why does the Nox have such a ridiculous damage cap?

[yarash2110]

for those who do not know, the Nox has an amazing amount of damage resistence on his entire body besides for his tiny head, my riven'd akbronco prime which dealt 400 damage per pellet to armored eximus units, only dealt 21 damage to a non armored Nox, seriously? why?

this makes no sense, it encourages us to break his helmet, which deals toxin damage if we do, and it's really annoying for any weapon that isn't precise, even at point blank range i was barrely able to remove a tiny amount of health with a full magazine of shots, because, as i said, i was using the akbronco prime, one of the most inaccurate shotguns in this game, why would i be punished for it? 

i didn't test it but i wonder how explosive weapons apply damage, is it only headshots or no headshots? either a massive buff to explosive weapons or a massive nerf in grineer missions.

[Hixlysss]

Thankfully the nox is still affected by status. Blast proc + status braton prime = Nox ain't gettin' up. That aside, the Nox requires these headshots because he is a "Special unit" much like the bursa.

[--F--NerevarCM]

In a game when 90% of the people uses spray n pray auto guns, AoE weapons and shotguns. Having a enemy that is weak against precision weapons is not the end of the world.

Edited July 12, 2017 by -SDM-NerevarCM

[Trichouette]

8 minutes ago, yarash2110 said:

seriously? why?

Because U21 should've been called "the headshot update" instead of "chains of harrow", because everything in the update revolve around headshot

I like that enemy, it bothers a lot of people using only AOE weapons

[Ceryk]

It's a mini-boss. Why would you think it was going to be an easy enemy? They are trying to give players the challenge constantly being asked for by making varied enemies that require different tactics to take down than just "Spam all the attacks!"

Edited July 12, 2017 by Ceryk

[Tsukinoki]

3 minutes ago, Ceryk said:

It's a mini-boss. Why would you think it was going to be an easy enemy?

While I don't have a problem with them, I think some of peoples problems come from how the unit is a miniboss....but isn't treated as one and can still come at you in groups of 3+ even on medium level tiles.

Meanwhile Bursas, another mini-boss type enemy, is brought to the attention of players and has limited spawns in most conditions.

If the Nox is supposed to be a miniboss it should be treated as such and have tighter controls on its spawn numbers and possibly a warning of sorts.

Edited July 12, 2017 by Tsukinoki

[shut]

18 minutes ago, Hixlysss said:

Thankfully the nox is still affected by status.

Not Slash, sadly. Even breaking the helmet doesn't remove the slash proc immunity for some godforsaken reason.

[Aeon94]

16 minutes ago, yarash2110 said:

for those who do not know, the Nox has an amazing amount of damage resistence on his entire body besides for his tiny head, my riven'd akbronco prime which dealt 400 damage per pellet to armored eximus units, only dealt 21 damage to a non armored Nox, seriously? why?

this makes no sense, it encourages us to break his helmet, which deals toxin damage if we do, and it's really annoying for any weapon that isn't precise, even at point blank range i was barrely able to remove a tiny amount of health with a full magazine of shots, because, as i said, i was using the akbronco prime, one of the most inaccurate shotguns in this game, why would i be punished for it? 

i didn't test it but i wonder how explosive weapons apply damage, is it only headshots or no headshots? either a massive buff to explosive weapons or a massive nerf in grineer missions.

Explosive weapons can't headshot so don't think they work on Nox.

 Actually I'm fine with Nox and his resistance , game needs more threatening mini-boss like enemies rather than meatbags. 

15 minutes ago, -SDM-NerevarCM said:

In a game when 90% of the people uses spray n pray auto guns, AoE weapons and shotguns. Having a enemy that is weak against precision weapons is not the end of the world.

^ This. 

10 minutes ago, Tsukinoki said:

 can still come at you in groups of 3+ even on medium level tiles.

Didn't see more than 1 spawn at a time so far but spawn rate / amount should be reduced if that's true.

[Orblit]

Honestly didn't know it had damage resistance, as I actually just went for the head.
Never knew someone would actually just ignore the entire mechanic of the new enemy/miniboss.

That being said, a warning that one has spawned and is coming to make weird gargling noises at me would be nice.

[Tesseract7777]

I think all it needs is maybe a warning that one is coming by, a little bit of control over their spawns so they don't come a bunch at once (although I have yet to see more than one at a time, so it hasn't been an issue for me). Would be cool to know one is nearby, mainly because I want to try to beat the antitoxin aura out of it like a pinata. 

 

Edited July 12, 2017 by Tesseract7777

[BaronKreight]

I like the guy actually. I like the looks and the voice over. I think this mob is a good example of how to make an enemy challenging but not annoying at the same time.

[Ceryk]

1 hour ago, Tsukinoki said:

While I don't have a problem with them, I think some of peoples problems come from how the unit is a miniboss....but isn't treated as one and can still come at you in groups of 3+ even on medium level tiles.

Meanwhile Bursas, another mini-boss type enemy, is brought to the attention of players and has limited spawns in most conditions.

If the Nox is supposed to be a miniboss it should be treated as such and have tighter controls on its spawn numbers and possibly a warning of sorts.

I've fought 2 or 3 Bursas at one time, so having some trouble with your argument there... And Bursas are a bit more powerful due to their varied abilities AND can be turned against the Corpus once defeated, so if they do have more spawn number limitation that probably has a whole lot to do with it.

Edited July 12, 2017 by Ceryk

[Jobistober]

Love the new Nox enemy. He is actually quite terrifying, especially when he charges, and his scream when killed is chilling.

I have not seen more than one spawn at once, although I've seen them spawn less than a minute apart. I imagine they could be tied to alarm state as Bursas are. Either way, would love to have a sound that announces their arrival, much like Hyekka master and such.

[True_Naeblis]

Yes, your main weapon didn't work, but that's why you have a secondary and a melee. You should be prepared for whatever you might encounter on the run, and if you choose to only bring AoE weapons you have to do what you can with what you've got. It's one thing for newer players to have to deal with all the Stalker's nonsense, but the Nox is more than fair as an enemy.

[(XBOX)Onyx Schnee]

then shoot it's dome, is that so hard?

there's a reason my valkyr prime's loadout is one precision weapon(sybaris prime) one wide range weapon(akbronco prime) and very close quarter melee(venka prime)

[Cortanis]

12 hours ago, Trichouette said:

Because U21 should've been called "the headshot update" instead of "chains of harrow", because everything in the update revolve around headshot

Truth right here. ^

and yet... we're still stuck with the mess they've left sniper rifles in. >.> How tone deaf do they have to be?

[StinkyPygmy]

I love nox. We need more interesting enemies that stand out from the chaff we mindlessly cut down day in day out. Akbronco prime? Get in his face and shoot his helmet point blank. Its a hand shotty, thats literally what its for.

 Here's to hoping we get more enemies that actually force us to slightly change up our tactics for half a second and are mechanically interesting. WF is in dire need of this.

Edited July 13, 2017 by StinkyPygmy

[Xzorn]

Well.... The short answer is because they had to ignore core game design to overcome the numerous flaws that escalated over time.

The longer answer is the Damage system, Power Creep, AoE supremacy, Ammo Economy, Status rates, exponential scaling and weapon design.

 

Spoiler

The Damage system has always been flawed in numerous ways. In case of Nox the flaw lies in that weak points are not actually weak points when armor comes into play. Even Nox has 150 base armor on it's head which at lvl 100 is 2,199.70 armor or 88% Damage Reduction or 94% Damage Reduction on Eximus units. Slash being far superior to Impact / Puncture has commonly been used to overcome armor scaling so they had to pretend it's not a thing in order to force players into shooting it's "Weak Point" which as established is not actually one.

Power Creep though necessary has been far overdone through the years in order to entice players into getting new toys to play with. Nothing wrong with that but DE has never given us a place to use said toys to their full potential. Much of this involves exponential scaling which I'll get to in a moment but safe to say we do far too much damage to be fighting lvl 40-100 enemies.

AoE supremacy has been a situation for Warframe ever since they made it a horde shooter causing decreased value in precision weapons. After all, If an AoE weapon does even 1/4 the damage of a single target weapon but hits x2 - x10 the enemies. It's still worth using the AoE over single target. Through the years they have added scripts to spawn enemies closer to players and relocate enemies near players. Long ago, enemies only spawned behind red-doors which caused a delay in their respawn times that just about doesn't exist anymore. Kill an enemy and it will instantly respawn within 40m of you.

Ammo Economy partially plays into weapon design but for the most part Rifle pick-ups do not give enough ammo to compensate automatic weapons. Status rates play into this as most rapid fire automatic weapons have a low base status rate for no legitimate reason when compared to pistols and other damage per shot type weapons. It takes Soma Prime 80 rounds to kill a lvl 145 Napalm, it takes Akstiletto 50 ammo and it takes AkLex 15 ammo. Yet both Rifle and Pistol pick-ups give x20 ammo with similar drop rates.

Exponential scaling has cause numerous problems but the biggest culprit is by far enemy damage output. This is the reason players get unfairly one-shot and do not enjoy fighting past Sorties on some frames. It's also the majority reason we have no place to use our Power Creep toys.

Weapon design as I mention is partially due to ammo economy but simply put Automatic weapons do not have enough damage to justify the ammo use. Pandero can head-crit for 120k damage while Soma Prime head-crits for 8k. This is why in real life the bullets dictate the damage you do; Not the weapon. Automatic single target weapons are so underwhelming in both damage and ammo economy that attempting to overcome this deficiency with Ammo Mutation lowers the weapon's damage output below competitive levels thereby ruining a purpose in using the weapon.

As a result of all this, Shotguns, Launchers, Melee and a few Pistols are the best options in the game because faults in design have removed many other options from competition and Nox's design is intended to fight off this supremacy instead of fixing the reason these weapons aren't being used.

/rant

 

[blackheartstar_pc]

I enjoy him and am on the add more units like this train.

15 hours ago, Orblit said:

Honestly didn't know it had damage resistance, as I actually just went for the head.
Never knew someone would actually just ignore the entire mechanic of the new enemy

Welcome to Warframe where this is sadly the norm. Most don't have time for special or fun mechanics unless it can be abused because they "have to go fast".

Edited July 13, 2017 by blackheartstar_pc

[samuelx43a]

Sortie-level nox's are deadly, their guns can take you out almost inmediatelly, and I was an Inaros, and got kill a couple times agaisnt them.

It's why whenever I go to kuva floods I take my tigris prime, lex/staticor/twin grakatas and the lesion(which is incredibly powerful. Not using drifting contact and that other mod and it kills lvl 100s)

 

My two(insert your currency here)

[Ultimate_Vault_Hunter]

5 hours ago, blackheartstar_pc said:

I enjoy him and am on the add more units like this train.

Welcome to Warframe where this is sadly the norm. Most don't have time for special or fun mechanics unless it can be abused because they "have to go fast".

Nox is fun... Ready to see a Nox/Manic challenge to bring in a new Sheev Wraith...

[Teridax68]

For sure, the Nox's massive non-headshot damage reduction does encourage more skillful use of weaponry, but it's still a terrible way of going about it. The damage cap is there more to curb damage creep than anything else, and while in a balanced game we should be taking more time to kill the Nox the "stupid" way, currently our damage is so out of whack that implementing difficulty in such a way would require special-casing and damage-capping a much larger number of enemies. The Nox is yet one more sign that the game needs to be rebalanced, rather than covered up in band-aids, as the frustration of dealing with artificial difficulty like this has long since overtaken the relative fun we get from being overpowered.

[Jobistober]

52 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Snip

The Nox is yet one more sign that the game needs to be rebalanced, rather than covered up in band-aids, as the frustration of dealing with artificial difficulty like this has long since overtaken the relative fun we get from being overpowered.

I'm so confused by this argument.

"Admits we are overpowered, asks for more difficulty, then complains when a new, unique enemy is released that can't be instantly one-shotted."

I really don't understand this line of thinking and makes me wonder if people that keep complaining about "artificial difficulty" even know what they want to begin with. Players complained about bullet sponges and DE started releasing enemies with unique resistances and weak points and players still complained. I can imagine the frustration on the developer's side. Nullifiers, Bursas, and now Nox are all designed to throw a wrench into normal combat and make the player think differently rather than P42W or one-shot every enemy, and Nox fits that perfectly.

Nox is only difficult to kill if you don't shoot his weak point. Shoot him in the face and he dies within a couple shots.

P.S. My post is not directed at you per se, more towards the mentality. I see this argument a lot, but what I don't see are solutions being suggested to this so called problem.

[blasron]

I find the  Nox way less troublesome and plain stupid than the Nullifier. That guy dosen't take away your power, he need some sort of "skill" to take down, He is pretty rare (good thing), he is a good chalenge (ever face one lvl 100 they get scary tought), you don't need cheese to beat him and definatly is not a left over knee jerk reaction to power usage.

 

Really Nox IMO is the most balance, less cheesy enemies the dev put in the game. They hit hard but can be in return hit hard

[Teridax68]

3 hours ago, Jobistober said:

I'm so confused by this argument.

"Admits we are overpowered, asks for more difficulty, then complains when a new, unique enemy is released that can't be instantly one-shotted."

What I'm asking is for the difficulty to be natural to whichever unit it's a part of, rather than inserted through a special-case mechanic, as is the case for the Nox's damage reduction, Vay Hek's invulnerability phases, etc. If the Nox were simply a unit with a lot of health who took a lot of pain from headshots, that would be fine, but the implementation of it so far has been a damage cap. Not just bonus armor, a full-on damage cap that also provides immunity to DoTs and applies to stealth finishers, and essentially forces all weapons down to a fixed level when dealing against it, just like the Nullifier's damage cap to their bubble. What should happen is that we need to have our damage flattened to a large extent, so that it never runs the risk of doing ridiculous stuff like one-shotting boss units, but so far the implementation has been a series of unpleasant band-aids that do not make for good clarity or fun gameplay. Adding variety and challenge to gameplay is fine, but doing so in a manner that goes against the natural flow of gameplay, and lessens enjoyment overall is not how to do it.