Punch through mods worth it

[(XBOX)SLIM PR1ME]

I am wondering if punch through mods such as shred and metal auger are worthy of a mod slot on rifles.  I don't see a damage calculation for them on warframe builder and it kind of looks like a dps loss.  So I am wondering are they worth it since you are hitting more enemies with less bullets fired?  Any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

[(PSN)lhbuch]

They are really good. Some people will tell you that Shred is mandatory in any auto rifle. This game usually has a lot of grouped enemies and killing more than one enemy per shot sometimes is more important than a better DPS to just one enemy. 

[Trichouette]

Depend on the weapon and on your play style.

I use it on opticor and make several kill on lined enemies.

And If I had another slot... I'd put it on every secondary I have.

[Malindros]

7 minutes ago, (XB1)GHOST AG3NT SLM said:

I am wondering if punch through mods such as shred and metal auger are worthy of a mod slot on rifles.  I don't see a damage calculation for them on warframe builder and it kind of looks like a dps loss.  So I am wondering are they worth it since you are hitting more enemies with less bullets fired?  Any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

do you want to hit more than one target with a single round, if yes, use those mods.

results will vary pending weapon.

[(PSN)Magician_NG]

Depends on the weapon.

Hitscan weapons?  (Soma) Punch through is mandatory, imo.

Beam weapons?  (Synapse) Punch through is again...mandatory.

Projectile weapons?  (Dread) Not mandatory...but I'd argue that it should be used.

Explosive, splashy, or AoE weapons?  (Ogris) Feel free to pass on punch through.

[Zetrein]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)Magician_NG said:

Projectile weapons?  (Dread) Not mandatory...but I'd argue that it should be used.

Point of order, bows have innate punchthrough on charged shots. Some other weapons (Ignis, a couple sniper rifles) also have innate punchthrough.

As to the question of how useful punchthrough mods are, I will say only this: Without a punchthrough effect, corpses will block your fire. It's not only a matter of killing a dude and the five dudes behind him, but shooting through the first dude's falling corpse to hit targets that are still alive.

[Dhrekr]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)Magician_NG said:

Projectile weapons?  (Dread) Not mandatory...but I'd argue that it should be used.

Bows (Dread) come with a built-in punchthrough. No need to use a slot for that.

I think there's another small list on weapons with innate punch-through, but it's really not that long.

[(PSN)Magician_NG]

The problem with the innate punch through on bows is that it won't penetrate a grineer shield lancer's shield.

Even on a fully charged shot.

Which is why I always recommend punch through be used on bows.

[Mythic_Sentinel]

yes punch through is very useful in any primary weapon . u can take out multiple targets with that kind of weapons

[DaftMeat]

Shred can be very useful. But dedicating a mod spot just to Punch Through alone ... ? There are too many other useful mods to devote a spot just to Punch Through. Damage is king.

Now if Punch Through made like 30% of damage bypass shields or it it would go through Nullifier bubbles, then we'd be talking a whole other ballgame...

[Man_In_Suitcase]

52 minutes ago, (XB1)GHOST AG3NT SLM said:

I am wondering if punch through mods such as shred and metal auger are worthy of a mod slot on rifles.  I don't see a damage calculation for them on warframe builder and it kind of looks like a dps loss.  So I am wondering are they worth it since you are hitting more enemies with less bullets fired?  Any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Yes. You'll be tackling hoards or large groups of enemies 80% of the time, and putting Shred or any punch through mod effectively gives you more dps oppose to not. The only time you wouldn't need punch through is if you're building a weapon to take on VIP targets, like the Lex Prime for e.g.   

Edited March 1, 2016 by Man_In_Suitcase
Still not use to primed forums! :o

[Tzolkat]

Punch through lets you shoot through obstacles such as light/medium cover and dying/dead enemy bodies. Used correctly it can make for a devastating boost to your weapon's effectiveness. You can use it to conserve overall DPS (and ammo) in weapons like the Soma, or use it in combination with status builds to deliver those effects to groups of enemies for greater CC potential.

[TheSteelRat]

I only use punch through on something with  a low Rate of fire.  Otherwise I rather have more damage.

Love it on my Ignus when searching for syndicate medallions

[lookinerator]

Also, Seeking Fury is super good on shotguns...
 

[Acos]

Pierce Through is most useful in defense maps where you'll eventually become quite familiar with the spawn points and paths that enemies take to get to their destination. Since enemies largely run in a straight line to get to their destination before they spread out, it's pretty simple to intercept their path and capitalize on pierce through mods to hit several enemies with the same projectile. 

For general gameplay where enemy pathing and placement is less predictable the utility of Pierce Through starts to decrease as its becomes more rare for enemies to group up in such a way that you can hit multiple units standing in a line without spending time to get yourself in a suitable position. At this point I find more damage to be a better contributor to ammo efficiency than very occasionally saving ammo by hitting multiple enemies with the same bullet. 

Pierce Through also allows you to get around cover, or even shoot safely through cover to hit enemies which can be useful in situations that you couldn't tank damage out in the open. On the other hand, proper usage of your Warframe's abilities and the event of Bullet Jumping give you other options for safely dealing with large groups of enemies as well.

As for "corpse shooting", it's better to approach a line of enemies when you don't have pierce through at an angle rather than shooting directly at the front of your line. That way you have line of sight on every enemy in the line, rather than only the guy at the front. If players running in front of you while they are shooting is an issue you can always politely educate them. Or you can also not-so-politely start running in front of them while they are shooting; either option seems to get the message across.  

Personal opinion after playing with pierce through for the last couple of years is that you don't really need it, and it's simple enough to play without it if you find your gun lacking enough damage to be effective in higher level content. Having it offers you some additional utility that can be quite useful when it comes up, but it is by no means absolutely necessary or even worth sacrificing damage or other utility over. 

[ThorienKELL]

Punch thru mods are generally valid choice to consider in many scenarios. How useful will they be depends on many parameters:

Weapon type, rate of fire, reload speed, damage, range /spread but also map type, enemy type, etc.

For example I find puch thru mod mandatory in weapon like sancti tigris, it comes as dual stat, increasing reload speed too, both are very needed on tigris, it's damage is massive and RoF is low, lining up enemies, especially in narrow hallways, can be brutally effective.

For other weapons - it depends, best way to determine is to to a little experiment, Take weapon to some typical setup as draco or void survival and pay attention to each shot /count - try to determine ratio of when would punch thru be useful and when not. If you determine that you would score double /tripple hit fairly frequently, say in 3 shots out of 10 enemies do seem to line up, then it's good mod.

For example on my lex prime I concluded that this might be not best way to go - maybe 1 hit out of 10 had enemies lined up. Especially considering painfully low clip of lex, I opted with ice storm - 11 bullets instead of 8 means more then occasional double hit.

But it is also matter of personal preference and play style. Best thing you can do is to test it out and find what you like.

 

 

Edited March 1, 2016 by ThorienKELL

[(PSN)DBR87]

I tend to avoid Shred and Metal Auger on things that have innate punch through. I don't use Shred on Bows, Lanka, or Ignis because of innate punchthrough.

I don't use it on Penta or Tonkor because explosions

I use Shred on Braton Prime Sybaris.

I use Metal Auger on Burston Prime and Amprex because they don't need the added fire rate.

Punch through increases you DPS to mobs. Depends on the weapon if you want Metal Auger or Shred.

[Maelstrom980]

shred and metal auger are, on hit scan weapons, almost always an applied DPS boost. as mentioned above they allow you to shoot through dead targets and light/medium cover. this alone can be a big boost. Then you need to account for being able to hit several targets per shot and/or inflict multiple status procs per shot. This causes you to become much more ammo efficient witch is very important at higher levels of play when everything is a bullet sponge.

Just a little math to give you an idea of how good it can be.

lets say you do 100 per shot with your latron.

a 90% damage mod adds 90 damage, or 90%, each one after that give a lower overall bonus as percentage as its based off 100 damage. total damage increase as a precent is something like 90%, 47%, 32%, 24% per 90% elemental mod. punch through gives causes 100% per target hit after the first, so hit 2 deal 100% more total damage from that shot, hit 3 deal 200% more this is because you deal full damage to each target. overkill a target with extra shots, still deal damage to the guy behind him. clip the cover that they are hiding behind, still kill them. They are ultillity mods but they are awesome.

 

 

[Acebaur]

7 hours ago, DaftMeat said:

Shred can be very useful. But dedicating a mod spot just to Punch Through alone ... ? There are too many other useful mods to devote a spot just to Punch Through. Damage is king.

Now if Punch Through made like 30% of damage bypass shields or it it would go through Nullifier bubbles, then we'd be talking a whole other ballgame...

 

7 hours ago, kkinnison said:

I only use punch through on something with  a low Rate of fire.  Otherwise I rather have more damage.

Love it on my Ignus when searching for syndicate medallions

Punch through IS damage. If you shoot one bullet that does 100 damage on a guy and kill him and there are 2 other guys lined up behind him(which happens constantly on endless missions) then your one bullet just killed 3 guys and dealt 3x the damage. No other mod offers better than that. 

Also Ignis has like 2m innate punch through so it's wasted on that gun. 

 

Shred is pretty much all you need on rifles, I'd only use Metal Auger if you don't want the fire rate.  On pistols Seeker doesn't need to be maxed, 2 ranks is sufficient for pretty much everything.  More than that is just wasted mod points IMO. 

[DaftMeat]

8 hours ago, Acebaur said:

 

Punch through IS damage. If you shoot one bullet that does 100 damage on a guy and kill him and there are 2 other guys lined up behind him(which happens constantly on endless missions) then your one bullet just killed 3 guys and dealt 3x the damage. No other mod offers better than that.

While I don't dispute that, in my experience enemies rarely cooperate by lining up so that your one shot goes through more than 2 or 3 at a time. And even when they do line up perfectly (thank the Lotus for small hallway tiles), Punch Through mods seem kind of weak even at max rank.

The way I play, I only use Punch Through mods to enhance weapons that already have Punch Through. I always put Shred on my bows to enhance string draw and how many Grinner it can impale in one shot. Don't get me wrong, I love Shred. For sidearms/secondaries, Punch Through seems less important and effective though.

[Acebaur]

2 hours ago, DaftMeat said:

While I don't dispute that, in my experience enemies rarely cooperate by lining up so that your one shot goes through more than 2 or 3 at a time. And even when they do line up perfectly (thank the Lotus for small hallway tiles), Punch Through mods seem kind of weak even at max rank.

The way I play, I only use Punch Through mods to enhance weapons that already have Punch Through. I always put Shred on my bows to enhance string draw and how many Grinner it can impale in one shot. Don't get me wrong, I love Shred. For sidearms/secondaries, Punch Through seems less important and effective though.

In endless missions they tend to line up a lot, and even if it's only 2 or 3 at a time, that's still 2 or 3x the damage your one bullet does. How do they seem weak? Are you talking about the distance it punches through? If so Shred's 1.1m is more than enough to get through to hit several in a row. It's not just enemies either, it's useful to ignore cover, doors, shield lancers and those especially annoying pop up pedestals in the void, not to mention the nice fire rate increase it gives.

 

For side arms it depends on the gun. My Telos Bolto's don't have it because they have a great fire rate/mag and knock back, but on a gun like the Lex with a low mag and slower rate? Absolutely, especially given it's enormous damage. 

[Gelkor]

20 hours ago, (PS4)Magician_NG said:

 

Projectile weapons?  (Dread) Not mandatory...but I'd argue that it should be used.

 

Dread and other bows have built in punch-through stronger than any you can get from mods. Why would you waste a mod slot on a tiny bit more punch-through?  Especially because Dread is slash-based which enhances it's punch-through on targets it kills.

[S0V3REiGN]

I definitely like punch through on weapons if I can slot them in. Hitting multiple enemies is increased DPS and you get flexibility of hitting targets behind cover or in other rooms without having to relocate. I don't like builds with pure raw damage if it doesn't allow for flexibility.

[SolidJames]

I wouldn't use my 5 forma Tiberon without Shred. Allows me to punch through the door on void defense and get lines of headshots. Depending on the wave and tower level, sometimes I can kill all the enemies before the door ever even opens.

[Acebaur]

4 hours ago, Gelkor said:

Dread and other bows have built in punch-through stronger than any you can get from mods. Why would you waste a mod slot on a tiny bit more punch-through?  Especially because Dread is slash-based which enhances it's punch-through on targets it kills.

According to the wiki all bows have 1m of innate punch through(on charged shots) so while I agree with your premise, your statement about the bow's being stronger than any mod is actually wrong