Warframe Damage-Based Abilities Scaling With Enemy Level; Why The Hek Not?

[Aktriaz]

Why not?

 

While damage based abilities could use a utility aspect to them, why not just make them scale with enemy level, the same way enemy stats do?

 

This is the reason Warframes like Ember fall short, not enough damage to go anywhere near end game.

 

So what if, Warframe powers would get a damage boost against the level of the enemies they are used against? Power strength would still beef up the damage, but the total damage after those mods is increased by X per enemy level.

 

I strongly believe you should be rewarded for casting an Ability like Smite or Shuriken much more than you would simply firing a Boltor Prime. The energy pool is a much more scarce one then typical ammo, and you should be rewarded for tapping into it in place of normal ammo.

 

I believe this would revive and revitalize all Damage-Focused warframes, that you could have a damage/duration build Ember, and actually bring them to End-Game Infested, and actually BE USEFUL, like you should be able too.

 

Imagine an endgame where Warframe powers are the only thing left to damage enemies with? I personally think that would be freaking awesome, making the Tenno feel like the all-powerful Wargods they should be. Utility warframes would still have their place, such as Nyx, Trinity, and Loki, acting more as support. Face it, abilities like Chaos, Invisibility, and Link will always be useful.

 

Thoughts?

[(PSN)ArjunHarikumar]

may be but not for every frame 

 

trinity and mag already hasTHOSE  THE STRONGEST FRAMES 

[dadaddadada]

Agreed, but damage should not blindly scale with enemy level. We can get more creative about it.

 

My idea:

Your powers get more and more damage the more... uhmm... headshots you do.

Yeah that's it. for every headshot you do, you gain +1% power damage. Or for every melee copter/jump kill you do. Or for every kill with only your first ability. Or for every stealth kill.

 

Just an idea. I may elaborate a bit more about it in a dedicate thread but it may take some time.

Edited September 9, 2014 by dadaddadada

[Aktriaz]

Agreed, but damage should not blindly scale with enemy level. We can get more creative about it.

 

My idea:

Your powers get more and more damage the more... uhmm... headshots you do.

Yeah that's it. for every headshot you do, you gain +1% power damage. Or for every melee copter/jump kill you do. Or for every kill with only your first ability. Or for every stealth kill.

 

Just an idea. I may elaborate a bit more about it in a dedicate thread but it may take some time.

I think what we need is a simple, long term solution.

 

While adding complex mechanics like that can be interesting, it does get to the point of over complicating things.

[Tsoe]

You are right powers with no utility fall short...

 

Scaling would be great

 

and would make sense as well

 

but the core of the issue is  ennemies lvl up being HP/armor related

[JohnnyTopside]

A possible solution would be to add a small but flat (Re: Balanced) percent of either HP damage or armor ignore, based on your ability strength. I've been thinking about it for a while, and there are some problems with it, but it's an option. You could halve or even quarter this number for "heavy" units or units that are strong to the damage type. I wish I had a better idea, but this is what has been bouncing around in my head and I can't think of another good idea that doesn't involve rebalancing the entire game as a whole unit.

Edited September 9, 2014 by JohnnyTopside

[IfritKajiTora]

Skill levels damage
example:
Slash dash rank 0 500 damage
rank 1 525
rank 2 550
rank 3 575

If we kill enemy on rank 40 so we get all skills Rank 40
Rank 40 slash dash 1500 damage

Radial Javelin:
rank 0 1000dmg
rank 1 1050dmg
rank 2 1100dmg
.....
rank 40 3000dmg

Edited September 9, 2014 by IfritKajiTora

[Azawarau]

It wouldnt change much except that after a point enemy level wont matter

 

You hit a point where you do the same amount of damage to the enemy and they can one hit you and thats it

 

Thats it

 

Doesnt sound fun?

 

Just use energy efficient CC and an energy efficient damage dealing power along with trinity and the game can go as long as youd like

[DSpite]

There is no End Game. Endless Survival or Defense is not "end" anything, it's an infinite scaling game mode to give us something to do.

 

Nightmare missions, Tactical alerts and the new events are much closer to "end game" content. If anything, we should be balance around 30-40 level mobs and NOT have scaling abilities, as we should very rarely fight special mobs that are anything above 30-40.

 

I don't even understand the OP way of thinking.

 

If we keep scaling upwards, then all level mobs feel the same as lower level mobs, so where exactly is the difference in game play? All that changes is their damage scales up, so the end result could easily be duplicated by simply keeping mobs at 30th, and just dropping our shields and health instead.

 

Once the mobs hit our level, they should scale further by being more flexible, and start having more tools available to them to mitigate damage (deployable shields, personal Shield drones, faster regenerating shields/health), better ways to deliver damage to us (Penta like weapons, deployable defenses, AoE systems)  and so on, and not just be exactly the same mob with more numbers.

 

All that changes in combat now is that we hold down the trigger down longer as the levels go up. It does not make combat more interesting, we just have more of the same, only more bullet spongy.

[Deios-Ken]

I agree on almost all points of the discussion, and this is my idea of how to balance skills at the highest level: every time you use a skill you gain a certain number of points on a counter, depending on the level skill used. The collected points, similar to the channeling melee attacks, can then be used to make any of the skill more effective (eg, more damage, duration, most health restored etc). This prevents a system of scaling skill is being used incorrectly and annoying. Remains a system that should be developed separately for each warframe, due to the power of some skills compared to other. 

Anyway I can not imagine how to implement this system that can fit even users on consoles, due to the lack of buttons on the controller

[Monolake]

 

 

Imagine an endgame where Warframe powers are the only thing left to damage enemies with

 

 

Thoughts?

 

Been there, it becomes a boring routine.  Excalibur spams Blind, Mag spams Shield Pol, Trinity spams Energy vampire on cooldown, and you can go on forever. 

 

However damage abilities need to scale and be modable for more power. else they become completely useless.

Edited September 10, 2014 by Monolake

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

The damage skills should do percentage damage instead of flat damage.  For example, one skill could do 25% of a non-boss enemy's maximum health per activation. That makes it useful for high levels.

 

To make it useful for low levels just tack on flat damage too so have the skill I mentioned do 500 damage + (25% of enemy's max health). This is so that you are not just better off relying on guns only at low levels, and now the skills will be useful at low levels as well.

 

It would still make higher levels harder and fundamentally different/harder, gameplay-wise, than low levels, but the skills would be worth using at all levels for different reasons.

[Oriviagene]

Why not giving all skill some utility point/additional debuff? :|

[Deios-Ken]

Been there, it becomes a boring routine.  Excalibur spams Blind, Mag spams Shield Pol, Trinity spams Energy vampire on cooldown, and you can go on forever. 

 

However damage abilities need to scale and be modable for more power. else they become completely useless.

To avoid this it would be enough that the enemies become more resistant to a certain skill whenever they are affected repeatdly (similar to Polimorph of the Mage in world of warcraft)

[Monolake]

To avoid this it would be enough that the enemies become more resistant to a certain skill whenever they are affected repeatdly (similar to Polimorph of the Mage in world of warcraft)

Avoid what exactly? 

[Aktriaz]

Been there, it becomes a boring routine.  Excalibur spams Blind, Mag spams Shield Pol, Trinity spams Energy vampire on cooldown, and you can go on forever. 

 

However damage abilities need to scale and be modable for more power. else they become completely useless.

I don't mean like that, anything done over and over again can become boring.

 

What I mean is, damage-based abilities scale with enemies, so your Volt could actually down a mob of level 80 Corpus with a single Shock, or Excalibur Slash-Dashing through level 80 Infested. Perhaps not exactly not like that, but I'm just giving an examples.