Base Damage Mod Removal / Adjustment May Lead To The Accidental "nerf" Of Some Warframes. This Must Be Investigated.

[MechaKnight]

Certain abilities rely on weapons, but do not calculate all damage mods applied to a weapon, only base damage. Most of these abilities were already considered non-optimal by the community, but with the incoming possibility of a base damage mod balance/removal, said target abilities must be mentioned in an attempt to find a solution.

 

I will begin listing relevant abilities to my memory. If I miss any, please do suggest them in your reply.

What we are looking for: ability calculations which involve the damage from our weapons, and only consider the base damage, not the damage added by elemental or physical damage mods. Specifically, abilities in which a base damage focus in their weapons are vital to their effectiveness.

 

Limbo, Rift Surge and Rift Plane mechanic

Rift Surge is supposed to have similar damage properties to Mirage's Eclipse, using the same damage multiplier found within. However, a particular problem with Limbo's Rift Surge in comparison is that it only scales the base damage of the weapon, while Mirage's Eclipse scales all applied damage mods on the weapon. Since all successful gun builds feature more additional element and physical damage than base damage, Limbo is already losing anywhere from 55% (2 element/status event mods on a crit build) to 82% (4 elemental mods and one physical damage mod scaled down to 105% damage) of his weapon damage in comparison to an identically built Mirage. The planned balance pass which is intended to alter the importance of base damage mods may leave Limbo in the dust since it is the only kind of damage he can scale on weapons. Limbo's damage calculations are so unintuitive and unhelpful that they may as well be considered an oversight akin to an error. My preferred solution is to treat it more similarly to Mirage's Eclipse and Rhino's Roar, where all damage on the weapon is considered in the calculations.

 

Additional information on Limbo

As of currently, the way Limbo's damage in Rift Surge scales is unintuitive to the point of broken, but what if it did function properly? I question his durability and evasion as well. Mirage is the best comparison, as she has identical armor value, slightly higher shields, but lower health. However, Mirage is protected by 4 hologram decoys, can mitigate 95% of incoming damage with Eclipse while standing in shade, and can perform all evasive movement maneuvers with increased speed. She can do all of this while remaining in a combat-ready state able to attack any and all targets. Hall of Mirrors and Eclipse scale themselves off all damage found on Mirage's weapons along with power strength, but do not multiply their bonuses between each other.

 

Limbo's only evasion and damage mitigation comes from standing in the rift assuming there are no other enemies in the rift. Limbo can only attack targets while he is on the same plane with them, meaning he can only attack targets in the rift plane if he himself is standing in the rift plane. The damage multiplier for Rift Torrent is broken and therefore will always work to a reduced effectiveness anywhere from -55% to -82% compared to only Eclipse. However, even if it were patched to be just as effective, Limbo has only two options to apply this damage bonus to enemies: he can take them in with Banish one-by-one, or he can use Cataclysm to load up a heap within his plane. Bringing enemies in one-by-one with Banish is expensive on time and energy. If he chooses to use Cataclysm to expedite the process, he instantly opens himself to the gunfire of whatever was standing in his cataclysm bubble at the time, with no decoys, damage mitigation, dodging, or any comparable protection. This usually means Limbo is hastily slaughtered as he attempts to deal damage the only practical way he is supposed to. The solution is to introduce some form of damage mitigation to Limbo while he is in the rift plane. For the purpose of balance, this protection should only be granted to Limbo but development can decide if it can be passed to other warframes as well. This protection should not go into an augment for Limbo's own protection, but can be made into an augment to apply to other teammates.

 

Valkyr, Hysteria, and its comparison to Warcry

Cited in the wiki are many calculations for Valkyr's Hysteria, but we're going to focus on the portion relevant to the balance pass we've heard of incoming to the game from our developers. Specifically, base damage mods will be reigned in to offer players valid variety of choice.

 

Hysteria is heavily reliant on this base damage. To the point where players seek out high base damage weapons regardless of their attack speed, and use Spoiled Strike to increase this base damage alongside Pressure Point. Generally, the base damage offered from Spoiled Strike was mostly a choice in preference over an elemental mod depending on the element and preference of attack speed. Assuming both base damage mods are altered, this would affect the function of Hysteria drastically since the custom weapon applied to players within the ability does not scale off elemental or physical damage mods, only base damage and critical stats.

 

In comparison to Warcry, such concerns are absent. Warcry supplements any melee weapon Valkyr is using at the time with enhanced attack speed, which makes the weapon more effective overall. There are no concerns with statistic miscellany within Warcry as to what melee weapons are compatible with this ability. Hysteria however is hindered by many considerations as to weapon and mod viability, to a point where Hysteria is commonly seen as a bad ability. The loss in base damage mods would only widen the divide within our player audience. My preferred solution is remove the statistical concern from the player's equipped melee weapon completely, and drastically buff the ability to be significant enough within absolute damage terms, with enhanced damage to make the melee experience rewarding compared to guns and damage abilities, since it is very time consuming to travel to your targets in close range and engage them one-by-one.

 

Saryn, Contagion

Self explanatory. This ability has all of the base damage trouble Hysteria has, with none of the fun. That's it. No damage mitigation, no attack speed, status chance, critical stats, or cool effects. Contagion was always a bad ability because it was nothing but elemental damage that scaled off base damage. Soon it will be nothing really.

 

The only proposed solution is a full rework. Nothing less.

 

Volt, Electric Shield

Volt's Electric Shield has a myriad of purposes in protection, critical damage, projectile effects, and other helpful roles. Still, you will expect a decrease in the electric damage it gives because it scales off base damage. Even after the loss of base damage this shield will still be formidable in various other ways.

 

Most of our weapons in gameplay tend to feature more damage from elemental and the event physical damage mods than base damage, since said added elemental and physical damage scale from base damage. This is a very important mechanic to address and solve, because certain warframe abilities rely heavily on weapons. In particular, those abilities which only consider base damage on weapons need to be addressed, because they are already considered lackluster by a wide audience of players, and will be utterly devastated by the upcoming base damage mod change if consideration is not given to adjust these abilities for the balance pass. It is recommended these adjustments ideally be released before or simultaneously alongside the base damage balance pass.

Edited January 29, 2015 by MechaKnight

[Thaumatos]

DE will most definitely be looking at more than just a straight nerf to damage.  Whatever happens to the damage mods, they've already made it very clear that they've become a very integral part of gameplay that requires more than a simple fix (such as removing them all together).

 

The only thing I can hope for is that they've got this particular issue as the 'meat and potatoes' part of their plate and not the string beans that they'll just throw out as if to say, "Well we try to eat healthy, but the food tastes terrible."

[Blakrana]

You raise a salient point. Admittedly...I don't really have many ideas that could be helpful, but I do have a...sort of idea for Hysteria.

 

First and this is going to get a lot of wincing I wager but...make the claws do Finisher Damage. I'm not sure what'd be 'safe', but 200 to 300 sounds reasonably safe; rather than 100 Slash/Impact/Puncture, just x Finisher. From there, remove the Invincibility and either make the duration somewhere around 10-20 seconds, or make it a toggle sort of like Prism/World on Fire keeping the duration but also allowing her to gain energy via orbs/Rage (flavourful at least, right?). And of course, removing the 'didn't kill everything, self damage' thing because in at least my own experience, I've never had it happen.

 

If keeping the 'Melee weapon affects' thing, change it so she either adopts the elements, or keeps the general 'combat' traits but it's still just 'pure finisher' damage like Bladestorm. Although I'm aware this could get quite ugly.

 

So...in theory, the Hysteria would benefit from Duration for a Warcry build, but you wouldn't be 'locked in' if you already killed everything, and by making it Finisher Damage, sure, she'll be very very dangerous but...hopefully the fact her Melee combat is very, very tricky in Hysteria could mitigate that.

 

Again, I don't really pretend to have good numbers in my head but...considering Hysteria is actually rather fun, so far as the combos and flavour goes, I thought I'd give it a shot.

 

Admittedly, I'm better at designing balanced battle encounters for Anima: Beyond Fantasy than I am hypothetical stuff for this...

Apologies. I tried I guess.

[ashrah]

if they nerf mods....its sure i will uninstal game.......warframe is been fun one period but after adding superman mode in try....and its going in that direction....its time to find  another game...i put to many hours in forming stuff 6 forma most......to be strong.....not to ...be in lvl with rank 4 players

[CY13ERPUNK]

simplest solution? allow those abilities to take all dmg mods on a weapon into account, ie the total final output dmg of the weapon (ie physical/elemental dmg mods)

 

that doesn't necessarily mean that the abilities would then deal that phys/elem dmg type, but that final # could be taken into account to adjust the ability's dmg #'s

 

would this make some of those abilities more powerful? sure maybe, but would making those abilities more powerful undermine any of the current game mechanics that already have to account for stupid base dmg mods on weapons and ULT spam? ya, i didn't think so

 

of course the only valid reason to remove the core base dmg mods from weapons is so that weapons actually improve in performance with rank, just like frames do, weapons are hamstrung by requiring the base dmg mods, otherwise the weapon dmg never improves (without the base dmg mods, even other added phys/elem dmg mods add pitiful amounts) ; thusly the whole reason to remove the base dmg mods is to replace that function with a +5% base dmg gain so that all weapons would have a base +150% dmg at rank 30 and so that especially for newer players, their gear would actually improve in performance during play without having to rely on trading/RNG

 

yes this would basically be like giving most weapons a 9th slot, but my #'s are just an idea, they could be adjusted up/down and/or be different for each weapon type (ie +3% for primaries and +6% for 2ndaries and +8% for melee, or whatevs), and if some other rebalancing needs to be done, then so-be-it, the most important thing is to remove 'false choices' and to implement true build variety across the board for all weapons and frames

 

you only have to look at a game like PoE from GGG to see better idea than what DE has done so far, i know they (DE) are aware of the issues and they are aware of the talk in the industry (PoE/GGG, Destiny, Extra Credits, etc), it just remains to be seen how they (DE) are going to handle it

 

hopefully we will see some real progress on this issue in 2015, maybe even another large ingame system/mechanic change, i think it is long overdue myself 

Edited January 29, 2015 by CY13ERPUNK

[Rhaenxys]

You raise a salient point. Admittedly...I don't really have many ideas that could be helpful, but I do have a...sort of idea for Hysteria.

 

First and this is going to get a lot of wincing I wager but...make the claws do Finisher Damage. I'm not sure what'd be 'safe', but 200 to 300 sounds reasonably safe; rather than 100 Slash/Impact/Puncture, just x Finisher. From there, remove the Invincibility and either make the duration somewhere around 10-20 seconds, or make it a toggle sort of like Prism/World on Fire keeping the duration but also allowing her to gain energy via orbs/Rage (flavourful at least, right?). And of course, removing the 'didn't kill everything, self damage' thing because in at least my own experience, I've never had it happen.

 

If keeping the 'Melee weapon affects' thing, change it so she either adopts the elements, or keeps the general 'combat' traits but it's still just 'pure finisher' damage like Bladestorm. Although I'm aware this could get quite ugly.

 

So...in theory, the Hysteria would benefit from Duration for a Warcry build, but you wouldn't be 'locked in' if you already killed everything, and by making it Finisher Damage, sure, she'll be very very dangerous but...hopefully the fact her Melee combat is very, very tricky in Hysteria could mitigate that.

 

Again, I don't really pretend to have good numbers in my head but...considering Hysteria is actually rather fun, so far as the combos and flavour goes, I thought I'd give it a shot.

 

Admittedly, I'm better at designing balanced battle encounters for Anima: Beyond Fantasy than I am hypothetical stuff for this...

Apologies. I tried I guess.

 

Why remove the invulnerability without a defensive mechanic in exchange? with warcry + lifestrike mod + some elemental mods with CC regular melee would be clearly superior than Hysteria, Valkyr, a melee oriented frame will be obliterated if she goes into melee range, she needs some kind of scaling damage reduction to keep doing her designed role.

 

Hysteria needs to have his own base stats not affecting by the current melee/melee mods already, have a damage reduction of 95% and the ability to tackle like melee weapon does on archwing missions.

 

About limbo... i was trying for the first time limbo the other week and i thought he would be more complex, he has a great gameplay mechanic, however, he should have a damage mitigation while in the rift and the rift surge bonus should be applied to teammates to give more reason to banish people.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Rhaenxys

[Thaumatos]

Why remove the invulnerability without a defensive mechanic in exchange? with warcry + lifestrike mod + some elemental mods with CC regular melee would be clearly superior than Hysteria, Valkyr, a melee oriented frame will be obliterated if she goes into melee range, she needs some kind of scaling damage reduction to keep doing her designed role.

Everyone gets obliterated in melee without a gimmick.  Valkyr just happens to have a melee gimmick as part of her ultimate.  The problem is that invulnerability is never variable based on difficulty level, player skill, loadout, etc.  It's always 100% no incoming damage.  This is why it was taken away from both Rhino and Trinity.

 

Invuln is mechanic that is proven only to work properly with cooldowns...and we all know how the general Warframe population feels about cooldowns.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Thaumatos

[Rhaenxys]

Everyone gets obliterated in melee without a gimmick.  Valkyr just happens to have a melee gimmick as part of her ultimate.  The problem is that invulnerability is never variable based on difficulty level, player skill, loadout, etc.  It's always 100% no incoming damage.  This is why it was taken away from both Rhino and Trinity.

 

Invuln is mechanic that is proven only to work properly with cooldowns...and we all know how the general Warframe population feels about cooldowns.

Sure, everyone gets obliterated in melee range but Valkyr is the only frame focused 90-100% on melee combat.

 

Trinity gets 100% damage reduction with 2 hp when paired with quick thinking, Trinity with max redirection+max vitality and link up would be more durable than Valkyr by a huge margin.

 

Rhino with ironclad charge and iron skin has a huge survivability with more team utility, both, Rhino and Trinity have better survivability and utility than Valkyr.

 

I dont care if DE removes the invulnerability, im not a invulnerability abuser to bypass hard situations but she needs survivability in order to accomplish the only role she is designed to do, other frames who are not focused on melee already have survivability tools, as i stated in my previous post, 95% damage reduction seems like a good option.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Rhaenxys

[(PSN)IkariWarrior83]

Is Mesa's ult related to the damage of the pistol she has equipped?  I was using it last night or two nights ago and was doing damage in the hundreds when I had a nukor equipped, instead of my usual Marelock

[MechaKnight]

Group response time

 

@Thaumatos: Agreed. The developers are probably aware but I just wanted to make this thread as a public announcement of sorts, as well as a reminder to the developers not to neglect this portion of the balance pass.

 

@Blakrana: The damage types can be decided by the developers. My main concern is simply that this ability accounts for base damage but not elemental damage. The developers already have a default damage applied to the gauntlet weapon in Hysteria but it's very weak for damage. Most players play her using Narrow Minded so her range for the Hysteria penalty becomes very small.

 

@ashrah: Do not worry. The developers have been at it for more than two years trying all kinds of implementation. I'm sure it will not be a straight nerf. It's just a set of changes to make the game more fun and balanced.

 

@CY13ERPUNK: Agreed. These awkward abilities I have mentioned are disadvantaged because of their heavy reliance of base damage with no consideration of other types of damage. Including all damage in the calculation would solve a lot of this. The developers are simply streamlining their game to operate better while removing the redundancy behind base damage mods. I'm simply putting this thread up as a reminder to consider abilities which scale off only base damage.

 

@Rhaenxys + Thaumatos: Thank you for your feedback. Your ideas are appreciated. Your suggestions are some of but many in ways to improve Hysteria. For now, my focus is how it scales with base damage but not elemental or physical. Any proposed solution to this is fine.

 

@(PS4)IkariWarrior83: No. Mesa's Peacemaker does not scale off weapon damage from any weapon you have, only the strength attribute on your warframe. Her Ballistic Battery uses power strength to give additional base damage to guns that do not scale off the weapon's own base damage, and such implementation can be considered a solution if it were introduced to mentioned base damage abilities in a balanced yet adequate form.

[Rhaenxys]

Group response time

 

@Thaumatos: Agreed. The developers are probably aware but I just wanted to make this thread as a public announcement of sorts, as well as a reminder to the developers not to neglect this portion of the balance pass.

 

@Blakrana: The damage types can be decided by the developers. My main concern is simply that this ability accounts for base damage but not elemental damage. The developers already have a default damage applied to the gauntlet weapon in Hysteria but it's very weak for damage. Most players play her using Narrow Minded so her range for the Hysteria penalty becomes very small.

 

@ashrah: Do not worry. The developers have been at it for more than two years trying all kinds of implementation. I'm sure it will not be a straight nerf. It's just a set of changes to make the game more fun and balanced.

 

@CY13ERPUNK: Agreed. These awkward abilities I have mentioned are disadvantaged because of their heavy reliance of base damage with no consideration of other types of damage. Including all damage in the calculation would solve a lot of this. The developers are simply streamlining their game to operate better while removing the redundancy behind base damage mods. I'm simply putting this thread up as a reminder to consider abilities which scale off only base damage.

 

@Rhaenxys + Thaumatos: Thank you for your feedback. Your ideas are appreciated. Your suggestions are some of but many in ways to improve Hysteria. For now, my focus is how it scales with base damage but not elemental or physical. Any proposed solution to this is fine.

 

@(PS4)IkariWarrior83: No. Mesa's Peacemaker does not scale off weapon damage from any weapon you have, only the strength attribute on your warframe. Her Ballistic Battery uses power strength to give additional base damage to guns that do not scale off the weapon's own base damage, and such implementation can be considered a solution if it were introduced to mentioned base damage abilities in a balanced yet adequate form.

 

Taking elemental mods into account would make up for the damage lost from the remove of base damage mods? just asking for the shake of curiosity.

 

About Hysteria, i think it would be easily fixed if this move has some base stats not affected by the current melee/melee mods but higher than the current numbers to make up for it, that or take elemental mods into account but i prefer the first option.

 

PD: i feel a bit bad about the Hysteria invulnerability off-topic, sorry.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Rhaenxys

[(PSN)MrNishi]

If the base damage mods were removed in favor of havingbthe weapons damage scale with weapon level.(Like Shields, Energy, and health stats scale with Warframe level)

Then it would be not be a difference and would be freeing up a mod slot.