Can we please stop this thought that Mirage is the only thing that makes Synoid Simulor OP?

[Nox_Terminus]

Does the Simulor need mechanical changes? Sure, but it doesn't need a hard nerf.

Mirage is the disease, Simulor spam is just one of the symptoms.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

Considering mirage doesn't really have much else, hall of mirrors is fine. Prism really isn't great damage and the blind isn't nearly as good since it doesnt open up finishers. It is great for melee and has cc capabilities, but it's not reliable to say the least. Eclipse is a great damage buff or defense buff, but isn't reliable as either due to lighting inconsistencies. Sleight of Hand is about as useful as a fishing pole in a desert. So, hall of mirrors is really the only reliable and effective defense and damage buff. The miragulor interaction is an unexpected huge buff from synergy that has been widely accepted as overpowered. Otherwise, hall of mirrors fine with how it buffs weapons. If she is overpowered with other weapons like tonkor, then it's the weapon that's overpowered not her, and we all know for the longest time the tonkor or synoid simulor have always been the weapons you bring when you just want to roll through a mission like a wheel of cheese. 

[Chipputer]

The current problem with touching either Mirage or the Synoid Simulor is that neither are overpowered, inherently, and touching either one of them will affect all players who use the one that you touch in a major way due to a small subset of players that use them to cheese.

The headshot changes to AoE weapons was enough of a nerf to the SySim. Specific combos with Mirage are what need to be looked at, not Mirage or those individual weapons.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

12 minutes ago, Chipputer said:

The current problem with touching either Mirage or the Synoid Simulor is that neither are overpowered, inherently, and touching either one of them will affect all players who use the one that you touch in a major way due to a small subset of players that use them to cheese.

The headshot changes to AoE weapons was enough of a nerf to the SySim. Specific combos with Mirage are what need to be looked at, not Mirage or those individual weapons.

Synoid Simulor is still FAR ahead of other weapon classes. Its limited range is kinda meh once you factor in the fact that we can cross rooms in seconds. It does metric tons more damage than most other weapons, has a large aoe, slight cc, and has a great syndicate aoe proc. Mirage isn't op to me and I've already said why, but synoid simulor is. Mirage WITH simulor is just ridiculous, but that's different. To me, all it really needs is slower fire rate and higher dot, but that's just me brainstorming ideas.

Edited February 19, 2017 by (PS4)Crixus044

[Chipputer]

Just now, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

Synoid Simulor is still FAR ahead of other weapon classes.

That's a problem with AoE, in general, in this game, not inherent with the SySim.

Things that take the SySim a little while to kill can be one shot by me with my (Rakta) Cernos (Prime), but you don't see people saying those weapons are overpowered, no?

[(PSN)Crixus044]

20 minutes ago, Chipputer said:

That's a problem with AoE, in general, in this game, not inherent with the SySim.

Things that take the SySim a little while to kill can be one shot by me with my (Rakta) Cernos (Prime), but you don't see people saying those weapons are overpowered, no?

You hit the problem right on the head.

A O E

It may take a synoid simulor a few seconds to kill what takes bows and snipers instant, but in those few seconds, a sniper may kill 5 enemies (one at a time), while the synoid simulor simultaneously took out a whole room. 

[Chipputer]

10 minutes ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

You hit the problem right on the head.

A O E

It may take a synoid simulor a few seconds to kill what takes bows and snipers instant, but in those few seconds, a sniper may kill 5 enemies (one at a time), while the synoid simulor simultaneously took out a whole room. 

Yes. Which is an AoE problem and not a problem with the individual weapons.

I'm very much in favor of target caps in games like this, but that's such an unpopular opinion that I wouldn't be surprised if someone found out where I lived to come find and burn me alive. lel

[(PSN)Crixus044]

17 minutes ago, Chipputer said:

Yes. Which is an AoE problem and not a problem with the individual weapons.

I'm very much in favor of target caps in games like this, but that's such an unpopular opinion that I wouldn't be surprised if someone found out where I lived to come find and burn me alive. lel

This is just one of the many ideas I've come up with, but I think that if it would be changed, it could simply have it's damage distributed among enemies in range. For instance, a 5,000 damage explosion would divide the base damage evenly amongst the enemies in range. Crits are then calculated based on chance and number of enemies hit.

Example: 5000 base damage with 20% crit chance hitting five enemies. Each enemy recieves 1000 damage with one enemy getting crit damage. 

[Chipputer]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

This is just one of the many ideas I've come up with, but I think that if it would be changed, it could simply have it's damage distributed among enemies in range. For instance, a 5,000 damage explosion would divide the base damage evenly amongst the enemies in range. Crits are then calculated based on chance and number of enemies hit.

Example: 5000 base damage with 20% crit chance hitting five enemies. Each enemy recieves 1000 damage with one enemy getting crit damage. 

I thought of doing that, too, but then AoE weapons would still outshine single target weapons due to a single target focusing the damage, entirely.

I've also thought of using a balancing point of a certain number of enemies. Single target weapon does xxx amount of damage, you balance an AoE weapon to do that same amount of damage, cumulatively, to a certain number of enemies so the idea is that an AoE weapon will be better for crowds but still not directly outshine the single target weapon. In the end, the logical conclusion is that you either under-tune the AoE and it becomes useless at its own job when the crowds get too large, or you over-tune it and it's still too strong.

It's a tricky nut to crack and one that I don't envy the dev team for.

[Lyravain]

On 16/2/2017 at 7:30 PM, Tesseract7777 said:

Actually Mirage does need nerfs. Before the Synoid Simulor Mirage abused other weapons horribly and will find a new one if Simulor itself is nerfed. Yes, Simulor needs to be nerfed independently of Mirage, but Mirage could also use balancing independently of Simulor. 

It is far too easy for her to pick up the latest flavor of the month and make it absolutely ludicrous. And that IS a problem, whether those who are fans of Mirage want to admit it or not. Even after the change to Prism she is still one of the most overpowered frames in the game by far due to her interactions with many weapons. 

And that won't be solved by simply nerfing the Synoid Simulor. That solves nothing except that particular weapon, and there is far more wrong with Mirage than the Synoid Simulor. 

In short: They both need balancing.

Mirage is fine as is. She's not broken or OP. In fact, considering most things, she has an ability that's used because it breaks the rules on one weapon, an ability no one ever uses, an ability that might help you live-or it might not and an ability that was absurd levels of CC that now is only 'pretty darn good CC, if you can pay the Energy Cost'.

It's the whole Simulor interaction that is the biggest issue because otherwise, her 1st is pretty much one of the most inventive and useful abilities in the game. Would be passed by her ability to turn the environment into a death trap... but that doesn't work. So... yeah.

If you want to 'rework' or 'balance' her, it wouldn't be about a 'nerf' or 'buff', but about a complete rework of at least two of her abilities.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

1 hour ago, Chipputer said:

I thought of doing that, too, but then AoE weapons would still outshine single target weapons due to a single target focusing the damage, entirely.

I've also thought of using a balancing point of a certain number of enemies. Single target weapon does xxx amount of damage, you balance an AoE weapon to do that same amount of damage, cumulatively, to a certain number of enemies so the idea is that an AoE weapon will be better for crowds but still not directly outshine the single target weapon. In the end, the logical conclusion is that you either under-tune the AoE and it becomes useless at its own job when the crowds get too large, or you over-tune it and it's still too strong.

It's a tricky nut to crack and one that I don't envy the dev team for.

Yeah and warframe community is a lot more.......needy than other communities so either it's perfect or garbage. Most games have aoe weapons based strictly on damage falloff, where its aoe isn't determined by range, but falls off to a certain amount from the epicenter. Full damage only happens at the epicenter and falls off to nothing, meaning higher the damage, higher the aoe radius.

I don't know how this would work with warframe, but it works with most games, and it would stop the room clearing of most aoe weapons without destroying its damage amount fully

[Chipputer]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

Yeah and warframe community is a lot more.......needy than other communities so either it's perfect or garbage. Most games have aoe weapons based strictly on damage falloff, where its aoe isn't determined by range, but falls off to a certain amount from the epicenter. Full damage only happens at the epicenter and falls off to nothing, meaning higher the damage, higher the aoe radius.

I don't know how this would work with warframe, but it works with most games, and it would stop the room clearing of most aoe weapons without destroying its damage amount fully

I don't honestly think the AoE weapons in Warframe have a large enough radius to justify that. Maybe frame powers, but you know exactly where that would go if frame powers received any form of noticeable falloff. "Something something muh power strength."

In the end it all returns to CC being king but all of the popular CC methods in the game turning the AI off. After every discussion about AoE vs Single Target, build diveristy, etc, etc, you will always land on that little nugget of truth and it will immediately sober you.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

4 minutes ago, Chipputer said:

I don't honestly think the AoE weapons in Warframe have a large enough radius to justify that. Maybe frame powers, but you know exactly where that would go if frame powers received any form of noticeable falloff. "Something something muh power strength."

In the end it all returns to CC being king but all of the popular CC methods in the game turning the AI off. After every discussion about AoE vs Single Target, build diveristy, etc, etc, you will always land on that little nugget of truth and it will immediately sober you.

Lol, well considering this is a game vs a computer, game balance only fixes so much. It's all a matter of who you're fighting to determine what you're using and if it's balanced. When you're fighting enemies with the mental capacity of a chihuahua, its easy to use mass aoe cc to lock down whole maps, in which case weapon balance is irrelevant. 

[Chipputer]

Just now, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

Lol, well considering this is a game vs a computer, game balance only fixes so much. It's all a matter of who you're fighting to determine what you're using and if it's balanced. When you're fighting enemies with the mental capacity of a chihuahua, its easy to use mass aoe cc to lock down whole maps, in which case weapon balance is irrelevant. 

Eeehhhh I disagree that balance only matters so much. Really, they should shoot for a relatively balanced Time To Kill on each enemy with the various weapon categories and should probably slightly deviate based on weapon type and where you shoot.

IE: Is this weapon meant to be precision based or not, what range will the user probably be at when using it, should this single shot weapon kill faster than this automatic one, what situations would this be a possibility and does it require aiming at a specific area, etc

Your last point is pretty spot on, though. Weapon balance is kind of dwarfed with how much they've shot themselves in the foot with frame balance and powers. Who cares how fast my Braton Prime can kill compared to your Soma Prime when the enemy can't move, anyway, and we're just shooting a lifeless husk that can't react?

[(PSN)Crixus044]

6 minutes ago, Chipputer said:

Eeehhhh I disagree that balance only matters so much. Really, they should shoot for a relatively balanced Time To Kill on each enemy with the various weapon categories and should probably slightly deviate based on weapon type and where you shoot.

IE: Is this weapon meant to be precision based or not, what range will the user probably be at when using it, should this single shot weapon kill faster than this automatic one, what situations would this be a possibility and does it require aiming at a specific area, etc

Your last point is pretty spot on, though. Weapon balance is kind of dwarfed with how much they've shot themselves in the foot with frame balance and powers. Who cares how fast my Braton Prime can kill compared to your Soma Prime when the enemy can't move, anyway, and we're just shooting a lifeless husk that can't react?

Time to kill is the best way to manage balance, but usually, this is done at base stats, which normally would work, except that the way mods work, throw this tactic out the window. Crit weapons may have the same base sustained dps, but crit mods take weapon power WAY beyond others. Also, the randomness of status also kinda kills this, as well as aoe with crit because of the randomness of crit procs with multiple enemies. All in all, the developers need to run build tests with weapons to determine how well it performs in game before sending it out to us. It's a complicated system that makes you eventually say "You know what....I'm just gonna stick to my braton and have fun" 😉😊

[Chipputer]

Just now, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

Time to kill is the best way to manage balance, but usually, this is done at base stats, which normally would work, except that the way mods work, throw this tactic out the window. Crit weapons may have the same base sustained dps, but crit mods take weapon power WAY beyond others. Also, the randomness of status also kinda kills this, as well as aoe with crit because of the randomness of crit procs with multiple enemies. All in all, the developers need to run build tests with weapons to determine how well it performs in game before sending it out to us. It's a complicated system that makes you eventually say "You know what....I'm just gonna stick to my braton and have fun" 😉😊

You can kind of calculate the averages of all of those other factors and come up with some facsimile of a TTK, even including them, though. But yeah, it's the main reason I stick to bows, throwing knives, and sword and shields with my Oberon.

After getting down into the nitty gritty of trying to come up with solutions, I'd rather just have fun.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

51 minutes ago, Chipputer said:

You can kind of calculate the averages of all of those other factors and come up with some facsimile of a TTK, even including them, though. But yeah, it's the main reason I stick to bows, throwing knives, and sword and shields with my Oberon.

After getting down into the nitty gritty of trying to come up with solutions, I'd rather just have fun.

Oberon huh? You are a rare breed of players lol. I love him, though i understand why he's not a popular choice. I was almost kicked from my clan for using oberon in LoR, until i showed up the crew 😎

I would absolutely love for better weapon organization and balancing system so that these op and underpowered threads would eventually not be needed, but until then, one weapon at a time.

[DeadlyBard676]

simply reduce the amount of vortexes that can be out by a single player to 2. there problem solved.

[Fallen_Echo]

11 hours ago, Chipputer said:

I thought of doing that, too, but then AoE weapons would still outshine single target weapons due to a single target focusing the damage, entirely.

I've also thought of using a balancing point of a certain number of enemies. Single target weapon does xxx amount of damage, you balance an AoE weapon to do that same amount of damage, cumulatively, to a certain number of enemies so the idea is that an AoE weapon will be better for crowds but still not directly outshine the single target weapon. In the end, the logical conclusion is that you either under-tune the AoE and it becomes useless at its own job when the crowds get too large, or you over-tune it and it's still too strong.

It's a tricky nut to crack and one that I don't envy the dev team for.

I have one thing what would fix this problem. 

Damage falloff, since we all know that explosions lose their power as the taget gets further away, but to implement such thing in warframe every aoe weapon should get a range buff.

The damage would look like this:

direct hit: 200% damage bonus (overkill mode affected by armor)

3 meter from target: 100% damage

after 3 meters:10% damage lost for every meter from the target

The above calculation should be done according to a weapons current aoe range in a way it doesnt effectively nerfs it.

Hit limitation is the worst thing we could apply,because its neither realistic or fair to these weapons.

[Karav]

On 2/18/2017 at 5:26 AM, Fallen_Echo said:

That sounds interesting, could you share the build?

The carpet-bomber Zhuge is very simple: multi-shot, thunderbolt, explosive elemental damage, and status chance. It's an AoE attack build that really only works on Mirage. There's a bit more to it, but basically the idea is to get guaranteed explosive PROC.

AoE is powerful, but to be fair, so is punch-through. It's not as powerful, but a good sniper can get two or three kills with each shot. A Vauban's vortex or a Loki's Decoy can set up enemies to be shredded just by exploiting pathing to stack enemies on top of each other. AoE is only good if you can group enemies up. That only happens on specific mission types. It's generally a good thing to have weapons/characters/builds specialized for missions. It's why we have different armaments.

The Mirage/Simulor build you're describing is powerful, but it's still not as scary as when a coordinated group uses the Torid. I know that coordinated groups are rare, and it takes a lot to forma a weapon to that point, but shouldn't a player willing to invest the time to get the weapon and forma it be rewarded? Honestly, I find the syndicate AoE effects themselves to be a little unbalanced, but that's just me.

[Xekrin]

On 2/16/2017 at 9:03 AM, sappinmahsentry said:

I've seen people without mirage dominate games (without anyone else having much fun) with just spamming LMB on their simulor. It's not AS insane, but it still is broken. Mirage needs no nerfs, the Synoid Simulor does.

IMO, Mirage may be fine, Simulor is may be fine, separately.  They could actually even be fine together, except the majority of miragulor players get it into their heads they must spam and spam and spam everywhere, everything, all the time.  Even when there are no enemies, at all, they spam.  This is a vast majority of players, not everyone.

I play miragulor occasionally because it is quite powerful and can be fun and definitely helps in missions that would otherwise be a pain to do.  I do not spam.  I shoot when things need to die, I stop when they are dead.

Although I truly believe both mirage's 1st and simulor "separately" need to be looked at (I really hate mirage clones in general, mostly visually), but this isn't really about that.  It is about them together that causes the problem.

 

 

[DeMonkey]

Darn thought police.

You can't change people's minds by asking them to stop thinking a certain thing.

Regardless I'll throw my hat in and say that Mirage does overall imo need some tweaking. 2 damage buffing abilities on a single frame is pretty (very) overkill.

I also think that the Simulor needs some overall tweaking, it's potentially the weapon that requires the least amount of skill and effort to use in the game, there should be some downsides to it.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

I'm not a fan of nerfing the Simulor, It's one of the only weapons that can hold it's own against some of the larger mobs in Sortie3. I'd rather they nerf the sound file. Gawd almighty I cannot stand that BLING BLING BLING BLING BLING. Ugggh! On lower levels it ruins the mission, I agree. I just leave, or go into resource hunting mode. Mirage is basically holding hostage a weapon that you'll initially hate, but come to respect the minute DE throws an endless conga line of spamming eximus units ranging in the level 100s rushing your position. For now the community should just shun this combo, you see one, leave. There's plenty of other PUGs without them, deny them the affinity gain and the audience.

[Chipputer]

17 hours ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

You are a rare breed of players lol.

And I take pride in that.

I believe knowing the mechanics of the game will breed a better player than any meta could ever do and so far I have not been proven wrong, both from myself and from running into others who think the same way.

[Chipputer]

6 hours ago, Karav said:

The Mirage/Simulor build you're describing is powerful, but it's still not as scary as when a coordinated group uses the Torid. I know that coordinated groups are rare, and it takes a lot to forma a weapon to that point, but shouldn't a player willing to invest the time to get the weapon and forma it be rewarded? Honestly, I find the syndicate AoE effects themselves to be a little unbalanced, but that's just me.

Hey, someone else who doesn't necessarily like the syndicate effects. High five!

Anyway, the problem with your first little sentence, there, is that the SySim doesn't require a coordinated group to be powerful whereas the Torid, generally, does so that you don't spread out the enemies too much. You don't need that with the SySim and you especially don't need it when using Mirage.