De, It's Time To Let Go: Enemy Armor Has Failed.

[Aspari]

Ooooh! I hope I get to shoot armor off enemies soon!

[TankHunter678]

Well they could make the scaling have stronger diminishing returns at higher levels.

[Arlayn]

Armor being an issue? Were you using Grakata? It nullifies the issue...

[Vercinaigh]

The current paragdigm for enemy armor (armor reduces damage) is simply not working. It makes it harder for players to understand the effect of their elements in damage 2.0 and interacts in a highly negative way with the brute force numerical scaling of high-level enemies. And these problems keep flaring up periodically. It's time for a change.

I propose that ENEMY armor function in the same way as enemy shields: an additonal health bar, with different resistances than their 'main' health. Warframe armor would still reduce damage, of course.

Yeah i like this to be honest, can still have unarmored parts of their health though....perhaps show enemy health as split bars...one for health and one for armor etc, the new UI could support this without much screen space.

[fatpig84]

Or do it EVE style....

Armor as a separate health bar.

 

Having said that, Warframe damage combination system is somewhat deeper than EVE. 

And that is quite a rarity...... But u guys still don't have tracking, optimal ranges blah blah :p

 

Edited December 15, 2013 by fatpig84

[Tulzscha]

Moved to the proper section.

[Manofdusk]

 Since armor is essentially a "creature type" like flesh, robotic, and infested, why not remove armor values entirely for enemies and just tweak damage as it applies to armor?

 

 Then make it so that warframes are either armored or not armored.

[castem]

I propose that ENEMY armor function in the same way as enemy shields: an additonal health bar, with different resistances than their 'main' health. Warframe armor would still reduce damage, of course.

 

 

Personally, I'd be happy if armor simply didn't scale, period. Now different types of enemies could have different armor values, ie. normal Lancers could have 25% damage reduction and Elites could have 33%, but since health already increases, there's simply no need to make armor values increase too. All it does is make Armor Ignore a necessity once you reach a certain threshold, which was the core problem of damage 1.0.

 

I still would be able to get behind the idea of armor as a finite health bar though, something that still reduces damage dealt to flesh, but can be broken down with an anti-armor build until it becomes 0% and then you're dealing pure health damage at that point. I think combining the two would give us the best of both worlds.

 

+1 to both of you.  I would prefer either of these to be implemented, rather than the current system.

[Pariah63b]

Everything in this forum can be solved by using the right weapon and right mods without changing anything. Get over not being able to use one weapon for the whole game.

[Baigan]

The problem with armor reducing damage is that it double dips with resistance tables. Even if you use something that is neutral to armor, You will be doing less damage than you'd expect because it passively reduces damage. 

 

Using corrosive or puncture does not bypases the reduction, It just helps alleviate the problem. Armor isn't bestowed to squishy enemies either, wich further aggravates the bullet spongyness feeling even when you mod heavily to counter it.

 

If armor were to act like a shield, it would sort of be a subpar form of defense unless it also regenerated like shields do.

 

Example:

Infested with 2000 health has the same 2000 health effectively.

Corpus Crewman with 1000 shields and 1000 health has effectively 2000 health as well.

 

Now here is where it gets whacky.

100 armor translates into a 25% damage reduction according to the wiki.

300 armor reduces 50% of the incoming damage.

 

So for an armored enemy to have 2000 effective health, it only needs 1000 health and 300 armor.

 

Here is the math for enemy armor calculation:

total Armor = base Armor + (base Armor * 0.0025 * ((current Level - base Level) ^ 2.5))

(taken from http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Armor)

 

 

Factor in the damage tables bonuses and penalties and there you have one tough cookie.

Sure, corrosive reduces armor if it procs... But we have no idea by how much and all we know is that it does not make em exactly squishy.

[Otaiken]

The problem with armor reducing damage is that it double dips with resistance tables. Even if you use something that is neutral to armor, You will be doing less damage than you'd expect because it passively reduces damage. 

 

Using corrosive or puncture does not bypases the reduction, It just helps alleviate the problem. Armor isn't bestowed to squishy enemies either, wich further aggravates the bullet spongyness feeling even when you mod heavily to counter it.

 

If armor were to act like a shield, it would sort of be a subpar form of defense unless it also regenerated like shields do.

 

Example:

Infested with 2000 health has the same 2000 health effectively.

Corpus Crewman with 1000 shields and 1000 health has effectively 2000 health as well.

 

Now here is where it gets whacky.

100 armor translates into a 25% damage reduction according to the wiki.

300 armor reduces 50% of the incoming damage.

 

So for an armored enemy to have 2000 effective health, it only needs 1000 health and 300 armor.

 

Here is the math for enemy armor calculation:

total Armor = base Armor + (base Armor * 0.0025 * ((current Level - base Level) ^ 2.5))

(taken from http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Armor)

 

 

Factor in the damage tables bonuses and penalties and there you have one tough cookie.

Sure, corrosive reduces armor if it procs... But we have no idea by how much and all we know is that it does not make em exactly squishy.

 

So if unit with 1000 HP and 300 armor has effectively 2000 health, then just take away the damage reduction and make this unit have 1000 HP and 1000 Armor. Or 1200 Armor + 800 HP, tweak the ratio depending on what damage types you want to work best on this enemy. It is the same thing in the end, effective health. You can scale this easily as just the amount of HP + Armor scales and the damage remains consistent while all bonuses still apply, it's easy to tweak and you won't run into the problems we have with damage reduction now.

 

Or put flat % damage reduction on enemies and then tweak the HP scaling accordingly. Again, it's much simpler to tweak, damage remains consistent and you won't run into those pesky problems we have now.

 

Or Hybrid of those two systems.. or anything... just avoid any % damage reduction that actually scales.. it just creates trouble. DE has been fixing this since 1.0 and it's still not working properly.

 

Also, enemies (apart from bosses) don't usually regenerate shields. How is armor different? This system would be best used for enemies only. Frames can get a flat reduction (for example Rhino: flat 30%) which is then increased by Steel Fibre, just like critical chance works. Soft cap it, hard cap it and voila.. simple working system.

Edited December 15, 2013 by LocoWithGun

[Baigan]

So if unit with 1000 HP and 300 armor has effectively 2000 health, than just take away the damage reduction and make this unit have 1000 HP and 1000 Armor. It is the same thing in the end, effective health. You can scale this easily as just the amount of HP + Armor scales and the damage remains consistent while all bonuses still apply, it's easy to tweak and you won't run into the problems we have with damage reduction now.

 

Or put flat % damage reduction on enemies and then tweak the HP scaling accordingly. Again, it's much simpler to tweak, damage remains consistent and you won't run into those pesky problems we have now.

 

Or Hybrid of those two systems.. or anything... just avoid any % damage reduction that actually scales.. it just creates trouble. DE has been fixing this since 1.0 and it's still not working properly.

 

I'm not defending the current way it is done, in fact I'm pointing out whats wrong with it. Its the double dipping feature.

 

Your corrosive weapon that deals 100 damage isn't going to deal 175 damage (+75% against armor) on a Grineer Trooper, If the trooper has 300 armor, Your corrosive 100 damage gun is actually going to deal 87.5 damage against said trooper. Arguably, corrosive is the WORST element, and still the most effective against armor. Go figure.

[Vercinaigh]

The more I play void, the more I support this change, this has got to stop.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Vercinaigh

[Malora_Sidewinder]

I think that this is a good idea. Enemy armor could be a new shield bar that is weak/resistant to different damage types than shields.

[Otaiken]

I'm not defending the current way it is done, in fact I'm pointing out whats wrong with it. Its the double dipping feature.

 

Your corrosive weapon that deals 100 damage isn't going to deal 175 damage (+75% against armor) on a Grineer Trooper, If the trooper has 300 armor, Your corrosive 100 damage gun is actually going to deal 87.5 damage against said trooper. Arguably, corrosive is the WORST element, and still the most effective against armor. Go figure.

 

I was wondering about Troopers specifically, it seems that since dmg 2.0 they don't recieve extra damage from Corrosive and Puncture like other Grineer units do. Do they really use armor + health like the others or do they have different surface type (maybe bug)?

 

Anti-Grineer loadouts work on every other Grineer unit except for troopers. And from level 45 or so no matter what loadout you have your damage gets insane reduction on all Grineer units. I'm curious to know if that's simply bad system or if it's still bugged on top of that.

 

The obscurity of the current system is also a part of why I dislike it so much. When you have a bar it's easy to seem that the enemy has way more health than he should have and then it's easy to fix. When you lock it behind various formulas instead it's much harder to troubleshoot and players are baffled why they don't do any damage as there's no apparent difference to enemies, their guns just suddenly stop doing damage.

Edited December 15, 2013 by LocoWithGun

[Baigan]

I was wondering about Troopers specifically, it seems that since dmg 2.0 they don't recieve extra damage from Corrosive and Puncture like other Grineer units do. Do they really use armor + health like the others or do they have different surface type (maybe bug)?

 

Anti-Grineer loadouts work on every other Grineer unit except for troopers. And from level 45 or so no matter what loadout you have your damage gets insane reduction on all Grineer units. I'm curious to know if that's simply bad system or if it's still bugged on top of that.

 

The obscurity of the current system is also a part of why I dislike it so much. When you have a bar it's easy to seem that the enemy has way more health than he should have and then it's easy to fix. When you lock it behind various formulas instead it's much harder to troubleshoot and players are baffled why they don't do any damage as there's no apparent difference to enemies, their guns just suddenly stop doing damage.

According to the codex, the main difference is that te Trooper has 50 more armor than the lancer (lancer has 100, trooper has 150). However, this is at the codex page, meaning that levels are not factored in. Still, a Heavy Gunner has 500 base armor. I'd say that the trooper reaches the the lvl 45 equivalent sooner, but that would mean the heavy gunner is already a dreadnought at lvl 1 :I

[DoomFruit]

I still think Damage 1.0 was superior. Yes, the enemies had armour. Yes, the armour did eventually scale itself up to 100% damage mitigation. And yes, you could bypass that armour completely with AP mods or innate armour ignore weapons. No horrible convoluted table of resistances. Just "stick this mod on and you will be able to effectively harm all enemies, no matter their level".

[tehous]

The point of having damage mitigation in the form of armor would be to get smaller damage numbers against heavily armored targets, to give visual feedback that this indeed is a tough mob. A secondary effect would be to increase the efficiency of health restoration but that isn't exactly common for mobs in warframe so isn't really of importance.

 

Damage 2.0 by itself already covers most of this, creating increased/reduced damage number depending on mob type and as such armor is somewhat superfluent. Armor does help to differ between armored mobs and that could be accomplished by a static non-scaling armor or preferably by adjusting resistances which would be visible, readable and understandable in the mob entry in the codex.

 

As pointed out, armor can be equated to a multiplier of health. Currently we have exponential scaling of health which is then increased by a exponentially scaling multiplier.

 

Armor scaling currently only serves to break the game at higher levels.

[Liminal]

Yes.

Hell yes!

F*** yes!

It's what I've been thinking all along :)

 

Armor scaling has no place when HP already scales.

[tehous]

On a related note one might wonder why the effect of armor was cut to a third?

 

To make armor less of an issue at lower levels where it wasn't an issue to begin with?

To decrease the viability of health tanking that was already weak?

 

 

At the same time the options for bypassing armor are reduced (and now removed?) while the scaling, which was the problem to begin with, was increased...

(1.4 exponent changed to 2.5 exponent)

 

To illustrate the effect, a little graph of the scaling of the mitigation for a mob spawning at level 1 with 50 armor under 1.0/2.0.

* I'm plotting the health scaling the mitigation results in, i.e. 50% mitigation=>doubling of effective health, 90% mitigation=>10 times effective health. 

* Using datamined 9.6.1 values for 1.0 scaling

* 2.0 level on x-axis, so multiplying 1.0 level by 2.5 (2.0 level 40~1.0 level 100).

Blue line is 1.0 scaling, red line is 2.0 scaling

 

I think the graph speaks for itself.

[shygddt]

Mass Effect 3 resistances worked like this:

 

Armor gives a flat damage decrease, say -10 damage. If your gun did 11 damage, tough luck, effective damage works out to 1. If your gun did 1000 damage, armor only reduces it by 10 so effective would be 990. I would be perfectly on board with this treatment for armor in Warframe provided armor is restricted to Grineer only.

 

I think the bigger issue is like the above poster mentioned. Scaling is @(*()$ $&*&*#(%&. What's the point of EXPONENTIAL scaling? To give a beef gate where all your weapons don't work at high levels? What's the point of going to high levels then?

[Baigan]

 

Armor gives a flat damage decrease, say -10 damage. If your gun did 11 damage, tough luck, effective damage works out to 1. If your gun did 1000 damage, armor only reduces it by 10 so effective would be 990. I would be perfectly on board with this treatment for armor in Warframe provided armor is restricted to Grineer only.

 

 

Flat reduction is the shortest road to trivializing content. If 10 armor reduced 1 damage, Valkyr would literaly be impervious to small firearms. Unmodded. And a basic heavy gunner would laugh at anything without a pretty good damage loadout.

[shygddt]

Flat reduction is the shortest road to trivializing content. If 10 armor reduced 1 damage, Valkyr would literaly be impervious to small firearms. Unmodded. And a basic heavy gunner would laugh at anything without a pretty good damage loadout.

 

Yeah but it was balanced relatively well in ME3. DE likes to tell you to take the 99% enemy damage reduction and suck it, because exponential scaling. Anything will get stupid with exponential scaling.

 

I'm kind of disappointed really, I came back for Damage 2.0 to find armor still annoying as ever. Still, at least only Grineer seem to have $&*&*#(%& armor scaling now, so it's not all that bad.

[MalusCalibur]

The way I see it, armour should never scale with level, but instead be a fixed damage reduction percentage for each enemy type. So for example, a Lancer's armour might be sufficient to gain 20% damage reduction, while a Heavy Gunner could go as high as 60%. That way, armour never ends up completely impervious, but also does not become irrelevant.

[LtZefar]

Everything in this forum can be solved by using the right weapon and right mods without changing anything. Get over not being able to use one weapon for the whole game.

But we're using the right weapon with right element and highest puncture damage but we're still reduced to toothpicks in terms of powers.

 

The armor is ludicrous on higher levels. You can't just brush this off as nothing.