Does anyone actuality enjoy beam weapons right now?

[Ham_Grenabe]

I only have 1, the Ignis Wraith. I never liked beam weapons much in the first place (conceptually, not just because they were in their status/sec phase when I started the game). I like slug-throwers. 

But on the day of the big rework, the Ignis Wraith was so good it felt like cheating. The day after the per-target ramp came into play, I noticed the damage fluctuations. However, I only ever use it in starchart-level missions so having the damage reduced to 65% of the Big Buff is largely irrelevant -- everything still dies fast and painfully. I'd never take it into Sortie 3 unless it was a "beam weapons only" requirement; I have much better weapons for killing things. 

Edited February 26, 2018 by Ham_Grenabe

[METAHUMVN]

On 2/23/2018 at 12:20 PM, Ketec said:

The ramp up time + reset puts them int o a  trash tier category compared to  most other weapons where you can get full damage every shot on every enemy  regardless if you miss or not.
You run across hallways/plains, shoot a target, move on - that's the style of gameplay warframe has - not stop, aim, shoot, wait, move on.

One word. 

Amprex with sinister reach and corrosive dmg. 

#IWillShowYouDaWae 

Edited February 26, 2018 by UMBRANEMESIS

[-Trey-]

They deal too much dmg, quite frankly it doesn't make sense for them to outclass everything like this.

[Unus]

Finally got around testing two of the beamy deffguns. Looks like me Cycron made out like a bandit, but, the Flux rifle? Blasted piddle-gun that barely tickles Class-11 Grins! The ell is that about?! Will go on to test the Ignis, Phage, and Amp shortly.

[Lyricallee]

On 2/23/2018 at 3:20 PM, Ketec said:

The ramp up time + reset puts them int o a  trash tier category compared to  most other weapons where you can get full damage every shot on every enemy  regardless if you miss or not.
You run across hallways/plains, shoot a target, move on - that's the style of gameplay warframe has - not stop, aim, shoot, wait, move on.

The weapons were far from nerf'd in the latest update, the Ignis Wraith, Atmos, Phage and Amprex are now so relevant, effective and fun I put forma into them this weekend and they are now part of my regularly used weapons.  No idea how you could think this was a nerf.  You could really test on your own, but also, many of the streamers have put out videos showing how much better these are now.

Example 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blaB_mGvVKw

I believe I also saw iFlynn doing a high level sortie with a flux rifle but maybe I am mis-remembering.

[rune_me]

58 minutes ago, Lyricallee said:

The weapons were far from nerf'd in the latest update, the Ignis Wraith, Atmos, Phage and Amprex are now so relevant, effective and fun I put forma into them this weekend and they are now part of my regularly used weapons.  No idea how you could think this was a nerf.  You could really test on your own, but also, many of the streamers have put out videos showing how much better these are now.

Example 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blaB_mGvVKw

I believe I also saw iFlynn doing a high level sortie with a flux rifle but maybe I am mis-remembering.

I think you missed the point. The video you linked to was just after the beam rework. 24 hours later, there were a hotfix that changed the ramp up damage from being from you fired the weapon, to being per target ramp up, which somewhat affected the way they caused damage. Hence the video you linked to is no longer relevant (it was in fact only relevant for about 24 hours).

Beam weapons are still useful and really good, but you should ignore all those videos released by all the streamers right after the rework.

[SneakyErvin]

3 hours ago, Khift said:

I'm not going to lie - I feel like I'm talking to people who either have never seriously played Warframe or who are intentionally ignoring their own game experience for the sake of making arguments. Before making my post last night, just to make sure I wasn't crazy, I polled my clan mates, and asked them how long, in their estimation, it takes to kill a normal enemy in a Kuva Flood or third sortie, and out of approximately 15 responses there was not a single person who responded they thought it took 1 second or longer. Every response was some variety of "half a second" or "under a second".

I'm making this about "extremely short fights" because that's what the game is actually made up of. If you haven't experienced that, then I suggest you actually go play Warframe for once; it's more fun than arguing on the forums, that's for sure.

 

Except that no, it does matter. The enemies, individually, are not very strong - sure - but there are a whole lot of them. Warframe is a horde shooter. That's what it is. It may not have been DE's intent for it to turn out that way, but the ship has sailed on that horizon I'm afraid. A weapon that takes a second to kill what another weapon takes half a second to kill - sure, it's only half a second, until you're staring down thirty enemies and now it's fifteen seconds.

 

An "AoE" weapon that has better per target DPS than most of the beam weapons in the game. Maybe that's unbalanced, I don't really care, but the Ignis Wraith when properly built is solidly in the top half of beam weapons in terms of damage output. Put, say, the Phage there, which has slightly less damage output and no AoE gimmick, and suddenly the beam weapon is just garbage in comparison to a hitscan weapon. Can it get the job done? Yes, it could. Would I ever recommend the Phage with the current beam weapon mechanics? No, no I wouldn't, not unless the only thing you're ever going to use it for is killing level 150 bombards in the simulacrum.

As I said, the calculations doesnt matter in the content that you describe or try to argue around, that is the whole point. The majority of the game is horde slaughter, the ramp up wont matter because things are dead before it even gets to its full effect. You make an issue around something that simply doesnt exsist except on paper. This goes directly to your next paragraph aswell, you simply dont bring a single target gun to a horde slaughter if you wanna clear things as fast as possible. If you do, the ramp up time is the least of your concern in those cases either way, since it will slaughter them one-by-one faster than the ramp up reaches its maximum. So again it is a trivial issues for the sake of paper values.

And regarding Phage, well that is a weapon-to-weapon thing, not every weapon is golden in this game, many are just a polished turd. So since each family has one or more weapons all those families and their mechanics are trash? That atleast seems to be how you reason.

So there really is no situation in the game where the ramp up will be a negative effect since either the fights are so short that it will never reach its peak or they are long enough for the ramp up to have minimal impact on total dps.

[Khift]

8 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

So there really is no situation in the game where the ramp up will be a negative effect since either the fights are so short that it will never reach its peak or they are long enough for the ramp up to have minimal impact on total dps.

I'm gonna be honest - I'm not convinced you understand how the beam weapon ramp up mechanic works.

Can you explain to me in your own words how it works? Because either you're misunderstanding the crux of the problem, or you're deliberately ignoring the argument I'm making, and I'd like to know which. Statements like this one I've quoted, in the context of how the ramp-up mechanic actually works, is just so ridiculously incorrect in every way that I have to assume you're misunderstanding how it's working.

Edited February 26, 2018 by Khift

[SweatyFalcon]

Quanta Vandal and Ignis Wraith with both corrosive builds are ver y strong 

Especially with Mirage

[GhostLacuna]

43 minutes ago, rune_me said:

I think you missed the point. The video you linked to was just after the beam rework. 24 hours later, there were a hotfix that changed the ramp up damage from being from you fired the weapon, to being per target ramp up, which somewhat affected the way they caused damage. Hence the video you linked to is no longer relevant (it was in fact only relevant for about 24 hours).

Beam weapons are still useful and really good, but you should ignore all those videos released by all the streamers right after the rework.

And you missed the fact that several follow up videos that where made after said ramp up change still show beam weapon dealing huge amounts of damage and destroying armor like nothing. 

Also aiming is hardly an issue for many of us that grew up with arena shooters. It was a core requirement to master beam weapons back then. 

Are they scaled down from the first iteration yes, are they trash now? hardly since the worst thing that ever happened to beam weapons (status per sec) was removed.

[rune_me]

3 minutes ago, GhostLacuna said:

And you missed the fact that several follow up videos that where made after said ramp up change still show beam weapon dealing huge amounts of damage and destroying armor like nothing. 

How did I miss that? 

Let me quote myself:

51 minutes ago, rune_me said:

Beam weapons are still useful and really good

 

[AbstractKazzy]

For one day, many beam weapons were good. After that day they were nerfed back to "Trash with a few exceptions" tier.

[Xarian]

The thing about beam weapons is that, in general, they are relatively strong against high-level enemies and relatively weak against low-level enemies. If you are killing enemies in one or two shots from a machine gun, beam weapons will slow you down (because of the ramp). If it takes you 5-10 bullets to kill an enemy, though, then beam weapons will go faster (because of their high stats).

The Ignis and Amprex deserve special mention, here, because their huge AOE makes up for the damage ramp against low-level enemies. They are (slightly) weaker against high-level enemies, though.

The Flux Rifle is a good example. It's okay against low-level enemies, but nothing special - and it's going to be slower than something like a Sybaris Prime. But against high level Grineer, the Flux Rifle melts faces and easily competes with other good weapons.

[Unus]

22 minutes ago, Xarian said:

The thing about beam weapons is that, in general, they are relatively strong against high-level enemies and relatively weak against low-level enemies. If you are killing enemies in one or two shots from a machine gun, beam weapons will slow you down (because of the ramp). If it takes you 5-10 bullets to kill an enemy, though, then beam weapons will go faster (because of their high stats).

The Ignis and Amprex deserve special mention, here, because their huge AOE makes up for the damage ramp against low-level enemies. They are (slightly) weaker against high-level enemies, though.

The Flux Rifle is a good example. It's okay against low-level enemies, but nothing special - and it's going to be slower than something like a Sybaris Prime. But against high level Grineer, the Flux Rifle melts faces and easily competes with other good weapons.

Huh. . . So I should be testing the Flux on Gunners and bombards instead of their fodder underlings for best results?

[Xarian]

1 minute ago, Unus said:

Huh. . . So I should be testing the Flux on Gunners and bombards instead of their fodder underlings for best results?

Yes, and make sure to aim for headshots, since accuracy is one of the main strengths of a beam weapon. Corrosive with high status % drains armor really quickly.

[Unus]

1 hour ago, Xarian said:

Yes, and make sure to aim for headshots, since accuracy is one of the main strengths of a beam weapon. Corrosive with high status % drains armor really quickly.

Oh, you don't have to worry about headshots for me suh, me and my Ms. Cyc have been head-shotting for as long as we've been together, I've made it a habit since my old Timesplitters days to go noggin trepannin. Corrosive should be solved by my "Synapse Emulation" build though, so, looks like I might be able to get all three in one go then.

[cookieknife]

Only the usable ones which is like 3 lol

[SneakyErvin]

19 hours ago, Khift said:

I'm gonna be honest - I'm not convinced you understand how the beam weapon ramp up mechanic works.

Can you explain to me in your own words how it works? Because either you're misunderstanding the crux of the problem, or you're deliberately ignoring the argument I'm making, and I'd like to know which. Statements like this one I've quoted, in the context of how the ramp-up mechanic actually works, is just so ridiculously incorrect in every way that I have to assume you're misunderstanding how it's working.

Simply put it takes 1 second for the weapons to reach maximum damage, this is reset whenever "channeled" damage is not done to the target. So a weapon like ignis which may cover say 10 targets with the "beam" will have 10 seperate ramp ups and fall offs. Again this is a mechanic for beam weapons to make up for zero spread and recoil.

This one sec ramp up has no impact on avarage fights since they are simply so short that the pre-ramp up damage is enough to kill them in the same amount of time it takes other weapons. And in long fights it is not much of an impact because the ramp up times will equal a very low drop in dps, unless of course you are far to undergeared and need to dodge each 0.5 to 1 sec of the fight, at which point you will be in constant ramp up.

[(PSN)Chymick006]

Aside from Amprex and Opticor, I'm not a fan of beam weapons.

Amprex just cleans rooms and Opticor is literally:

[Guest]

Well, I still bring my Cycron all places. Not only did I put loads of effort into it till it could be sortie 2 viable pre buff, now it happily kills everything in Kuva Flood and Sortie 3 (because of the effort put in to roll for an OK riven). It is also a nice plug in charger for Antimatter Drop.

But some of the other beam guns aren't doing so good. Mainly issues with terrible ammo efficiency and all. Cycron was made to ignore ammo problems.

[Tora.Prime]

I do, now scale really good

[KotoKuraken]

Simply put, the tl;dr of this thread is

"On paper it's bad, but in the field it's pretty good"

The main things with the changed beam weapons:

-They are significantly better than they were

-Scale incredibly well. It takes around the same time or less as other top tier weapons to kill lvl 150+

-The ramp up time doesn't even matter until you come across a lvl 150+ enemy, and by the time it ramps up they are dead

Verdict for beam weapons: godly

[Educated_Beast]

I have to agree here.  Sure they are better than before but that is not saying much.  Hit scan weapons are still the way to go.  I have an awesome riven for glaxion and it has 7 forma on it.  It kills much slower than so many other weapons available to me. By the time I have one down, my vulkar wraith can have 3-5 of them down, more if they are in a line.  

Yes it is usable, but no, I do not use it.  I'm not sure why so many people are coming to the defense of this nerf, they are not in games.  Sure there is the occasional ignis / amprex player, people do things for different reasons, but if you want to get in and out as fast as possible causing as much damage as possible, don't bring a beam weapon.  

The aoe beam weapons should have been targeted, not the entire class of weapons.  

[Shozanakh]

I enjoy my Atomos and Ignis very much, both become Sortie level viable weapons. I don't feel any problems with damage ramp up.

[ThorienKELL]

Ignis, amprex and atomos were actually always fairly decent but albeit bit "anemic". Now they are fully fledged badass weapons. Quanta vandal, synapse and gammacor are good/great now too. Good weapons have been pushed to great category, while crappy became at least usable. Most of my beam weapons have rivens and several formas from before so some changes are hard to judge for me maybe. But still, nobody can dispute this was major buff. More options - always good thing.