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Problems With Direct Damage Powers And Possible Solutions


IceJolt
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In the game’s current state the vast majority of direct damage Warframe abilities simply become useless as enemy health and armor increases past the level these skills can remain effective. DE doesn’t seem to want to address this issue and instead is opting for the easy ‘fix’ by looking to give these skills some utility as well. While I’m all for making skills more interesting and multifaceted, I think it is unfortunate the playstyle direct damage abilities offered should have to be left behind. I posted a similar topic on the subreddit but I thought it was worth discussing here too.

 

Problems

  • Low damage

     

    Direct damage skills like fireball and radial javelin don’t do enough damage against high level enemies. Weapons can achieve far greater DPS and even with these skills’ large area of effect they are still worthless here. The damage has to be bumped significantly so they are competitive with weapon damage.

     

  • No way to deal with armour scaling

     

    However this may not be enough. The main reason heavy gunners are so hard to kill at higher levels for example is their huge amount of armor. Weapons can partially deal with this by creating elemental damage types like corrosive for example, which not only deals more damage to armored enemies but can also ignore armor. Warframe abilities on the other hand are stuck with their set damage type and have no way to deal with armor scaling. Even if their damage was bumped up considerably they’d still lag behind weapons against heavily armored opponents.

     

  • Spamming powers

     

    Currently, with the right gear, you can spam abilities virtually indefinitely. This means that rather than being some burst damage or short term buff you need to save for the opportune moment, Warframe abilities are something you can have active constantly. Consequently this raises several issues in balancing and designing these skills. Something like radial blind isn’t inherently overpowered but the fact we can have it active all the time does. Similarly if spamming miasma could deal the as much damage as your gun then why use anything else? In most other games for example your weapons serves as a relatively low but consistent source of damage while your abilities serve as a source of burst damage. They fill different roles and therefore both remain useful.

     

  • Redundant abilities

     

    For many Warframes their 1, 2 or 3 abilities can often be a simply inferior version of their 4th skill and consequently min-maxing a build usually means leaving these skills out. Moreover it also means a lot of warframes are a one trick pony whose playstyle revolves around spamming the same ability over and over again because it is just a better version of their other skills. While this is a separate issue I think it is a problem many warframes suffer from and is certainly something to be looked at to bring more variety to play. Again I think the issue here is a lack of role diversity.

     

Possible Solutions

 

These are really just meant as some ideas than a serious proposal to fix everything.

  • Buff the damage but limit the frequency of use for some abilities.

    By this I’m mainly talking about ult abilities like miasma. If you buff the damage to be competitive with weapon damage, ult abilities with a huge range could be overpowered. If you implemented a form of cooldown however, like Rhino stomp already has, you could change this skill into a form a burst damage and therefore keep it useful without being OP. There are many ways to do this such as having skills deal damage overtime or build up in strength. Miasma could deal more damage with each tick for example but over a longer period of time, which again would stop this skill from being spammed but still be useful.

    Many abilities wouldn’t need a form of cooldown however as they are still balanced even if you spam them.

     

  • Have more skills that work together with your weapons.

    Antimatter drop or Roar for example either increase the damage of your weapons or have their damage increased by them. This means that they can be directly balanced around your weapons and instead compliment one another to create abilities that are always useful.

     

  • Synergistic abilities.

    Accelerant and WoF are an example of this. Have more skills interact with one another to increase their effectiveness. This could fix the issue of redundant skills while adding much more depth to playing these frames. Accelerant is perhaps the most boring way to implement this but you could do lots of cool things to alter the function of abilities. Hitting your snowglobe with freeze causes it to explode, damaging and freezing all surrounding enemies for example.

     

  • Greater ability customization.

    Limiting abilities to fairly weak damage types like fire means they are greatly affected by armour scaling with no way to deal with it. You could introduce a new aura mod that makes weapons deal +10% damage as corrosive and makes all of your warframe abilities deal their damage as corrosive instead for example.

     

  • Just have all ability damage ignore armor.

    This could possibly be easier to implement than the suggestion above and would makes a huge difference to how well abilities scale, as seen by bladestorm.

     

  • Don’t make content more difficult through health/ armour scaling.

    Rather than changing abilities to deal with absurd armour and health, change the way enemies are made tougher such as having more leader types or giving enemies interesting mechanics to kill them. The ability to spam abilities could still lead to balance problems however.

     
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You have a very good point here, but I think there's one more thing that's wrong with abilities in general in WF which you briefly touched upon: it's their spammability. Basically, WF becomes a completely different game the moment you pick up Fleeting Expertise. With FE, you can boost your efficiency to the +75% cap and reduce the energy cost to 1/4 of the default. So you can spam abilities 4x as much as you could by default. Another way to put it: +75% efficiency is really +300% efficiency (i.e. 4 times as efficient). With just 2 mods, you can achieve a +300% boost in a stat, which is ridiculous when you think about it. With this gigantic boost in efficiency, you can suddenly spam abilities and even ults like no tomorrow. It also means that the freedom for building skills is very narrow, since efficiency is simply too good to pass up most of the time.

 

I really agree that damage abilities are a bit silly the way they are now because they simply scale so badly. However, the moment you solve this problem, ability spam will become a serious issue if the efficiency mods stay the way they are. It already is pretty ridiculous for skills that DO scale well and the moment you make all skills scale into late game, I can easilly see this game becoming SpamFrame.

 

In my opinion, the way efficiency is calculated needs to be changed. If you denote by x the efficiency bonus (in %, capped at 75%), then right now it is:

energy cost = (base cost) * (100% - x)

 

Personally I think it should be:

 

energy cost = (base cost) / (100% + x)

 

This would make efficiency a lot less powerful. Maybe the mod values would need to be tweaked to balance things out, but the ridiculous scaling would not occur with this formula. It would also be no longer necessary to have the arbitrary 75% cap on the bonus efficiency.

Edited by vleessjuu
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You have a very good point here, but I think there's one more thing that's wrong with abilities in general in WF which you briefly touched upon: it's their spammability. 

 

Personally I think it should be:

 

energy cost = (base cost) / (100% + x)

 

This would make efficiency a lot less powerful. Maybe the mod values would need to be tweaked to balance things out, but the ridiculous scaling would not occur with this formula. It would also be no longer necessary to have the arbitrary 75% cap on the bonus efficiency.

 

Yes, being able to spam abilities really is the core issue in trying to balance warframe powers and the energy system in general becomes fairly meaningless once you have the right mods. However if you change it then quite a lot of powers and by extension warframes would need to be tweaked since a lot of skills can be spammed but aren't necessarily overpowered. Caster frames would also suffer the most when it takes longer to kill enemies and therefore less energy is available, such as in endless defence missions or boss fights. It could work though but it might mean more effort is needed to balance everything.

 

Another option is to perhaps remove energy orbs and just use the more traditional system of having energy slowly regenerate over time like mana bars in most RPGs, although that would require even more time and effort to implement.

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Most abilities deal fine damage or too much damage.  Armor scaling is what kills many abilities when facing heavy Grineer.  Infinite content is, of course, irrelevant.  

 

Weapons deal far more damage than any direct damage ability. A synapse with corrosive will kill a heavy gunner far quicker than miasma, which also deals corrosive damage, or bladestorm, which ignores armour completely. Once enemies are a high enough level that the difference in damage between powers and weapons becomes apparent and meaningful, there is no reason to use powers. 

 

I wouldn't say infinite is irrelevant either as many would consider it the current endgame but that's a different discussion. 

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Weapons deal far more damage than any direct damage ability. A synapse with corrosive will kill a heavy gunner far quicker than miasma, which also deals corrosive damage, or bladestorm, which ignores armour completely. Once enemies are a high enough level that the difference in damage between powers and weapons becomes apparent and meaningful, there is no reason to use powers. 

 

I wouldn't say infinite is irrelevant either as many would consider it the current endgame but that's a different discussion. 

Weapons are by far overpowered; that goes without saying.  

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