De, Give Us Better Armor.

[MrsUnreal]

 Playing survival like I always do to level up my gears, I really have to ask why is armor so weak?

 Facing a level 18 yes a level 18 napalm enemy on Cassini Saturn, he hit me with a dead on shot , which took 600 out of my 860 shields and 200 out of my 860 health from my Excalibur frame. I could've dodged the blast but I was just curious as to how much damage it would do and how long the shields would last with the lingering flames.

 

That's way too much damage from such a low level enemy to do, you would expect that from a level 40+ enemy.  I had flame repellent on with all vital mods all max along with a fast shield recharge at 170%.

 

Armor does nothing in this game, and the defensive mods against viral,flames, radiation and lasers  are all lacking in their respected duties.

 

Since the first day of playing warframe till now (over 1000 hrs), and have almost everything in this game, I have yet to experience armor doing what its supposed to do  and that is to protect your health when shields are down.

 

 Nearing the end of having, acquired and leveled almost every weapon, and have all frames except  E.Prime, there is just too much imbalance with damage and  protection.

 

This is not a rant or rave, but just one of the many things that needs addressing in the game.

 

To be honset, I disagree somewhat with your statement that armor doesnt really make a difference, I think it does; particulary when you have played a variety of frames, you begin to feel it (which you must have after 1000 hrs).Generally when a frame feels more 'squishy' its because of armor - hence  why nekros etc takes HP damage so easily. I think that a buff on the affects of armor would be well recieved but we ask for buffs on everything, all the time. I think we should consider it more of a challenge, that would mean not taking a rocket to the face.... I know a lot of people have talked about Valkyr and it is an obvious example of how armor does make a difference which is why you can melee everything and not take huge HP dmg hen playing as her.

 

I do however agree with the fact that mods that claim to increase resistance to certain procs should be beefed up a little. They are basically pointless to have on. I have used them appropiately and still wonder where the benefit is, for example when doing infested missions, I have used a maxed 'Anti-toxin' yet still take the same toxin proc as if it isn't equipped. Again the same thing with someone like Sargus Ruk and 'Flame repellant' and on and on and on...

 

Their benefit is yet to be seen, maybe DE will do something about it, maybe not, who knows its their game anyway.

[Jokubas]

Napalms seem overly strong and overly tough in general to me (not saying they break the game, just that they seem to hurt a lot and take a lot compared to other heavy units, in a way that feels arbitrary, and it's silly when they fire point blank).

 

As for armor though, I hate it. It's essentially a hidden modifier (on your shield/health bar) that dictates what your health actually is. In tough missions, the health number on my Warframe might as well read "1". Having 400 Health or 800 Health on low armor Warframes means nothing. It's unintuitive and frankly kinda silly. What makes it worse is something that I feel is a problem for a lot of more situational mods. Since most things are percentage based, the things that really need the buff don't get anything from it, and the things that are already in a good place just win-more. There's really no point in buffing your health or armor on lower armor frames, because the percentage means your armor will barely change, and your low armor means your health is almost irrelevant.

 

The current armor and health system should be rolled into a single number that takes all damage evenly. Essentially just calculating out the current modifier and displaying it as the true health. If they want an armor system, it really needs to be something with its own role (instead of just modifying health behind the scenes), and it needs to apply to more than the one or two frames that have enough of it to use it.

[Rydian]

Rhino,Oberon,Frost?

Valkyr has more armor than all three of those combined.

 

But of those, Frost and Rhino are the second best users... though even if you max out their armor mods, they're still less than Valkyr is at base.

[Hueminator]

Actually it is not really that Valkyr is the only frame who can use armor effectively.  Keep in mind that 200 armor is not twice as tough as 100 armor.

 

600 armor ~ 67% mitigation

1260 armor w SF ~ 80% mitigation

 

13% increase in % mitigation

 

Frames that ranges 150-190 armor have the best deal with SF (Gain around 20% mitigation).

Edited September 10, 2014 by Hueminator

[Azawarau]

Valkyr has more armor than all three of those combined.

 

But of those, Frost and Rhino are the second best users... though even if you max out their armor mods, they're still less than Valkyr is at base.

Youre missing the point

 

They can make use of armor and armor mods

[KorbanGado]

Do you play in Mass Effect 3 co-op?

In the universe Mass Effect there are several types of protection that you and your opponents are worn over the armor: shields and barriers.

Shields are strong, but have a low recovery rate and serious delay.

 

Barriers protect weaker, but can defend you from any kind of exposure (except for direct damage to health), including fully from the effects of status and critical hits. Barriers recharged almost instantaneously and have very short delay.

 

And my suggestion - give the player a choice:

1. Wear shields, the capacity of which is several times the size of the barriers (to compensate for the difference), and not worry about the fact that their capacity can be reduced.

 - But at the same time, shieds are extremely sensitive to the weapon, causing impact damage or to any "hit-scan" weapons. (Effective against Corpus/uneffective against Grineer)

.

2. Wear barriers which size will be slightly lower (for example, below the current maximum - about 700 units) than the shields, but under the influence of which is the chance to catch the negative effect of status will be equal to about 30% of the original chance projectile. (For example, the bullet of Tysis has a chance status of about 60%. Barrier will reduce the chance of up to 30% of the current.)

- In this case, the barriers will be ineffective against weapons, inflicting puncture damage, but is extremely effective against inflicting impact, with a high chance of inflicting status effect. (Effective against Grineer/uneffective against Corpus)

 

They had different effects? Was that always in from the beginning, because I could have sworn they always functioned the exact same and the only difference was the theoretical 'barriers being made biotically, shields technically' of the classes. Granted, it's been a while since I've played it, so my memory may be fuzzier than perfect.

In either case, it's a bit rough a comparison as much as I'd hate to say it, as both biotic barriers and shields in ME3 MP are the equivalent of a shield in Warframe - ie an extra health bar that regenerates to prevent you from taking health damage. What ME really did differently was the segmented bar-health as opposed to just a hard number displayed like Warframe does (even allowing you to regenerate within a single bar as long it wasn't fully depleted). It'd be hard for them to implement such a health system this late in the game with all the mods and likes they already have (although I would love to try it anyways), and the only other way to properly try and do armor (besides damage reduction) would be to have it function as a one-time Iron Skin effect, where you start the level at full armor and it degrades as it takes hits (after the shield is down), until it finally breaks and you are left with only shield and health.

 

Problem with that method is I'm sure people would complain it was unintuitive - especially if the amount of armor isn't somewhere displayed onscreen - and it would effectively work like a more limited version of what it is now (as now you constantly get a 30% reduction in damage, theoretically making your health bar last longer, but it's permanent). That being said, I would love to see a "grineer influenced" (because they seem to be the most up-armored people in the game) warframe that looks largely like it was built from tank parts and armored to withstand the sun - as opposed to the very organic looking nature of pretty much every single other frame regardless of their given armor values - but then people would complain that "you can't have space knights in a game about space ninjas!" just like they did with Hyd-"the pirate"-roid.

[http404error]

Actually it is not really that Valkyr is the only frame who can use armor effectively.  Keep in mind that 200 armor is not twice as tough as 100 armor.

 

600 armor ~ 67% mitigation

1260 armor w SF ~ 80% mitigation

 

13% increase in % mitigation

 

Frames that ranges 150-190 armor have the best deal with SF (Gain around 20% mitigation).

 

Common misconception. The thing you're missing is that damage mitigation is not linearly valuable. Increasing damage reduction from 50% to 75% *doubles* your effective health, despite that only being a 50% increase. The gains increase as you approach 100%.

 

Armor does in fact scale linearly, in that every 300 points of it is 100% additional effective health (that is, the total damage it takes to down you before reduction)

[Rydian]

Youre missing the point

 

They can make use of armor and armor mods

You brought them up in response to somebody mentioning Valkyr, so I pointed out people don't bother to mention them because they're not outliers like Valkyr is.

[http404error]

You brought them up in response to somebody mentioning Valkyr, so I pointed out people don't bother to mention them because they're not outliers like Valkyr is.

 

Additionally, each rank of Steel Fiber increases their effective health by less than 6.5%. Not awful, but probably not worth a slot either, since it's far more effective to maximize Iron Skin or Snow Globe.

[Azawarau]

You brought them up in response to somebody mentioning Valkyr, so I pointed out people don't bother to mention them because they're not outliers like Valkyr is.

 

 

In my original post I was stating that the fact that Valkyr is the only frame that can use armour effectively is a problem in of itself.

 

Also napalms hit like a truck at any level, sure in a perfect situation you would dodge there blasts but the perfect situation is rare. 

I was pointing out 3 other frames that can effectively use armor

[Variatas]

Common misconception. The thing you're missing is that damage mitigation is not linearly valuable. Increasing damage reduction from 50% to 75% *doubles* your effective health, despite that only being a 50% increase. The gains increase as you approach 100%.

 

Armor does in fact scale linearly, in that every 300 points of it is 100% additional effective health (that is, the total damage it takes to down you before reduction)

+1 to this.  The amount that damage is reduced isn't the important number to look at, it's the amount of damage that you TAKE.  Someone with 70% DR is taking TRIPLE the damage that someone with 90% DR is.  And once you start looking at "effective health", it just becomes linear.  Armor's DR actually HAS to be on a "diminishing returns" curve, because DR that is granted linearly (like in Skyrim, for example) has INCREASING returns in effective health.  (This is why you barely notice any change in Skyrim until you're very nearly capped.  The proportional difference between 90% and 75% incoming is much smaller than 30% and 15%)

Anyways, I don't mind the current armor system TOO  much, but it does kinda feel like the everyone but Valkyr could use a little boost, or Steel Fiber could stand to have a counterpart that adds FLAT armor rather than a percentage increase.  Zephyr, for example, can get a huge health pool, but because she's one of the 15 armor frames, it doesn't really mean anything, even if you use Steel Fiber for some reason.

 

[Methanoid]

You're supposed to be a ninja, not a cinderblock

dont recall many ninjas using rocket loaunchers machine guns.

 

tbh we are ninjas, knights, soldiers and magicians