Damage 2.5 (Guide to why it's awful)

[HonestOrangeAppleHorse]

The main consideration as to why Damage 2.5 is a step in the wrong direction, is its failure to achieve its desired outcomes, while simultaneously hurting the game as a whole.

The proposed changes to IPS damage types fall into the same issues currently plaguing the game, that being a lack of build diversity, with an emphasis on armour mitigating damage types such as Slash or corrosive. With the new IPS system implemented, this issue goes unaddressed, as Slash will ultimately remain the meta defining damage type among the three.

• Impact Proposed changes: Stagger > Ragdoll (Scales based on Impact damage values)

Proposed Impact damage changes result in a overall damage reduction on the part of the player, any high Impact Focused weapons resulting in unpredictable outcomes. Sniper rifles with a high Impact value will almost certainly have negative repercussions from this change, as any enemy who does not die from a single shot will likely end up impossible to target due to unpredictable movements created by heavy impact procs, significantly lowering damage and time to kill. Missions which require complete enemy extermination to complete (end phase of Liberation Bounties) may be rendered impossible as enemies are ejected from the play space.

• Puncture Proposed changes: Damage reduction 10%-75 (Scales based on puncture damage values)

Proposed Puncture damage chances are ultimately ineffectual due to the proposed changes given to Impact damage. Methods already exist for reducing enemy damage by 100%, either in the form of stagger, knockdown or death, resulting in Puncture's damage benefits being superseded by more effective, wide sweeping, mechanics already in existence. Lower end values such as the minimum 10% proposed by new changes are also less effective than current values (flat 30% damage reduction on puncture proc).

• Slash Proposed changes: Mechanic remain unchanged, but scales only from weapon's Slash values rather than full base damage

Ultimately every single weapon which possess a Slash damage value is nerfed. Weapons whose damage values contain a near 100% Slash value remain in current meta positions (Atterax, Galatine Prime, Tigris Prime) due to Slash procs scaling off of large IPS ratios weighted in Slash. Any weapons whose primary damage type is not Slash becomes immediately ineffective at bypassing heavy armour or shields, as any Slash procs they are able to produce have their damage values immediately reduced. For example, Akstiletto Prime (IPS Values Below)

21.6

3.6

10.8

Total Damage

36.0 ( 60%)

At the current IPS system, every slash proc inflicted by the Akstiletto Prime deals 36.0 damage every second for seven seconds.

With the proposed changes made by Damage 2.5, Slash Proc Damage is reduced to 10.8 damage every second for seven seconds, a near 70% overall damage reduction.

With every weapon undergoing similar changes, weapons whose IPS spread are weighted to Slash will be further cemented as endgame items, with an overall reduction in available options to players wishing to experience endgame content. Mods such as the new Hunter Munitions will be rendered ineffective, as Slash damage values on weapons that it is most useful on have their Slash damage values reduced. For instance, the Lenz, whose Damage spread features 0% Slash, will no longer have access to Hunter Munitions as the Cold and Blast damage types it deals no longer scale into the Slash procs the mod delivers, causing them to deal 0 damage. 

The scenario is as follows.

You enter a high level Void Sortie, armed with your trusty Soma Prime.

Up ahead you spot a Level 80 Corrupted Bombard, gleaming white in the void's light.

"No problem" you think to yourself as you sprint forward, lining up its head between your sights.

Ecstatic as always to play the game, you pull the trigger.

*RATATATATATATATA!*

Suddenly, confusion sets in.

Where once before your mighty golden rifle would have tore your most hated enemy's head clean off, instead he falls to the floor, staggered by the stream of bullets bouncing off of his armour.

Rolling about in tears, the Bombard laughs.

"10% damage reduction? You can't be serious!"

As you stop firing to engage your 3 second reload, the Bombard is able to regain his footing.

"Should have brought your Tigris Prime, SKOOM!"

Your Warframe is then splattered across the white wall behind you, reduced to a million pieces by an Ogris rocket.

The Bombard whistles and goes about his day in service to the neural sentry.

 

If this is the future you want for your favourite Space Ninja shooter, then Damage 2.5 might be for you. If not, welcome to the land of the sane.

Two Warframe YouTubers going by the name of Mogamu and Brozime have already posted stellar analysis of this topic, even offering their own solutions for a better system than the provided by Digital Extremes. Feel free to search for their videos yourself on their channels.

 

Anyway, I hope this has been an informative guide to understanding Damage 2.5's futility, and that you too understand the ramifications of implementing such a system.

Yours Truthfully 

HonestOrangeAppleHorse.   

[MickThejaguar]

Gonna be honest, these threads are kinda beating a dead horse at this point. Pretty much all of the warframe youtubers responded negatively to the changes and the forums damn near blew up when they were announced so they were delayed until next year. This actually the first time I've seen all of the big name youtubers unanimously agree that something was bad. Honestly I think the "Damage 2.5 is so bad" threads should chill out until they show us the next rendition of it. You've said nothing of substance that hasn't already been said at this point. If we're going to continue making posts about Damage 2.5 then could it at least be some suggestions as to how to fix it and not simply saying that it's bad.

[AzureTerra]

DOOOOOOOOOOM

[Drae-chan]

Y'all just whining because you won't be able to oneshot everything with tigris prime or whatever anymore. As a player playing just for like 100 days, not even, i'm actually waiting for the damage 2.5. Also it actually does make sense for example for vulkar to have a bigger 'kick' than some smaller impact weapons. Hopefully they'll apply it to elements as well.
However.
What i'd love to see is not only effects scaling from near zero to 100% of their potential, but also up. Viral reducing enemy HP to like 10% would be hilarious.

[Krymms]

Honestly I think DE is overthinking damage,

We all know the best enemy is a dead one, currently slash is the only damage type which helps you kill enemies faster.

It would make more sense if DE balanced damage around, well doing damage, instead of temporarily lowering enemy damage or ragdolling enemy.

Here are some ideas I got for the damage types:
 

Spoiler

 

First off, keep slash as is now. It works so why change it. The problem with current damage is not slash being "too op", it's the impact and puncture being too weak.

As for impact, make it stun an enemy for duration. While impact proc is on enemy, give us slightly increased damage.

For puncture goes the obvious way, stop the "damage reduced by xyz" noone cares about enemies doing slightly less damage if they can be dead by that time. Just make puncture damage bypass armor/shields partially based on the status chance.

 

 

[grindbert]

all those changes would be unnecessary if there was even one single competent person at de who would realize that it's the armor scaling that's the mother and father of all those problems and is the one thing that needs to be fixed before anything else and might even make further fixes unnecessary.

[Gravitus123]

Crowd control is not worth it when you can just kill the enemy especially in a game that has hordes of enemies.None of the changes to the ips procs should be crowd control we dont need it what we need is for them to do damage in different way and hopefully be on par with slash procs

[Fallen_Echo]

I dont know where the idea of puncture decreasing damage comes from.

I put a hole in your chest now your self guided seeking rockets become weaker!

Doesnt make any sense, why doesnt it increase damage done?

A much more simple update on IPS would be this:

Slight nerf to slash (i dont like it gets one but DE will going to do it sooner or latter) 30-25% total damage used up instead of 35%

Puncture increases elemental status chance, duration and grants extra puncture damage (+10% stacking) to procced targets

Impact procs stagger and grant extra damage (+10%) to units under crowd control effects

[raziel29a]

I agree with you guys. Physical DMG should be about DMG, let them elements do some fancy CC.

The ideal solution is crude and simple.

Slash - damage over time. You do not change the classics.

Puncture - perm armor reduction, stacking. Temporary received DMG increase. DMG dealt reduction makes no sense and has next to none use. 

Impact - increase finisher damage received and open up for finishers. May be even super short, forcing to shoot them in the face and pray for the proc to kick in. Impact based melee should be slow as hell so we don't get instant finisher weapons. 

Slash him and he'll bleed. Make a hole in his armor and he'll be shot right in the guts. Hit him in the head with a blunt heavy object and he'll dazzle around confused ready for a fancy hirudo wrestling move. It's obvious and makes sense. 

Follow the logic and voice of the people who are your ultimate boss. We can fire everyone by spending our money somewhere else. Never forget about Evolve. It takes a lot to build a fan base and just few crappy decisions to lose it all. 

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

On 12/21/2017 at 2:05 PM, Drae-chan said:

Y'all just whining because you won't be able to oneshot everything with tigris prime or whatever anymore.

Except that we will.

In fact, if Damage 2.5 winds up 'fixing' the interaction between physical damage mods and physical procs, the Tigris Prime will do even more damage. Why? Let's look at some math:

Right now, Tigris Prime scales off of its 'Base Damage', a stat that can only be increased by '+ Damage' mods (not '+ Physical' or '+ Elemental' mods). Examples of such mods are Primed Point Blank (+165%), Vicious Spread (+90%), and Blaze (+60%).

However, these mods have diminishing returns when stacked, to to all of them scaling off of the original base damage. For example, a Tigris Prime with Primed Point Blank deals 4134 damage, with 80% of it slash. If you add Vicious Spread, it becomes a total of 5538, which is only 33% more than 4134.

Now, with the proposed system, we lose 20% of the damage of our current slash procs, due to impact and puncture damage doing nothing for slash procs. In return, we (hopefully) get the chance to use Sweeping Serration (+120% slash) to boost our slash proc damage by +120% of the new total, resulting in an increase of +76%, making this far better than either Vicious Spread or Blaze, assuming Primed Point Blank is installed (which it should be).

 

We aren't complaining that Tigris Prime/Atterax/Galatine Prime aren't going to one-shot. They still will. What we are complaining about is the fact that they will be the only weapons to do so, that so many fun and creative weapon builds based on Hunter Munitions and the Vigilante mod set will be thrown out the window, leaving us with only the meta builds on meta weapons.

Edited December 27, 2017 by -AoN-CanoLathra-

[SenorClipClop]

Honestly, in order to make other physical status procs desirable Slash needs to be toned down at least a little bit. The proposed change makes physical sense, too: if I mod a pistol for Slash and Magnetic, why does the Magnetic damage deal bleed all of a sudden? Yeah, it'll suck, but a nerf to Slash isn't without justification.

What's important to help players adapt to the change is that we need to be given new tools to get a better grip on buolding for Status with Physical damage types. Right now the only way to significantly increase status on most weapons is to equip the 60/60 mods (Rime Rounds, etc.). The issue with these is that they also add an elemental damage to the weapon's distribution, reducing the power of physical procs. What this means is that with the proposed changes and the mods we have right now, increasing your chance to proc Status will decrease the power of your physical procs. The meta kids seem most upset about this affecting Slash, but from what we know this will be true for all physical procs. If this the case players will have to choose between highly unlikely procs or highly insignificant procs. We can't strengthen our proc percentage without weakening our proc strength.

To fix this, we will need mods that can raise Status chance without dilutung our desired damage types, in order to ensure our procs can be both reliable and significant. For example, a mod that grants +60% Slash damage and +60% Status chance could help weapons hit high Status without diminishing Bleed procs, replacing a 60/60 elemental. This could be used to powercreep extra status chance onto weapons and have more weapons hit 100% easily, but it would be balanced by the fact that more spread-out damage types reduce proc efficacy. In any case, the diminishing in vague power could be balanced by tools that give us that power back, with the trade-off that we need to be specific about which damages we build for.

In short, relegating Slash procs to Slash damage (and ditto for the other IPS types) should be fine for the game, as long as we are also given the tools to increase Status chance on weapons without having to add unneeded damage types to a build. Needing to build a weapon for Slash damage and Status in order to get reliable and significant Slash procs is fine, but right now we don't have the tools that will let us do both.

Edited December 27, 2017 by SenorClipClop

[Fallen_Echo]

2 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

Honestly, in order to make other physical status procs desirable Slash needs to be toned down at least a little bit. The proposed change makes physical sense, too: if I mod a pistol for Slash and Magnetic, why does the Magnetic damage deal bleed all of a sudden? Yeah, it'll suck, but a nerf to Slash isn't without justification.

Look at the upper example and think again whats wrong with what you wrote.

Slash uses up base damage, not total damage. I too had to re-read how the current damage system works and came to the conclusion that this change causes 2 things:

1) weapons with low slash get a hefty nerf and become barely useable in high levels same happens with forced slash proc mods.

2) weapons with high slash keep their meta state and get a slight nerf. Nothing really bad.

 

In conclusion stances and the hunter munitions become useless and nothing changes.

[Tsunero]

On 2017. 12. 22. at 1:06 AM, grindbert said:

all those changes would be unnecessary if there was even one single competent person at de who would realize that it's the armor scaling that's the mother and father of all those problems and is the one thing that needs to be fixed before anything else and might even make further fixes unnecessary.

At this point I think they are never going to f*cking fix the armor scaling...

[Pyradus]

+1

Let's raise awareness that Damage 2.5 will change NOTHING about the current balance between IPS. Impact and Puncture will still be almost 100% worthless, with Impact actually being worse when aiming for headshots.

Don't just nerf Slash and call it a day, DE! Properly balance Impact and Puncture!!

[Fallen_Echo]

7 hours ago, CapnToaster said:

+1

Let's raise awareness that Damage 2.5 will change NOTHING about the current balance between IPS. Impact and Puncture will still be almost 100% worthless, with Impact actually being worse when aiming for headshots.

Don't just nerf Slash and call it a day, DE! Properly balance Impact and Puncture!!

Not just impact, puncture will get worse too. The new damage reduction will scale between 10-70% meaning it will be even less useable on low puncture weapons.

[SenorClipClop]

22 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

Look at the upper example and think again whats wrong with what you wrote.

Slash uses up base damage, not total damage. I too had to re-read how the current damage system works and came to the conclusion that this change causes 2 things:

1) weapons with low slash get a hefty nerf and become barely useable in high levels same happens with forced slash proc mods.

2) weapons with high slash keep their meta state and get a slight nerf. Nothing really bad.

 

In conclusion stances and the hunter munitions become useless and nothing changes.

I'm aware that it's a nerf to Slash status (from the wip information we have at least) and I don't think it's a terrible thing for the game. It'll suck for players, yes, but with tweaks and additions the game may yet be okay. I have to wonder if you read the rest of my post, or if you just stopped when I disagreed with you so you could regurgitate the same synopsis that's been echoed around hundreds of times.

With the example later in my post, I show that what we know of damage 2.5 will bring a significant nerf to Slash status builds, even for meta weapons. Given how we mod for status, even the most meta slash weapons will see a significant nerf, not the slight nerf you claim they'll get, and here's an example to show it:

 Let's take the Galatine Prime. With 90% Slash and a decent Status chance, it shouldn't be harmed too much by the 2.5 changes if we are only talking about its base stats. Thing is, we're gonna build it for Status, so we'll slap on two 60/60 mods (let's say Virulent Scourge and Vicious Frost for Viral). What makes the 2.5 nerf significant is that now with all that extra Viral damage, our 90%-Slash Galatine now has about 43% of its total damage as Slash, which means that its Bleed procs will deal very little damage compared to before the change. This change seriously harms everything that could previously do well with Slash procs, not just the off-meta weapons.

The reason I can see the sense in the change is that we can overcome if DE introduces mods that increase Status chance and desired Physical damage types (like a 60/60 mod for Slash and Status), or at the very least gives us the mods to dramatically shift damage types to what we specifically wish to build for. It would mean that we could still build for reliable and potent slash procs, but we would need to buold specifically for slash damage.

[Fallen_Echo]

1 hour ago, SenorClipClop said:

I'm aware that it's a nerf to Slash status (from the wip information we have at least) and I don't think it's a terrible thing for the game. It'll suck for players, yes, but with tweaks and additions the game may yet be okay. I have to wonder if you read the rest of my post, or if you just stopped when I disagreed with you so you could regurgitate the same synopsis that's been echoed around hundreds of times.

With the example later in my post, I show that what we know of damage 2.5 will bring a significant nerf to Slash status builds, even for meta weapons. Given how we mod for status, even the most meta slash weapons will see a significant nerf, not the slight nerf you claim they'll get, and here's an example to show it:

 Let's take the Galatine Prime. With 90% Slash and a decent Status chance, it shouldn't be harmed too much by the 2.5 changes if we are only talking about its base stats. Thing is, we're gonna build it for Status, so we'll slap on two 60/60 mods (let's say Virulent Scourge and Vicious Frost for Viral). What makes the 2.5 nerf significant is that now with all that extra Viral damage, our 90%-Slash Galatine now has about 43% of its total damage as Slash, which means that its Bleed procs will deal very little damage compared to before the change. This change seriously harms everything that could previously do well with Slash procs, not just the off-meta weapons.

The reason I can see the sense in the change is that we can overcome if DE introduces mods that increase Status chance and desired Physical damage types (like a 60/60 mod for Slash and Status), or at the very least gives us the mods to dramatically shift damage types to what we specifically wish to build for. It would mean that we could still build for reliable and potent slash procs, but we would need to buold specifically for slash damage.

I have read your post and in fact i agree with the need of the new dual stat mods. I just wanted to point out that what you wrote is not exactly true as elemental damage doesnt turn into slash.

Currently i have the following problem with the proposed changes:

-slash meta keeps its spot but shrinks down as less weapons can use it to fight "endgame" levels

-every weapon without high slash loses a lot of damage what could otherwise keep it useable

-stances and hunter munitions suddenly become useless

-impact is giving us a ragdoll nightmare making it the worst proc ingame

-puncture still doesnt make sense, theres a hole in your back and because of this the self guided seeking rocket you shoot deals less damage

-puncture gets nerfed as it will start at 10% damage reduction so low puncture weapons become less useful overall

[SenorClipClop]

15 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

-snip-

Elemental damage doesn't turn into Slash damage, but for some reason elementals count for Bleed damage right now instead of just the slashy bits of the weapon, which can be argued for or against making sense. You're free to disagree, but I for one think it's reasonable to make it so that only the slashing damage will relevant for the slashing effect. I don't expect a blunt object to do a great job bleeding a target for instance. The change, to me, is fine as long as we are also given the upgrade options to drastically shift our physical damage percentages on a weapon. We'll trade vague power for specific power.

As for the other issues you mention, I agree with pretty much all of them. Ragdoll on Impact proc would be really disruptive to gameplay, especially for snipers and for short-reaching impact melees like Fists and Sparring weapon. Forced procs don't need to keep 2.0's numbers, but they will defs need something to keep them usable. With the physical dual-stat mods I suggest we'll able to Status build and have more weapons with  high percentages of specific IPS types, not levelling the meta but at least giving more weapons the chance to compete. (There will always be a meta.) Puncture will have scaling procs instead of the flat 30%, but I have no issue with this considering that you'll only have weak Puncture procs if you don't build for Puncture. 

Edited December 29, 2017 by SenorClipClop

[Fallen_Echo]

28 minutes ago, SenorClipClop said:

Elemental damage doesn't turn into Slash damage, but for some reason elementals count for Bleed damage right now instead of just the slashy bits of the weapon, which can be argued for or against making sense.

Care to explain this?

Unless we talk about the hunter munitions i have never noticed that adding elementals on a weapon affects slash in any way.

[Thrymm]

I'm actually more worried about ragdolling impact procs than some puny slash changes, to be honest, and frankly I think everyone should be.

The slash change is nothing.  You can kill enemies without any slash damage at all.  My gas status red crit-riven Lanka makes slash procs look like paper cuts, it'll take down sortie level bombards in two or three ticks and if they group up, it'll do it to a group of them.  Hek with a puncture/radiation emphasis has similar knockdown power because it just pounds its damage load right through.  I have a high crit buzzlok riven that lets it work in high level sorties and it gets the job done with impact.

Changes to impact, however, can easily be a damage decrease to every weapon in the game.  Nearly every weapon that can regularly deliver a slash proc also delivers impact.  Worries about your slash procs doing less damage?  Imagine how little they'll be doing when the very first impact proc knocks enemies right out of your crosshairs.  The quality of your slash procs will be the least of your worries when you're trying to lay a stack of them on something.

The Grakata is probably the best example to be able to get a visual picture with.  Anyone that has used it knows it's a bullet hose, and that it kills things remarkably well even into very high levels.  The slash it delivers is great, but with a corrosive build it also peels armor like an onion so bypassing armor isn't really a chief concern with it because it'll drive an enemy to red health bar in seconds anyway.  It does this because it hits your target lots of times very quickly and most hits proc a status effect.  The target stays still because of the current impact effect and eats piles of corrosive stacks and simultaneous slash procs.  If it got knocked down or ragdolled on hit three, the entire weapon may as well be in the bin because you won't be delivering any of that with the reliability that you do today.

Weapons that emphasize impact are affected even worse.  These weapons can work now because they effectively immobilize the target to take multiple hits, preventing them from retaliating or moving to cover while they deal with the somewhat lesser impact damage being delivered by a gorgon variant or buzzlok, or even akMagnus.

[SenorClipClop]

8 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

Care to explain this?

Unless we talk about the hunter munitions i have never noticed that adding elementals on a weapon affects slash in any way.

You said it yourself, that right now the total damage on the weapon is poured into calculating the bleed proc damage. This includes all elemental damage you mod onto a weapon.

[Fallen_Echo]

1 hour ago, SenorClipClop said:

You said it yourself, that right now the total damage on the weapon is poured into calculating the bleed proc damage. This includes all elemental damage you mod onto a weapon.

No i said slash uses up base damage. 

On 2017. 12. 27. at 10:46 AM, Fallen_Echo said:

Look at the upper example and think again whats wrong with what you wrote.

Slash uses up base damage, not total damage.

But if thats true than its a bug what needs to be fixed.

[Drae-chan]

Am i the only person here who doesn't find metagame and oneshotting fun?

[Fallen_Echo]

51 minutes ago, Drae-chan said:

Am i the only person here who doesn't find metagame and oneshotting fun?

I guess you completely missed the point of this entire discussion.

The slash meta wont go away with this update, hell it will be enforced now because every weapon what wont have atleast 70% slash damage (high damage too) will be less useable while the kings of slash furthermore lock down their position.

Impact gets an annoying ragdoll effect and puncture gets nerfed too.

Theres no point in this update what count as a reasonable and acceptable damage rework.

Your question migh aswell be "Am I the only one who cant foresee problems because of meta hating?"

[SlayerAxell]

Easy. Impact: Reduce armor (just around the part hitted) and shields permanently or 5-10seconds (related to impact damage, like if u have 100, u reduce 100 with a status shoot). Keep cc but add duration.

Slash. Keep it up. Its fun. Isnt that op. If you want to nerf it, add a an impresive incapacitate way if u slash an arm or leg of an enemy.

Puncture: Status effect causes to the target lose accuracy for a good time 5-10secs. Also, if u PUNCTURE u ignore a heavy percent of armor or shields (like 35%, hi slash, Im good now)

Now, easily, they work differently, but they are all viable. Also, slash will be better or slightly vs infested. Impact vs corpus. And Puncture vs grinner. Like its suposed. Also, mix IPC weapons will be also viable and not as good as vs all. Like is ALSO suposed.

Edited January 18, 2018 by SlayerAxell