Why Is Armor Ignore And Piercing Everything?

[theangelbelow88]

If you think about it, most of the top damage/worth wile weapons for high level content are mostly armor ignore/piercing and anything that doesn't ignore armor/has piercing becomes crap or obsolete, a good example is my Supra(4xforma'ed) starts dropping in damage after wave 15 on high level defense mission but all my armor ignoring weapons are still going strong even with them un-forma'ed, the real issue is enemy armor and elemental resistance scaling, once enemies start going over level 50, most normal damage starts to suffer, except for armor ignoring/piercing damage, if the weapon doesn't have one or ether of these its pretty much going to become near worthless when enemies hit around level 80+.

 

If anything I think DE needs to re-work armor and elemental resistance scaling for enemies(elemental resistance scaling, may have changed, unconfirmed for now), even at a point corpus crewmen become completely immune to electrical damage and that just seems wrong, and lets face it, normal damage becomes extremely low when most enemies have over a thousand armor. 

 

A simple fix would be to cap enemy's armor and elemental resistance and let only health keep scaling, this would help put a lot of weapons on more equal ground but that is just a quick idea off the top off my head, I would love to hear what everyone else has to say on this topic.

 

Here is another thread with good details discussing this issue and talking about some solutions.

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/67709-resistance-scaling-vs-ehp-scaling/

 

Solutions that might come up on this topic but are not really solving the issue.

 

1.) Hitting weak spots, when you'er being attacked by 10 level 80 heavy grineer gunners, you don't really have time to aim at weak spot, as much as you would like too, and/or if your weapon isn't very accurate, your not going to be aiming for a difficult to hit area, on top of that weak spots also have armor(less armor) which also scales, so weak spots don't even grant full damage.

 

2.) Have your team bring corrosive projection, right off this pretty much limits players from using other auras that could help in some other ways and/or that they enjoy using, also not everyone has corrosive projection, and last when you join a random game the odds of someone using one are slim.

 

Also here are some charts to help get an idea of how ludicrous armor scaling and health are thanks to RealityMachina.

Edited August 10, 2013 by theangelbelow88

[Paradoxbomb]

+1, it seems stupid to increase armor AND health. It's one thing if heavy units have better armor, but making it scale with levels just makes half the weapons in the game useless, and rescricting player choice is a big no-no. I hope DE acknowledges and fixes this in the near future.

[theangelbelow88]

+1, it seems stupid to increase armor AND health. It's one thing if heavy units have better armor, but making it scale with levels just makes half the weapons in the game useless, and rescricting player choice is a big no-no. I hope DE acknowledges and fixes this in the near future.

Health increases on enemies are fine, as it doesn't really effect damage on any weapon, but combines with crazy increases in armor, well, then you have a problem.

[BIossome]

Do things still get elemental resistance scaling? I thought they took that out.

[LatoObligato]

I do agree, it'd be nice to see the enemies with more health rather then high armor, in reasonable amounts of course.

[theangelbelow88]

Do things still get elemental resistance scaling? I thought they took that out.

From what I know they still scale slightly but I could be wrong, the only elemental damage that doesn't scale/has never is piercing from what I know, again I could be wrong about the others though, but honestly if they did change that, it still doesn't feel like fire, ice and electricity are anywhere near as viable as piercing. 

Edited July 25, 2013 by theangelbelow88

[theangelbelow88]

I do agree, it'd be nice to see the enemies with more health rather then high armor, in reasonable amounts of course.

Yeah, DE needs to find a good middle ground between armor and health.

[Keetsune]

Two words:

Corrosive Projection

 

P.S. Leave it as it is.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Keetsune

[Ss3trnks2]

Two words:

Corrosive Projection

 

P.S. Leave it as it is.

[theangelbelow88]

Two words:

Corrosive Projection

 

P.S. Leave it as it is.

30% armor reductions isn't as significant as it sounds on higher waves for defense missions or for the last few waves on a void defense, when you compare it to a weapons that already deals 100% pure damage.

 

Also not everyone has Corrosive Projection.

Edited July 25, 2013 by theangelbelow88

[Paradoxbomb]

Two words:

Corrosive Projection

 

P.S. Leave it as it is.

 

While Corrosive Projection definitely helps, that sill falls under what I said earlier about limiting player's choices to the one thing that is necessary to deal decent damage. Obviously, things like Corrosive Projection and bolt weapons will always be the superior choice for armored targets since that's their schtick, but presently, their the ONLY option for dealing passable damage to endgame enemies.

 

Besides, making health scale and armor have a base dedcution just makes more sense than the current system.

[IcarusNine]

Enemies already gain health with level.  The problem is that armor also scales, and together the result is that 'normal' weapons lose effectiveness far more rapidly than armor-ignoring weapons.

 

This is mostly a problem with armored Grineer and chargers though.

Most other enemies have no armor or have an unarmored weakpoint.

[theangelbelow88]

Enemies already gain health with level.  The problem is that armor also scales, and together the result is that 'normal' weapons lose effectiveness far more rapidly than armor-ignoring weapons.

 

This is mostly a problem with armored Grineer and chargers though.

Most other enemies have no armor or have an unarmored weakpoint.

Yeah, I know about the health scaling and that part is fine, but all factions have armored units, infested have ancients, corpus have engineers and almost all the grineer units have armor, and anyone who has played high level content will tell you that these armored units are spammed, meaning you'll have to deal with groups of them and honestly when there's 10 heavy grineer gunners you or 15 ancients rushing you who has to time to be hitting weak spots a 100% of the time.

[VoidPunch]

Yea they seriously need to fix this soon. I'm all for the armor cap, most of my weapons are becoming crap fast even with maxed out AP mods

[theangelbelow88]

Yea they seriously need to fix this soon. I'm all for the armor cap, most of my weapons are becoming crap fast even with maxed out AP mods

I was really hoping that this would have been addressed when U9 dropped, but guess we'll just have to keep waiting.

[Xylia]

+1.

 

It is kinda sad when more than three-quarters of all the weapons in the game are useless in areas that "matter" -- high-level content.

 

U9 dropped and DE added a good 10-30 levels onto all the planets, which further increased armor AND health.

 

So basically, every enemy is now a bullet sponge unless you have really awesome mods, which leaves newbies and mid-tier in the dust while the hardcores still get to roflstomp everything, because face it... nothing is going to survive a fully modded Ogris blast, or what-have-you.

 

It'd be nice if these poor weak weapons would once again have a use in later game, other than "level to 30 for mastery and then chuck".

 

That's what MOST weapons in this game are -- Mastery Fodder that you grind up to 30 on lowbie planets that you can actually kill something with them.

[RealityMachina]

To answer the thread's question even though I realize the OP meant it as a rhetorical question judging from his posts:

That's why.

 

:(

[theangelbelow88]

To answer the thread's question even though I realize the OP meant it as a rhetorical question judging from his posts:

 

That's why.:(

Wow, kinda hard to believe its really that drastic... 

Edited July 25, 2013 by theangelbelow88

[theangelbelow88]

+1.

 

It is kinda sad when more than three-quarters of all the weapons in the game are useless in areas that "matter" -- high-level content.

 

U9 dropped and DE added a good 10-30 levels onto all the planets, which further increased armor AND health.

 

So basically, every enemy is now a bullet sponge unless you have really awesome mods, which leaves newbies and mid-tier in the dust while the hardcores still get to roflstomp everything, because face it... nothing is going to survive a fully modded Ogris blast, or what-have-you.

 

It'd be nice if these poor weak weapons would once again have a use in later game, other than "level to 30 for mastery and then chuck".

 

That's what MOST weapons in this game are -- Mastery Fodder that you grind up to 30 on lowbie planets that you can actually kill something with them.

Well armor scaling has been an issues for a wile now but I agree U9 did add more fuel to the fire, I also feel by adding higher level enemies to most planets and not addressing the armor scaling issue, it does make it harder for new plays and players that don't have good mods to progress at a good rate or even enjoy some of the game.

[Keetsune]

Yeah, DE, go make warframe more closer to another casual sh`t game in endless bunch of them.

[theangelbelow88]

Yeah, DE, go make warframe more closer to another casual sh`t game in endless bunch of them.

I prefer playing a game with a smart AI and reasonable stats, to a game with a sub-pare AI, that relies on over the top stats and sheer numbers to count as "challenging".

 

And besides this topic is not about making the game easier, its about shrinking the gap between armor ignoring weapons and none, so if you have nothing related to say about the topic please don't comment, thank you.

[Varonth]

Yeah, DE, go make warframe more closer to another casual sh`t game in endless bunch of them.

 

I think you didn't get the problem the OP showed you.

 

If you have any weapon with armor piercing damage you deal X damage. It takes you healthpool/X hits to kill that target.

Higher level enemies have higher healthpools, thus, you need more hits to kill them.

When it then comes to weapons without armor piercing damage it is still the same. Higher level enemies take more hits due to higher healthpool but:

They take even more hits because their armor is going up aswell.

 

So lets take a toxic ancient ~60.

Let's assume 200 damage per hit armor piercing damage.

~5000 health so 5000/200 damage = 25 hits.

 

Now use a bullet weapon, and because it is affected by armor, DE decided to give the weapon 50% more damage, making it 300 damage (50% is a massive increase)

You also have ~1000 armor on the enemy target.

So damage per hit will be 300*100/1000 = ~30

So to kill the same ancient you will just need a nice little amount of 5000/30 = 166 hits.

 

It is not about making this game easier.

Nobody wants these weapons to be better than armor ignore. Just equal. So the game wouldn't become easier.

[Keetsune]

I prefer playing a game with a smart AI and reasonable stats, to a game with a sub-pare AI, that relies on over the top stats and sheer numbers to count as "challenging".

 

And besides this topic is not about making the game easier, its about shrinking the gap between armor ignoring weapons and none, so if you have nothing related to say about the topic please don't comment, thank you.

I dont belive that every of your 281 posts is "related to threads" where you post them. And by the way my post is "related" to this thread.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Keetsune

[theangelbelow88]

I dont belive that every of your 281 posts is "related to threads" where you post them. And by the way my post is "related" to this thread.

My comment was not meant to be offensive, I'm sorry if it came of that way, I'm just trying to keep this topic on a more specific focus and not a broader spectrum.

[theangelbelow88]

I think you didn't get the problem the OP showed you.

 

If you have any weapon with armor piercing damage you deal X damage. It takes you healthpool/X hits to kill that target.

Higher level enemies have higher healthpools, thus, you need more hits to kill them.

When it then comes to weapons without armor piercing damage it is still the same. Higher level enemies take more hits due to higher healthpool but:

They take even more hits because their armor is going up aswell.

 

So lets take a toxic ancient ~60.

Let's assume 200 damage per hit armor piercing damage.

~5000 health so 5000/200 damage = 25 hits.

 

Now use a bullet weapon, and because it is affected by armor, DE decided to give the weapon 50% more damage, making it 300 damage (50% is a massive increase)

You also have ~1000 armor on the enemy target.

So damage per hit will be 300*100/1000 = ~30

So to kill the same ancient you will just need a nice little amount of 5000/30 = 166 hits.

 

It is not about making this game easier.

Nobody wants these weapons to be better than armor ignore. Just equal. So the game wouldn't become easier.

Thank you, this is exactly the point that I'm trying to get across with this topic.

Armor ignore should be a perk, not something a weapon must have to be viable on higher level content.

Edited July 25, 2013 by theangelbelow88