Double Steel Fiber's Armor Bonus

[Varzy]

Ya heard me.

 

Playing as Valkyr with Steel Fiber and tanking several of my own Ogris shots to the face made me think, "Hey, maybe there's something to this damage mitigation thing..."

 

However, for Valkyr to reach this level of mitigation she got numerous buffs, and currently boasts an armor rating of 600, absurdly high compared to the next level down, 190. Design wise she sticks out like a sore thumb and gameplay wise she's the only one who gets real traction out of Steel Fiber's 110% buff.

 

But why should just one frame benefit from the Armor mechanic? My thinking is that instead of buffing one frame's Armor, a buff should be made to Steel Fiber to provide 220% Armor at max rank so all frames can have a piece of the pie.

 

 

Rationale:

The current damage reduction formula is:

 

Mitigation% = Armor/[Armor + 300)

 

This formula has significant diminishing returns, which is why Valkyr's Armor needed to be boosted so absurdly high for her to perform her role as a Health Tank. But, that diminishing returns is also why it makes sense to buff Steel Fiber.

 

 

x-axis: Armor Value

y-axis: Mitigation factor

As Armor goes up, effectiveness goes down. Doubling Steel Fiber's bonus is more subtle than you'd think!

 

Armor values after applying a 200% Steel Fiber buff (because I'm too lazy to calculate a negligible 20%, lol)

 

[15]   -> 45

[50]   -> 150

[65]   -> 195

[155] -> 465

[190] -> 570

[400] -> 1200

 

What this buff would mean for each Warframe

 

[15] Armor Frames now take ~87% damage as opposed to 95% (unmodded) or 90% (current SF)

 

Affects:

Banshee

Ember

Nyx

Trinity

Volt

Zephyr

 

Thoughts: A 10% damage reduction versus a 5% one doesn't set the world aflame, and critically means that this change doesn't break the game -- the glass canons of the game don't become reinforced-glass cannons. These frames rely on their shields and CC and they will continue to do so.

 

 

[50] Armor Frames now take 66% damage as opposed to 86% (unmodded) or 74% (current SF)

 

Affects:

Vauban

 

 

[65] Armor Frames now take 61% damage as opposed to 82% (unmodded) or 69% (current SF)

 

Affects:

Nova

Necros

Mag

Loki

Excalibur

Ash

Oberon

 

Thoughts: Between here and Vauban is where the weight of the change comes into play, I feel, giving a large swathe of the current frames some build and playstyle flexibility by offering a straight up 20% reduction in health damage. Ash, Excalibur and Oberon players in particular might enjoy that -- as a Rage Oberon, I know I would :X

 

 

[155] Armor Frames now take 40% damage as opposed to 66% (unmodded) or 48% (current SF)

 

Affects:

Sayrn

 

Thoughts: And right about now we start to notice the diminishing returns, though 26% less damage is still hugely attractive to Sayrn, especially with Melee 2.0 and Contagion encouraging her to get into the fray.

 

 

[190] Armor Frames now take 35% damage as opposed to 61% (unmodded) or 43% (current SF)

 

Affects:

Frost

Rhino

 

Thoughts: Diminishing returns really hits at Rhino/Frost tier (26% less damage vs current system's 22%), but the bonus is still hefty enough to make it a more attractive prospect. I've run Armored Frost and it's a fun yet squisher set-up, so I believe this change would be appreciated. My only concern is how it might affect Snow Globe.

 

 

[400] Armor Frames now take 20% damage as opposed to 43% (unmodded) or 28% (current SF)

[600] Armor Frames now take 15% damage as opposed to 33% (unmodded) or 19% (current SF)

 

Affects:

Valkyr

 

Thoughts: I put Valkyr's old and new armor values to compare how both would work with a 200% Steel Fiber bonus. With the buff she doesn't need to have as oddly high an armor value as she currently does, as the best bonus 600 Armor can currently get is equivalent to the best bonus the proposed change can reach with 400 Armor. And if she keeps the 600, well, it's only a 5% bump.

 

 

Summary

> Buff Steel Fiber to 220% Armor at max rank

> It won't break the game, it is in fact surprisingly lightweight

> But it will open up room for tweaking gameplay and generally making Armor useful

Edited April 12, 2014 by Varzy

[OptimumBow0]

Sounds good to me, but Valkyr's armor value should probably be decreased. Or not. It just depends on how many people aren't comfortable with an 85% damage reduction.

[Varzy]

Sounds good to me, but Valkyr's armor value should probably be decreased. Or not. It just depends on how many people aren't comfortable with an 85% damage reduction.

Her absurd armor is what sparked this thought, so yeah definitely agree. Buffing Steel Fiber means her damage mitigation will be at the level DE wants but will also benefit frames across the board.

[OptimumBow0]

Her absurd armor is what sparked this thought, so yeah definitely agree. Buffing Steel Fiber means her damage mitigation will be at the level DE wants but will also benefit frames across the board.

I think it's pretty much perfect.

[GONZI2013]

ok.

[Varzy]

ok.

k

[-SLX-J3tAc3]

Looks good to me! Very interesting graph you have here.

[Varzy]

Looks good to me! Very interesting graph you have here.

Pulled it from the wiki :X

[Edgedemon]

all in all you want the "only" frame who gets that bonus to get an even higher bonus?.

 

also Saryn, Rhino and Forst already benefit from its current set up and since Snow Globe is affected by armor Frost gets more use out of SF than suggested.

 

since you where looking at wiki you could also take a  look at the effective HP page.

[Varzy]

all in all you want the "only" frame who gets that bonus to get an even higher bonus?.

 

also Saryn, Rhino and Forst already benefit from its current set up and since Snow Globe is affected by armor Frost gets more use out of SF than suggested.

 

since you where looking at wiki you could also take a  look at the effective HP page.

Actually, I was suggesting to nerf Valkyr's armor back to 400. Even if it wasn't, though, the even higher bonus is a difference of 5%, it's negligible.

 

Also yeah, they benefit from it's current setup but a little more incentive to use Health+Armor builds wouldn't destabilize them and would open up options for lower armored frames. And I acknowledged that Frost would get a big benefit to Snowglobe (the Health it derives from your Armor rating would be boosted by 50%), which may or may not be a bad thing.

 

And damage mitigation % is basically the same thing as effective health.

Edited April 12, 2014 by Varzy

[Varzy]

So Life Strike is a thing now! I'm pretty pleased with this mod, as lifesteal is exactly what Hp builds have needed to be viable. Of course, this ties in with Armor and damage mitigation -- I think this proposed change could really work in tandem with Lifesteal to make some alternate builds possible.

[OpusRelinque]

Change Saryn with Rhino in the table, Saryn is a health tank and 'designed' to be a heavy melee/caster, and she is slow.

Rhino in compare is great shield tank with suprior running speed, CC, mobile extra shield and gapcloser.

[Varzy]

Change Saryn with Rhino in the table, Saryn is a health tank and 'designed' to be a heavy melee/caster, and she is slow.

Rhino in compare is great shield tank with suprior running speed, CC, mobile extra shield and gapcloser.

I didn't make those armor values, if that's what you're saying? Those are their in-game armor values.

 

Some tweaking of armor for frames wouldn't go amiss, though. I think swapping Rhino and Sayrn's values would be a solid move.

 

Personally I also want to see Oberon get an armor buff, so he can better be a 'Paladin'. He's wearing heavy armor for goodness sake, buff him to 155!

[WARLOCKE]

So Life Strike is a thing now! I'm pretty pleased with this mod, as lifesteal is exactly what Hp builds have needed to be viable. Of course, this ties in with Armor and damage mitigation -- I think this proposed change could really work in tandem with Lifesteal to make some alternate builds possible.

 

To bad its attached to a melee weapon thus limiting its impact minimal at higher levels of play. Put it on a primary and then were talking build diversity.

[Varzy]

To bad its attached to a melee weapon thus limiting its impact minimal at higher levels of play. Put it on a primary and then were talking build diversity.

How high are we talking, though? High level play is a bit of a nebulous concept a lot of people throw around without meaning the same thing as the next guy. Do you mean ~1 Hour into survival? Or Wave 30 defense level foes? A lot of things start to fall off in the former.

 

Regardless, Lifestrike activates through challenging which in of itself is a damage boost, especially with Killing Blow. Plus it's a heal per swing so even if it takes a few hits to even kill trash mobs, between the stagger melee 2.0 reintroduced, the hit counter, and the channeling bonus, you'll walk way with full health.

Edited April 26, 2014 by Varzy

[gamefreak9149]

It would be nice to see it get more use on the lower armor frames since I only used it on3 frames before, frost, rhino, and Valkyr. Reason being they had the highest armor only got to see the benfit from the mod. So yeah increase of steel fiber is a welcome change. They might have to boost the sentinal armor values as well.

[Eirshy]

Uh, going from 19% Allowed (81% resisted) to 15% Allowed (85% resisted) is a 26% increase in effective health, not a 5% increase. In addition to it being a lot closer to 13% allowed than 15% allowed.

 

 

The issue with your math is that you made the common mistake of comparing resistance values. While using damage allowed instead of damage blocked is a step in the right direction, you must go all the way and convert to effective health multiplier to get actually comparable results.

 

This is because as you get to higher values of percentage damage reduction, each percentage point is more valuable- 90% DR is 10x EHP, 91% DR is ~11x EHP, whereas 50% DR is 2x EHP and ~67% DR is 3x EHP.

 

The formula's pretty easy to use:

EHP = HP / Damage_Allowed

Plug in a 1 for HP, and you're finding the Effective Health Multiplier, or rather, the amount of unreduced damage needed to deal a single point of damage against your health.

 

The DR = Armor/(Armor + C) formula is already designed to be an effective health formula. This is why the "deminishing returns" comment you have is not entirely accurate- the direct returns are linear as an EHM gain, but the relative returns deminish. I would be incredibly happy to gain 1% DR when I'm already at 90% DR, as that is a huge direct increase (more than 1x more health)- but roughly a 10% relative increase.

 

Most often the formula is seen with C=100 (League of Legends, Warframe's Damage 1.0, etc), which means that each point of armor increases each point of health's value by 1%- so 100 armor is 100% increased health value is 50% DR or 2x EHM, and 900 armor is 900% increased health value is 90% DR or 10x EHM.

At C=300, every 3 points of armor are an increase of 1% in health value- so 300 Armor is 2x EHM, 2700 is 10x EHM, etc.

 

As a note, the SF mod increases your EHM by its percentage.

As the chart shows, you'd almost definitely need to lower Valk's base armor back to 400- but the effecitve difference with 600-SF vs 400-DSF would be a slight buff (negligible, though, barely over a 1% relative increase). However, other frames would be recieving quite an armor buff- Saryn, Frost, and Rhino would all be getting a gain of over 25% to their health's effective worth.

 

Meanwhile, the 65, 50, and 15 armor categories are *still* not really caring. I mean, nearly a 40% relative increase might make it potentially worth while on a 65, but you'd be better off just using Ridir and Vigor instead for the shield increase and actually using cover- as you aren't going to break the point where your EHM is at least 2.0.

 

Yet, Saryn's 155 already breaks the 2.0 barrier with the current SF.

 

 

 

The problem with Steel Fiber is more that its cost of use (mod points and to rank) are waaaaay too high for something that's only really worth while on 4 frames. Pretty much every other mod has a use on each frame, a situation where you might want it. But Steel Fiber needs you to be a high armor frame to begin with to have a purpose- and this change still wouldn't benefit lower-armor frames enough to be really worth while.

Edited April 26, 2014 by TheBlueJelly

[Noble_Cactus]

Actually, I was suggesting to nerf Valkyr's armor back to 400. Even if it wasn't, though, the even higher bonus is a difference of 5%, it's negligible.

 

Also yeah, they benefit from it's current setup but a little more incentive to use Health+Armor builds wouldn't destabilize them and would open up options for lower armored frames. And I acknowledged that Frost would get a big benefit to Snowglobe (the Health it derives from your Armor rating would be boosted by 50%), which may or may not be a bad thing.

 

And damage mitigation % is basically the same thing as effective health.

 

Against low-level enemies, the globe will likely expire before it breaks. Against high-level enemies, it will break too quickly to the point where an extra 1000 hp (roughly the current benefit from a maxed SF) won't make much of a difference, though I'm unsure of how the new armor value would factor into that. At that point you're using Globe for the 4 seconds of invincibility rather than the amount absorbed. So this would benefit mid-level play  (the intended high-level) the most, and I'm not adverse to that at all.

Edited April 26, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[Kyphe]

Lets not forget that the buff to valks armor was for a reason in the minds of DE which is not to have her like other frames.

 

Personally I think she needs a total rebuild but as far as steel fiber goes, I would never use it on a frame that had half decent shields.

 

Any end game level where I am likely to take damage would burn through my armor HP and SF in seconds no mater what.

[Wolfstorm18]

Valkyr is the weakest frame actually. Try to play it without Hysteria and she falls quick.

 

I dumped mine and build a Nova in its place. Now I'm spamming M-Prime with pride. 

 

Nerfers go home.