[Update 20] Weapon Balance Pass Feedback Megathread

[yingji]

Stay for the ending :)

Makes the point real well ... boneheaded overnerfs look like this. Not even remotely sortie viable. MR12, 125k syndicate standing, rivens ... yeah.

Sort it out.

 

Edited March 29, 2017 by yingji

[Azamagon]

Some thoughts after testing a bunch of these weapons:

Harpak
Recoil reduction made a huge difference in usability. It's a good gun, but since it's not my cup of tea, I didn't spend all too much time with it. I can totally see it as a very viable weapon for sorties and such though.
Verdict: Good buffs to it.

Hind
Where to begin?
It needs way more. RoF, for starters. Altfire needs its to have its ridiculous sound fixed, increased in RoF and become a toggle (not a direct fire).
Verdict: Still garbage AND it needs fixing in the sound.

Panthera
Fun and powerful, with tons of love in the QoL-department. Feels like this was the weapon that actually had the most love put into it, because it now really feels like a viable and enjoyable gun (and it was really needed). Bug though: Punchthrough doesn't work on it (it passes through environment, but NEVER through enemies)
Verdict: Very good buffs, but the punchthrough bug needs fixing.

Paracyst
Toyed around with it for a bit and it still feels a bit... underwhelming? Also, why not instant harpoon, like on the Harpak? Is it because it deals the DoT?
Verdict: Still feels a tad weak.

Buzlok
Statistically: Great buffs! Now tagging an enemy is not so ammo-intensive, and it has an incentive too (crit+), beyond the autoaim.
Mechanically: However, now we can't tag the environment for creative strategies, which is a HUGE loss. Why not have the secondary fire shoot a beacon on first shot, then disable the beacon on second shot, along with allowing us to tag the environment again? That would fix the old clunkyness AND retain the creative old uses. That would be the best of both worlds!
Verdict: Statistically better, mechanically it was robbed from a lot of fun and creativity.

Glaxion
Umm... where's the ammo rate fix? It still eats ammo like no tomorrow.
Verdict: Still unusable in longer missions due to the promised ammo rate fix not even taking place!

Ogris
The status-niche is really nice, and makes it an EXCELLENT area-denial weapon if you have Nightwatch Napalm on it (it's pretty much a musthave now). Still feels a tad clunky though. And you had the opportunity to give it some secondary fire! Why not have secondary fire be like a toggle on/off for a laserguiding system? Or a lock-on system? It could mechanically be improved so much!
Verdict: Works, if Nightwatch Napalm is installed. Otherwise, might still be considered underwhelming.

Attica
Nice buffs, plain and simple. I would've vastly preffered it to have buff to reloadspeed instead of getting that magincrease though (Mag back to 16, but reload from 2,8 to 2,25?). Nontheless, it now feels like a sidegrade to Zhuge, which is nice.
Verdict: Very good, but the reloadspeed is still rather crippling.

Tonkor
I really love the accuracy buff. But I really hate the critchance nerf, would've rather had the critmultiplier reduced, so we didn't get ANOTHER weapon with unreliable crits. Other than that, I don't really mind the other changes.
Verdict: Still a great (generally the best?) launcher. Less reliable in damage, but now reliable in accuracy.

[Combustionsquirrel]

On 3/27/2017 at 2:11 PM, yingji said:

The general theme of nerfing/crippling AoE weapons is I think misguided. Stick with me here.

Warframe doesn't restrict certain weapons to certain classes. Most games do. Warframe doesnt.

What this means is, you will always see certain combinations (Mirage+Simulor, Mirage+Tonkor) that are off the scale effective.

If you're a caster type frame with low/no damage ability wtf gun are you supposed to use to wipe out zillions of mobs now? Warframe is a horde mode game.

- Simulor? Sorry son, we pretty much deleted it (unless you are Mirage go figure :-/)
- Tonkor? Sorry son, we pretty much made it as terrible as the other launchers
- Other launchers? Sorry son see above, they will instakill you unless you use a handful of tanks

Better solution? Warframe accepts itself as an AoE-friendly mass mob wreckage game, since it has always been one, and has risen to be very popular because of this. Make a beautiful array of excellent AoE weapons that players love and celebrate the nature of horde mode games and be happy Warframe is (kinda was, bring back the AoE weapons) one of the very best.

Nuking the holy underpants off screenfuls of mobs is exactly the DNA of horde mode games like Warframe. Weapons that do this are good and we need more of them.

 

I dunno about the simulor because I never really used it because it was super slow to get to max stacks on anyone but mirage, and F*** that it's too meta, but the Tonkor is now worse than the other launchers. It kills you just as much as it kills the enemy (because mixing lack of control of when the nade explodes + not being flung far away from you on a rocket is a bad combination).

I strongly agree with your post on the self-damage limitation thread, in that the self-damage mechanic should be replaced with a blast proc because as of now self-damage is stupid because unless you're super tanky (like max health inaros with warding halo and trin blessing) you're guna get one shot by any explosive weapon.

And I also think that the tonkor's grenade launching mechanic should be re-instated and there should be a higher self-damage, like 300 or so (6x more than what it was) instead of a blast proc (because you'll be flying through the air), because that was plain, simple fun and it should never have been removed in the first place.

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

49 minutes ago, yingji said:

Stay for the ending :)

Makes the point real well ... boneheaded overnerfs look like this. Not even remotely sortie viable. MR12, 125k syndicate standing, rivens ... yeah.

Sort it out.

 

I'm really not excited to see this hit consoles. Synoid Simulor u20.0.0-u20.0.3 looked more interesting than this terrible excuse of a weapon now.

[(PSN)Cyotis]

What if the Paracyst harpoon had a healing effect?

[-AxHx-MDeero]

Hey...

first off:

finally some balancing... thx DE, this was needed

second:

...though it could be done from the start instead of releasing overpowered weapons, this would save us the frustration of "loosing" formas, which we might have paid for... just a thought!

third:

The Stradavar was released as an auto / semi-auto weapon (in my opinion, most weapons should have that feature... but well). Its triggers for Semi-auto and Auto firing mode however are on the same button ( and this is how it should be for Weapons with such features) and provides the ability to toggle between the firing modes (again... how it should be). Now the newly released reworks are great and all, but why did you decide to let the firing modes of em to not be toggled and instead using 2 different triggers on a weapon.

For Weapons which can launch a grenade or its clip or stuff like that, the triggers should be different. But firing modes with 2 triggers... Imagine how that gun would look like, having two triggers! The point is, and i strongly believe most Tenno would agree, that firing semi-auto shots by pressing the middle mouse button is just no feature at all, who wants to shoot with the middle finger? Its just not trained for that... so please get firing modes and special attacks treated differently (firing modes are no special attacks!!!) to let us toggle firing modes as you have introduced it with the Stradavar and to let us have different triggers for special attacks.

Firing Mode: Different methods of firing the main projectile (most often bullets). Basically to do the same thing but in a different way.

Special Attack: Firing a secondary projectile (like a grenade for example, or hurling the weapon at enemies even). Basically to perform a different action.

Maybe it was just some generic programming to make the Hind use Semi-Auto firing on the Middle Mouse Button instead of making it toggleable, but then again... the Pendora was released the same way... so... please overthink that decision

[Vammir]

10 hours ago, yingji said:

Stay for the ending :)

Makes the point real well ... boneheaded overnerfs look like this. Not even remotely sortie viable. MR12, 125k syndicate standing, rivens ... yeah.

Sort it out.

 

So much this!!!! 

Simulor was totally thrown under the bus for no reason whatsoever. Toning down a notch or even bring some new functionality would be universally welcome. Most of excuses I have heard are quite easily countered, especially the Mirage+Simulor nonsense. 

Shame..

Edited March 29, 2017 by Vammir
typo

[Huanthus]

2 hours ago, Vammir said:

So much this!!!! 

Simulor was totally thrown under the bus for no reason whatsoever. Toning down a notch or even bring some new functionality would be universally welcome. Most of excuses I have heard are quite easily countered, especially the Mirage+Simulor nonsense. 

Shame..

Kinda agree with this even the boltace telos does more in her new state tried both weapons with lvl 140 corrupted eximus bombards and the telos was at least viable probably should add a new gimmick for the simulor family such as a charged shot or something like that, boltace is like limbo rework just gotta get used to it and change the config, still the impact dmg seems to not work as intended with shattering impact sometimes it strips armor and others doesnt

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

59 minutes ago, Huanthus said:

Kinda agree with this even the boltace telos does more in her new state tried both weapons with lvl 140 corrupted eximus bombards and the telos was at least viable probably should add a new gimmick for the simulor family such as a charged shot or something like that, boltace is like limbo rework just gotta get used to it and change the config, still the impact dmg seems to not work as intended with shattering impact sometimes it strips armor and others doesnt

Yeah, it would be very appreciative that the Telos Boltace keeps "Storm Path" and completely removes "Blast" and the pitiful 8 second cooldown. Again, adjust the visual transparencies on the slide attack if it's too overbearing for the general playerbase. If it's gonna be in this weakened state, give us some flexibility here.

[lioganda]

So, what happened to the miter? You guys said there would be crit chance and dmg on the normal and charge shot yet in game there is no crit what so ever. Its been 5 patches now and you guys still couldnt fix that?

Please DE, fix my (promised) buffed miter! :(

[DreamsmithJane]

18 hours ago, yingji said:

Stay for the ending :)

Makes the point real well ... boneheaded overnerfs look like this. Not even remotely sortie viable. MR12, 125k syndicate standing, rivens ... yeah.Sort it out.

Spoiler

 

 

Sorry. All I see is someone using the gun wrong and complaining about it. Dumping all the orbs into a single stack, really?

9 hours ago, MDeero said:

The Stradavar was released as an auto / semi-auto weapon (in my opinion, most weapons should have that feature... but well). Its triggers for Semi-auto and Auto firing mode however are on the same button ( and this is how it should be for Weapons with such features) and provides the ability to toggle between the firing modes (again... how it should be). Now the newly released reworks are great and all, but why did you decide to let the firing modes of em to not be toggled and instead using 2 different triggers on a weapon.

Speed. It's faster to press one button than two. Pandero's "fan the hammer" alt fire is not a mode I want to be stuck in, nor take extra time to switch into or out of. It's more of a panic button, or used when I want to unload on Magnetize. I don't ever want to not have semi-auto fire available when using that gun. Similarly, having two active fire buttons lets me switch between automatic fire and charged shots rapidly when using Tenora. And since the charged shots don't require holding the button, I just tap it and line up the shot without any awkwardness. But I don't want to have to switch back and forth, because unlike with the Zarr, I'm not going to be using the same fire mode for extended periods of time.

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

2 hours ago, DreamsmithJane said:

Sorry. All I see is someone using the gun wrong and complaining about it. Dumping all the orbs into a single stack, really?

He's... stacking and detonating them...? What other intended purpose is there...?

[Fallen_Echo]

14 hours ago, (PS4)Lei-Lei_23 said:

He's... stacking and detonating them...? What other intended purpose is there...?

He either mixed up what weapon hes talking about or never used the simulors properly.

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

32 minutes ago, Fallen_Echo said:

He either mixed up what weapon hes talking about or never used the simulors properly.

Or he's providing misinformation on a piece of feedback for a nerfed weapon that we sorely don't need right now.

[DreamsmithJane]

22 hours ago, (PS4)Lei-Lei_23 said:

He's... stacking and detonating them...? What other intended purpose is there...?

Stacking them far beyond the limit, thereby wasting them. Max stack is FOUR. On a 2.442 multishot build, there were huge streaks of shots in a single point without detonation. The amount of waste there is staggering. With that build, a double-tap per stack should be all you need. Aiming slightly to the side would enable corrosive procs from the almost non-existent merge damage without wasting all the real damage from detonation. This person either didn't read the update notes, or is deliberately muddying the waters for drama and views.

[XGodOfCarnageX]

On 28/03/2017 at 9:55 PM, Azamagon said:

Some thoughts after testing a bunch of these weapons:

Harpak
Recoil reduction made a huge difference in usability. It's a good gun, but since it's not my cup of tea, I didn't spend all too much time with it. I can totally see it as a very viable weapon for sorties and such though.
Verdict: Good buffs to it.

Hind
Where to begin?
It needs way more. RoF, for starters. Altfire needs its to have its ridiculous sound fixed, increased in RoF and become a toggle (not a direct fire).
Verdict: Still garbage AND it needs fixing in the sound.

Panthera
Fun and powerful, with tons of love in the QoL-department. Feels like this was the weapon that actually had the most love put into it, because it now really feels like a viable and enjoyable gun (and it was really needed). Bug though: Punchthrough doesn't work on it (it passes through environment, but NEVER through enemies)
Verdict: Very good buffs, but the punchthrough bug needs fixing.

Paracyst
Toyed around with it for a bit and it still feels a bit... underwhelming? Also, why not instant harpoon, like on the Harpak? Is it because it deals the DoT?
Verdict: Still feels a tad weak.

Buzlok
Statistically: Great buffs! Now tagging an enemy is not so ammo-intensive, and it has an incentive too (crit+), beyond the autoaim.
Mechanically: However, now we can't tag the environment for creative strategies, which is a HUGE loss. Why not have the secondary fire shoot a beacon on first shot, then disable the beacon on second shot, along with allowing us to tag the environment again? That would fix the old clunkyness AND retain the creative old uses. That would be the best of both worlds!
Verdict: Statistically better, mechanically it was robbed from a lot of fun and creativity.

Glaxion
Umm... where's the ammo rate fix? It still eats ammo like no tomorrow.
Verdict: Still unusable in longer missions due to the promised ammo rate fix not even taking place!

Ogris
The status-niche is really nice, and makes it an EXCELLENT area-denial weapon if you have Nightwatch Napalm on it (it's pretty much a musthave now). Still feels a tad clunky though. And you had the opportunity to give it some secondary fire! Why not have secondary fire be like a toggle on/off for a laserguiding system? Or a lock-on system? It could mechanically be improved so much!
Verdict: Works, if Nightwatch Napalm is installed. Otherwise, might still be considered underwhelming.

Attica
Nice buffs, plain and simple. I would've vastly preffered it to have buff to reloadspeed instead of getting that magincrease though (Mag back to 16, but reload from 2,8 to 2,25?). Nontheless, it now feels like a sidegrade to Zhuge, which is nice.
Verdict: Very good, but the reloadspeed is still rather crippling.

Tonkor
I really love the accuracy buff. But I really hate the critchance nerf, would've rather had the critmultiplier reduced, so we didn't get ANOTHER weapon with unreliable crits. Other than that, I don't really mind the other changes.
Verdict: Still a great (generally the best?) launcher. Less reliable in damage, but now reliable in accuracy.

i disagree with paracyst,she's now one great weapon,with the right build and also one riven you can destroy anything in this game,even lvl 145 bombards don't survive to much.i don't like the harpoon either,the animation on the alt+fire,sounds more like a concentrate shot,not a harpoon shot.i hope De change this  Alt+fire is the most useless right now.

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

2 minutes ago, DreamsmithJane said:

Stacking them far beyond the limit, thereby wasting them. Max stack is FOUR. On a 2.442 multishot build, there were huge streaks of shots in a single point without detonation. The amount of waste there is staggering. With that build, a double-tap per stack should be all you need. Aiming slightly to the side would enable corrosive procs from the almost non-existent merge damage without wasting all the real damage from detonation. This person either didn't read the update notes, or is deliberately muddying the waters for drama and views.

So... he achieved the max required stack on the vortex, detonated them, showcased how the detonated damage is now neglegible.

Proper feedback would be to question why are/should orbs converge into a single vortex beyond its maximum capacity, thereby wasting ammo. Not a "you're doing it wrong" statement when for all thoughts and purposes, players will be button-tapping the Simulor randomly to create a vortex without counting their shots (should they be counting shots like counting cards on a Blackjack table?) and detonating at their own whim.

[DreamsmithJane]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Lei-Lei_23 said:

So... he achieved the max required stack on the vortex, detonated them, showcased how the detonated damage is now neglegible.

Proper feedback would be to question why are/should orbs converge into a single vortex beyond its maximum capacity, thereby wasting ammo. Not a "you're doing it wrong" statement when for all thoughts and purposes, players will be button-tapping the Simulor randomly to create a vortex without counting their shots (should they be counting shots like counting cards on a Blackjack table?) and detonating at their own whim.

What, you can't count to four?! I'm not buying that, and I'm entirely unsympathetic to people who can't be bothered to think a little when using the weapon. I mean, it's Suda's weapon. It shouldn't be a mindless killing machine anyway. You don't even have to wait to see the vortex form to know you've fired enough. Four shots. Done. Aim 1m to the right, four shots, done. If you use multishot, it's two shots. You can count to two. It's more than one. Am I dragging that condescending bit too far? Maybe. But seriously, you don't wanna count your shots? PFFT. "You're doing it wrong" is a factual statement, and it is nobody's fault but yours if you refuse to accept that there is a "right" way. As for why it allows stacking beyond the max, it's to let people refresh the vortex duration. However, adjacent vortexes do not merge, which is why it's advantageous to space out your shots just enough to create multiple stacks.

[(PSN)Brewski_3]

Some good posts here.

First, it seems that the biggest issue for the people constantly yelling for nerfs is anything aoe. I suppose they won't be happy until no aoe weapons and abilities remain.

As many people have said, it's really not that hard to avoid people using these aoe weapons/abilities that "steal" all of the kills, outside of world on fire on exterminates, which makes sense since that is a match made in heaven. Having to quit a match every now and then wouldn't bother me. Also, like many have stated, I don't care about leading on the scoreboard, especially now that affinity is shared. Getting through missions faster is fine with me since I don't have nearly as much time to play as I would like.

I agree that instead of self-damage being added to tonkor, that they should move in the other direction of removing or reducing it for other launcers. As previously mentioned, it's just not practical to use them on most tilesets. While I would greatly prefer something be done at the weapon level, I suppose I could live with a mod option that eliminated or reduced self-damage. An option for both the weapons and warframes would be nice if it came to this to give us a little more flexibility.

The simulor nerf is incredibly saddening to me. If they insist on nerfing things, it would be very nice if they would be more prompt about it. Having weapons for years and then have them made useless or nearly so in many cases only adds to the pain. I will admit that I used simulor more than I should have. Being an energy overflow guy, it was very nice to have the simulor be able to get me by in most situations until that kicked in so I didn't have to use restores in situations where abilites were necessary. That extra energy was also nice on energy reduction sorties and eximus heavy missions. Considering the aforementioned lack of playing time, I'm typically playing harder content or helping/taxiing lower level players. Considering how often people tend to go down in those situations, it was very nice to have the simulor to get enough clearance to revive others. It's ammo efficiency was also very welcome. Obviously I haven't had a chance to try the new version but considering how it already struggled a little at high level stuff, I can't imagine it is viable there now.

Along those lines, as a few people have mentioned, anything that is viable on sortie 3s and long endless missions is going to be insanely overpowered in low level start chart missions. Given this large range in enemy levels and the fact that there is zero scaling applied to weapons and abilities, things are either going to be overpowered at low level missions or not end game viable, as I imagine practically no one will change their mods/loadouts to accommodate each mission they play. I would prefer that everything be viable for high level content so unless they plan on giving us scaling, I wish they would stop "balancing" things based on low level content.

Edited March 30, 2017 by (PS4)Brewski_3

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

1 hour ago, DreamsmithJane said:

What, you can't count to four?! I'm not buying that, and I'm entirely unsympathetic to people who can't be bothered to think a little when using the weapon. I mean, it's Suda's weapon. It shouldn't be a mindless killing machine anyway. You don't even have to wait to see the vortex form to know you've fired enough. Four shots. Done. Aim 1m to the right, four shots, done. If you use multishot, it's two shots. You can count to two. It's more than one. Am I dragging that condescending bit too far? Maybe. But seriously, you don't wanna count your shots? PFFT. "You're doing it wrong" is a factual statement, and it is nobody's fault but yours if you refuse to accept that there is a "right" way. As for why it allows stacking beyond the max, it's to let people refresh the vortex duration. However, adjacent vortexes do not merge, which is why it's advantageous to space out your shots just enough to create multiple stacks.

And Suda has a hammer. That smashes things. Smash! Think... SMASH!

[Kardis]

With respect to the Hind, I've been wanting a semi-automatic rifle with high base damage and high magazine for a long time. The new Hind almost does this, but having to press alt-fire to do single-shots is awful, and makes no sense. As many others have mentioned, making it like the Stradavar should be the obvious solution. The rate of fire is also kind of weird, since it isn't actually semi-automatic if you have to pull the trigger so slowly (it may as well be bolt-action at that speed). The weapon will never be the most OP'd thing around, but I would appreciate some small further tweaking to it for those of us willing to take it into battle! Thanks a lot, and please stop making every weapon burst-fire and full-auto; give the semi-auto weapons some love! :D

[Azamagon]

Just some crazy thoughts I had in regards to the Hind:

* Buff RoF to make it (at base) similar to the NPC's version
* Reduce recoil, to the point of almost making it non-noticable (for the primary fire)
* Alternate fire turned into a "swarm-shot", or in other words, a shotgun-blast (with 5 bullets). The benefit is a more bursty DPS on a nearby target. Downside is a FAR higher recoil, and a whole bunch less accuracy (due to being shot in a slight shotgun-spread fashion). RoF between triggerpulls could be the same or slightly slower than primary fire. Damage/status/crit per bullet could be exactly the same as primary fire. Would that possibly be a more interesting secondary fire for it? I mean, then it still encompasses the whole "5-bullet per triggerpull" niche, along with being the first burst+shotgun(ish) rifle in the game (instead of just being a subpar version of Stradavar).
Furthermore, this could be a new attack to add for the Elite Lancers too, and they'd use this attack if you get within X meters of them.

If there are to be any other improved stats however, then I'd like that to be reserved for a Wraith/Prisma version (with at minimum +5 slash damage, +10 magsize, and better crit and status). After all, it's a MR0 weapon.

[Windy_Wind]

I don't see the mutalist quanta machenic works. The orb stacks but doesn't make bigger orbs or do AOE damage upon merging, so what's the point?

[(PSN)salovel1991]

On 3/25/2017 at 11:11 AM, ganjou234 said:

AMAZING work on the Telos Boltor. It's a good thing we won't get to see stuff like this (see video below) happen. That shi* seriously made things dull....

 

So PC mucked it up with macros. The only thing we had close to this level of spam was the simulor. 

[Huanthus]

15 hours ago, (PS4)Lei-Lei_23 said:

And Suda has a hammer. That smashes things. Smash! Think... SMASH!

Suda HULK?

 

12 hours ago, Kardis said:

With respect to the Hind, I've been wanting a semi-automatic rifle with high base damage and high magazine for a long time. The new Hind almost does this, but having to press alt-fire to do single-shots is awful, and makes no sense. As many others have mentioned, making it like the Stradavar should be the obvious solution. The rate of fire is also kind of weird, since it isn't actually semi-automatic if you have to pull the trigger so slowly (it may as well be bolt-action at that speed). The weapon will never be the most OP'd thing around, but I would appreciate some small further tweaking to it for those of us willing to take it into battle! Thanks a lot, and please stop making every weapon burst-fire and full-auto; give the semi-auto weapons some love! :D

I agree with this they already done it with the zarr n the stradavar so they should apply it to similar weapons (would be nice to have it in the braton family from full automatic to semi)