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Arca Plasmor Change


(XBOX)Shamim1969
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2 minutes ago, IceColdHawk said:

Can't tell if you're being serious or not. You're just as blind as the the last guy i quoted. "Look brothers! High status chance number! This must be so OP with status!". We've been explaining why it isn't and yet you go on and keep saying that. What do you want with that high of a status chance? Keep refreshing the rad procs instead of getting enemies dead or what? Don't get me started on magnetic....Oh toxin. I assume it's a corpus build (sherlock). Even then, i'd advice you to go for crit and use both toxin mods for WAY higher toxin damage or even better, straight gas. Since it's full elemental, you won't proc "wasted procs" like impact or puncture (aside from the innate impact proc thingy) so it doesn't even require that high of a status chance to get your elementals out.

And i also see you're sacrificing 2 mods slots (Spazz and Acceleration) for QoL. Something that this weapons LACKS for the sake of balance since it comes with innate punch through. So please tell me again why it was so urgent to remove it's high level damage potential?

And this^

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4 hours ago, IceColdHawk said:

It's still playable, yes. But it lost a LOT of damage potential when you take away headshot potential from a crit gun.

What i don't get is WHY exactly this had to be nerfed. Wasn't the slow reload and fire rate enough of a drawback? And what's with the "high status" advantage? It's pure elemental and therefore can't proc slash (unless with HM but that renders status chance irrelevant anyway). The only elemental proc that i can think of that still shows strength in a slow firing but high status weapon would be the gas proc. Viral doesn't need a high status due to having it's own duration and not being stackable. Also since it's plasmor and shoots 1 pellet, it doesn't profit from usual shotgun status mechanics whereas tigris prime does. Tigris Prime doesn't have punch through but that can be fixed with Seeking Fury easily.

This^

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I use the Arca Plasmor for mainly Teralyst, Mag Magentize, and Banshee Sonic Fracture.

The Headshot nerf will hurt my Mag Magnetize playstyle since there will just not be Headshot bonus by using the bubble to auto-score headshots. So yes the change is a damage Nerf.

•Proc'ing Radiation inside the Magentize bubble helped DPS 

Teralyst is pretty much status immune.

Sonic Fracture throws/Ragdolls enemies and I was not trying to land headshots.

•But that allowed Gas or Viral to work just fine on Fleshy targets, devoid of armor.

If Hunter's Munitions proceed than it was just a bonus, but I wasn't worried about Arca Plasmor being held back by Armor for what how I was using the weapon.

Pretty reliable Single status application weapon and I don't think the Headshot nerf changed the status capability, but I could be wrong as I don't have that change on PS4.

 

 

Arca Plasmor is Status Weapon just as much as DE says the Daikyu is a Status Bow.

Relatively slow-rate of fire and high status chance allows for non-stackable Status to be applied pretty reliably. 

For Corrosive Armor Stripping and/or Gas/Toxic/Bleed stacking: high hit rate (fire-rate/pellet count) for multi status applications per sec is preferred.

 

Maybe they will bring back headshot bonus and halve the status and Crit Chance to make everyone happy! (Since it is not a Critical or status weapon anyway)

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3 hours ago, Kurokoz said:

What is this definition?

https://amp.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/6rkzyr/shotgun_status_you_why_its_important_to_give_100/

Here you go. “Definition” is stretching the word, but this reddit post explains why the shotgun algorithm gives the utmost importance to status chance, pellet count, and the prerogative of status chance applied (100%) before multishot.

So yeah, Arca Plasmor is not a status shotgun due to 1 slug “pellet”/wave, being unable to reach 100% status chance before multishot, and applying status chance unreliably on any given target due to low fire rate. It doesn’t matter if it shoots a wave that can hit multiple targets, since it cannot hit 100% status chance before multishot (without the help of a riven) the stat proc isn’t guaranteed, nor does it have a sustained fire rate to shoot the waves multiple times without the use of multishot.

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This nerf simply removes an alternative to the Tigris, reducing player options and gameplay diversity and overall makes the game less fun to play. Its unique properties as an energy wave shotgun were fun and different than pellet-based shotguns, and neither more nor less effective. *MANY* other shotguns are great at applying status, stripping armor etc...and if that's something I wanted to do, I would use those guns over the Arca as they do it better. Getting headshots took skill and practice, and headshots were really the only thing that made the weapon viable vs high toughness enemies (Nox/Eximus/etc...) and an alternative to the Tigris. Whether intentionally designed or not, this weapon gave a great gameplay experience because it had an inherent "easy to use, difficult to master' skill ceiling.  It wasn't so great that it was clearly the one best weapon; it simply added to a small pool of alternatives - win/win.  Whether intentional or not, it was a great design that fit well into the overall primary ecosystem. By virtue of this nerf, it is now a "no skill required" weapon, making it less fun to use.  It is no longer a viable alternative in higher level play, making higher level play as a whole less fun because the options are more limited. While the cited design issue may be a true statement, there are countless other aspects of this game where something works differently than intended and DE has embraced it because the community loved the unintended consequence. DE - please consider doing so in this case.

If by some chance this is related to the Harrow augment, for the love of god change the augment, which affects one frame - not a weapon that's used across all frames.  

I'm sure there will be naysayers who post in this thread that support DE's decision; for those that believe the Arca was actually overpowered, gamebreaking, or otherwise a gameplay problem - I'd love to see examples.  For those who believe "not working as intended" is a good argument - I'll ask what is more important, a non-gamebreaking aspect of the game enjoyed by many, or adhering to a game design that makes the game less fun to play?  I'll refer you to the current state of Destiny 2 for further research on that topic.

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You mention skill a lot and ask for the harrow augment to get changed. No need. But if the intention was to really remove "cheap headshots", they could just make it have a smaller hitbox for accounting headshots than the whole wave so you actually need to be as accurate as any other weapons if you want to get headshots. But removing whole headshot potential completely? Just no.

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vor 1 Minute schrieb (Xbox One)RDeschain82:

We still have spin 2 win.

Banshee can lock down entire tilsets. 

Loki can completely bypass game mechanisms. 

Tigris with punch thru can do exactly same thing. 

But Better nerf arca plasmar. Because reasons. 

That too. Sometimes DE changes are a pure mystery.

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2 hours ago, A-Midnight-Shanking said:

If there would be anything that would be changed that directly involves the Atterax, I hope it's the Alt Attack Damage of all whips. Why do momentum based weapons like whips have the same spin attack multiplier as a solid sword?

If attacking using the whip involves spinning it around, spinning it around while sliding on the ground shouldn't add much to it. I'd like to see the damage multiplier for the slide attacks of whips be lowered from 2.14x to 1.6x, Wall attacks from 4x to 3x, and Slam attacks from 2.0x to 1.5x

Indeed, that's a point of view that I have never considered! Spinning with a whip should be exactly the same damage as swinging it normally. A whip doesn't care for the force of the motion, only it's speed.

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30 minutes ago, (Xbox One)RDeschain82 said:

I could understand if they gave it more splash. Or even less punch through. But the whole head shot thing being unintended...come on... Just lol

I can agree with giving it a small hitbox for the headshot, but a headshot AoE is a big nope since they've fixed Tonkor and co from doing exactly that.

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2 minutes ago, -N7-Leonhart said:

I can agree with giving it a small hitbox for the headshot, but a headshot AoE is a big nope since they've fixed Tonkor and co from doing exactly that.

But that's not what's happening with this gun.  Or was, anyways.  To score headshots on a crowd, you had to jump above them and shoot your projectile such that it just skimmed over top of them.  If you aimed too low, you'd have a bunch of body shots.  If you fired upwards while standing level with the enemies, you'd get a body shot on the guy closest to you, a head shot on the guy behind him, and you'd miss anyone beyond that.  The tonkor was applying headshot damage to anyone who was affected by the blast radius, no matter where they were in relation to it.  That's not what the plasmor did.

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8 hours ago, Bobtm said:

There's a greater/deeper problem than just that, which is somewhat tricky and unfortunate overall.

  • We still have no real or clear "Line in the sand" of balance yet.

We not only don't have one ourselves as a collective playerbase, but DE doesn't really seem to have one either.  Or if they do, they both haven't shown us and won't say it.  To a slight degree most folks have a reasonable expectation of potency for a weapon to hold up in a Sortie, but even that's a major grey area in and of itself.  DE aren't sure how strong a weapon is supposed to be in any precise way, they make sure it doesn't feel too silly then release it and then just watch/collect data from the playerbase.  It's that data that they try and use as a measuring stick for balance.

I recall once during a Devstream a while back where Steve was genuinely surprised by a sniper damage shot that Reb landed.  It was a low damage hit for that sniper because it wasn't using a proper build.  Reb knew it was not a hard hit, showing a more firm grasp on the actual gameplay side.  Basically there's a rather large disconnect between where many of us players are, and where the bulk of the dev team is, in regards to gameplay.  The folks at DE are dedicated to making a great game for us, no doubt, and they're smart too.  But they don't keep up with the playerbase in terms of actively experiencing Warframe itself from a player's perspective realistically.

Honing back in on the Plasmor for this point.  Even with the headshot part before it didn't feel overpowered because outside of the Zephyr trick, its range was fairly limited.  The problem that arose was with Harrow's new Augment.  Even without headshots the Plasmor still does fine vs crowds so it's not underpowered for losing that bonus it had prior for normal play.  The change here primarily just removes it from being used to easy-mode one's way to infinite +50% additive crit (200% on headshots).

The best part here;  They didn't need us to test the Harrow augment plus Plasmor to know that this would be an issue.  The same patch that introduced the augment also removed this trait from the Plasmor.  So a quick little look was quite literally all it took for DE to see a clear issue was present.  When issues are simple ones DE usually does catch them.  Larger balance issues however are a whole other kettle of fish.

You make some rly good points. I want to add that there is one issue that is related to the very core of warframe business model: its long term existence depends on new, shiny and good updates. 

So on one hand, a totally balanced update wont bring back players from other games or new ones - they will just label the content as mastery fodder and do something else. On the other hand, a rly shiny and powerful update will bring a lot of players, who will want skins, rivens and forma for that new weapon BUT, this new content might hurt the balance overall.

Im ok with all the nerf and buff cycle, 4 years and 4000+ hours ingame already made me accept things as they are BUT I think that DE should be carefull with this cycle, keep releasing new and shiny content only to be nerfed later might frustrate players in the long term if you know what I mean.

 

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49 minutes ago, (Xbox One)RDeschain82 said:

We still have spin 2 win.

Banshee can lock down entire tilsets. 

Loki can completely bypass game mechanisms. 

Tigris with punch thru can do the exact same thing as pre nerf arca plasmar. 

 

You forgot WoF Ember and a couple of other things. But yeah - those items need addressing badly. At least Maiming Strike is apparently being looked at (I wouldn't hold my breathe though....)

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The change to the Arca Plasmor, wherein headshots no longer benefit from the headshot multiplier, harks back to Digital Extremes' once-consistent approach to set the house on fire because the doors are draughty.

  • Exhibit 1, a little anecdote about Mag.

Way back in 2015, when Mesa was the be-all, end-all of static defense, Mag got Greedy Pull. A convenient little augment that allowed the squishy, energy-starved magnetic frame to keep itself (and her team) supplied with ammunition and energy, and conveniently get the loot drops as a bonus.

Now, since Mesa couldn't move with Peacemaker up and you can't restore energy with plates while using channeled abilities, some Mags found a new life as an oversized Carrier, sucking up loot and energy to feed the Mesa.

The problem, reckoned someone at DE, wasn't Mesa getting energy, but Mag pulling it in. So, instead of doing something reasonable, like cutting Mesa's pickup range to 0 while Peacemaker is up, they decided to change Pull entirely, making it Line of Sight, augment or not.

Let me rephrase this: Digital Extremes nerfed Mag because Mesa was too powerful.

 

  • Exhibit 2. The Amprex.

Also harking back to the past, this time to 2014, the Amprex is a primary weapon boasting elemental damage, good status, excellent crit chance and crit damage and could hit vast numbers of enemies due to arcing and innate punch-through, and was infamous for racking up easy headshots. Its downsides are a viciously tiny magazine (compared to ammo consumption) and a punishingly long reload animation.

Sound familiar?

One of the reasons I love the Arca Plasmor is how much like the Amprex its behavior is. The Corpus make nifty guns. So, on a hunch, I decided to try out Lasting Covenant with my Amprex.

Link to the video of the test. Please excuse my low mic volume; I have never captured my own mic while playing before, so the settings were out of whack.

As you can see, even with minimal aiming, the Amprex merrily hits multiple enemies, arcing from head to head and scoring headshot kills, extending the duration of Lasting Covenant to just under 90 seconds on a mere 20 enemies, from having started out at 30.

 

  • The issue.

The Arca Plasmor was introduced in early September 2017. The weapon has remained unchanged for four and a half months and has existed as an amusing and satisfying alternative to the ubiquity of the Vaykor Hek and the Tigris Prime.

Despite many claims otherwise, this weapon was far from overused, being a consistent 3/5 Riven disposition, occasionally jumping to 2/5, placing it in merely above-average usage.

Suddenly, the weapon is too powerful, because... it allows Harrow to sustain his augment indefinitely with little effort. Thus, instead of doing something reasonable like giving the augment a small ICD or capping its effect to only the first kill per every shot, someone decided to remove a major function of one particular crit weapon, because something-something "accuracy". Meanwhile the Vaykor Hek can shoot the wings off a fly on the other side of a room.

Again, to rephrase, Digital Extremes nerfed the Arca Plasmor because Harrow's augment is too powerful.
Notice the pattern?

 

  • But what about...

-splash/explosive weapons?!
Well, for one, flamers can and always have been able to headshot, and one of the excellent features of crit Ignis Wraith builds is their tendency to headshot multiple targets due to punchthrough. Sound familiar?
For another, explosives can still headshot, it just takes a bit of effort convincing them to do it. Crit Penta builds are entirely legitimate, using the manual detonation on the grenade to make it airburst above targets' noggins.

-balance!?
Vex Chroma exists and Tigris Prime/Sancti and the Vaykor Hek (or a regular Hek with the augment) can oneshot Sargas Ruk. This is not a valid argument, and you know damn well it isn't.

-the controlled environment of the test!?
While the enemies were not moving, they were also not numerous. In actual missions you will easily face tight knots of 20 enemies at the same time, between which the Amprex will merrily arc, go for the face, and fuel the duration of Covenant.

 

  • As a conclusion:

The Arca Plasmor isn't the problem. Sitting at 3/5 Disposition for months proves that.
The actual problems, for there are two, and which the change to the Plasmor has failed to fix, are, for one, the behavior of Lasting Covenant, which can be fueled in bulk by the Amprex, the Atomos, Penta airbursts, and, I am sure, other clever ways I've yet to consider. Do all of these weapons deserve to have their ability to headshot removed, in violation of all mechanical consistency? No, of course not. What needs tweaking is Lasting Covenant itself, and how its effect can trigger.

The other problem is Digital Extremes' unnerving tendency to break something unrelated just so one particular case action of something else is no longer an issue. The analogy with the torched house in the beginning of the post.

I hate the term "bandaid fix". I really do; the community has thrown it around for everything, including deep, systemic changes that eliminate the underlying issue entirely. But for once, I will use that turn of phrase.

 

The change to the Arca Plasmor is the epitome of a bandaid fix: it fails to solve the actual problem, while being disruptive to unrelated occurrences.
Please, revert the change to the weapon and fix the derp augment instead.

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so let's go down the list of things you missed the target on...

  • Greedy Pull was an Augment for complete automation of Gameplay. the Augment was a problem itself.
  • Amprex is nowhere near the power level of Arca Plasmor.
  • Arca Plasmor and Shotguns as a whole are Overpowered, wholesale. Arca Plasmor breaks things regardless of Warframe because of casually Weakpoint Critting everything in sight (well not anymore).
  • Ignis is only good because it can hit entire rooms at once. per Target it's pretty weak.
  • Vex Armor will get fixed eventually.
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Oh god. 
I was right about everyone coming to whinge about the Arca Plasmor on the forums now.

You guys compare it to the Tigris Prime, which is strong yes but in its own narrow way,a strong single target burst with not much ability for AoE.

The difference here is that the Arca Plasmor is an AoE weapon, capable of clearing entire hallways,so being upset that it doesn't do as much damage as the Tigris Prime is absurd,and if people are to put punch through on their Tigris then they sacrifice, but the Arca Plasmor has punch through by default

 

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Just now, Kayll said:

Oh god. 
I was right about everyone coming to whinge about the Arca Plasmor on the forums now.

You guys compare it to the Tigris Prime, which is strong yes but in its own narrow way,a strong single target burst with not much ability for AoE.

The difference here is that the Arca Plasmor is an AoE weapon, capable of clearing entire hallways,so being upset that it doesn't do as much damage as the Tigris Prime is absurd,and if people are to put punch through on their Tigris then they sacrifice, but the Arca Plasmor has punch through by default

 

...then put the seeking set on it too, and ooooh!!! Can you tell I am loving this weapon?

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3 minutes ago, taiiat said:

so let's go down the list of things you missed the target on...

  • Greedy Pull was an Augment for complete automation of Gameplay. the Augment was a problem itself.
  • Amprex is nowhere near the power level of Arca Plasmor.
  • Arca Plasmor and Shotguns as a whole are Overpowered, wholesale. Arca Plasmor breaks things regardless of Warframe because of casually Weakpoint Critting everything in sight (well not anymore).
  • Ignis is only good because it can hit entire rooms at once. per Target it's pretty weak.
  • Vex Armor will get fixed eventually.
  • Then if the Greedy Pull augment was the problem, why not change Greedy Pull, and not baseline pull? It's equally daft.
  • An Ability Strength Harrow can buff it to be comparatively oneshotty.
  • And the Amprex doesn't casually crit everything in sight? Besides, if shotties are overpowered, why not make everything as comparatively overpowered instead? Might as well embrace the power creep since it's so deeply ingrained.
  • The argument was about mechanical behavior, not effectiveness.
  • It's been nearly 3 years. I have doubts.
     
Just now, rc1309 said:

Correlation =/= Causation

Fallacy fallacy. Just because it doesn't imply it by necessity doesn't mean it can't.

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11 minutes ago, Kayll said:

Oh god. 
I was right about everyone coming to whinge about the Arca Plasmor on the forums now.

You guys compare it to the Tigris Prime, which is strong yes but in its own narrow way,a strong single target burst with not much ability for AoE.

The difference here is that the Arca Plasmor is an AoE weapon, capable of clearing entire hallways,so being upset that it doesn't do as much damage as the Tigris Prime is absurd,and if people are to put punch through on their Tigris then they sacrifice, but the Arca Plasmor has punch through by default

 

WAAAATTT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SPINNING OF MY SCOLIAC CLEARING ENTIRE TILSETS?! YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO SPEAK UP. 

Edited by (XB1)RDeschain82
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The weapon was changed to be closer to how it was envisioned when it was designed,a weapon capable of clearing a hall way simply and with ease.
It should not be rewarded headshots if you hit them more often than not while not even attempting to headshot,at that point you are just giving the weapon extra damage in a silly way.

 

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Just now, Kayll said:

The weapon was changed to be closer to how it was envisioned when it was designed,a weapon capable of clearing a hall way simply and with ease.
It should not be rewarded headshots if you hit them more often than not while not even attempting to headshot,at that point you are just giving the weapon extra damage in a silly way.

 

You're seriously expecting me to believe Digital Extremes forgot weapons can headshot. Really, now.

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2 minutes ago, (Xbox One)RDeschain82 said:

WAAAATTT? I CANT HEAR YOU OVER THE SPINNING OF MY SCOLIAC CLEARING ENTIRE TILSETS?! YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO SPEAK UP. 

Thats great, this post is about the Arca Plasmor.
Using an overpowered weapon to try and rationalize another weapons power is quite silly.

Surely you would nerf the 5 weapons that are out of line than try to bring the entirety of the weapon pool to their level of power and in retrospect have to rebalance every enemy in the game afterwards?

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