How I Would Rebalance Damage 2.0

[Azamagon]

First of all, I think the concept of Damage 2.0 is nice, but the balance of it is currently not so great however. There are certain elements that are heavily favored, such as Heat, Magnetic and Corrosive. While I do not think they need much nerfs, some other elements are quite lackluster and needs something more added to them instead.

 

Also, something i really don't like with D2.0 is that there is no reliability of any element. We have to once again rely on RNG for special effects. I'd like there to be minor reliable effects, while the procs are better stronger effects.

 

Furthermore, I think Warframe abilities are handled incredibly bad in D2.0. And so are the melee weapons. Well, enough blabbering, let's get down to the elements!

 

THE DAMAGE VALUES:

PHYSICAL

Impact; +50% Shields, +25% Robotics, -50% Infested.

Puncture: +50% Armor, +25% Robotics, -50% Infested

Slash: +50% Flesh and Infested, -50% Robotics

 

ELEMENTS:

Heat: +50% Infested, +25% Flesh

Cold: +25% Armor, Flesh and Infested, -25% Shields (!) and Robotics

Electricity: +50% Shields (!) and Robotics, -25% Armor and Infested

Toxic: +50% on Flesh, -25% Infested, -50% Robotics

 

COMBINED:

Heat+Cold = Blast: +25% Shield, Armor and Robotics

Heat+Electric = Radiation Plasma: +25% Shields, Flesh, Infested and Robotics

Heat+Toxic = Gas Radiation: +50% Flesh and Infested, -25% Robotics

Cold+Electric = Magnetic: +75% Shields, +50% Robotics, +25% Armor, -25% Flesh and Infested

Cold+Toxic = Viral: +100% Health, -50% Robotics

Electric+Toxic = Corrosive: +75% Armor, +25% Robotics

 

Comments on this:

* Before you only comment on the numbers, you have to also consider what procs and guaranteed effects I have granted each element too!

* Cold makes no sense being good against shields. If anything, Electric makes far more sense for that. Cold is instead better against armor (makes it brittle). Sure, Fire could also be good against armor (due to leading heat), but Heat is already good as it is. Then what about the "cold weather" effect which currently cuts you shields in half? Well, I'd make this effect do something else entirely instead, for example: It could slow down you and all enemies a bit. And/or it could reduce you and all enemies' health and/or armor. And/or it could make stamina-regen much slower. Just something else at least.

* Plasma now is an element of its own, which all Plasma-weapons have as their damagetype, instead of Impact/Puncture/Slash! This goes for Supra, Dera, Cestra, Plasma Sword and also possibly Seer and Lanka. Plasma is a very versatile element, but which has they downside of having one of the weakest procs and no guaranteed effect at all. More to that later.

* I first wanted Laser to also be an element of its own, but hey, Laser can simply be Heat, nothing else. Heat is also a great overall element, so no real loss there. Weapons that counts as Lasers (and thus gets basedamage of only Heat) are Flux Rifle and Spectra. This also means that you can change its damagetype into Plasma (add Electricity), Radiation (add Toxic) or Blast (add Cold).

 

 

THE GUARANTEED EFFECTS AND STATUS PROCS:

Note: Guaranteed effect is something that always happens, no matter what, when you hit the target. Procs are based on status chance, like now.

PHYSICAL

Impact - Guranteed: Nothing

- Proc: STAGGER - A stagger, as it says...

 

Puncture - Guranteed: Nothing

- Proc: WEAKEN - Slightly reduces enemy target's damageoutput

 

Slash - Guranteed: Nothing

- Proc: BLEED - Health DoT. It "bleeds" your shields first, before reaching the health, but on shields the damage is halfed. (Makes little sense, but makes it far less overpowered)

 

ELEMENTS:

Heat - Guranteed: Fire DoT

- Proc: INCINERATE - Fire DoT (Stronger) and short fiery stun (Old fiery Panic-animation).

 

Cold - Guranteed: Minor slowdown.

- Proc: FROSTBITE - Freezes target (Complete stun) and greater slowdown afterwards

 

Electricity - Guranteed: Shock interruption (Think a short stagger, but which holds the target in place. Interrupts any attack, reload etc) Has a cooldown for how often it can affect a target.

- Proc: CHAIN LIGHTNING - Chain Electric damage which also causes shock interruption on all targets

 

Toxic - Guranteed: This damagetype bypasses all armor and shields (!), and leaves a Toxic DoT (also bypasses)

- Proc: TOXIC OVERWHELMANCE - As the guaranteed effect, but leaves a stronger Toxic DoT, which ticks MUCH faster, and the target gets stunned very briefly too. This damage also bypasses armor and shields (!)

 

COMBINED:

Blast - Guranteed: Lesser stagger (not as good as Impact's proc'd Stagger). Just like electricity, this one also has a cooldown for how often it can affect a target

- Proc: BLASTWAVE - AoE Knockdown.

 

Radiation Plasma - Guranteed: Nothing! (Its weakness for being so versatile in damage)

- Proc: PLASMA PULSE - AoE plasma damage (not very high though)

 

Gas Radiation - Guaranteed: Radiation DoT.

- Proc: RADIATION HAZARD - Target gets confused (less accuracy and/or attack his own), also causes an AoE (or Chain?) Radiation DoT (stronger).

 

Magnetic - Guaranteed: Minor and short slowdown, minor shield reduction

- Proc: MAGNETIC SPIKE - Target is magneticly immobilized (stun) and has strong shield reduction, also causes an AoE medium shield reduction.

 

Viral - Guranteed: This damagetype bypasses all armor and shields (!), causes minor slowdown and minor health reduction.

- Proc: VIRAL OUTBREAK - Target gets a heavy slowdown and strong health reduction, also causes an AoE medium health reduction. The damage the main target suffers still of course also completely bypasses shields and armor (!)

 

Corrosive - Guaranteed: Corrosive DoT, minor armor reduction

- Proc: CORROSIVE SPLASH - Corrosive DoT (stronger), also causes AoE medium armor reduction

 

Comments on this:

* While Toxic and Viral maybe don't have the best percental stats, their damages ignore all shields and armor, which can make them extremely potent on targets that have high amounts of shields/armor and lesser amounts of health.

* Plasma has the weakest proc, due to its stronger versatility of stats. Almost all other elements have some form of CC (no matter how tiny) they can provide, which should never be underestimated.

 

 

ABILITIES AND STATUS EFFECTS:

While the above effects have been talked about a lot now, there is one thing I really think needs changing:

* Abilities should NOT have the above described guaranteed effects, nor the procs.

* Abilities should INSTEAD have individual 100% guaranteed effects, which should pretty much always be stronger than what the weapon elemental effects have.

 

For example:

The Cold elemental mods causes a guaranteed minor slowdown, while the proc is a shortlasting freezing effect with a stronger slow afterwards. Frost's abilities however, do not follow these rules. Instead, his abilities have innate individual effects. For example, Freeze could have a MUCH stronger freezing effect than the weapon elementals. Same goes for Ice Wave, it should always slow targets down, and same goes for Avalanche.

In short: ABILITIES NEED TO HAVE 100% RELIABLE EFFECTS, NOT RELATED TO THE DAMAGE 2.0 SYSTEM!

 

 

MELEE WEAPONS AND STATUS EFFECTS:

Something I think D2.0 handled really poorly was melee weapons. Melee weapons should be high risk, high reward weapons. While damage maybe wasn't rewarding in D1.0, they had one thing that made them worth using (well, most melee weapons at least): They had guaranteed staggering effects! This needs to be brought back, for ALL melee weapons, on TOP of making them all stronger than they all are at the moment.

Then, what about elemental mods that causes stagger effects? (Impact's proc for example) Well, when these proc with a melee weapon, the target should be KNOCKED DOWN instead! Note though, I think that the ground executions also need a great improvement for this to be happen though. Ground executions need to be stronger, faster and activated with a different button other than the melee one (Like the standard action button, which is the X-key at the moment. That could happen for stealth-attacks too btw!).

 

Thoughts and comments? :)

Edited December 1, 2013 by Azamagon

[xGryphus]

Very nice and well thought concept, I especially like the addition of Plasma. Cold impacting Stamina makes sense.
Just from top of my head - a possible alternatives for
- Electric guaranteed effect: Static Charge - consecutive attacks against target increases chance of chain lightning to proc

- Magnetic proc: Magnetic Spike - pulls all nearby enemies toward target (think one tick mini Vortex)

- melee: charge attack have a 100% chance to proc status effect

[Roxorium]

I fully agree with the author. Right now we have some pretty weird system, like Ignis that very rarely leaves a fire DoT on enemies, and it's a GODDAMN FLAMETHROWER. Or Ogris. Even if we shoot the enemy directly with the warhead itself, he's not even staggered. Ogris imho should have built-in 100% knockdown and pushback chance... And there's much more ._.

Edited November 28, 2013 by Roxorium

[tatcher]

Nice ideas. +1

[Azamagon]

Very nice and well thought concept, I especially like the addition of Plasma. Cold impacting Stamina makes sense.

Just from top of my head - a possible alternatives for

- Electric guaranteed effect: Static Charge - consecutive attacks against target increases chance of chain lightning to proc

- Magnetic proc: Magnetic Spike - pulls all nearby enemies toward target (think one tick mini Vortex)

- melee: charge attack have a 100% chance to proc status effect

Thanks :)

I was hoping my more radical changes wouldn't be received badly, just because I have tried to make sense with them. For example:

* Cold and Electric being changed with how they effect Robots/Shields is necessary imo. Electricity should be strong against shields/robots due to overloading etc. Cold should be weak to them, after all, where do you store servers etc? Exactly, in VERY COLD ROOMS! The "Cold Weather" effect affecting stamina makes a lot of sense too, yeah.

* Heat + Electricity = Plasma, instead of Radiation. I hope this wasn't too big of a change. But I wanted to do this since Plasma weapons are in the game and Plasma certainly doesn't behave like bullets in any way! Plus, what is Plasma? A fourth state of matter which is (most often) very warm and is SWARMING with electrons around it.

* Heat + Toxic = Radiation, instead of Gas. I didn't wanna scrap Radiation, as it is far more interesting than just ... Gas >_> Radiation being Toxic + Heat also sorta makes sense I think. At least it does in my head :P

 

Regarding your suggestions:

* Electric proc - While that certainly is a cool idea to make it unique (just like Toxic is unique in bypassing armor/shields), I dunno if that is a good balance for it? It is already one of the more balanced pure elements, plus it is the only pure element that has some form of aoe! Nice conceptual idea though, I will most certainly think about it! :)

* Magnetic Spike - Also sounds very cool! :) I was thinking the spike to be more akin to Shield Polarize (so it follows the "reduction" trio of shield/health/armor which Magnetic/Viral/Corrosive holds currently). Once again, interesting, but I think such effects are maybe better to leave for abilities? Especially since clustering enemies together by merely attacking them sounds like it can be too disruptive / overpowered... Once again though, will think about it! :D

* Charge gives guaranteed proc = Nah, disagreed upon this one, since chargeattacks already have such advantages over regular attacks.

 

I fully agree with the author. Right now we have some pretty weird system, like Ignis that very rarely leaves a fire DoT on enemies, and it's a GODDAMN FLAMETHROWER. Or Ogris. Even if we shoot the enemy directly with the warhead itself, he's not even staggered. Ogris imho should have built-in 100% knockdown and pushback chance... And there's much more ._.

Well, there you go! Two things not making sense already fixed by my suggestions :D

 

Thanks for the feedback guys! ^_^

[Achronus]

+1

 

DE, Please look at this very carefully.

 

It does solve a few of the problems in Dmg 2.0

 

Slight adjustment...

Perhaps the Charge attack only garanties ONE Proc. (and it is random which one if you have more than one on a weapon.

This also solves the: "Galaine Blasting the heck out of 5 guys at a time!" problem. (Or perhaps Heavies get 2?)

Edited November 28, 2013 by Achronus

[xGryphus]

Regarding your suggestions:

* Electric proc - While that certainly is a cool idea to make it unique (just like Toxic is unique in bypassing armor/shields), I dunno if that is a good balance for it? It is already one of the more balanced pure elements, plus it is the only pure element that has some form of aoe! Nice conceptual idea though, I will most certainly think about it! :)

I think that you misunderstood me here - I suggested a change to guaranteed effect. To put it in simple words - the longer you attack a single target the more static charges it accumulates and thus the higher is a bonus to proc chance, for example: you have a rifle with Stormbringer and base proc chance 10%; each hit against single target will apply a static charge that increase basic chance for chain lightning to proc by let's say 2%. So after first hit, next bullet that hits this target have 12% to proc chain lightning but if it fails to procge it would apply second static chard so the third bullet would have 14% chance to proc chain lightning and so on up to 100%. Chain lightning proc would obviously reset static charges counter. Static charges would also disappear if you stop attacking that target for short period.

 

Edited November 28, 2013 by xGryphus

[Azamagon]

I think that you misunderstood me here - I suggested a change to guaranteed effect. To put it in simple words - the longer you attack a single target the more static charges it accumulates and thus the higher is a bonus to proc chance, for example: you have a rifle with Stormbringer and base proc chance 10%; each hit against single target will apply a static charge that increase basic chance for chain lightning to proc by let's say 2%. So after first hit, next bullet that hits this target have 12% to proc chain lightning but if it fails to proc it would apply second static chard so the third bullet would have 14% chance to proc chain lightning and so on up to 100%. Chain lightning proc would obviously reset static charges counter. Static charges would also disappear if you stop attacking that target for short periord.

Hehe, I already understood what you meant. What I meant with the Toxic stuff was that the Toxic's effect is very unique to it. Giving the Electric effect your proposed suggestion (increasing chances of proccing the more you attack a target, which I did understand right away) would also make it unique, but in a different way. That's all I meant with that part ^^

[Azamagon]

Bumpetybump! Any more thoughts on this? :)

[Drasiel]

This seems fairly well thought out suggestion, and would also solve the issue I've been seeing with electricity (https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/140944-the-element-electricity-and-why-it-might-suck/#entry1676237)

 

I like the addition of plasma, although I'm not sure how it would play out in game. Despite it's lack of proc it is good vs everything in only one type of damage so it still might be too good. Especially considering that Blast does the the same +% to two less thing. Yes you could potentially knock them down with blast and there is the stagger but vs any of the enemy types Plasma is going to be doing an additional 25% damage over blast everytime it damages something because it will do extra damage to both it's Defence and it's health/creature type.

 

I think Plasma might either need a weakness or if you wanted to be really clever maybe a proc that negatively effects you. Any way just my opinion, take from it what you will.  

 

 

[Achronus]

Actually Plasma was one of the points I liked most about this suggestion.

 

Plasma's unique feature? it's an all-rounder; maybe knock it down to 15-20%

 

Otherwise as is would be great. Some will inevitably use it exclusively as the 'Default dmg'.

But they won't do as well as someone who has an alternate build for each enemy type.

 

Also, what do both you OP and DE have against Toxins huh?

 

I would think that Toxin would be BONUS dmg vs Infested? I get that the infested are a plague and generally very toxic to Tenno, Grineer and Corpus. And that they would be very resistant to MOST toxins; Why the heck would Space Ninja be using MOST toxins? Surely The Tenno can design Chemical Formulae for their toxins that are very bad for infested just as much as they are for Corpus or Grineer.

[-CM-ThaWolf]

I like it very much, and it makes way more sense then the current one, also it would not be a step back to the old System but improve DMG 2.0 to DMG 2.5. And most important we would get way more SHINY Effects back i really miss them!

[Achronus]

Ok, Some thoughts  (Now that I have had a few days to think on it):

 

Let us for the moment assume that the shields are Plasma Shields.

Plasma shields are essentially "Vaporize some of the incoming (whatever) to deflect (via explosive thrust) the rest of the object".

 

Cold things (specifically cryonic materials) would be designed to sap this plasma reserve.

SUPER cold environments wouldn't so much make the shield less powerful but make the shield work harder to stop MOST projectiles.

(For simplicity and to avoid over confidence in the players simply setting shields to half during the mission works)

 

So what does this mean for the OP's possible dmg tables?

Flip the 25% on armor and shields (if your armor does not include a few insulating layers to prevent the WHOLE thing from freezing because of surface cryo splash, it sucked)

Remove the +50% on Electricity; instead make the Infested take 25% BONUS dmg from it (The infested have no unified armor coverage, thus the electicity can reach the nervous system; Techno/Bio weapon you are: Tazers still SUCK)

 

Blast, Plasma and Magnetic would be COMPLETLY uneffected.

Blast overpressure waves are VERY hard to stop for plasma shields, dmg stands

Plasma weapons might be easy in theory to deflect; save that the fields containing the incoming plasma are inherently disuptive (to a degree) to the shield, dmg stands

Magnetic would be very bad for a plasma shield, it's effect would be to bleed shield reserve plasma away and out of the shield (effectively draining it), dmg stands

 

Cold would actually HELP stamina recharge; your suit (you are Space Ninja) is quit capable of keeping nice and toasty. But!! the ability to vent your over heated body after that long sprint would be VERY nice. (Why do most people enjoy jogging in cool/cold weather?)

 

I hope this inspires some real thought; I got to say that the current dmg 2.0 makes Gas; and Gas is bad. (And, I really want my Plasma Rifle!)

[Vaskadar]

I think that for the cold proc effect, it should make the target take more damage, rather than just slowing down, and possibly freeze/shatter.

[Achronus]

Cold = Slow enemies

Slow = more head shots = more dmg

Slow = less enemy shots = less dmg output

 

Shatter? Sure on death.

 

Wish granted; Aim.

Edited December 1, 2013 by Achronus