like crossfire). The overall changes you guys are wanting to do are huge and time consuming and I am afraid it will not have that much of an impact on the players and how players play and what we use often.

[Damocles]

I just think corrosive will never be worth using mathematically speaking. The easy fix is instead of subtracting 80% of armor from a potentially infinite armor value that produces an asymptotic reduction of 100%, the 80% reduction happens to the reduction percentage instead, so that 10k armor 97.3% damage reduction grineer at 80% corrosive strip would be 17.3% damage reduction to health.

Lastly, to make unpopular elements/statuses worth while using:

• Impact should make weakpoints like banshee's sonar up to from 10-100% damage full stack
• Puncture damage should have a small %age bypass armor like toxin does to shields, and the status effect could increase the chance of follow up shots to punch through
• Blast should set nearby enemies on fire, the damage should be based on the stacks and health of the exploded enemy
• Magnetic should take the effect of void and bullet attract, while void should be something else entirely
• Gas should be reverted to old toxin clouds since that bypasses shields
• Radiation being heat+electric should not be worse than the individual parts, make it a DOT with some CC effect, wisp's breach surge seems to be most fitting
• Cold sounds fine from what I'm hearing, but DE often releases weapons that either are crit based, or status based, and cold sounds like a hybrid only thing. I would have instead opted to freeze the duration of other statuses so they last longer, so imagine a slash procc that lasts forever as long the cold never wears off.

[[DE]Sam]

Howdy, Tenno!

Over here, we’re still iterating on how best to approach reworked Statuses and Enemy Scaling. However, we’re focusing on one bite at a time, which will help inform further decisions!

Additionally, our goal is not to disrupt damage king, but to provide additional buffs to other Statuses less used.

However, we’ve noted a few questions and seek to answer them! Please remember that this is all still a work in progress and is subject to further change.

An Update on Status Effects

Magnetic (and Toxin)
As mentioned, we aim not to dethrone the established Meta. However, we believe it prudent to lift alternatives to a further viable point without dethroning the best. 

• Toxin will likely reign, especially with plenty of raw damage. 
• Magnetic, while likely not dethroning, provides another avenue to tackling the Corpus and their enhanced Shields!

However, we did have some additional ideas we have planned for Magnetic for the Status to do bonus damage to Overguard, and on Shield Break, deal Electrical damage hitting for a percentage of max Shield per stack (if 10,000 Shield, 3% of that per stack, type of thing.)

Currently, we aim to let Magnetic marinate for a minute with these new changes! From there, we’ll continue to iterate, but we believe it’s important to get data and how the changes will feel before making further changes.

Gas
Gas is extremely powerful due to the interactions with Bane Mods, where Gas double dips into multiplicative bonuses. As of right now, we don't have plans to change how Gas works, as players have invested a lot into making Gas work alongside Primed Bane Mods. As it stands, we don't want to nerf that interaction, so we feel there is currently no room to buff the Status any further. 

Viral
Similar to Toxin reigning king, we don’t seek to disrupt Viral as a powerhouse of big numbers! We have no desire to nerf Viral, and that’s the most realistic way to dethrone it, so we will not be touching it!

Blast
We have an answer for you! Blast will certainly be blasting. 

When you deal a Blast Status, the damage dealt will trigger a smaller, secondary detonation following a delay. If you eliminate an enemy or reach X Blast stacks, they’ll detonate, dealing a percentage of the summed-up damage on an AoE range!

IPS (Impact, Puncture, Slash)
We saw some questions surrounding a desire for IPS changes, and for now, we have nothing planned for these three (for the immediate future).

Currently, we want to focus on everything mentioned above—one step at a time! 

Reconvening on Armor
With Armor being capped, our goal is to make total Armor Stripping far less dominant and far less “mandatory” feeling. While Strip isn’t necessary by any means, we seek to bring the partial strip further up. Armor Strip will lose value by design, forcing the feeling of needing full Strip to a desired trait, not a necessary one.

Additionally, with capped Armor, there was some expression over less Armor making Corrosive less potent to Strip away those values. However, the raw amount removed isn’t what matters nearly as much with this design; we’re focusing on how much Damage Reduction is removed with each Corrosive stack, which will go up with our design goals, especially as we reconfigure the Armor formula to be less bottom heavy!

An important note is that we don’t intend to match the loss of Effective Hit Points due to an Armor cap. Our goal is to slightly increase the rate at which Health increases after level 70 so as to prevent their EHP from completely stalling.

Clarifying Resistances
We had some extra clarifications surrounding Faction Resistances so we can better explain other Factions (or independent targets!) 

Enemies such as The Stalker, Acolytes, Zanuka, etc., will, generally speaking, be neutral!

Corrupted, being a group of the three combined Factions, will have their own unified Resistances!

To clarify subfactions, we’re currently aiming for just three:

• Kuva Grineer
• Corpus Amalgams
• Deimos Infested

New players (or catching-up players) won’t see certain Faction Resistances until a specific Quest is completed. Similarly, this will also apply to the Subfactions!

Updating a few Warframes
Frost has received some changes! His passive has been updated, and his Abilities are updated to be properly centred around Cold stacks. Any numbers here are prone to changes - all of this is still a work in progress as of this Dev Workshop! Additionally, Atlas, Baruuk and Gauss are receiving a few changes to align with how Cold will work.

A new passive:

• Cold Status Effect applied by Frost Abilities have increased duration of X% and gains Y Armor per enemies inflicted with Cold in a Zm Radius.

Freeze Updates:

• Adds required Cold stacks to freeze instead of simply freezing to both initial hit and AoE interactions.
• Increased the AoE range component of the projectiles baseline (twice as large).
• AoE aspect will scale with Range, AoE radius is on Ability description.
• Duration was changed to ‘Freeze Duration’, but scales the same - purely to communicate how long Frost freezes targets easier.

Ice Wave:

• Changed the label to ‘Freeze Duration’ as well!

Snow Globe:

• Applies a Cold stack every X seconds, with no limit, when inside the Globe.
• The Slow label is gone - replaced by ‘Cold Status/Second.’
• Instantly apply full Cold stacks on cast if an enemy is within Snow Globe range.
• No longer blocks player projectiles from the outside anymore!

Avalanche

• Adds the required Cold stacks to freeze instead of simply freezing.

Augments

• Ice Wave Impedance
  • Apply Cold stacks per second up to full freeze for anyone standing on the trail. On full freeze, it continuously refreshes the freeze if the trail is there.
• Chilling Globe Augment
  • Update the Augment to add 10 Cold Procs if the condition is met (i.e., unify the freeze with the cold procs as we normally do now).

We'll also be aligning Warframes like Atlas, Baruuk and Gauss to properly match the incoming system changes! 

Atlas

• All enemies caught within the cone are instantly turned into stone. Petrified enemies have their damage type modifiers increased by a certain %. Here, we're ensuring it works with the new Health Type system, alongside working cooperatively with Cold's Freeze Status Effect, while reducing the complexity of how we use damage vulnerability.

Baruuk

• We’re simply ensuring Reactive Storm will appropriately apply with the new Faction Resistances!

Gauss
We’re aligning Thermal Sunder to properly work with the new Cold Freeze Status Effect as well!

• Tapping Thermal Sunder during Redline will now apply 10 Cold Status Effects - resulting in the same full freeze. The duration of the freeze lasts for the scaled duration of his ability.
• Tapping Thermal Sunder will add 9 Cold Status Effects on the second tap if it hits a target already affected by a Cold Status to reach full freeze.

And Everything Inbetween
To give more room to the D Polarity, we’re introducing seven more D Polarity Weapon Mods! We’ll have a full list of these new Mods with the Jade Shadows Patch Notes.

Vulpaphyla and Predasite Mutagens
As well, Mutagens provide Resistances based on Health Types. Instead, these will be changed to specific Resistances. The below allocations are, of course, still work in progress! 

[Danny99s]

"Gas is extremely powerful due to the interactions with Bane Mods, where Gas double dips into multiplicative bonuses. As of right now, we don't have plans to change how Gas works, as players have invested a lot into making Gas work alongside Primed Bane Mods. As it stands, we don't want to nerf that interaction, so we feel there is currently no room to buff the Status any further. "

 

I guess you haven't heard of bane mods with slash or toxin or any other dot. What kind of logic is this.

Uncap Gas stacks and make it scale with the elements in it.

Edited May 31 by Danny99s

[BalaDeSilver]

On 2024-04-26 at 1:00 PM, [DE]Sam said:

Gas is extremely powerful due to the interactions with Bane Mods, where Gas double dips into multiplicative bonuses. As of right now, we don't have plans to change how Gas works, as players have invested a lot into making Gas work alongside Primed Bane Mods. As it stands, we don't want to nerf that interaction, so we feel there is currently no room to buff the Status any further. 

This is a fallacy. Every DPS status effect does this, and Slash is a lot stronger than gas in this regard. The 10 stacks cap is very bad and kneecaps gas in every other way that isn't minmaxxing with bane mods/Roar. It's stupidly strong, yes, but it's the *only* way in which it is strong.

Very poor reasoning to not make it good literally everywhere else.

[Numerounius]

2 minutes ago, [DE]Sam said:

No longer blocks player projectiles from the outside anymore!

In-line with this and the mention of the Nidus stacks mention on the devstream can we please continue with this trend of fixing disruptive abilities to minimize its impact?

Limbo's rift and its interaction with objectives is the clear stand-out problem with this. We know you have the tech to fix it already as it acts differently and preferable for Murmur Eyes. This issue isn't exclusive to Limbo's rift though, as the interaction also exists for Cloud Walker and other similar states.

 

6 minutes ago, [DE]Sam said:

A new passive:

• Cold Status Effect applied by Frost Abilities have increased duration of X% and gains Y Armor per enemies inflicted with Cold in a Zm Radius.

This is cool to see updated passives. However, the one I want to see updated is Atlas. It is a shame that other Frames essentially get a superior version of Atlas' passive as part of a Warframe ability or even having a singular mod that provides a greater effect than it.

[yoritomosomori]

8 minutes ago, [DE]Sam said:

Gas
Gas is extremely powerful due to the interactions with Bane Mods, where Gas double dips into multiplicative bonuses. As of right now, we don't have plans to change how Gas works, as players have invested a lot into making Gas work alongside Primed Bane Mods. As it stands, we don't want to nerf that interaction, so we feel there is currently no room to buff the Status any further. 

Are the VFX changes still on the way? It's not particularly easy to understand what's going on visually

[BalaDeSilver]

On 2024-04-26 at 1:00 PM, [DE]Sam said:

As mentioned, we aim not to dethrone the established Meta.

BTW, you should. Not by the way of nerfing what works, but by buffing what is weak.
I still kinda think Toxin could not bypass shields by default and only do that in the proc and that's the one nerf of the update.

[Riccioyv]

what does this mean to a noob player like me who can't build anything because im dumb as #*!%?

[KamuiHyuga]

Just as an FYI, Gas is actually the worst of the DoT effects because despite being able to use Bane mods to double dip (like literally every other DoT status), it does not gain any benefit from the elemental bonus on the hit that applied it (AKA you can have two +15% Heat/Toxin mods and a +90% other element mod and your Gas ticks will do the same damage as if you had two +60% Heat/Toxin mods and no other element mod), and is also capped at 10 stacks.  This cripples it greatly.

[Shinobi_TennoTTV]

Nice, but what you think about my idea here: 

 

[NanoSquid]

Having Magnetic deal bonus damage to overguard is a GREAT move! Overguard is a bit dominant for enemies and players both, so having a way to focus on stripping eximuses for frames that rely heavily on ability damage is a great niche to open up. Plus it addresses my main criticism, which is that it now affects every faction!

[Vicidomini]

1 hour ago, [DE]Sam said:

Gas
Gas is extremely powerful due to the interactions with Bane Mods, where Gas double dips into multiplicative bonuses. As of right now, we don't have plans to change how Gas works, as players have invested a lot into making Gas work alongside Primed Bane Mods. As it stands, we don't want to nerf that interaction, so we feel there is currently no room to buff the Status any further. 

Seriously? I dislike bane mods because I'm too lazy to swap for each faction, but even I know someone optimizing using banes mods is very likely to go slash or toxin instead. Using gas requires you to group up to a certain amount of enemies, and is basically useless without the requisite enemy density. 

[Vortraz]

Status changes are welcome.

But minding the health types is already optional and the average player doesnt do it. The average player strips 100% of armor and brute forces with Viral/Slash/Heat and just FORGETS health types exist.

 

I however play Lavos. Everything about the frame to its core is made for me. And I intentionally only stack corrosive to 13 and use the proper damage types to get the bonus damage and ignore most of the remaining armor.

 

You are NOT making the game simpler for the average player, your only removing depth veterans have long enjoyed. Only three health types means three objectively best damage types + a few damaging statuses. If you go through with that change I dont see myself playing your game ever again.

- A ten year old player

Edited May 31 by Vortraz

[--Hyper-Kabuto--]

On 2024-04-27 at 3:16 AM, RAZORLIGHT said:

This stuff is incredible.

But it won't solve one big issue, changing loadouts manually is tiresome.

We need some kind of adaptive loadout system, based on the faction we fight.

If we fight corpus it will automatically chose the corpus loadout (if activated by the player) and so on.

Yes! Having a button to select which loadout is for whichever faction will be such a BLESSING!! :)

[DARKGMM]

I'm sorry, but this simplification makes enemies even easier to kill, that is exactly NOT what anyone wants :(.

I know people nowadays want everything handed to them immediately without having to do anything in return, but this is really pushing it. Removing all these cool Armor, Shield and Flesh types makes the game bland, and enemies even blander. These were unique and now, instead of suddenly coming across an enemy that could resist at least something, it's going to melt just like the rest.....HOW, from this point forward will you buff enemies? Yes, by increasing the same 3 values, which does literally nothing but make it more grinding and bland. 

I stand by that this is a really really weird choice that takes some of the uniqueness that Warframe has, away. And I'm sad to see this happen. 

Although there is harder content now, which is good, a big nerf was already done to some of those units which makes them as vulnerable as the rest, and not act like focus points anymore, and that was the whole point of those enemies. So streamlining the factions, no, REDUCING the uniqueness of those factions and in turn the individuals themselves, they will be but just one big blob of different skinned enemies, that act ALL THE SAME in terms of damage vulnerability. 

INSTEAD: should have just made a Codex (better than we have now, yes) tab to easily specify what SCANNED enemy has what types of damage vulnerabilities, Armor, Shields etc. , and link the weapons and abilities that coincide with those damage types. That's was the root of your problem no? Ease of access? That's literally what it boiled down to while explained on stream. 

 

Anyway, I truly hope it's different than what I expect, but it seems catering more and more to specific groups of people (auto-firing for ALL weapons?? WTH) is taking away more and more of the unique things about Warframe and making it into a mainstream, simplified, almost AFK shooter, which is ULTRA sad to see happen to a game so loved my many. Let me be wrong, PLEASE. 

[Digital-Dreams]

1 hour ago, [DE]Sam said:

Gas is extremely powerful due to the interactions with Bane Mods, where Gas double dips into multiplicative bonuses. As of right now, we don't have plans to change how Gas works, as players have invested a lot into making Gas work alongside Primed Bane Mods. As it stands, we don't want to nerf that interaction, so we feel there is currently no room to buff the Status any further. 

Every time I see people talk about Gas, it is about how weak it is. I am not an expert but ehat I have seen is that Gas is weak due to the calculations being different compared to Toxin or Heat, as well as being the only DoT with a cap.

 

I only request the team to take a look at the calculations as well as allowing it to stack like heat or toxin, you would just need to remove the growing AoE and make it a fixed value.

[Danny99s]

Watching new players and streamers lose interest in game because the enemies on star chart are way to weak, no incentive to learn to mod, and you want to make Steel Path  easier?

Are you gonna add  Platinum Path next year ?

 

[TARINunit9]

2 hours ago, [DE]Sam said:

Gas is extremely powerful

There must be a super secret test build where you guys buffed Gas and it completely blew all damage calculations out of the water

Because in the actual real game we're allowed to play, Gas is NOT extremely powerful. Quite the opposite...

[Caerith]

Gas is super weak in the game called Forum Echo Chamber.  If you want to play a game where Gas is really good, maybe try playing Warframe. 

[MobyTheDuck]

DE, imma be real with you. No matter how many bandaids you add to Temporal Anchor, it will still be the only Protea skill that gets auto replaced.

Even more that we now will need TWO whole mod slots, not to make Temporal Anchor better, but to make it make OTHER skills better.

[thats_rudiculous_07]

On 2024-04-26 at 9:00 AM, [DE]Sam said:

Magnetic

Give magnetic 🧲 an attraction affect 3m like how gas has an AOE cloud

 

 

[Digital-Dreams]

55 minutes ago, Caerith said:

Gas is super weak in the game called Forum Echo Chamber.  If you want to play a game where Gas is really good, maybe try playing Warframe. 

Could you share a build or explain how Gas is good then? Because I must be building wrong if everything I test Gas with is weak as S#&$