Status Mods, Shotgun Status, and The Mandatory Mod Debate

[Sintag]

Apologies for the long title.  Regardless, we need to have a nice talk about a lot of things going kinda wrong with regards to weapon balance.  Or, at least, we need to do something.  Given Melee's rework is incoming right around the corner, I figured now's as good a time to talk about this as any other, right?

I'll be using Spoilers to keep things organized, so let's begin with Mandatory Mods and Mod Adjustments

Spoiler

• Serration, Point Blank (And it's Primed counterpart), Hornet Strike, Pressure Point/Primed Pressure Point/Sacrificial Pressure are all removed from the game.  You'll be compensated Credits, Endo, and Ducats based on Rank and how many copies of the Primed damage mods you had, and Sacrificial Pressure will be replaced with Sacrificial Prowess.  Don't worry, there's still going to be a means of getting more damage into your weapons.
   
• As Weapons gain levels, their damage will increase;
  Rifles: Gain 18% more damage every 3 levels, capping at 180%.
  Pistols: Gain 20% more damage every 3 levels, capping at 200%.
  Shotguns: Due to two variants of the same Mod existing, I went and crunched numbers.  Shotguns gain 13% more damage every 3 levels, capping at 130%.
  Melee: Three variants.  Melee gains 15% more damage every 3 levels, capping at 150%.
   
• OTHER ADJUSTMENTS
• All 15% Status Mods are buffed to 90%.  May be changed if needed.  No additional cost.
  Sacrificial Prowess can go up to 110/130% Status Chance.
   
• Split Chamber buffed to 100% Multishot, starting at 20% instead of 15% and increasing by 20% each Rank.  No additional cost.
   
• Barrel Diffusion is now a 4-Rank Mod, capping at 100% Multishot (was 120%).  You will be compensated the Credits and Endo required to reach Rank 5.
   
• All 90% Cold Elemental Mods are - Polarity instead of D Polarity.
   
• Maiming Strike: Will no longer stack with Blood Rush.  Can now proc off of Charge Attacks as well as Slide Attacks.
   
• Hunter Munitions: Only triggers once a second.
   
• Lethal Torrent: Fire Rate increase buffed to 75%.  Multishot nerfed to 50%.  Ranks are unchanged.

Moving on, here's the elephant in the room: Shotgun Status.
If you don't know, Shotguns have a funny interaction with the Status system.  Normally, that chance is divided between every pellet in a burst, until the Status Chance hits 100%.  Then, every pellet in the burst procs an effect.  This is part of why the Tigris Prime is a monster (the other being the insanely high per-shot damage and therefore high Slash proc damage), and it also tends to boil Shotguns down to 'but can it reach 100% Status?'.  This isn't a healthy state for Shotguns to be in, and, again, it makes certain Shotguns massive outliers in their own curve, so to speak.  So here's a fix for that:

Spoiler

• Shotgun Status has been changed.  Now instead of proccing an effect with every pellet in the burst, 100% Status Chance means one pellet in the burst that connects with enemies will proc.  Sub-100% is applied similarly to rifles in that it increases the chance that one pellet in the burst, that hits at least one enemy before stopping, will proc, instead of dividing the chance across every pellet.
   
• Status Chance can exceed 100%.  This adds a chance for a second pellet to also proc a Status Effect.  This pellet must also hit an enemy.
   
• Primary Shotguns lose all damage beyond 40 meters (fizzles out, no damage/procs)
• The exceptions to the above rules are Arca Plasmor and Astila, due to their mechanics being different (one fires a giant slug-like wave, the other fires a glass slug that then shatters into an AoE
   
• Secondary Shotguns lose all damage beyond 30 meters (fizzles out, no damage/procs)

As always, let me know what you think.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Sintag

[rapt0rman]

TBH, what you're suggesting for shotguns would put them in an even worse spot then old status/sec beam weapons as far as status viability, they'd need hundreds of percents of status to be useful, and the complete damage fall off is pretty ridiculous and not really relevent.

Shotguns could function just fine simply by making it status-per-pellet (they've done it with weapons like the Quartakk and Akjagara already), with 100% functioning exactly as it does now, and adjusting the sub 100% status weapons accordingly. The only real problem is how steep the curve is at the moment, 1-99% being functionally packing peanuts compared to 100%. There's an entire untapped world of "viable" status chances between 1% and 100%, no need to go farther than that (unless DE ever decides to go the route of double procs).

Edited July 30, 2018 by rapt0rman

[Katinka]

That sounds weird for shotgun status.  I most use Vaykor Hek or Sobek when it comes to shotguns and neither of them are built for 100% status but I'll still often see multiple procs from a single shot.  Limiting it to 1 proc on 100% would probably give less procs on average than my current build that will sometimes give none, sometimes ~4 or somewhere in between.
The main issue I have with shotguns is that when playing as client all procs from a single shot are the same type while if I play solo or host I can get slash, impact and corrosive from a single shot, stripping armour, causing dots and stagger-locking.

As to mandatory mods, I'm in two minds as to whether they should change as I suspect they'll just get replaced with whateer mathematically gives the best increase to DPS, whatever is the current 9th best mod that doesn't quite fit.

[ShortCat]

Scaling weapon damage will not work in Warframe. Reasons:

1. This solution hands out maxed mods to everyone and defies progression as well as removes necessary Endo and Credit sinks.
2. Scaling damage is pointless, because you can level weapons passively, thus the player can skip the whole process (and DE repeatedly stated, they don't like such behaviour).
3. This will inevitebly promote even more passive leveling, as at lvl 0 it won't be possible to give weapons immediate damage boost via mods. It basically nerfes leveling process, especially for advanced Tenno.
4. Players end up with a nerfed version of the same gear, which feels luckluster. As an example look at how Frames are leveled atm: even with high MR it is pointless to install PS, Range or Duration mods on a lvl 0 Frame, because skills are locked AND have horrible stats to even take advantage of.

Better solution would be to redesign those mods and make them less mandatory. For example, Multishot could create additinal pellets, not bullets.

[Hyohakusha]

An overcomplicated nerf to shotguns that would require an overhaul of every weapon in the game. After DE ran passes on primary and secondary already. Not happening.

[torint_man]

I'm going to be covering stuff that isn't the shotgun status stuff.

5 hours ago, Sintag said:

Serration, Point Blank (And it's Primed counterpart), Hornet Strike, Pressure Point/Primed Pressure Point/Sacrificial Pressure are all removed from the game.

The problem with this is it gets rid of a significant progression aspect of the game. Suddenly there isn't a 40k endo and 1 million credit sink for rifles and secondaries and two other sinks of that size for shotguns and melee. Also, saving up a mod slot gives a bigger increase to effectiveness than you would think, as mods that effect stats different than one another effectively multiply eachother. The only way I could see such a thing being reasonable is if you had to invest on a weapon by weapon basis (think along the lines of forma and potatoes).

5 hours ago, Sintag said:

Barrel Diffusion is now a 4-Rank Mod, capping at 100% Multishot (was 120%).

No mods have 4 ranks, and I doubt DE is going to make mods that have other than 3, 5, or 10 ranks (besides coolant leak which has 0 ranks). Also I find this unnecessary, as the difference of the same mods between weapon types gives a little bit of flavor.

5 hours ago, Sintag said:

All 90% Cold Elemental Mods are - Polarity instead of D Polarity.

No. Otherwise this makes literally every build in existence be 4 V and 2 -. I would much rather the 60/60 mods be made into D polarities.

5 hours ago, Sintag said:

Hunter Munitions: Only triggers once a second.

Why? Hunter Munitions is not OP. I personally find adding a different mod to increase damage leads to similar kill times until beyond sortie 3 bar armor augmentation. Also, this unfairly nerfs its use in high rate of fire weapons and does literally nothing against sniper rifles. 

5 hours ago, Sintag said:

• Primary Shotguns lose all damage beyond 40 meters (fizzles out, no damage/procs)
• The exceptions to the above rules are Arca Plasmor and Astila, due to their mechanics being different (one fires a giant slug-like wave, the other fires a glass slug that then shatters into an AoE
   
• Secondary Shotguns lose all damage beyond 30 meters (fizzles out, no damage/procs)

Why? Because of the "Tigris prime best sniper" meme? Also, it is clearly intended for shotguns to be usable past these ranges, as they all have a falloff range with specific ranges and max damage lost values. Forcing a magical and universal "You are not allowed to use this entire class of weapons past X range" is asinine. Also, the mara detron's max falloff range is 30 meters and is clearly designed to be used past that range. Also, I find it hilarious that you are excluding the arca plasmor from that when in reality it fizzles out at 30 meters.

Also, this thread is too broad. It should have been two threads of your first half with general mods and second half with shotguns.