IPS Damage Nerf: No Reason To Ever Use Them?

[Darthmufin]

IPS damage, also known as Impact, Puncture, and Slash damage have mods that increase damage to that specific damage type. Most people think that the Puncture IPS mods were worth it, and i have shown over and over again that they are not. Same for impact, Impact and Puncture IPS mods are useless and serve extremely little use other than builds where you don't want elemental damage for some reason. Slash is an exception, due to slash procs being able to stack thus making the increase in slash damage acceptable but even then, you lose a slot for that. On melee this is a little different, as some melee weapons can benefit if they have high status to use IPS as you will only need a single combination elemental like corrosive, which leaves room for slash. 

For a while now, Archwing IPS mods acted differently however. Instead of adding slash, impact, or puncture damage based on their respective damage totals, they would add the damage based on the base damage of all three. This meant that the IPS mods were actually worth using over elementals in some cases, the first time in Warframe where this was the case. Digital Extremes must know how useless IPS mods are, they made the game after all and see the extremely limited use of these mods. 

So why was this changed? I was hoping that the archwing "bug" was DE waking up to some of their more unfortunate mod additions and realization that they  needed that kind of buff to be effective. Sadly i appear to have been wrong, and now all IPS damage mods are useless once again. Very unfortunate. 

 

also, napalms hurt tenno through the rift plane, for almost 5 months now. :)

[Hawk_of_the_Reborn]

Impact damage eats through shielded enemies like Corpus. Piercing goes through armor like Grineer and Ancients. Slash is worthless against robotics like Moas, Bursas, Mutalist Moas and the like.

[NightBlitz]

agreed, as they are now, ips mods have no reason to be used over an elemental mod that has the same % bonus, because in every case the total dmg for IPS is higher than the dmg of any one of those types, some times elem mods are roughly 3x as effective as IPS mods, others less, but even then they're better. now i could understand not being able to use them on weapons that dont have any IPS dmg, but they should be able to compare to elem, even if a little. at the very least let that be the case in AW. now that aw weapon part in in syndicates. why bother running anything aw thats not an alert  for anything besides lving aw gear?

[daget24]

27 minutes ago, Hawk_of_the_Reborn said:

Impact damage eats through shielded enemies like Corpus. Piercing goes through armor like Grineer and Ancients. Slash is worthless against robotics like Moas, Bursas, Mutalist Moas and the like.

These are just damage resistances. Elements have them to, and more often than not they are more versatile when it comes to damage resistances as well as providing way better special effects than those of Physical. Even DoT of the toxin tends to be way better than that of Slash until the very late game. Imo its not really worth to invest into Physical damage mods atm.

Edited August 10, 2016 by daget24

[Hawk_of_the_Reborn]

47 minutes ago, daget24 said:

These are just damage resistances. Elements have them to, and more often than not they are more versatile when it comes to damage resistances as well as providing way better special effects than those of Physical. Even DoT of the toxin tends to be way better than that of Slash until the very late game. Imo its not really worth to invest into Physical damage mods atm.

When you go for crit build, one having more damage is best in general. 

[Darthmufin]

6 hours ago, Hawk_of_the_Reborn said:

Impact damage eats through shielded enemies like Corpus. Piercing goes through armor like Grineer and Ancients. Slash is worthless against robotics like Moas, Bursas, Mutalist Moas and the like.

you don't understand what i'm saying, the "bonus" of impact or puncture is less than more elemental damage. Try it for yourself, i tested the impact set extensively and found there is no different between using an impact mod, or increasing elemental. It's actually counter productive especially on critical weapons. You deal a bit more shield damage with that impact mod, but when shields are gone your viral damage is lower so your dealing lower damage to their health, for example. 

as i said slash is different because slash has a stacking DoT bleed affect, which are not reduced by armor. 

[bubbabenali]

Slash > pretty much everything

Not because any damage modifiers but only because of the procs.

Yea, obviously 1sec stagger, 30% damage debuff and 8sec unblockable and unreduceable DoT are somewhat equivalent...

Add the fact that slash is best against all flesh types and there are auras to effectively turn every enemy into an unarmored \ -shielded units, well of course the other IPS types are only used to weaken otherwise possibly powerfull weapons.

[daget24]

6 hours ago, Hawk_of_the_Reborn said:

When you go for crit build, one having more damage is best in general. 

Usually when you're going for crit build you don't usually have any slots left for damage, but then if its not a slash weapon its better to put just some elemental damage for status.

 

5 minutes ago, bubbabenali said:

Slash > pretty much everything

Not because any damage modifiers but only because of the procs.

Yea, obviously 1sec stagger, 30% damage debuff and 8sec unblockable and unreduceable DoT are somewhat equivalent...

Add the fact that slash is best against all flesh types and there are auras to effectively turn every enemy into an unarmored \ -shielded units, well of course the other IPS types are only used to weaken otherwise possibly powerfull weapons.

You can have just 1 slash damage and it wouldn't make difference since it always bases on weapon base damage not the slash damage, You don't need to build damage to proc physical status. (Much to everyones annoyance) 

[bubbabenali]

Just now, daget24 said:

Usually when you're going for crit build you don't usually have any slots left for damage, but then if its not a slash weapon its better to put just some elemental damage for status.

 

You can have just 1 slash damage and it wouldn't make difference since it always bases on weapon base damage not the slash damage, You don't need to build damage to proc physical status. (Much to everyones annoyance) 

Normaly you'd pick a weapon where slash has the highest portion and then mod in corrosive or viral; yes IPS mods are useless on 90% of the weapons

[DoomFruit]

11 hours ago, Darthmufin said:

For a while now, Archwing IPS mods acted differently however. Instead of adding slash, impact, or puncture damage based on their respective damage totals, they would add the damage based on the base damage of all three.

Actually, they were better than that - they added damage as a fraction of the weapon's overall base damage, like all the (actually useful) elemental mods do. This meant that I could stick them on my Velocitus and they would actually work.

But no, the archwing IPS mods are now completely useless like they are in the rest of the game.

[Darthmufin]

15 minutes ago, DoomFruit said:

Actually, they were better than that - they added damage as a fraction of the weapon's overall base damage, like all the (actually useful) elemental mods do. This meant that I could stick them on my Velocitus and they would actually work.

But no, the archwing IPS mods are now completely useless like they are in the rest of the game.

yeah i know, i omitted that because that is clearly silly to add slash to a weapon without any IPS damage. 

[Darthmufin]

3 hours ago, bubbabenali said:

Normaly you'd pick a weapon where slash has the highest portion and then mod in corrosive or viral; yes IPS mods are useless on 90% of the weapons

even on a pure impact or puncture weapon IPS mods are not really worth it, elemental have better bonuses then the physical damages except for slash. sonicor still is better with more elemental damage than more impact, for example. Impact is the worst of them all though, even if you have 100% of the damage as impact, the final result will be -25% damage against grineer and crewmen health. 

[Darthmufin]

soo, any news from DE or are they ignoring this too?

[DarcnyssWolfe]

6 hours ago, Darthmufin said:

soo, any news from DE or are they ignoring this too?

Lmao take a looks at the shield gate post, it takes a post staying active for months and getting constant support from players before its ever mentioned in a dev stream. And then take a look at the last several mega threads, if they don't care, it'll just be ignored and buried.

As a side note, currently dealing between primed fury and the 120% slash MOD on Gal Primed (which has a wapping 95% slash base damage), with just one dual stat putting it at 32% status chance, thing gets near constant slash procs. It's beautiful, if it didn't outright kill nearly everything under lvl90.

[(PSN)lhbuch]

Elemental damage mods take base damage to calculate its damage. IPS damage mods take only that specific type of damage to calculate its added damage. So in most cases a elemental damage mod will be better than an IPS mod. 

A diiferent scenario is the PROC itself. As stated above in some scenarios people will use IPS mods to have a sum of increased damage and increased chance to proc that specific IPS.

A classic scenario is when you build a wepon to proc Slash like Darcnysswolfe mentioned. In this scenario, the more slash damage GAL P has, higher the chance of slash procs to happen .

Edited August 25, 2016 by (PS4)lhbuch

[SinergyX]

44 minutes ago, (PS4)lhbuch said:

Elemental damage mods take base damage to calculate its damage. IPS damage mods take only that specific type of damage to calculate its added damage. So in most cases a elemental damage mod will be better than an IPS mod. 

A diiferent scenario is the PROC itself. As stated above in some scenarios people will use IPS mods to have a sum of increased damage and increased chance to proc that specific IPS.

A classic scenario is when you build a wepon to proc Slash like Darcnysswolfe mentioned. In this scenario, the more slash damage GAL P has, higher the chance of slash procs to happen and higher the damage that these procs will do.

Exception imho would be the Primed, where for quite a few weapons the percentage non-main-IPS is that small, a 120% impact can still outperform a 90% elemental. I only know 1 fire primed (secondary), but i believe there are already a few primed IPS mods out there (melee, primairy shotgun).

[Inarticulate]

3 hours ago, (PS4)lhbuch said:

A classic scenario is when you build a wepon to proc Slash like Darcnysswolfe mentioned. In this scenario, the more slash damage GAL P has, higher the chance of slash procs to happen and higher the damage that these procs will do.

The damage inflicted by a Slash proc is affected only by your weapon's base damage (regardless of damage type) and base damage mods.

[(PSN)lhbuch]

17 minutes ago, Inarticulate said:

The damage inflicted by a Slash proc is affected only by your weapon's base damage (regardless of damage type) and base damage mods.

Did edit the original post for accuracy. Tks my friend.

[(PSN)lhbuch]

1 minute ago, (PS4)lhbuch said:

Did edit the original post for accuracy. Tks my friend.

Oh and also, you are the one who influenced me to get into this Tigris Prime cult man. Please help me defend it. Lol

[voltocitygel]

The reason IPS mods are useless is beachside of how weak the bonus is. (Except the event versions, which I use in some cases)

at max rank, elemental mods add their % bonus damage calculating from all base weapon damage. The physical mods add it based on that damage type's base damage. Right there is the problem. Unless the weapon only deals one damage type, elemental mods will add more damage, period. And that isn't taking into account resistances. Physical are the least specialized in terms of what they work against- base elements are in between- and secondary elements are the super specialized types.

[Inarticulate]

I feel the main problem with the IPS damage mods is that the physical damage types typically have smaller bonuses against enemy armor and health types compared to elemental damage types. In cases where the IPS damage mods grant a larger amount of raw damage to the weapon than an elemental mod, the elemental mod still has better bonuses against the enemy armor or health type.

Being based off of the base physical damage split is fine for me; all that means is that they are situational. After all, you don't use critical hit mods on weapons that have low critical chance.

1 hour ago, (PS4)lhbuch said:

Oh and also, you are the one who influenced me to get into this Tigris Prime cult man. Please help me defend it. Lol

And yes, Sweeping Serration is amazing on the Tigris Prime because the point of the Tigris Prime status build is to stack as much Slash damage as possible to make Slash a larger piece of the proc type pie.

 

Slash ties with Heat against unarmored Grineer and light Infested units making it viable for the third elemental slot in place of Heat on weapons with 3 spare slots for elementals and at least 75% of its base damage in Slash (e.g. Dread).

Impact and Puncture aren't as good as Slash for the third elemental slot simply because it doesn't perform as well as the alternative elemental mod. Impact might work for the fourth elemental slot against Corpus to avoid building Gas damage, but a second Toxin mod often works just as well (especially on status weapons where the Magnetic proc means there's less shield for your Impact damage to be effective against). Puncture beats out Toxin against Ferrite Armor, but you're usually better off with Cold so that you have something to deal with Alloy Armor a bit better.

The Impact proc is decent, though, so it's worth considering on weapons with high status chance if you don't mind giving up some of the proc type pie for elemental status procs (e.g. Mutalist Cernos).

[Darthmufin]

12 hours ago, DarcnyssWolfe said:

Lmao take a looks at the shield gate post, it takes a post staying active for months and getting constant support from players before its ever mentioned in a dev stream. And then take a look at the last several mega threads, if they don't care, it'll just be ignored and buried.

As a side note, currently dealing between primed fury and the 120% slash MOD on Gal Primed (which has a wapping 95% slash base damage), with just one dual stat putting it at 32% status chance, thing gets near constant slash procs. It's beautiful, if it didn't outright kill nearly everything under lvl90.

That is the sad truth of DE now i suppose. I have a few threads with 50+ likes and still no word from DE. They keep fixing new bugs but refuse to fix older bugs for some reason. 

[Darthmufin]

5 hours ago, voltocitygel said:

The reason IPS mods are useless is beachside of how weak the bonus is. (Except the event versions, which I use in some cases)

at max rank, elemental mods add their % bonus damage calculating from all base weapon damage. The physical mods add it based on that damage type's base damage. Right there is the problem. Unless the weapon only deals one damage type, elemental mods will add more damage, period. And that isn't taking into account resistances. Physical are the least specialized in terms of what they work against- base elements are in between- and secondary elements are the super specialized types.

and like i said, even if the weapon deals pure puncture or impact, the IPS mod is still not worth it over elemental. The only one that is, is slash due to stacking bleed procs. All elementals have better procs than puncture and impact one way or the other and the damage increase is minimal compared to more elemental damage. that is the issue. 

[Vohim]

the only  damage type i find semi useless  for my play style at least 

is puncture

as for  corpus/sorties i run   impact+elemental combo

or impact+ Lightning if a sortie with lots of corpus machines 

corrossive and Slash for infested 

well  could go with corrossive+ puncture for grineer  so i solved my own mistery   as to what to use puncture for

Edited August 26, 2016 by Retepzednem

[Darthmufin]

On 8/25/2016 at 8:50 PM, Retepzednem said:

the only  damage type i find semi useless  for my play style at least 

is puncture

as for  corpus/sorties i run   impact+elemental combo

or impact+ Lightning if a sortie with lots of corpus machines 

corrossive and Slash for infested 

well  could go with corrossive+ puncture for grineer  so i solved my own mistery   as to what to use puncture for

like i mentioned several times now, it's less effective to use IPS damage mods over elemental. Elemental just offers more advantages than IPS and since the nerf, there is literally NO reason to use archwing IPS damage mods, not even slash. They all suck and DE probably knows this. I just don't understand why DE would willingly ruin their own mods.