Omg Soma Is Op! What The Hell O.o

[Khunvyel]

I'm probably going to be drowned under and labelled with the "L2P nuub" tag, but... I cannot help it;

 

Soma is a R6 weapon. It is intended to perform better right off the bat. Note, I said "right off the bat." And careful, I repeat again; it appears to perform better right off the bat due to the two polarity slots and the ease to use.

I have gotten it once I dinged R6, and there were three things that bothered me with it:

1) comparatively zero recoil. After a while I went on my merry way and used it at as 100 shot marksman rifle, simply because the enemies were weak enough. Or the gun strong enough for those lower levels. Take your pick. At a base RoF of 15 having zero recoil just doesn't feel right. But this is a general problem I'm having with the game. Recoil is static and not increased by higher RoF. This bothers me greatly.

2) It only kills things as long as you have AMMO, and like every single high-RoF / low Damage per shot weapon, the damage-to-ammo efficiency goes down the drain. I prefer other Primaries over the Soma. I just picked it to see how it actually performs because I don't like talking about things I didn't try out myself.

3) It seems to have too much of everthing. Very high crit chance and crit damage. very high status proc chance. No recoil. piercing+slash emphasis, making it a (perhaps too) great allrounder. Then again... it is R6, so why not. As many others can attest, it is far from "THE" ultimate weapon for every single possible scenario.

 

So, bottom line, your Soma looking OP is probably because you just got it and stroll around the usual things like you did, completely taking all those things mentioned out of context.

 

DPS != Effective damage... which is what many math nuts usually forget (( not talking about the flimsy people who do not even take reload times into consideration. But granted, status proc damage would help a lot )).

#) Damage per second does not take into account your miss rate, and with a higher rate of fire and higher recoil (which isn't mattering much in regards to the Soma, granted) you are simply prone to miss more often. When I got the Grakata I was like... "Dear God... why?" because of the wildly flailing recoil. Just on paper, it looked like it was a fine weapon pre-Soma age... and then you actually pull the trigger and... *cringe*. It is certainly an interesting weapon to spray bosses with, but I prefer more reliable hits on regular grunts. Again, I said "prefer." My preference. I am sure there are people around here who have so many loves for the Grakata, including the weird reload / magazine. Do we really want to know WHAT this beast really fires...?

#) Damage per second does not take into account your ammo waste rate - extra shots fired even though the target is already dead, etc. This especially is an issue with burst fire weapons and again, high RoF guns.

#) High damage per SHOT weapons have the disadvantage of "overkill". Yes, there is such a thing as overkill, which is the damage wasted on an enemy not having enough "hitpoints." In such a case, a weapon that deals less damage with a higher rate of fire can be as ammo efficient and faster with killing as a gun dealing high damage per shot, but having a lower RoF. This is why the Soma supposedly feels great when putzing around the starmap.

#) Hitscan or traveltime is also a huge factor. Your perfect aim is for naught if the enemy just moves that much too early and your projectile misses by just a pixel (( hence why I never liked the Boltor, even during pre-Soma times. Though it was funny to make Bosses look like they have feathers all over their head :3 )).

#) Bottom line; math is one thing, human application another, and then there are preferences which makes people more apt to use certain weapons than others. Some people enjoy Bows. I do. Others loathe them for their traveltime because they don't have the facilities to aim properly with such a weapon.

 

And then there was the (offtopic) Galatine which also is a R3 weapon for a reason. Though I never understood the hype.

So, great, I take almost double the time to deal double the damage during a charge attack? Leaving me twice as vulnerable to anything else? With twice as long impaired mobility? In that regard, I enjoyed the Orthos a lot more but then again, I'm not a charge guy. I never understood all those "Charge attacks are the only game in melee" mentions, because the same time it took me to execute a single charge attack, I was already doing two or three slide attacks, netting me a lot more damage, receiving less damage because I was constantly on the move.

But again, case and point for preference. Galatine does not have the slide damage I want, so I stick to other things which exactly do that and provide my nimble get-around.

 

Back then I was checking the weapons for slide damage and decided for Dual Ethers as first upgrade from the Skana (that was before the Cronos blueprint from Vor was a guaranteed drop) as I liked the higher attack rate in comparison to Dual heat swords. This also made sliding around speedier. But I totally recommended Dual Heat swords to any new player if they were uncertain, as DHS require no Rank and are on par with highest slide attack paired with a good charge attack. Thus people could use both attack styles proficiently and check out which style of play they like better.

 

However, since we already mentioned the Tiered weapon system:

I hope that we get a major category revamp and get those tiers populated USEFULLY. Some leftover weapons which are utter crap now can get a legitimate buff by stuffing them into a higher Mastery Rank requirement. We must never forget the new players. I don't care for the "this is OP, that is OP" discussion as long as it is within reason. People can argue about the power of weapons within the same tier, that is totally fine. Complaining because something like the Soma is several times more powerful than your MK1-Braton? Oh please...

 

So... hi! I prefer other Primaries over the Soma, and I prefer other melee weapons over the Galatine, and what good did I do by not scratching the preference of Secondary Weapons!

 

*fetches himself a very, very good flak-vest*

[LazyKnight]

Burston prime - calcs consider this as firing 10 burts per second which is impossible to achieve, actual dps is way lower than soma, besides that it have no downsides.

GottFaust's calculator is wrong on Status effect, but not necessarily wrong on burst-fire. They fixed the burst fire by making the burst iteration fire-rate higher than the burst fire-rate. This just make it close to 10 bullet per second, or close to 16 bullets with speed trigger. That is not what was terribly wrong, as the difference is minor.

 

He did all the status effects under the assumption that a single bullet can proc every effect at once with the same probability.  I wasted hours during the weekend, to verify that a bullet can only get one proc per bullet, and what are the chances of getting 'I/s/p' over two elementals.

 

The way it seems to works is the each I/s/p is determined individual based on:

 

[impact/(Total base damage)]=Chance of impact

[slash/(Total base damage)]=Slash chance

[Puncture/(Total base damage)]=Puncture chance

 

I did not check to see if something like a slash mods influenced this at all, but serration does nothing in changing the ratio, so only the base weapons stats are needed to figure the chances.

 

Elementals are figured in a similar way:

[1st elemental/(Total elemental damage)]= 1st elementals chance of status triggering

[2nd elemental/(Total elemental damage)]= 2nd elemental chance of status triggering

 

The way it seems to works is there is a 50-60% of picking out of 'I/s/p' when two other compound elementals are at full mod strength. When there is just one other element mod the 'I/s/p' fills the void it left.

 

This result in having only a 20-25% chance of and individual elemental going off when its counterpart elemental is equal.

Edited March 3, 2014 by LazyKnight

[Davoodoo]

GottFaust's calculator is wrong on Status effect, but not necessarily wrong on burst-fire. They fixed the burst fire by making the burst iteration fire-rate higher than the burst fire-rate. This just make it close to 10 bullet per second, or close to 16 bullets with speed trigger. That is not what was terribly wrong, as the difference is minor.

10 bursts per second = 30 bullets per second on rest i can agree

[LazyKnight]

10 bursts per second = 30 bullets per second on rest i can agree

Not 10 burst per second, but 10 bullets per second. 

 

His calculator is easy to mess up by entering the fire-rate values in the wrong boxes.

 

If fire rate is entered correctly :

Name :: Burston prime

Magazine Size :: 45

Total Ammo :: 585

Crit Chance :: 5%

Crit Damage Multiplier :: 150%

Fire Rate :: 10 rounds per second

Reload Time :: 2 seconds

Status Chance :: 15%

Projectiles Per Shot :: 3

Status Procs Per Second :: 3.115

Burst Status Procs Per Second :: 4.5

Time to Empty magazine :: 4.5 seconds

Average Bleed Stacks :: 17

 

If entered with the boxes inverted:

 

Name :: Burston prime

Magazine Size :: 45

Total Ammo :: 585

Crit Chance :: 5%

Crit Damage Multiplier :: 150%

Fire Rate :: 25 rounds per second

Reload Time :: 2 seconds

Status Chance :: 15%

Projectiles Per Shot :: 3

Status Procs Per Second :: 2.852

Burst Status Procs Per Second :: 11.25

Time to Empty magazine :: 5.1 seconds

Average Bleed Stacks :: 30

 

Edited March 3, 2014 by LazyKnight

[(PSN)mkjt88]

But it needs nerf... I don't even like soma (i hate that machine guns get all the love, when i started to play it was gorgon .. and now soma? see the pattern? )

Did you expect or want the gorgon to always be the top weapon?? Before long the soma will be the new gorgon and something better will replace it.. This will not be a bad thing as we need good weapons for high waves and difficult enemies. Yes star chart games are a joke but do high wave def or survival And you will all want buffs not nerfs.. I think its fine where it is and hopefully soon they release a new faction or enemy types and hopefully new maps on star chart so these weapons can be challenged without endless missions.. But in the meantime people still need them for the endless missions.

[SquirmyBurrito]

Tiered system sorts weapons into categories then each category gets increased power variant on each tier(if you have multiple tiers like 20 its fine to skip some weapon types on few tiers).

 

Problem is that you cannot get weapon comparable to soma in most categories, atm comparable to soma primaries are.

Boar prime - have tons of disadvantages, ammo inefficiency, low accuracy limiting its dps and low range

Synapse - still lower dps and again disadvantage of range.

Latron prime - this thing have no disadvantages imo, some may say that it punishes missed shots

Bows - Much lower dps, most of dps goes into overkill, they punish missed shots

Burston prime - calcs consider this as firing 10 burts per second which is impossible to achieve, actual dps is way lower than soma, besides that it have no downsides.

And thats pretty much it, skipped penta on purpose

Sorry but only 6 weapons in top tier?? thats bad, and only 4 of them being generic ones, thats even worse.

 

Thats without a doubt worst tiered system ive ever seen.

All assault rifles are t1 or poorly balanced

Only semi auto/pump shotguns we have are t1 (strun, hek)

Sniper rifles are underperfoming in their tiers(snipetron, vulkar, lanka, vectis no matter if you put them all in t1 or put lanka and vectis in t2 theres imbalance anyway), if you consider more tiers then we lack endgame sniper rifles

 

Are you working under the assumption that there needs to be just as many top-tier weapons as their are trash-tier weapons? I do agree that each category needs to be represented though. And according to GottFaust's chart (which I am still confused as far as its credibility goes) all the weapon types are represented (ignoring melee) in the top twenty (you could shorten that to top ten if you don't consider launchers their own class and put bows and sniper rifles together).

Edited March 3, 2014 by SquirmyBurrito

[LazyKnight]

And according to GottFaust's chart (which I am still confused as far as its credibility goes) all the weapon types are represented (ignoring melee) in the top twenty

His chart would have all impact and puncture heavy weapons drop dramatically in their ranking. It would have high slash damage weapons (as in 80%+) go up by a bit. Phage would still be top 1 or 2, and the next highest primary DPS weapon in game would be Dread. All his number would be deflated by a bit, but it is NOT hard to figure out what the status effect spread will be.

 

The only part that needs to be figured is how to apply the corrosive and viral effects. Soma would rank high on the list, but not highest still because it has such a low proc rate per bullet. It would be annoying to redo the list he has, but it could be done. Status effect's spread is not as complex as it appear to be.

Edited March 3, 2014 by LazyKnight

[(NSW)Omgwtfl9lbbl]

I am a little bit confused about how some of his calculator works still. I've mostly just looked at his TTK and his procs code while only glancing at his raw/burst dps and firing mode code. On his Phage numbers, it has made me curious on how he does continuous fire. The numbers on the google docs spreadsheet use a Phage with a single projectile and 15% status chance dealing a base of 330 damage, I'm pretty sure. I don't know if that's well represented or not. Also, his build uses Shotgun Spazz + Accelerated Blast which should give it a theoretical 2.5 fire rate, but when under continuous fire mode his calculator returns a fire rate of 4. I'm not too certain how continuous fire works in this game as I'm not even a high enough mastery rank to use one lol (I mean, I would have assumed it to be pretty much like automatic on steroids except with the status tweaked since if I'm not mistaken that's what happened to the Synapse and Flux with the continuous fire change) nor have I looked at his continuous fire code, so I can't say much more about it, but I do find that odd.

 

I'm not entirely sure how the Phage works, either. I'm assuming that it should be considered as 7 tentacles each dealing a base of ~47 damage with an individual status chance of ~2.3% per tentacle (instead of 1 projectile/330 damage/15%). Entering it into the calculator as such paints a very different picture.

Edited March 3, 2014 by omgwtflolbbl

[LazyKnight]

(I mean, I would have assumed it to be pretty much like automatic on steroids except with the status tweaked since if I'm not mistaken that's what happened to the Synapse and Flux with the continuous fire change)

The chance displayed for the continues weapons is a status/second, and not per ammo. It used to be status effect like an automatic on steroids, but not anymore because of a nerf. I have a phage and synapse both at 5-6 forma: Fire-rate seems to have zero affect on status per second.

 

 

~2.3% per tentacle (instead of 1 projectile/330 damage/15%).

I wouldn't be surprised if Phage had a critical chance of 1.5% per tentacle as well.

 

The beam is weird when full focused and behaves as one. When the beam is focused things like gas procs are going off total damage and not per tentacle, and when it is unfocused it will show hits that are 1/7 as strong and have resulting gas proc would be noticeably smaller.

Edited March 3, 2014 by LazyKnight

[(NSW)Omgwtfl9lbbl]

The chance displayed for the continues weapons is a status/second, and not per ammo. It used to be status effect like an automatic on steroids, but not anymore because of a nerf. 

 

I have a phage and synapse both at 5-6 forma: Fire-rate seems to have zero affect on status per second. The reason I think Phage would still rank so high is because it can weight viral as the dominate damage type, leading to quicker viral application.

Weirdness but matches what I remember people complaining about. I'm assuming that status procs are updated once a second for continuous weapons? Still confused about how his fire rate is calculated though.

 

Also, poking around with it a bit more, continuous fire mode with phage on his calculator using the two RoF mods makes it run its mag dry within 6 seconds, so yeah. Dunno how he likes to calculate continuous fire stuff, I'll probably look into it later. I'm assuming that the Phage does not actually do that lol.

[LazyKnight]

Also, poking around with it a bit more, continuous fire mode with phage on his calculator using the two RoF mods makes it run its mag dry within 6 seconds, so yeah.

Yeah, that's wrong.  Even when both fire-rate mods are equiped it takes about 16 seconds to empty 40 ammo. Base rate is 1 ammo per second.

 

I think the bug is in how the fire-rate mods are applied to ammo consumed.

Edited March 3, 2014 by LazyKnight

[(NSW)Omgwtfl9lbbl]

I'll have to look into his code again to see where the issue lies, probably later tonight. The only thing that I do remember concerning the alternative fire modes from when I skimmed his code before is that he had separate methods of calculating procs per second for continuous and for everything else.

[Hadronox]

Soon you will get tired of 1 shotting everything and join us elite, using crappy weapons forgotten by time and turning them into god weapons.

 

1 shotting everything? What? You mean in Mercury, yeah sure.

[WhiteCopain]

Yeah. Everyone plays Rhino/Soma for a reason lol.

[Khunvyel]

Well, one wisenheimer response to this could have been; "Sure I am capable to oneshot things in Venus, Earth and Saturn just fine, thanks for asking!"

 

But don't mind me, it is not my intend to fuel this fire. Just someone who is equally humoured by 1) a "Soma is OP" thread and 2) the inevitable arguing :3

 

However, to add something constructive to this topic;

As a side note: I am tried of seeing "nerf this" and "nerf that" threads with inaccurate reasons or claims, especially in this PVE-centric game where everything is available to everyone.

 

I found it interesting to observe a certain people who feel completely inferiour in group play because they get pooled together with 3 others who have amazingly well modded gear. This makes the aforementioned person having a hard time to simply keep up with the guys sprinting around like mad, destroying everything in a stride, and at the end of the day their statistic window says something like... "Damage done: 5%" Then these people feel completely useless, feel like they have not contributed anything to the completion of the mission and felt like dead weight that was simply carried through. Hell, some even feel discouraged and begin to shy away from random group play, but often for worse, and keep solo, instead of trying to play with friends or find a clan.

While I personally care little for this thought process, it is indeed something that cannot be wiped off the table completely, because it happens.

Yes, I agree if you say that it is their fault for thinking that. Would a better matchmaking system help? Probably, but that would also need more options to cope with those extra needs.

[Hadronox]

I found it interesting to observe a certain people who feel completely inferiour in group play because they get pooled together with 3 others who have amazingly well modded gear. This makes the aforementioned person having a hard time to simply keep up with the guys sprinting around like mad, destroying everything in a stride, and at the end of the day their statistic window says something like... "Damage done: 5%" Then these people feel completely useless, feel like they have not contributed anything to the completion of the mission and felt like dead weight that was simply carried through. Hell, some even feel discouraged and begin to shy away from random group play, but often for worse, and keep solo, instead of trying to play with friends or find a clan.

While I personally care little for this thought process, it is indeed something that cannot be wiped off the table completely, because it happens.

Yes, I agree if you say that it is their fault for thinking that. Would a better matchmaking system help? Probably, but that would also need more options to cope with those extra needs.

I think people who may fall into the "inferior" category are mostly new people and those who are leveling up / forma'ting (using a new word here) weapons or frames. We probably have all been there, and imo it is just part of the game.

As someone new, your playground should mostly be lower level planets with other new people. And then your experience, mastery rank and gear improve the more you play and soon you join others in tougher content. It is just part of the learning curve.

For those who are leveling up or forma'ting stuff, it is just part of how the exp system works. One should not feel useless since you know that is the price of leveling up or forma'ting new items. If you are leveling a new frame, take a good weapon and vice versa. I have gotten used to this system and I think it works fine for the most part. I would love to have a completely better system, but this is ok for now.

 

-snip-

I only respond to you in the spirit of civility. Disregarding your judgmentalism, this whole misunderstanding started with you taking my hyperbolic irony a bit too seriously. That is unfortunate. If you wish to continue this argument, I suggest you PM me instead, since it seems you are becoming defensive and taking this personally, in the world of internet forums. Or you can make a separate thread so we do not derail this thread anymore.

Edited March 5, 2014 by Hadronox

[Khunvyel]

As someone new, your playground should mostly be lower level planets with other new people. And then your experience, mastery rank and gear improve the more you play and soon you join others in tougher content. It is just part of the learning curve.

For those who are leveling up or forma'ting stuff, it is just part of how the exp system works. One should not feel useless since you know that is the price of leveling up or forma'ting new items. If you are leveling a new frame, take a good weapon and vice versa. I have gotten used to this system and I think it works fine for the most part. I would love to have a completely better system, but this is ok for now.

 

It should be new people, yes. But sometimes the system throws someone in who is completely off the charts, I've had that with spanking new test accounts. Everything looked wonderful, 2 Mags, 1 Excalibur with nothing but starter weapons somewhere in Mercury. Then a Nova joined with a lot of highrank mastery / clan research weapons and you can guess how the story ends.

It might be just me, but I'd rather just rather have a team of 2 or 3 people within the same line of gear and rank, and have the last spot left blank instead of being filled with someone that will sneeze everything to death while sprinting to the objective/exit.

[Vernoc]

i can´t understand why everyone crys about the soma, its a good midgame gun , not more

[(PSN)Chip_Foamy]

It's already locked behind fairly Mastery Rank or a good amount of plat (update 10 bundle), I don't see why it needs to be nerfed.

[Hadronox]

It should be new people, yes. But sometimes the system throws someone in who is completely off the charts, I've had that with spanking new test accounts. Everything looked wonderful, 2 Mags, 1 Excalibur with nothing but starter weapons somewhere in Mercury. Then a Nova joined with a lot of highrank mastery / clan research weapons and you can guess how the story ends.

It might be just me, but I'd rather just rather have a team of 2 or 3 people within the same line of gear and rank, and have the last spot left blank instead of being filled with someone that will sneeze everything to death while sprinting to the objective/exit.

I know what you mean. You are referring to high level players who would join lower level missions, for various reasons - it could be an alert, or leveling up new weapons or even some intentional show of power. I remember being in awe of such players when I started out. Personally it never bothered me but instead showed me the potential of what I will one day be able to do myself.

But imo this is a separate issue, one which may deserve its own post. You could ask for a separate queue system for beginners and veterans, or something along those lines, perhaps akin to League of Legends matchmaking system which tries to only pit players of certain levels with/against each other.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Hadronox

[Khunvyel]

Yes, it is a separate issue, questioning the matchmaking system. It was just something that is also kinda falling in line and being responsible for "why can't people keep still with the Soma." It is relatively easy available. You ding R6 sooner or later anyway. By the time you should have more than plenty of resources in stock to build the Soma flat out. The other thing is visibility. A lot of random groups I was joining was 80% composed of Soma Primaries.

 

I know, I know. Only because it is seen often, doesn't mean it is the best thing under the sun. But it cannot be denied that it is rather easy to use, sporting 2 V polarities and requires next to no effort, other than "time" to level up your rank. This puts the Soma into an obvious choice for a great many players, and that is why the same number of players is astounded by it's seemingly OPness.

 

I usually take such things with a grain of salt, and I've always been someone who enjoys number crunching but also hands on testing, and very soon the downsides of the Soma have been evident to me.

[Tar_Spit_Fire]

i love how some dudes reply to this post and be like: i have that weapon and i got bored of it and i sold it.. or Soon you will get tired of 1 shotting everything and join us elite, using crappy weapons forgotten by time and turning them into god weapons..... what are you guys trying to proof here? are you agree with this weapon nerf idea? or you just want everyone know that you are a pro? reply to the post using a proper answer.... or not you just sounds like another anti-mainstream player....

[NikolaiLev]

DE wants/wanted a tier'd weapon system. The Braton is obviously not in the same tier as the Soma.

 

Except...

 

Though karak and tetra are and they are both inferior. 

Unless you want to tell me that there are 5 t1 assault rifles and 0 t2 ones

 

 

So braton dera tetra karak and grakata are all t1 assault rifles and we lack t2 assault rifle.

Its far from tiered system if it lacks even most generic weapon.

 

And then you have weapons like the Galatine, which is a mere Mastery Rank 3 weapon, yet is far and above the best non-prime weapon in the game, and is on par with the Dakra and Orthos Prime.

 

It doesn't really matter if DE wants a tiered system.  Players should speak out against it because tiered systems are bad.  They reduce player choice for no benefit to gamers.  The only thing it does is forces players to abandon weapons they've potentially invested in with forma and potatoes to get a stronger weapon.

[Davoodoo]

It doesn't really matter if DE wants a tiered system.  Players should speak out against it because tiered systems are bad.  They reduce player choice for no benefit to gamers.  The only thing it does is forces players to abandon weapons they've potentially invested in with forma and potatoes to get a stronger weapon.

Not entirely true.

Monster hunter uses tiered system for weapons and it is good one. 

 

But current "tiered system" is no system at all, its pure chaos.

 

Whole point of tiered system is that you get basically same weapon but with higher dmg, also all weapons within each tier should be sidegrades to each other

 

it should go like this mk1 braton -> mk2 braton -> mk3 braton -> mk4 braton or soma 1.0 -> soma 2.0 -> soma 3.0 -> soma 4.0 or even nothing-> nothing -> vectis -> better vectis -> even better vectis

 

atm its like this mk1 braton ->braton -> braton prime -> nothing -> nothing -> nothing -> nothing -> arguably boltor prime cause its not even same type of weapon.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Davoodoo

[NalkorRN]

The soma prime topics amuse me. Yeah it would be powerful cause the soma is but primes aren't THAT much better than their normal counterparts in most cases. They're bling but not much else.

Pretty sure it's been said already in this thread, but Boltor Prime craps all over the regular Boltor, sporting more than double the damage.