Why Would Anyone Use The Physical Damage Mods?

[Zhizn]

As the topic title says, why would anyone use the mods that boost only impact/puncture/slash damage?  Since they boost damage, I assume they're meant to be a dps mod, but there are at least 8 other dps mods that are better than them.  Its not even a close call - their current % and lack of it being base damage make them useless.  They do the same % as one of the faction damage mods, but those affect all your base damage and thus are significantly better.

 

As for the 8 other mods - for rifles, serration, split chamber, heavy caliber, all 4 elements, the faction damage mods, punch through (arguable - some people don't aim right for it to do anything), wildfire/malignant force (if one isn't better than the physical damage mod, then the other one is).  That is 12 mods that are better at damage dealing than the physical damage mods.

 

It doesn't even make it into the sometimes useful mod category, like the fire rate, crit, and accuracy mods (all useful on some guns).  In fact, I'd put them in the same category as max ammo increase mods - so far outclassed (by ammo mutators) that they are rendered useless.

 

Some math for the proof:  First, lets stack the deck as much as possible in favor of the physical mod - the highest % modifier of the damage 2.0 types I found was a 50% difference between a physical damage type and the best elemental combo for use against a faction, and that was slash damage on corpus flash (elemental combo for corpus faction is gas and magnetic, and its the gas element that has a penalty).  Slash will have a 25% bonus, and the two gas elemental mods (heat and toxin) will have a 25% penalty.  This will even affect wildfire and malignant force.  Next, lets assume the weapon's base damage is 100% slash damage, just so we don't weaken the physical damage mod further.  This is as stacked in favor of the physical mod as I can get.  And now, the numbers: the physical mod add 30% of whatever the base damage is, and it gets a 25% bonus, so .3 * 1.25 =  .375, or 37.5% of the base damage on corpus flesh.  a standard elemental mod does 90% of the base damage, and if its heat or toxin, it will suffer a 25% penalty(or do only 75% of its listed damage), so .9 * .75 = .675, or 67.5% of the base damage done to corpus flesh.  Standard elemental mods are twice as good as a physical damage mod - in the worst circumstance for them.  Now lets look at wildfire and malignant force - they only do 60% of the base damage, and suffer the same penalty, so .6 * .75 = .45, or 45% of the base damage.  Yep, even wildfire and malginant force, ignoring their extra effects, add more damage than the physical mods.

 

However, in order to not be pure complaining, I'll add a change proposal - make the physical damage mods the same % bonus as the elemental mods (like melee weapons) to give them a fighting chance.  Heck, you can even add a higher % than the elemental mods and they would still only be better than the elements on a few weapons (those that are mostly a single physical damage type), and that would only be against the right factions.  Make the physical damage mods competitive with elemental mods, please.

[Coren024]

I personally think that DE should lower the values of the elemental mods as a part of the solution (there should still be another component to the fix) because as it is now, even on a crit build weapon where a bunch of mod slots go to crit chance and damage, 2-3 elemental mods will make the elemental damage be 2-3 times as large as the entire physical damage, which makes the base distribution of physical damage types unimportant because over 50% of the damage isn't even one of the 3 physical damages.

[Papa_Nuk_Nuk]

Status chance makes them competitive.

Yes the elemental mods do more damage, But they only have an effect on a proc.

Physical damage mods affect EVERY hit, only applying the extra effects on procs.

[Guest Shibboleet]

Status chance makes them competitive.

Yes the elemental mods do more damage, But they only have an effect on a proc.

Physical damage mods affect EVERY hit, only applying the extra effects on procs.

Elemental mods do damage every hit also.

[Coren024]

Status chance makes them competitive.

Yes the elemental mods do more damage, But they only have an effect on a proc.

Physical damage mods affect EVERY hit, only applying the extra effects on procs.

Wrong, elemental damage mods always do the damage, the proc chance is only for the special procs that each element (including the physical ones) have.

 

How else would a weapon with only elemental damage do any damage if it relied on proc chance?

Edited January 26, 2014 by Coren024

[VKhaun]

Ember -> Accellerant -> Stacking fire damage.

[Papa_Nuk_Nuk]

Elemental mods do damage every hit also.

Wrong, elemental damage mods always do the damage, the proc chance is only for the special procs that each element (including the physical ones) have.

How else would a weapon with only elemental damage do any damage if it relied on proc chance?

O

that makes more sense. Point.

Now it seems unbalanced, but isnt elemental damage based on physical damage?

So physical damage makes elemental damage even more?

Edited January 26, 2014 by Sadisticnerd

[Coren024]

O

that makes more sense. Point.

Now it seems unbalanced, but isnt elemental damage based on physical damage?

So physical damage makes elemental damage even more?

 

the elemental damage is based on the base damage of the weapon + any % bonus that is to all damage. The + slash, impact, and puncture mods do not increase the amount that elemental mods look at.

[taiiat]

Yes the elemental mods do more damage, But they only have an effect on a proc.

Physical damage mods affect EVERY hit, only applying the extra effects on procs.

 not trying to beat you up, but you've been a part of Warframe for more than a year, yet never realized how Elementals deal Damage? o.0

 

on topic:

 

i had some thoughts about Physical Damage Mods a week or two ago, but forgot to make a thread.

 

you see how Accelerated Blast works? it's adding Damage to one Physical based on the total Damage. that's not how all the rest of the Physical Mods work.

 

but!

i think all of the Physical Mods should actually work that way! it would be a large enough increase of one Damage Type to actually be worth equipping.

 

because as it is now, the only reason why you'd ever equip a Physical Damage Mod - is that you're a new player and you don't have any Elementals yet. that's literally the only reason.

[rhoenix]

O

that makes more sense. Point.

Now it seems unbalanced, but isnt elemental damage based on physical damage?

So physical damage makes elemental damage even more?

That's the fun part - physical damage mods have no effect on damage of elemental mods, and moreover, physical damage mods only add a percentage of damage of their specific physical damage type - in other words, a weapon with 20 impact, 20 puncture, and 100 slashing would become 20i/20p/130s if you added a slashing damage mod (with +30% damage bonus), but adding an impact damage mod instead only gives you 26i/20p/100s.

The Nightmare Shotgun mod Accelerated Blast adds a value of puncture damage based on the total physical damage of the weapon, not just the base puncture damage value - but is the only one that does.

You'll also note that damage from elemental mods doesn't move an inch if you add or change any physical damage mods.

If physical damage mods added based on total physical weapon damage, or if they're kept as-is but affected the base numbers for elemental damage (so that adding them indirectly increased elemental damage from mods), either would be acceptable as a fix to me.

[Zhizn]

if they were changed to affect base damage, I think they'd still need an increase in % amount - 30% is equal to a faction damage mod, and the physical damage mods are limited to their specific damage type, and so wouldn't usually have a full 30% increase in base damage as most weapons aren't a single pure physical damage type.

[NalkorRN]

That's the fun part - physical damage mods have no effect on damage of elemental mods, and moreover, physical damage mods only add a percentage of damage of their specific physical damage type - in other words, a weapon with 20 impact, 20 puncture, and 100 slashing would become 20i/20p/130s if you added a slashing damage mod (with +30% damage bonus), but adding an impact damage mod instead only gives you 26i/20p/100s.

The Nightmare Shotgun mod Accelerated Blast adds a value of puncture damage based on the total physical damage of the weapon, not just the base puncture damage value - but is the only one that does.

You'll also note that damage from elemental mods doesn't move an inch if you add or change any physical damage mods.

If physical damage mods added based on total physical weapon damage, or if they're kept as-is but affected the base numbers for elemental damage (so that adding them indirectly increased elemental damage from mods), either would be acceptable as a fix to me.

This is a sad result of damage 2.0. Before, accelerated blast added Armor-Piercing damage, one of the four forms of armor-ignoring damage and also scaled off of base damage. It's what made shotguns so hilariously overpowered. They had the potential to sport +150% base damage and +150% AP damage. The Hek I believe did Physics Impact damage since it stunned damn near everything with each shot, allowing it to get the full benefit from a combination of mods.

[rhoenix]

This is a sad result of damage 2.0. Before, accelerated blast added Armor-Piercing damage, one of the four forms of armor-ignoring damage and also scaled off of base damage. It's what made shotguns so hilariously overpowered. They had the potential to sport +150% base damage and +150% AP damage. The Hek I believe did Physics Impact damage since it stunned damn near everything with each shot, allowing it to get the full benefit from a combination of mods.

I'd call it an unintended side-effect, rather than a direct result - especially because Accelerated Blast's effect is inconsistent with other physical damage mods.

[HillsAndTheSea]

 The Hek I believe did Physics Impact damage since it stunned damn near everything with each shot, allowing it to get the full benefit from a combination of mods.

 

nope, did "slam" damage, something unique to shotguns, it was essentially bullet damage with stun effect, sobek used this damage type as well.

 

there were never any armor ignore shotguns, 

[Monolake]

Physical Damage Mods are garbage, its a well known fact. You might slap them on some low ranked weapon that has one prevalent damage type to replace later when you get more mods points, and thats it.

They are not 'early game' mods either: they drop from mid game enemies and they are bad for starter weapons, which have combined physical dmg. How good would be max slash dmg mod on a MK1? +3 dmg.  

 

Need a rework. Now its just a +200/500 credits drop.

[Garuger]

I personally love them and use them on every weapon i have . In fact it is a core build with them that extra damage they add is very important

Here are my builds http://imgur.com/a/rDZ7e . Besides what else could i use?

[Crewell]

The reason to use them is on weapons that do a high number of a specific damage type. Take bows for instance. Each of the three does a large amount of one damage type. Adding a Rupture mod to a Cernos for instance is a large damage boost to the weapon. That being said, the damage increase from those mods should be equal to or higher than the elemental mods.

[rhoenix]

The reason to use them is on weapons that do a high number of a specific damage type. Take bows for instance. Each of the three does a large amount of one damage type. Adding a Rupture mod to a Cernos for instance is a large damage boost to the weapon. That being said, the damage increase from those mods should be equal to or higher than the elemental mods.

Yes, that's obviously their intent, but the execution of that intent is lacking. This is due to the fact that currently, elemental mods add more damage for the space than physical damage mods - even with weapons with high damage to a single physical type.

Until the physical damage mods either added to damage type based on total damage of the weapon, or have it increase the base damage that elemental mods work from (or both), and they'll become viable for their cost. Until that happens however, one is better off using elemental mods for added damage.

[Starender]

thoses mods are useless

[Zhizn]

The reason to use them is on weapons that do a high number of a specific damage type. Take bows for instance. Each of the three does a large amount of one damage type. Adding a Rupture mod to a Cernos for instance is a large damage boost to the weapon. That being said, the damage increase from those mods should be equal to or higher than the elemental mods.

 

If you read the math portion of my original post, I ran the numbers assuming a weapon had a single damage type - which would make the mod better than the split damage types of most weapons (and the bows you mentioned).  They still didn't come close to a 60% elemental mod.  There are only 8 mod slots available for a weapon, and there are 12 mods that are more damaging in ANY situation.  Sure you might lose out to the RNG gods and just not have the other mods, but otherwise you really shouldn't ever use the physical damage mods as they currently are.  They need a fix - either affecting base damage, or a damage increase.

 

Heck, they could even play around with several different solutions - first, they could buff the bonuses the physical damage types receive - if you get a larger bonus with physical types than from elemental types, it would make them more valuable.  They could also have them work from base damage (like accelerated blast does now) and be used to heavily buff a physical type that is low on a weapon (would probably also need the 'physical damage types are more valuable' change to be useful).  They could just buff the % to something like 90 (or even higher - at 90% they would still be worse than most of the elemental mods because they don't work off base damage).  Or they could just make them all into nightmare mods that also give you some other boost - like status chance or magazine size.  That way they would have some benefit other than pure damage, since they are the worst mods in the game for pure damage.

[Papa_Nuk_Nuk]

I quit.  Damage 2.0 is too confusing.
Crai

Just making my "rainbow" build over here.  Corrosive and gas all the way.

[Eruend]

Call me crazy, but what if the physical type bonus wasn't limited to the damage?

 

ok, so that's not incredibly clear. Here's an example: What if No Return gave the same damage bonus to piercing damage as it does now, and also increased proc. chance for that SPECIFIC damage type? Heck, maybe even go further and increase the effectiveness of the proc. in general.

 

ok, so three modifiers on one mod may be a little too much. Just tossing random ideas though.

Edited January 26, 2014 by Eruend

[Zhizn]

I actually like that idea eruend.  Heck, anything to make these mods useful at least some of the time would be nice.

[Soluh]

Call me crazy, but what if the physical type bonus wasn't limited to the damage?

 

ok, so that's not incredibly clear. Here's an example: What if No Return gave the same damage bonus to piercing damage as it does now, and also increased proc. chance for that SPECIFIC damage type? Heck, maybe even go further and increase the effectiveness of the proc. in general.

 

ok, so three modifiers on one mod may be a little too much. Just tossing random ideas though.

So something like, stick Sawtooth Clip on the Miter, suddenly eviscerator mode?

I could get behind that.

[bobafetthotmail]

Call me crazy, but what if the physical type bonus wasn't limited to the damage?

 

ok, so that's not incredibly clear. Here's an example: What if No Return gave the same damage bonus to piercing damage as it does now, and also increased proc. chance for that SPECIFIC damage type? Heck, maybe even go further and increase the effectiveness of the proc. in general.

 

ok, so three modifiers on one mod may be a little too much. Just tossing random ideas though.

I like. anything that boosts the proc chances is good by definition.

Edited January 27, 2014 by bobafetthotmail