Rebuilding Damage - Vaporizing Armor, Overkill, And Drilling

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Right now, the devs are looking into modifying the way that resistances work to attempt to defeat the current meta of "build rainbow if not crit, build crit if crit."  One build to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.  I've seen a lot of good suggestions to things and I'd like to incorporate a few things of my own.  Let's begin by reviewing what exactly the current issues are:

 

1. AI weapons in all their forms (Physics Impact, Serrated Blade, Poison, and Armor Piercing) are dominant in the lategame because armor levels skyrocket and thus normal weapons which were previously balanced with AI weapons are now no longer.

 

2. High-RoF weapons are ammo inefficient and due to their mechanics cannot function at lategame without exorbitant use of ammo packs.  Thus, they have difficulty competing.

 

3. Sniper weapons, while incredibly powerful against single targets, have very little ability to kill hordes quickly and so have a hard time fitting into Warframe's "charge through and murder everything" playstyle.

 

4. Extreme accuracy is not rewarded; the only accuracy rewards are weak points (relatively large) and Sonar Splotches (even larger)

 

As such, I propose the following changes.

 

Vaporizing Armor

Others have suggested that as you damage armor, it will degrade locally until failing.  While I in a way support this, I request that it be made the property of laser damage.  On each hit, for every four points of raw laser damage (before mitigation) to health, reduce armor by 1.  What this does is gives a secondary to laser weapons (right now, just the Dera, though I'd like to see the Supra with it too) that greatly helps the team if you have mixed weaponry.  It also gives reason to make laser elemental mods.  Perhaps something like..  

 

Incinerating Light [Rifle] [uncommon]

Max Rank 4

Starting Cost: 4

+8% laser damage per rank (max 40%)

+1 cost per rank (max 9)

 

This mod also gives existing weapons the capacity to assist in this regard as well.  With this, conventional weapons shall last much longer, especially when used as a team.  Also to note, this would occur after any multiplicative resistance modifiers such as Corrosive Projection or the idea of Crush halving enemy armor and this mechanism cannot make armor go negative.  When used collectively on a team, enemy armor could be much more manageable.

 

Overkill

I have seen suggestions that sniper weapons ought to receive a unique mechanic that can allow their overkill damage to damage the target behind the main target, that is, that if the main target is killed, the enemy behind it takes some fraction of the extra damage.  If it dies, the enemy behind it takes overkill damage.  I fully support this and propose it be incorporated as the following two mods:

 

Self-Sharpening Rounds [sniper] [Rare]

Max Rank: 5

Starting Cost: 5

+0.1 puncture (max 0.6)

+15% overkill damage to target in bullet path (max 90%)

+1 cost per rank (max 10)

 

Shattering Shells [sniper] [Rare]

Max Rank: 5

Starting Cost: 5

+2% Serrated Blade Damage (max 10%)

+15% overkill damage as 5-pellet shotgun effect (3% each) (max 90%, 18% per pellet)

+1 cost per rank (max 10)

 

These mods would help skilled snipers line up devastating shots.  Also, yes, Overkill damage stacks with puncture damage.

 

Drilling

Right now, there's not a whole lot of incentive to be overly accurate.  Sure, you have the aforementioned headshots and Sonar spots, but neither of those is that hard to hit with an accurate weapon.  What I propose then is that every shot on a target leaves a mark.  I'm just talking a little decal of a bullet hole/dent, similar to what you see on walls.  It lasts for three seconds.  If a successive round damages the same location, the damage is amplified by 20% of the damage of the first shot (not counting elemental damage) as Physics Impact damage.  These effects cannot be triggered by an extra shot by multishot, though multishot can assist by increasing the number of these decals on the target.  The effects can stack additively.  The marks of one player can be exploited by another player.  Though both shields and health can be drilled, marks left on the shield when it pops have no impact on damage to health.

 

Assume it happened on the Dera.  Because its multishot is literally on top of the original projectile, the target would receive two marks in the same location.  If a successive shot damage one of those locations, the target would take 40% extra damage from the first of the two shots.  If another hit, the target would take 60% because the two bolts from the second firing would also leave marks which stack.

 

This does a couple things:

 

1. Extreme accuracy is heavily rewarded.  If you can land multiple hits in the same location, you will receive bonus damage.  The more rapidly you can do this, the more you are rewarded.

 

2. This opens the door for "suppression" weapons.  By coating the target in bullets with your Gorgon/Supra/Grakata/Twin Vipers, you are leaving dozens of marks that other players can capitalize on.  True, it will largely be by chance, but if one of your allies hits a mark, it's going to make the enemy hurt.  Enemy AI's could even have a drilling event built into them so that they react defensively to when they are being suppressed by this activity.

 

Hopefully these changes would encourage player cooperation as well as address the above issues.  Thoughts?

[_Absolom_]

+1

[Ganpot]

Vaporizing Armor

Others have suggested that as you damage armor, it will degrade locally until failing.  While I in a way support this, I request that it be made the property of laser damage.  On each hit, for every four points of raw laser damage (before mitigation) to health, reduce armor by 1.  What this does is gives a secondary to laser weapons (right now, just the Dera, though I'd like to see the Supra with it too) that greatly helps the team if you have mixed weaponry.  It also gives reason to make laser elemental mods.  Perhaps something like..  

 

Incinerating Light [Rifle] [uncommon]

Max Rank 4

Starting Cost: 4

+8% laser damage per rank (max 40%)

+1 cost per rank (max 9)

 

This mod also gives existing weapons the capacity to assist in this regard as well.  With this, conventional weapons shall last much longer, especially when used as a team.  Also to note, this would occur after any multiplicative resistance modifiers such as Corrosive Projection or the idea of Crush halving enemy armor and this mechanism cannot make armor go negative.  When used collectively on a team, enemy armor could be much more manageable.

 

Making this exclusive to lasers would make them too powerful (at least against Ancients and Grineer).  Besides, a laser damage type shouldn't even exist.  Lasers are just made up of heat.  So why don't they inflict fire damage (or even electrical damage, if the projectiles are really shaped electric expulsions)?

 

Overkill

I have seen suggestions that sniper weapons ought to receive a unique mechanic that can allow their overkill damage to damage the target behind the main target, that is, that if the main target is killed, the enemy behind it takes some fraction of the extra damage.  If it dies, the enemy behind it takes overkill damage.  I fully support this and propose it be incorporated as the following two mods:

 

Self-Sharpening Rounds [sniper] [Rare]

Max Rank: 5

Starting Cost: 5

+0.1 puncture (max 0.6)

+15% overkill damage to target in bullet path (max 90%)

+1 cost per rank (max 10)

 

Shattering Shells [sniper] [Rare]

Max Rank: 5

Starting Cost: 5

+2% Serrated Blade Damage (max 10%)

+15% overkill damage as 5-pellet shotgun effect (3% each) (max 90%, 18% per pellet)

+1 cost per rank (max 10)

 

These mods would help skilled snipers line up devastating shots.  Also, yes, Overkill damage stacks with puncture damage.

 

It would make more sense to just give snipers innate puncture (like .4 meters or something).  They are supposed to be high caliber rounds, after all. 

 

Drilling

Right now, there's not a whole lot of incentive to be overly accurate.  Sure, you have the aforementioned headshots and Sonar spots, but neither of those is that hard to hit with an accurate weapon.  What I propose then is that every shot on a target leaves a mark.  I'm just talking a little decal of a bullet hole/dent, similar to what you see on walls.  It lasts for three seconds.  If a successive round damages the same location, the damage is amplified by 20% of the damage of the first shot (not counting elemental damage) as Physics Impact damage.  These effects cannot be triggered by an extra shot by multishot, though multishot can assist by increasing the number of these decals on the target.  The effects can stack additively.  The marks of one player can be exploited by another player.  Though both shields and health can be drilled, marks left on the shield when it pops have no impact on damage to health.

 

Assume it happened on the Dera.  Because its multishot is literally on top of the original projectile, the target would receive two marks in the same location.  If a successive shot damage one of those locations, the target would take 40% extra damage from the first of the two shots.  If another hit, the target would take 60% because the two bolts from the second firing would also leave marks which stack.

 

There are 3 problems with this idea.  Firstly, this would make Multishot exceptionally overpowered, while also buffing accurate weapons (and nerfing inaccurate ones).  Secondly, most enemies move way too unpredictably and quickly to land pin-point precision shots on them through anything other than luck.  This would be infuriating in practice.  Thirdly, I highly doubt this game can run the necessary calculations to record every bullet impact on dozens of potential enemies at once as they move around, while sending that data from the host to clients in real time.  This would almost certainly lead to massive frame drops and extreme lag. 

Edited August 16, 2013 by Ganpot

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Making this exclusive to lasers would make them too powerful (at least against Ancients and Grineer).  Besides, a laser damage type shouldn't even exist.  Lasers are just made up of heat.  So why don't they inflict fire damage (or even electrical damage, if the projectiles are really shaped electric expulsions)?

 

 

It would make more sense to just give snipers innate puncture (like .4 meters or something).  They are supposed to be high caliber rounds, after all. 

 

 

There are 3 problems with this idea.  Firstly, this would make Multishot exceptionally overpowered, while also buffing accurate weapons (and nerfing inaccurate ones).  Secondly, most enemies move way too unpredictably and quickly to land pin-point precision shots on them through anything other than luck.  This would be infuriating in practice.  Thirdly, I highly doubt this game can run the necessary calculations to record every bullet impact on dozens of potential enemies at once as they move around, while sending that data from the host to clients in real time.  This would almost certainly lead to massive frame drops and extreme lag. 

Personally, I'd wish they'd rename laser to plasma, but that's another issue entirely.

 

I've thought about the idea of making it innate, but I figured modding could be a better solution to it.

 

Why would MS be OP after this?  And I know it's often unpredictable, but it wouldn't be absurd.  As for the frame drops, you're probably right about that.

[Halofreakalex]

The first idea is good, but it unbalances the game again and doesn't solve the meta problem.

The second I think should be implemented immediately as part of the sniper mechanic, as well snipers are suppose to be high powered.

And the last, while good is highly impractical. The amount of data being transferred would kill some internet connections....

[Ganpot]

Why would MS be OP after this?  And I know it's often unpredictable, but it wouldn't be absurd. 

 

Multi-shot calculations take place after other elemental damage modifiers, which is why multi-shot is so important at endgame.  For example, if you equip a +90% fire damage mod and a +60% ice damage mod, those effects are additive.  The end result is a +150% increase in damage (assuming no enemy resistances).  But a multi-shot mod is multiplicative.  So adding a 100% multi-shot mod on top of those two leads to a +300% increase in damage, plus double the base weapon damage. 

 

On top of that, your idea would be adding in a +20% base damage any time multi-shot activated (since the bullets would usually land on the same spot).  The current multi-shot chance for pistols is 180%, so most of the time there would be a +40% damage bonus. 

[Volt_Cruelerz]

I am well aware how MS works. I fail to see how it would be OP. I said it could leave marks but not get bonus damage from them. Also, for things outside of a select few weapons, the MS round will not go to the same place.

Edited August 16, 2013 by Volt_Cruelerz

[Ganpot]

I fail to see how it would be OP. I said it could leave marks but not get bonus damage from them. Also, for things outside of a select few weapons, the MS round will not go to the same place.

 

Assume it happened on the Dera.  Because its multishot is literally on top of the original projectile, the target would receive two marks in the same location.  If a successive shot damage one of those locations, the target would take 40% extra damage from the first of the two shots.  If another hit, the target would take 60% because the two bolts from the second firing would also leave marks which stack.

 

Sure, the first extra projectiles won't benefit from the extra damage.  But players will be able to build up those damage markers twice (or three times) as fast as normal.  Thus: my conclusion that it would be OP.  

[Depar]

how would +10% serrated blade dmg affect lanka? same as normal pierce dmg?

 

but i like the idea of a shattering shell, thunderbolt for sniper