Tonkor: Let's fix easy mode

[EvilChaosKnight]

Gotta love the "high risk high reward" talks about the lawnchairs. Too bad there's all risk and minor reward as far as I can see with other explosives. In fact I'd say that current explosive weapons in Warframe are about as dangerous to use as Redeemer from UT and Fatman from Fallout 3/4.

Actually screw that. You can survive a Fatman shot if you have power armor and both UT and F have wide open maps. Not the case for multi-forma Ogris or Penta. And neither UT nor Fallout have enemies which spawn as common mooks which will bounce rockets back at you (Nullicancer).

Right now if you don't buff other launchers in some meaningful way while nerfing the Tonkor we'll have not a single worthwile explosive weapon in the game.

[Malindros]

On 3/14/2016 at 11:28 AM, Drasiel said:

The Tonkor, it's a rather severe spike on the power curve of launcher weapons. Outstripping other launcher type weapons in nearly all it's base stats and damage potential as well as being the safest launcher to use due to it's lack of self damage.

Now I can hear you in the wings "but dras BUFF ALL THE THINGS. Stop ruining our fun, It's a pve game fok u go play pvp if u want balance" To which I say "no".

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.

Option the First:

Leave base stats (ignoring damage) the same with the tonkor. Buff all base stats (ignoring damage) on other launchers up to about halfway towards where the tonkors base stats sit. Cut the tonkors damage by 1/4 or up to 1/2 and lower it's mastery rank requirement to 3. Tonkor becomes the first launcher you can create, it lets you learn how launchers work and it's totally safe. You want to more power? get a different launcher and deal with self harm.

Option the Second:

Lower the base stats (ignoring damage) of the tonkor and raise the base stas (ignoring damage) of all the other launchers until they meet in about the middle of the stat range between them. Leave all damage the same. Tonkor gains self damage and an alternate fire that acts as "rocket jump" (for those that are upset about losing tenno bouncing via grendade)

Option the Third:

Leave all the stats the same. Enable self damage on tonkor. Remove passive radial blast headshots. Enable headshots for radial damage if the physical rocket/grenade strikes the head.  Now I can hear you say "but that's impossible with how the tonkor grenades bounce" to which I reply "You can equip the mod adhesive blast, you already have a very substantial bonus to the tonkor's performance with how the grenades bounce spread and the high rate of fire it uses. You can afford the mod slot for the x2 bonus that stacks with the x2 crit bonus the tonkor nearly always sustains".

 

First off, you do know that the Penta has a base damage of twice the Tonkor base damage, yes?  So the only thing making this a weapon of note is its gimmick...

Secondly, let the scrubs show themselves by the over use of this weapon...if people cannot think for themselves, why should DE do it for them?

Thirdly, if you remove the "rocket jump" feature, this gimmick of weapon is just, well, what it is now, in my opinion now, utterly forgettable...

[SquidTheSid]

13 minutes ago, Malindros said:

First off, you do know that the Penta has a base damage of twice the Tonkor base damage, yes?  So the only thing making this a weapon of note is its gimmick...

I didn't know that 350 was twice that of 325. 

 

Penta's base damage is 350 yo (Secura variant is 375), while Tonkor's is 325 (both have the same projectile damage of 75).

 

What, a 35% crit chance and 2.5x multiplier isn't noteworthy? I'd say those are VERY noteworthy stats.

 

 

[TheLexiConArtist]

7 minutes ago, Malindros said:

First off, you do know that the Penta has a base damage of twice the Tonkor base damage, yes?  So the only thing making this a weapon of note is its gimmick...

Since when is 350 more than twice 325?

Secura penta: Since when is 375 twice 325?

Ogris: No, 650 includes projectile impact damage. 500 actual base damage is still not twice 325.

[(PSN)xKAIOWAx]

I hate all this boom boom boom weapons , this game dev talk about balance and release this clear room weapons for childrens, why dont use penta and ogris ? 

 

[taiiat]

36 minutes ago, EvilChaosKnight said:

Right now if you don't buff other launchers in some meaningful way while nerfing the Tonkor we'll have not a single worthwile explosive weapon in the game.

the other Launchers all easily deal 12,000+ Damage per Shot - which is plenty. will wipe out Trash Units well into 3 digit Levels, only Armored Heavies will ever not die when Enemy Levels are high, which is what other balanced Weapons experience anyways.

what you mean to say is, if we don't add a random zero to the end of all Explosive Weapons, they won't be able to compete with other Overpowered Weapons. ofcourse, balanced Weapons cannot compete with Overpowered ones.

[CDelacroix]

Once again, a small group of people talk about changing something that the vast majority of the game's players like and have no problem with, simply because it offends their delicate sensibilities. Does nobody truly see anything wrong with this?

I say this as someone who has a ~2% use rate on the Tonkor and had to force himself to bother leveling / forma-ing it. This also isn't an argument exclusive to the Tonkor. This is an argument that repeats often for several different aspects of the game. The worst part about it is that you people have no desire to even USE the Tonkor. Hell, most of you don't even care that there is a progression in weapons or frames. You were simply offended by someone who used it at some point in your lives and you think you'll hurt them by having it nerfed. I've seen it countless times before, and it's just as petty and simple-minded now as it always was, and always will be. Frost, Loki, Rhino, Nova, Boltor Prime, Tonkor, Galatine, Brakk, Tigris, Soma, Marelok, coptering, etc. These are simply the examples that are coming to mind immediately, even.

Stop. Just, please, stop. You're ruining the game for the rest of us.

Edited March 15, 2016 by CDelacroix

[(PSN)TheYetiMan22]

1 hour ago, EDYinnit said:

Not Aim Glide. Bullet Jump.

The Tonkor came out a little over three months before Parkour 2.0; Update 16.4 (April 23) until Update 17.0 (July 31) gave relevance to a grenade jump because regular parkour simply didn't have such vectors of motion freely available.

Now you can go further and with greater control by pointing yourself in a direction and bullet jumping. So.. yeah, grenade jumping obsoleted and no longer a viable excuse for lacking proper risk for the (greater than normal) reward.

 

My apologies, you stated Aim Glide in your original post. Are you talking about accuracy of the gun or accuracy of jumping mechanics? Not sure what you're saying. As I get the impression that the grenade jump was primarily just a gimmick (as a nod to Quake...I'm thinking of the Devstream it was talked about). It's a fun dynamic just like Vauban's Bounce pad. Would be a shame to lose the quirk              '                                           

[DaftMeat]

[TheLexiConArtist]

23 minutes ago, (PS4)TheYetiMan22 said:

My apologies, you stated Aim Glide in your original post. Are you talking about accuracy of the gun or accuracy of jumping mechanics? Not sure what you're saying. As I get the impression that the grenade jump was primarily just a gimmick (as a nod to Quake...I'm thinking of the Devstream it was talked about). It's a fun dynamic just like Vauban's Bounce pad. Would be a shame to lose the quirk              '                                           

I just realised the miscommunication back there.

Parkour obsoleting the 'grenade jump' is due to Bullet Jumping in the desired direction getting you farther and with greater control then trying to bounce off a Tonkor-nade. Gimmicks 'for fun' should not come at the cost of balance.

I didn't say 'aim glide' compensates accuracy/arc, I said aim guide - the dotted line that displays the trajectory of the projectile while you're aiming.

[Thural]

The reason the tonkor is so much more powerful is that it's the only truly crit-based explosive weapon, meaning that it does four times its final damage because it headshots and crit headshots do four times damage.

If you know anything about building weapons, you'd know the penta is just as strong as the tonkor, it's just the self damage that's a problem, so remove self damage on penta and people will say we now have to nerf it as well.

What could we do to make the tonkor less op without changing its playstyle?

Nothing, except nerf it into absolute uselessness

We could halve the damage, but it still does 15k per shot which oneshots almost anywhere the current tonkor oneshots

We reduce the crit multiplier to 1.5, it still does 15k per shot

We reduce the crit chance to 25%, nothing happens, except it can't do 70k per shot on redcrits anymore

All of the above suggestions would normally cripple any other gun, but would barely affect a fully forma'd tonkor, and make a mediocre one useless.  What it needs is a utility nerf.

I say we don't touch the damage, make it only explode on enemy contact (make it disapear after a few seconds if nothing touches it), and reduce the size of the explosion.  This way, it still fills the role of a bunker buster, but it loses to faster firing weapons in the trash clearing department, as it should.

As well, we lower the self damage to 20 with 0% crit chance (along with the penta and other launchers), but make it scale with base damage, elemental damage, and multishot mods, so that it's less punishing for low level players, lets tanks use it in close quarters when things get rough, and makes squishy players more wary of letting the enemy close.

TL;DR: make tonkor explode only on contact, smaller explosion, lower self damage, but make it scale with mods

Edited March 15, 2016 by Thural
make it look nicer

[Autongnosis]

On 14/3/2016 at 7:03 PM, [DE]Glen said:

Similarly I find it surprising that such a powerful explosive weapon has no meaningful self-damage: a single shell that blows up a dozen infested but barely scratches you seems broken IMO.

You know, i've seen this argument a lot about the Tonkor. Let me just say one thing:

There is, imho, a very good reason why the Tonkor should keep its negligible self-damage, which is that the grenades it launches explode on contact with the enemy or with yourself. Which wouldn't be a real issue, if not for the fact that at any time, while you're speeding around, and you fire the Tonkor, odds are your grenades are gonna explode in your face even if there's nothing. And that's if you're host. If you're client, it's guaranteed to happen, on top of a lot of other random mid-air explosions that only affect the Tonkor. It's caused, i think, by the hitboxes of you and of the grenade not updating properly and merging when the grenade spawns.

I even purposefully play that way when i do affinity runs on high-level missions with formaed frames. Fly at the max possible speed to avoid being shot while dumping pinpoint explosions at my location. Works wonder for clearing out Nullifiers and their company of happy mobs for instance.

 

That said, any change to raise self damage on the Tonkor would just do one thing: make it unplayable to anybody who hasn't "server is in my bedroom" level of connection and a pretty decent hardware to boot (although that doesn't really help, since even top of the class gets blown on their feet when client).

What i would do (i'm not game designer though) is to turn the Tonkor into a light assault grenade launcher - cutting down its damage significantly (and i mean significantly, my personal target was 50P for the grenade/150 blast for explosion), but making it more confortable (slightly faster travel time, slightly faster reload... that kind of thing).

 

Then, on a side note, buff the other launcher so that the power scale is basically:

• Tonkor (low self damage, ease of use, low damage)
• Penta (lethal self damage, mechanically awkward but still useable normally, medium damage)
• Ogris (lethal self damage, BFG slow charge and single AoE effect on a slow travel time, high damage)

But this last point really is debatable, so i'll just leave it here as a side note. 

 

Thanks for your attention :)

[LazyKnight]

I wonder if this topic will end with Tonkor being tweaked into oblivion. Honestly, I am surprised that it has remained as is for this long, but I have never been a fan of AoE weapons in this game. Never mind me my use of Tonkor was to the extent of me leveling it (at 0% in my stats...but level 30)  and marveling at how effective it was with few mods. 

[TheLexiConArtist]

6 minutes ago, Autongnosis said:

You know, i've seen this argument a lot about the Tonkor. Let me just say one thing:

There is, imho, a very good reason why the Tonkor should keep its negligible self-damage, which is that the grenades it launches explode on contact with the enemy or with yourself. Which wouldn't be a real issue, if not for the fact that at any time, while you're speeding around, and you fire the Tonkor, odds are your grenades are gonna explode in your face even if there's nothing.

Rest of your post wasn't mindless apologism so I'm not going to be too scathing.

It's not unthinkable that if you're using explosive ordnance you should have to slow down and take care so as not to hurt yourself. If you're flying through the air recklessly and happen to be near an explosion, well, you have nobody else to blame, wouldn't you say?

It just boils down to a case of playstyle disagreeing with weapon type. If a player enjoys flying around, spraying and praying, then perhaps explosives aren't (or shouldn't be) for them.

[Herosupport]

the only way to fix the tonkor would be to change the way explosive damage works in the game and remove headshots from it and only count each hit has a body shot that hits center mass but then that nerfs all the other weapons that can use that damage type. So the best thing DE can do is send it to the recycling bin and refund every one the catalyst and forma they put into it.

Or they could swap the critical chance and Status chance.

[Thural]

If an explosion happens 3 feet in front of you, an awful lot of that shrapnel is going to hit your head.  And if any damage is done to your head, it usually does more harm than if it had been done to your body.  What I understand is you're saying we put two and two together and still only get 2?

[Mousarchy]

quicker way to make a viable fix to tonkor.

REMOVE the safety blast.

ADD secondary fire mode that launches in chamber for the 50dmg rocketjump.

Thats what my idea was. (but too lazy to post because it would never be noticed anyways)

The tonkor should be the wild dangerous launcher with the penta being tactical strategy controlled explosives
butof course with that little 50dmg self cap on it there is no real dangers to it. since the terrible accuracy and unreliable ranged shots is nullified since you can just pointblank it anyways.

Also you should really think about what the actual issue with the weapons are before you just post simple QQOP

 

Edited March 15, 2016 by Ordosan

[EvilChaosKnight]

19 minutes ago, EDYinnit said:

Rest of your post wasn't mindless apologism so I'm not going to be too scathing.

It's not unthinkable that if you're using explosive ordnance you should have to slow down and take care so as not to hurt yourself. If you're flying through the air recklessly and happen to be near an explosion, well, you have nobody else to blame, wouldn't you say?

It just boils down to a case of playstyle disagreeing with weapon type. If a player enjoys flying around, spraying and praying, then perhaps explosives aren't (or shouldn't be) for them.

Doom, Quake and UT strongly disagree with everything you said here.

[Thural]

2 minutes ago, Ordosan said:

quicker way to make a viable fix to tonkor.

REMOVE the safety blast.

ADD secondary fire mode that launches in chamber for the 50dmg rocketjump.

Thats what my idea was. (but too lazy to post because it would never be noticed anyways)

The tonkor should be the wild dangerous launcher with the penta being tactical strategy controlled explosives
butof course with that little 50dmg self cap on it there is no real dangers to it. since the terrible accuracy and unreliable ranged shots is nullified since you can just pointblank it anyways.

If the penta is used strategically, why would you have to worry about self damage?  Also, with that suggestion, if someone jumps in front of you (or the aiming glitches, as it tends to do on occasion) you die, whereas the penta doesn't have that problem, you simply don't detonate the grenade until you're out of harm's way.

[TheLexiConArtist]

6 minutes ago, EvilChaosKnight said:

Doom, Quake and UT strongly disagree with everything you said here.

That's cool, I guess. This isn't Unreal Quaketournament of Doom though. It's Warframe.

Even so, it's been a long time since I played any of them, but I'm pretty sure that firing the Redeemer at my feet in UT generally meant I died.

Edited March 15, 2016 by EDYinnit

[EvilChaosKnight]

5 minutes ago, EDYinnit said:

That's cool, I guess. This isn't Unreal Quaketournament of Doom though.

It's been a long time since I played any of them, but I'm pretty sure that firing the Redeemer at my feet in UT generally meant I died.

Not only you get one just shot at the Redeemer, it's extremely rare and it actually kills your enemies in 1 hit at any point of the game instead of tickling them, you can carry literally 10 other guns for any situation in the field. How many other guns can Tenno carry? 1. Go figure.

Point being, in all those games guns are designed around the general playstyle. In Warframe you need a very specific playstyle designed around those guns not to be just effective but not to outright DIE. This is how you can separate good shooter mechanics from... not so good.

Edited March 15, 2016 by EvilChaosKnight

[Mousarchy]

Just now, Thural said:

If the penta is used strategically, why would you have to worry about self damage?  Also, with that suggestion, if someone jumps in front of you (or the aiming glitches, as it tends to do on occasion) you die, whereas the penta doesn't have that problem, you simply don't detonate the grenade until you're out of harm's way.

ya thats the strategical part of the penta. you can set up your grenades were they want them to be and blow them when you need to.

also when someone jumps in front of you? oh well i guess we should talk about how the ogris has that issue. 

thats the point of launchers. you need to learn to pay attention to your surroundings. thetonkor down side are its wild shots. they can bounce around, they are not reliable to aim with. and with the chance of you killing yourself. thats the price you pay for not being aware of your surroundings when you are using High Explosives.

you remove the ability to kill yourself and then suddenly everyone is just using explosives as a short range weapon (like they are doing with the tonkor now. how many ogris or penta do you see people pointblanking with)

[TheLexiConArtist]

Just now, EvilChaosKnight said:

Not only you get one just shot at the Redeemer, it's extremely rare and it actually kills your enemies in 1 hit at any point of the game instead of tickling them, you can carry literally 10 other guns for any situation in the field. How many other guns can Tenno carry? 1. Go figure.

I love how you just defeated your own argument by contrasting an equivalent of what the Tonkor does, without the associated risk, against the fact that the Redeemer is a one-shot, rare superweapon.

The Tonkor is like having a Redeemer that doesn't kill you if you're in the blast radius, and you carry tens of shots with a semi-regular source of picking up ten more at a time, instead of having just one and rarely.

[EvilChaosKnight]

6 minutes ago, EDYinnit said:

I love how you just defeated your own argument by contrasting an equivalent of what the Tonkor does, without the associated risk, against the fact that the Redeemer is a one-shot, rare superweapon.

The Tonkor is like having a Redeemer that doesn't kill you if you're in the blast radius, and you carry tens of shots with a semi-regular source of picking up ten more at a time, instead of having just one and rarely.

Not in the slightest. You can just as easily jump around with a Redeemer, and your death is far from guaranteed. And most of the maps in fact LET YOU do so easily. Once again, not the case in Warframe. You also completely dodged the Doom and Quake points. Or even a normal RL in UT series.

Oh, and while you are at it. Name me an enemy from any of those games which will deflect missiles in random directions (potentially your face).

Edited March 15, 2016 by EvilChaosKnight

[Herosupport]

25 minutes ago, Thural said:

If an explosion happens 3 feet in front of you, an awful lot of that shrapnel is going to hit your head.  And if any damage is done to your head, it usually does more harm than if it had been done to your body.  What I understand is you're saying we put two and two together and still only get 2?

Explosions are a full body injury weather if you take any shrapnel or not the force of the blast is lethal by its self causing bleed outs at the capillary level it burst and or ruptures them and the body becomes one giant bruise and the victim dies of internal bleeding. and from 3 feet the shrapnel you speak of is a minor and treatable injury in comparison because their is nothing we can do to treat such blast injuries yet.

Edited March 15, 2016 by Herosupport