De, How Are We Going To Fight Grineers Now?

[Lunarez]

Thank you very much! I'm absolutely garbage with the new damage numbers so having perspective helps. Yes that's about right but the issue is that's 25% output after corrosive damage is applied, so the actual reduction is much much higher overall

 

It's not higher overall if you compared them with pre-11.3.3 patch. Before the patch, damage reduction was another factor that apply after armor (while armor doesn't scale), which make everything ,include infested and corpus, taking reduced damage regardless of having armor or not. And this number scale with level, leading to ridiculous damage mitigation (was reported doing 1 damage per shot at 60+ enemies)

If I read the patch right, this patch make it that instead of having damage reduction, the system increases armor of mobs as a percentage of their base.

 

in conclusion of my thought, for an example of enemy that have 500 armor and 75% damage reduction. It changed from...

 

........Reduce the [reduced damage from 500 armor] by 75%

(around 85% reduction)

 

to

 

........increase armor by 75%, which makes the enemy has 500*1.75 = 875 armor

(around 75% reduction....oh...coincidence with your testing)

 

Some mobs don't have armor also, so the damage is a lot stronger.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Lunarez

[Redmage107]

Well I meant relative to it's own system. I mentioned in my damage comparison you actually gain something like 2.5 times the damage you had in the old system under the new rules. However interesting new find while doing the Orokin Reactor Blueprint alert.

 

By the time enemies reach Level 55 they scale above T3 Void enemies. This is notable because at this point they have more than double the health of an equivalent T3 unit IIRC

Grineer Lancer: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Skill06/screenshots/?appid=230410

Grineer Trooper: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=204566287

Grineer Heavy: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=204567496
 

So potentially once diminishing returns kick in, a high level Grineer Alert or Defense can out-scale the possible void challenges by a lot

Edited December 16, 2013 by Redmage107

[Monolake]

From recent potato alert that had lvl 50-55  grineers: lazily modded Soma(r5 heavy caliber, r9 serration, unmaxed corrosive/crits) kills them fine

Edited December 16, 2013 by Monolake

[Redmage107]

Yeah me too it's just a neat little insight, especially noting that a majority of the group I was running with was not capable of performing as well as I did. If you read my post, I was testing using that alert, and was scoring kills just fine.

 

However most of the core player base does not have Heavy Caliber or maxed Serrations.  if they did it wouldn't be going for as much as it does in the trading section. Some of us like going for long periods of time in T3 survival. I'm just looking into the numbers on the scaling now that DE has changed them to see if they should be changed again...

Edited December 16, 2013 by Redmage107

[Lunarez]

What I think is, this means Corrosive proc become better after the patch, since it can reduce enemies armor by a huge margin, making the scaling less painful, unlike before that the damage reduction still kick-in anyway.

 

And that should means Corrosive Projection aura will be needed more for grineer also (you won't need that for corpus or infested since they have no armor anyway)

 

What I like about this patch is that DE gave us a mean to counter the scaling. Yeah, it's still insane but at least we have counters. The old reduction doesn't even leave use anything to fight for level 55+.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Lunarez

[Redmage107]

I'm just thinking, Potatos are used for midgame progression and real development of Warframe builds. Forma facilitates this in the same way but is much less efficient.

 

My core concern now is not, can us top level players play how we want? Of course we can, we have all this crap.

 

If you need T3+ gear to grab a potato or a corrosive projection mod now, how do you progress?

[Lunarez]

I'm just thinking, Potatos are used for midgame progression and real development of Warframe builds. Forma facilitates this in the same way but is much less efficient.

 

My core concern now is not, can us top level players play how we want? Of course we can, we have all this crap.

 

If you need T3+ gear to grab a potato or a corrosive projection mod now, how do you progress?

 

From what I have tried, unless you're going over 15 minutes in T3 survival, I mostly do fine with some (Not all) non-potatoed weapon. Like Lex, the newly added Penta, and Magnus (I am in the progress of leveling weapon and I'm also having mid level hornet strike because I'm selling those) The mob's attack scaling isn't quite as high as Damage 1.0 so, yes, you'll kill slower, but it's not becoming uberly hard as long as you know mod combination and use warframe powers along. And it's easily guessed that you shouldn't touch T3 key if you don't have mandatory weapon to survive pluto from the start anyway.

 

Now it's about luck if you can get a potato though.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Lunarez

[PsycloneM]

U11 + U11.3

 

When Damage 2.0 was first introduced, armor-affecting elemental damage would directly modify an enemy's damage reduction:

 

damage x [ 1 - damage reduction  x ( 1 - modifier ) ] = final damage

 

where damage reduction = armor / ( armor + 300 ).

 

This was very effective for damage types with positive modifiers. As armor increases towards high values, these damage types would never diminish below a limit defined by their respective modifiers. In the case of corrosive damage (+75%), its damage would never fall below 75% of the initial damage (before reduction). For puncture damage, 50% of the initial damage, and 25% for blast and gas (excluding the 1.25x flesh modifiers). Essentially, these damage types decay to non-zero values against very high-armored enemies. 

 

However, damage types with negative modifiers suffered heavily. Cold damage increased an enemy's damage reduction by 1.5x. This meant that beyond 600 armor, an enemy would have a damage reduction of 100% (making them immune to cold damage). When U11.3 came around more damage types were given negative modifiers to armor, which further complicated the original issue.

 

U11.3.2

 

Changes:

• Armor resistances don’t make enemies entirely immune to damage.

 

This update was the first step in preventing damage types with negative modifiers from being neutralized beyond specific armor values. Instead of applying the modifiers to damage reduction, these damage types applied their modifiers directly to the enemy's health:

 

damage x ( 1 + modifier ) x ( 1 - damage reduction ).

 

This was beneficial for the negative modifiers; their damage would not absurdly decay to zero as they did before the hotfix. However, the positive modifiers no longer decay to non-zero damage values with increasing armor. There was hardly any difference in choosing puncture damage over slash damage, as both would decay to zero at relatively similar rates.

 

U11.3.3

 

Changes:

• Fixed armor resistances stacking onto health - armor resists are applied the armor value instead.

 

With this new update, we're finding that the armor resistances are being applied to armor and health:

 

damage x ( 1 + modifier ) x ( 1 - modified damage reduction )  = final damage

 

where modified damage reduction = armor x ( 1 - modifier ) / [ armor x ( 1 - modifier ) + 300 ].

 

This update serves as a compromise. As was the case with U.11.3.2, damage types with negative modifiers are not being neutralized at specific armor values. For damage types with positive modifiers, reducing the enemy's armor by a fixed percentage is more effective than applying the modifier to the enemy's health. Yet, these damage types will still diminish to zero with increasing armor (albeit at a slower rate).

 

I know many of you are frustrated about all of these changes, but I think these are steps in the right direction. While armor resistances should have significance at higher levels, they should not cause your damage output to be nullified (as was the case with U11 and U11.3). Perhaps the next step should involve reviewing the armor scaling equation. I agree with Kyte that a simple adjustment to the exponent (as 2.5 is fairly high) would make a significant difference.

Edited December 16, 2013 by PsycloneM

[Redmage107]

Agreed 11.3.3 marked a very different direction to damage 2.0 which I'm very glad to see, even if it's rough around the edges. The revisions do make sense but it's just an issue of getting everyone acquainted with them and really I'm glad that they're taking the direction they are with damage 2.0 in terms of making more damage types and weapon types viable

 

My core issues are just getting the alert armor scaling handled as short of defense and survival, alert missions are the only situations where you'll realistically encounter these sort of armor scaling issues for prolonged periods of time.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Redmage107

[Definitegj]

 

U11 + U11.3

 

When Damage 2.0 was first introduced, armor-affecting elemental damage would directly modify an enemy's damage reduction:

 

damage x [ 1 - damage reduction  x ( 1 - modifier ) ] = final damage

 

where damage reduction = armor / ( armor + 300 ).

 

This was very effective for damage types with positive modifiers. As armor increases towards high values, these damage types would never diminish below a limit defined by their respective modifiers. In the case of corrosive damage (+75%), its damage would never fall below 75% of the initial damage (before reduction). For puncture damage, 50% of the initial damage, and 25% for blast and gas (excluding the 1.25x flesh modifiers). Essentially, these damage types decay to non-zero values against very high-armored enemies. 

 

However, damage types with negative modifiers suffered heavily. Cold damage increased an enemy's damage reduction by 1.5x. This meant that beyond 600 armor, an enemy would have a damage reduction of 100% (making them immune to cold damage). When U11.3 came around more damage types were given negative modifiers to armor, which further complicated the original issue.

 

U11.3.2

 

Changes:

• Armor resistances don’t make enemies entirely immune to damage.
•  
•  
•  

 

This update was the first step in preventing damage types with negative modifiers from being neutralized beyond specific armor values. Instead of applying the modifiers to damage reduction, these damage types applied their modifiers directly to the enemy's health:

 

damage x ( 1 + modifier ) x ( 1 - damage reduction ).

 

This was beneficial for the negative modifiers; their damage would not absurdly decay to zero as they did before the hotfix. However, the positive modifiers no longer decay to non-zero damage values with increasing armor. There was hardly any difference in choosing puncture damage over slash damage, as both would decay to zero at relatively similar rates.

 

U11.3.3

 

Changes:

• Fixed armor resistances stacking onto health - armor resists are applied the armor value instead.
•  
•  
•  

 

With this new update, we're finding that the armor resistances are being applied to armor and health:

 

damage x ( 1 + modifier ) x ( 1 - modified damage reduction )  = final damage

 

where modified damage reduction = armor x ( 1 - modifier ) / [ armor x ( 1 - modifier ) + 300 ].

 

This update serves as a compromise. As was the case with U.11.3.2, damage types with negative modifiers are not being neutralized at specific armor values. For damage types with positive modifiers, reducing the enemy's armor by a fixed percentage is more effective than applying the modifier to the enemy's health. Yet, these damage types will still diminish to zero with increasing armor (albeit at a slower rate).

 

I know many of you are frustrated about all of these changes, but I think these are steps in the right direction. While armor resistances should have significance at higher levels, they should not cause your damage output to be nullified (as was the case with U11 and U11.3). Perhaps the next step should involve reviewing the armor scaling equation. I agree with Kyte that a simple adjustment to the exponent (as 2.5 is fairly high) would make a significant difference.

 

 

I think is a wrong direction. Take U11 + U11.3 Damage 2.0 and avoid putting any negative modifier to armor is far more elegant and balanced solution. Armor by itself is already the most punishing thing, there is no need for negative modifier.

 

This will allow reasonable damage to be done to Grineer Heavies and Trooper, no matter what level it scale into.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Definitegj

[PapaKicks]

I like the idea of more hp, less armor. Even if it takes the same amount of time to kill as it does right now, at least we won't feel so useless doing 50 dmg per hit.

 

I know it will only delay the power creep a few levels, but how does corrosive projection (-30% armor) x 4 affect the damage charts? -120% armor is a nice reduction.

[General_Krull]

PEople who need evidence of ridiculous armor scaling, go to Nuovo and let a friendly bombard get swarmed by chargers. If that doesn't prove armor scaling is out of whack, nothing will.

 

This bombard was swarmed by 10+ chargers before I took this screenshot. I let them wail on him for around 10 seconds or more before I got bored and blew them up and i know this screenie doesn't really prove anything, I could have just took a picture of a random bombard, but go test it yourself.

 

 

 

EDIT: Also it seems pallas is now grineer MD alert, with level 50+ enemies, go test it out, friends.

Edited December 17, 2013 by General_Krull

[Definitegj]

I like the idea of more hp, less armor. Even if it takes the same amount of time to kill as it does right now, at least we won't feel so useless doing 50 dmg per hit.

 

I know it will only delay the power creep a few levels, but how does corrosive projection (-30% armor) x 4 affect the damage charts? -120% armor is a nice reduction.

-120% armor against high armor will cause damage formula to go into negative, making it do 1 damage

 

-100% will remove all armor completely, used by those teams that do endless wave defense/survival.   Shouldn't be the only viable solution though, hard to achieve in PUG.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Definitegj

[matto]

Last alert on Ceres, Pallas.

 

One clip of a 2* Soma to kill a lvl 50 (if I remember well) Grineer (Elite lancer).

 

5 min later, standard mission on Pallas, lvl 20, one-two bullets.

Edited December 17, 2013 by matto

[Kyte]

I like the idea of more hp, less armor. Even if it takes the same amount of time to kill as it does right now, at least we won't feel so useless doing 50 dmg per hit.

 

I know it will only delay the power creep a few levels, but how does corrosive projection (-30% armor) x 4 affect the damage charts? -120% armor is a nice reduction.

The issue is that past 1000 or so damage reduction is stupid large and the curve tapers off, so 1000 armor is barely any different from 10000. armor This of course means even a 75% reduction to that 10k will leave you with 2500 armor that is almost just as tanky.

On the other hand, if you kill all the armor (ie reach 100% armor reduction or more), then there's no armor at all. You are completely immune to armor scaling. Your weapons will do full damage. So yeah. Stack dem Corrosive auras. In fact, stack ALL the armor debuffs. So long as you can hit 100%, you're good to go.

(Unless DE has a bug in their math)

 

 

I think is a wrong direction. Take U11 + U11.3 Damage 2.0 and avoid putting any negative modifier to armor is far more elegant and balanced solution. Armor by itself is already the most punishing thing, there is no need for negative modifier.

 

This will allow reasonable damage to be done to Grineer Heavies and Trooper, no matter what level it scale into.

The issue is that the U11 system is fundamentally a bandaid over too-high armor scaling. Nobody noticed because Corrosive covered all your armor-piercing needs. Then they scaled back the elemental effect and the ugly became visible.

 

---

 

I'm gonna quote myself from another forum, since I wrote a bunch of words and graphs and stuff. (Someone had asked what's up with the current damage model.)

 

I ran the math and graphs. The thing is that in U11 they compressed the levels and jacked up all the exponents to compensate.

At that point, nobody noticed because elements favorable vs armor would shave off %s straight from the DR, meaning Corrosive would turn that 90% DR into 22.5% or such.

Unfortunately, the formula also made elements unfavorable vs armor go to zero damage and even negative damage really @(*()$ early. (A Lv. 1 Lancer has 25% DR. With Cold that DR became 37.5%. And so on)

So DE fixed it, first in 11.2 by making elemental bonus vs armor increase base damage (so 1000 Corrosive would do 1750 effective), and then in 11.3 making it change base armor plus the base damage increase.

That's actually not terrible, except that the DR function breaks down at higher armor levels (Red line: Baseline DR for that armor level. Blue line: DR after Corrosive. It's still better than the Damage 1.0 function, though, for the same armor levels. Which I suppose is why enemies didn't feel that much more papery compared to frames) and the armor scaling formula goes way past that (This is a Heavy Grineer, btw 500 base armor).

 

Basically DE forgot their armor scaling formula only worked because of their elemental formula, changed the elemental formula and forgot to dial down the armor growth to compensate.

 

Or if you wanna look at it differently, Damage 2.0 didn't fix armor at all but the Corrosive thing bandaided until they changed how Corrosive worked.

 

Or if you wanna look at it on a less harsh light, juggling four different formulas interacting with each other is hard.

 

They need to change that exponent to 1.7 or maybe 2.0 if DE really thinks Grineer should be tanky as F***.

(btw the armor formula is base_armor + 0.0025 * base_armor * (level - base_level)^2.5)

 

End result: This. 1000 damage (no bonuses or penalties) vs a Grineer Heavy (500 base armor), Lv. vs Effective Damage.

Blue line is current. Red and green are my proposals.

I don't remember if I showed the last graph before, but eh. Completes the idea.

 

...

Come to think of it, a Lv. 1 Heavy Grineer taking only 37.5% damage is still pretty crazy.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Kyte

[PapaKicks]

-120% armor against high armor will cause damage formula to go into negative, making it do 1 damage

 

-100% will remove all armor completely, used by those teams that do endless wave defense/survival.   Shouldn't be the only viable solution though, hard to achieve in PUG.

 

Wait, serious? (I haven't been reading this thread obviously) I don't get why 120% would do 1 damage...

 

Besides, I always assumed the 100% reduction would never let it hit zero %.

 

Example:

100 armor, with 100% armor reduction would be 50 armor.

100 armor, with 200% armor reduction would be 25 armor.

 

Etc etc. Basically impossible to hit zero, 0.0000025 etc etc

 

That's how other games do it.

 

Possible 'solution' change corrosive projection to 25% per mod, or if you want to keep some armor, 20% per mod.

[SlyBoots]

chipping in after i did the pluto grineer alert where half my squad didn't even bother to try and fight the enemies and i just can't blame 'em. i had a fairly well modded hek (75% more corrosive can go in there as i have an unranked electric damage mod atm) and did nearly all of the killing but the amount of mags heavy gunners could take was just completely ridiculous - no resemblance of balance whatsoever. and once again the blessing of RNG - a corrosive proc occuring - meant all the difference. i'm biting my tongue to not start a rant about this nice little detail...

 

I know many of you are frustrated about all of these changes, but I think these are steps in the right direction. While armor resistances should have significance at higher levels, they should not cause your damage output to be nullified (as was the case with U11 and U11.3). Perhaps the next step should involve reviewing the armor scaling equation. I agree with Kyte that a simple adjustment to the exponent (as 2.5 is fairly high) would make a significant difference.

 

 

dude, i love the tests you do and have done (and props to all others who did tests for this) but i gotta agree with definitegj on this one:

 

I think is a wrong direction. Take U11 + U11.3 Damage 2.0 and avoid putting any negative modifier to armor is far more elegant and balanced solution. Armor by itself is already the most punishing thing, there is no need for negative modifier.

 

This will allow reasonable damage to be done to Grineer Heavies and Trooper, no matter what level it scale into.

 

the mechanic where puncture could get 50% and corrosive 75% damage unmitigated by armor to deal damage on the targets health was rather elegant and all they should have done is use a different method for negative modifiers. negative modifiers (or any modifiers for that matter) should never have effected total damage but just the damage type they stem from in the first place - i mean i'm trying to keep steves warning about how rough this is gonna be in mind but most of this seems less rough and more completely clueless, spreadsheet solutions to design/fundamental balance problems... i dunno... don't really wanna rant.

 

another possibility might be to make certain procs way more reliable but i somehow have lost all faith in DE's ability to finetune stuff like that.

Edited December 17, 2013 by SlyBoots

[Penthos]

Last alert on Ceres, Pallas.

 

One clip of a 2* Soma to kill a lvl 50 (if I remember well) Grineer (Elite lancer).

 

5 min later, standard mission on Pallas, lvl 20, one-two bullets.

That's the funny thing.  I feel like the only real difference between the armor in 1.0 and the armor in 2.0 is the way in which it increases, with disregard to the weaknesses.  For some reason, DE thought increasing armor parabolically was a good idea from the old linear rate.  In the end, the high armor enemies just hit us faster.  Technically, DE did nothing to change how armor works but merely give it weaknesses that eventually wouldn't matter.  The armor system doesn't need to be fixed, it just doesn't work as it should with the armor scaling.  The only thing I can say to possibly remedy this is that the armor stays the same, but the Grineer units get a lower and fixed amount of health that doesn't scale with level.

[Alaizia]

This is so funny, not.

 

As of U11.3.2, Puncture and corrosive no longer affect armor reduction and only act as normal multiplier. How are we going to fight Grineers and Heavies over level 30? The armor scaling didn't change in respond to that. Level 40 Heavy gunners will still have at least 7740* armor, 96.27% reduction. Edit Armor estimation

 

How are we going to kill them with our toothpick weapons now?

 

 

Edit: PS to DE, if you just want to avoid dealing negative (or 1) damage, you only need to avoid putting any negative multiplier to the armor column. Not need to change the whole mechanics.

 

 

Update U11.3.3: Puncture and Corrosive still don't affect armor reduction, only affect the amount of armor. As Grineer will scale to have ridiculous amount armor, it doesn't make a difference in the end. We still won't be able to fight Trooper and Heavies above lvl 35.

The devs have already said they are working on this crap.

[Definitegj]

The devs have already said they are working on this crap.

 

Nope, the devs/patch note said they already fixed this crap.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Definitegj

[Definitegj]

 

Wait, serious? (I haven't been reading this thread obviously) I don't get why 120% would do 1 damage...

 

Besides, I always assumed the 100% reduction would never let it hit zero %.

 

Example:

100 armor, with 100% armor reduction would be 50 armor.

100 armor, with 200% armor reduction would be 25 armor.

 

Etc etc. Basically impossible to hit zero, 0.0000025 etc etc

 

That's how other games do it.

 

Possible 'solution' change corrosive projection to 25% per mod, or if you want to keep some armor, 20% per mod.

Anything less than 1 will be displayed as 1. Negatives is less than 1.

 

Serious, that is how it work in this game.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Definitegj

[Definitegj]

dude, i love the tests you do and have done (and props to all others who did tests for this) but i gotta agree with definitegj on this one:

 

 

the mechanic where puncture damage could get 50% and corrosive 75% damage unmitigated by armor to deal damage on the targets health was rather elegant and all they should have done is use a different method for negative modifiers. negative modifiers (or any modifiers for that matter) should never have effected total damage but just the damage type they stem from in the first place - i mean i'm trying to keep steves warning about how rough this is gonna be in mind but most of this seems less rough and more completely clueless, spreadsheet solutions to design/fundamental balance problems... i dunno... don't really wanna rant.

 

another possibility may be to make certain procs way more reliable but i somehow have lost all faith in DE's ability to finetune stuff like that.

 

Some warframe abilities do pure elemental only and negative modifiers will make it do 1/low damage much earlier against the Grineer which is very depressing to watch.

 

Ideally, i think armor shouldn't scale at all but DE don't like that, so lets skip that.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Definitegj

[Pisirk]

We obviously need higher level weapons to defeat higher level opponents. OH WAIT....

[LazerusKI]

Some warframe abilities do pure elemental only and negative modifiers will make it do 1/low damage much earlier against the Grineer which is very depressing to watch.

 

Ideally, i think armor shouldn't scale at all but DE don't like that, so lets skip that.

mh mh...even forcield-type (Vaubans Vortex) deals only 1dmg at higher levels

Edited December 17, 2013 by LazerusKI

[SlyBoots]

the elemental frames, right... hm, if they ever catch onto that other little detail that frost and ember are still crippled because their abilities don't trigger procs a suggestion might be that armor increases proc effect duration and frame ability damage can't be reduced below a certain threshold. might be band aid, i dunno, that's just what popped into my mind right this instant...

Edited December 17, 2013 by SlyBoots