[Pvp] Weapon Hierachy

[-dicht.ThanksFrost-]

As a devout sniper/bow user. I never got to notice the place other weapons had. When the DM and TDM update came out, I only used weapons i really excelled in, which were burst fires, bows and snipers. Of course when the vectis (my fav pvp weapon) came in thats all I ended up using.

 

Since the vectis was so good at countering most playstyles with the right maneuvering and positioning and aim. I never noticed how it would feel like if i was using another weapon. This was untill the recent big patch that essentially killed all snipers, the update that now forces people to combo with the sniper instead of using the sniper alone. Which im pretty sure the intent of that nerf was to stop comboing but it did the completely opposite,,.. am i going on a tangent here?

 

Essentially since the vectis decimation in u 17.5 I was experiementing with various other weapons. I wanted to write this post sooner but I really wanted to get a essence as to how many pro and new players reacted to this change, with the pros losing their toys and how this effects new players and the skill gap as a whole. And upon playing many games across 2 weeks I found a very glaring issue.

 

Autos

 

 

Now before you say anything, I want to advise you that this is not a "nerf autos" post. The automatic weapons are fine the way they are. The problem is their utility and their popularity.

 

A good shooter should always have a weapon class that most players can pick up and use with ease usually autos are the best candidate for this because they are the least punishing weapons. They have good control, nice rate of fire and do decent damage. An auto should be the optimal choice for the average.

 

But then we cross the line of, what's good for newcomers and what's obligatory. So many pro players that I have seen in games have been turning over to autos and this is bad in my opinion. That is not to say that a better player should choose an auto, no that's not it. But it has gone to the point where most of the other choices are so undesirable that most people including myself feel that it is obligatory to use and master autos in a pub in order to do good. And yes it has gone to that point.

 

And it is clear in the games I play. Before hand you would see maybe 1 Vectis player 1-2 bow users, 3 autos/Bfires, 2 melee users. Now lobbies are just filled with karaks, gorgons, bratons and furises.

 

Warframe is now suffering from a weapon class hierarchy, now that the Developpers have essentially taken out snipers out of the picture many people including myself are realizing that auto is the only way to go. This means that the issue at hand now is how can we make the other weapon types more desirable and I would like to share my opinions based on my experience. Be wary these are my imhos, and because of this I might not share the same opinion as you and because of that feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but don't be surprised when contested.

 

Lets start

 

So I talked about autos so we will skip that.

 

Burst Fire and Single Fire weapons need a lot of love. Can we please get this long range, medium range, short range agenda out of our minds for just one second please. With a high mobility game like warframe there is no head shots left and right, intricate animations  do not allow for consistent head shots. The burst fire class offers great bonuses for headshotting, but a player in this game, especially facing skilled players will probably get only 1-4 headshots per game. Universally especially the hind, the tiberon and the Sybaris. Also the single fire weapons, are nope just nope. I remembered when you guys buffed all the single shot and burst weapons, it was so perfect for the most part. It would be nice to have Burst fires like that again.

 

Melee & Shotguns: I am not an expert on this, please feel free to list your concerns.

 

Secondaries for the most part are fine, there are a few really bad weapons like the atomos or the Kohmak but that's expected. Although the furis is the clear dominator in this game.

 

Snipers: Snipers as of now are unusable. And don't give me that "pair up with powers: stuff because its dumb. The snipers should stand up on their own just like every other weapon in this game. The sheer fact that people now have to rely on invis to go decent with a sniper is stupid. Not only that, it went from usable in any situation to suitable in no situations. Going Vectis only was already pretty straining but with the lie and wait nerf it got even worse especially with bolt action rifles. Now snipers are in a position where thy are forced to use snipertrons scrapping the vecits. Keep the lie and wait changes, but don't make the Vectis discriminate. The Vectis should be a 2 shot kill on all warframes considering the fact that A) you are using a sniper in a high mobility game and B) you have to actively reload as you are moving and aiming.

 

The snipertron is fine the way it is, it has a 4 round mag and a decent rof in this case its alright to make this weapon discriminate. Let is 3 shot heavies and 2 shots weaklings. Same goes for the Vectis prime it has 2 shots. But the normal Vectis should be the hard hitting weapon. The Vectis prime in the middle, and the snipertron more on the weaker spammy side.

 

TL;DR Buff normal Vectis, its terrible now

 

Bows: With the exception of daikyu. All the bows are trash. The paris prime/ paris series which I call medium bows are decent. But the fast bows like Mk1-Paris and Cernos are garbage. And this is coming from someone who's u16 conclave skills was founded under the mk1 paris. The nerf was not needed, the thing was already an unpopular choice amongst bow users and now no one uses it with the exception of player who just enter the game. The point of the mk1 is to spam with it, that's how it excels and it works, not to a degree of OP but once again if used correctly can be deadly. But it got the Vectis treatment of "oh I saw a player pwn with it so it is clearly the weapons fault inb4 nerf"

 

Weak bows, need a buff period if anything must surpass what they were pre-nerf

 

I think that sums it all up.

 

Overall we are now playing a generic 3rd person shooter where autos are the #1 choice universally and all the other skill demanding weapons bear absolutely no reward. If the devs are reading this, your targets are not walking when they are shooting, they are jumping, gliding, flipping and rolling make these skill demanding weapons not take the precision of a HawkEye'd god. Make them feasible like they used to be.

[Kolos1001]

Melee is king now!

[TESTAMENTEXE]

Silva and Aegis + channeling needs a nerf tbh...

[Pythadragon]

If I may add on....

 

The current situation of 'auto weapons are king' is a direct result of the bullet jump speed rebalance and the migration of 'tanky frame players' to a squishier frame than before.

 

Before the bullet jump speed rebalance, players naturally gravitated towards EHP heavy frames. You hardly ever saw an excal or a nyx or an ember running around because they were squishy and not faster than tankier frames. In tandem with various phases of energy spawn nerfs, tank frames were king. Weapons in general, were balanced around the correct assumption that most players chose to play a frame that is generally pretty tanky. We saw lots of frost primes, rhino primes, ash primes, ect.

 

With the bullet jump speed rebalance, tank frames got slower, and squishy frames got faster. Despite the benefits of a tankier frame in this context, many players switched to squishier frames in order to maintain the same feeling of speed that they were used to in tandem with the general mechanical advantages of not being slow. I've seen lots of players are migrating towards squishier frames. In particular, I've seen many ash prime and frost prime players switch to using something more like volt prime. What does this mean in the grander scheme of things? It means that more players are choosing less tanky frames than before!

 

Therefore, weapons that used to be balanced for tankier frames are now being used against squishier frames. Time to kill in practice has gone down significantly.

 

This practical lowering of the time to kill has reached a saturation point where it has gotten so low for general weapons, including automatics, that the forgiveness of a high ROF weapon now outperforms a low ROF precision weapon.

 

In other words, It's not that automatics suddenly got buffed. It's that the average player is now using a squishier frame so that the forgiveness of an automatic weapon is better than a low ROF precise burst/single shot weapon.

 

Recommendation:

 

Weapons across the board need to take a pass over to readjust to the frame choice of the average player who is now using a squishier frame than before.

 

If done properly, I'd guess that TTK  goes up a bit, tank frames become tanky again, and low ROF precision weapon users get a chance to show off their skills.

 

When the forgiveness of auto weapons outweighs the benefits of low ROF precision weapons for the highest skilled players in the game, you know that weapons need an 'across the board' rebalance!

Edited October 16, 2015 by Pythadragon

[-dicht.ThanksFrost-]

-snip-

you get my upvote, and maybe my body.

[-InV-igo95862]

The problem with Vectis was that it effective at all ranges. Snipers are supposed to be opposite of shotguns. Shotguns are not functioning at all at long ranges but Vectis did and was really effective at short range.

[Nazrethim]

I consider myself a "melee specialyst". I can tell about Melee:

Some quick facts:

-Pure melee is way underdeveloped

-Quickmelee is (with some weapons) superior to Pure melee

 

Now to the long text:

Melee combat in Conclave currently depends on two things: which weapon you use and what stance you use.

For example: Nikanas. Both Nikanas are near equal in dps, Nikana deals more damage per hit, but Dragon Nikana has higher attack speed. The stances are another story: Blind Justice outperforms the other two stances by a large margin, actually Blind Justice in the hands of a skilled player outperforms almost any other weapons/stance combination because it has good multipliers and good combos and one of the most awful and weak E-spam combos (which forces any Nikana/Blind justice user to execute the powerful combos). But what about the other two stances? Well, tranquil cleave and desicive judgment have good multipliers, but the fact is they lack what BJ has: an effective gap closer (Guiding Light combo) and a killer combo (Destined path).

Enough with Nikanas, moving on. The following weapons have a major hindrance: Lack of a Gap closer (a la Guiding light)

Hammer: post-slam nerf, the jat-kittag almost dissapeared (clearly showing why people used that weapon).

Heavies: These are still considered overpowered by some, despite the fact that isn't the weapon what killed them, but the Tempo Royale Stance, which has good multipliers and, more importantly for the weapons it is asociated with, fast animations. Cleaving Whirlwind stance is actually nastier than TR, but the slow animations make very difficult to exploit the Broken bull combo.

Daggers: good stances, Pointed Wind has very good multipliers, but the weapons are mostly crap. Dark dagger and Ceramic dagger aproaching "decent" status, while Karyst is probably the weakest melee weapon in the Conclave (Ironic considering it's the strongest dagger in PvE). These weapons suffer mostly from low damage combined with near inexistent range (you swing the weapon and litterally have to hit the enemy with your ARM, not the blade, to land a hit, and no, I tested it with an inmobile fellow tenno to test it)

Dual daggers: Fang is a decent weapon, but fang prime takes the cake. Stances don't matter actually because this is mostly used by A) Ranged players to quickmelee to death anyone who closes the gap to them or B) E-spammers with no regard for combos, because the insane atk spd combined with pure puncture damage make this weapon perfect for mashin E until the enemy is dead. Surprisingly these don't suffer the near negative range of single daggers.

Fists: Haven't teste the Ankyros, but Ankyros Prime is absolute garbage, good attack speed but the damage is so low not even Gaia's tragedy or Seismic Palm make the weapon able to kill anything. Furax was fine until it was nerfed for no conceivable reason other than an attempt to promote the use of the new fist Tekko, which is also garbage. With fists there are two options: Gaia's tragedy (good speed and multipliers) or Seismic palm (slower and clunkier but devastating [at least pre furax nerf]).

Swords: Hilarious actually, most available swords deal negligible damage, Iron phoenix is terrible and Crimsom Dervish has awesome multipliers but animations so slow not even a a combination of ralentless assault+excalibur passive can make it viable. More hilarious is the fact the quickmelee (which isn't affected by stance) is actually better than the stances themselves.

Tonfas and Dual Swords. Worse than swords, the stances of dual swords are pointless due to lack of effective multipliers and needlessly long combos, while the only tonfa stance lacks multipliers and is very innefective. Quickmelee is the way to go. Remember the "killer nikana/blindjustice combo" I mentioned earlier? is one of the few combos able to actually win a fight vs a quickmeleeing player with a tonfa or dual swords.

Sparring: Weapons are fine so this will be about the stances. Grim Fury is the de-facto stance because the combos are fast and have good multipliers, also the final kick at the end of "Burning desire" combo is an insta kill if channeled (yeah, just that one hit can kill a heavy frame) but the atk spd is so fast and the range of the weapon so little (in the same boat with single daggers mind you) that only the best of the best can actually pull that mid combat. Brutal tide (aka Breakdance stance) has very good multipliers but the animation lock really bites you back, also is very difficult to execute combos due to those cool animations, a fun stance to use and very average.

Scythes: I have both Hate and Reaper prime, both are useless in most situations. Both weapons are weak in terms of damage and BOTH stances suffer from animation lock, lack of multipliers and slow attack speed. The animations look cool tough.

 

I haven't used Glaives, Nunchakus, Machetes or Polearms, so if any melee specialyst with experience in those weapon can help better for everyone.

 

All in all melee combat requires a huge amount of love in general.

Edited October 16, 2015 by Nazrethim

[cary2010haha]

--

TTK is not "low" at the moment. I can kill every frame in a second if they don't move. (or just a knockdown)

 

LP/ GORGONs / KARAK / SHOTGUNs

 

[-dicht.ThanksFrost-]

The problem with Vectis was that it effective at all ranges. Snipers are supposed to be opposite of shotguns. Shotguns are not functioning at all at long ranges but Vectis did and was really effective at short range.

There are many shooters both new and old that have usual e cqc snipers. Not everything has to be in the confines of battlefield

The problem with this mentality is that you are creating an enivroment where snipers should only be useful when you are far away camping in the back or cowering behind globe, sheild and invis. Warframe is not one of those games, warframe snipers like gears and UT can be used close range hell it's almost required on those games.

Warframe is not a cowardly stay back and fire cover shooter it's a aggressive fast paced shooter with arena styled encounters. And the more we stray a way from that the more boring and generic this game will become. The OG VECTIS would be perfectly fine if it 2 shorted all frames.

You are speaking under the grounds that there is only 1 place for snipers and 1 place for shotguns and for that reason I have to say that this reasoning is flawed. Because there are many more factors to PvP encounters other than what weapon each player is using. Snipers should not be restricted to certain frames, snipers should not discriminate in this game and most importantly the only thing that should restrict the sniper user is his own skill and the only think that should excell the sniper is his own skill. No powers, no different ttks. This change took the already small amount of snipers that were playing and cut 75% of them off. Why? Because the payoff of snipers is nonexistent unless you cheese it.

This change only affected the people who were actually skill full with a sniper only play and now encourages comboing more than ever. It literally a slap in the face to all the effort I and many other players used to put into our games, basically telling me "sorry, restricting yourself to a sniper is bad for the game its not good to rely only on your aim, press globe button more next time". Sniper only play was not easy and now its impossible to the point where the people who are like 40x better than me or some of the best snipers I have seen gave up on the weapon and who can blame them? God forbid they go 25-5 with a weapon they have been using for 2 years in more unfavorable not noon friendly conditions.

Edited October 16, 2015 by Eureka.seveN

[Lordricker]

TTK is not "low" at the moment. I can kill every frame in a second if they don't move. (or just a knockdown)

 

LP/ GORGONs / KARAK / SHOTGUNs

 

Im confused, killing a frame in one second sounds pretty fast and having a low TTK means it takes a low amount of time to kill someone ?

[-FireMaelstr0m-]

 

When the forgiveness of auto weapons outweighs the benefits of low ROF precision weapons for the highest skilled players in the game, you know that weapons need an 'across the board' rebalance!

 

Very well said.

[Lord_Noctus]

but at the moment people shouldnt underestimate the fact that chasing with autoweapons isnt rly easy. i think an overall lowering of the ttk would be nice.

we also need buff on burst and projectile weapons.

Edited October 16, 2015 by Lord_Noctus

[Nazrethim]

but at the moment people shouldnt underestimate the fact that overall with autoweapons isnt rly easy. i think an overall lowering of the ttk would be nice.

we also need buff on burst and projectile weapons.

Don't forget the already suggested, discussed, requested and overly analyzed melee combat system.

[Lord_Noctus]

Don't forget the already suggested, discussed, requested and overly analyzed melee combat system.

murph_hkm made a thread about it 

[-dicht.ThanksFrost-]

but at the moment people shouldnt underestimate the fact that overall with autoweapons isnt rly easy. i think an overall lowering of the ttk would be nice.

we also need buff on burst and projectile weapons.

This is absolutely true. The problem resides more in the fact that the other weapons don't step up nor are rewarding enough to compete.

[rockscl]

Im confused, killing a frame in one second sounds pretty fast and having a low TTK means it takes a low amount of time to kill someone ?

 

TTK is a concept about time, so it should be called "short" or "long", not high or low, those last words allow confusion, he seems to be talking about low TTK as long TTK

Edited October 16, 2015 by rockscl

[elele]

Scythes: 

 

Anku is fantastic for clearing room if one can get the spinning combo going. Requires MM though. 

[Nazrethim]

Anku is fantastic for clearing room if one can get the spinning combo going. Requires MM though. 

I talking from the "no mod equiped, only stance" perspective. And think MM has to go but that's another issue not related to this topic so let's leave it at that.

[Lord_Noctus]

fixed my sentence dang didnt notice what i did there :D

[BoyTitan]

Vs high tier my Latron the weapon I am best with feels so crap. Even in a game with other player around my skill level or bettter. Lets say we go around killing pubs my latron will kill pubs at a slower rate of their boltor prime/telos bolter or braton prime. I feel like I am at a dps disadvantage which isn't cool.

 

Its even worse for the tiberon if ffa its dps output makes it unusable no matter how good you are even if you get no deaths a good tier player is going to get more kills than you.

Edited October 21, 2015 by [DE]Danielle
Removed unnecessary/rude comment

[iquaniqua]

 

I haven't used Glaives, Nunchakus, Machetes or Polearms, so if any melee specialyst with experience in those weapon can help better for everyone.

 

Glaives feel kind of wierd to use to me, since you throw them around when meleing and so you tend to miss quite a bit of strikes, i haven't usedthe other stance that much but astral twilight is very hard to use since you throw the glaive and it orbits around you and stuff, so it's not really good in 1v1s

 

The ninkondi are really good for quick mele, since you just spin them like crazy and they can proc ele and just obliterate shields, the stance isn't bad either

[iquaniqua]

 

If I may add on....

 

 

With the bullet jump speed rebalance, tank frames got slower, and squishy frames got faster. Despite the benefits of a tankier frame in this context, many players switched to squishier frames in order to maintain the same feeling of speed that they were used to in tandem with the general mechanical advantages of not being slow. I've seen lots of players are migrating towards squishier frames. In particular, I've seen many ash prime and frost prime players switch to using something more like volt prime. What does this mean in the grander scheme of things? It means that more players are choosing less tanky frames than before!

 

Therefore, weapons that used to be balanced for tankier frames are now being used against squishier frames. Time to kill in practice has gone down significantly.

 

Tanks got  a lot slower and squishies got a little slower, even some casters have a bj speed lower than 1.

Also, that doesn't seem to be the case for me, i still see a lot of rhinos and frosts, but now they just run around or stand still instead of parkouring, i do se a bit more squishies, but not a lot.

[stoybot]

I can't recall a single shooter that didn't reward/promote skillful shooting and remained popular for over a year. There's little to no skill required for using automatic weapons in Warframe, and the Vectis was so enjoyable to use because it was very powerful in the hands of experienced players. Everyone was using it? Yeah, right... Out of the few Vectis users I encountered while playing actively, only a handful didn't bottom-frag and fewer still top-fragged.

 

Instead of nerfing it to the ground, the PvP devs could've increased its skill requirement by, say, removing the unscoped crosshair. While veterans won't find it hard to quickscope without a crosshair pre-aim, the fast-paced nature of the game will cause them to miss a lot of mid and long-range quickscopes. Here's the closest example I could find to Warframe-like pacing (still far off, I know):

 

 

You don't have to watch the whole thing to see him missing quickscopes because he doesn't have the extra half a second for a more calculated shot; and he's a professional player that was considered one of the best sniper users in the history of the game...

[Pythadragon]

I can't recall a single shooter that didn't reward/promote skillful shooting and remained popular for over a year. There's little to no skill required for using automatic weapons in Warframe, and the Vectis was so enjoyable to use because it was very powerful in the hands of experienced players. Everyone was using it? Yeah, right... Out of the few Vectis users I encountered while playing actively, only a handful didn't bottom-frag and fewer still top-fragged.

 

Instead of nerfing it to the ground, the PvP devs could've increased its skill requirement by, say, removing the unscoped crosshair. While veterans won't find it hard to quickscope without a crosshair pre-aim, the fast-paced nature of the game will cause them to miss a lot of mid and long-range quickscopes. Here's the closest example I could find to Warframe-like pacing (still far off, I know):

 

You don't have to watch the whole thing to see him missing quickscopes because he doesn't have the extra half a second for a more calculated shot; and he's a professional player that was considered one of the best sniper users in the history of the game...

 

Do not remove the crosshair. That is an antiquated idea that has not been relevant in pc gaming for 10 years.

 

All that will do is encourage screen overlay, dot on middle of screen ect. Heck, many gaming monitors nowadays have a crosshair overlay function built into it. Then it becomes an issue of hardware advantage across pvpers. Pay to win :)

 

Examples:

This is a common 144hz gaming monitor

 

http://www.amazon.com/VG248QE-1920x1080-DisplayPort-Ergonomic-Back-lit/dp/B00B2HH7G0

 

·         24-inch Full HD LED-backlit 144Hz display 1920x1080for brilliant HD-quality visuals in both 2D and 3D

·         GamePlusdisplays a crosshair overlay and in-game timers to enhance your gaming

·         144Hz refresh rate and 1ms Trace Free II Technologyfor smooth motion playback for movies and games

·         80,000,000:1 ASUS Smart Contrast Ratiodelivers the darkest blacks and brightest whites for true-to-life images

·         Full height, tilt, and swivel adjustmentsfor the most versatile 3D monitor to provide the most comfort

 

--------------

 

 

This is a commercial 'red dot' attachment for monitor/tv:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Airdrop-Gaming-HSD-1619-HipShotDot/dp/B00GV0LR64/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1445184537&sr=8-2&keywords=red+dot+on+monitor

 

·         The HipShotDot is the gaming industry's first powered red dot sight attachment for your television. Improve your KDR, perfect your trick scope, run and gun and shoot from the hip like never before. Level up with the HipShotDot.

Edited October 18, 2015 by Pythadragon

[stoybot]

Do not remove the crosshair. That is an antiquated idea that has not been relevant in pc gaming for 10 years.

 

All that will do is encourage screen overlay, dot on middle of screen ect. Heck, many gaming monitors nowadays have a crosshair overlay function built into it. Then it becomes an issue of hardware advantage across pvpers. Pay to win :)

 

Examples:

This is a common 144hz gaming monitor

 

http://www.amazon.com/VG248QE-1920x1080-DisplayPort-Ergonomic-Back-lit/dp/B00B2HH7G0

 

·         24-inch Full HD LED-backlit 144Hz display 1920x1080for brilliant HD-quality visuals in both 2D and 3D

·         GamePlusdisplays a crosshair overlay and in-game timers to enhance your gaming

·         144Hz refresh rate and 1ms Trace Free II Technologyfor smooth motion playback for movies and games

·         80,000,000:1 ASUS Smart Contrast Ratiodelivers the darkest blacks and brightest whites for true-to-life images

·         Full height, tilt, and swivel adjustmentsfor the most versatile 3D monitor to provide the most comfort

 

--------------

 

 

This is a commercial 'red dot' attachment for monitor/tv:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Airdrop-Gaming-HSD-1619-HipShotDot/dp/B00GV0LR64/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1445184537&sr=8-2&keywords=red+dot+on+monitor

 

·         The HipShotDot is the gaming industry's first powered red dot sight attachment for your television. Improve your KDR, perfect your trick scope, run and gun and shoot from the hip like never before. Level up with the HipShotDot.

 

Not relevant? That's not true, but you might have a point when it comes to a casual shooter like Warframe's PvP. Most competitive CS players never relied on any of the numerous crosshair "hacks" because they become a crutch that you can't use during LAN events. My main point is that it's better to raise the skill requirements than nerfing its damage. There are many ways to do this - increase the zoom level to make close quarters scoped aiming more difficult (a la Vulkar), decrease accuracy based on your movement speed etc. Reducing the damage of a slow-firing weapons is a not a solution - and it's downright ridiculous for sniper rifles.