Melee, Crit Supremacy, Channelling and Status - A discussion

[MasterControl]

As of recent, due to Shadow Debt mods and the ever-present power creep, the best melee weapons are defined by their crit chance and crit damage. As such status weapons have fallen behind, and channeling is a weird niche that can be used on any weapon. This doesn't only apply to melee, either. Rifles and handguns that can crit harder and more often usually outclass other weapons of similar difficulty to acquire. While admittedly status can be effective in extremely specific situations (ridiculous corrosive procs to strip sortie level armor and gas/electric Lankas for Mag) it rarely can outclass the sheer damage potential of critical hits.

So let's fix that. Cause status procs such as electricity and blast to create a spike of damage on their victim in the element of the proc, where the damage is determined by a new stat - Status Intensity. Not as intense as a crit, of course. Other statuses, such as flames, toxins, gasses and corrosion, won't quite have the initial spike and instead will have the ability to stack, making your enemy die faster and faster the more you consecutively proc him. Allow fire procs to slowly spread amongst enemies in contact with each other, and gas procs to linger where they were created for a short while.

It has also been proven by the occasional new weapon that channeling multipliers are able to be changed. Give some weapons better channeling stats and dedicate them to the use of channeling. Allow channeling to be a mix of damage and utility that can be customized by the player to suit their taste. Give channeling some new mods, and make it interesting. For instance, increased charged melee speed while channeling at the cost of efficiency? Sure! Status procs while channeling give back a small bit of energy? Why not! Killing an enemy while channeling causing them to explode for area of effect damage? Could be fun! Enemies that die with a status proc transfer that proc to a nearby enemy for the remainder of the proc's duration? A buddy kills his rad-proc'd friend, goes crazy himself!

 

Point is, crits are just a bit much and nothing really comes close. This may not be a perfect end-all solution, but it'd make weapons of different classes and/or uses far more appealing and fun to use. Just a few ideas to discuss and have fun with. I would hope that perhaps even one of these ideas could help DE make new weapons which have an appeal other than being a bigger hittin stick than the last hotness.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Mastercontrol98
Perhaps status shouldn't be so similar to crits

[Extroah]

Again with that Crit Supremacy, there is no such thing as Crit Supremacy. Crits are underpowered as hell and fall off way too quickly but, judging by the crit supremacy statement, i would quess that you haven't played high level missions as of yet. Elements are superior to Crits, so are Status. Why else would you explain a Zenistar doing above 25k Damage with Elemental Mods whilst doing what? 1.5k or 2k Crit Damage? This would just introduce even more powercreeep if anything.

[SolarDwagon]

7 minutes ago, Extroah said:

Again with that Crit Supremacy, there is no such thing as Crit Supremacy. Crits are underpowered as hell and fall off way too quickly but, judging by the crit supremacy statement, i would quess that you haven't played high level missions as of yet. Elements are superior to Crits, so are Status. Why else would you explain a Zenistar doing above 25k Damage with Elemental Mods whilst doing what? 1.5k or 2k Crit Damage? This would just introduce even more powercreeep if anything.

Uh....what? Most of the widely acknowledged top-tier weapons are crit weapons. All the top tier primaries are crit except maybe theTigris family, most good secondaries have at least respectable crit status, and every endgame melee I can think of is crit based as well.

 

I think that once DE work out their serration and co. rework you might see more variability and more status focus.

[Irorone]

[Extroah]

1 minute ago, SolarDwagon said:

Uh....what? Most of the widely acknowledged top-tier weapons are crit weapons. All the top tier primaries are crit except maybe theTigris family, most good secondaries have at least respectable crit status, and every endgame melee I can think of is crit based as well.

 

I think that once DE work out their serration and co. rework you might see more variability and more status focus.

 

Crit Weapons are only OP up to a certain point, but Status and Elemental Weapons catch up fairly quickly in the Lv 75~100+ Range. Crits just fall off too quickly, specially with Melee. I'm a Melee only Player and i mainly use Crit Weapons so i can speak from experience in that regard. Elemental/Status Weapons will be especially superior because they strip Armor/Shields away like butter, whilst Crit Weapons have to hit 1000 times just to get the Shields off of a heavy Unit.

[Leavith]

6 minutes ago, Extroah said:

Again with that Crit Supremacy, there is no such thing as Crit Supremacy. Crits are underpowered as hell and fall off way too quickly but, judging by the crit supremacy statement, i would quess that you haven't played high level missions as of yet. Elements are superior to Crits, so are Status. Why else would you explain a Zenistar doing above 25k Damage with Elemental Mods whilst doing what? 1.5k or 2k Crit Damage? This would just introduce even more powercreeep if anything.

Okay be fair my friend...... High level mission contain players that are usually running strategies like 4 Corrosive Projectiles-Stripping armor off against grineer/4- Steel charges-Increasing Melee damage up way Up against infested/Or other shenanigans like this which make that whatever is protecting those enemies from not receiving that full blast of crit damage disappear.

Example if you had the choice between two weapons one is crit weapon and the other a status procs weapon in you knew your team was running 4 corrosive weapons what would you choose?

Is hard question for me but I would go crit mainly because it take more then one hit to kill with procs.As you would need 1 hit to procs and another to follow that hit to take advantage of a procs such as magnetizim or Viral or another way to look at it you would need to wait for that procs to do is job such as gas or slash. As for a crit weapon high damage, high crit mult  ,and chance is really all it would need to make sure is one shot all your using.

The difference is not as big as he cuts it to be is big enough you can tell is their but not big enough that it would make any decent player leave a bunch of weapons behind cause they no crit.

[Extroah]

1 minute ago, Leavith said:

Okay be fair my friend...... High level mission contain players that are usually running strategies like 4 Corrosive Projectiles-Stripping armor off against grineer/4- Steel charges-Increasing Melee damage up way Up against infested/Or other shenanigans like this which make that whatever is protecting those enemies from not receiving that full blast of crit damage disappear.

Example if you had the choice between two weapons one is crit weapon and the other a status procs weapon in you knew your team was running 4 corrosive weapons what would you choose?

Is hard question for me but I would go crit mainly because it take more then one hit to kill with procs.As you would need 1 hit to procs and another to follow that hit to take advantage of a procs such as magnetizim or Viral or another way to look at it you would need to wait for that procs to do is job such as gas or slash. As for a crit weapon high damage, high crit mult  ,and chance is really all it would need to make sure is one shot all your using.

The difference is not as big as he cuts it to be is big enough you can tell is their but not big enough that it would make any decent player leave a bunch of weapons behind cause they no crit.

Regarding your Example, if it's a Lv 150 Enemy i'd go for Status/Element over Crit. As i mentioned above, Crit are superior only up to a certain point and then Elements/Status take over. I personally never use Elements, but the couple times i did they were superior. Gas damage Zenistar doing 25-75k Damage on a regular swing, that's more than some Weapons do as finisher damage.

[Leavith]

7 minutes ago, Extroah said:

Regarding your Example, if it's a Lv 150 Enemy i'd go for Status/Element over Crit. As i mentioned above, Crit are superior only up to a certain point and then Elements/Status take over. I personally never use Elements, but the couple times i did they were superior. Gas damage Zenistar doing 25-75k Damage on a regular swing, that's more than some Weapons do as finisher damage.

IN my example I mention 4 corrosive did you take that into account. at that point when 4 corrosive are involved I mod my weapon damage for the faction or use the weapon I need for the faction.

Example Dread-infested-because slash damage gets those multipliers bonus/Paris prime-grineer-because puncture damage still gets those multipliers/Rakta Cernos-Corpus-because impact damage gets those shields multipliers.

That's just an example of primary mod my base damage not even mentioning i would add element multiplier damage against that faction to make sure I could kill in one shot if it is required as some mission you deal with more different type of enemies from the same faction instead of type.

Gas/Fire-infested Radiation-grineer Magnetism/Blast/Ice-Corpus

 

ALSO for the certain point idea I am not seeing at present mission where enemies go into 150 unless is sorti and that is still not that high...unless we are touching special events.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Leavith

[MasterControl]

25 minutes ago, Extroah said:

Again with that Crit Supremacy, there is no such thing as Crit Supremacy. Crits are underpowered as hell and fall off way too quickly but, judging by the crit supremacy statement, i would quess that you haven't played high level missions as of yet. Elements are superior to Crits, so are Status. Why else would you explain a Zenistar doing above 25k Damage with Elemental Mods whilst doing what? 1.5k or 2k Crit Damage? This would just introduce even more powercreeep if anything.

I have in fact played high level missions. I'd have to check, but I believe the highest level enemy I have faced was either level 200 or 300, perhaps somewhere in between or greater for all I know. It's been awhile. The ONLY status that remain more effective than crits at this level is corrosion and viral, and perhaps arguably blast for the CC. Maybe viral/toxin if you happen to be playing Saryn, but only because she can stack her procs into insanity - Which I absolutely adore. At the point where crits are ineffective, status isn't doing a whole lot better. 25k damage is nice, but I can achieve at least 35k on a good swing with Scindo Prime (Just checked to confirm), and that's without any boosts from warframe powers, or even a charge attack. Hek, my Nikana Prime was red critting for over 100k yesterday, though admittedly that was with Ivara's stealth and charge attacks for lulz. I've heard that Galatine Prime is even more insane.

 

EDIT: Just remembered Fragor Prime exists, which is even more mental bananas than the Scindo Prime. One moment.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Mastercontrol98

[Extroah]

2 minutes ago, Mastercontrol98 said:

I have in fact played high level missions. I'd have to check, but I believe the highest level enemy I have faced was either level 200 or 300, perhaps somewhere in between or greater for all I know. It's been awhile. The ONLY status that remain more effective than crits at this level is corrosion and viral, and perhaps arguably blast for the CC. Maybe viral/toxin if you happen to be playing Saryn, but only because she can stack her procs into insanity - Which I absolutely adore. At the point where crits are ineffective, status isn't doing a whole lot better. 25k damage is nice, but I can achieve at least 35k on a good swing with Scindo Prime, and that's without any boosts from warframe powers, or even a charge attack. Hek, my Nikana Prime was red critting for over 100k yesterday, though admittedly that was with Ivara's stealth and charge attacks for lulz. I've heard that Galatine Prime is even more insane.

Yeah i know what they are capable off, i am a Melee only player that basically only plays Crit Melee, but they are falling off way too quickly later in the Game, that's where Status and Elements start to shine. I don't know every single detail of them, but Gas seems to be OP since it can basically clear a room with couple swings. Blast and the other were already mentioned by you, so yeah. I've seen Scindos doing 450k damage Redcrits, but imho if the Enemies go into high Lv range it's more about taking large groups of enemies down or at least CC them, which is impossible with Crit Weapons in my Experience even though it's been a while since i've played anything above LV 75.

6 minutes ago, Leavith said:

IN my example I mention 4 corrosive did you take that into account. at that point when 4 corrosive are involved I mod my weapon damage for the faction or use the weapon I need for the faction.

Example Dread-infested-because slash damage gets those multipliers bonus/Paris prime-grineer-because puncture damage still gets those multipliers/Rakta Cernos-Corpus-because impact damage gets those shields multipliers.

That's just an example of primary mod my base damage not even mentioning i would add element multiplier damage against that faction to make sure I could kill in one shot if it was required as some mission you deal with more different type of enemies from the same faction instead of type.

Gas-infested Radiation-grineer Magnetism-Corpus

No i didn't take them into account, but depending on the Level (150++) i'd still probably go Element/Status. Below that, yeah, Crit Melee all day every day, but above that it's more about what i've said in the above quote.

[-N7-Leonhart]

20 minutes ago, SolarDwagon said:

Uh....what? Most of the widely acknowledged top-tier weapons are crit weapons. All the top tier primaries are crit except maybe theTigris family, most good secondaries have at least respectable crit status, and every endgame melee I can think of is crit based as well.

 

I think that once DE work out their serration and co. rework you might see more variability and more status focus.

Little do you know of the OPness of the bleed procs on high slash weapons like Lesion, especially when combined with something like Excalibur's Blind...

[Fast_98]

13 minutes ago, -BM-Leonhart said:

Little do you know of the OPness of the bleed procs on high slash weapons like Lesion, especially when combined with something like Excalibur's Blind...

Combine it slash with viral and you can kill a level 100 bombard in 5-7 hits with no body count / blind. 

[MasterControl]

10 minutes ago, Extroah said:

but Gas seems to be OP since it can basically clear a room

Unless something drastic has changed in the month or two I've been away playing EVE during The Wait Within.. Not at all. Gas has actually been regarded as one of the worst elemental procs since I started playing Warframe 2 and a half years ago simply because it doesn't do enough damage and if I remember right a lot of things resist it. It only recently got it's resurgence being used on the Ignis for a saryn spore build and in Mag's Magnetize Lanka, due to some fun interactions it has with the powers.

 

16 minutes ago, Extroah said:

if the Enemies go into high Lv range it's more about taking large groups of enemies down or at least CC them

Yeah, this is the kind of stuff you used to hit in 3 hour long void survivals. Really, after the point of level 150, usually 175, you give up on trying to kill them and cheese them into submission with Warframe powers. But that's a discussion for another day. Status doesn't provide enough CC at this point to keep you alive on it's own. Death is the best crowd control, and 100k damage a hit is still more than enough to put these suckers down fast if your team was smart and brought corrosive projection or the right warframe powers.

17 minutes ago, -BM-Leonhart said:

Little do you know of the OPness of the bleed procs on high slash weapons like Lesion, especially when combined with something like Excalibur's Blind...

I will give you that, but Slash being the only competent damage status is a problem in of itself. That, and most of that damage comes from slash damage's interaction with finishers, wherein it always has a certain % of the hit's damage regardless if it was a finisher, crit, or whatever else. Can lead to some pretty nutty stuff with the right setups. Lookin at you, Ash using slash weaps while smokescreening and Banshee + Excal supplementing their 300% finisher damage augs

[Extroah]

2 minutes ago, Mastercontrol98 said:

Unless something drastic has changed in the month or two I've been away playing EVE during The Wait Within.. Not at all. Gas has actually been regarded as one of the worst elemental procs since I started playing Warframe 2 and a half years ago simply because it doesn't do enough damage and if I remember right a lot of things resist it. It only recently got it's resurgence being used on the Ignis for a saryn spore build and in Mag's Magnetize Lanka, due to some fun interactions it has with the powers.

As i've said, i'm not soo sure about Elements as i rarely use them but, from what i can remember, somebody posteda Video on it. I even just found it again :

 

But yeah, death is the best CC indeed.

[MasterControl]

11 minutes ago, Extroah said:

As i've said, i'm not soo sure about Elements as i rarely use them but, from what i can remember, somebody posteda Video on it. I even just found it again :

 

But yeah, death is the best CC indeed.

Eyyup, that's because he's using Exalted Blade and Radial Blind. That alone lets you hit way hard. I doubt the gas is really contributing much here. If anything, that's showing why crits are off the walls bonkers, but stealth crits and normal crits are two different things. Really, I just want Status to contribute more than it does at the moment. DE has mentioned that they intend to bring status up to par with crits (or so I've been told, don't have a source on that) and I just wanted to suggest a few ways to do it.

[Markerlight]

What you saw in that video was the interaction between Critical hits, slash procs causing bleed (which is affected by crit) and gas status which causes toxin procs (which are, again, affected by crits) and the blind mechanic, where if you are able to force an enemy in an unalerted state (Excal, Mirage, Inaros, Equinox, Ivara, Wukong...) they take 8x damage from status procs as well. 

In short, crits rule.

Stay educated pal.

[Fast_98]

Their isn't a Crit supremacy. Crit weapons function by doing what they are meant to do, crit. However for status their are much more variables that status weapon need to fulfill. Either the weapon is unfit to be a status weapon (doesn't have aoe,speed,rate of fire, status chance, etc) or it does and it becomes amazing (tysis, Tigris p, lesion, lacera, staticor, torid, etc). Plus a lot of status combinations are useless/ weaker (magnetic, impact, radiation, puncture)  comapred to others (slash, gas, viral, corrosive). My galatine might crit into the millions but it useless when compared to Mr. Bombards armour scaling.

If anything need a buff then it has to be raw damage weapon because of how much faster they fall off compare to crit and status.

 

 

 

[Extroah]

3 minutes ago, Markerlight said:

What you saw in that video was the interaction between Critical hits, slash procs causing bleed (which is affected by crit) and gas status which causes toxin procs (which are, again, affected by crits) and the blind mechanic, where if you are able to force an enemy in an unalerted state (Excal, Mirage, Inaros, Equinox, Ivara, Wukong...) they take 8x damage from status procs as well. 

In short, crits rule.

Stay educated pal.

And the +500% Damage or whatever stupid high number the person that made the video for a particulat thread said some time ago because the Procs stack up and get a crazy high multiplier or something. Again, i'm not expert on Elements as i've mention above, but Crit Weapons still fall off rather quickly compared to status/elements because of the armor scaling.

[Dreddeth]

Status damage via Heat, Gas, and Toxin is applied only if the enemy is still alive after the hit, and scales off of whatever damage you did on the hit that procced it, meaning that more flat damage to work with and okay Status is usually better than having trash-tier damage but god-tier Status. CC effects and debuffs are handy of course, but they are static apart from Blast, meaning that, apart from Blast, they do not scale off of damage, and Blast does not scale in a particularly useful way.

Now compare the Dread's ability to deal around 60* its listed base damage with a single redhead, and even deal that damage again over time with an insane Bleed proc if you're lucky, to the DPS of a status weapon like the Burston Prime whose abysmal crit stats exclude it from achieving that level of initial damage for its procs to scale off of, and no the Lanka doesn't count as a pure status weapon because its procs are scaling off of its crit damage. In fact, no status weapon shall be considered superior to a crit weapon unless it achieves that superiority without relying on the damage boost of crits, because at that point it is effectively a crit weapon with status.

Regarding debuff/CC procs, if one is going solo they're often a necessity which varies by faction. Corrosive and/or Viral for Grineer, Magnetic and Toxin for Corpus, Blast or Gas or Heat for Infested, etc. However, picking up a frame with good CC powers makes sacrificing potential damage for further potential CC fairly pointless. For example, the stun from an Electric or Heat proc is frankly lackluster and redundant compared to Sleep Arrow, Chaos, Paralysis, or Spellbind, making a damage increase that would ensure killing those CC'ed enemies before the ability expired much more practical than stacking CC statuses on top of CC abilities.

Plus, Naramon is a thing if people are going to go as far as to play the min/maxer "past level 700 that falls off" card, not to mention Covert Lethality, which is of course counter-intuitive to the very aim of a Status weapon. Oh, and Saryn's Toxin procs scale off of crits too, so building for Toxic Lash (which guarantees a Toxin proc) and going to town with Scindo Prime will achieve significantly higher damage output than trying to get a Gas Zenistar to work with Spore.

So yeah, Status-specialized weapons are great, if you're inflicting one of the useful statuses like Corrosive, Viral, or a DoT. Plenty of crit weapons, though, especially these days with the Zhuge and Nikana Prime and whatnot, have respectable status on top of the ability to deal far more damage to begin with, making them just plain better.

[MasterControl]

12 minutes ago, Fast_98 said:

Plus a lot of status combinations are useless/ weaker (magnetic, impact, radiation, puncture)  comapred to others (slash, gas, viral, corrosive)

That's what I'd like to address. And if ya don't believe crit supremacy exists, take a Bo Prime and status build it and compare it to a crit built Hate. The difference should be easily apparent, even if they have similar base damage.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Mastercontrol98

[Dr.Evergreen]

Um, OP you saying it just for melee right? I think the 'Intensity' you'd say can make a mess to primaries.

Some weapons can be buffed and yes it can be a good thing.

but I'm concerning about other aspect. new overpowered guns will come,

and low firerate weapons, low proc weapons, and awkward-triggered guns will again trash'd

because it cannot stack proc constantly or not buffed properly.

Even now the shiny Soma Prime can be a second banana compared to Prisma Grakata,

which can spray proc bullets in very short time...

 

and...I wonder how many Tenno use a melee weapon like this : 40% crit, 10 base impact dmg, 0.5 attack speed, 5% proc, short like a spoon.

This is exaggerated thing but what I wanna say is, why a powerful weapon being powerful is because it has good specs overall,

not because its crit only.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Chantepleur

[TaylorsContraction]

I can agree that melee has crit supremacy because slash procs are scaled by crits and ignore all defenses. My nikana prime churns out 5k slash procs per second without even ramping up to a 3-4x multiplier. Galatine p. is similarly strong. But for primaries /secondaries status is not bad at all.

[BattledOne]

On 11/11/2016 at 0:28 PM, Extroah said:

And the +500% Damage or whatever stupid high number the person that made the video for a particulat thread said some time ago because the Procs stack up and get a crazy high multiplier or something. Again, i'm not expert on Elements as i've mention above, but Crit Weapons still fall off rather quickly compared to status/elements because of the armor scaling.

You do realize besides slash, all status damage is affected by armor scaling? So a bombard with like 90% damage reduction will reduce the main hit by 90% and then the gas based on that 10% is reduced by 90%.