Utility vs Damage. A discussion about current Metagame

[Justice_Ember]

Hello Tenno,

Over a year ago I started a Topic that had little traction and due to personal reasons I couldn't keep answering as I would have liked to. Well, today I have a lot more time monday through friday and it doesn't look like it's gonna change soon. 

So to start this up the TL;DR version: Crit Builds get to scale Damage due to Red crits(over 100%) however there's nothing for Status Builds since status falls flat after 100% chance.

As many great responses as there were, the gist of the topic was mostly about how useful is either build which ultimately leads to "Crit builds are better" thus forming a very one-sided metagame, and that's not particularly fun. 

Options have been mentioned as to how to improve Status to reach Critical usefulness but for now I'd like to ask you, fellow tenno, Would you like to see a broader metagame that points to several directions or is the current state enough?

[AlphaPHENIX]

I am a guy that prefers utility, seeing how most utility mods in the game are ''useless'' with the current meta only carring about DPS, ya i would like broader meta.

[Kurokoz]

I honestly don't think meta matters in a PvE game where I spend my time enjoying murder rather than being concerned on how to be as overkill as possible. It is rare when I actually need to be built well so I just bring whatever holds my interest at the time. For example, the secondary fire of the Ferrox is far less damaging than the Javlok's. But have you seen unaware Grineer just walking in place without questioning it? Hilarious. I also build status a lot more because it is much more interesting to see what I can come up with (like a blast sonicor) and often something like corrosive, fire, electricity, radiation, cold, blast, viral, or gas proccing can be very useful..

[1tsyB1tsyN1nj4]

9 minutes ago, Kurokoz said:

I honestly don't think meta matters in a PvE game where I spend my time enjoying murder rather than being concerned on how to be as overkill as possible. It is rare when I actually need to be built well so I just bring whatever holds my interest at the time. For example, the secondary fire of the Ferrox is far less damaging than the Javlok's. But have you seen unaware Grineer just walking in place without questioning it? Hilarious. I also build status a lot more because it is much more interesting to see what I can come up with (like a blast sonicor) and often something like corrosive, fire, electricity, radiation, cold, blast, viral, or gas proccing can be very useful..

You've never been to the try-hard side of WF have you? lol The problem with status procs is that only like 5 procs are actually usable, and in general most weapons have such low status chance it isn't worth modding for. Of course the same applies to weapons with almost unusable crit%, which lands the weapon in the dumpster as mastery fodder which is a really sad fate =/

Instead of overhauling the entire system and calling it Damage 3.0, DE could have a much easier time polishing 2.0 and then calling it 2.5 or 3.0. A wide swath of weapons overall need just a small stat bump to become more than mastery fodder, that way people will actually be incentivised to choose instead of sheeple-ing the current meta flavor of the day. Fire and Electricity procs need to suck less, primarily because enemies can break out of panic early instead of being stun locked for the duration of the proc, and Gas needs to have a visible cloud when it procs ((if it doesn't already)) Oh, and the MITER needs to be fixed. It has a bug where charged shots have no projectile width.

[Justice_Ember]

Just now, Kurokoz said:

I honestly don't think meta matters in a PvE game where I spend my time enjoying murder rather than being concerned on how to be as overkill as possible

I'd love if more Tennos had your mindset, but sadly that's not the case, Metagame is something found everywhere and as such we can either improve it by broadening or maintain it.

[Kurokoz]

I ignore the try hard side because I do not find it very fun. Especially with terms like "mastery fodder". A lot of terrible weapons are at least fun and shouldn't be put in the trash. Unfortunately, the issue with meta is the mind set of the players who follow it. There will ALWAYS be an issue that people are upset about. (applies to in game and real life) Some people just seem to seek out problems rather than just enjoying what they can. You can't change 'em so you may as well just enjoy yourself. There was a point where people thought that anything that wasn't the dual ichor are mastery fodder. Making more weapons overpowered will never stop people who think in a mindset like that. There will always be something on the bottom and people who will think its trash.

[Justice_Ember]

@Kurokoz the problem with ignoring is that is not solving.

[Kurokoz]

@zzzNitro But at the same time nothing can fix the issue of the meta mind set. DE will do the best they can to balance what they can but people will always complain.

[Justice_Ember]

38 minutes ago, Kurokoz said:

@zzzNitro But at the same time nothing can fix the issue of the meta mind set. DE will do the best they can to balance what they can but people will always complain.

True, and on that line of thought I feel like this change (changing status so that it scales over 100%) would help reaching that goal.

[EinheriarJudith]

i believe in making my weapons/frames stronger to challenge tougher content. if that is meta thinking then its been around since the onset of RPG games that had lvling progression. ill give you an example. in Star ocean. do you think you can make it to the last boss without lvling up and or acquiring stronger gear? answer? no. the game was built specifically with lvling/gear progression like the majority of RPG games to date. Warframe has both a lvling/gear progression through lvling weapons, frames, and mods. i enjoy the shooting part but if i want to go farther i have to have stronger gear. 

in my opinion i would get rid of crit chance/damage and replace it with headshot damage. because really head shots should be the only critical hits (with the inclusion of weak points on special mobs). head hit boxes need an improvement.

[Justice_Ember]

12 hours ago, EinheriarJudith said:

in my opinion i would get rid of crit chance/damage and replace it with headshot damage. because really head shots should be the only critical hits (with the inclusion of weak points on special mobs). head hit boxes need an improvement.

While completely true that the core mechanic could improve from a full rework my proposal is to tweak just a little the current one to broaden the meta

Edited March 22, 2017 by zzzNitro
Typo ñ

[Fallen_Echo]

I would love to see more options for the metagame.

Status procs when they hit with more than 100% should either apply another status effect or should double the power of the procs. (double armor stripping for corroaive ,etc...)

I would be happy if we could modify our weapons without combining status effects. I always wanted to run around with a fire, blast, electricity and corrosive weapon.

They could modify the proc system that if you hit an enemy with a 110% status chance, you first appy the procs for the 100% and then you have 10% chance to proc elemental weakness which would increase specific elemental damage by 50% for everybody.(same duration with the normal procs)

 

[ashrah]

its not meta... in every rpg based game u have things who will  be best.. and u alwayes tend to maximize... what is best for class character u playing..so they need to buff bad wepons... and ppl have more coices..but not demolish good wepons to be bad as rest that is not balance

[Fallen_Echo]

50 minutes ago, ashrah said:

its not meta... in every rpg based game u have things who will  be best.. and u alwayes tend to maximize... what is best for class character u playing..so they need to buff bad wepons... and ppl have more coices..but not demolish good wepons to be bad as rest that is not balance

That would be the best, but we curently discuss that how should status fit in the metagame.

[Justice_Ember]

5 hours ago, ashrah said:

in every rpg based game u have things who will  be best.. and u alwayes tend to maximize... what is best for class character u playing..so they need to buff bad wepons... and ppl have more coices..but not demolish good wepons to be bad as rest that is not balance

Alright, so we agree on something, PEOPLE WANTS TO MAXIMIZE, and what we call balance is the capacity to do so with several options. For instance, 1 god weapon and a trillion mastery fodder would be unbalanced AF but 10 god weapons, 100 mid tier and 1000 mastery fodder would be a step towards BALANCE. So adding to that pool of possibilities is a good thing, now, there's a tons of weapons in today's meta that are considered Mid-Tier due to a lack of Raw damage, so increasing the Status potential doesn't cluster the Crit weapons pool while giving an alternative to "End-game" with more weapons to utilize.

Look at it this way, instead of increasing the amount of weapons that do Raw Damage, increase the Utility of other weapons making it a viable End-Game Maximization.

[ashrah]

3 hours ago, zzzNitro said:

Alright, so we agree on something, PEOPLE WANTS TO MAXIMIZE, and what we call balance is the capacity to do so with several options. For instance, 1 god weapon and a trillion mastery fodder would be unbalanced AF but 10 god weapons, 100 mid tier and 1000 mastery fodder would be a step towards BALANCE. So adding to that pool of possibilities is a good thing, now, there's a tons of weapons in today's meta that are considered Mid-Tier due to a lack of Raw damage, so increasing the Status potential doesn't cluster the Crit weapons pool while giving an alternative to "End-game" with more weapons to utilize.

Look at it this way, instead of increasing the amount of weapons that do Raw Damage, increase the Utility of other weapons making it a viable End-Game Maximization.

that would be cool...status wepons have lot potecial they can be made after u reach 100% status any  element  who procs will do 4x dmg... based on u  gun dmg

[Justice_Ember]

The important thing is to not necessarily go the damage route and rather find a way to make utility AS important as raw damage

[Djego27]

It has little to do with maximization. The idea behind status mods and status weapons where that they provided better scaling against certain enemy units compared to raw dps weapons/modding, that did fall off at some point hard. This was mostly archived by how bad armor scaling and it's counters work, it always was much less important for infested or Corpus(where you did destroy shields with magnetic damage, compared to just mod pure toxin on modern damage weapons and bypass it). This was at the expense of raw damage and in many cases fairly bad usability(like being ammo inefficient, having a longer reload, range limitations or other drawbacks).

There are still examples in the game where somebody at DE did a fairly reasonable job to balance stuff out with the Boltor/Soma prime vs Braton prime(after the buff)/prisma grakata that will catch up fairly good after L80 ish in armored targets kill speed while being otherwise inferior in usability and damage before that point.

In other cases like the old shotguns, boar prime and strun wraith where like a different weapon class compared to all other shotguns, because they did scale better than most weapons in the game against armored targets even while being much weaker with the base damage even before the rework then others in a weapon class that was considered to be just as bad as snipers. Then again the rework literally did feel like 2 people did balance shotguns and did not talk with each other, given that the status shotguns where both nerfed to a point where it made hardly any sense to use them(even for somebody like me that utterly loves the sound and the in the face game play of the boar prime) while the damage shotguns(hek and tigris variants in particular) where buffed so much that even in sortis or after 60 minutes in survival they are the better weapons that not run even out of ammo and do not come with super massive spread, 1 ammo restore every 120s requirement and very big damage falloff if you are not right on top of your target(after considering the fact that you have to fix the status chance with a riven to not make it look as bad as the gun is shown in all the comedy simicarium corrosive blast videos) or a never ending reload animation on the strun wraith(with 2 reload speed mods on it already for Christ sake).

The only reason because the Boar Prime is my most used weapon in the game is because I really really like it and with Ember you can use it for pretty much anything but high level corpus/infested missions, since the low damage and range are no issue on Ember.

Overall the Acolyte crit mods where a mistake, just as the power creep with so many damage weapons over the years so we just reached a point where you do not need status weapons for kind of all what 99% of the people play, since they will not overcome damage weapons or plain damage modding in scaling. Heck DE litterally thrown it on guns like the Tigris prime or akstilleto prime as gimmick, while they are already totally viable as dps weapons or released stuff like the staticor that is not only better then any other status weapon in the game but also got no long reload, a massive magazine, being super ammo efficient, no spread, good damage and only a minor issue of travel time on the projectiles. 

There is no real use for giving status above 100% a new mechanic, because the weapons that are already can be modded for this are reasonable useful and the core problem is mostly that damage weapons scale to good to give most status weapons a useful niche outside of insane high levels and even there it is hardly much reason to use them there since you would use 4 CP or damage buffing abilities(sonar, bullet attractor, accelerant, roar etc.) to archive high level scaling with your damage modded weapons or just do your damage with warframe abilities.

Edited March 22, 2017 by Djego27

[Justice_Ember]

@Djego27 I'll take your comment point by point to better answer it

15 minutes ago, Djego27 said:

It has little to do with maximization.

You answered this yourself during the rest of your post by exsplaining in full detail why players go with a certain meta, where maximization plays a huge rol, but for the sake of the argument let's call it "end-game viable"

33 minutes ago, Djego27 said:

In other cases like the old shotguns, boar prime and strun wraith where like a different weapon class compared to all other shotguns, because they did scale better than most weapons in the game against armored targets even while being much weaker with the base damage even before the rework then others in a weapon class that was considered to be just as bad as snipers.

Here's where this discussion is important, in those days it wasn't difficult to see people preffering status over damage or viceversa thus broadening the meta

36 minutes ago, Djego27 said:

Then again the rework literally did feel like 2 people did balance shotguns and did not talk with each other, given that the status shotguns where both nerfed to a point where it made hardly any sense to use them(even for somebody like me that utterly loves the sound and the in the face game play of the boar prime) while the damage shotguns(hek and tigris variants in particular) where buffed so much that even in sortis or after 60 minutes in survival they are the better weapons that not run even out of ammo and do not come with super massive spread, 1 ammo restore every 120s requirement and very big damage falloff if you are not right on top of your target(after considering the fact that you have to fix the status chance with a riven to not make it look as bad as the gun is shown in all the comedy simicarium corrosive blast videos) or a never ending reload animation on the strun wraith(with 2 reload speed mods on it already for Christ sake).

Another example of how the Status has been overlooked when compared to raw damage

38 minutes ago, Djego27 said:

Overall the Acolyte crit mods where a mistake, just as the power creep with so many damage weapons over the years so we just reached a point where you do not need status weapons for kind of all what 99% of the people play, since they will not overcome damage weapons or plain damage modding in scaling. Heck DE litterally thrown it on guns like the Tigris prime or akstilleto prime as gimmick, while they are already totally viable as dps weapons or released stuff like the staticor that is not only better then any other status weapon in the game but also got no long reload, a massive magazine, being super ammo efficient, no spread, good damage and only a minor issue of travel time on the projectiles. 

That's the most common issue, in today's game you'll find that building towards red crit gives a substantial pay off while once a status build reaches 100% there's no point in going overboard

40 minutes ago, Djego27 said:

There is no real use for giving status above 100% a new mechanic, because the weapons that are already can be modded for this are reasonable useful and the core problem is mostly that damage weapons scale to good to give most status weapons a useful niche outside of insane high levels and even there it is hardly much reason to use them there since you would use 4 CP or damage buffing abilities(sonar, bullet attractor, accelerant, roar etc.) to archive high level scaling with your damage modded weapons or just do your damage with warframe abilities.

Instead of looking at damage weapons being too good I look at it as an opportunity to make Status weapons "just as" good. A new mechanic or rather, an updated mechanic for status would branch out the current meta so that Crit weapons and Status weapons could stand on the same podium of "End Game Viable"

As a side note, 

45 minutes ago, Djego27 said:

The only reason because the Boar Prime is my most used weapon in the game is because I really really like it and with Ember you can use it for pretty much anything but high level corpus/infested missions, since the low damage and range are no issue on Ember.

I agree, I use a viral marelok with Ember and the Combusting Ignis to clean small fry, but that's what drove me to write this, just imagine the possibilities, a status mechanic update would make it oh so much more interesting in terms of building and playstyle.

[Justice_Ember]

This looks like a step in the right direction, although tests are in order.

[Djego27]

30 minutes ago, zzzNitro said:

You answered this yourself during the rest of your post by exsplaining in full detail why players go with a certain meta, where maximization plays a huge rol, but for the sake of the argument let's call it "end-game viable"

Well status weapons where a meta in itself and just as much subject to min maxing as damage weapons today, given that are more specific in application and have a few more details to them like how the damage spread affects what effects are the most common or that you in most cases needed a utility mod to compensate for the various drawbacks(like primed ammo mutation on the prisma grakata or firestorm on the Thorid etc.) you could argue that they even where a bit more subjected to that.

Then again the meta 3 years back kind of was that most people played only 40 minutes of void survival in pick up groups and you could bring nearly everything from the almighty boltor prime to my Tiberon that was my first weapon I did forma 5 times and put a catalyst on. If people wanted to stay longer, without organized frame synergy and more or less killing with abilities, you did require a bit more knowledge what status weapons will provide plus what you need and how to mod them, since they where as uncommon in normal game play as they are today. You also had to invest a high amount of resources into it(like the Strug for example or a normal grakata). I for myself invested a lot of resources in my akbronko prime what did help scaling decently to 60 minutes with Ember, since you just showered heavy gunners and bombards in corrosive procs. Back in the days nobody questioned somebody for bringing for example a strug to a 60 minutes run(that was much more difficult back then) because people that did bring this niche weapons had in general a fully formaed build(different to most people that did the 40 minute runs) and did exactly know why and how to use that gun.

There was also far less of a meta back then. For the most part it was just boltor prime, best weapon in the game, even if it started to run into issues at the 40 minute mark, 50(L80) ish with status mods and heavy calibre instead of the normal damage mods. Most weapons actually did not used to be universal good by modern standards and this was all most people had. You pretty much had to use a specific 2. weapon to deal with mechanics that your damage weapon could not, because it actually had issues killing stuff. If you compare it to now, it does not matter so much how you mod your Tonkor(as long as you put some crit mods and serration on it) or other meta guns and you will not need a 2. weapon to help to compensate for weaknesses with your main weapon, since there are hardly any and you do not really need status effects to punch through L100 sorti missions, this can be all done fairly easy with my vaykor hek instead of my boar prime, the first one actually still manages the job a bit quicker and does not need ammo restores or standing directly in front of the target.

55 minutes ago, zzzNitro said:

Here's where this discussion is important, in those days it wasn't difficult to see people preffering status over damage or viceversa thus broadening the meta.

I would not say that, status shotguns where(if you roll a good riven they still are) just incredible good vs armor by the way the apply status and being the highest proc/s weapons in the game by a bug(that turns 1 status effect per shot into like 20, what is the reason why they scale so good against the application where you need the highest amount of procs for) while the other shotguns could be used but where basically rifles with damage falloff, spread and less damage. While increasing the range a bit and giving them the damage to become interesting was a good idea, DE overdid it for the most part to a point where the vaykor hek was the best sniper rifle in the game(even after 50% damage falloff at range and spread it was still miles better then a actual sniper rifle to take out a target at any range). In my opinion less would have been more, by simply giving all shotguns the status per pellet mechanic a bit more range and letting damage decay over range more(like to 30% or 20% cap) and a lot less damage(specific tigris and hek versions). It works on the lowest damage shotguns in the game reasonable well, without making them completely outplay other weapon classes(like snipers or normal assault rifles) while still giving them good scalability and a lot of use at high levels.

1 hour ago, zzzNitro said:

That's the most common issue, in today's game you'll find that building towards red crit gives a substantial pay off while once a status build reaches 100% there's no point in going overboard.

There is no such thing as going overboard with status for the most part. If you mod a gun to stack corrosive procs to some degree because it is the weakest proc against the strongest EHP mechanic in the enemy scaling but the guns that can be modded against this with 100% status or even more(what are mostly status shotguns) are already very good against that. For example on my mara detron I use a status build and you only need 50% ish status chance to proc radiation, fire for CC and viral for halve HP every 2-3 seconds, you can not get over 100% with the gun and you build your status modding around that by using non stackable single effect procs that last a few seconds.

Red crits in contrast to that are for the most part just a damage mechanic that was given exclusive to bows and snipers to help with the scaling before DE opened up a ton of weapons to it with the event mods.

1 hour ago, zzzNitro said:

Instead of looking at damage weapons being too good I look at it as an opportunity to make Status weapons "just as" good. A new mechanic or rather, an updated mechanic for status would branch out the current meta so that Crit weapons and Status weapons could stand on the same podium of "End Game Viable"

The problem is that you can not really do that with the current level of damage or stuff you can modify by status. The reason why you used a prisma grakata over a Soma prime was that it can deal with one mechanic, what is armor scaling, a lot better then the soma prime(while it can actually scale reasonable if you throw in a few status mods on it by the high fire rate as well). However this does come at the price of the need to be within 5m range of the target to do mag dumps and have all shots hit the target, high spread what makes head shot damage only useful in very short bursts(and if you want to play out the status power of the gun you need to do full auto mag dumps into stuff) and being incredible ammo inefficient by the much lower base damage(to a point where you spam ammo restores at L80 with primed ammo mutation where you will honestly still do fine with a soma prime for ammo).

Status weapons do not have her restrictions and being actually bad dps weapons for no reason. The reason for this is that they can provide very powerful mechanics far beyond of the scope of normal damage weapons that DE released back in the day by literally providing linear level independent anti armor scaling(it hardly matters if a target got 50k or 150k flesh under the armor on Ember and the shots needed to remove that armor are exactly the same at L50 as they are at L150). However this only is important if you would run into problems to kill stuff with your normal damage weapons nowadays, what you do not. The boar prime is a ideal weapon to kill a L150 eximus bombard in the void, at the same time it is terrible at kills moas or other stuff without armor at this level, simply because it deals fairly low damage with a massive spread and is vastly outplayed by my mara detron against anything without armor by a mile while the mara detron is not even considered good.

[Justice_Ember]

11 minutes ago, Djego27 said:

Status weapons do not have her restrictions and being actually bad dps weapons for no reason. The reason for this is that they can provide very powerful mechanics far beyond of the scope of normal damage weapons that DE released back in the day by literally providing linear level independent anti armor scaling(it hardly matters if a target got 50k or 150k flesh under the armor on Ember and the shots needed to remove that armor are exactly the same at L50 as they are at L150). However this only is important if you would run into problems to kill stuff with your normal damage weapons nowadays, what you do not.

And as you say while Damage has been greatly buffed with shotguns such as Tigris or Hek series Status remains the same and the once powerful mechanics rendered invalid by Auras or Waframes abilities, that's why I propose an update for Status effects. But overall I agree with you tho.

[Djego27]

59 minutes ago, zzzNitro said:

And as you say while Damage has been greatly buffed with shotguns such as Tigris or Hek series Status remains the same and the once powerful mechanics rendered invalid by Auras or Waframes abilities, that's why I propose an update for Status effects. But overall I agree with you tho.

In case of shotguns DE could have done a better job by just using what is already in her game, a bug that is very well tested to a point where it defines certain weapons and actually would allow reasonable well scaling without adding super high damage while also making status similar to other weapon classes where it scales linear instead of hitting 100% or your weapon is pointless or status mods are not worth it at all because they only add a fraction of what they would add to other weapons by the pellet mechanic(what makes non stackable dps procs useless for damage and also adds a fair amount of status chance lost just because not all pellets will hit the target).

100%+ status weapons are incredible rare, for the most part it would be just status shotguns, that do not really need a buff, since they do perform fine once you fix them with riven mods(I do however not agree with DEs balance for them, you do not get a OP weapon or a more powerful meta gun out of it, you just get a working status shotgun, what is fairly good, with a lot of drawback and it's a niche gun), not for massive extra damage or crit but plain reload speed or status chance, because this is the thing what makes them pointless and not fixable with other mods reasonable well, at least if you consider playing zoomed in and hitting 2 ever 8s with a event mod as painful, if you do it a hour non stop.

As for status weapons in general, look at it this way. Status weapons are for the most part very limited weapons and have clear use case where they are great or just terrible with the same mods, in case of the void even in the same mission. The reason why people used them was because they could do things her damage weapons could not do depending on the level of content, assuming you did go for higher levels you had to use them while a lot of people just did stick to the levels her weapons could handle easy. If you now give the normal damage weapons the ability to handle this levels as well, there is hardly any kind of reason to use that status weapons.

Edited March 22, 2017 by Djego27

[Justice_Ember]

@Djego27 What would you do if you wanted to make status great again? 

Also I think you are using her instead of their, I can't be sure tho.

[Djego27]

Well you probably would need damage 3.0, not as it will probably just come out as a few tweaks and hoping for the best what I kind of expect from DE(mostly by my experiences in the past with the bigger changes).

What I would do if I had the time and a team to get it done in a reasonable amount of time.

1. Rebalance enemy scaling.for damage, so we do not end up getting one hit killed without cheesing at high levels, damage should cap at L80-100 ish levels and warframe survive abilities should also be balanced around this kind of damage(no more 95% damage resistance for Mesa for example, knock it down to 50-60%).

2. Rebalance enemy scaling for EHP. Currently everything just scales fairly linear like HP so does armor however it does not work like HP but a multiplier to HP. Armor should be it's own HP bar and still protect against damage(cap it at 90%, only make 50% applied by or current way of armor scaling, the rest till the 90% hard cap comes form the percentage of armor left compared to the total amount), however this protection can be removed by all damage with the current damage bonuses and takes massive damage from elements that are good against it currently with her typical armor reduction when it comes to the damage calculation. This allows that you can give certain enemy units 30k HP and 30k armor now without becoming completely unmanageable without corrosive procs, while it would massively favour status weapons with corrosive on them(another weapon would have to deal with the 90% damage reduction mechanic full time, what is still a lot less bad as it is currently at high levels, while weapons that highly focus on strong elements destroy the armor before the HP are gone, while status weapons go around that with fairly linear scaling since it does not matter if the target got 8k armor or 80k, the amount of procs to deplete that is the same).

Corpus should get her own armor type, that could be weak against magnetic for example but strong against toxin and gas and should be on brusas, combas and eximus robotics. Flip the shield to HP balance on Techs to shields and give them proto shields(that can not penetrated by toxin). Then reduce the magnetic proc to 50% shield reduction over 6s with a 5% shield loss(percentage based for scaling). In general this makes magnetic and other elements good vs shields more viable against corpus again.

Infested. Stop adding disruptor or toxic auras to heavy units, only small units can receive the buff(healer auras are ok since they have a status counter). Allow magnetic procs to disable this auras on the target for the 6s, same as radiation procs can disable healer auras. Reduce the HP of all heavy units by 50% and give them a new infested armor type that works like the grenier one but is capped at 30% from the numerical value as well as 30% from the percentage remaining on the target(60% in total) that can be affected by status as well as elements that scale good against it. Auras like eximus leech should also no longer be able to stack, require line of sight and draw a line to the player(like trinity link) so you know what unit drains your energy.

3. IPS & Element rebalance:

Puncture not only gets the damage and armor reduction bonus buff to 75% vs ferrite and 50% vs alloy when it comes to damage calculation, but also deals 200% of the puncture damage done to the armor and procs become finisher damage(armor ignore). A unit with 300 armor(50% damage reduction) and ferrite armor gets hit for 100 puncture damage. It would receive 175 damage(puncture damage bonus against the armor) against the armor with 29.5% damage reduction(300 * 0,75 / (300 + (300 * 075)) ) what is 123 and would result into a total 243 damage done to the armor after the 200% bonus. A boltor hit would knock a 50% damage reduction down to 18.25% in a single hit while also dealing 123 damage to the targets HP and fully depleting the armor in the next one.

This gives puncture a very good performance in destroying the armor as well as a lot of use for puncture based status weapons(tellos boltor should be the puncture status rifle instead of the boltor prime side grade for example).

Impact gets the damage bonus vs shields upgraded to 100% and 25% damage bonus against all armor types. The proc will also remove 20% of the current max armor on proc(most of the good anti armor status weapons are impact and even modded for other status it gives a impact status weapons a fair amount of scalability).

Slash stays as it is, but slash procs do now scale off full weapon slash damage(including slash mods) instead of just base damage/what was base damage + base damage mods). Damage vs fossilized units is buff to 50%(to also get the 50% armor reduction).

Elements:

Normal elemental mods are reduced to 30% damage bonus, status mods to 20% while the 90% ips mods are reduced to 45%, 120% ones to 60%. This gives IPS modding more purpose as well as reduces the overall damage we got by a lot. The primed elemental mods get reduced to 60%, blaze stays as it is.

The normal status mods get bumped from 30% to 120% and reduced to 4 mod point cost maxed, electric status mods get added to spy like the others.

Electric: Add a chance of chaining to another unit within 10 meters applying the proc to that unit as well every 1s of being CCed with the status chance of the weapon. This will massively improve the CC on most weapons that are not a amprex and kind of does something similar with the chain mechanic.

Cold: Place a 10m big ring on any target hit by a cold proc, the effect should work like frosts ice wave impedance, massively slowing attack and movement speed for soft CC.

Fire: Fire should get the 50% damage bonus against heavy Infested units and also a 25% armor reduction/damage bonus against the new infested armor. It should also get the 50% damage bonus against corpus flesh(what for some reason is not weak to fire).

Toxin: Make the dot deal 5 times the damage against armor. This will make it very good in combination with effects that remove armor and much better vs heavy Infested or on a magnetic\toxin weapon vs the new corpus armor.

Radiation: Units should be more offensive during the duration of the proc, because it can be often useless if they just take her time to take cover(similar to nyx mind control where it also should be changed).

Viral: Make the proc 12s duration and remove 5% of the total HP of the target before the effect runs out and only then. This would make viral much better on weapons that can not keep it up full time, where it is currently kind of hit and miss.

Magnetic: Buff the damage bonus to 100% vs shields, make the proc remove all aura buffs(eximus, Infested healers, disruptors, toxic ancients) and give it 75% damage bonus against the new corpus armor.

Gas: Does stay as it is.

Corrosive: Does stay as it is.

Blast: The AOE effect, that is a know down proc, can roll for status with the status chance of your weapon on a additional status proc(can be blast as well with a chain reaction but also anything else your weapon is modded for).

 

4. Rebalance weapons

Remove base damage and multi shot mods and build that into the weapon as a levelling bonus. Shotguns can do without primed point blank since the status per pellet mechanic makes them very strong in the new system without excessive dps(Hek and Tigris still should be knocked down a bit in damage). Make utility mods like reload speed, mag capacity, zoom, ammo mutation etc very cheap like 3-4 points for a maxed out one. Raise the cost for pure elemental/IPS mods by 1-2 and the cost of crit related mods by 2-3, so you need to make trade-offs on your T3 weapons what reduces her power. Make body count a core mechanic of the melee counter and remove or serious tune down the acolyte mods.

Make 4 tiers.

Starter tier 1: Low MR market weapons, they gain a additional mod point every 3 levels, utility and usability should be good without any mods(for example strun and mk1 strun should have 0.25s reload per shell) while the extra mod points allow the player to max it get it to good performance without to much forma or a catalyst. The removes the "I should not forma or use a catalyst because I get a better weapon soon." issue and gives newer players something worth play with and invest into it before moveing on.

Normal tier 2: 30 mod points as it is now and still not to many drawbacks, weapons should follow a certain guideline for overall effectiveness, what the elemental and armor/shield rebalance would allow, since status is more valuable again and damage weapons do not scale that much better by the elemental mods being knocked down in power.

Special tier: You do not get mod points for the last 5 levels, that means your weapon will only have 25/50 mod points, what with the changes to crit and damage mods makes modding a lot harder and forces compromises. This tier should have all the syndicate weapons(and the weak ones should need a look to justify that), very strong special weapons like the prisma dual cleavers, the mara detron(give the normal detron what would be tier 2 the stats of the mara, give the mara 20% base status) or strun wraith as overpowered stuff like the staticor, Hek, Tigris or Zar. Weapons that are quite strong but have a lot of downsides or need hybrid modding(like crit/status on the prisma grakata) should be considered to be placed into the normal tier, same as bows and snipers in general given her very different and situational game play(rakta cernos would still be special tier being a syndicate weapon, however it is my most preferred bow in the game and a mod slot for something else then speed trigger different to other bows so fair enught).

Prime Tier: It would be normal tier within 10-15% damage and extra status to help with scaling but with 30 mod points. Take the Boar prime as perfect example of what a primed weapon should be, it got a bit more damage and status then the normal version(the status chance of the normal one should be 30%, 40% on the prime) but the difference that extra status can archive is very big at high levels. It is not a map wide death machine(what is funny because it actually got the spread to accomplish that) but lower damage weapon with some serious drawbacks that scales incredible well into high levels against armor given it's status mechanics. It does not need 50k damage, like another primed shotgun has, per shot to be a good weapon and it does not outshine other weapons in normal content at all, where it is just a low range, high spread, super fun golden boom stick that does the same or less damage as other people do with her normal weapons.

In general weapons in the same tier should be fairly comparable with different strength and weakness. It is ok for a Tiberon to do more damage than a burston(that would be tier 1) and ok for it to fall off at L80 by the lack of status and crit where the burston prime shines. It is not ok that the galatine prime is plain better then the scindo prime, it would be much better to slightly reduce the damage below the scindo prime with a 20% higher attack speed(crazy good with tempo royal for CC and heavy hits in the combos) while giving the scindo a better channelling multiplier to really wreck faces with channelled ground finishers. Soma prime vs boltor prime was very good as well before you added the event crit mods, more of this, especially when different base damage types, status chance and actually having bigger issues with high level units again comes back into play.

Also limit self damage to base damage of the weapon itself unmodded. While this still hurts it is not the one hit kill mechanic we have today, even if you are just at the edge of the explosion.

5. Warframe reballance

Damage reducing or ignoring abilities should be tuned down by a lot, to not provide a 20-50 times better ability to take damage but still provide a serious(3-10 times) better ability to take damage, however since damage will no longer one shot any normal frame at high levels it is still very powerful. Inarus should be tuned down to 1.2k HP since this is still a very high amount of HP in the new system. HP mods would make a impact on all frames at higher levels. Invisibility should have units that can counter it(probably easier to implement then better AI to deal with it). Infinite scaling stuff like Equinox gets tuned down to not be able to consume the damage of another equinox etc.

6. Rewards for endless play

Back in the days you saved keys in endless play and it did feel more rewarding to play to higher levels since you got more stuff for the same amount of keys spend. Now that our damage is much lower and playing higher is again difficult add 2 mechanics to endless missions. The first would be 2.5% buff to uncommon and rare stuff drop chance per rotation, so rotation C item with 5% base chance would drop at 10% chance at the 60 minute mark C rotation reward. The second would be that you get showed what the relic would drop and have the chance to not use the roll in endless fissure missions, keeping your relict(at least 2 times in a mission so you can roll 3 times on a C rotation in a 60 minute run and take the best result, even if I think it should be endless if we lose infinite scaling, so the 12.5% drop chance at 80 minutes does motivate you to give it just "one more" try while already kind of struggling). Combined with the buff to drop rate this would give people plenty of reason to stay in a survival for 80 minutes for the better chance to finally get her rare item out of her 2-3 relict's that took a day to farm.

We should not kill L100 enemy units every day in a daily like the sorti, it should feel rewarding and challenging to play to that levels instead of seeking satisfaction in endless increasing numbers that our guns still can handle and every blink of a eye not spending in perma map CC or invis/god mode cheese is instant death we should actually be able to play that missions and our inability to combat high levels units should be more of a issue then getting one hit killed by a Napalm shooting it's gun in the next room and insta kill you with the AOE damage.

Edited March 24, 2017 by Djego27