Warframe health damage caps please

[Jaldarmich]

I think its agreeable to expect all frames to be at least semi viable on steel path, but i feel like any armor/health tanking frame I test barely makes it past low sp. Has DE ever said anything about damage cap based protection? Could we get something like     2000 - armor value + ~10 = maximum health damage a player can take in one hit ?

I know its a bit arbitrary, but its a really big problem since many frames just can't enjoy sp the way they were designed... sure I could shield tank with chroma, but then why does he have 1000% armor boost in two skills? Why does the Inaros rework even exist if it can't put him beyond a few minutes of endless missions?

Am I just looking at it wrong or what?

[zThulsaDoomz]

Honestly gonna need an example here

Survivability has gone thru the roof in the last half decade of the game, especially considering things like shield gate, vazarin, shield regen, and outright invulnerability in a lot of instances. 

The frames you listed are more than capable of going into hundreds (Inaros), if not thousands (Chroma) of enemy levels.

That being said, I'd be very interested in what loadouts you have and how you react to taking dmg

[Zakkhar]

25 minutes ago, Jaldarmich said:

I think its agreeable to expect all frames to be at least semi viable on steel path

False premise. It is not. It is quite impossible task to do.

25 minutes ago, Jaldarmich said:

but i feel like any armor/health tanking frame I test barely makes it past low sp.

Wrong. You just misunderstand the premise. Tanking is not about being immortal. Tanking is about mitigating and/or quickly healing the damage thrown at you by using your own gear, abilities, movement, positioning (along with possibly also drawing aggro from more squishy squadmembers).

Spoiler

To add the context here, I am a dedicated Tank. I raided competitively in WoW for 8 years with every possible Tank Class

Dying and quick Last Gasp can also be viable tactic. Players just got spoiled with immortal Inaroses in normal Starchart, where you could just stand idle in everything, while being healed passively and cannot seem to adapt.

25 minutes ago, Jaldarmich said:

sure I could shield tank with chroma, but then why does he have 1000% armor boost in two skills?

Are you shield tanking with Chroma? How did you stack his %dmg Vex Armor bonus between DE removing self damage and Vex Armor revamp?

Edited September 20 by Zakkhar

[Jaldarmich]

I have an Inaros with eclipse adaptation and over 1500 armor still gets deleted whenever he leaves the invuln of his 2. Hydroid with over 2k armor and 2 health archon shards with arcane blessing and adaptation still dies even tough I try tunning away and spamming skills with molt reconstruct. Same with Chroma, except he has quick thinking and does last much longer into missions. Still evaporates after a while

[Jaldarmich]

2 minutes ago, Zakkhar said:

False premise. It is not. It is quite impossible task to do.

Just because its not the case that doesn't mean it should. Sp is where the real meat of the game is and locking frames out just feels lazy as design. I don't count base starchart as the proper experience due to low overall numbers

[Zakkhar]

53 minutes ago, Jaldarmich said:

Sp is where the real meat of the game is and locking frames out just feels lazy as design.

Not really, no. It is not only about frames choice but about players skill and ability to customise the frame. There is way too many factors that go beyond frame concept that pushing the blame on developers is frankly unfair. Also if we want diversity of choice and playstyles there will always be stronger and weaker choices, especially considering many frames are very old and havent been revisited or revamped recently, while all the new frames are super poweful (often just to be nerfed 3 month after release).

53 minutes ago, Jaldarmich said:

I don't count base starchart as the proper experience due to low overall numbers

Count all frames that were designed before SP was even in the thing that werent changed since then. There is new gear, mods, shards, pets, helminth subsumes etc. that allows the customisation of viablility in low SP, but they wont be able to sustain max lvl.

Edited September 20 by Zakkhar

[Zakkhar]

58 minutes ago, Jaldarmich said:

I have an Inaros with eclipse adaptation and over 1500 armor still gets deleted whenever he leaves the invuln of his 2. Hydroid with over 2k armor and 2 health archon shards with arcane blessing and adaptation still dies even tough I try tunning away and spamming skills with molt reconstruct. Same with Chroma, except he has quick thinking and does last much longer into missions. Still evaporates after a while

Almost everything that can 1shot you can be prevented by simply moving around and/or suplementation of operator.

Adaptation is reliable if you are getting chip dmg, but not very reliable if you tend to get hit with big hits. Armor is fine, but it doesnt say much without HP (EHP is the term). 

How do you react to taking much damage in short timespan? Rolling guard? Transference? Simply parkour away from enemies? Hide behind corner/cover?

What Companions do you run? Do they offer any kind of cc or draw aggro? Do you utilise weapons that require you to ADS while standing still? Can you reliably measure the risk level of a group before you get into one?

[Jaldarmich]

Could you refer any threads or videos on sp survival in general? I feel like Gloom Garuda and Revenant being my intro to it kinda messed with my impression on what it was supposed to be... also losing all my energy to 1 of 5 ancients seems less than avoidable to me when they spawn all around, and I have to shoot too, but thanks

[dwqrf]

Since shield were changed to get a base 50% damage reduction (from 0%), Health as a pool was indrectly nerfed and a lot of frames end up having less damage reduction on-health than on-shield (which was just impossible before).

It would make sense to have a better starting damage reduction from low armor, as a lot of frames having less or equal of 150 armor cannot even reach 50% damage reduction on-health with a maxed Steel Fiber.

[RichardKam]

2小时前 , Jaldarmich 说:

I think its agreeable to expect all frames to be at least semi viable on steel path, but i feel like any armor/health tanking frame I test barely makes it past low sp.

Fear not, Tenno. We can help you. There is no need to seek health damage cap for such trivial matter.

Even if nothing prevail against accursed SP Grineer, Qorvex is forever, Qorvex is eternal.

Alright. Seriously. For survival you want to stack different layer of DR, just like gun you stack damage and multishot. For example, banshee with melee fortification and adaptation should be fine even in SP survival. Or you can always abuse invisibility like Loki. Apart from DR, I always recommend Nyx because her 4 makes you invulnerable, her 3 turns most enemies away from her, and her 2 can 100% strip armor with minimal investment.

[(PSN)Magician_NG]

I'm a proponent of the 4D. Adaptation, Rolling Guard, Health Conversion, and Quick Thinking. Although the shieldless frames can't utilize Health Conversion very well; instead they lean hard on Gloom. Arcane Blessing coupled with Arcane Grace for mindless passive healing, because oftentimes base shields don't give enough runway for Arcane Aegis to proc.

Even with all that, you still have to be mindful of infested toxic clouds.

[SneakyErvin]

Do you run any health sustain on the frames? Since Grace on Inaros together with something like Combat Discipline makes him practically unkillable, since you take a whole 10 damage per kill you make in order to have a chance to trigger Grace, which then heals you for several hundreds of health per tick. This way you wont just rely on enemy damage, which is far higher than 10 health lost per hit in order to trigger Grace. Then slap on Hunter Adrenaline or Rage and you have infinite energy for his 2 in "oh S#&$" situations or simple grouping up of enemies.

I run my Inaros without Adaptation, Rolling Guard or Eclipse, and I run him full melee aswell. Just a decent amount of health and armor with good access to health sustain. The only thing that destroys me early on is if I screw up on my own and bring a weapon with Blast, which is apparently bugging out at time and hitting the user aswell, insta killing poor Inaros. Blast atm is only really safe on frames with Overguard, since it makes them status immune which avoids the bug. If mobs are to kill me I need to go far into SP, beyond Elite Deep Arc levels. Which is hours in most SP content.

edit: Also a tip. If you need a breather, dont forget to pull out the melee with a quick melee attack, since that activates auto blocking which avoids all damage directly hitting you from the appropriate angle, it does not avoid AoE damage that hits near you.

Edited September 20 by SneakyErvin

[Tiltskillet]

4 hours ago, Jaldarmich said:

I think its agreeable to expect all frames to be at least semi viable on steel path, but i feel like any armor/health tanking frame I test barely makes it past low sp. Has DE ever said anything about damage cap based protection? Could we get something like     2000 - armor value + ~10 = maximum health damage a player can take in one hit ?

I know its a bit arbitrary, but its a really big problem since many frames just can't enjoy sp the way they were designed... sure I could shield tank with chroma, but then why does he have 1000% armor boost in two skills? Why does the Inaros rework even exist if it can't put him beyond a few minutes of endless missions?

Am I just looking at it wrong or what?

In a general way, I agree that there is too much of a spread in survivability between frames.  However I also feel like there's some kind of flaw in your approach if there is any frame you can't survive with for a "few minutes of endless" in SP.   Unless maybe by "few" you mean like 60+?

 

 

[(PSN)Cephalon_Scarlet]

I think what the op means by health damage cap is each enemy would be allowed to do a maximum instance of damage per hit regardless of level so for example if the enemy is hitting you with melee for lets say 200 damage, the enemy that shoots you with a rifle would have that damage divided and would need multiple shots to reach that 200 damage this way if you're using a tank frame you could easily soak up the damage.

[Jaldarmich]

16 minutes ago, (PSN)Cephalon_Scarlet said:

I think what the op means by health damage cap is each enemy would be allowed to do a maximum instance of damage per hit regardless of level so for example if the enemy is hitting you with melee for lets say 200 damage, the enemy that shoots you with a rifle would have that damage divided and would need multiple shots to reach that 200 damage this way if you're using a tank frame you could easily soak up the damage.

Exactly... just in a way that doesn't screw over damage absorb abilities like defy(not that they are amazing)

Edited September 20 by Jaldarmich

[trst]

Just to throw in some more suggestions for health tanking:

Synth Deconstruct is very underrated. Paired with Health Conversion on your frame nets you a lot of healing and up to 1350 flat armor. You can even take it a step further with Arcane Blessing for more HP or to save a mod slot for an HP mod and further still with Archon Shards for the Equilibrium effects or more efficient orbs.

With enough stacked together you can easily get armor into the 80%+ DR range. Paired with Adaptation, Eclipse, or any other additional DR pushes you into the upper 95-99% DR range.

[(PSN)Unstar]

I remember that on the first week of Elite Deep Archimedea (with all modifiers active), I carried my squad to victory using an Inaros Prime when my only good weapon was an Innodem (which is to say, I had no functional ranged weapons).  And if memory serves, the damage output from enemies in those missions exceeds those that you would experience in a few minutes of low Steel Path.  Unlike the rest of my squad, I was only downed once, in the final mission by an enemy Necramech I underestimated.  And to be clear, I'm not an amazing player, nor was I using any abilities that gave me invulnerability.  I've got a lot of tools at my disposal, but I'm not especially evasive due to arthritis, so I mostly soak damage and react to taking damage by doing some manner of manual healing.

All of which is to say, I know it's possible to survive comfortably with a health tank in Steel Path, and that makes me think that there are probably other factors that are contributing to the difficulties you're having. So I'd be curious to hear more about the context in which you're having these difficulties.  What weapons are you using?  How long does it take you to kill enemies?  Are you standing still?  Moving a little?  Moving a lot really fast?  When you notice yourself taking a significant amount of damage, how do you respond?  What's the full build for the frames you're using?

My experiences with health tanks suggest that something is going wrong here, and if you give us enough information, hopefully the folks on the forums can help you find it and lead you to victory.

Edited September 20 by (PSN)Unstar
more details

[Xzorn]

• Chroma 140k eHP
• Trinity 200k eHP
• Rhino 250k eHP + Immortal
• Nidus 160k eHP
• Frost 100k eHP

No Helmith or Adaptation factored. Haven't clocked Mesa, Nekros, Gara or Nova since I came back but they're prolly 80-120k.
This all stems from a decade old flaw DE refused to fix being Enemy Exponential Damage Scaling. Now it's far to late to fix.

Before all the Shield stuff we already beat enemy offense scaling. Just using Trinity + Citrine + Ancient Healer is 99.75% DR.

[Karyst]

9 hours ago, Jaldarmich said:

I have an Inaros with eclipse adaptation and over 1500 armor still gets deleted whenever he leaves the invuln of his 2. Hydroid with over 2k armor and 2 health archon shards with arcane blessing and adaptation still dies even tough I try tunning away and spamming skills with molt reconstruct. Same with Chroma, except he has quick thinking and does last much longer into missions. Still evaporates after a while

From my experience with health tanks you will generally need three things, a hp/s heal, a large burst heal, and being in the face of the enemy using melee most of the time. You have to make a burst damage dealing enemy priority for kill, you being close to enemy while mostly having enemies Infront of greatly reduce the angle you can get hit from. Balancing armor/health is another thing. Having 5k armor and 1k HP for example is not what you want due to burst damage knocking you out also adaptation won't stack to sufficient level since you can't take enough hits for it to reach. It's been said countless times already but it has to be said again. Enemies that are dead/CC'd can't hurt you. Most enemies after you get into their melee range engage with you in melee, try to move out of melee and so on. Sure, this is mainly melee gameplay, but that's the natural way to do it since lof of melees have stagger, knock down, stun, lift and so on for the CC further incapacitating the enemy. So instead of looking at your EHP purely from your character's stats look at it from your entire arsenal that you are bringing into mission and you will quickly find your EHP being much higher.

Edited September 20 by Karyst

[4thBro]

I haven't read any replies yet (and I expect to disagree with all of them), but this is what I think about acceptable Health tanking:

 

You want well over 99% reduction. (And a form of health return. And status immunity because of Heat.)

 

I've played Nidus with high armor, Adaptation, and obviously his Link ability, and been 1-shot by level 2000 Corpus detron crewmates. Adaptation very likely wasn't ramped up, so it is hard to count it for anything. (It honestly might just be a bad mod, unless you can build its stacks during invuln periods, but this is unreliable.)

I personally require 3 relatively solid layers of damage reduction before I consider a Health tank viable. Something like a 90% baseline ability, high armor that's at least 80%, and then probably a Helminth of either Null Star or Eclipse. (Eclipse is now super good for this after the change, being a reliable 75% that has basically no stat requirements, but enjoys some Duration.) This would total to 99.5% reduction, and I wouldn't be surprised if you still died with 2k HP on this. So it begs the question... who the #*!% can even hit these kinds of numbers???

 

 

...... That being said, just going through Steel Path, you don't need nearly the same level of defense. Just 90% should be fine, honestly. Pair it with solid health returns, and you're good to go.

[LittleLeoniePrime]

11 hours ago, Jaldarmich said:

I think its agreeable to expect all frames to be at least semi viable on steel path, but i feel like any armor/health tanking frame I test barely makes it past low sp. Has DE ever said anything about damage cap based protection? Could we get something like     2000 - armor value + ~10 = maximum health damage a player can take in one hit ?

I know its a bit arbitrary, but its a really big problem since many frames just can't enjoy sp the way they were designed... sure I could shield tank with chroma, but then why does he have 1000% armor boost in two skills? Why does the Inaros rework even exist if it can't put him beyond a few minutes of endless missions?

Am I just looking at it wrong or what?

my nova with her own built in DR ability, health conversion and adaptation can survive until about level 4000. and yet I still agree with you, because I think all forms of survivability should be viable for level cap and I should not be force dto play revenant, valkyr or shield gate.

[Zakkhar]

5 hours ago, 4thBro said:

I've played Nidus with high armor, Adaptation, and obviously his Link ability, and been 1-shot by level 2000 Corpus detron crewmates. Adaptation very likely wasn't ramped up, so it is hard to count it for anything. (It honestly might just be a bad mod, unless you can build its stacks during invuln periods, but this is unreliable.)

Except Nidus has literally a not-die mechanic built into his kit. 

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Nidus#Undying_

And corpus mostly wields projectile weapons (and melee) that are not hitting anyone mobile any time soon. Tanking all pellets of a close range and innaccurate weapon like Detron is rather impossibble unless someone stands still a lot. I am not saying it happened this time, but there are countermeasures in place.

Edited September 21 by Zakkhar

[TheArmchairThinker]

16 hours ago, Jaldarmich said:

I think its agreeable to expect all frames to be at least semi viable on steel path

Every frame is semi viable if you play the role well and not just tank all the hits just because a warframe is a tank. Inaros leans more to tank applying CC than brute force like chroma

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

I am not necessarily inherently against damage caps, but also could it just be an experience and knowledge issue? Play style issue? 

Using my own personal experience, there was a time, I remember struggling to survive in base Steel Path, with Rhino, one of the tankier frames in the game, and many many years later, I find surviving as any and all Warframes, even Operator, a relatively chilled and casual venture, even after a few hours in Steel Path Omnia Fissure missions. The biggest changes were with my knowledge and understanding of the game, my builds, my gameplay style, and granted, a few more tools at my disposal was well (Arcanes, certain weapons etc). 

Like did you know rolling, just normal rolling gives you some damage reduction? I didn't use to when I first started, but I do know, and even though its not a massive amount, it can help in certain situations, alongside other things. Like some Warframes, I like playing when I feel lazy and I want to use a weapon where I aim a bit more to get headshots, so standing around a bit more, means I will take more damage, but if you are a lot more active, and roll, and bullet jump, over obstacles and map geometry, well the game's enemies, try to react to you, but the AI behind them... They aren't the same as fighting against humans, they will often be a bit slow, and with less accuracy, and so even learning how to jump and flip around enemies and knowing some of their behaviour patterns, can be a skill learned and implemented into mitigating damage. 

Thats just play style and skill, before we even start getting into tools like Mods, Arcanes, and Powers and Abilities. I can actually survive better now, with no mods, on a squishy Warframe, in Steel Path, way back. I wouldn't necessarily consider that fun, but its worth understanding. Then also worth trying to understand what other people do, that might be different from what you are doing as well, to see if that helps explain discrepancies in experiences. 

Warframe can very much be a rewarding game of exploration, learning and adjusting. Certain tools may even have certain tricks and mechanisms that may assist them disproportionately as well. (Like what is killing you as Inaros? Multiple sources of damage or singular large damage from specific enemies? Which enemies? What type of damage? The answers to such questions may have established and common solutions already). 

[4thBro]

8 hours ago, Zakkhar said:

Except Nidus has literally a not-die mechanic built into his kit. 

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Nidus#Undying_

And corpus mostly wields projectile weapons (and melee) that are not hitting anyone mobile any time soon. Tanking all pellets of a close range and innaccurate weapon like Detron is rather impossibble unless someone stands still a lot. I am not saying it happened this time, but there are countermeasures in place.

 

... Weird post.

 

Nidus has a cheat death mechanic, but what does that matter? If stray pellets from a detron take out 5 stacks of his passive, you're going to go through those stacks really quickly.

You can - obviously - assume that when I say "die" on Nidus, I mean either dying dying, or going -5 stacks.

 

As for dodging the shots, you can't really dodge them forever in something like a Duviri Survival/Exterminate/Excavation. You WILL get hit by bullets, especially when overran by Eximuses that you can't CC. Another weird "point."

 

Why do people try so hard to be contrarian? Just let factual points be factual points, and move on to the next step. We waste so much time in the past, and for what?