Percentage vs flat values on Primed mods

[(XBOX)PichuFrenzy]

This is a suggestion to make some of the next Primed weapon mods more useful on the lesser good weapons and less strong on the already good weapons. This might open up more Primed mods possibility without the fear of making overpowered mods. 

Most of the mods we currently know are using percentages (only exception being punch through and projectile range). So if you put a mod increasing a stat on a weapon that is already good at what you are willing to increase, the mod will have a stronger effect than on another weapon which isn't good at that particular stat. 

Let's take as an example blast radius on primary weapons. 

• Ogris has a 6m blast radius. If you put the Firestorm mod on it, you will gain 24% of these 6 meters and end up at 7.44 meters.
• Torid has a 3m blast radius. If you put the Firestorm mod on it, you will gain 24% of these 3 meters and end up at 3.72 meters.

The problem we have with our Primed weapon mods is that they only increase this kind of gap between weapons. 

What I suggest, instead of simply buffing the percentage bonus, is to put a flat value on the primed mod:

gives

With this primed mod, Orgis will end up at 7.5 meters instead of 6 and Torid will end up at 4.5 meters instead of 3. The mod is still useful on both weapons without being overpowered. 

With flat values on primed mods, we would have a better modding potential on weapons. Listing a few mods that could be useful if primed with flat values:

• Primed Point Streak: +20 Critical Chance (instead of +150% Critical chance)
• Primed Rifle Aptitude: +20 Status Chance (instead of +15% Status Chance)
• Primed Fulmination: +1.5 m Blast Radius (instead of +24% Blast Radius) 

 

[Xarteros]

If you want to make mods good, you should always aim to add both flat values AND percentage bonuses together.

For instance: The Sobek/Obex/Jat Kittag augment mods. Each one creates an explosion that deals X flat damage and Y% of the enemy's max health as additional damage.

The reason this is better is because a percentage always caters better to weapons specialised for the function of the mod, and the flat value always allows lesser weapons to catch up a little bit.

If Prime Firestorm added X meters of blast radius, as well as Y% increase to blast radius, then any weapons DE bring out that have really big blast radius' don't get short-changed. 

Look at Lanka. Lanka has 5m base punch-through, and all our punch-through mods are flat values. An extra 2.4m punch-through isn't as impressive to a Lanka as it is to something with no base punch through. Now, if you were to make a primed punch-through mod, and it gave you say; +1.5m Punch-through with an extra 100% increase (applied to the 1.5m as well), then normal weapons would get 3m punch-through from the mod, but Lanka would get 8m extra, to a total of 13m. Now, those stats are just example figures, obviously DE would need to make sure that they're all still balanced a bit and wouldn't be game breaking, but the principle is there.

A better example would be crit. With your suggestions, adding +20 base crit chance means that high-crit weapons are basically no better off than low-crit weapons in the long run. Weapons built to specialise in crits allow us to get red-crits, with high multipliers. Making all of the values flat instead of percentages is great for non-crit build weapons, and I applaud that, but it also means that weapons focused for crits would be better off with non-primed mods, and that's just not right.

So, if you did the same thing with the crit mods, you'd be fine. Make them all add +X flat bonus, and +Y% bonus. Maybe like +10 flat chance, and +100% chance on top of the flat bonus. That would mean that a weapon with a crit chance of 5% would get an end result of 30% (5 + 10 =15, 15 + 100% =30), making it MUCH more useful than a normal 150% crit chance mod. However, it means that a weapon that already has a crit of say, 25% would go up to 70% (25 + 10 =35, 35 + 100% =70). For comparison, a weapon with 25% base crit only gets up to 62.5% with the standard 150% crit mod. Again, that's just a filler value. Maybe the percentage should be a little higher or something.

For comparison, with ONLY a flat bonus, a weapon with a base 5% crit chance would get 25% with your suggested 20 flat bonus. However, the weapon that has a base of 25% only goes up to 45%, which is already worse than just using the base 150% non-primed mod.

You need to have percentages and flat values working together, otherwise you end up homogenising all the weapons and taking all the uniqueness away. It's a great plan for bringing some of the lesser weapons into the realm of the useful, so you can crit-build weapons that were otherwise hopeless etc, but not if it means that it's ever better to use a non-primed mod for any reason other than capacity limitations.

[(XBOX)PichuFrenzy]

1 hour ago, Xarteros said:

 

Even if I don't really mind if a primed mod isn't always better than a non-primed mod (because a strong weapon is strong enough and doesn't need to get better), your post made me think about weapons that stands in the middle (not great but not bad either). I think that flat values only would hurt these weapons and will end up making them worse than the weapons with low stats. 

Therefore, as you said and with the right balance, mixing percentage and flat values should be the way to go so no weapon is left behind. 

[lukinu_u]

The idea of flat incease is not bad but it's totally not the purpose of Primed mods. Primed mods are juste existing mods with 10 rank instead 3/5.

The problem is also that base crit/status stats would not be revelant anymore because you can easily balance them with these mods to make them crit/status hybrid.

For example, if you take the Nukor, the weapon has the highest crit damage multiplier (4x) but the lowest crit chances (1%). This means with your proposition of primed crit chance, it will get a flat 20%, so 21% chance to deal 4x damage, 10.8x with the right build and even more with a Riven. It's already possible with Arcane Avenger and Kavats crit buff but let do this with mods only not a great idea.

[Blade_Wolf_16]

5 minutes ago, lukinu_u said:

The problem is also that base crit/status stats would not be revelant anymore because you can easily balance them with these mods to make them crit/status hybrid.

I think that's the general idea behind it. Look at the Supra/Sobek/Viper augment. The Supra has low crit and status, but the augment gives a flat 20% Status chance, wich isn't much since it's not affected by other mods, but still worth it since if you shoot 300 times (without multi-shot), you should deal at least 75-85 procs, instead of 15. Same with the Sobek.  As for the Viper, having only 14 bullets in the clip of a weak full-auto pistol isn't going to help you getting out of a jam as it's barely affected by clip mods, but 54 is a lot more significant. 

In the other hand, using a mod similar to the Supar one (not necessarely 20% status) on a Miter, for example, would have barely any good effect. On a Soma, it would be very usefull, but not necessarely the best way to boost status, since there are also dual stat mods. Giveing, let's say, 30 bullets to weapons like Dex Furis or Dual Cestras would do much, but giving a flat 5-7 to wepons like the Pyrana, Pandero, Vasto, etc would be great. (remember that pistols have subdivisions, so making different mods for each class is possible).

[lukinu_u]

35 minutes ago, Blade_Wolf_16 said:

I think that's the general idea behind it. Look at the Supra/Sobek/Viper augment. The Supra has low crit and status, but the augment gives a flat 20% Status chance, wich isn't much since it's not affected by other mods, but still worth it since if you shoot 300 times (without multi-shot), you should deal at least 75-85 procs, instead of 15. Same with the Sobek.  As for the Viper, having only 14 bullets in the clip of a weak full-auto pistol isn't going to help you getting out of a jam as it's barely affected by clip mods, but 54 is a lot more significant. 

In the other hand, using a mod similar to the Supar one (not necessarely 20% status) on a Miter, for example, would have barely any good effect. On a Soma, it would be very usefull, but not necessarely the best way to boost status, since there are also dual stat mods. Giveing, let's say, 30 bullets to weapons like Dex Furis or Dual Cestras would do much, but giving a flat 5-7 to wepons like the Pyrana, Pandero, Vasto, etc would be great. (remember that pistols have subdivisions, so making different mods for each class is possible).

It's probably the general idea behind it but it's a bad idea.
For the Sobek and Supra, they did it to make the weapon a bit useful on high level because they dont and these mods are exclusive to these weapons, so it still in control of DE. Allowing a flat +20 crit chance and status chance on every weapon would just be balance breaking.

If we take the example of the Karak Wraith that is not a bad weapon but have low crit and status chance, you can put these to mods to get 25% crit chance and 35% status chance that make the weapon a great hybrid with the base 2x crit damages. With the Strong Riven disposition, you can get +Damage +Multishot +Crit damages and transform this weapon into a beast without relying on the base stats of the weapon, and that's not really the purpose of Warframe modding.

Also, for melee, Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds apply after flat increase, so you can easily turn Lacera or Zenistar into god like status/crit hybrid (that is already possible with Naramon flat +30 crit chance) but also do the same for Hirudo, Destreza and other god-like crit only weapons.

Currently, there are 4 type of viables build for weapons :

• Crit build, relying on crit damages and crit chances.
• Status build, relying on high status chance to spread various effects, mainly slash, gas, corrosive and blast.
• Flat damages build (very rare).
• Status/Crit build generaly used on weapon with high slash damage, crit and status stats to increase the damage of the slash proc by the critical multiplier.

There is already a lack of variety but with these mods, only the Status/Crit build will be used for obvious reasons and there will be no more variety in our build.

[(XBOX)PichuFrenzy]

52 minutes ago, lukinu_u said:

If we take the example of the Karak Wraith that is not a bad weapon but have low crit and status chance, you can put these to mods to get 25% crit chance and 35% status chance that make the weapon a great hybrid with the base 2x crit damages. With the Strong Riven disposition, you can get +Damage +Multishot +Crit damages and transform this weapon into a beast without relying on the base stats of the weapon, and that's not really the purpose of Warframe modding. 

Yet, the Soma Prime will still be a better weapon. These kind of mods will allow the lower weapons to catch up. And as Xarteros suggested, a combinaison of flat values and percentages will still make the mod rely on the base stats of a weapon. 

52 minutes ago, lukinu_u said:

Also, for melee, Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds apply after flat increase, so you can easily turn Lacera or Zenistar into god like status/crit hybrid (that is already possible with Naramon flat +30 crit chance) but also do the same for Hirudo, Destreza and other god-like crit only weapons.

We are not forced to put similar mods on melee weapons since they already have Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds as you said. We can simply focus on primary and secondary weapons (or maybe we can play with primed channeling mods with flat+percentages values). 

52 minutes ago, lukinu_u said:

There is already a lack of variety but with these mods, only the Status/Crit build will be used for obvious reasons and there will be no more variety in our build.

I think you are focusing too much on automatic weapons. These weapons don't have any really interesting mechanics to begin with so of course their best builds will end up being similar. Also, we only have 8 mods slots and 60 capacity points at best. All primed mods and a riven won't be able to fit in here even with 8 formas.