(Long Post, DE: Please Review/Address) Concerns Regarding the Tentative IPS Changes, and How Each Might be Improved

[Conipoeia]

Note:

I've seen a couple threads making suggestions for alternate changes to IPS status effects, but I wanted to make one based more so upon the proposed changes themselves and the issues thereof, keeping suggestions minimal and simplistic. This post is the result.

 

For those who are yet unaware, Friday's devstream included some discussion on potential changes to the status proc effects of Impact, Puncture, and Slash. While the massive disparity of usefulness between these procs is certainly something that should be addressed, it is my belief that the heretofore proposed adjustments are a step in the wrong direction.

As follows are the prospective changes, and a short explanation as to why I think each to be flawed:

 

Weakened:

30% flat enemy damage reduction for a duration of six seconds, altered to a variable-percentage system (scaling with inflicted puncture damage,) up to a 90% reduction. I'll be frank: in its current state, this effect is useless---even nigh unnoticeable. And this change would likely make no ostensible difference.

The numbers are not the problem with this proc---rather that its premise, as a whole, is fundamentally flawed: given enemy density in nearly all situations wherein "survivability" becomes a factor, single-target or small-AOE reductions to damage output are simply untenable when compared against omnidirectional means of damage reduction (ie., self-buffs, high mobility, etc.)

When targeting a single unit, by far the best course of action to nullify whatever threat it poses is simply to kill it. When engaging against level ranges whereat it is no longer viable to do so, large-AOE/omnidirectional hard-CC is vastly preferable to a temporary reduction to the damage output (which, even at +90%, will be rendered useless at very high levels) of a single enemy, during which time you will be summarily killed by any number of its allies.

In short, adjustments to the strength of this effect without a more drastic accompanying change in its mechanics will never result in anything more than a negligible "sidegrade." In turn, such is precisely what its proposed change would be. And unfortunately, compared even to this, the other two statuses would not fare as well.

 

Knockback:

A brief stagger animation, altered to---again---a variable system, which would culminate in a ragdoll effect, similar to that of Knockdown. The key difference here, being that, while Blast is entirely optional on nearly all weapons, Impact is often not.

This proc's only present use is one of utility: it is unique alongside Freeze in being one of the only two weapon-applicable CC conditions to generally not obscure the afflicted enemy's head during the stun. This can allow for enemies to become stunlocked in a manner that facilitates consistent headshots, albeit not with some slower-firing weapons that otherwise greatly benefit from precision. It is in this respect that the proposed change would actually prove detrimental to the ultimate usefulness of this status. Where before it prevented immediate retaliation and assisted in landing consecutive precision hits, it would now be largely unchanged in terms of the former (and in either case, do so better than Weakened,) and actually make the latter impossible from many angles.

In short, the proposed change would actually prove detrimental to what is, to many weapons, the primary use of this proc, while in-turn offering only small improvement to an effect which is otherwise plagued (though to a lesser degree) by many of the same issues elaborated upon in the section concerning Weakened above.

 

Bleed:

Deals 35% of a weapon's base damage in Finishing Damage in seven ticks over a duration of six seconds, altered to scale instead off of the inflicted Slash damage, with a brief mention of a possible cap to the number of stacks inflicted. This would, in effect, result in Bleed's damage being affected by mods such as Buzz Kill more so compared to Pressure Point, for instance.

While at first this change appears to be a simple one of little ultimate consequence---one made, perhaps, for consistency's sake, in keeping with with the new scaling of the two aforementioned effects---upon further scrutiny it becomes apparent just how detrimental a change such as this would be to the variety of high-level viable weapons in the game. 

For this, consider two types of weapon: those which intrinsically scale well, with reliable status chance and Slash-based, physical damage (eg., Tigris Prime, Atterax,) and those which do not meet these criteria, but are able to scale nonetheless by generating Bleed procs via some other means (eg., Primaries made viable by the recently-released Hunter Munitions mod, Melees utilizing stances with guaranteed Bleed procs.) This change would result in an effective buff for a small selection of very specifically stat-ed weapons, often already considered to be among (if not exclusively) the most powerful in the game (thus, perhaps, justifying the introduction of the stack cap,) while robbing many weapons within the latter type of the only means by which they could scale.

Consider, for example, two weapons specifically: the Atterax and the Ohma. The Atterax, with its heavily Slash-weighted IPS distribution, can deal exceptional amounts of Slash with any given swing. This means that mods such as Buzz kill will allow its Bleed ticks to hit even harder than before the change, while the Ohma---which has no Slash damage at all---will become largely useless, regardless of how many stacks Sovereign Outcast is able to proc.

In short, this change would make certain "overpowered" weapons more powerful still, while practically removing scaling altogether from many others, thus ultimately impeding player choice in viable weapon variety.

 

Suggested Improvements:

My aim here is, of course, to be constructive, and to merely criticize without offering at least some recourse is not exactly in congruence to this end. Therefore, below, I have listed a few simple changes that might help to resolve these problems while not introducing anything too radical:

 

Weakened: In thematic following with Puncture damage itself, perhaps this status effect could sunder an enemy's defenses, increasing their damage taken alongside decreasing their damage dealt. Retaining its scaling effects, it could work alongside Corrosion and Virus as another distinctive means to the end of effectively reducing an enemy's EHP.

Knockback: Keep the same staggering animation, but scale its duration with Impact dealt. This would make the status effect more complimentary to slower, often precision-reliant weapons, by allowing them to stagger-lock for consistent headshots where they could not before. To further benefit this synergy, a debuff to headshot damage could be applied to enemies, scaling with Impact dealt, and maybe a chance for melee strikes to count as precision hits to allow them to get more out of the status effect as well.

Bleed: Honestly, I don't really know what to say for this one except for that, due to so much of the game's balance depending so greatly upon it, it would likely be for the best to leave it largely as-is, with any adjustments made being very carefully considered for all the repercussions they could have.

 

Together: With the above changes, a status-capable weapon with a balanced IPS distribution could be just as viable as a heavily Slash-weighted one---with direct and Bleed proc damage being boosted by Weakened, precision multiplier (via Knockback stagger,) and Knockback precision debuff, each of which scaling effectively with respective damage dealt, ultimately culminating in a more synergistic and utility-focused means of scaling damage.

 

Final Thoughts:

I care about this game, and want to see it do well. One of the best things Warframe has going for it is its incredible variety, at least on the surface. A new player may easily find themselves taken aback by the sheer number of choices. This effect is greatly diminished when that new player begins to learn more about the game---that many of those choices have right or wrong answers. While it's great that action is being taken to resolve this problem of choice, I can't help but see this most recent initiative as being largely misguided. And I think that the community, another great aspect of this game, can help with this. If any of my fellow Tenno have anything to add or suggestions for alternate changes, please reply. I'd like to see what others have to say about all this. Also, forgive me if things got a little incoherent towards the bottom: it's getting to be really early now.

[Conipoeia]

Bumpin

[Fallen_Echo]

+1

[Pyradus]

Puncture will be useless. Warframes already have crowd control abilities that reduce enemy's damage output to zero. 90% damage debuff - useless. It's not a good idea.

Slash is only considered the best because it actually helps kill enemies faster. DE: make impact and puncture procs help kill enemies faster.

Example:

Puncture - Enemy takes 50% more damage from all sources

Impact - Ragdolled enemy takes % of their max health as finisher damage when colliding with objects

I literally took like 5 seconds to think these up. Come on.

Edited November 23, 2017 by CapnToaster

[Azamagon]

Thanks for this thread!

The drawbacks which you mention of the newly suggested IPS-tweaks are exactly why I dislike the changes, with my biggest concern actually being about the changes for Impact.

Impact-status has always been a nice effect, imo, because it's quick CC, but not disruptive (unlike Blast). I feel people are highly underestimating this status-proc, it can be a real-life saver. For example; as a rather frequent user of Ash, Smoke Screen's impact-proc has saved me more times than I can count. People always call it useles... and I don't understand how they can say it. I find Smoke Screen to be vastly superior to Loki's Invisibility, really.

Anyway; Making it able to knockdown/ragdoll is NOT something I'm feeling eager about. A longer stun duration is far more interesting and useful, even if knockdown/ragdoll makes more "sense" overall (gameplay over 100% realism, especially in a case like this, imo). And I mean, knockdown is something Blast already can provide, so this newfound overlap feels unnecessary.

And another problem with this seems to be, as far as I've understood their intentions with these changes, is the "all or nothing approach" that DE (again and again) makes the mistake of doing. Meaning, the procs will scale and ONLY scale, with no base values from the procs at all (urgh...). Which leads me to this:

Why not a bit of the old "base" effects AND a sprinkle of the new scalability?

For example:

Puncture - Debuffs the enemy so the enemy deals 30% less damage and it suffers 30% more damage taken, no matter how small the Puncture damage of the proc's source was. Now scale it up from THERE (even if slowly, up to a cap of, say, ~60% for both effects), so more Puncture damage from the proc-source will be nice and noticed, but not necessary to make it worthwhile in the first place.

Impact - Similarly: At base (meaning, with 0 Impact-damage from the proc-source), make it stagger with the same animation as it does now. Add to it as you suggested; during this stumble, increase headshot/weakspot damage to that target by, say, 25%.
Then, with more Impact: Make the stumble animation slower (i.e. CC for longer, max 2x the duration or so) and make the headshot/weakspot bonus damage higher (slowly so, up to a cap of like 50% bonus).
So, similarly to Puncture, that way the base proc is still nice, but more Impact damage from the proc-source will of course be nice and encouraged, but not necessary for the proc to be worthwhile.

Slash - Same deal here: Make it deal, say 25% of base weapon damage as its base damage value (nerfed from 35%, yes) if there is no slash-damage present on the proc-source. Now scale this with the weapon's Slash damage, up to an equivalent of like 40% of the weapons base damage as the cap. This makes slash still a decent proc (and maybe not as overpowered as now) for non-slash weapons, while Slash weapons are just ever so slightly buffed. Considering that Slash ONLY provides damage (whereas Impact+Puncture would now have utility AND some damage-boosting), how about giving it a tiny utility as compensation? Like, enemies with slash-procs will be sensed on your minimap for the bleed duration?

What do you say about that? :)

 

 

[Conipoeia]

Good points, Azamagon. Change is needed, and some synthesis of new and old is likely the best way forward.

You're also absolutely correct about the necessity for "scaling floors;" DE's track record for considering the extremities of their scaling systems (ie., armor,) is certainly cause for concern.

Regardless, your suggestions are quite good, save for some lingering reservations I have about changes to slash (finishing damage is just so vital to so many non-slash oriented archetypes, even minor changes will likely have drastic effects.) After seeing so many excellent suggestions from the community, I have to wonder how much thought was really put in to the official changes.

[Azamagon]

31 minutes ago, Aviore said:

After seeing so many excellent suggestions from the community, I have to wonder how much thought was really put in to the official changes.

Well... knowing how they work, the thought they had was probably along these lines:

"Hmm... IPS is not all too well done. Wouldn't it be cool if *insert random "cool" stuff here*?"

rather than the thoughts one would expect:

"Hmm... IPS is not all too well done. How can we make each function better in the current setting of the game so people actually see them as somewhat equal?"

Unfortunately, the "rule of cool" + building upon an unstable base + not using an ounce of foresight is sadly just how they roll *shrug*.

[Ardhanarishvara]

On 11/19/2017 at 5:30 AM, Aviore said:

Bleed:

Deals 35% of a weapon's base damage in Finishing Damage in seven ticks over a duration of six seconds, altered to scale instead off of the inflicted Slash damage, with a brief mention of a possible cap to the number of stacks inflicted. This would, in effect, result in Bleed's damage being affected by mods such as Buzz Kill more so compared to Pressure Point, for instance.

While at first this change appears to be a simple one of little ultimate consequence---one made, perhaps, for consistency's sake, in keeping with with the new scaling of the two aforementioned effects---upon further scrutiny it becomes apparent just how detrimental a change such as this would be to the variety of high-level viable weapons in the game. 

For this, consider two types of weapon: those which intrinsically scale well, with reliable status chance and Slash-based, physical damage (eg., Tigris Prime, Atterax,) and those which do not meet these criteria, but are able to scale nonetheless by generating Bleed procs via some other means (eg., Primaries made viable by the recently-released Hunter Munitions mod, Melees utilizing stances with guaranteed Bleed procs.) This change would result in an effective buff for a small selection of very specifically stat-ed weapons, often already considered to be among (if not exclusively) the most powerful in the game (thus, perhaps, justifying the introduction of the stack cap,) while robbing many weapons within the latter type of the only means by which they could scale.

Consider, for example, two weapons specifically: the Atterax and the Ohma. The Atterax, with its heavily Slash-weighted IPS distribution, can deal exceptional amounts of Slash with any given swing. This means that mods such as Buzz kill will allow its Bleed ticks to hit even harder than before the change, while the Ohma---which has no Slash damage at all---will become largely useless, regardless of how many stacks Sovereign Outcast is able to proc.

In short, this change would make certain "overpowered" weapons more powerful still, while practically removing scaling altogether from many others, thus ultimately impeding player choice in viable weapon variety.

..

Bleed: Honestly, I don't really know what to say for this one except for that, due to so much of the game's balance depending so greatly upon it, it would likely be for the best to leave it largely as-is, with any adjustments made being very carefully considered for all the repercussions they could have.

I have one question for you:
What makes you think they're going to touch forced slash procs at all?

Currently they are of relatively little consequence, even with the newly-acquired Hunter Munitions only truly being useful for heavily armoured enemies as anything less than that already died instantaneously (IE every other faction and anything without alloy armour). In fact, that is their entire point - you trade off direct damage to aim for indirect damage in order to bypass a barrier. For other factions this strategy does not work nearly as well. Well, that's not quite true, it works just as well but there are better options for direct damage.

Hunter Munitions only reaches full efficacy on a handful of weapons that had difficulty being useful in high level play due to their mechanics or damage stats not quite sticking to the toughest faction in the game (Corrosive Synapse had little issue being effective against ancients for example). Sure, it can add on to one or two even more ludicrous and overpowered weapons just as well, but it's far more notable for the number of weapons which it allows to take on tougher armoured content. The same can be said of any melee stance that forces slash procs which, without that ability, would likely never be taken against the Grineer or Corrupted, with Dual Blades like Twin Basolk having some truly powerful ground finishers due to their ability to force bleed procs with all the weighting of base damage + melee combo + critical damage behind them.

It should be clear that they were throwing early ideas around more than anything, especially with regard to bleed procs, and that they are likely to do plenty of testing with regards to a system that would change how we play so innately. I doubt forced procs are going to change much at all. If anything, to balance out the number of weapons which will have puny slash procs, and to balance out the fact that they're looking into stack cap, the upper limit of scaling might actually increase slightly for especially slash-weighted weapons, and I don't see functions like Hunter Munitions or Stance Bleeds being affected negatively in any way given that they operate on a principle of treating your entire weapon's base damage as being full slash damage.

--

On 11/19/2017 at 5:30 AM, Aviore said:

Weakened:

30% flat enemy damage reduction for a duration of six seconds, altered to a variable-percentage system (scaling with inflicted puncture damage,) up to a 90% reduction. I'll be frank: in its current state, this effect is useless---even nigh unnoticeable. And this change would likely make no ostensible difference.

The numbers are not the problem with this proc---rather that its premise, as a whole, is fundamentally flawed: given enemy density in nearly all situations wherein "survivability" becomes a factor, single-target or small-AOE reductions to damage output are simply untenable when compared against omnidirectional means of damage reduction (ie., self-buffs, high mobility, etc.)

When targeting a single unit, by far the best course of action to nullify whatever threat it poses is simply to kill it. When engaging against level ranges whereat it is no longer viable to do so, large-AOE/omnidirectional hard-CC is vastly preferable to a temporary reduction to the damage output (which, even at +90%, will be rendered useless at very high levels) of a single enemy, during which time you will be summarily killed by any number of its allies.

In short, adjustments to the strength of this effect without a more drastic accompanying change in its mechanics will never result in anything more than a negligible "sidegrade." In turn, such is precisely what its proposed change would be. And unfortunately, compared even to this, the other two statuses would not fare as well.

...

Weakened: In thematic following with Puncture damage itself, perhaps this status effect could sunder an enemy's defenses, increasing their damage taken alongside decreasing their damage dealt. Retaining its scaling effects, it could work alongside Corrosion and Virus as another distinctive means to the end of effectively reducing an enemy's EHP.

When the majority of damage is going to end up coming from "heavies" like Ancients, Bombards, Napalms, Gunners, Techs and such, the issue of Weakened not being an omnidirectional damage reduction for the player becomes far lower. Being able to pick out a priority target and reduce their threat immediately while also working on whittling them down sounds just fine to me.

A lot of folks tend to forget that Puncture as a damage type doesn't just gain a damage bonus against armour, but it also ignores that same amount of armour. Against any Ferrite-Armoured enemies, it will ignore 50% of their armour while also gaining an additional 50% extra damage. It's less effective against Alloy however, only ignoring 15%. Still, against any units with Alloy Armour, the most-annoyingly durable and dangerous of the Grineer, being able to reduce their damage output by 90% is insanely useful. It essentially provides a bootleg, non-frame-specific alternative to bringing tank frames for other warframes that might be more squishy otherwise.

Still, I do see some merit to your proposed change. On the other hand, I also see issues. On one hand it would allow for people to have the option to ignore Corrosive in favour of bringing a proper element to take advantage of Alloy armour weakness. On the other hand, the more likely scenario, it will just exacerbate the issue of bringing the wrong element to fight Alloyed enemies with since it would essentially work alongside Corrosive.

I say keep it simple. Keep it at damage reduction. There's ways in the game to get aoe puncture procs. Personally I would find a suggestion to increase the upper cap on duration of puncture procs to be way more useful and balanced - maybe repeat proccing would, instead of adding stacks, add more duration so that you can effectively keep an enemy's down for prolonged periods of time even if you're not focusing on them.

That is, of course, unless I misunderstood your meaning entirely, and something like this is what you actually mean: a damage vulnerability mechanic that makes the enemy more susceptible to damage taken, lessening their resistances and enhancing their weaknesses. Example, a puncture proc might, depending on the weighting, make an enemy 20% more vulnerable to all sources. Due to the way that armour works, many damage types would begin to ignore a portion of armour, and those that already did would ignore even more. Puncture would, at full strength, essentially brute force its damage into Alloy Armour by going from 15% armour ignore and bonus damage to 35% armour ignore and bonus damage, while at the same time forcing Radiation to go from 75% armour ignore against Alloy Armour to 95% armour ignore against Alloy Armour, but only on a weapon with full puncture weighting, such as the Vaykor/Sydon or Telos/Boltace for example.

--

 

On 11/19/2017 at 5:30 AM, Aviore said:

Knockback:

A brief stagger animation, altered to---again---a variable system, which would culminate in a ragdoll effect, similar to that of Knockdown. The key difference here, being that, while Blast is entirely optional on nearly all weapons, Impact is often not.

This proc's only present use is one of utility: it is unique alongside Freeze in being one of the only two weapon-applicable CC conditions to generally not obscure the afflicted enemy's head during the stun. This can allow for enemies to become stunlocked in a manner that facilitates consistent headshots, albeit not with some slower-firing weapons that otherwise greatly benefit from precision. It is in this respect that the proposed change would actually prove detrimental to the ultimate usefulness of this status. Where before it prevented immediate retaliation and assisted in landing consecutive precision hits, it would now be largely unchanged in terms of the former (and in either case, do so better than Weakened,) and actually make the latter impossible from many angles.

In short, the proposed change would actually prove detrimental to what is, to many weapons, the primary use of this proc, while in-turn offering only small improvement to an effect which is otherwise plagued (though to a lesser degree) by many of the same issues elaborated upon in the section concerning Weakened above.

Knockback: Keep the same staggering animation, but scale its duration with Impact dealt. This would make the status effect more complimentary to slower, often precision-reliant weapons, by allowing them to stagger-lock for consistent headshots where they could not before. To further benefit this synergy, a debuff to headshot damage could be applied to enemies, scaling with Impact dealt, and maybe a chance for melee strikes to count as precision hits to allow them to get more out of the status effect as well.

Eh, there's one issue with your idea of impact procs, being that it way too limited to only a single class of weapons. Case in point, melee. Melee doesn't care about knockdowns or ragdolls one iota - in fact, it can in some cases thrive from them as headshots have never been a significant source of melee damage output. The better solution to this issue wouldn't be to remove that function outright, but rather to introduce some IPS conversion mods so that you can start having more control of the weighting of IPS outside of just single-factor-multiplier mods like Buzz Kill, allowing you to on some weapons scale down the impact strength as needed, though let's be honest, it's not like anyone uses Impact-based primaries against armoured enemies anyhow.

Or, perhaps, maybe an even more elegant solution might be to introduce dazing as a scaleable mechanic. Each impact proc would slow down the enemy a little bit at a time until they just start reeling, wobbling in place as they try to recover, eventually being knocked on their back perhaps for an extended period of time, or toppling forward on their hands and knees (which might also benefit melee and not just primaries/secondaries).

Dazing could be a function with diminishing returns meaning that, with less impact weighting, it'd take more time and effort to achieve higher daze states.

Edited November 29, 2017 by Ardhanarishvara
Puncture?

[Conipoeia]

First off, thank you for the lengthy rely. Thought-out responses like this are exactly my reason for making this thread in the first place.

 

Section One:

47 minutes ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

What makes you think they're going to touch forced slash procs at all?

The problem with this section, as I understand it, is rooted in a presupposed mechanical dichotomy between "forced" and "organic" bleed procs. Specifically:

50 minutes ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

given that they operate on a principle of treating your entire weapon's base damage as being full slash damage.

A forced proc is wholly indistinct from any other in terms of its calculation: it isn't that they, specifically, treat a weapon's full IPS as slash, rather, bleed (in its current state) scales off of base damage regardless. With the proposed change, all bleed procs would instead calculate in a manner similar to that which you had thought, but without the aforementioned provision ("given that...slash damage,") as it had never really existed.

So despite forced slash procs being in no way specifically adjusted (as they lack the haecceity to be acted upon in such a manner,) they will nonetheless, in practice, be rendered ineffectual by extension of changes to the mechanic on whole.

Much of the remainder of this section is of exactly the sentiment I meant to communicate. I think your understanding of my intended point has been skewed by the above misunderstanding.

 

Section Two:

You mention in the third section of its proc being "

1 hour ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

way too limited to only a single class of weapons.

" The underlying issue within weakened procs is a similarly narrow use-case, but instead with respect to enemy level and playstyle. Regardless of the extent of damage output, enemy health and damage scaling is such that a comparatively very small window is left where it remains prudent to reduce the threat of a single target without effectively killing them outright, yet their damage output is not such that even a reduction of 90% or more is ineffectual. This isn't to mention the passivity that is even then necessitated to make such a damage reduction worthwhile outside of situations like that of the Simulacrum.

 

In terms of the damage vulnerability, your addendum at the bottom of this section is almost precisely what I had meant:

2 hours ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

That is, of course, unless I misunderstood your meaning entirely, and something like this is what you actually mean: a damage vulnerability mechanic that makes the enemy more susceptible to damage taken, lessening their resistances and enhancing their weaknesses. Example, a puncture proc might, depending on the weighting, make an enemy 20% more vulnerable to all sources. Due to the way that armour works, many damage types would begin to ignore a portion of armour, and those that already did would ignore even more. Puncture would, at full strength, essentially brute force its damage into Alloy Armour by going from 15% armour ignore and bonus damage to 35% armour ignore and bonus damage, while at the same time forcing Radiation to go from 75% armour ignore against Alloy Armour to 95% armour ignore against Alloy Armour, but only on a weapon with full puncture weighting, such as the Vaykor/Sydon or Telos/Boltace for example.

Emphasis on "distinctive means," I wanted to accomplish a method of EHP reduction that was fundamentally different from, but complimentary to other existing ways of doing so. You've essentially explained in a more elaborative manner exactly what I had intended, as at the time I had thought nearly 1,400 words to be well enough for a forum post few people would likely see anyway.

 

Section Three:

2 hours ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

Melee doesn't care about knockdowns or ragdolls one iota - in fact, it can in some cases thrive from them as headshots have never been a significant source of melee damage output.

You're absolutely correct here, which is why, with an expanded emphasis on precision damage with the proc type, I had also proposed "

On 11/19/2017 at 5:30 AM, Aviore said:

a chance for melee strikes to count as precision hits to allow them to get more out of the status effect as well.

" With a scaling chance for any proc-ing strike (or some other, similar execution of the same principle) to register as a precision hit, or, "headshot," the general inconsistency which previously prevented such hits from constituting "a significant source of melee damage" could be resolved. You posited a similar effect in your suggestion in the section, so this may well be just another case of miscommunication.

 

2 hours ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

introduce some IPS conversion mods so that you can start having more control of the weighting of IPS outside of just single-factor-multiplier mods like Buzz Kill, allowing you to on some weapons scale down the impact strength as needed

While I certainly see what you're going for here, simply avoiding a detrimental proc type altogether hardly seems like addressing the deficiencies of said proc.

 

All of that said, discussion is, of course, the primary goal of this thread; any and all input to this conversation is greatly appreciated. If there's anything in this reply that I'm not getting, please let me know.

[Authoritycat]

Already made a post about this: 

Slash and Impact are fine as they are, one being damage, the other being 100% reduction CC. Impact doesn't need to do more damage like slash. Blast and Impact being too similar could be a problem though. Then again it would mean they could stack. 

Edited November 29, 2017 by Authoritycat

[o.0-]

Interesting thoughts on the procs themselves.

I have a premise for the system overall, to have status effects become independent of damage and more connected to health types affected. Mods, would retain a one to one relationship, but it would then be possible to create a build that would then favor different play styles and choices. Meaning the current Meta would have to evolve a bit in what is optimal to bring on a build. As this idea moves away from combo elements, and looks to see changes on mandatory mods, there would then be more free slots available as a result on weapons.

That way I'd bring my AkMagnus and be able to choose what it would focus on, and also the work that has already gone into the procs for Knockback and Weaken can stay and even be tweaked further.

For example, the devs are looking to adjust how Status Chance works, so if players are able to control how Status procs on an enemy, through how we mod, then the devs can continue to revamp procs and provide us an opportunity to get out of it what we want. One player wants to go for broke and mod to be as lethal as possible, then the focus would be on getting Crits to drop a target in as few shots as possible, another wants to ignite their targets and so mods for that, with a third who wants to inflict some pain and goes with DoT effects like Bleed and Poison, so on and so forth.

Here's my thread where I breakdown the idea further and have begun delving into the Mods, most recently:

 

[Conipoeia]

@Authoritycat

Yes. You initially posted yours as I was typing mine.

So now, I suppose, this is just the cooler version of that thread. 

 

Also:

10 minutes ago, Authoritycat said:

Slash and Impact are fine as they are

Yes, but DE is evidently intent on changing them. So we're analyzing here why that's dumb.