Puncture Mods Are Still Not Worth It

[dEEkAy2k9]

8 pages, a few upvotes, every now and then a thread about the same thing pops up and DE still does not care about it

[Keetsune]

8 pages, a few upvotes, every now and then a thread about the same thing pops up and DE still does not care about it

Yeah i wonder about that in every threads on this forum. Ppls so lazy to press one button on mouse ... or they realy think that warframe is ideal as it is, or maybe ppls just dont know that upvote button exist?

[Rudest]

I think they have a particular synergy with the high damage and high firerate of the Twin Vipers, particularly when dealing with groups of infested.
That said.. My Vipers are heavily forma'd. So there is room to play around like that.

[Vaskadar]

Still not worth sacrificing an important elemental damage mod on the vipers. The only weapons that benefit the most from puncture mods are the single-shot weapons, especially Latron and Latron prime, but Puncture is still extremely limited.

[Dasmir]

150+ posts DE !

Edited July 3, 2013 by Dasmir

[notlamprey]

Like a few other people here, I noticed one day that I had multiple puncture mods sitting around and decided I'd boost them a little and play around.

I was so, SO disappointed with what I got. Very underwhelming effect; rarely even noticeable (even at high levels), extreme slot cost...

Dearest wonderful Dev Team: this is a case of having something in your game that isn't fun, isn't liked, and doesn't serve your vision in its current state. Change is needed to justify its presence in your game. Perhaps the design council has already been brought in on it. It might be a small enough issue to escape mention in livestreams. This is understandable, but your players still have to log in and shake their heads at this gimpy mod. Have pity.

[Hixlysss]

Puncture mods still need a use beyond "Enemies standing in a line" or "Grineer with a Shield" to be honest. I'd rather it be something along the lines of making bullets like the Paris bolts and such as opposed to just "Penetrate object of X thickness."

[Ced23Ric]

Moving to Gameplay Feedback.

[Vaskadar]

Please fix. This mod is still borderline useless.

[Estred]

At their starting level, they still cannot puncture the Grineer Riot Shield, and they are still not viable. Puncture mods need to have their current max value tripled in order for them to be worth anything for their prohibitive cost. 1.8 meters should be enough to get collateral kills on multiple enemies. As it stands right now, however, puncture is NOT worth the energy or the money invested in them. OR, they could be based on a multiplier.

 

15 mod energy max? For what? Puncturing one enemy? It should be able to punch through at least two.

First option that seems to be fairly popular is a flat value.

Rifles - 4.5 meters max

Pistols - 3.0 meters max

Shotguns - 1.5 meters max

Possible alternative (and balanced) fix I came up with below:

 

Puncture on a damage-based system. If the damage of a Snipetron is 115, multiplying it by the suggested formula would give it reasonable puncture. 115 x 0.030 = 3.45 meters. This would justify the prohibitive cost of the puncture mod.

 

Formula: damage x 0.030 = puncture rating (when maxed out)

 

Scaling of puncture mods: 0.005/0.010/0.015/0.020/0.025/0.030 or something along those lines as far as a multiplier goes.

 

That way, shotguns don't get the ridiculous puncture they had before, and sniper weapons and other high damage single-shot weapons get the puncture they need. The maximum puncture a HEK pellet could achieve (when equipped with max damage/max puncture) would be 1.083

 

This would be the best possible fix I can come up with. Critical damage should not modify the damage, however, as that would be disgustingly broken, but it really depends on what they think of it.

Just a note, remember Embers Fireblast has a four meter radius. so 4m puncture is massive. At best I would ask for 1 meter puncture so you could on average hit an enemy and the guy behind him. I do like your math though and support it. +1

[Vaskadar]

Just a note, remember Embers Fireblast has a four meter radius. so 4m puncture is massive. At best I would ask for 1 meter puncture so you could on average hit an enemy and the guy behind him. I do like your math though and support it. +1

Cut your fireblast size in half and that's how much actual puncture it is. 4.5 puncture was pretty reasonable, but I want the damage model a LOT more simply because it's balanced according to weapon strength. You won't have the Gorgon spraying lead lasers everywhere through everything if it is balanced as such.

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

Maybe I'm crazy. But puncture on the ogris seems pretty great.

[Tesrac]

I'm finding that a .5 pumcture went a considerable distance towards upping my DPS, and I know I can shoot through at least a single grinder Heavy Gunner and hit his body behind him so I am content with that. Anything over a meter would be overpowered IMO, I already simply ignore any cover from a standard hatch down and am getting better at clipping enemies behind heavier cover. Fum fact, you can seriously jack your damage up if your Banshee paints them with her Sonar first, you can hit several critical points with a single burst.

[Estred]

Cut your fireblast size in half and that's how much actual puncture it is. 4.5 puncture was pretty reasonable, but I want the damage model a LOT more simply because it's balanced according to weapon strength. You won't have the Gorgon spraying lead lasers everywhere through everything if it is balanced as such.

Ya know, if Puncture worked off the weapons innate values much like the Critical % Mod that would be a good balance. That way High-Pierce weapons like Bolt Weapons would benefit more from Puncture as would Snipers. Shotguns would probably go through 1 person at short range and Rifles maybe 1 person at medium range.

[LazerusKI]

that lanka cant scale with puncture bothers me a bit...

tried to turn it into a "real railgun" with incredible damage and piercing hits and these things...

but i think the projectile counts as a bolt, so no puncture :s

[Vaskadar]

This topic needs to be kept closer to the top. It's a major issue that has remained since update 7 and we're two updates later without any word on it changing. This is really frustrating considering that the original post has 100+ upvotes, and 9 pages worth of posts.

[gell]

Well DE_Steve, you like to make big changes, as mentioned in livestream 10, so I say remove the whole meters punctured thing and make it so if you equip the mod, you will just do a straight line puncture as far as a regular shot goes (no distance limit beyond hitscan limits). Instead, make damage and enemies punctured increase with mod rank.

 

It could be something like 1/2/3/4 enemies punctured, for 75/50/25/25% damage on subsequent enemies.

 

I know Steve doesn't just like making small changes, so there you go. Plus, I think this makes way more sense than puncturing 0.5 meters, or 1.5 meters. That's a bit silly, don't you think?

[TenZa]

Puncture should just puncture enemies. /thread

[Vaskadar]

Puncture should just puncture enemies. /thread

 

Until they change it, this will be the thread that never ends. It goes on and on, my friends.

Edited July 19, 2013 by Vaskadar

[B0AR]

Even with the buff today, they are STILL not worth it.

 

- Either Buff it more or lower the cost.

[Cleesus]

Even with the buff today, they are STILL not worth it.

 

- Either Buff it more or lower the cost.

do both

[Zeally]

I don't know what kind of crack half of you are on, but I've been rolling with a maxed puncture mod (I'm rolling in forma keep in mind, so I have polarities for mods that cost 11 energy or more) and I have no problem shooting through any enemy, thin doors leading into other rooms (corpus doors mostly, some grineer doors too, and some of the orokin tower doors) and through light cover (aka railings, like the thin bars and the actually panel cover railings) and if you angle it right, you can shoot enemies sitting at the corners of larger cover when they take cover behind it.

 

Currently, puncture mods capping at 0.6 meters go through almost 2 feet of cover, pushing up to 1 meter will nearly make it too strong again.

 

I think a small buff, somewhere around 0.7 to 0.8 meters would be justified and maybe lowering the cost to 11 like the elemental mods would be a fair change.

Edited July 19, 2013 by Zeally

[plznohurtme]

Unless it can go through the heavy grineer doors it's pointless. That's pretty much my base measure for how effective the mod is and quite frankly it's usable, but it just isn't as good as it should be right now. Given its cost and the fact that you lose damage to take it you're not actually getting enough for it to be worth the cost. I use it in my Braton Vandal, but just because I can make use of it doesn't mean that I can't see the glaring problems that do need to be fixed. I'm sure you used it pre-u7 and it was broken, I'm not sure what depths you used, but 2m was never broken and 4 was right on the edge... it was the 8m+ which caused the biggest issues.

[tasteofsound]

This mod is listed as RARE with a hefty cost as well. That being said it provides no where near the level of damage outputted by RARE mods with LOWER costs.

There are a few ways you can go about addressing this problem and Ill list them as follows. (Just a summarization of previous posts of other users. For all those with short attention spans; TLDR: PLS FIX RANGE OF PUNCTURE THX.)

These fixes are all related to buffing the range of puncture and adjusting the values appropriately for each weapon type. All of these methods however, do come with complications listed farther down the post. !!!INCOMING WALL OF TEXT!!! (And vigorous use of seemingly unneeded parenthesis as well as occasional grammatical error.)

Method #1:

Just add a flat increase to the effective range of puncture. Use whatever values you deem fit but please, at the bare minimum give one shot the capacity to penetrate AT LEAST one mob. This at least, would rival Multishot because you would be essentially dealing the same amount of damage. (2X Damage to one mob with Multishot at 100% vs X Damage to two targets with Puncture.} Use Multishot as a baseline. If you find that even this is too overpowered, then no amount of point cost reduction would save this mod from being completely useless.

Method #2:

Diminishing effect with every penetration. With this you can establish a balance between damage and range. For example lets say that instead of 0.6 M, the mod's effective range is increased to some arbitrary amount (There doesn't even need to be a range cap because you can just adjust the percentage). With this increase however, you decrease the damage dealt to each subsequent mob hit by a percentage so that the total sum of damage would equal or at least compare to Multishot. This method also has the added benefit of scalability according to its accompanying point cost, because you can just lower the percentage of damage dealt, range and mod point cost to however you see fit!

Method #3:

Limiting the amount of targets that can be hit by this mod! Its really quite simple. As others have stated, maybe simply increase the amount of mobs a shot can penetrate with each rank. Not only that you can also apply diminishing returns here as well! Lots of options huh DE?

Now that we've got that out of the way, we can now address some of the issues that lie with the Puncture mod itself. You guys will have to keep these facts in mind when you decide whether or not Puncture is worth buffing at all or whether or not it should be removed entirely altogether. They will also be accompanied by possible solutions.

Problem #1

This might have been DE's biggest issue with previous builds of the game but I would not know because I only started playing at update 7. WALLHACK-LIKE PROPERTIES. From what I've read off other posts, players might have been able to shoot straight through obstacles. This of course defeats the purpose of adding any sort of cover in an environment as the player can just shoot through them LOL. (Completely destroys the cover mechanic incorporated into Grinnie AI.)

Possible Solution:

Make it so projectiles cant puncture the environment? I am completely ignorant to whether or not this would affect shield wielding mobs, but I'm assuming it wouldn't.

Problem #2:

CRITICAL SPOTS!! With puncture there is always a possibility of hitting a single target at an angle where you would hit multiple critical spots! (Multishot and pellet-orientated weapons in mind here, as lining up two critical points with a sniper or something would be rather more difficult.} This me very well be the reason puncture exists in its current state! (Like mentioned previously by another person, SONAR with a Puncture-modded Shotty seems extreme in terms of damage potential when you're hitting multiple points along with multiple enemies!) Hehe maybe this is why the current max level Puncture Mod is so mod point expensive.

Possible Solution:

Well TBH I wouldn't know how to resolve this issue. Completely clueless here. Maybe puncture can't even function in this way because a singe projectile can only damage a target once, but again I am completely ignorant in this aspect as I have yet to try the Banshee + Puncture combo.

So Hopefully DE views this amalgamation of thoughts and suggestions. By no means are these ideas solely my own as I am sure many if not all of the posts in this thread fall into one of these categories. These ideas are simply a streamlined summarization of this thread's ideas so please if you can keep this post going! (Would also greatly appreciate it as I put some time into typing this all out...)

Edited July 20, 2013 by tasteofsound

[tasteofsound]

Bump for great justice! I would love to see this mod reworked especially with the massive increase to spawn rates!