The current weapon balance; Buffs are great, but what about nerfs?

[Da_Atte]

As of the latest update (Chains of Harrow) I was pretty excited to see some of the weapons getting buffs/slight reworks. I am grateful Mara Detron got some love for a long time as it is one of my favorite secondaries to use.

But then again, when new buffs come out, I always think what about the possible and needed nerfs for some... unnamed weapons in the game. We all know what they are so I'm not really going to go into too much detail.

The game heavily relies on burst and high damage weapons. There's really no point in using weapons that deal lower damage because the "end game" enemies will resist a lot of the damage you will deal unless you got Slash or your weapon is built with the best possible elements for killing that certain type of enemy.

While Mods make a huge difference in how you're going to build and use your weapon there's one problem in some of the weapons: the base damage. It goes both ways. Some of the weapons are extremely weak and some of them are extremely powerful. And right now there still are weapons that will be in the top-tier, defined by the community, even if you have a powerful Riven Mod in the other weapon and no Riven in the more powerful one. And in the end, even a Faint Riven Mod can make a huge difference when it comes to balance.

So. Yeah. I'm not really sure what I was trying to say. We all know this issue is a huge problem in the game and we all know there are a handful of Primaries, Secondaries and Melee weapons that will outmatch almost any other weapon in the game.

Still waiting for actual difficulty rework to the game and not just increasingly tougher enemies. Artificial difficulty isn't difficult. Just limiting.

[elitetrollz]

Last nerf broke our hearts. 

[Da_Atte]

4 minutes ago, elitetrollz said:

Last nerf broke our hearts. 

The broken weapons break my heart. Not all weapons must be Mastery fodders.

[iwoply]

Old weapons just need to be brought up to par, If the game requires power creep to complete content than its a problem with enemy design/scaling. which is the case for warframe.  Also just my opinion PvE shouldn't need nerfs. 

 

[Da_Atte]

1 minute ago, Eggplants said:

...its a problem with enemy design/scaling...

...Also just my opinion PvE shouldn't need nerfs.

Well, I did mention Artificial difficulty which the end game content of Warframe is based upon. Also, why no nerfs to PvE? If no weapons get nerfs all the weapons will get buffs. I guess that would work but when all the weapons get buffs the enemies must reworked a lot. I think there should be some kind of median that the weapons should all strife toward. Right now the top tier is pretty ridiculous and the low tier is laughable. There's a huge gap between the most used weapons and the least used weapons.

[Xaero]

Could you tell me which weapons are considered broken? I see pretty random stuff in public missions, haven't seen anything being very popular like it was with Tonkor, Simulor and Telos Boltace.

I see Soundquake spammers very often though.

Edited June 29, 2017 by Ksaero

[Fallen_Echo]

Until we get every weapon to be considerable as a good choice for sortie 3 without rivens, no nerf should come.

[Da_Atte]

1 minute ago, Ksaero said:

Could you tell me which weapons are considered broken?

Didn't really want to say what weapons... But come on if you haven't heard about Sancti Tigris, Tigris Prime, Vaykor Hek, Strun Wraith, (Kohm but not really that common to be called powerful), Euphona Prime and Atterax being rather powerful. Funny how they mostly are Shotguns...

Although I myself could add Ferrox on the list. While not the most powerful one because of the slow fire rate it still outclassess a lot of the weapons when using against high level enemies.

Of course Blood Rush melee weapons outclass most of the guns. But that's a story for another day (hopefully not).

[Birdframe_Prime]

7 minutes ago, Da_Atte said:

But come on if you haven't heard about Sancti Tigris, Tigris Prime, Vaykor Hek, Strun Wraith, (Kohm but not really that common to be called powerful), Euphona Prime and Atterax being rather powerful.

Kind of unlikely that shotguns are getting nerfed, they were the first round of weapons to get buffed and all the secondary shotguns just got the same buffs...

[shut]

5 hours ago, Da_Atte said:

The broken weapons break my heart. Not all weapons must be Mastery fodders.

Broken weapons don't need to be turned into mastery fodder, either.

I'm all for nerfing something if it's way over the top. But DE's treatment of SSimulor and TBoltace (making them borderline useless and then ignoring all feedback) showed that when something is nerfed, it'll get nerfed so hard that the game isn't any more balanced than it was before.

[PrVonTuckIII]

5 hours ago, Eggplants said:

Also just my opinion PvE shouldn't need nerfs. 

That's wrong, but regardless, the general sentiment is correct. As of now, DE has removed most of the top-tier weapons from the meta-box. The ones that remain generally deserve their spot.

[True_Naeblis]

I don't understand the point of starting a topic like this when you can't even give a concise list of weapons or reasons why they should be nerfed, @Da_Atte People who start both nerf/buff discussions based on their feelings in games is beyond me to understand, and all the more so when they do so en masse and companies actually follow through on the requests. What is the point when you can't even give a traceable argument explaining what's wrong with the weapons?

I could see if there were a logical argument for it, but we're talking about a PvE game. Let people enjoy their weapons as they are. If you think they're too powerful then don't use them, or mod them to intentionally be weaker. It honestly feels like people start these discussions up just to feel like they're able to make changes to the game and have their voices heard for no reason other than to be heard.

[Fallen_Echo]

17 minutes ago, SortaRandom said:

Broken weapons don't need to be turned into mastery fodder, either.

I'm all for nerfing something if it's way over the top. But DE's treatment of SSimulor and TBoltace (making them borderline useless and then ignoring all feedback) showed that when something is nerfed, it'll get nerfed so hard that the game isn't any more balanced than it was before.

Whenever some youtuber makes a powerful build i start to shrug thinking about what kind of nerf will DE apply to it.

The libo catabomb got from highly useful to well the damage is almost non-existant without the augement.

[SenorClipClop]

31 minutes ago, SortaRandom said:

SSimulor and TBoltace (making them borderline useless

Don't you mean that now you just can't clear rooms with them instantly? Or that you have to actually pay attention when clearing said rooms like you have to with other weapons?

[Xaero]

5 hours ago, Da_Atte said:

Didn't really want to say what weapons... But come on if you haven't heard about Sancti Tigris, Tigris Prime, Vaykor Hek, Strun Wraith, (Kohm but not really that common to be called powerful), Euphona Prime and Atterax being rather powerful. Funny how they mostly are Shotguns...

Although I myself could add Ferrox on the list. While not the most powerful one because of the slow fire rate it still outclassess a lot of the weapons when using against high level enemies.

Of course Blood Rush melee weapons outclass most of the guns. But that's a story for another day (hopefully not).

Well, taking their range and fire rate into consideration, not many players feel comfortable with them, so I guess they are fine.

[Skaleek]

If you own everything you dont care anymore, because you can just cycle to whatever is OP the new week.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Skaleek

[shut]

1 hour ago, SenorClipClop said:

Don't you mean that now you just can't clear rooms with them instantly? Or that you have to actually pay attention when clearing said rooms like you have to with other weapons?

You seem to be lumping me in with those "my map-nuking SSimulor/TBoltace is perfectly balanced, and anything less effective is WORTHLESS!" folks. Would you mind not doing that?

Anyhoo, here's why I think the TBoltace and SSimulor completely suck now.

 

For TBoltace: the pushing effect will throw enemies WAY out of melee range, forcing you to awkwardly use combos instead of using the tonfa's main source of damage (slidespam). Boltace has virtually identical slide damage, but without this downside.

 

For SSimulor: Hoo boy, where do I begin.

- Radius for merging has been decreased to less than half. (Acceptable, since the main source of damage is now detonation rather than merging.)
- Detonation radius is significantly lower than pre-nerf merge radius, even at max ramp-up.
- Crit chance was cut in half and is no longer worth considering in builds.
- Status procs are not frequent enough for Corrosive to be viable as an armor-stripper. (Reminder that Magnetic damage barely tickles Bombards and Napalms.)
- For some godforsaken reason, there's this arbitrary damage cap on base detonation damage. This is contrary to the "more shots = more damage" philosophy of literally any other gun in literally any other game. (Granted, this is just an inconvenience, since you can just detonate and start a new stack. But holy hell, is it needlessly disruptive to the flow of gameplay.)
- Effective damage has decreased from ~200 damage per shot to 75 damage per shot.
- Merging still pushes enemies away from the orbs until they're out of the damage radius.
- DE (in the U20.0 notes) cited many damage/range "ramp-up" mechanics for pre-nerf and post-nerf SSimulor, nearly all of which did not exist pre-U20 and do not exist now. Almost none of the "official" damage and range values (old and new) come close to matching ingame behaviour. This suggests that they didn't actually playtest the weapon.

 

tl;dr - TBoltace and SSimulor needed nerfs for sure, but the nerfs were WAY over the top.

Edited June 29, 2017 by SortaRandom

[PrVonTuckIII]

On 29/06/2017 at 2:50 PM, True_Naeblis said:

I could see if there were a logical argument for it, but we're talking about a PvE game. Let people enjoy their weapons as they are. If you think they're too powerful then don't use them, or mod them to intentionally be weaker.

Hey! Can we not turn this into another "wah wah nerfs are bad in PvE" argument. That's not contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way.

Edited June 30, 2017 by PrVonTuckIII

[True_Naeblis]

56 minutes ago, PrVonTuckIII said:

Hey! Can we not turn this into another "wah wah nerfs are bad in PvE" argument. That's not contributing to the discussion in any meaningful wss. 

I turned it into a "provide logical evidence for why changes need to be made if you're going to make a thread" thread, as had others. Not going to apologize for that in the least.

[(XBOX)Onyx Schnee]

7 hours ago, Da_Atte said:

Didn't really want to say what weapons... But come on if you haven't heard about Sancti Tigris, Tigris Prime, Vaykor Hek, Strun Wraith, (Kohm but not really that common to be called powerful), Euphona Prime and Atterax being rather powerful. Funny how they mostly are Shotguns...

Although I myself could add Ferrox on the list. While not the most powerful one because of the slow fire rate it still outclassess a lot of the weapons when using against high level enemies.

Of course Blood Rush melee weapons outclass most of the guns. But that's a story for another day (hopefully not).

Best part about the kohm; you don't need 100% status like other shotguns. All 4 dual stats and hells chamber brings it up to like....98%. Its sheer rof will take care of the rest(i tested in the sim, nano applicator is good and all...but you actually lose dmg/dps with it. Let the kohm's rof do the jobXD)

[Da_Atte]

So let me further express my opinion here.

The reason why I didn't want to name weapons is because EVERYONE will talk about the said weapons afterwards. I don't want it to be like that. I mean, DE know what weapons are powerful. And a simple search on internet/YouTube shows them too.

And second: no, I don't think the OP weapons should be turned into Mastery fodder either. That's backwards thinking.

What I mean is, weaker weapons should be buffed and the most/more powerful ones nerfed. You may decide how much but the fact that we need balancing right now it a huge issue.

Also, I personally am fine with the ridiculously overpowered weapons. I don't use them. But if there is a weapon that surpasses most weapons there will be a huge amount of poeple using it and the game will be balanced to that direction, and not the "right" direction, if you catch my point.

Let people use the weapons they like. But it is rather annoying that some of the weapons I mainly use are so damn underpowered you can't even use them in Sorties. It's amazing how badly some of the weapons have fallen behind this day.

[Epsik-kun]

3 minutes ago, Da_Atte said:

Let people use the weapons they like. But it is rather annoying that some of the weapons I mainly use are so damn underpowered you can't even use them in Sorties. It's amazing how badly some of the weapons have fallen behind this day.

That's exactly the problem Rivens attempt to solve. However genuinely wishing for all the weapons to be viable in a grind game means you should be playing something of another genre. In a game like Warframe there must be progression, otherwise, the game itself becomes pointless and meaningless. All the "sidegrades" that look so good and balanced in theory, in reality, will make the vast majority of the players just ask themselves "why should I even bother?" There are people who just enjoy changing builds and loadouts, but generally when a person plays a game about looting and grinding they want to see their character grow and become stronger - not just different.

I spent my first 12 ranks basically playing a single frame because polishing that frame was what made the game interesting to me. And when I finally started switching frames - at first it still was to get some stuff for the main frame.

So, no matter how much you would like to run sortie missions with your Lato or Skana - it shouldn't be anywhere as effective as running them with Tigris and Galatine. And while Rivens don't magically make "all" the weapons viable, they considerably expanded the "viable" weapon selection which is a huge success already. The recent weapon buffs also were oriented on terribly underpowered weapons, so paired with Rivens they'll have their chance to shine. And if the Rivens completely break some of the top-tier weapons - then and only then should be direct nerfs considered.

[Da_Atte]

2 hours ago, Epsik-kun said:

That's exactly the problem Rivens attempt to solve.

Attempt. Yes. Keyword being attempt.

I have Rivens for the Primaries I like to use with fairly good stats (no negative values affecting Damage) and the only Mod that feels like a overpowered Riven is my Vulkar Riven (which in fact does have -DMG against Corpus). And that's one of the more problematic things too. If you get a godlike Riven to a weapon that has a base DMG of 50 and then a mediocre Riven to a weapon that has the base DMG of 300. The higher damage still wins in burst, maybe not sustain. But as I said, burst wins in guns, Sustain in Melees.

[DrBorris]

I feel like the last set of nerfs corrected all of the outliers. IMO the only weapons that are "OP" are some melee weapons, but that is more due to melee mechanics than the weapons themselves. 

Melee is supposed to be high risk, high reward. However melee has been indirectly buffed so much that it is now low risk, absurdly high reward. One of those attributes really should be adjusted (Risk should be higher IMO). 

[Magneu]

The only weapon really needing to be reigned in seems to be the Atterax at this point. That, or get rid of Maiming Strike.

I've seen people solo five hours with Naramon and that weapon. Might just be me, but when only a single weapon can go that far, there may be something out of whack.

Naramon also needs the boot, although Tennocon will likely reveal plans for that.