Math On Why The Synoid Gammacor Is Massively Nerfed

[Mikail96]

synoid is still mid tier tho

[FloraGreen]

It was nerfed because it was godlike. Thats it.

Now, its a fairly balanced secondary.

It should have been nerfed the first day after release.

Oh, also.

TL;DR

Let us do the same to soma prime and boltor prime.... I want to see those people cry. 

[Heidrek]

Let us do the same to soma prime and boltor prime.... I want to see those people cry. 

Some of us play more than one game, well I'll be playing Smite until everything is reasonably balanced. lol

[CheckYourSix]

Some of us play more than one game, well I'll be playing Smite until everything is reasonably balanced. lol

 

I'm pretty much thinking the same thing. I was a founder and had high hopes for the game, but I was left feeling less than happy about the game when I quit back in May ~ish of 2013.  Now it's 2 years later I come back and bring about a dozen of my friends along with me after I decided to try it out again on a whim to see how the game has changed. I was having a blast along with all my friends. Then this patch happened last night. We are all seriously contemplating about leaving again. This was after we all came back and bought the Nova Prime access and were all going to buy the volt prime access.

 

I guess it's a good thing they did this before implementing the volt prime access or they would have made about another $1000 or so from my friends and I as we all would have bought it and be upset with their decisions with how they gutted the SG. I guess it's back to League of Legends or maybe ESO. I left ESO originally because of massive balance problems and nerfs like this. Really just wish Gigantic wasn't only in Wednesday only play right now :(

[Davoodoo]

I just editted for effective sustained dps from Lato with the same max fire rate mods on both guns. The Lato is more sustained dps over the synoid period. It makes the synoid useless now.

Dps calculation for new synoid, 7 mods used, leaving place for whatever you might want to put in.

 

Raw Damage Per Second :: 28896

Raw Burst Damage Per Second :: 35599,872

 

If lato can actually reach these numbers then lato must 1 @(*()$ amazing weapon.

 

Then i even put gunslinger as 8th mod

 

Raw Damage Per Second :: 40632,725

Raw Burst Damage Per Second :: 51619,814

 

Op redo your math cause it sux.

Edited March 20, 2015 by Davoodoo

[CheckYourSix]

Dps calculation for new synoid, 7 mods used, leaving place for whatever you might want to put in.

 

Raw Damage Per Second :: 28896

Raw Burst Damage Per Second :: 35599,872

 

If lato can actually reach these numbers then lato must 1 @(*()$ amazing weapon.

 

Op redo your math cause it sux.

 

If you use the same mods it damage remains close to what it was before. The problem is not the RAW numbers, but effective. This is because you blow through all ammo in about 18 seconds instead of 80 seconds. Chances of finding the ammo needed to continue to fire for 80 seconds with the new synoid changes to maintain the dps through 80 seconds is NOT THERE. When factoring effective dps of potential ammo problems the dps drops below that of the LATO. That was the point I was making.

 

For reference I can get these RAW dps numbers for lato as the highest RAW output.

 

http://warframe-builder.com/Secondary_Weapons/Builder/Lato/t_30_22223030_193-1-5-195-5-5-200-3-5-204-2-10-206-0-5-209-6-5-404-4-5-487-7-10_206-6-193-6-204-7-200-5-404-5-195-11-209-6-487-16/en/3-0-12/

 

Which is a good 15K burst dps and 5.6K sustain RAW. Of course that is not really a good effective dps for the Lato, but it is the raw numbers.

 

However the effective would be close to that 5.6K sustain DPS because it doesn't have ammo efficiency problems. The SG does now. When the SG runs out of ammo the effective DPS is zero until more ammo is found. With the current nerf running out of ammo when built for max dps is something that WILL happen.

 

Again, if I build the new SG the same was the old way for max RAW dps output this is basically the build to use. Looks like Warframe Builder updated the values for the SG now.

 

http://warframe-builder.com/Secondary_Weapons/Builder/Synoid_Gammacor/t_30_43000000_193-1-5-195-6-5-200-2-5-204-3-10-206-4-5-209-5-5-404-0-5-487-7-10_404-11-193-14-200-9-204-14-206-11-209-11-195-11-487-16/en/3-0-55

 

It looks great with RAW numbers, but doesn't give the full picture. 48.30 fire rate basically means blowing through a magazine in 3 seconds. With 4 magazines worth of ammo that's 12 seconds of firing with 3 reloads at 2 seconds each means 18 seconds to go from full to zero. It means running out of ammo in 18 seconds and I promise you won't find enough ammo to sustain dps beyond that. Which means effective drops. Switching out an ammo mutation mods or changing for an ammo aura mod helps a little bit, but not enough. Not to mention reduces your RAW dps by doing so.

Edited March 20, 2015 by CheckYourSix

[o0oSynthetico0o]

Dps calculation for new synoid, 7 mods used, leaving place for whatever you might want to put in.

 

Raw Damage Per Second :: 28896

Raw Burst Damage Per Second :: 35599,872

 

If lato can actually reach these numbers then lato must 1 @(*()$ amazing weapon.

 

Then i even put gunslinger as 8th mod

 

Raw Damage Per Second :: 40632,725

Raw Burst Damage Per Second :: 51619,814

 

Op redo your math cause it sux.

 

 

I assume you had the SG all loaded down with fire rate mods, sure the dps burst is insane like that, but too bad its only about 1.2 seconds of fire, with a 2 second reload time. maybe you need to redo that math with the dps downtimes factored in.

[Davoodoo]

I assume you had the SG all loaded down with fire rate mods, sure the dps burst is insane like that, but too bad its only about 1.2 seconds of fire, with a 2 second reload time. maybe you need to redo that math with the dps downtimes factored in.

7 mods build used only lethal, 8seconds to empty mag=280k dmg per clip, 8 mods also used gunslinger, 4.5seconds to empty mag=230k dmg per clip.

 

 

If you use the same mods it damage remains close to what it was before. The problem is not the RAW numbers, but effective. This is because you blow through all ammo in about 20 seconds instead of 80 seconds. Chances of finding the ammo needed to continue to fire for 80 seconds with the new synoid changes to maintain the dps through 80 seconds is NOT THERE. When factoring effective dps of potential ammo problems the dps drops below that of the LATO. That was the point I was making.

7 mods build got same ammo economy as soma and i can run 35-40 waves of t4 def without running out of ammo for it.

 

Simply stop putting all rate of fire mods and all your problems are solved, if you are still trigger happy then theres mutation for you and weapon will have perfect accuracy, amazing ammo economy and still 30k sustained dps.

Edited March 20, 2015 by Davoodoo

[DrBorris]

Wait... so the Synoid is less effective after its nerf? WHAT HYPOCRICY IS THIS!

 

I lol'd a bit, you are arguing that Synoid is worse after its nerf than it was before its nerf, congratulations captain obvious, have a lollypop.

 

Now Mr. OP, look at every other secondary in the game, compare the burst and sustained DPS of each. Do you notice something? Basically every high Sustained DPS secondary has a relatively low burst DPS. Secondary weapons were never meant to be primaries, their main intention is for a high "burst" of DPS for high level units and then you switch back to your primary to keep butchering the mobs.

 

Also, what does sustained DPS matter? The entire mob will still be dead within a clip, time to reload before the next group comes in.

 

 

 

Okay, that may have been a bit harsh. It might have been a bit of an over-nerf, 5x ammo consumption might have been a bit more "balanced".

[Pizzarugi]

In order to make the weapon useable again, you are forced to use both a mutation mod and a pistol scavenger aura to balance out the ammo guzzling. Its now poor ammo economy has killed it from being an endgame viable weapon compared to a number of syndicate weapons.

The requirement to use a mutation by itself would've been a fair balance, but forcing players to use an aura slot means shooting the entire team in the foot because there's better auras you can use. Can't use corrosive projection if you have to worry about maintaining your gammacor.

DE should've dropped its damage down a bit instead.

Now I'm back to using brakk.

Edited March 20, 2015 by Pizzarugi

[Crazii59]

Ammo mutation ? Plus the Sycore is still pretty useful. I don't see why there is such an outcry....other than the fact you now have to be careful and AIM. At Least they didn't nerf the damage, something to be happy about.

 

Inb4 megathread

 this change effectively nerfs the damage as well by making ammo mutation necessary. The Sycor was great because of its damage per tick that you could sweep across a room, killing everything. This change reduces the dps (due to necessary ammo mutation), and reduces the damage per tick (due to increased fire rate). Essentially the main reason the weapon was so good is now gone. Was it too good? Probably. Is it sorta good now? Nope. I haven't looked at the numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if the regular Gammacor is better, minus the syndicate proc. They went overboard with this one.

[Grom-84]

Maybe giving a synoid one large clip can solve the problem? 

[LazyKnight]

Maybe giving a synoid one large clip can solve the problem? 

Would not help in the least. It suffers from a consumption problem and giving it a larger reserve would do nothing other than extend the time before going out of ammo, but it would do nothing about the problem of not being able to restore ammo lost. It simply burns way too much ammo verse level 40 NPCs with just lethal as fire-rate mod.

[ArbitUHM]

Because the old gammacor was ammo efficient meaning you could effectively find enough ammo from the kills you made while continuously firing to maintain that continuous fire rate. A Lato is the same way. You can continue to fire a Lato non stop while making kills and still find enough ammo to do so from your kills.

 

You CANNOT do that with the new synoid gammacor anymore at all. Especially in late T4 mission runs. It's impossible to do so. How much ammo can be found? Don't know but it's not enough to continuously sustain a continuous fire rate to maintain close to that theoretical max sustain dps it has.That why I state effective sustain dps. On an Ancient Eximus in T4 survival 40+ minute in the new gammacor will kill with using 2 full magazines and you may get a single 20 round drop from it. The old gammacor wouldn't even use a full magazine to kill 3 of them. If you can't not understand what that does to effective dps then you are brain dead.

The issue I am having is that you using "dps" in a way that no one else does in order to make the SG look extraordinarily bad. There is a reason that dps calculators abstract out variables like ammo efficiency because there is no universal benchmark to compare it to. What your "sustained dps" calc does is calculate the total damage the new SG can inflict with its total ammo, divided by the time it takes to shoot, then dropped the dps to 0 when it runs out ammo and added an arbitrary time period (roughly 60 seconds, or the different in continual firing times between the new and old SGs) where the player doesn't find more ammo, doesn't drop an ammo restore, doesn't switch to primary, just does nothing. That is not how anyone calculates "sustained dps". The total damage inflicted using available ammo might be a useful number to compare to how much total damage the old SG could inflict to argue how inadequate its ammo supply/ammo efficiency is. 

 

What's worse is that you took your "sustained dps plus 60 sec of 0 dps dead time based on the difference between new and old SG" and compared it to the actual sustained dps of the Lato. I'm not sure why you think that the Lato would have better ammo efficiency, given it would have Grakata levels of RoF (~21 rounds/sec) with the three firerate mods according to warframe builder, plus it has lower damage per shot and less maximum ammo. But even if the Lato had awesome ammo efficiency, you've still added 60 seconds of dead time based on the comparison between the old and new versions of the SG, and taken that number and compared it to the continuous dps of a completely different weapon. If you're going to do that sort of (very dubious IMHO) comparison, you would at least need to compare apples to apples and calculate the continuous length of time it takes to fire all the Lato's ammo and use the difference in continuous firing times to "normalize" the new SG's sustained dps.

 

I also just want to point out that I don't even disagree that the SG took a pretty big hit to its effectiveness; I'm only disagreeing with how you are using the numbers because they are very misleading IMO.

Edited March 21, 2015 by ArbitUHM

[IronRoby]

It's just an increase in ammo consumption. Treat it like an automatic handheld SMG and you'll feel better about it.

 

At least the Synoid Gammacor has no travel time, no recoil, and has perfect accuracy. It's rare to find all three of these qualities on any handheld SMG in the game.

 

Actually, from the wiki:

 

"The Synoid Gammacor's beam when fired does not immediately hit at its maximum range, instead it takes around half a second to extend to its maximum range, and will maintain that range as long as the weapon is being fired. The beam retracts when the weapon stops firing."

 

So, Synoid is not actually hitscan at all, when not used in continuous sweeps. Another drawback people tend to miss (along with range and status per sec, not per hit), when they only whine about DPS. So keeping it firing near constantly is not just about mindless spamming, it's a necessary tactic to try to keep up the imitation of hitscan at the end of the continuous beam tip, because if you stop firing, then the beam has to travel at the targets again. A tactic that's now destroyed.

 

And we already have many SMGs, why couldn't we keep one good handblaster-lightsaber? It would have been much better to only just have nerfed beam damage instead.

Edited March 21, 2015 by IronRoby

[Nominiat]

I know you want a weapon with insane dps, amazing ammo efficiency, perfect accuracy, and nearly 100% uptime, but you just can't have it all.  Be happy that only the ammo mechanics were nerfed because this nerf isn't getting reverted and it's a poor choice to argue about it that undermines the complaints of all the legitimately bullS#&$ nerfs that DE hides in their updates.

[IronRoby]

I know you want a weapon with insane dps, amazing ammo efficiency, perfect accuracy, and nearly 100% uptime, but you just can't have it all.  Be happy that only the ammo mechanics were nerfed because this nerf isn't getting reverted and it's a poor choice to argue about it that undermines the complaints of all the legitimately bullS#&$ nerfs that DE hides in their updates.

 

That's the thing, I would much rather they have nerfed base damage, that would only have made Synoid less powerful. The current ammo economy nerf makes it near unusable.

 

I agree you can't have it all, but DE went about it the worst way they could. And Synoid already didn't have it all to begin with, it had very low range and was not hitscan without sustained continuous fire. 

 

And while a nerf to Synoid is not getting reverted, there is hope that it might be exchanged to a more palatable nerf. After this, I'm sure most Synoid-users would gladly accept something like going to old Synoid, except with only 150 damage or something, instead of old 210. If Rakta was balanced with increasing damage once "balance" was achieved, why couldn't the same be done in reverse with Synoid, rather than radically changing its gameplay for the worse and totally destroying its utility?

Edited March 21, 2015 by IronRoby

[GhostUnitVII]

Ammo mutation ? Plus the Sycore is still pretty useful. I don't see why there is such an outcry....other than the fact you now have to be careful and AIM. At Least they didn't nerf the damage, something to be happy about.

 

Inb4 megathread

Aiming isn't a problem with the Synoid Gammacore, people should know how too if they grounded out 100k in sin credits... The problem is the grind to such a weapon, it SHOULD be dam near god like, sense getting 100k isn't a easy task, especially now with the nerf to the max cap you can get every day.

 

I have a feeling that this weapon just been hit by a nerf because it was used in a lot of low level maps, and people complained about how OP it was, and not viewing it for what it actually is... an end game weapon...

 

does it deserve a nerf? yes, but this much? no, because before the weapon was buffed in ammo efficiency, and then they decided to nerf it, so why don't they just make up their dam minds.

 

wish there was a "return for credit" button on this gun, because it isn't worth the 100k anymore.

[DelialFallen]

I just find it a bit weird I now only get a single Enthropy procc before running completely out of ammo using the Synoid now.

 

Needless to say I get many more on both the Telos Akbolto and V. Marelok.

[Monolake]

Now you need a mutator in the long run and no more firerate mods so... its still 30k burst/23k sustained which BTFOs ~97% of the weapons in the game.

If you dont use a mutator it's ~33k/27k DPS.  (Im not counting with primed Heated charge btw)

 

It's still the most powerful syndicate weapon.

Edited March 21, 2015 by Monolake

[[DE]Momaw]

Synoid Gammacor

28 damage (base)

*3.2 (base + Hornet Strike)

*4.6 (base + four elementals at 0.9 each)

*2.8 (base + barrel diffusion and lethal torrent)

= 1,154.048 damage at a rate of

15 rounds per second (base)

*1.6 (base + lethal torrent)

= 24 rounds per second

 

Burst DPS: 27696.

 

Magazine size divided by the rate of fire = time to empty (TTE), and TTE/(TTE + reload time) = continuous modifier (CM). In other words the portion of time that the gun is actually shooting instead of reloading; the multiplier to change burst into continuous dps.

75 / 24 = 3.125;  3.125 (3.125 + 2) = 0.61

Burst DPS 27696 * CM 0.61 =

16,894.56 continuous DPS

 

Synoid Gammacor used to do over 40K sustained DPS, but the massive increase to rate of fire has reduced ammo efficiency to the point that you must have ammo mutation and drop rate of fire if you want to use this gun for any length of time. Also drains its magazine seven times faster than it used to, whacking the CM, which used to be extremely forgiving.

 

But what was that nonsense about the Gammacor?  Because it's so much more ammo efficient, we can afford to afford to replace that Ammo Mutation with Gunslinger, increasing its rate of fire dramatically and still not making the ammo usage completely impossible to manage. Observe...

Gammacor

50 damage (base)

*3.2 (base + Hornet Strike)

*4.6 (base + four elementals at 0.9 each)

*2.8 (base + barrel diffusion and lethal torrent)

= 2,060.8 damage at a rate of

5 rounds per second (base)

*2.32 (base + lethal torrent + gunslinger)

= 11.6  rounds per second

 

Burst DPS: 23905.28

 

mag/ROF = TTE; TTE/(TTE+reload) = continuous modifier

50 / 11.6 = 4.31;  4.31 / (4.31 + 2) = CM 0.68

Burst DPS 23905 * CM 0.68 =

16,255 continuous DPS

 

 

So the Synoid Gammacor now does a whopping 3.6% more sustained DPS than the Gammacor in "real world" (game) terms. Synoid must use ammo mutation to be practical, while Gammacor gets almost twice as much oomph out of each ammo and even WITH Gunslinger still doesn't touch the base fire rate of the ammo-hungry Synoid. .  The Synoid flavor does have Entropy built in, so there's AOE damage (which is pathetic magnetic type and useless against everything but shielding) and a little bit of free energy (no longer scales to your max energy capacity).  So there's that, I guess.

 

...

 

Did Suda players ever think they would be looking with envy at the Rakta Ballistica?

[IronRoby]

Now you need a mutator in the long run and no more firerate mods 

 

You need no fire rate increase mods allowed and ammo mut in the short run. And it will still not be enough for more than short missions.

 

It's still the most powerful syndicate weapon.

 

On paper. Even without fire rate mods, that DPS will only last you about 40 sec of "most powerful weapon" and ammo mut can't keep up with it.

 

What's the point of being "the most powerful syndicate weapon" when you won't bring it along on a mission (especially on longer or endless missions) because you are rightly afraid of running out of ammo and would prefer any of the other five because of the reliability of their de facto usability?

Edited March 21, 2015 by IronRoby

[Monolake]

You need no fire rate increase mods allowed and ammo mut in the short run. And it will still not be enough for more than short missions.

 

 

On paper. Even without fire rate mods, that DPS will only last you about 40 sec of "most powerful weapon" and ammo mut can't keep up with it.

 

What's the point of being "the most powerful syndicate weapon" when you won't bring it along on a mission (especially on longer or endless missions) because you are rightly afraid of running out of ammo and would prefer any of the other five because of the reliability of their de facto usability?

Other 5? Compare it to other weapons that run out of ammo even faster AND have less DPS, like Secura Dual Cestra or Loka Castanas (only speaking of syndicate weapons, not mentioning lots of weapons that are several times weaker). Now Synoid power is balanced by subpar ammo economy. And with mutator you will have enough ammo as long as you kill enemies.  

Now you have a legit choice if you want to use a weaker but more economic weapon like Marelok and kill slower but not run out of ammo (and run out of DPS instead).

[Macframe]

snip

 

Nice post, for people only see the simple math of (rate of fire x damage) being the same as before, so the old and new are basically the same, then DE has you fooled. In practice it's not that simple, in order to make them equivalent, you're assuming you're constantly full of ammo, like Archwing guns that can regen ammo so fast before you can deplete it, but that's not the case here. I may add that because how status chance works for continuous weapons in this game, having high rate of fire for this kind of weapon is never a good thing, and ammo mutation is rarely the answer. Depending on how fast you guzzle ammo, it only delays the inevitable in endless missions unless you're leaving early, not to mention it sacrifices a mod slot instead of a damage one.

 

I can agree it was OP after the first buff, however it's very suspicious and questionable to wait for this long, for something that can be abused in the Syndicate system, after people have put time and resources into something they like... it's just distasteful. You're basically creating an artificial time and resource sink not by game content but by interference. At the very least for changes like these, be it weapon or warframe, you need to have option that people can refund their resources like potato and forma, however time is still wasted, are you willing to give out plat to compensate for that? That's why nerf is never a good thing, buff other comparables or make gameplay changes instead. Don't make a habit of it DE, because now it's not just about nerf but trust.

[WildBastion]

I think a nerf was needed, it was simply TOO good (it was/is one of my favorite weapons simply because of its unique nature). However, The nerf was a bit heavy handed. The ammo expense is just too great. 7.5x is really too much, but a nerf in the right direction. All that would be needed is say 5x or 4x ammo consumption and it would be about in-line with what it should be.

 

I like that I can no longer permanently hold down the fire button and just run around without caring, I mean I do not doubt that you could take pre-nerf synoid into a mission and literally never stop firing and never run out of ammo.  HOWEVER, now I run out of ammo, with mutation, before I even reach the assassination target. I am careful with my shots, I don't just hold it down and hope I hit something, but I also don't slowly aim and get 100% headshot rate (the game is really too fast for that, which is why snipers are in an odd (read: terrible(high dmg but so what)) place.

 

 

That is my (not-so-simple) opinion, now for the real reason I wanted to post:

 

As for those people who cry out about secondaries being used more than primaries: SO EFFING WHAT?

There is no logic beyond semantics available to justify weapon strength being based on whether it is primary or secondary.

 

I want a large amount of options so I can tailor my experience to the way I want to load-out a character. I used the synoid as a primary so I could run an opticor as my other weapon, I refuse to use the opticor on trash mobs because it slows the game WAY THE HELL DOWN. I use the giant huge slow laser cannon for its intended purpose: HUGE single shot damage, thus I use it on targets that HAVE huge health: Bosses. I would use my synoid to clear out the plebeian scum because it was fast and fun. I want this back.

 

All my load-outs are themed or work together, its how I prefer to play the game.

 

Sybaris and Pyrana or Akstilettos with Fang prime or Sheev

Opticor and Synoid

Quanta and Securas (with serro)

Dread and Rakta

Boltor prime and Akbronco prime

 

I use a particular weapon in-mission when they are appropriate, not because OMGH BEST DPSH!

 

 

It does the game a grave injustice when the flavor and function of weapons change to be too similar to one another (not that this is going on with synoid, this is a general statement and meant for:) Look at the Kohm nerfs, wth man .... -_-

Edited March 22, 2015 by WildBastion