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A Brief Suggestion To Rework Elements


Boondorl
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Element stacking is pretty popular in this game. To the point where we have a term for it: rainbow build. A lot of people feel pressured to use elements to keep up with the enemies' effective health in this game, and a rework would relieve some of this pressure.

 

I'll keep my suggestion short. Elements, when applied, should change a weapon's base damage to that element. So let's say you got a 6/6/6 Braton. Adding on toxin would change it to 18 Toxin damage. Adding electric would change it to 18 Corrosive.

 

Weapons with more than one element/combo have the damage split evenly. If you were to add Cold to your Braton with Corrosive, you'd have 9 Corrosive 9 Cold. Adding heat would give you 9 Corrosive 9 Blast. Adding a third element would give you 6 Corrosive, 6 Blast, 6 Electric and so on. This gives a risk assessment to stacking elements.

 

Leveling a card increases the potency of the proc. Current proc potency would be equivalent to a rank 3 mod card. This way, it starts out weaker but ends stronger. This means stronger slows, stuns, DoTs, and so forth.

 

I/S/P should be made more potent to make it a viable option for those who do not wish to use or cannot use elements. This includes stronger procs and more bonus damage against enemies weak to them.

 

Why do this, though? Elements are a large portion of damage in this game. Arguably, I/S/P are only used for unmodded weapons. After levels are aquired, most players do the bulk of their damage through elements. With this system, elements can be used to complement base damage, not simply add on to it. The importance of elements is still there, but no where near as necessary as it stands. Weapons without elements should be able to compete with weapons with them for those who either cannot find any elements (a very real scenario) or simply want to opt out of them for their current procs.

 

This change is aimed to rework elements to make them more stable. It opens up player choice while adding a risk to running them. Elements have been the elephant in the room for a while, and it's time they get reworked.

Edited by Boondorl
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Except this doesn't fix the problem. The enemies would still be to  strong. a good element helps you bypass the worst of said enemy type, but it does not mean you do not need the peppering of the I/S/P just means they aren't enough on their own. This is mostly true for the weapons your leveling that are not particularly effective normally against that faction, but with a bit of elemental work and suddenly it can become more viable to use. Also no we don't have rainbow builds anymore, that was when you had all four base elements running at the same time, because their were no combos, but the enemies needed certain types of damage to be affected properly.

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Sounds good to me, OP. I really dislike having to make elemental combos for pure damage. Innocent_Flower made a thread similar to this one, where mods converted your damage to a specific type instead of adding more on. I like a combination of both ideas - each mod converts your damage to this or that type, and the stronger it is, the higher the proc chance of its occurence. i would also like to be able to have cold and toxic without being forced into the combination automatically - perhaps if you separate the cards, then you will get separate effects. However, if they're side-by-side, then you get the combo.

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I slightly disagree, because then guns that have specific functions like the burston prime for example would lose it's advantage over all enemy types. (yes you can mod toward the faction, but there will always be one enemy that has a different resistence) Take a pure element weapon, for example the Serro, If you mod that guy for corrosive and blast then you're going to be lacking against enemies who are weak against radiation only. (for example bombards and Napalms) Building if your way with only radiation and viral would deal damage to most enemies, but then yet again we're lacking against certain enemy types Radiation being weak to shields, and viral being weak against machinery. 

 

Having pure element weapons every time i put an element mod on would be a pain in the arse and i would personally stop using elements and focus more on the base damages. A slightly more interesting idea would be for the ability to add certain items to your guns and add innate elements to your weapons. (similar to focus system) only difference is you can find these in missions and they have a massive amount of variety. Strengths arnd weakness vary based on the drop (similar to fusion cores being different ranks) The only tricky part is once you put an addition onto your weapon you cannot replace it with a similar part without using a forma to manually change it out. This could be a way to add a neutral stance/aura to primaries and secondaries, (and by neutral i mean it adds no extra points to the weapons) certain ones can perform basic functions like for example, serration could be changed be one of these. Serration will be given to you at a random rank and you can equip it to your gun with neutral benefit or loss, you won't have to waste space putting a "necessary" mod on your gun. (all those who have already maxed the mod will keep the mod maxed, it's use will just be changed.)

 

But that's just my opinion 

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i would also like to be able to have cold and toxic without being forced into the combination automatically - perhaps if you separate the cards, then you will get separate effects. However, if they're side-by-side, then you get the combo.

 

I like this idea a lot.

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I slightly disagree, because then guns that have specific functions like the burston prime for example would lose it's advantage over all enemy types. (yes you can mod toward the faction, but there will always be one enemy that has a different resistence) Take a pure element weapon, for example the Serro, If you mod that guy for corrosive and blast then you're going to be lacking against enemies who are weak against radiation only. (for example bombards and Napalms) Building if your way with only radiation and viral would deal damage to most enemies, but then yet again we're lacking against certain enemy types Radiation being weak to shields, and viral being weak against machinery.

 

For your first point, this is why I believe I/S/P should be more powerful. The player should not currently have to feel as though they need elements to have damage. Burston Prime's mixed stats could be seen as a huge plus that no element could rival. It makes both vanilla and element options as opposed to just simply "go element or go home."

 

As for your second point, two things. First, keep in mind that procs will be stronger. A fully-ranked blast combo could have the potential to completely ragdoll enemies. Viral may reduce health up to 75% (maybe a little OP). Procs, especially on the Serro, will play a big role with this new system. Second, Warframe makes use of multiple weapon slots. Similar to Borderlands 2, you may have to have different elements (or none at all) slotted on different weapons for different situations. While going melee-only can be fun, you're still technically handicapping yourself. Handicaps have disadvantages that follow them.

Edited by Boondorl
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Rainbow builds as they were originally called no longer exist.  They were called such because they contained every color of the rainbow - all 4 elements.  A current elemental build has at most 3/8 elements, or 5/11 if you count physical types as elements.  Less then half of all colors is hardly a rainbow.

 

I disagree entirely with this concept, as while it would certainly stop double-combined elemental builds, there's good reason to expect it would stop all elemental builds period.  Every individual element has significant weaknesses, and those weaknesses are spread out so any given element will encounter enemies it's strong against and ones it's weak against in any given mission.

 

That mean that every element you put on a weapon is reducing it's DPS against select enemies while increasing it against others. 

 

At which point I'm left wondering who would ever choose that over a rate of fire, or even reload mod, that actually increases your DPS against everything all the time. 

 

The current 'rainbow' builds would simply replace their elemental builds with RoF, reload, clip size and ammo mutation mods.  Universally.

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