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There is no reason to NOT use AoE weapons in most cases.


Jackviator
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I love Warframe's weapon variety. It caters to pretty much any playstyle one can think of.

However, there's a slight problem: One of those playstyles (using Area of Effect weapons like the Tonkor, Synoid Simulor, Ignis and Telos Boltace) is objectively more effective than any other playstyle in just about any given gameplay situation. And there's nothing wrong with that, some weapons will always be more or less effective than others, and it makes sense that AoE weapons would work better than all others in this game, that's just the nature of a horde-mode game like this one. So it would be ok... so long as there are certain downsides to them, to ensure balance

The problem is, there aren't really many downsides to be found on some (not all, but some) AoE weapons. Let's examine a few of those now:

1: The Tonkor. Causes massive damage in a very wide area, especially if you manage to hit an enemy in the head, so it applies the headshot damage multiplier to all enemies around it. Downsides: a two-shot magazine. That's it. No self-damage of any kind, (you can even shoot the grenades at your feet to do a rocket-jump). Just fire the 'nades st enemy crowds and watch the destruction.

2: The Telos Boltace. Causes massive damage in a wide area, and even applies endlessly-scaling guaranteed Bleed procs in very wide areas that do DoT damage to enemies directly, with no regard to enemy armor or other resistances. Downsides: none. Just set a slide attack macro and you can blitz through Sorties like they're nothing.

3: The Ignis. Causes massive damage in a wide area, and even has innate punch-through. It doesn't matter if an enemy is at the back of the crowd or the front, he's instantly getting vaporized. Downsides: it falls off past about level 60. The thing is, I honestly don't think that really matters too much. Outside of Sorties Raids and Floods, there's really no reason to go past level 50 or so in this game. You don't get any benefit in Survival or other endless missions from doing so unless you're in an endless Fissure mission, and those aren't even always available. Basically, outside of the few examples I listed, there's really no reason to be outside Star Chart levels in this game.

4: The Synoid Simulor. Probably the worst offender on this list. Causes a MASSIVE AoE that stunlocks enemies when spammed, gives you back energy every so often while causing another AoE, and you don't even have to aim the thing. Very ammo-efficient with a massive ammo pool and a short reload, and in general one of (if not the best) guns in the entire game for dealing with crowds. This thing has "meta" tramp-stamped onto it at birth.

So, what's to be done here? Well, I had a few ideas.

Tonkor: add a degree of self-damage, but not the "one shot and you're dead" BS we have now on most guns with self-damage. Instead, it should do a flat 100-200 damage that doesn't scale with any mods, but also bypasses Armor; it would essentially deal Finisher damage, but not bypass Shields. This way, you'd have to either pair it with a super-tanky frame like Wukong, Inaros or Assimilate Nyx if you don't want to have to worry too much about your shots. Or, if you use it on other frames, you'd have to be wary of what you're doing, but not get one-shot by your own gun.

Telos Boltace: change the guaranteed Bleed proc to a Puncture proc. This way you'd still be able to do damage in a wide area, you'd just not be dealing endlessly scaling Finisher damage, you'd instead be debuffing all enemies around you by reducing their attack damages. It also makes more sense; the Telos Boltace is Puncture-based, after all.

Ignis: remove punch-through and/or reduce the radius of the flame hitbox by 25%. This way you'd actually have to focus on the enemies you want dead as opposed to just frying them by pointing in their general direction. Additionally, DE could also think about buffing its status chance or something so you could use it in Sorties and such and still be effective if you so wish, but like I said, high levels only make up a tiny portion of the gameplay.

Synoid Simulor: this is a tricky one due to its short firing range and wide explosion radius, so self-damage isn't an option. Instead, I think the damage from the alt-fire bubble explosion and the stacking of the vortexes themselves could simply be swapped. Basically, if this were the case, you'd have to build up your vortex stacks first, and then when you want a massive AoE, you would trigger the explosion with your alt-fire. Essentially, you would still get your big AoE, you'd just have to put in a couple seconds of buildup first.

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So as you can see, I'm not trying to homogenize all weapons and frames, "nerf them into the ground," or other such ridiculous extremes I often seen thrown around when this type of post comes up. All I just want is for them to have certain downsides to ensure balance, and not make them the best tool for the job in all situations unless you know how to use them well.

And if you're the type that thinks nerfing is never acceptable because it's a PvE game, wellllll... just have a read:

 

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Mm I disagree about the Ignis one, and not just because I'm an Ignis user. I rarely use my Ignis in pub matches because I know it's not fun, but the thing about the Ignis is that unlike every other weapon on this list, it's not good when you first get it. It takes several formas to even make it Sortie worthy, let alone end game worthy.

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Ain't Telos Boltace's spin attack already limited by LoS and also damage reduction for enemies further away from the epicenter? Meanwhile Tonkor's aiming seems pretty clunky for me to use, since 1/3 of the shots end up bouncing someplace else so that's another downside.

Do agree on Synoid Simulor tho to some extent, especially with the frequency of Mirage players spamming the daylights out of it. I might as well just sit at the extraction point and let them do all the killing.

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10 minutes ago, Jackviator said:

Tonkor: add a degree of self-damage, but not the "one shot and you're dead" BS we have now on most guns with self-damage. Instead, it should do a flat 100-200 damage that doesn't scale with any mods, but also bypasses Armor; it would essentially deal Finisher damage, but not bypass Shields.

That'd make Tonkor the top gun for restoring energy pool on warframes with Rage.

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I'mma be honest with you, I feel like you're making all of these ~*~*~totally unpopular opinion~*~*~ threads in an attempt to farm upvotes. My evidence for this is you gleefully posting how you got 100+ upvotes on your Kuva topic.

What's said here has been said many times before. AoE is too good, most AoE weapons barely have a downside, if any, and something needs to be done about them as they are needlessly disruptive to those that would rather not use them (who have every right not to). The issue is that you need to keep the basic function of the weapon intact so as not to alienate the current users of the weapons (IE: reversing the payload of the SySim, as you suggest, making the weapon unwieldy, which was the original complain the basic Simulor received).

It's also worth mentioning that, Tonkor and Telos Boltace aside, most of these weapons aren't as prolific and problem causing without being used on Mirage. I barely see an Ignis outside of infested missions, so I'm not sure where this sudden trend of bringing up the Ignis on the forums came from, and a regular SySim user, while still outputting tons of damage, isn't going to be completely removing all player agency from everyone else by simply walking forward and spamming the mouse key.

EDIT: This is also incredibly similar to your recently posted topic about the same issue, just from a different perspective.

Edited by Chipputer
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Can confirm the Ignis has more than enough tradeoff already.

Quote

Doesn't matter if an enemy is in the back of the pack or the front

Except it does, because the damage falls off at range. Its ammo economy is also pretty weak (although not exactly in Amprex territory), so if you're fighting tougher targets and/or not correctly orienting yourself towards groups you're going to wear down your supply. But specifically finding groups is what you should be doing with natural AOE weaponry, so.. That's pretty appropriate.

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On 2/12/2017 at 4:03 AM, Chipputer said:

I'mma be honest with you, I feel like you're making all of these ~*~*~totally unpopular opinion~*~*~ threads in an attempt to farm upvotes

Nah it's just to get my message across and keep the discussion going as much as possible. 

If there's a problem in the game, I'm gonna keep talking about it until it gets fixed. That's the only thing that can get the attention of the devs; if enough people are talking about it.

Edited by Jackviator
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I have to admit, Miragulor is amusing - yesterday, I was in a pub defense mission (hunting acolytes) and we beat the acolyte, and started the mission. I just put up a snowglobe and knelt on the warframe cryopod because our resident Miragulor was running loops around the map like a hyperactive 4-year-old, spraying Simulor rounds. It was funny to watch, I must say.  "I'M GOIN' FAST, MAMA!"

I personally don't like using AOE weapons because, while perhaps optimal, they feel dull. 

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TBH, with how quickly one can proc stack, rather stick with 200-300 dmg bleed ticks (@5-10 stacks) than essentially having an improved disarm when everything in range is trying to do negative damage from mass puncture proc stacking.

Edited by DarcnyssWolfe
Correcting Auto-Correct
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Aoe weapons are great, the game spams us with room after room of low hp pointless mobs, so these help clear without being stuck on the AOE trash clearing frames.

 

you forgot, Atomos, Staticor, Pox, Torid, Opticor, Quanta (vandal), Amprex, Stugg, Kulstar, Angstrum, Zarr equally as good, tho the last 4 have self harm.

and a few of the large radius AOE weapons like Atterax or insane damage aoe procers like Orvius

 

the 4 you mentioned to have downsides :P

Ignis, scales out hard, its pretty much a low level trash clear and late game proccer with no real dps

Synoid Simulor scales out because it has relatively low damage, try vs a 150+ armored.

Tonkor scales out a little, but its main drawback is players who can't aim, missing shots, Hot shots Part Deux moments, null bubbles

Telos boltace is only really strong because of its bleed procs, but you really do get a sore finger after a while, and later on really need to start hitting things to get kills.

 

Tonkor doesn't self harm because Scott has been playing team fortress and likes the idea of rocket jumping so can't figure out a way to meld the 2 mechanics, I think Simulor was just a whoops moment, when they made the syndicate version and gave it huge numbers, nobody really used the normal version with lower damage.

 

A nerf to Simulors ability to penetrate walls, doors and floors would be nice, Tonkor could simply be made less accurate. Boltace just needs its interaction with specific mods removed.  

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Hopefully DE way of going about damage 3.0 could solve some of this. I agree with the OP about warframe being a horde shooter, so AOE weapons are typically the best because you can take out multiple enemies out of the horde you are facing. However, with DE making enemies more "interesting" with damage 3.0, maybe other weapons like machine guns/snipers/bows will become more prevalent.

DE's premise of they way they are going about damage 3.0 is focusing on the enemy side of things by working on enemy scaling and making enemies more "interesting". By more "interesting" enemies, perhaps this could mean that they want to design enemies that are, for example, priority targets because they buff their allies or they have offensive abilities that make it hard for you and your team. These interesting enemies could also have certain mechanics that make it so you have to kill them a certain way and aren't just "more bags of hitpoints" as DE_Steve said on the last devstream. These mechanics could incentivize the use of more precise, non-aoe weapons to take out weakspots (with the upcoming infested eximi) or simply cause high single target damage to high value enemies (with bows/snipers).

In fact, there are some of these enemies already in the game. For example, corrupted ancients give their allies large damage reduction, incentivizing players to hunt them down and kill them first before killing the other mobs. In addition, whether we like them or not, there's no denying that enemies like nullifiers are anti-aoe because of the way that their shield reacts to burst damage as opposed to sustained damage (this applies to the tonkor a lot), and with the upcoming weakspot on nullifier bubbles, hopefully players' precise weapons will have more of a chance against nullies as opposed to just machine guns.

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That, and there's no real punishment for going in to a mission and making the largest amount of noise and destruction possible. Warframe isn't about surgical strikes, since frames are essentially Godlike Angels of Horrible and Humiliating Ragdoll Death compared to basically everything in the game*.

So like, when you hit a Grineer base to do a spy mission, subtlety isn't rewarded much: you can just blast the crap out of everything, launching grenades and setting everything on fire, and you're still "undetected" if you don't trip the vault alarms -- they don't purge the vaults at lockdown or anything, which you'd think they would.

It's not a stealth game, it's not even a precision game - so you might as well hurl bombs and scream. 

 

* Excluding endgame; endgame is free to break the expectation. 

Edited by (XB1)CannyJack
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On ‎2‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 1:35 PM, (Xbox One)CannyJack said:

That, and there's no real punishment for going in to a mission and making the largest amount of noise and destruction possible. Warframe isn't about surgical strikes, since frames are essentially Godlike Angels of Horrible and Humiliating Ragdoll Death compared to basically everything in the game*.

So like, when you hit a Grineer base to do a spy mission, subtlety isn't rewarded much: you can just blast the crap out of everything, launching grenades and setting everything on fire, and you're still "undetected" if you don't trip the vault alarms -- they don't purge the vaults at lockdown or anything, which you'd think they would.

It's not a stealth game, it's not even a precision game - so you might as well hurl bombs and scream. 

 

* Excluding endgame; endgame is free to break the expectation. 

That's the real problem with AOE. Enemies just aren't tough enough to make crit headshot damage, or armor-slaying status to matter. That's why I love high level stuff.

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