Crit Weapons (Lanka): The Only Path?

[jjpdn]

Its feels as if the Lanka is the only viable end game sniper.

With its increase in crit chance, you can get over 100% and so headshots become viable, because:

No crit headshot = double damage

Crit headshot = quadrupple damage. 

With two damage mods, no crit damage = ~six-eight times damage (+120% total damage, +90% elemental)

With one crit chance and the other crit damage mod = ~16x times damage. Not to mention the other damage mods would double damage for the weapon, when they would only give diminishing rewards for the non-crit weapon after the first two.

As a side note:

Normal bodyshot: ~4 times damage with two basic damage mods

Crit bodyshot: ~4.4 times damage with crit chance and crit damage, BUT, the two basic damage mods are able to quadruple damage instead of having diminishing returns. 

This is the same for all other weapons vs crit. 

Do you believe crit weapons are too powerful?

 

Edited February 26, 2016 by jjpdn

[Misgenesis]

I dont know about other snipers but Vulkar/W has the Loka augment which makes it quite formidable. It can do some serious crits too.

[GSDAkatsuki]

1 hour ago, Misgenesis said:

I dont know about other snipers but Vulkar/W has the Loka augment which makes it quite formidable. It can do some serious crits too.

Problem is that it's not reliable. Any sniper that has under 100% critical chance with point strike is just not a sniper rifle. Snipers need to be one shot, accurate weapons. 

[Loswaith]

Crits can be too powerful but it typically depends on the stats to begin with.

Crits (from a gaming perspective) essentially fall into the block of additional damage for precise shots to hit more vulnerable locations (this is why games like Borderlands have a critical damage when hitting those "soft" locations, rather than random chance).  Warframe currently gives additional bonuses to that with criticals on top.

The largest issue on crit weapons however is that they have both high critical multipliers AND high critical chance (while low critical chance weapons have low multipliers).  This heavily skews the balance in their favour, especially if they have better than average regular damage (like many weapons good at crits do).  More balanced critical type weapons would have either high multiplier with low crit chances or low multipliers with high crit chances, or higher both with well below average base damage (thus the crits essentially bring up their base damage to better than or equal to average damages).

For example (presuming my maths is correct) a weapon with 10% crit but 1.5 damage multiplier is doing an effective 15% additional damage, while a 125% critical chance with 4.4 damage multiplier is doing an effective 550% additional damage (before 'soft spot' multipliers).  However if it was a 10% crit chance with 4.4 damage multiplier that would only be an effective additional damage increase of 44%.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Loswaith

[(PSN)Lord_Gremlin]

Once they finally release primed chamber vectis prime will be an option. More or less, but yes Lanka is the only good sniper. 

[marshmellory]

nah, rubico is very good as well

[p3z1]

Shameless self-advertisement: 

 

Anyways, I kinda disagree, since Vulkar Wraith now competes with end-game weapons. Main problem is, sniper rifles don't have a place IMO, due to the lack of resources. Aside from being the rarest ammo dropped (by experience), but they also need time to aim to gain benefits, which is hard in a fast-paced game. Couple in the fact that they don't have punchthrough (except for snipetron/lanka), they are pretty slow in killing hordes as well. Picking targets is fine and dandy, if you had a pretty safe place to do it. As it stands, the game doesn't cater much to snipers, due to the lack of resources for them. Also factor in the broken accuracy mechanics for snipers.

Now this is my opinion of snipers. Yes, I have a 4 forma Vulkar Wraith so I know what I am saying.

[(PSN)DBR87]

I haven't been in a game where Vectis has let me down. I'll take Vectis' versatility over Lanka almost  any day.

I do like Lanka, but I prefer Vectis.

[Specific.Zod]

Just give sniper rifles inate punch through DE, why a bow has it BUT sniper rifles don't? since most bows are able to red crit all day and can hit faster than sniper rifles.

Spoiler

one slot for shred or metal auger while bow dont need it. consider bow use the same mods.

 

[NezuHimeSama]

Crits are nice, but they don't take down barriers. That's the tradeoff. Arctic Eximus go from a joke to an actual real defensive unit when you switch from damage to crit.

You also lose mod space for crit builds, hurting versatility, and they're weaker with sub-par/incomplete mod setups.

 

If crit weapons didn't do more damage than non-crit weapons, they'd be totally pointless. Besides damage, crits only have drawbacks.

[Bobtm]

As it stands now each sniper type brings something solid to the table.  The Lanka, while it does indeed deal reliably high damage, has the trade-off in that its speed to kill is overall lower per target if each sniper is in the realm of 1-shot kills.  Of course each sniper can retain 1-shot potential for a very long time, up to enemy level 100 and beyond.  The Lanka losing out a little in this realm is due to it having both charge time as well as projectile travel time, something the other snipers do not.

Basically if two identical players have the Lanka and a different sniper, the one with the Lanka will get fewer/slower kills as the hitscan firing type allows shots to land sooner.  Additionally the Lanka seems to have the most scope sway overall out of the various sniper types.  To speak to the point of crit-stuff;  Every sniper qualifies as a crit weapon, albeit they each operate differently.  So whether crit weapons are "too strong" or not is something that applies to each of them rather than just one.

The Vulkar (Wraith) sort of sits in a similar-ish area, as it too is more for reliable damage.  Rather than being reliable in crit however the Vulkar (Wraith) has a more easily sustainable combo meter overall.  Alike the Lanka these two snipers sport three zoom options in total.

The Vectis and its Prime then play off of this realm but instead are a snappier option, sporting lower zoom than the prior two snipers mentioned and only sporting two total zoom options, as opposed to the three options of the above snipers.  These two are also fairly solid when racking up combo count due to having the fastest reload among their sniper peers.

The Rubico then stands out in another niche, having lower reliability at stock, as well as having awful combo sustain but unmatched combo build.  Overall the Rubico will out-burst every other sniper in the short/immediate term due to its incredibly high crit multiplier (with zoom bonus) and the massive damage gained by its combo.  However it has the worst "uptime" among these noted snipers since it shares the slowest reload with the Vulkar series but has a smaller mag size.  Alike the Vectis it has two zoom levels, however its cap zoom is the higher x12 like the Lanka possesses.

Snipetron is atrocious, the end.

Anyways what I'm getting at is merely this;  Each sniper class (except Snipetron) has its own niche (technically the Snipetron has the niche of being terrible).  Their individual quirks allow them all to be viable for a player who is sniper-minded.  Calling the Lanka the best is both genuinely absurd, and incorrect.  It's just one of many justifiable options for sniping.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Bobtm
Clarification and some additional points.

[jjpdn]

I see what you all mean when you said the Vulkar is viable.

When I said endgame, I meant good long defense/survival missions.

At that point, I find normal snipers lacking in killing powers against heavy units.

But, with Lanka, headshots seem still one shot. 

[YasaiTsume]

Snipers still suck vs Nullies.

DE should fix that first.

[Paradoxbomb]

Personally I really don't like how snipers and many other precision weapons are overly-reliant on that critical headshot multiplier to deal reasonable damage. It basically results in the player having to rely on both skill and luck just to one-shot anything besides fodder units (and a lack of consistency/reliability is probably the worse thing you can have with slow firing weapon like a sniper). On top of that, weapons that have a super-fast fire rate or target enemies heads via AoE, such as the Soma Prime and Tonkor respectively, benefit from this mechanic to the point where it's arguably broken.

IMHO critical headshots should deal the x2 damage just like a regular headshot and in their stead they should implement headshot multipliers that are unique to different weapon types (snipers having the highest at x4). That way the bulk of a sniper's (or any precision weapon's) damage comes from their base damage combined with getting a headshot, while crits are icing on the cake instead of the entire basis of your damage output.

 

Edited February 27, 2016 by Paradoxbomb

[Faulcun]

The lanka is the most versatile weapon out of all of them. It is capable of one shot kills on heavy gunners all the way up to level 80 on a first initial headshot with no combo multiplier.

The heavy units are the only units that you actually need to fully charge on. All of the rest of the enemies can be "short shot" with a 1/4 charge, significantly increasing your rate of fire. It is not necessary to fully charge every shot in order to get the kill.

It has 5m of innate punch through, the fastest projectile of any weapon, and is pure base elemental. The weapon sway and travel time are worth the greatness of that weapon. Ive been an avid lanka user since I was able to get my hands on it in update 9. It was amazing then, and its even better now.

[Magneu]

My Vulkar Wraith was OHKO level 120 gunners to the head, dunno why people hate it. Argon Scope makes it rather dependable for crits, and Lasting Purity bumps the already good base damage even higher.

Only other competition for me is Rubico; even with Primed Fast Hands, it's a OHKO on similar level to gunners with that ridiculous crit multiplier and combo meter. With Argon Scope, you're sitting near 98% crit chance, I believe. 

Of course, a Gas/Electric Lanka is my sniper of choice for Corpus. Absolutely shreds units with procs there.

Honestly, while a sniper heavily suffers in solo play, they have a valuable place in a squad of being the designated heavy killer, especially that one Ancient at the back of the crowd who is practically immune to everyone else's punchthrough Soma Primes. With a sniper, you become the guy who takes out the Eximus, the Ancients, anything that autos struggle with. The tradeoff is, your suffer heavily against crowds (but then again, you do have a secondary/melee slot...).

 

EDIT: My OHKO on Vulkar Wraith is due to the combo counter; pretty reliable, but the slow reload can hurt sometimes. Would slot Primed Fast Hands, but VW is reeeaaally tight on mod space.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Magneu

[Faulcun]

6 minutes ago, Magneu said:

My Vulkar Wraith was OHKO level 120 gunners to the head, dunno why people hate it. Argon Scope makes it rather dependable for crits, and Lasting Purity bumps the already good base damage even higher.

Only other competition for me is Rubico; even with Primed Fast Hands, it's a OHKO on similar level to gunners with that ridiculous crit multiplier and combo meter. With Argon Scope, you're sitting near 98% crit chance, I believe. 

Of course, a Gas/Electric Lanka is my sniper of choice for Corpus. Absolutely shreds units with procs there.

Honestly, while a sniper heavily suffers in solo play, they have a valuable place in a squad of being the designated heavy killer, especially that one Ancient at the back of the crowd who is practically immune to everyone else's punchthrough Soma Primes. With a sniper, you become the guy who takes out the Eximus, the Ancients, anything that autos struggle with. The tradeoff is, your suffer heavily against crowds (but then again, you do have a secondary/melee slot...).

 

EDIT: My OHKO on Vulkar Wraith is due to the combo counter; pretty reliable, but the slow reload can hurt sometimes. Would slot Primed Fast Hands, but VW is reeeaaally tight on mod space.

Yep i can get behind that too. I havent messed with the wraith yet, except to level it. But while I was, I was super impressed with it so far. I fully intend to dump forma on that thing too.

And yeah I love my lanka for the same reasons. After the first hit, the damage gets stupid. its not uncommon to see 30 or more consecutive hits where im looking at 600k damage crits and just crazy numbers

[hukurokuju5]

vectis usability is super nice.

lanka damage and combo counter gets cray though

 

[TheLexiConArtist]

2 hours ago, Magneu said:

My Vulkar Wraith was OHKO level 120 gunners to the head, dunno why people hate it. Argon Scope makes it rather dependable for crits, and Lasting Purity bumps the already good base damage even higher.

EDIT: My OHKO on Vulkar Wraith is due to the combo counter; pretty reliable, but the slow reload can hurt sometimes. Would slot Primed Fast Hands, but VW is reeeaaally tight on mod space.

One of the best things about the Vulkar Wraith is that you can get a solid build from just the innate Madurai polarity and Catalyst it came with.

It's nothing godly, but as just something to use when I fancy sniping, I can't fault the build that gives me a 95% status chance between all the element/status mods and Hammer Shot, along with some solid base damage (Lasting Purity and Serration) with a reasonable 50% crit rate to make use of the Hammershot critdamage buff.

 

Plus I set the elements for corrosive/blast. Blast ragdolls based on damage dealt, do you have any idea how fun it is to ping enemies off into oblivion with every shot you take? Sod the damage viability, it's hilarious.

[Faulcun]

4 hours ago, EDYinnit said:

One of the best things about the Vulkar Wraith is that you can get a solid build from just the innate Madurai polarity and Catalyst it came with.

It's nothing godly, but as just something to use when I fancy sniping, I can't fault the build that gives me a 95% status chance between all the element/status mods and Hammer Shot, along with some solid base damage (Lasting Purity and Serration) with a reasonable 50% crit rate to make use of the Hammershot critdamage buff.

 

Plus I set the elements for corrosive/blast. Blast ragdolls based on damage dealt, do you have any idea how fun it is to ping enemies off into oblivion with every shot you take? Sod the damage viability, it's hilarious.

FYI, using a standard elemental mod in place of hammer shot will deal higher damage both on non-crit, and critical hit. Hammer shot isnt what it used to be.

[TheLexiConArtist]

3 minutes ago, Faulcun said:

FYI, using a standard elemental mod in place of hammer shot will deal higher damage both on non-crit, and critical hit. Hammer shot isnt what it used to be.

It was more about the status chance and the drain amount. Between everything else and still only having a 50% critrate, the damage part is negligible, and I had exactly 9 mod power left over, all maxed mods fitting perfectly to make a nearly 100% status sniper rifle.

Which is useless if you're looking to really minmax (status on slow ROF is pretty limited, mainly for slash procs, hi Dread) but it's a good serviceable and entertaining build with no inaccessible mods.

[Rekkou]

Are you implying that the only way a weapon should be made is by giving them charge time, projectile travel time, and scope sway? If you didn't notice, pretty much every guaranteed crit weapons always have impracticality stuck onto them. Bows also have charge time, projectiles and fall off. Weapons like Synapse or Amprex have limited range and damage ticks, Tonkor is also very impractical. Basically on most crit weapons, their high damage is not just advantage, it's their redeeming factor.

When DE not being DE (cough* Soma Prime cough*), they pretty much aware of this. Any other crits weapons with less crits capabilities such as most hitscan Snipers, Attica and Semi auto rifles are much more practical to their higher crits counterparts. Snipers are hitscan, fires faster and generally better for long range than Lanka and most bows, Attica doesn't need charge and fires faster than bows. Latron Prime/Wraith and Sybaris is basically Snipers with less damage but much more practicality.

Like other people have mentioned, practicality counts. If you based the argument on damage alone, plenty of weapons are immediately going to look inferior. DPS is calculated on a basis that you're doing everything with 100% computer like performance. And weapons like Lanka are pretty much designed to hinder you as much as possible to reach that 100% performance. Unless DE goes DE, any weapon with stronger damage than Lanka will be more impractical, and any weaker weapon will be more practical.

[FitzSimmons]

rubico, vulkar wraith, Vectis, Vectis prime

[FitzSimmons]

13 hours ago, Rekkou said:

Are you implying that the only way a weapon should be made is by giving them charge time, projectile travel time, and scope sway? If you didn't notice, pretty much every guaranteed crit weapons always have impracticality stuck onto them. Bows also have charge time, projectiles and fall off. Weapons like Synapse or Amprex have limited range and damage ticks, Tonkor is also very impractical. Basically on most crit weapons, their high damage is not just advantage, it's their redeeming factor.

When DE not being DE (cough* Soma Prime cough*), they pretty much aware of this. Any other crits weapons with less crits capabilities such as most hitscan Snipers, Attica and Semi auto rifles are much more practical to their higher crits counterparts. Snipers are hitscan, fires faster and generally better for long range than Lanka and most bows, Attica doesn't need charge and fires faster than bows. Latron Prime/Wraith and Sybaris is basically Snipers with less damage but much more practicality.

Like other people have mentioned, practicality counts. If you based the argument on damage alone, plenty of weapons are immediately going to look inferior. DPS is calculated on a basis that you're doing everything with 100% computer like performance. And weapons like Lanka are pretty much designed to hinder you as much as possible to reach that 100% performance. Unless DE goes DE, any weapon with stronger damage than Lanka will be more impractical, and any weaker weapon will be more practical.

ummm daikyu? impractical, less crit chance, can't even quick shot, I won't add slow charge because it's a long bow. and don't forget the shotgun convectrix if I remember correctly, impractical still less damage even less than strun. oh and rakta cernos  and cernos are not guaranteed crit. with new mod argon scope even hitscan weapon like sniper and Sybaris that were not guarantee to crit can be guarantee to crit, since they're hitscan you can easily hit headshot to get the buff, especially Sybaris.

[Rekkou]

6 hours ago, FitzSimmons said:

ummm daikyu? impractical, less crit chance, can't even quick shot, I won't add slow charge because it's a long bow. and don't forget the shotgun convectrix if I remember correctly, impractical still less damage even less than strun. oh and rakta cernos  and cernos are not guaranteed crit. with new mod argon scope even hitscan weapon like sniper and Sybaris that were not guarantee to crit can be guarantee to crit, since they're hitscan you can easily hit headshot to get the buff, especially Sybaris.

I already cover anything you can nitpick in "Unless DE goes DE"