Puncture and Impact Vulnerabilities are no longer intuitive

[Infernobl4de]

While this update has its ups and downs regarding the damage rework, a particularly egregious issue is the change to physical damage. Previously, Impact dealt increased damage to Shields, while Puncture dealt increased damage to armor. This was simple, if sometimes inconsistently applied, and intuitive: it makes sense for armored units to be vulnerable to puncturing weapons, since that's how it is in real life as well; and while energy Shields aren't a real thing, compare to a physical arm shield being best dealt with using blunt force. However, the update has both decoupled these vulnerabilities from their respective hit point types (i.e. an unshielded Corpus unit retains vulnerability associated with their Shield) and, more importantly, swapped these vulnerabilities. Now Armored units (Grineer) are vulnerable to Impact, despite that having no basis in reality, at least compared to Puncture vulnerability. At the same time, the occasional Armored Corpus unit (such as Oxium Ospreys) arbitrarily retains Puncture vulnerability (by virtue of being Corpus, not Armored).

On another note, this change unnecessarily damages the game's design by reducing build variety. The reason given for the vulnerability swap in the patch notes is as follows:

Quote

Since Impact Status Effects enables Mercy actions, we found that it wasn’t all too effective against Corpus due to their lower Health counts compared to their Shields, while Mercy killing Grineer is more accessible due to their innate tankiness. The Corpus can deliver incredibly high amounts of raw damage, allowing for Puncture to naturally play effectively into limiting their damage potential.

This reasoning appears sound, but in reality this reasoning is why these damage types should have remained as they were. In practice, there are very few ways to bring exactly one physical damage type to a mission; most weapons have some mix of the three. Previously, this could be seen as a neutral or even beneficial fact. For example, using the quoted reasoning, facing a Grineer unit while wielding a weapon with an even mix of Impact and Puncture would allow you to evenly benefit from both Puncture's anti Armor damage and Impact's mercy-enabling status; changing the weighting could allow you to lean more towards direct damage or the secondary effect. Now, anything less than 100% Impact is damage wasted in that same scenario (still holding to the quote's logic). Even before considering any other damage types, this is a clear downgrade in terms of build customization.

Lastly, and this has more to do with the greater vulnerability rework, the decoupling of damage vulnerability/resistances from hit point types is a huge downgrade to the depth of the game. I'm not talking about Alloy Armor, Proto Shields, Infested Flesh etc.; the removal of Armor and Shield specific weaknesses in exchange for faction weaknesses is what's hurt the game's interactivity. Before this update, an Armored enemy would have extra resistances and vulnerabilities while their Armor was intact; removing their Armor would not only remove their general damage reduction, but could also get rid of a specific damage type resistance. The same was true of Shields, and was much more readily applicable. Post update, Armor is only a form of general damage reduction, and Shields are only notable for their recharging and Shield gating attributes. As a result, even if the physical damage types were returned to their pre-update state, the reasoning for that has been muddied (if I were to fully strip a Grineer unit's Armor, he would still take extra damage from Puncture). In summary, the current state of damage vulnerabilities is so overly simple and boring as to make Faction Mods look exciting.

My solution to this issue is a simple two-step process. First of all, any faction-based damage vulnerabilities/resistances should A) be moved to all Health, Shields or Armor (depending on intuitive logic and which hit point type the faction is known for, where applicable), or B) remain as an additional layer of resistance for a particular faction (where absolutely reasonable) on top of standardized Health, Shield, and Armor-based damage modifiers. Secondly, though really concurrent with step 1, Shields should regain their Impact vulnerability, and Armor should regain its Puncture vulnerability. Optionally, the third step is to re-implement Armor's unique vulnerability mechanic, where damage that is strong against Armor also ignores a portion of the target's current Armor value. That is, assuming that mechanic isn't still in the game (I haven't checked).

For the record, I agree that the previous state of the hit point system was overly complicated. Even though I had a decent handle on the various Health, Shield, and Armor types and their weaknesses, I never found it intuitive and could not readily explain or describe it without looking something up. That said, this update absolutely overcorrected, and I hope that the current state of this system doesn't stick. If Borderlands could make a good RPS element-hit point system 15 years ago, then I'm confident Warframe can hit the mark now. Or at least, soon.

[Mr.Holyroller]

The new system is for new players only really.

It's much easier to digest.

The changes do absolutely nothing for/to veteran players.
You still run the exact same builds (although some testing needs to be done with the new elemantalist mods)
Slash/viral is still king in nearly every situation.

The same applies for the changes to corrosive. Helps new players actually feel like corrosive is reducing armor at higher levels, but veterans that have easy access to armor strip or huge slash procs wont really care/notice

 

[Infernobl4de]

29 minutes ago, Mr.Holyroller said:

The changes do absolutely nothing for/to veteran players.
You still run the exact same builds (although some testing needs to be done with the new elemantalist mods)
Slash/viral is still king in nearly every situation.

The same applies for the changes to corrosive. Helps new players actually feel like corrosive is reducing armor at higher levels, but veterans that have easy access to armor strip or huge slash procs wont really care/notice

I kind of agree, and I don't think it's a good thing if the elemental system so much of the game is based around doesn't affect veterans. Speaking as someone who is well into the Steel Path, I'd still prefer for damage types to have consistent, intuitive strengths and weaknesses—even if Slash exists to continue hogging the spotlight.

[Boondorl]

Blunt weapons are also effective against armor in real life. There's a reason war hammers were a thing. A big hammer is going to do a lot more damage to a person wearing armor than a sword. I feel like it's easy to forget that blunt weaponry is useful for the same reason piercing armor is: there's a squishy person inside that suit. Getting your bell rung by a Fragor doesn't sound very fun.

Borderlands has maybe one of the most boring damage typing systems I've seen in an ARPG. The last time I played it (Borderlands 2) the ailments weren't even unique, it was just all the same DOT outside of Slag completely breaking the game with its damage amp (sounds familiar). Path of Exile manages to have infinitely more complex and rewarding systems with none of that nonsense. Warframe has more than enough puzzles pieces now to make interesting and fun builds that don't rely on random damage type crutches (well, Magnetic and Impact still do. We're almost there), especially because armor strip is no longer mandatory and killing all builds that aren't various ways to strip/ignore armor. We don't need to fall back on random obfuscated damage typing, especially because the way Borderlands and Warframe's systems interact is lightyears apart from each other.

Frankly, if it were up to me I'd remove basically all damage type bonuses and focus solely on making status effects more competitive. Impact's is still extremely situational in a bad way (an overwhelming majority of enemies are barely affected by it) and Magnetic's is...it's getting there. The shock on shield burst is neat but ironically you often end up overdamaging Corpus to the point it doesn't even have a chance to stack, at least at SP levels. Giving more ways for different damage types to interact with defensive layers (armor, shields) would be my next thing to tackle. Things like both Fire and Corrosive having anti-armor is a step in the right direction, but should be expanded more to give players multiple builds per each defensive layer, promoting even more build diversity. For instance, something like Blast giving stacking flat armor reduction on detonation. You can tell the previous system was attempting to do something like this, but all of it being directly tied to damage that was only active if that defensive layer was present killed it on the spot. Damage types should be invested in for the status effects they bring to the table, not because the wiki/star chart told me it's the only way to do any damage to them.

[moondog548]

Swapping the functions of impact and puncture would have made more sense than swapping the vulnerabilities.

But to me the current state feels "close enough" to not mess with further.

[Tiltskillet]

I still don't know how I feel about the puncture/impact switch in general.  But one small benefit of it is that  converts will be somewhat more effective, since grineer and corpus will now usually do the physical damage to which  they're vulnerable.

[SteveCutler]

I agree. Impact and Puncture feel the wrong way around.

I think it would've made more sense to switch the status effects instead. Have Puncture make it easier to get a Mercy kill, as the enemy's armor has been punctured, exposing them and making them vulnerable to finisher attacks. Have Impact lower the enemy's damage, as they're concussed and confused.

[Traumtulpe]

I feel this part makes sense. Armor protects from piercing and slashing, but it doesn't make a hammer have any less "impact" - at best it can distribute the impact over a larger area. On the other hand, an energy shield may well be able to dissipate that force, like water, while I can see piercing damage ripping right through (though you might argue it should act more like Toxin in that case).

Also Grineer being vulnerable to mercy kills makes sense, you can't really do this with a combat ready armored opponent, but with a stunned one you can slip a dagger into some joint of his armor.

If we're going with the realism approach, armored enemies should probably have a 50% to resist slash procs, and either a x1.5 chance to get electricity procced or immunity to it (it's made of metal, but then so is a Faraday cage).

[IDystopiaI]

Trying to force mercy kills into being used just feels terrible. They're a secondary effect of Impact (Which is in need of a rework because the primary effect is useless/detrimental; who wants an enemy flailing around when you're trying to shoot it?) and they can't even be used on all enemies. They're slower than regular finishers but take priority over them too. If I try to mod my weapons to make use of mercy kills, I'm not able to kill fast enough to deal with the number of enemies I'm required to kill to protect an objective in Defense or Excavation and I'm not going to be making enough kills to keep life support up in Survival.

This change also makes a faction's weapons stronger against itself while very weak towards the opposite faction. Their weapons are generally weighted towards having more of what the enemy faction is weak to, and very low to what their own faction is strong against. For example, the Vulkar Wraith has 27 Puncture and 245 Impact, with the change to Corpus now being weak to Puncture, this weapon lost a significant amount of damage to this faction. It's the same for Corpus weapons too with weapons like the Exergis having very low Impact (20) and high Puncture (120). With the change to Impact/Puncture effectiveness, it's better for killing its own faction than the enemy faction. The base stats for a faction weapon shouldn't be stronger for killing its own faction, and many of these types of weapons do follow this trend of having either Impact/Puncture being significantly higher depending on if the weapon is Grineer or Corpus.

Overguard also just makes the problem of trying to get mercy kills worse. As soon as it's broken, enemies are primed to take significantly more damage from CO type mods and other DOT effects which just nukes them past the point of being able to mercy kill if a weapon is modded correctly.

Edited June 23 by IDystopiaI

[Infernobl4de]

48 minutes ago, IDystopiaI said:

Trying to force mercy kills into being used just feels terrible. They're a secondary effect of Impact (Which is in need of a rework because the primary effect is useless/detrimental; who wants an enemy flailing around when you're trying to shoot it?) and they can't even be used on all enemies. They're slower than regular finishers but take priority over them too. If I try to mod my weapons to make use of mercy kills, I'm not able to kill fast enough to deal with the number of enemies I'm required to kill to protect an objective in Defense or Excavation and I'm not going to be making enough kills to keep life support up in Survival.

This change also makes a faction's weapons stronger against itself while very weak towards the opposite faction. Their weapons are generally weighted towards having more of what the enemy faction is weak to, and very low to what their own faction is strong against. For example, the Vulkar Wraith has 27 Puncture and 245 Impact, with the change to Corpus now being weak to Puncture, this weapon lost a significant amount of damage to this faction. It's the same for Corpus weapons too with weapons like the Exergis having very low Impact (20) and high Puncture (120). With the change to Impact/Puncture effectiveness, it's better for killing its own faction than the enemy faction. The base stats for a faction weapon shouldn't be stronger for killing its own faction, and many of these types of weapons do follow this trend of having either Impact/Puncture being significantly higher depending on if the weapon is Grineer or Corpus.

Fully agreed. The benefits of Impact (and Puncture for that matter) effects are so minor that changing the old status (heh) quo is an exceptionally bizarre decision. Especially when doing so causes so many issues with the worldbuilding; it would be so much better to just actually rework the status effects to be more relevant.

Edited June 22 by Infernobl4de