Tonkor: Let's fix easy mode

Magneu · April 15, 2016

4 minutes ago, Poolboy said:

Ah, again with the fallacy fallacy.

Your "arguments" are anecdotal and opinionated. They revolve around "it ruins MY playstyle," and "I see it everywhere!" Sorry if it's hard to argue against something that's not there.

Your car analogy is S#&$ too. Depending on how you drove the car and what you were using it for matter more than the stats. The Prius would be a much better choice over the Ferrari if you drove in the city and stopped often, just like the Soma P or Ignis will out preform the tonkor

What do we measure a weapon by? Killing efficiency vs effort to operate. I wouldn't give a soldier a gun that can blow up a small town if it required him to stand next to an enemy for five minutes, the same way I wouldn't give a soldier a hyper-stable, no recoil, hyper-accurate, high magazine, easy maintenance weapon that can't kill an unarmored enemy; they both skew the ratio too much one direction, when we want a perfect balance.The Tonkor is the clear winner in this metric to any other weapon, i.e., it pulls a perfect 10/10 (maybe a 9/10 if you can't aim to save your life).

To reiterate, we don't care about low level killing efficiency; AOE abilities, or practically any gun do just fine with that (what rewards exactly are sought at low levels?). As levels climb, the Tonkor is still OHK, while other weapons fall-off. At peak sortie levels, the Tonkor is massively outperforming even the runner-up, leading to people using it more than any other weapon. I'd bet good money if DE pulled statistics of usage, they'd see the Tonkor (a) topping kill charts, (b) topping usage charts among people over MR5, and (c) topping charts of kills per ammo used. Low level killing efficiency is not a valid argument, as enemy DPS is not high enough to pose a threat to any semi-competent player at that point.

Yes, I will call you out on fallacies, the very definition of which is "a mistaken belief, especially one based on unsound argument", or, in logic, "a failure in reasoning that renders an argument invalid". By definition, your "argument" isn't based in truth; assuming that we (hopefully) are seeking the truth, your argument must be discarded.

Yes, I have some anecdotal arguments, because that's what I personally have seen. I see at least one Tonkor in every sortie, and a good deal of the time two (and if it isn't a Tonkor, it's a Mirage with a Synoid Simulor). My experience (I've run most every sortie since release) indicates that the Tonkor is vastly over-represented; again, I would love DE to look at/release usage statistics. I'm certain it would simply prove me right (and if it doesn't, I consider my argument defeated, the argument that it's too prevalent, that is).

The Tonkor does directly affect my playstyle, as I indicated in melee vs Timmy Tonkor example. A single player can actively deny my playstyle, shoehorning me into using similar cheesy tactics or going full try-hard to keep up, while they play at a relaxed rate. The effort vs reward ration is screwed up (this is ignoring the risk vs reward ratio which, as far as both launchers and all weapons go, is completely skewed towards the Tonkor. This is bad for...well, if you actually watched the videos instead of cussing me out, you'd know why). Even if it didn't affect me, I believe that it is extremely toxic for the game, both currently and, more importantly, in the long run.

I argue that (a) the Tonkor skews risk/reward and effort/reward ratios too far in one direction (lack of self-damage being the prime example), (b) the Tonkor is objectively superior to every other weapon at levels where DPS truly matters by a massive margin (not even counting the advantage of AOE and headshot criticals), (c) the Tonkor is too easy to obtain and use for the power it offers (MR5; seriously? Why even bother getting other weapons? Also, see point A), and ultimately, (d) the Tonkor promotes an unhealthy game, where powercreep is never slowed down, old content is rendered obsolete, and the playerbase grows bored of content quickly because they can simply steamroll it (this is why I say changing the Tonkor is imperative to DE's long-term goals, again, going back to my linked videos. Powercreep, especially of this magnitude, will kill a game outright in the long run.

I can prove all of those points valid and correct except for point D; however, using logic (as well as a plethora of previous examples in other games), we can easily extrapolate that it is probably that it will come to pass.

Now. Counter these argument and I'll take you seriously. As is, you've simply attacked me and not my arguments, and provided no backing for your wild claims. In addition, you've put words in my mouth (strawmanned), spewed ad hominem (stating I said/am what I'm not), and attempted to shift the burden of proof to me. So, I ask you;

Why should the Tonkor not be nerfed? If you respond to just this question and ignore the rest of the post, at least it's progress.

Magneu · April 15, 2016

1 minute ago, TheBrsrkr said:

Obviously it will still have competition in specific niches, but 90% of the game is a pretty massive niche, especially when it consists of the most played game modes. If a Ferrari cost half as much as a Prius and you had a crapload of highway to cruise through to get wherever you're going, the Prius will still outperform it in the actual city, but the Ferrari already dominates the rest of the damn road. It's not hard to understand.

Didn't even think of this. Thanks for reinforcing my argument! Guess I wasn't thinking meta (as in, the actual term, not Warframe usage) enough.

cx-dave · April 15, 2016

10 hours ago, EDYinnit said:

Not sure if trolling or actually just stupid. Individual numbers are higher but the firerate averaged it down to a lesser degree? Wow, it's almost like the Tonkor's numbers would have been much higher still, had elemental resistance not factored in.

I chose to largely ignore your irrelevant MK-1 Braton vs Amprex vs Sortie Lephantis. The Amprex like any other pure elemental weapon would have done next to no damage (went in with a Quanta Vandal with close to 7K Corrosive, saw only numbers around 68 popping up on Sortie Lephatis). The Tonkor on the other hand was still viable in this situation. It just got beaten by the Soma P. That's all.

Your math in itself isn't wrong. The problem is that it's based on an incomplete model. You attempt theorize your way out of the Tonkor, without actually using it simply doesn't work.

For instance, your math doesn't take into account the travel time of the projectiles, ramp up behavior of the Soma P fire rate, and timing in the game play. You aren't just standing still and have the opportunity to constantly land shots. Compared to the Tonkor it's far easier to hit a target with the Soma P.

During hectic situations you still can aim relatively effective with the Soma P. With the Tonkor on the other hand, it's a case of diminishing returns when a specific enemy has to be hit. Additionally, the enemy wasn't susceptible to damage at all times. With the Soma P you might have been able to get a few extra shots in after dogging enemy fire, which wouldn't have been possible with the Tonkor in the same situation. A miss with the Tonkor is also far more detrimental to your damage output compared to the Soma P.

7 hours ago, Magneu said:

Yes, of course the Tonkor at some point is going to be the best or one of the best choices to kill an enemy. So, are many other weapons at a given point. Over all it's balanced out well enough not to make the Tonkor better or best in all or even the majority of situations.

TheBrsrkr · April 15, 2016

4 hours ago, cx-dave said:

I chose to largely ignore your irrelevant MK-1 Braton vs Amprex vs Sortie Lephantis. The Amprex like any other pure elemental weapon would have done next to no damage (went in with a Quanta Vandal with close to 7K Corrosive, saw only numbers around 68 popping up on Sortie Lephatis). The Tonkor on the other hand was still viable in this situation. It just got beaten by the Soma P. That's all.

So by some magical force the Tonkor, an elemental weapon, would somehow beat out the Soma Prime, a physical weapon, in a single target situation, where there is resistance to elemental damage? Literally everything about that boss came together to kick the Tonkor in the teeth, and you're somehow surprised that a physical weapon outdid it, in an area where physical weapons had the advantage? Are you just trolling? It feels like you're just trolling.

4 hours ago, cx-dave said:

. Your math in itself isn't wrong. The problem is that it's based on an incomplete model. You attempt theorize your way out of the Tonkor, without actually using it simply doesn't work.

This is going to bring up some extremely specific circumstances and irrelevant parts, isn't it?

4 hours ago, cx-dave said:

For instance, your math doesn't take into account the travel time of the projectiles, ramp up behavior of the Soma P fire rate, and timing in the game play. You aren't just standing still and have the opportunity to constantly land shots. Compared to the Tonkor it's far easier to hit a target with the Soma P.

The travel time of the projectile is completely irrelevant, since we're comparing DPS values to a fairly stationary boss. It really doesn't change much of anything. The ramp up speed of the Soma is also irrelevant since it really just makes your argument worse, providing even more factors in the very niche situation where you're fighting one enemy at a time that would give it an advantage over the Tonkor. Hitting targets is especially useless because it wouldn't change that all of the above is true anyway.

4 hours ago, cx-dave said:

, of course the Tonkor at some point is going to be the best or one of the best choices to kill an enemy. So, are many other weapons at a given point. Over all it's balanced out well enough not to make the Tonkor better or best in all or even the majority of situations.

This is what happens when you ignore what everyone else has said to toot your own horn. The majority of situations, especially the majority of situations that people play for extended periods of time (endless missions) have large groups. The Tonkor excels at fighting large groups. All launchers do, but the Tonkor is objectively the best to do so with. So saying that the Tonkor is balanced because there is one specific enemy where it is not the objectively best choice is just ridiculous, because it excels in most of the rest of the game.

cx-dave · April 15, 2016

3 hours ago, TheBrsrkr said:

So by some magical force the Tonkor, an elemental weapon, would somehow beat out the Soma Prime, a physical weapon, in a single target situation, where there is resistance to elemental damage? Literally everything about that boss came together to kick the Tonkor in the teeth, and you're somehow surprised that a physical weapon outdid it, in an area where physical weapons had the advantage? Are you just trolling? It feels like you're just trolling.

This is going to bring up some extremely specific circumstances and irrelevant parts, isn't it?

The travel time of the projectile is completely irrelevant, since we're comparing DPS values to a fairly stationary boss. It really doesn't change much of anything. The ramp up speed of the Soma is also irrelevant since it really just makes your argument worse, providing even more factors in the very niche situation where you're fighting one enemy at a time that would give it an advantage over the Tonkor. Hitting targets is especially useless because it wouldn't change that all of the above is true anyway.

This is what happens when you ignore what everyone else has said to toot your own horn. The majority of situations, especially the majority of situations that people play for extended periods of time (endless missions) have large groups. The Tonkor excels at fighting large groups. All launchers do, but the Tonkor is objectively the best to do so with. So saying that the Tonkor is balanced because there is one specific enemy where it is not the objectively best choice is just ridiculous, because it excels in most of the rest of the game.

Your Tonkor must be special then.

...and suddenly my examples are extremely specific. Did you make all the other examples I provided and that you replied to disappear from memory?

You might be comparing raw DPS, but I'm not. I clearly explained that actual in-game damage depends on various factors besides just hitting your target.

All your have to do is wait until your large groups of cannon fodder rank up. The Tonkor will then gradually become less effective again.

Edited April 15, 2016 by cx-dave
removed bad joke

TheLexiConArtist · April 15, 2016

10 hours ago, cx-dave said:

I chose to largely ignore your irrelevant MK-1 Braton vs Amprex vs Sortie Lephantis. The Amprex like any other pure elemental weapon would have done next to no damage (went in with a Quanta Vandal with close to 7K Corrosive, saw only numbers around 68 popping up on Sortie Lephatis). The Tonkor on the other hand was still viable in this situation. It just got beaten by the Soma P. That's all.

Your math in itself isn't wrong. The problem is that it's based on an incomplete model. You attempt theorize your way out of the Tonkor, without actually using it simply doesn't work.

For instance, your math doesn't take into account the travel time of the projectiles, ramp up behavior of the Soma P fire rate, and timing in the game play. You aren't just standing still and have the opportunity to constantly land shots. Compared to the Tonkor it's far easier to hit a target with the Soma P.

During hectic situations you still can aim relatively effective with the Soma P. With the Tonkor on the other hand, it's a case of diminishing returns when a specific enemy has to be hit. Additionally, the enemy wasn't susceptible to damage at all times. With the Soma P you might have been able to get a few extra shots in after dogging enemy fire, which wouldn't have been possible with the Tonkor in the same situation. A miss with the Tonkor is also far more detrimental to your damage output compared to the Soma P.

Yes, of course the Tonkor at some point is going to be the best or one of the best choices to kill an enemy. So, are many other weapons at a given point. Over all it's balanced out well enough not to make the Tonkor better or best in all or even the majority of situations.

You don't get to declare the relevancy. It was MK1 Braton vs. Amprex, and that proportion is relevant to the Elemental Enhancement property in order to make one beat the other. Which was around the same as the resistance proportion required to make the Tonkor still beat a Soma Prime on Lephantis assuming it took any blast at all.

If you want to talk about incomplete mathematical models, how about your ignorance of the weighting factors in the whole equation? "Soma wins due to fire rate" wouldn't be accurate if the Tonkor's damage per shot was 8 times higher. Which it more than accomplishes outside of elemental resistance. But I already addressed those combined factors by using the algorithms for Damage per Shot, Burst DPS and Sustained DPS which I have shown and nobody has yet seen fit to contest.

"Travel time of projectiles": irrelevant, does not prevent fire rate (unlike a Penta where you cannot fire a new projectile until your first has reached its target point and been manually detonated, since that control is its only redeeming factor compared to the Tonkor)

Spooling-up fire rate of the Soma: works against your argument by further reducing the expected DPS (meaning the proportional elemental resistance would have to be even larger for the Tonkor to not still win)

Limited window of vulnerbility / staying on-the-move: works against your argument as these factors favour burst DPS equation and the lower rate of fire weapon respectively, as you only need to aim and fire two shots instead of 200. In the burst scenario, the blast (elemental) only had to do 6% of its natural damage to outweigh the Soma's damage after the projectile Puncture was accounted for.

Missing: The chance of missing one bullet with a fire rate of 15 is astronomically improbable. If you're going to miss with the Soma, you're missing several bullets, which means the net effect of 'a miss' evens out just fine with that one Tonkor grenade miss. Which is, once again, made less likely comparitive to other projectile weapons thanks to that aim guide.

You know what else we didn't factor? Lephantis' health-type weaknesses. With Blast at 50% and Slash at 25%, the basic benefits from a Soma equate to 12.5% damage increase, while the Blast proportion of Tonkor damage adds 40.625% to the whole, before that pesky resistance, and makes the elemental to physical proportion 7.5 : 1 (physical is 13.333% of damage) even on Lephantis. Again, almost entirely elemental is still accurate.

So, before that elemental modifier the Tonkor's burst is roughly 1394, and its sustained is roughly 464.65. Of these, 13/15 is elemental. The Soma Prime's burst is 324 and its sustained is roughly 264.5.

New elemental resistances required to even the stats: ~92.12% (burst), ~53.25% (sustained). Due to the greater elemental damage proportion, it's eased off very slightly in favour of the Soma Prime's physical benefits.. but <2% of a required resistance value in difference is barely even significant at all. Especially in light of that lessened Soma DPS from spoolup time.

Still left unmentioned: Puncture damage armour penetration for non-4CP situations. Those aren't hard-maths-able since I don't know the scaling shenanigans offhand, but in a situation where the element damage is non-competing anyway, the Tonkor reliant entirely on Puncture projectile impact I would imagine to once again benefit more than the Soma's only partial Puncturing damage proportion.

Hard evidence once again proves that even in its worst-case scenario, a single target with artificially large elemental resistances, the Tonkor still competes with 'next-best' things, and can even still outperform depending on the actual values involved.

Edited April 15, 2016 by EDYinnit

TheBrsrkr · April 15, 2016

58 minutes ago, cx-dave said:

Your Tonkor must be special then.

.

Now let's look at a Soma Prime, shall we?

This is the most generic build I could find. And we're going to exclude elemental damage because that's just how I roll, to make this even more ridiculous. Now you take those numbers, add them together to get 59 damage thereabouts, multiply that by 6.6 on crit to get a little less than 390 damage per shot, for 19 point bloody 5 shots a second. Not even gonna bother with the math for that one. Even with the ramp up time and the chance not to crit, that's still many times more damage being done per second to a single target than the 2 shots of the Tonkor. Tell me more about how my Tonkor is special.

2 hours ago, cx-dave said:

...and suddenly my examples are extremely specific. Did you make all the other examples I provided and that you replied to disappear from memory?

They are all equally meaningless, because most of the game is STILL spent fighting large groups of enemies. Any and all endless missions. Mobile defense. Any infested mission. Trials, where you don't even have to kill anything. Even in those game modes where you do end up fighting mostly singular enemies, the AI makes them group up, and groups form up anyway seemingly at random. The only modes where fighting groups isn't an imperative is Spy missions, where sneaking is more important than shooting anyway, Deception, and even then you can end up fighting groups of enemies, and low level exterminates, where you shouldn't have either of those weapons because they were designed for players who aren't able to deal with groups.

2 hours ago, cx-dave said:

You might be comparing raw DPS, but I'm not. I clearly explained that actual in-game damage depends on various factors besides just hitting your target.

Travel time barely affects anything, since the Tonkor has a radius of what, 5 meters? It's not massive damage to one enemy, it's massive damage to everything within 5 meters of the original target. This effect would be devastating whether it's hitscan or not. Accuracy would be a problem if it didn't have an aim guide and predictable spread. Timing your shot would be near second nature with something you play with all the time, and only really applies to Lephantis. You know, a specific niche. Raw DPS is what matters, because how often do people miss in Warframe? Actually miss? We assume you have some kind of skill if you're fighting Lephantis, in a Sortie no less. This is just useless fluff around the real issue.

2 hours ago, cx-dave said:

. All your have to do is wait until your large groups of cannon fodder rank up. The Tonkor will then gradually become less effective again.

Along with everything else,and the Tonkor would still be more effective than them in that situation.

TheLexiConArtist · April 15, 2016

3 hours ago, cx-dave said:

Your Tonkor must be special then.

21 minutes ago, TheBrsrkr said:

Now let's look at a Soma Prime, shall we?

This is the most generic build I could find. And we're going to exclude elemental damage because that's just how I roll, to make this even more ridiculous. Now you take those numbers, add them together to get 59 damage thereabouts, multiply that by 6.6 on crit to get a little less than 390 damage per shot, for 19 point bloody 5 shots a second. Not even gonna bother with the math for that one. Even with the ramp up time and the chance not to crit, that's still many times more damage being done per second to a single target than the 2 shots of the Tonkor. Tell me more about how my Tonkor is special.

You know why he clipped out the mods in that?

http://warframe-builder.com/Primary_Weapons/Builder/Tonkor/t_30_00000000_132-1-5-133-3-5-137-0-10-140-6-5-141-2-5-150-5-10-159-4-5-451-7-5_137-14-132-15-141-11-133-11-159-9-150-16-140-9-451-11/en/2-0-70

He has Piercing Caliber on the bloody thing to inflate the puncture damage proportion artificially.

Never mind the fact that the physical damage even then is still a paltry 13.6% of the elemental whole, while your Soma build there has 32.3% physical, a factor of 2.37 times the physical proportion...

Edited April 15, 2016 by EDYinnit

Cpl_Facehugger · April 15, 2016

On Monday, March 14, 2016 at 1:28 PM, Drasiel said:

The tonkor is an outlier and needs to be adjusted. It's baby's first rpg: safe, fast, easy, brainless. There are a couple of ways to deal with this, and I'm going to touch lightly on the other launcher weapons because they could use a bit of spit shine.

Tonkor? Easy Mode? What? I've lost count of the number of times I've had Tonkor grenades go sailing between some grineer's legs to detonate harmlessly on the other side of the room. Compared to every other launcher, Tonkor requires tons of skill because unlike Ogris it sails in a ballistic arc and unlike Penta you can't detonate it at will. (And unlike Torrid you don't get persistent AOE.) The base premise here seems faulty. Tonkor is balanced by the fact that it rewards good aim with damage and punishes bad aim with a tiny magazine and fairly long reload speed.

What Tonkor has amongst its siblings is damage and a lack of self damage. That's basically it, and Tonkor pays for those two traits by having a much higher skill ceiling. This makes it have a niche in high level play, but its flaws are even more punishing in high level play because enemy damage output is such that if you miss, you're clemmed by the return fire. In low level play Tonkor's DPS is superflous - when a Penta oneshots your enemies, there's little reason to use Tonkor unless you're bad at judging grenade distance. Tonkor is also at a disadvantage against nullifiers in a way that basically no other launcher is since it just bounces off the bubbles instead of detonating and can't be detonated on the floor.

And honestly, I've seen exactly this same argument you're making here applied to both Ogris and Penta in the past. And even stuff like Kunai back in the distant mists of damage 1.0. I think it' a fundamentally flawed argument because Tonkor and other weapons like it are extremely dependent on player skill. A hypothetical MLG uberplayer who never misses will indeed get great performance out of the Tonkor. But this is the concept working as designed because a balanced game rewards player skill. A normal player? That's an awful lot of grenades sailing off to detonate harmlessly on the other end of the room. Tonkor on paper is capable of tremendous DPS but in practice it's a lot more varied and less reliable.

Like, skimming this thread I see a lot of "this gun is too easy, you can easily wipe out a whole group of enemies at once!" arguments and I have to boggle my eyes at this because it feels like everyone who says that has never actually tried to use the Tonkor. Now I'm not the most ~skilled~ player, but there are tons of times when I miss with Tonkor - sometimes I misjudge a shot because I'm taking a snapshot immediately, sometimes I misjudge the bounce... And each miss is hugely punishing because of that two round magazine. Tonkor's effectiveness is so varied that I don't even use it in sorties any more unless I'm lulzing around because things like Vay Hek and Synoid Simulor give me more reliable damage output and I'm generally interested in completing sorties as fast as possible. I know technically every gun is dependent on hitting the enemy, but I can think of basically no other weapon that's as hard to hit with as Tonkor.

What Tonkor gives me is fun via a risky but rewarding play style that takes skill to execute reliably. So seeing a thread that's basic premise involves taking away that fun and isfounded on arguments wholly at odds with my experience both using the Tonkor and being in squads where it's used makes me sad. (P.S. I really have to wonder how you're getting outkilled by a Tonkor user in most content. Tonkor only starts to pull ahead in my experience when level scales so high that hitscan assault rifles w/shred fall off. Otherwise I'm usually beating my clanmates with their Tonkors for kills with my hugely OP Braton Prime in starchart content, and with my Soma Prime in everything up to high level void/sortie 3 content because by the time the Tonkor grenade hits, I've already gunned down the whole enemy group via shred.)

DeadlyPeanutt · April 15, 2016

18 hours ago, Icy_Ymir said:

" If you don't like the weapons, don't play them " - and well, i don't play with tonkor, actually. But you're missing the point. The problem is OTHER PLAYERS WITH TONKORS, not me. THEY are playing with that OP thing, ruining the experience of every player without a tonkor.

are you required to play in the same squad as people who use tonkors? no

are you are free to start a squad with any stipulations you like? yes

are you free to play with a squad of people who don't play weapons you don't like, or solo? yes

would that allow other players to play the weapons they enjoy (such as tonkor)? yes

what you're saying is, in essence, 'I don't like tonkor. And because tonkor annoys me when i happen to be on a squad with someone who plays it, i don't want anyone to be able to play it.'

wow, that's pretty narrow minded; since i don't enjoy the weapon, no one should be able to use it.

keep in mind there are more people using tonkor as it is and enjoying it than people who dislike the weapon. so, who's opinion should win out?

please don't say your opinion should win out because you're always right, more skilled than other players, more knowledgeable than other players, or you can make up meaningless statistics to more or less support your case that tonkor is a very good weapon

again, have respect for players who enjoy this weapon.

and for anyone who doesn't think that 'enjoyment' or 'fun' has any part in this conversation...

i have news for you: people PLAY computer games to have fun. if you take away a weapon that they have fun with, they'll be upset

(i assume you don't play computer games to crunch numbers and debate endlessly about which weapon annoys you)

Edited April 15, 2016 by DeadlyPeanutt

TheLexiConArtist · April 15, 2016

8 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

Tonkor? Easy Mode? What? I've lost count of the number of times I've had Tonkor grenades go sailing between some grineer's legs to detonate harmlessly on the other side of the room. Compared to every other launcher, Tonkor requires tons of skill because unlike Ogris it sails in a ballistic arc and unlike Penta you can't detonate it at will. (And unlike Torrid you don't get persistent AOE.) The base premise here seems faulty. Tonkor is balanced by the fact that it rewards good aim with damage and punishes bad aim with a tiny magazine and fairly long reload speed.

Penta's manual detonation limits rate of fire depending on range (you can't fire again until you detonate the first without wasting the second, unless setting traps preemptively).

Tonkor has an aim guide, unlike every other projectile weapon.

The reload speed is average at worst (compare to 2.5 and 3 second reloads for other weapons such as Ogris and Torid respectively).

8 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

What Tonkor has amongst its siblings is damage and a lack of self damage. That's basically it, and Tonkor pays for those two traits by having a much higher skill ceiling. This makes it have a niche in high level play, but its flaws are even more punishing in high level play because enemy damage output is such that if you miss, you're clemmed by the return fire. In low level play Tonkor's DPS is superflous - when a Penta oneshots your enemies, there's little reason to use Tonkor unless you're bad at judging grenade distance. Tonkor is also at a disadvantage against nullifiers in a way that basically no other launcher is since it just bounces off the bubbles instead of detonating and can't be detonated on the floor.

Your enemy damage output "risk" on a miss is what other weapons have to deal with while hitting. The reward of a Tonkor hit far outweighs the risks of a Tonkor miss (and the odds are disfavourable to missing; aim guide again.)

Even in lower levels, the Tonkor is advantageous over the Penta due to its ability to be used at any range up to and including point-blank, and having no burden other than fire and forget. You don't have to watch a projectile in motion to time a manual detonation, you fire, then move to aim for the next group.

The Tonkor's damage output allows a mod slot sacrificed to a utility mod like Adhesive Blast, allowing you to deal inordinately large damage and stick it to the floor even if your timing of the delayed explosion and control of the bounce are under par enough to disallow you from rolling it to the floor. It still explodes after coming to a rest once bounced off a Nullifier or Arctic Eximus protective globe.

8 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

And honestly, I've seen exactly this same argument you're making here applied to both Ogris and Penta in the past. And even stuff like Kunai back in the distant mists of damage 1.0. I think it' a fundamentally flawed argument because Tonkor and other weapons like it are extremely dependent on player skill. A hypothetical MLG uberplayer who never misses will indeed get great performance out of the Tonkor. But this is the concept working as designed because a balanced game rewards player skill. A normal player? That's an awful lot of grenades sailing off to detonate harmlessly on the other end of the room. Tonkor on paper is capable of tremendous DPS but in practice it's a lot more varied and less reliable

If the Tonkor was so very unreliable and skill-dependant it would not be predominantly used by players of wildly variant MR, skill levels, and levels of familiarity with the game in general. The reason you no longer see arguments for the Soma Prime and Boltor Prime being too powerful, for example, is the fact that the current outliers, of which Tonkor is the most egregious, renders both of them mediocre despite zero nerfs being made to take them down from their previous lofty spot.

8 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

Like, skimming this thread I see a lot of "this gun is too easy, you can easily wipe out a whole group of enemies at once!" arguments and I have to boggle my eyes at this because it feels like everyone who says that has never actually tried to use the Tonkor. Now I'm not the most ~skilled~ player, but there are tons of times when I miss with Tonkor - sometimes I misjudge a shot because I'm taking a snapshot immediately, sometimes I misjudge the bounce... And each miss is hugely punishing because of that two round magazine. Tonkor's effectiveness is so varied that I don't even use it in sorties any more unless I'm lulzing around because things like Vay Hek and Synoid Simulor give me more reliable damage output and I'm generally interested in completing sorties as fast as possible. I know technically every gun is dependent on hitting the enemy, but I can think of basically no other weapon that's as hard to hit with as Tonkor.

Benefit of hit > drawback of miss. Missed grenades still have a second chance to deal damage. The SySim is another outlier but is not the focus of this thread (nor would the self-damage argument in particular necessarily apply, as it is not conventional ordnance and therefore isn't "cheating" the category)

For what anecdotes are worth, I don't use the Tonkor outside of Simulacrum testing and when the Randomiser gives it to me, but I can still hit most of the time. Someone who actually does use it regularly should be even better with their target-leading and aim.

8 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

What Tonkor gives me is fun via a risky but rewarding play style that takes skill to execute reliably. So seeing a thread that's basic premise involves taking away that fun and isfounded on arguments wholly at odds with my experience both using the Tonkor and being in squads where it's used makes me sad. (P.S. I really have to wonder how you're getting outkilled by a Tonkor user in most content. Tonkor only starts to pull ahead in my experience when level scales so high that hitscan assault rifles w/shred fall off. Otherwise I'm usually beating my clanmates with their Tonkors for kills with my hugely OP Braton Prime in starchart content, and with my Soma Prime in everything up to high level void/sortie 3 content because by the time the Tonkor grenade hits, I've already gunned down the whole enemy group via shred.)

Anecdotal. Arguments in this thread based on hard logic and mathematics have proven the imbalance and negative impacts that occur from others' Tonkor usage.

3 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

are you required to play in the same squad as people who use tonkors? no

are you are free to start a squad with any stipulations you like? yes

are you free to play with a squad of people who don't play weapons you don't like, or solo? yes

would that allow other players to play the weapons they enjoy (such as tonkor)? yes

what you're saying is, in essence, 'I don't like tonkor. And because tonkor annoys me when i happen to be on a squad with someone who plays it, i don't want anyone to be able to play it.'

wow, that's pretty narrow minded; since i don't enjoy the weapon, no one should be able to use it.

keep in mind there are more people using tonkor as it is and enjoying it than people who dislike the weapon. so, who's opinion should win out?

please don't say your opinion should win out because you're always right, more skilled than other players, more knowledgeable than other players, or you can make up meaningless statistics to more or less support your case that tonkor is a very good weapon

again, have respect for players who enjoy this weapon.

and for anyone who doesn't think that 'enjoyment' or 'fun' has any part in this conversation...

i have news for you: people PLAY computer games to have fun. if you take away a weapon that they have fun with, they'll be upset

(i assume you don't play computer games to crunch numbers and debate endlessly about which weapon annoys you)

Are you required to play in the same squad as people who don't want to see a Tonkor? No.

Are you free to start a squad in which you make it clear the Tonkor will be a factor? Yes.

Are you free to play with a squad of people who don't mind the weapons you don't like, or solo? Yes.

Would that allow other players to avoid the weapons they don't enjoy (such as Tonkor)? Yes.

What you're saying is, in essence, "I like the Tonkor. And because I like the Tonkor, I should be able to play it despite it detracting from the gameplay experience of the rest of my squad".

Wow, that's pretty narrow-minded; since I enjoy the weapon, nobody else's opinion matters.

Keep in mind that more people using Tonkor as it is does not define whether they like it nor does it define what is right; argument by popularity is fallacious, and many of those would happily move onto the next best thing introduced or remaining after a Tonkor rebalance.

Please don't say your opinion is right because of your personal preferences, ignorance of mathematically proven fact, and logical fallacies employed to try to make out that the Tonkor is anything but an imbalanced and unhealthy weapon.

Again, have respect for players who don't enjoy this weapon

And for anyone who thinks that 'enjoyment' or 'fun' have parts in this conversation...

I have news for you: People PLAY computer games to have fun. If your weapon takes away a portion of that fun reliably, they'll be upset.

(I assume you play a multiplayer game to enjoy yourself as part of a group, not to ruin other people's fun with an imbalanced weapon.)

(PSN)RenovaKunumaru · April 15, 2016

29 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

are you required to play in the same squad as p.........

This sounds much like the argument people have with Excalibur and EB.
I agree with you. If they don't like it play something else.

I honestly think that Explosive Blast damage should not do the self damage but instead cause stagger depending on the Tennos health. 3 sec, 2 sec or 1 sec stagger.

Of course having rocket jump grants immunity to this with the Tonkor, but puts all of the launchers into play.

Edited April 15, 2016 by (PS4)RenovaKunumaru

cx-dave · April 15, 2016

2 hours ago, EDYinnit said:

Hard evidence once again proves that even in its worst-case scenario, a single target with artificially large elemental resistances, the Tonkor still competes with 'next-best' things, and can even still outperform depending on the actual values involved.

First you call me stupid because it's so obvious that the Soma P would win from the Tonkor against Sortie Lephantis. You even go as far as making a nonsensical analogy between an MK-1 Braton vs Amprex in order to prove your point. Next, wow the Tonkor still makes you poop your pants cause it's OP regardless of elemental resistance.

1 hour ago, EDYinnit said:

Never mind the fact that the physical damage even then is still a paltry 13.6% of the elemental whole, while your Soma build there has 32.3% physical, a factor of 2.37 times the physical proportion...

1 hour ago, EDYinnit said:

He has Piercing Caliber on the bloody thing to inflate the puncture damage proportion artificially.

It's artificial now to mod a specific feature in a weapon when you need it...as in I shouldn't have used Fanged Fusillade on the Soma P against Sortie Lephantis either? The enemy doesn't care what the percentage proportions are of your damage. 1346 Puncture damage = 1346 Puncture damage. Put that into your calculator while I play Warframe :)

TheLexiConArtist · April 15, 2016

26 minutes ago, cx-dave said:

First you call me stupid because it's so obvious that the Soma P would win from the Tonkor against Sortie Lephantis. You even go as far as making a nonsensical analogy between an MK-1 Braton vs Amprex in order to prove your point. Next, wow the Tonkor still makes you poop your pants cause it's OP regardless of elemental resistance.

It's artificial now to mod a specific feature in a weapon when you need it...as in I shouldn't have used Fanged Fusillade on the Soma P against Sortie Lephantis either? The enemy doesn't care what the percentage proportions are of your damage. 1346 Puncture damage = 1346 Puncture damage. Put that into your calculator while I play Warframe :)

If Sortie Lephantis was a Physical Enhancement mission, then the Tonkor would win. If Sortie Lephantis was anything other than Elemental Enhancement, then the Tonkor would win. If the Elemental Enhancement resistance fails to surpass at least 53% up to 92%, then the TONKOR. STILL. WINS.

This is not proof of an utterly broken weapon because there's an infinitesimally small situation where it only falls short of a previously considered overpowered weapon? https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-texas-sharpshooter

It's artificial to mod a specific feature in order to claim it as a natural fact, i.e. that the Tonkor is not primarily based on elemental damage. That's like comparing a Heavy Caliber and tantamount unusable bow's damage to the damage of a normally built, non-HeavyCal different bow and saying that makes the first bow better than the second.

Besides, the proportion is still relevant, Mr. Sharpshooter, because it's still the upper limitation on damage that isn't subject to the very specific enhanced resistance of that mission. Again, you tried to skew the proportions to make your Tonkor not mainly elemental.. and failed miserably because you still achieved a far lower value than a Soma built with three Elemental and no specifically Physical mods.

Your Tonkor: 1346 damage, 85% crit chance, 5.5 multiplier, 2 mag, 2 firerate, 2 reload: Burst: 12988.9 Sustained: 4329.6

Brsrkr's Soma P: 89 phys. damage, 75% crit chance, 6 multiplier, 200 mag, 19.5 firerate, 3 reload: Burst: 9024.6 Sustained: 6982.2

Let's look at Fanged Fusillade on that Soma build instead of an element:

That Soma P: 94.4 phys damage, 75% crit chance, 6 multiplier, 200 mag, 19.5 firerate, 3 reload: Burst: 9572.2 Sustained: 7405.9

So you can pervert a Tonkor to still beat (in burst) or achieve 58.5% of sustained damage of a wholly physical damage based weapon with the projectile impact alone and a much lower physical damage proportion.

And this somehow argues against the Tonkor being horribly, horribly imbalanced?

Edited April 15, 2016 by EDYinnit

TheBrsrkr · April 15, 2016

31 minutes ago, cx-dave said:

First you call me stupid

Where? No, I'm tired of this. I want you to quote EXACTLY where he called you stupid. Honestly. This is the fourth time this thread people are pulling this out of their rear end. Stick to what he's saying, not what you feel.

33 minutes ago, cx-dave said:

. You even go as far as making a nonsensical analogy between an MK-1 Braton vs Amprex in order to prove your point.

Saying it's nonsensical is not the same as saying you didn't understand it. The Amprex is a continuous elemental weapon. The Braton is a physical high fire rate weapon. In a situation where elemental damage is drastically reduced, the Braton would be a better choice to fight with. Does this somehow make the Braton a better weapon than the Amprex? You are adding very niche parameters into a simple equation and then taking your inflated data and parading it about like it's proof of anything.

40 minutes ago, cx-dave said:

. Next, wow the Tonkor still makes you poop your pants cause it's OP regardless of elemental resistance.

Do you know what a meaningless statement is? Read this until it makes sense.

42 minutes ago, cx-dave said:

It's artificial now to mod a specific feature in a weapon when you need it...as in I shouldn't have used Fanged Fusillade on the Soma P against Sortie Lephantis either? I

It's artificial to mod a feature that is not the main focus of the weapon, as the main focus of the weapon, and then claim that it was this way all along. That's just dishonest. And you did so intentionally.

45 minutes ago, cx-dave said:

The enemy doesn't care what the percentage proportions are of your damage. 1346 Puncture damage = 1346 Puncture damage. Put that into your calculator while I play Warframe :)

Think hard about armor and flesh resistances, crit, fire rate and clip size and try again.

(PSN)xKAIOWAx · April 15, 2016

When someone need write a post with same size than Lord of the Rings, to defend one point, probably he s totally wrong .

Ogris and Penta are good? Very good, very! Why we dont see lot players using ? Because isnt for childrens, are dangerous and lethal in wrong hands, but still goods. There s no logical argument to defend tonkor without a lethal penalty ,is ridiculous a granade launcher with extremely high critical dmg without a proportional penalty ,exactly as Ogris and Penta

Cpl_Facehugger · April 15, 2016

1 hour ago, EDYinnit said:

Penta's manual detonation limits rate of fire depending on range (you can't fire again until you detonate the first without wasting the second, unless setting traps preemptively).

With a grenade launcher ROF is fairly unimportant though, and what you lose in ROF you gain in accuracy (ie I can detonate a penta grenade even on a near miss instantly; a near miss with a tonkor does nothing unless the grenade happens to land within range of the enemy - which sometimes happens but oftentimes doesn't. Even when it does we're talking, what, 2-3 seconds for the 'nade to detonate unless someone steps on it?)

Quote

Tonkor has an aim guide, unlike

every other projectile weapon.

The aim guide doesn't help much. Grenades don't always go where the guide says they will for a variety of reasons, and in actual play there's a ton of variance with things like cover and terrain that can negatively impact the grenade's accuracy over and above what a more conventional weapon will suffer from. Worse, with the pace of warframe as it stands there's not a whole lot of time to line up a shot with the aim guide. It's possible, but it's certainly not what you're talking it up to be.

Quote

The reload speed is average at worst (compare to 2.5 and 3 second reloads for other weapons such as Ogris and Torid respectively).

This is exactly what I mean when I say you aren't really playing tonkor much. Yes on paper its reload speed is average, but you fail to take into account the fact that you're reloading much more frequently, so the reload ends up being a lot more punishing in practice. Ogris' 2.5s reload is far less debilitating because it has a five round magazine and lower effective ROF; by the time you've used up all five rounds in most cases you'll have a lull to reload.

Quote

Your enemy damage output "risk" on a miss is what other weapons have to deal with

while hitting. The reward of a Tonkor hit far outweighs the risks of a Tonkor miss (and the odds are disfavourable to missing; aim guide again.)

Every weapon has to "deal" with enemy DPS at high levels, duh. That's kind of obvious. The reason I bring it up here is because tonkor's two round magazine means that misses are comparatively more punishing in this environment because that's more time you spend reloading rather than shooting or CCing.

Quote

Even in lower levels, the Tonkor is advantageous over the Penta due to its ability to be used at any range up to and including point-blank, and having no burden other than fire and forget. You don't have to watch a projectile in motion to time a manual detonation, you fire, then move to aim for the next group.

In lower levels the only strength of the tonkor is the lack of self damage since its DPS just ends up overkilling. But there's also the two round magazine which in practice dramatically reduces killing rate for low tier scrubs. Penta will kill more effectively in general in that situation due to the bigger mag and comparative ease of hitting due to remote detonation. Secura penta is even better for this situation because of the syndicate effect and even bigger mag. The only downside to penta for low level is self-kills, something which the remote detonation makes considerably more difficult than, say, ogris.

Quote

The Tonkor's damage output allows a mod slot sacrificed to a utility mod like Adhesive Blast, allowing you to deal inordinately large damage and stick it to the floor even if your timing of the delayed explosion and control of the bounce are under par enough to disallow you from rolling it to the floor. It still explodes after coming to a rest once bounced off a Nullifier or Arctic Eximus protective globe.

Last I looked, adhesive blast was widely considered trash in the meta because it it slows down killing by dint of removing the on contact detonation behavior and replacing it with a timed one. With you giving up damage for that "advantage" In high level play where the Tonkor's main advantage actually matters, lopping off a 90% elemental damage mod for that situation sounds like a sucker's bet for the same reason that the fire resist mod is not part of the meta outside of extremely niche uses like that tac alert with nothing but napalms.

Quote

If the Tonkor was so very unreliable and skill-dependant it would not be predominantly used by players of wildly variant MR, skill levels, and levels of familiarity with the game in general. The reason you no longer see arguments for the Soma Prime and Boltor Prime being too powerful, for example, is the fact that the current outliers, of which Tonkor is the most egregious, renders both of them

mediocre despite zero nerfs being made to take them down from their previous lofty spot.

I have never actually seen it predominantly used by players of widely variant MR, skill levels, and levels of familiarity with the game in general. When I pug I end up with a huge variety of guns, and tonkors are fairly rare even in sorties. When I run with clannies I see it almost never unless we're doing themed runs (ie all grineer guns) or sometimes sorties. This is of course anecdotal, but your example is as well, so I hope you're fine with me just summarily dismissing any claims as to how commonly it's used, considering how you're dismissing my anecdotes while trying to claim yours are somehow valid. DE hasn't released any "by the numbers" figures recently, but IIRC the most kills made were with dread and torid at the time they released the last one. Granted that may have been before the tonkor was released since for someone who's been around since U7 like me weapon releases blend together, but the point I'm making is that there's basically no hard data on usage outside DE servers. In my experience, Tonkor is nowhere near as commonly used as, say, Synoid Gammacor was back in the day. If anything, I see more shotguns in general.

Heck, when I do raids it's generally hek/tigris/soma (sometimes boltor) or go home. Nobody brings tonkors.

Quote

Benefit of hit > drawback of miss. Missed grenades still have a second chance to deal damage. The SySim is another outlier but is not the focus of this thread (nor would the self-damage argument

in particular necessarily apply, as it is not conventional ordnance and therefore isn't "cheating" the category)

Benefit of hit > drawback of miss in basically every gun, bro. That's what makes guns worth using. This argument is kind of funny to me considering we're discussing a gun with a magazine of 2 with arcing, bouncy grenades that only explode on impact or after a few seconds. Yeah missed shots can potentially deal damage (like every explosive ever), but that's not exactly unique to the tonkor.

Quote

For what anecdotes are worth, I don't use the Tonkor outside of Simulacrum testing and when the Randomiser gives it to me, but I can still hit most of the time. Someone who actually does use it regularly should be even better with their target-leading and aim.

Cool story, bro. I've, meanwhile, used tonkor quite a bit more than that in actual missions and I've found a lot of times when I miss. I've seen people use tonkors ever since they were released and I've never once been outcompeted for kills by this supposedly overpowering weapon.

Quote

Anecdotal. Arguments in this thread based on hard logic and mathematics have proven the imbalance and negative impacts that occur from others' Tonkor usage.

Dude, the "hard logic" and "mathematics" here in this thread is basically trying to distill an incredibly complex situation into something that can be handled by a simple DPS calculation without taking real world (insofar as anything in warfarm is real at least) variables into account. On paper tonkor is very powerful but in reality it's nowhere near as good as you're saying, and anyone who actually has experience with it knows this. It's powerful enough to be in the meta despite its disadvantages, but it's no prenerf synoid gammacor.

Edited April 15, 2016 by Cpl_Facehugger

DeadlyPeanutt · April 15, 2016

i've used syllogistic logic to summarize the arguments thus far in this thread:

a basic syllogism to sum up OPs arguments:
weapon X annoys me*
all weapons that annoy me should be nerfed
therefore, weapon X should be nerfed
*insert paragraphs upon paragraps of rationalizations as to why weapon X annoys me

Thus we have, in this case:
Tonkor annoys me.*
all weapons that annoy me should be nerfed.
therefore, Tonkor should be nerfed!
*insert paragraphs upon paragraphs of rationalizations as to why Tonkor annoys me

another example:
it annoys me when other players enjoy weapon X*
all things that annoy me are bad
Therefore other players enjoying weapon X is bad.
*insert paragraphs upon paragraps of rationalizations as to why weapon X annoys me

finally,
weapon X annoys me but is fun for other players
all things that players enjoy are good
therefore, players enjoying different weapons is good.

we can see that, prima facie, the last syllogism is the correct answer, purely based on Occam's Razor.

another problem tidily solved!
no need to thank me!

TheBrsrkr · April 15, 2016

7 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

i've used syllogistic logic

Read: I made arbitrary points

11 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

summarize the arguments thus far in this thread:

Read:to create strawmen of every argument in this thread that disagrees with me.

13 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

a basic syllogism to sum up OPs arguments:

Which we haven't talked about or mentioned in any way for about 20 pages.......

14 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

iweapon X annoys me*

Along with the other 0-3 people in the squad. Basically tack this on every time he says it.

17 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

all weapons that annoy me and the three other players with me on a multiplayer game should be nerfed

I think he left out that part. No worries.

19 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

Therefore, weapon X should be nerfed

See how it suddenly makes a lot more sense with context?

20 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

*insert paragraphs upon paragraps of rationalizations as to why weapon X annoys me

Rrad: insert paragraphs of arguments I do not understand or cannot refute outside of strawmen I create

21 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

another example strawman:it annoys me when other players enjoy weapon X*

I think he meant used, since 99.100% of the Warframe population don't care about what you personally enjoy and instead care about their personal experiences with you. Which are negatively affected by weapon X.

25 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

all things that annoy me outside of my influence, counter or directive are bad

Is anyone else seeing a pattern here? It's almost like he's intentionally leaving out important parts of the argument in order to make them sound stupid! Nah, he couldn't be that dishonest. You can make the same mistake twice.

28 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

Therefore other players enjoying weapon X is bad.

Replace "enjoying" with the bit I entered before, and watch in amazement as the argument suddenly makes a lot more sense! It's like magic!

30 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

.*insert paragraphs upon paragraps of rationalizations as to why weapon X annoys me

Read: paragraphs of arguments I have no valid counter to, therefore I will simplify them to a point of absurdity only I can understand.

32 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

finally,

Finally!

33 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

,weapon X annoys me but is fun for other players

Read:my personal enjoyment is more important than the balance of the game and the player I play with

34 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

all things that players enjoy are good

*record skip*

O I am laffin

Griefing is something players enjoy. Game exploitation. Game breaking. Broken mechanics. Excessive power. Unlimited resources. Instant gratification in all things. None of these are good things. This is a false premise if there ever was one. You can't seriously think this is true.

49 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

therefore, players enjoying different weapons is good.

Even without the ridiculous statement you made before, this doesn't actually make sense. Someone is still suffering here,but because you think people liking something is a good reason to ruin someone else's experience, they have to suffer in silence.

52 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

.we can see that, prima facie,

Read:you can see from the way I have laid out my strawmen and my fancy vocabulary

54 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

, the last syllogism is the correct answer, purely based on Occam's Razor.

It's just common sense that I'm right, because those strawmen are wrong! Also I have no idea what Occam's Razor is or how to use it.

Occam's Razor suggests that the least complex of two or more ideas is usually correct and should be tested first. It doesn't apply when you artificially inflate an argument, or when the issue itself is complex, and you do still have to test it. Occam's Razor is not an answer in itself.

59 minutes ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

. another problem tidily solved!

no need to thank me!

Read:Another pile of strawman violently discharged!

TheLexiConArtist · April 15, 2016

28 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

Spoiler

With a grenade launcher ROF is fairly unimportant though, and what you lose in ROF you gain in accuracy (ie I can detonate a penta grenade even on a near miss instantly; a near miss with a tonkor does nothing unless the grenade happens to land within range of the enemy - which sometimes happens but oftentimes doesn't. Even when it does we're talking, what, 2-3 seconds for the 'nade to detonate unless someone steps on it?)

The aim guide doesn't help much. Grenades don't always go where the guide says they will for a variety of reasons, and in actual play there's a ton of variance with things like cover and terrain that can negatively impact the grenade's accuracy over and above what a more conventional weapon will suffer from. Worse, with the pace of warframe as it stands there's not a whole lot of time to line up a shot with the aim guide. It's possible, but it's certainly not what you're talking it up to be.

This is exactly what I mean when I say you aren't really playing tonkor much. Yes on paper its reload speed is average, but you fail to take into account the fact that you're reloading much more frequently, so the reload ends up being a lot more punishing in practice. Ogris' 2.5s reload is far less debilitating because it has a five round magazine and lower effective ROF; by the time you've used up all five rounds in most cases you'll have a lull to reload.

Every weapon has to "deal" with enemy DPS at high levels, duh. That's kind of obvious. The reason I bring it up here is because tonkor's two round magazine means that misses are comparatively more punishing in this environment because that's more time you spend reloading rather than shooting or CCing.

In lower levels the only strength of the tonkor is the lack of self damage since its DPS just ends up overkilling. But there's also the two round magazine which in practice dramatically reduces killing rate for low tier scrubs. Penta will kill more effectively in general in that situation due to the bigger mag and comparative ease of hitting due to remote detonation. Secura penta is even better for this situation because of the syndicate effect and even bigger mag. The only downside to penta for low level is self-kills, something which the remote detonation makes considerably more difficult than, say, ogris.

Last I looked, adhesive blast was widely considered trash in the meta because it it slows down killing by dint of removing the on contact detonation behavior and replacing it with a timed one. With you giving up damage for that "advantage" In high level play where the Tonkor's main advantage actually matters, lopping off a 90% elemental damage mod for that situation sounds like a sucker's bet for the same reason that the fire resist mod is not part of the meta outside of extremely niche uses like that tac alert with nothing but napalms.

I have never actually seen it predominantly used by players of widely variant MR, skill levels, and levels of familiarity with the game in general. When I pug I end up with a huge variety of guns, and tonkors are fairly rare even in sorties. When I run with clannies I see it almost never unless we're doing themed runs (ie all grineer guns) or sometimes sorties. This is of course anecdotal, but your example is as well, so I hope you're fine with me just summarily dismissing any claims as to how commonly it's used, considering how you're dismissing my anecdotes while trying to claim yours are somehow valid. DE hasn't released any "by the numbers" figures recently, but IIRC the most kills made were with dread and torid at the time they released the last one. Granted that may have been before the tonkor was released since for someone who's been around since U7 like me weapon releases blend together, but the point I'm making is that there's basically no hard data on usage outside DE servers. In my experience, Tonkor is nowhere near as commonly used as, say, Synoid Gammacor was back in the day. If anything, I see more shotguns in general.

Heck, when I do raids it's generally hek/tigris/soma (sometimes boltor) or go home. Nobody brings tonkors.

Benefit of hit > drawback of miss in basically every gun, bro. That's what makes guns worth using. This argument is kind of funny to me considering we're discussing a gun with a magazine of 2 with arcing, bouncy grenades that only explode on impact or after a few seconds. Yeah missed shots can potentially deal damage (like every explosive ever), but that's not exactly unique to the tonkor.

Cool story, bro. I've, meanwhile, used tonkor quite a bit more than that in actual missions and I've found a lot of times when I miss. I've seen people use tonkors ever since they were released and I've never once been outcompeted for kills by this supposedly overpowering weapon.

Dude, the "hard logic" and "mathematics" here in this thread is basically trying to distill an incredibly complex situation into something that can be handled by a simple DPS calculation without taking real world (insofar as anything in warfarm is real at least) variables into account. On paper tonkor is very powerful but in reality it's nowhere near as good as you're saying, and anyone who actually has experience with it knows this. It's powerful enough to be in the meta despite its disadvantages, but it's no prenerf synoid gammacor.

Why is it not relevant, when you can happily shoot at two completely different packs in different directions regardless of relative distance with a Tonkor, but you have to go through the shoot -> watch and wait -> detonate motions with a Penta to each group in turn, unless the second group you fire at is precisely closer enough that the travel times to desired explosion points and the delay between shots fired match exactly?
Familiarity withe the weapon brings familiarity with the guideline. You will begin to understand the relative offset of the arc such that you don't need to place the guide directly on your target every time, just bring it up close and compensate the difference. The Tonkor also doesn't need to hit heads itself to gain its peak output, unlike other projectiles, including Throwing Secondaries and Bows, that also have an arc (albeit a shallower one), yet don't have a guide. The guide is actually pretty accurate, enough so that it takes Heavy Cal to bring the miss offset close enough to actually fail to connect, if the guide is aimed correctly, any more than once in a blue moon.
Parts of the whole. Two seconds is average for many weapons, but they also relate strongly to the time it takes to empty a magazine to calculate the effective DPS.
- The Ogris shoots 0.4 rockets per second. This taking forever to empty a magazine means that reloading affects less (16.667% damage lost) but the actual DPS is godawful to begin with. Base stats give the Ogris 175 sustained DPS, while the Tonkor retains 330.4167. Also, terrible blast radius on Ogris rockets, and incompatibility with Heavy Cal, make it highly less likely that you can in fact be safe to reload after 5 rockets, since each are horribly ineffective in comparison.
- The Tonkor's reload downtime property is a 66.67% burst DPS lost. (2/2)/((2/2)+2). As I calculated for another thread, a Brakk with half the reload speed (1 second), a magazine of 5 and a fire rate of 8 (base 5 + Lethal Torrent) has a reload downtime property of somewhere between 61% and 62% burst DPS lost. Not a big difference despite a better magazine and reload time, because it's quick to empty those mags out.
You missed the point: A Tonkor user worries about enemy DPS if they miss. If they hit, those enemies are all gone instantly. For almost any other weapon, they still have to worry about enemy DPS while still in the process of shooting them because these weapons do not deal instantly fatal damage in an area.
- An Ignis deals its damage over time and has falloff.
- A Bow deals damage to individual targets, or at best gets some punch-through linear collateral (not full damage due to being unlikely to hit heads).
- Even a shotgun modded for increased spread has to concern itself with the lack of cumulative damage on the individual targets (and falloff at range).
- Excepting Bows, these also all have to expend precious mod slots for range/spread/punchthrough to achieve these results. Most Bows (Rakta Cernos aside, which has its separate issue of imperfect critting) have to sacrifice a slot to Fire Rate to make the most of their usability.
Everything is overpowered on Mercury. The Tonkor retains this power almost linearly up to and including augmented Sortie enemies with the sole exception of Element Enhancements where its AOE element has been drastically weighted against. That is a problem, because it lacks the drawbacks of damage falloff or self-damage risk that hinder other weapons as content progresses.
Adhesive Blast is still an option. So is Terminal Velocity for helping you hit targets at longer range. You can afford to use these slots because of the innately overwhelming power and ease of use, whereas the necessity of such slot usage is more of a hindrance elsewhere. Also, bubbles provide plenty of issues to other slow-firing weapons too. They could do with fixing for a whole host of reasons, this does not preclude the imbalance of a Tonkor. Cherry picking this situation as the proof of drawbacks is an example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.
I wasn't trying to claim mine as any more valid than yours, but if one must consider your anecdotes then it's only fair that I can provide mine to gain equal consideration. Agreement on data usage statistics not being available to prove one way or the other, but you cannot discredit my claim of overusage because it's unprovable just as I cannot discredit your claims of a lack of overusage. Screenshots could easily be falsified with premade groups, of course, or I would provide the several I've accumulated with groups that were (though I cannot prove such) random, where the Tonkor is being used and abused in not-even-endless Tower 2 and 3 Voids, much less the Sorties, where I see them everywhere unless soloing or duoing with my solitary clanmate.
Besides this being another purely anecdotal thing, aren't raids commonly more about control and avoiding actually killing things as much as possible?
Is it though? Let's see:
- Benefit of hit with Tonkor: everything dies instantly. Drawback of miss: 0.5 - 2 seconds downtime until the next shot is taken (everything dies instantly)
- Benefit of hit with <Sniper Rifle>: One target (ideally) dies instantly. N other enemies continue to aggress. Drawback of miss: n+1 enemies continue to aggress until next shot is taken.
- The benefit of a hit with a Tonkor removes all opposition in the area, while the drawback of a miss delays the removal of all opposition by no more than two seconds.
- The benefit of a hit with a Sniper Rifle removes 1-(n-1/n) opposition, while the drawback of a miss is to retain 100% of n opposition.
- The drawback of a Sniper miss is of potentially lesser magnitude (delay increased proportional to n and firerate, where the Tonkor's is a flat value), but the benefit of a hit is of far lesser magnitude than that of the Tonkor (opposition = n-1/n vs. opposition = 0).
Meanwhile, in today's episode of Anecdotes Anonymous: "My Dual Ichors with a stealth multiplier, a 3x combo and absurdly overscaled criticals still fail to kill these Sortie Eximus Infested in the single hit that my Tonkor-toting squadmate still enjoys unless I do a lengthy ground-finisher animation that typically only hits one target, or possibly 3 at best"...
- Corrosive/heat, if you're wondering. Zero infested resistances, only weaknesses.
- You don't have to lose every target to still feel the negative impact, I've explained this before.
Explain why people are claiming "it's OP but that's fine" as the counterargument if it is not in fact OP. They are using it. They seem to have overwhelmingly great results. They just fail to acknowledge that it affects their squadmates negatively, citing their own selfish preference as invalidating that argument. I mean, I don't want to say 'git gud' but your personal accuracy rate regardless of usage with the weapon means nothing alone. If it was so inaccurate and hard to use, low-MR and low-skill players wouldn't still be using it.
- The mathematically proven claims boil down the DPS and risk/reward arguments. 70 self damage on a flat 250 blast (Concelaed Explosives) is totally balanced appropriately against that 50 self damage on a 78000 blast (Tonkor), right?
- The logical claims, however, are more about the intangible game health, player satisfaction and other such problems that the current power outliers cause.

1 hour ago, DeadlyPeanutt said:

finally,

weapon X annoys me but is fun for other players
all things that players enjoy are good
therefore, players enjoying different weapons is good.

Affirming a disjunct; A or B; A, therefore not B.

Players can enjoy or not enjoy weapon X. [some] Players enjoy weapon X, therefore no players cannot enjoy weapon X.

Holy fallacies batman. Too bad players can't enjoy other weapons when Timmy, Power Gamer comes by to ruin their fun with his Tonkor.

Cpl_Facehugger · April 15, 2016

Why is it not relevant, when you can happily shoot at two completely different packs in different directions regardless of relative distance with a Tonkor, but you have to go through the shoot -> watch and wait -> detonate motions with a Penta to each group in turn, unless the second group you fire at is precisely closer enough that the travel times to desired explosion points and the delay between shots fired match exactly?

It's not relevant because in gameplay mob spawns are such that any time you gain by not having to wait for a detonation (note that a skilled player can detonate at the same time as a tonkor grenade would hit anyway) gets flittered away by the reload time. IOW in actual gameplay the number of times a tonkor user will be able to fire off rounds more quickly than a penta user and have them hit (ie "vaporize multiple groups") is very low. Generally speaking, you're not going to be wiping out multiple groups instantly with a tonkor because of the need to aim those tonkor grenades.

It's similar to why akbolto's ROF isn't as important as it would be for an automatic machine pistol - because short of rebinding your fire key to the mouse wheel, you're not actually going to be able to make effective use of its ROF.

This is why I run my tonkor with crit delay. Because tonkor doesn't lose much from a mildly reduced ROF; its strength is frontloaded damage per shot.

Familiarity withe the weapon brings familiarity with the guideline. You will begin to understand the relative offset of the arc such that you don't need to place the guide directly on your target every time, just bring it up close and compensate the difference. The Tonkor also doesn't need to hit heads itself to gain its peak output, unlike other projectiles, including Throwing Secondaries and Bows, that also have an arc (albeit a shallower one), yet don't have a guide. The guide is actually pretty accurate, enough so that it takes Heavy Cal to bring the miss offset close enough to actually fail to connect, if the guide is aimed correctly, any more than once in a blue moon.

Well yes, familiarity with the weapon does make you more accurate. That's kind of obvious and is rather what I was saying - it rewards skill. This is a good thing. Nerfing a gun that rewards skill just because skilled people can be effective with it is a fool's errand.

As for the rest... You're basically making a case for removing the guide at best. I'm okay with that since the guide doesn't work too well anyway. So yeah, go ahead, nerf and/or remove the aim guide. :3

Parts of the whole. Two seconds is average for many weapons, but they also relate strongly to the time it takes to empty a magazine to calculate the effective DPS. *snip*

Dude, basically this entire argument of yours boils down to "tonkor has DPS, therefore nerf it." You're basically utterly failing to address anything I'm saying here.

Here, let me boil my argument down to its most simple: Straight DPS comparisons are a bad way to balance things, particularly things with nonstandard mechanics like Tonkor. This is because actual gameplay has a huge number of converging factors that conspire to utterly change the weapon's balance in gameplay including spawn mechanics, level design, how AOE is calculated, amongst others.

Going off of that: I have not found tonkor to be particularly unbalanced at all. It is top tier, but it is simply one amongst many, and its advantages relative to other top tier weapons (generally higher damage, AOE) are broadly in line with the advantages enjoyed by other weapons. You saying "Tonkor stronk" is saying nothing of value.

Tonkor is better than its direct competitors (Secura Penta, Ogris - well, Spenta is arguable because that syndicate effect has a lot of CC even if spenta is not nearly as strong directly), which is really just a case for buffing Ogris and Secura Penta because Tonkor's comfortably top tier but there is a good variety of weapons at the top tier so we're not here with a one gun to rule them all situation.

If I was sitting with my soma prime and people were outkilling me with tonkors outside of rare circumstances (ie enemy level >100) and this happened consistently I'd agree, but it doesn't. I don't know why you're falling so far behind tonkor users that you aren't having fun, but I think you need to consider whether the problem is the gun, or whether it's you.

You missed the point: A Tonkor user worries about enemy DPS if they miss. If they hit, those enemies are all gone instantly. For almost any other weapon, they still have to worry about enemy DPS while still in the process of shooting them because these weapons do not deal instantly fatal damage in an area *Snip*

Again with the "I don't play tonkor, therefore I'm going to theorycraft this on paper with DPS argumentation" stuff. Dude, stop. Tonkor's potential DPS isn't in question. I'm not disputing it. Tonkor has huge DPS. My point here is that all this theorycrafting doesn't reflect my experience actually using the weapon at all. There's a reason why no balance team in the world relies solely on theorycrafting to decide nerfs or buffs. Good balance teams playtest the hell out of their changes for very good reason.

Your whole argument here is basically "tonkor has ultra high damage/shot and AOE, therefore OP because in some level 3 sorties it's possible for it to kill better than most other weapons." But that's ridiculous. Tonkor is top tier, this isn't in question. But a gun can be top tier without being OP. Heck, a gun can be flatly better than another gun in its tier without being flatly OP. Soma Prime's DPS is something like, what, 10k higher than boltor prime's assuming equal play and in most other metrics it's as good or better, yet I've never seen anyone crap on boltor for being a bad gun or being unworthy in high level play.

Everything is overpowered on Mercury. The Tonkor retains this power almost linearly up to and including augmented Sortie enemies with the sole exception of Element Enhancements where its AOE element has been drastically weighted against. That is a problem, because it lacks the drawbacks of damage falloff or self-damage risk that hinder other weapons as content progresses.

Difficulty aiming is an excellent drawback on its own due to the influence skill has on it though. I'm unconvinced that Tonkor needs anything else, and basically nothing you've said thus far is particularly compelling.

Granted 'splosives were nerfed awhile back with the removal of autoheadshot damage and this technically nerfed tonkor disproportionately, but it's telling that this nerf hit and some people are still going on about tonkor.

Adhesive Blast is still an option. So is Terminal Velocity for helping you hit targets at longer range. You can afford to use these slots because of the innately overwhelming power and ease of use, whereas the necessity of such slot usage is more of a hindrance elsewhere.

Dude, have you used adhesive blast? It makes so your grenades no longer explode on impact with enemies. You're roughly tripling your time to kill on hits because the grenade doesn't explode instantly, but instead around two seconds later. It's not even good for aiming because you're generally better off firing your second grenade to take that down since it'll still be faster even taking the reload into account. :\

And terminal velocity? That actually makes hitting harder because of the effect it has on bouncing.

I don't main tonkor or anything, but you really need to stop throwing out theorycrafting until it sticks, because I actually use tonkor relatively frequently as a fun lulz gun so basically all this stuff you're suggesting flies in the face of my experience with tonkor in the actual game. And when you admit you don't use tonkor much at all outside of controlled simulacrum examples, it becomes really hard for me to take your claims about its overbearing power seriously.

Also, bubbles provide plenty of issues to other slow-firing weapons too. They could do with fixing for a whole host of reasons, this does not preclude the imbalance of a Tonkor. Cherry picking this situation as the proof of drawbacks is an example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

Well yes, bubbles give high damage/shot low ROF weapons trouble in general. But tonkor's problem with bubbles doesn't come from that but rather the fact that it doesn't detonate on bubbles, it bounces - which means your grenade is going flying off in a random direction. There's a reason why I said that tonkor is negatively impacted over and above normal explosives. (Well, also explosives can't crit null shields, with tonkor being the only crit grenade launcher, so that's another thing, but the main thing is how it doesn't detonate on the shield.)

And frankly here, nulls and arctic eximuses are common enough that any discussion balance should include them. Grineer have 'em, Corpus have 'em, void has 'em in mass quantities. Infested are the only ones out. But tonkor is probably the best explosive gun for infested; their swarming melee behavior synergizes well with tonkor's close range usability. Mind you, a gun being especially good against one faction is no reason for nerfs either.

I wasn't trying to claim mine as any more valid than yours, but if one must consider your anecdotes then it's only fair that I can provide mine to gain equal consideration. Agreement on data usage statistics not being available to prove one way or the other, but you cannot discredit my claim of overusage because it's unprovable just as I cannot discredit your claims of a lack of overusage.

I don't think you're seeing the point I'm making here. Here, let me rephrase: Your claim that Tonkor is overused is automatically baseless until DE releases weapon use stats. You say it's overused, but my experience says it isn't, therefore the two anecdotes cancel each other out.

Besides this being another purely anecdotal thing, aren't raids commonly more about control and avoiding actually killing things as much as possible?

Not nightmare raids. Have to take down those null drones. And even in normal raids there's the third stage where you have to kill to win.

Is it though? Let's see: Benefit of hit with Tonkor: everything dies instantly. Drawback of miss: 0.5 - 2 seconds downtime until the next shot is taken (everything dies instantly) *snip*

I'm aware of no sniper rifle considered top tier in the metagame. Even with the semi-recent buffs snipers are widely considered criminally underpowered as far as I'm aware. So comparing Tonkor to a sniper rifle is stacking the deck. We should be comparing it to the top tier in the meta - soma, boltor, dread, etc. In which case we end up with "tonkor AOE DPS stronk, handling sucks compared to other top tier guns."

And you're still not addressing my point at all. If Tonkor hits it's great. But you agree that hitting with a Tonkor is a lot more difficult than hitting with, say, a Soma, right?

Meanwhile, in today's episode of Anecdotes Anonymous: "My Dual Ichors with a stealth multiplier, a 3x combo and absurdly overscaled criticals still fail to kill these Sortie Eximus Infested in the single hit that my Tonkor-toting squadmate still enjoys unless I do a lengthy ground-finisher animation that typically only hits one target, or possibly 3 at best"...Corrosive/heat, if you're wondering. Zero infested resistances, only weaknesses.

Dual ichor against eximuses?

Elementals against eximuses when they have innate resistance to elements and don't use standard resistances for their base enemy type?

Trying to outcompete a gun with melee outside of rare circumstances or wildly lopsided weapon tiers?

I think I might be beginning to see the problem here.

You don't have to lose every target to still feel the negative impact, I've explained this before

Is this in response to me? Because I haven't said anything about this. :\

Explain why people are claiming "it's OP but that's fine" as the counterargument if it is not in fact OP. They are using it. They seem to have overwhelmingly great results. They just fail to acknowledge that it affects their squadmates negatively, citing their own selfish preference as invalidating that argument. I mean, I don't want to say 'git gud' but your personal accuracy rate regardless of usage with the weapon means nothing alone. If it was so inaccurate and hard to use, low-MR and low-skill players wouldn't still be using it.

Well, I'd probably boil the answer down to the same reason people suggest ill-conceived nerfs based on how sometimes someone kills more than them: Sometimes the people talking are just ignorant of base mechanics and how the game plays. They see massive DPS and think "oh wow that so stronk." Then since many people like to be stronk, they say "this gun is fun" even if they don't actually use the tonkor all that much.

Just because someone makes an argument doesn't mean that argument is actually right after all. I see no reason to think that a lack of understanding in what makes a balanced weapon is confined to just the people who ask for nerfs. It's just generally more evident there because they're more vocal about it.

Low MR players would use it because it's one of the easiest top tier guns to acquire.

The mathematically proven claims boil down the DPS and risk/reward arguments. 70 self damage on a flat 250 blast (Concelaed Explosives) is totally balanced appropriately against that 50 self damage on a 78000 blast (Tonkor), right?

The mathematically proven claims are basically just sophistry though. "Oh wow this attack has low self damage (because the weapon's gimmick relies on this)" says little. Like, you're railing against the ~DPS~ of the tonkor here, but adding 100% self damage won't actually make it any less "OP" if your argument is right. Those guys you complain about outkilling you will still do that whether they're at risk of blowing themselves up or not.

What adding more self damage would do is take a unique weapon and make it utterly generic except for DPS.

The logical claims, however, are more about the intangible game health, player satisfaction and other such problems that the current power outliers cause.

If the "logical" claims were logical we probably wouldn't be having this conversation because I'd be nodding my head and saying "yeah, that makes sense and fits in with what I see in the game."

But they don't.

Edited April 15, 2016 by Cpl_Facehugger
Argh, this formatting. This is why I don't post much DE. :(

Vox_Preliator · April 16, 2016

54 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

If the "logical" claims were logical we probably wouldn't be having this conversation because I'd be nodding my head and saying "yeah, that makes sense and fits in with what I see in the game."

But they don't.

PFFFFFFFAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAaaaaaa...

Oh, man, you got me good there! Humans agreeing and admitting their wrongness on the internet! Man, you're a funny guy!

If people did do that, we wouldn't have people still defending the Tonkor in its current state. But instead, we're still dealing with fallacy after fallacy after fallacy (not to mention outright ignorance and refusal to actually read their foe's arguments in the first place) thirty-three pages in.

Cpl_Facehugger · April 16, 2016

Just now, Vox_Preliator said:

PFFFFFFFAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAaaaaaa...

Oh, man, you got me good there! Humans agreeing and admitting their wrongness on the internet! Man, you're a funny guy!

If people did do that, we wouldn't have people still defending the Tonkor in its current state. But instead, we're still dealing with fallacy after fallacy after fallacy (not to mention outright ignorance and refusal to actually read their foe's arguments in the first place) thirty-three pages in.

But the tonkor is generally fine in its current state. High damage balanced by skill ceiling and general poor handling.

I mean, I haven't read all 33 pages, just some of them, but so far all the arguments in favor of nerfing tonkor I've seen are basically rooted in boiling everything down to a clean DPS calculation by people who don't actually play with tonkor much, but that's a bad idea with any gun, much less one as finnicky as a tonkor.

TheLexiConArtist · April 16, 2016

5 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

It's not relevant because in gameplay mob spawns are such that any time you gain by not having to wait for a detonation (note that a skilled player can detonate at the same time as a tonkor grenade would hit anyway) gets flittered away by the reload time. IOW in actual gameplay the number of times a tonkor user will be able to fire off rounds more quickly than a penta user and have them hit (ie "vaporize multiple groups") is very low. Generally speaking, you're not going to be wiping out multiple groups instantly with a tonkor because of the need to aim those tonkor grenades.

It's similar to why akbolto's ROF isn't as important as it would be for an automatic machine pistol - because short of rebinding your fire key to the mouse wheel, you're not actually going to be able to make effective use of its ROF.

This is why I run my tonkor with crit delay. Because tonkor doesn't lose much from a mildly reduced ROF; its strength is frontloaded damage per shot.

All weapons need to be aimed, some more than others but the Tonkor is far from the hardest to aim for its greatest effect.

Enemies infrequently spawn in perfectly intermittent, nice and tightly-packed radial groups. The moment there are several enemeis to your left and right at the same time, the Tonkor is going to be better at dealing with them than a Penta regardless of skill with the weapons (assuming comparitively equal-in-ratio Tonkor skill to Penta skill) because it's completely fire-and-forget. You shoot one Tonkor grenade left, one right, both groups blow up in 1 second + traveltime of second grenade. You shoot one Penta grenade left, wait on its travel time and detonate it, then one right, traveltime and detonate. The doubled actual firerate of the Tonkor is even more relevant because regularly shooting one Penta 'nade per second is not useful because every projectile out detonates with the same alt-fire click. Effective shots that can be made per second: 2 for the Tonkor, less than or equal to 1 for the Penta, most likely less.

Even then, since we're going dangerously theoretical, what about when enemies successfully encroach upon you? Any other explosive forces you to reposition before tackling the enemies due to self damage. Tonkor does not.

Well yes, familiarity with the weapon does make you more accurate. That's kind of obvious and is rather what I was saying - it rewards skill. This is a good thing. Nerfing a gun that rewards skill just because skilled people can be effective with it is a fool's errand.

As for the rest... You're basically making a case for removing the guide at best. I'm okay with that since the guide doesn't work too well anyway. So yeah, go ahead, nerf and/or remove the aim guide. :3

"Skill" is immaterial. Skill floor and skill ceiling are more important. Fact: The Tonkor has a massively great output with a low skill floor due to overwhelming damage, aim guide, no self damage. The skill ceiling is relatively far less important in that it merely eases your aiming time. This isn't a "learn how to headshot" precision weapon. It's Kill Everything For Free.

Dude, basically this entire argument of yours boils down to "tonkor has DPS, therefore nerf it." You're basically utterly failing to address anything I'm saying here.

Here, let me boil my argument down to its most simple: Straight DPS comparisons are a bad way to balance things, particularly things with nonstandard mechanics like Tonkor. This is because actual gameplay has a huge number of converging factors that conspire to utterly change the weapon's balance in gameplay including spawn mechanics, level design, how AOE is calculated, amongst others.

Going off of that: I have not found tonkor to be particularly unbalanced at all. It is top tier, but it is simply one amongst many, and its advantages relative to other top tier weapons (generally higher damage, AOE) are broadly in line with the advantages enjoyed by other weapons. You saying "Tonkor stronk" is saying nothing of value.

Tonkor is better than its direct competitors (Secura Penta, Ogris - well, Spenta is arguable because that syndicate effect has a lot of CC even if spenta is not nearly as strong directly), which is really just a case for buffing Ogris and Secura Penta because Tonkor's comfortably top tier but there is a good variety of weapons at the top tier so we're not here with a one gun to rule them all situation.

If I was sitting with my soma prime and people were outkilling me with tonkors outside of rare circumstances (ie enemy level >100) and this happened consistently I'd agree, but it doesn't. I don't know why you're falling so far behind tonkor users that you aren't having fun, but I think you need to consider whether the problem is the gun, or whether it's you.

Again, parts of the whole. Addressing one facet of the whole picture of why the Tonkor is utterly broken which its own defenders are typically admitting and calling that the entire argument is just fallacy.

Is it a straight DPS comparison, or is it damage, ease of achieving peak damage, viability in the typical (horde) state of the game, inadequate and/or already compensated drawbacks, lack of inherent risk as it applies to every other member of the weapon category, accessibility of the weapon itself, the effects it has on the rest of the squad's gameplay...

The list goes on.

If the Secura Penta was comparable at all to the Tonkor, we'd see it used comparitively often. We do not. Buffing other things is not the answer to an overpowered top-tier-of-its-own weapon. Power creep leads to poor gameplay and artificial enemy difficulty. Sorties might not go to level 100 + Sortie augment + mission type additional restriction (hi, Hijack nullbubbles) if we didn't have such ridiculously overpowered AOE weapons as the Tonkor.

Please explain to me how the advantages of the Tonkor are in line with the advantages enjoyed by other weapons when it does more damage than a Single Target weapon AND does that damage in full to entire groups.

We may not have one gun to rule them all, but two, three or four is a pale mockery of the variety that we had before their introductions. When Soma and Boltor Primes were being considered as too strong, despite the prevalent usage also of Pentas, Amprexes, Dreads, Paris Primes, Synapses, Latron Primes, on and on (there's 8 to begin with).. not just Tonkor, Synoid Simulor, Sancti Tigris, (Vaykor) Hek.

Again with the "I don't play tonkor, therefore I'm going to theorycraft this on paper with DPS argumentation" stuff. Dude, stop. Tonkor's potential DPS isn't in question. I'm not disputing it. Tonkor has huge DPS. My point here is that all this theorycrafting doesn't reflect my experience actually using the weapon at all. There's a reason why no balance team in the world relies solely on theorycrafting to decide nerfs or buffs. Good balance teams playtest the hell out of their changes for very good reason.

Your whole argument here is basically "tonkor has ultra high damage/shot and AOE, therefore OP because in some level 3 sorties it's possible for it to kill better than most other weapons." But that's ridiculous. Tonkor is top tier, this isn't in question. But a gun can be top tier without being OP. Heck, a gun can be flatly better than another gun in its tier without being flatly OP. Soma Prime's DPS is something like, what, 10k higher than boltor prime's assuming equal play and in most other metrics it's as good or better, yet I've never seen anyone crap on boltor for being a bad gun or being unworthy in high level play

Define a good balance team, because balance is barely objective. What some people praise, others will find cripplingly detracts from what they enjoyed, and I'm not just talking "fix OP".

I don't give even the loftiest of flying fucks about your experiences, I stick to hard logic and mathematics because they are things that are incontestable when correct. You find a problem with my algorithms? Please tell. You disagree with my logical conclusion? You bring counterpoints, preferably evidence and not fallacies or anecdotes, and I do the same in return, rinse repeat.

Can a gun be top tier without being OP? Sure it can.

Can a gun be top tier and be OP? Of course.

Is it likely that a gun that is many times better in rewarding effects than previous top tier weapons with a reduced risk of previous top weapons in the same category IS in fact OP? It is.

Again, the Soma and Boltor Primes used to be targets of nerf-threads by being 'OP'. Now, despite receiving ZERO CHANGES, they are merely mediocre at best. Is that not strong evidence that the new 'top tier' power few are improperly balanced, given that they are not the result of progression (and in the Tonkor's case, are in fact available much more easily than many prior top-tiers)?

Difficulty aiming is an excellent drawback on its own due to the influence skill has on it though. I'm unconvinced that Tonkor needs anything else, and basically nothing you've said thus far is particularly compelling.

Granted 'splosives were nerfed awhile back with the removal of autoheadshot damage and this technically nerfed tonkor disproportionately, but it's telling that this nerf hit and some people are still going on about tonkor.

Oh baby, check your facts.

Myth: Explosive autoheadshots were removed.

Fact: Explosive autoheadshots still occur for damage purposes but merely no longer count on tracked statistics (or the Headhunter affinity challenge).

You use the Tonkor so you're not going to be convinced by anything I say. You've made many claims about difficulty aiming, to which I provide your own words:

I think you need to consider whether the problem is the gun, or whether it's you.

Logic dictates that it would be seldom used if the burdens of aiming, of reloading, and the net result after such drawbacks was sufficiently hindered. Meanwhile, in reality:

47 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

Dude, have you used adhesive blast? It makes so your grenades no longer explode on impact with enemies. You're roughly tripling your time to kill on hits because the grenade doesn't explode instantly, but instead around two seconds later. It's not even good for aiming because you're generally better off firing your second grenade to take that down since it'll still be faster even taking the reload into account. :\
And terminal velocity? That actually makes hitting harder because of the effect it has on bouncing.

I don't main tonkor or anything, but you really need to stop throwing out theorycrafting until it sticks, because I actually use tonkor relatively frequently as a fun lulz gun so basically all this stuff you're suggesting flies in the face of my experience with tonkor in the actual game. And when you admit you don't use tonkor much at all outside of controlled simulacrum examples, it becomes really hard for me to take your claims about its overbearing power seriously.

55 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

Well yes, bubbles give high damage/shot low ROF weapons trouble in general. But tonkor's problem with bubbles doesn't come from that but rather the fact that it doesn't detonate on bubbles, it bounces - which means your grenade is going flying off in a random direction. There's a reason why I said that tonkor is negatively impacted over and above normal explosives. (Well, also explosives can't crit null shields, with tonkor being the only crit grenade launcher, so that's another thing, but the main thing is how it doesn't detonate on the shield.)

You cherry pick bubbles as a drawback, citing the inability to detonate reliably on the flaw, I cherry pick a mod you can use to make that function more reliable.

The projectile impact does the same thing with a Tonkor grenade as it does with, let's say, an arrow. So where's the difference? Well, what happens when you do pop the bubble; the Tonkor gets its usual one-shot-kill-everything back. Oh, and there's that other aspect, the one where you can go into a Null/Arctic bubble with a Tonkor and kill the contents freely without endangering yourself.

Please explain how Terminal Velocity makes it more difficult when you already stated that misses (causing bounces) are functionally useless. You don't really have to bounce the grenade at all to begin with, but especially with extra projectile velocity at your disposal.

Can I complain to a chef because he sends me undercooked chicken despite me not being a professional cook? Of course. Salmonella is not fun.

Can I complain about the Tonkor because of its overpowering imbalance of risks and rewards, and its impact on others' gameplay, when I have to experience it on a daily basis despite not using it often myself? You bet I can.

59 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

I don't think you're seeing the point I'm making here. Here, let me rephrase: Your claim that Tonkor is overused is automatically baseless until DE releases weapon use stats. You say it's overused, but my experience says it isn't, therefore the two anecdotes cancel each other out.

The anecdotes can't cancel each other out if I don't provide the other one, and prompts DE to look at which is accurate when they look into this. Remember the outcome of the thread is not within either of our controls, we just argue our evidence as weight to point DE in the right direction.

My anecdote will, however, resonate with the players reading who do see it all the time, as opposed to you playing with a subset of clanmates who have their own relatively consistent weapon tendencies instead of randoms. For example, if you played with me often, you'd think people used the Brakk reasonably often. However, I've seen one other person toting it in the past... several months? What can I say, it was nerfed but I like it so I use it anyway.

1 hour ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

Not nightmare raids. Have to take down those null drones. And even in normal raids there's the third stage where you have to kill to win.

Not going to pretend I have any base for suggesting other reasons your team don't use Tonkors for that, I don't do trials (Clan of two, represent).

1 hour ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

...I'm aware of no sniper rifle considered top tier in the metagame. Even with the semi-recent buffs snipers are widely considered criminally underpowered as far as I'm aware. So comparing Tonkor to a sniper rifle is stacking the deck. We should be comparing it to the top tier in the meta - soma, boltor, dread, etc. In which case we end up with "tonkor AOE DPS stronk, handling sucks compared to other top tier guns."

And you're still not addressing my point at all. If Tonkor hits it's great. But you agree that hitting with a Tonkor is a lot more difficult than hitting with, say, a Soma, right?

Substitute sniper with bow, with other weapons for a similar result. I used a Sniper because it's a more easily explicable comparison. One shot one kill, rather than trying to represent many-shots one-kill from a Soma. Which incidentally is even farther disfavourable; one shot missed adds barely any delay, but one shot hit adds barely any reduction in the opposition at mid to high levels where you don't kill with a single weak LMG-analogue round.

I'd say that hitting (once, anywhere) with a Soma/Prime is easier, but doesn't do much in comparison. I'd say that hitting consistently and at peak output goes immensely to the Tonkor though, as its autoheadshots and lack of sustained spray give a better margin than trying to hold a Soma Prime in place for 200 fully-spooled bullets to enemy faces.

That's the point of "benefit of hit" - what matters missing one or two grenades when two seconds later you've accomplished what the Soma took one or two hundred well-aimed shots to do?

1 hour ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

Dual ichor against eximuses?

Elementals against eximuses when they have innate resistance to elements and don't use standard resistances for their base enemy type?

Trying to outcompete a gun with melee outside of rare circumstances or wildly lopsided weapon tiers?

Tonkor's primarily elemental too, you know. Let's look at some Eximi resistances:

Fossilized (less Sanguine which do use standard Foss. resists): +blast +corrosive -heat

Infested: -heat, -blast, -corrosive.

Infested Flesh: +heat, -blast, -corrosive.

Well, you got me there. I guess I'll pack up and go home because I lost some... 5% of my net damage to that Fossilised Eximus heat resistance.

You know, because that totally counterweighs the multikilling Tonkor versus two-hits-per-target Ickies.

Melee's biggest downsides are getting to the target and staying alive in close range. I was already at the target and carving through them when Timmy's Tonkor Turd appeared and vaporised the lot. I had the Shadow Step invisibility for safety (and the stealth multiplier, on top of the Blood Rushing crit heaven). By all accounts, I should've been rocking the damage at its apex.. but the Tonkor still won from a safer, easier position. Totes balanced yo.

1 hour ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

Is this in response to me? Because I haven't said anything about this. :\

You cite being outkilled a lot. You don't need to be outkilled or outdamaged to get vexed out of your enjoyment. It's like trying to fight things with a huge-range, efficient Ash around. He's reserved all those red targets, so there's just no point trying to even help kill them.

Bear in mind I don't go into Sorties looking to be the damage of the team. I prefer utilitarian and supportive play. But I can use logic to extrapolate to the point of view of people who do, using my experiences from casual Void farming where utility is largely unnecessary as a starting point.

1 hour ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

Well, I'd probably boil the answer down to the same reason people suggest ill-conceived nerfs based on how sometimes someone kills more than them: Sometimes the people talking are just ignorant of base mechanics and how the game plays. They see massive DPS and think "oh wow that so stronk." Then since many people like to be stronk, they say "this gun is fun" even if they don't actually use the tonkor all that much.

Just because someone makes an argument doesn't mean that argument is actually right after all. I see no reason to think that a lack of understanding in what makes a balanced weapon is confined to just the people who ask for nerfs. It's just generally more evident there because they're more vocal about it

Commend you for this, you do at least acknowledge that use -> enjoy is not necessarily guaranteed fact.

But how else can one prove understanding balance, since you already disregard the evidential factors we've already brought? Sadly, all you bring is "I don't see it", "I don't get outclassed by it" and "I have trouble aiming with it".

I totally understand not wanting to trudge through 32 pages of arguments and counterarguments, but that doesn't mean they don't exist, and the fact that I've had to refine and repeat defenses against the same rhetoric all this time should lend credence to the fact I have something solid backing me up by now. Otherwise I'd be still argued to be bringing falsehoods and fallacy, and if I had been adequately and categorically disproven, I would've conceded and left, or at least as so many before me, I would have descended to ad-hominems or toxic behaviour as a last resort.

1 hour ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

The mathematically proven claims are basically just sophistry though. "Oh wow this attack has low self damage (because the weapon's gimmick relies on this)" says little. Like, you're railing against the ~DPS~ of the tonkor here, but adding 100% self damage won't actually make it any less "OP" if your argument is right. Those guys you complain about outkilling you will still do that whether they're at risk of blowing themselves up or not.

What adding more self damage would do is take a unique weapon and make it utterly generic except for DPS.

So what makes the Tonkor unique? It's a grenade lobber (like the Penta), only without the manual detonation and instead with a permanent lack of risk (regardless the increased reward) as its selling point.

You can't argue the arcing grenades, which existed on the Penta already and nobody actually seeks to change.

You could argue the 'grenade jump', to which I ask what value this has, being obsolete as of 3 months since the Tonkor's release (with the advent of Parkour 2.0), and whether you've seen my overarching goals for changes (which optionally include retaining the risk-free 'grenade jump' but removing its reward factor by making it concussive, doing no damage but forcing knockdowns on enemies).

You could argue the lack of self damage itself to be its unique factor, to which I ask if you understand risk/reward balancing; if you have significantly less (tantamount zero) risk, you cannot then have more reward than riskier equivalents, which necessitates damage reductions to make a fair and balanced weapon in its category of explosive ordnance.

Would self-damage cause the users to not use it in point-blank range (without suffering a drawback for such recklessness)? Would it cause the users to have to be more careful with their aim (functionally reducing firerate/output with this added burden)? Would it cause allies to be more likely to appreciate highly skilled, highly rewarding Tonkor usage because they know the risk that had to be overcome to achieve that (as a product of risk/reward balance)?

The answer to all of those questions is yes.

Roving_Neophyte · April 16, 2016

26 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

But the tonkor is generally fine in its current state. High damage balanced by skill ceiling and general poor handling.

I mean, I haven't read all 33 pages, just some of them, but so far all the arguments in favor of nerfing tonkor I've seen are basically rooted in boiling everything down to a clean DPS calculation by people who don't actually play with tonkor much, but that's a bad idea with any gun, much less one as finnicky as a tonkor.

" High damage balanced by skill ceiling and general poor handling. "

>skill

>tonkor

Nice joke, my friend, nice joke.

Probably the only thing that requires less skill than Tonkor is Synoid Simulor. Well, and maybe automatic shotguns too, but they are way less powerful anyway.

Best evidence of Tonkor's poor balance is the number of people who uses it. Tonkor is terribly overused, it's literally everywhere. You hardly can get in a squad where all 4 players don't use tonkor or synoid simulor. And several times i was in a squad where EVERYONE but me used tonkor, lol.

Tonkor: Let's fix easy mode

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

Create an account

Sign in

Warframe

Account

Community

Support