What's The Point Of Sonar Now?

[Eirshy]

Back in Damage 1.0, Armor Bypass was a major thing. It was what made many weapons actually viable because of the insanely high armor values enemies would achieve. It was also what made Sonar good. With an armor ignoring sniper weapon, a headshot was simply an x2- comparatively, sonar was an x5 base (x6.5 with Focus)

 

However, it does not convey armor penetration, merely a high percentile damage amplification to a specific spot. This meant that if you didn't have any armor bypassing damage, you were better off shooting the unarmored spots on enemies that had them.

 

 

 

Now, Damage 2.0 introduced some nice changes. Cold + AP was no longer Master Race status, non-innate-bypassing weapons were viable again, Medium Grineer no longer apply armor on their heads, Ancients no longer laugh at attempts to damage them with something that wasn't AP, Physics Impact, Toxic, or Serrated Blade...

 

But Armor was not removed. Armor Bypassing was. Armor still scales as well, meaning the source of all of the problems that Damage 1.0 had (Scaling Armor) was not removed. It was lessened, sure, I mean only like Heavy Gunners still have a notable amount of armor while having zero spots you can shoot them to get around that resistance (I'm assuming Techs and Leapers were fixed when they were switched off of being considered Armored)....

 

Things still scale till immunity. The potato alert we had earlier today had some lovely lv52-55 Grineer, which would take 6 points of damage per tick of a 260 blast damage skill. After the 25% reduction for the target being considered armored, Quake was at 195 per tick. And it was reduced down to 6. That's just shy of 97% damage soaked.

 

So, when they were fired upon by my Lanka (my 5 Forma'd and Potato'd, only-non-maxed-mod-is-a-r9-Serration, Pure-Corrosive-With-Stormbringer Lanka (using Hammer instead of Heavy Cal)), in spite of having a raw damage of 3062 before doubling or critting, I was required to headshot to be able to oneshot.

 

Now, this is fine. This is COMPLETELY fine. Requiring accuracty with a sniper weapon is not a "Why!?" moment- the gun is designed around the idea of having extremely high accuracy

 

However, the problem is: Headshots were more effective than Sonar shots. I could not oneshot by shooting Sonar, in spite of having a 3.25x larger amplifier on the damage. I could only headshot.

 

 

Sonar is SUPPOSED to be a better sniper tool than simply headshotting. Rewarding you for making specific trick shots instead of boringly shooting everybody in the face. And yet, in Damage 2.0, it's (at least, eventually, depending on level) ineffective. Completely and utterly ineffective unless the target doesn't have an armor-bypassing weakpoint (in which case you yourself are at least eventually ineffective).

 

 

 

 

So, what saves it? Boss Fights?

Back in the day, yeah, Sonar was an amazingly good tool for speeding up boss fights. It allowed a Banshee to, if properly modded out with end-of-end-game quality gear, actually oneshot Kril.

However now... Bosses like Lephantis and Ruk have so many regions of invulnerability, you should immediately stop playing so you can run out and buy a lottery ticket if the blotch actually lands on a location that can take damage. And to make matters worse, Health Gating on Vor AND Ruk, as well as the change of Kril from his fun "Quick, he's frozen, drop him as fast as you can!" to "Still not fire mode... Still not fire mode..." makes the insane alpha damage Sonar lets you potentially have basically be worthless.

 

 

 

 

So we look at sonar. It's got a lovely range. It puts enemies on the map. It gives you a potential obscene damage amplifier (1145% is absolute maximum according to the wiki). And yet...

On bosses that have the health to make it really useful, you can't use it due to the mechanics of the boss fights themselves.

On enemies that you'd really want it on (high level), armor bypassing weakpoints outscale it unless you go maximum ham on its amplifier (and even then, it still won't necessarily out-pace the armor scaling).

 

 

 

So really, what's the point of Sonar now?

Edited December 16, 2013 by TheBlueJelly

[Skynin]

I'm waiting.

[Zhoyzu]

its extremely useful now that people have been using less fire mods.

[Skynin]

Yeah, some words to read!

[Eirshy]

its extremely useful now that people have been using less fire mods.

 

Oh I completely forgot to list its bugs. The texture update glitch is really annoying, moreso since the damage amp spot is still there- just good luck finding it.

 

Or the fun "Shoot the bottom of the Ancient's foot" splotch. That one's probably my favorite.

Edited December 16, 2013 by TheBlueJelly

[Etsoree]

It always has been useful and it still is always useful.

 

Maxed out, it provides a 1,145% damage bonus to the glowing spot you hit.

 

What's not useful about that?

[Eirshy]

It always has been useful and it still is always useful.

Maxed out, it provides a 1,145% damage bonus to the glowing spot you hit.

What's not useful about that?

I dunno, maybe the fact that even 2000% when 97% is resisted is only 60% actual damage, wheras an unarmored weakpoint would be 100% and unarmored headshot is 200%.

Last I checked, 60% is lower than both of those values.

What made Sonar so good in Damage 1.0 was armor bypassing allowing you to ignore the problem of armor out-scaling your damage amplifier. Nothing bypasses armor innately any more, so this problem has returned. It's why the Paris (almost) beat the Dread in the hands of a Banshee.

Damage amplification doesn't mean damage resistance is ignored. Sufficiently high resistance will negate any amplification you have.

[Demon_Mask]

I like this OP

[K_Shiro]

He is the OP so nerf him. Anyways, I do believe that sonar is somewhat viable, since it does provide extra damage but at the same time I have to agree, that a 15% bonus damage is a joke.

They said something about checking frame skills as post-dmg2.0 they became unreliable. Like the maxed WaveofIce hitting rank 4 bombard for a nice little 50dmg...

[Zhoyzu]

Oh I completely forgot to list its bugs. The texture update glitch is really annoying, moreso since the damage amp spot is still there- just good luck finding it.

 

Or the fun "Shoot the bottom of the Ancient's foot" splotch. That one's probably my favorite.

lmfao forgot about that one too. yea i've been making suggestions for months to no avail so i gave up.

 

sonar SQ combo does well enough. also use it as an enemy locator. about all it is good for these days

[Eirshy]

lmfao forgot about that one too. yea i've been making suggestions for months to no avail so i gave up.

 

sonar SQ combo does well enough. also use it as an enemy locator. about all it is good for these days

 

Enemy Radar on 2? Same, sadly. And it's not too terrible if you're using guns with no accuracy (such as Gremlins) as a few needles will always hit the blotch accidentally. But if I wanted to do something that wasn't trick shots with my sniper rifle while parkouring off of everything in sight, I'd play another game >=@

[NDroid]

I haven't played my Banshee much after Damage 2.0 so I haven't really noticed it but this is a very good point. Sonar is what used to make Banshee viable in T3 Def for example, without it she becomes pretty useless against high level Grineer and in T3 Void.

 

The easiest solution to this would be to give the Sonar spots a complete "weak spot" status and basically have them ignore armor, at least on normal enemies. I don't really mind it being less effective against bosses since they're unaffected by many other frame abilities as well and are supposed to be challenging.