Sometimes the app is infuriating. I am starting a new job, working there on my days off until my notice at my current gig is up… And tonight I get the notice that Corrosive Projection is up on alert. And then Oxium. Dammit!
Dont worry, I missed out on both of them…!! rats.
CP is a must have for a lot of stuff still, so it really sucks when you don’t get it.
18.3 patch hit on PC and added passive abilities to most of the warframes, the MAG and the VOLT also got a nice rework… Especially cool is how the Volt Electricity Shield now can be picked up (by Volt) and used as a Riot shield, and you can ‘infuse it’ with extra damage by shooting lighthing at it! The speedboost from Volt is now a pickup for each player in the party as well, instead of being a “applied immediately” AND the vision skew you had when you used it is now milder.
There’s also a 2 x Affinity boost during the weekend, so its time to level up those weapons you’ve been saving, or perhaps put on a potato or two to make the flavour of the month weapon even better.
(Oh yea, the Affinity boost also works for FOCUS it seems, so it is a good way to get one more unlock…)
Now all I need is a pre-made Draco team that could do it 4-5 times and I’d be at the Focus ‘ceiling’ for the day.
Been playing a bit with using the Elemental buffs lately, and reading a bit about it. It seems that a well balanced team could do so much extra damage, it really is a shame that when you mostly play with randoms nobody is bothering with these things.
Oh yea, a lot of high level viability for certain frames got nerfed into the ground with this patch, but if you’re mostly casual fighting level 1-40-50 mobs, you should be ok.
Supposedly with Update 19 (sometime…) they’ll be looking into the ridiculous scaling of enemies in armor, shield, health, weapon damage as they go above level 80 and into the 100s… Which might also mean that you could start doing Sorties without having to bring one of just a few frames, so you could actually play the frame you wanted.
Despite how much I play this (an hour or two a day, most days), I’m still firmly in the ‘casual’ camp. That said, I do have some effective builds for most situations, and I’m having fun with the various systems and quests as I find and unlock them. I think the only quest I haven’t completed is the Mirage quest, and having to run Derelicts with the hope that you can unlock the vault… no thanks. Though, that’s looking more viable now I’ve got Inaros and can basically carry the key without penalty.
I’m liking the absolutely batshit alerts this weekend. I almost solo’d the first- got down to Wave 2 with my Frost, then got overwhelmed by two bursas and a Hyena at the same time. Beat it later with a group. Might have been able to get through the one today solo, but was actually dragged down by the randoms it paired me with. Beat it solid with a group next try. I’m looking forward to tomorrow to see if I can solo the 30-minute survival with Valkyr…
Mirage is still great for high-level content. She won’t be able to single-handedly trivialize trials anymore though.
Not sure how hard Valkyr was hit. I haven’t logged her in to see how much the energy drain was increased. I’d choose Inaros over her in most situations anyway.
Any details on how DE will address enemy scaling? They were supposed to address armor scaling with Armor 2.0, which morphed into Damage 2.0 and didn’t really solve anything.
The issue with frame viability is that damage-dealing powers don’t scale at all; while the CC, buff/debuff, and utility powers generally don’t have scaling issues. I guess changes to enemy scaling could address that. DE has made it clear that they don’t want frame damage to overshadow weapon damage though.
IMO sorties are in a pretty good place in terms of difficulty, so I’d hate to see that reduced much. Hopefully they’re not trying to balance around the ‘endless’ missions. That was a half-baked concept from the start.
Well, if you’ve got 3 T4D/S/I keys you kinda want to stay there as long as possible to get that last Prime part you’re missing, but for most pugs that means exiting after 30-40 minutes etc, simply due to the massive damage you’re taking - with your own damage having less and less impact. With more frame damages now being switched from a % to a fixed number, that means that after a certain enemy level you’re not able to continue anymore - no matter how many potatoes you put on your frame/gun/sentinel (Everyone uses carrier anyway…).
Sure, back in the days of Mesa/GreedyMAG on T4D you were pretty much just standing there and waiting for those two to kill everything, but T4D was pretty much always a ‘farm until you get bored’ type of deal anyway. If they move it to the new defence where you’re trying to keep a NPC alive who keeps running around I wonder how long you can do T4D then…
One of the problems with the sorties is that they do not give you “completion” rewards for the mission, only if you do all 3 sorites. Say you do a flawless SPY mission with level 80 enemies… do you get a “Spy” reward (Rare Mod or similar) – nope, but you get a chance to perhaps get a Minor Focus for a faction you dont want, after doing 1 hour of “content” and completing the daily sortie. The “RISK”/“DIFFICULTY” to “REWARD” ratio on Sorties is way off - and because of ridiculous level scaling on mobs compared to your own frame and the “nerf” to certain frames viability, it just becomes a chore.
A few days ago I believe the third Sortie was a mobile defense mission vs. Grineer. Think Nullifiers, Frost shields, Energy Drain, Boomers. Sorties as you know can be randomly queued and as such you have nearly no choice on group composition. Which means you pick the frame you “think” you might need for it, and hope the other 3 guys bring something of equal value to the table. So there we have it, a Trinity for EV/Blessing (pre-nerf), A Frost, and two randoms. By the end of the mission I had used 3 self-revives (As Trinity) because almost everything could one-two shot me, and as soon as the Frost bubble disappeared we were toast. The rest of the party didn’t fare much better (I had 5 revives on my tracker, and I believe for the others it was 4, 3, 3). I also ran out of primary weapon ammo trying to kill the bastards - also ran through 10 large team energy restores and a few health pads… It has “always” been a problem with the game that certain frames are much better at doing content than others, but instead of fixing the core problem they are reducing those frames viability at said content – which means nobody can do that content anymore.
If they are moving everything to LOS I’d like them to do that with nullifiers, auras and drains.
The content isn’t “difficult” or “challenging” if your chosen frame can get one-shot by everything, and your return damage from class abilities or weapon fire is to have to empty the clip to kill the target and watching your main abilities do almost no damage at all…Sure you can CC, except half the map is covered with nullifiers. Of course, they want you to use synergy abilities to boost the rest of the party, but how often do you see that being used in PUG content. That is why you ‘needed’ some of the cheese frames to ensure that the PUG group could do a 60 minute survival instead of having to run away after 40 minutes. Alternatively they might as well have most of the missions automatically end once you hit level 100 enemies.
Would be interesting to try the raid after the change. Having a 50m range on Trinity heal and much reduced blessing will for most maps mean some people will die a lot more.
I did play it when it came out as a EV/Blessing Trinity and it was hectic… and we ultimately failed. I tried it a few more times and we could never get it done - not to mention how the matchmaking for it was nearly broken. I am pretty sure that with the most recent change and a typical PUG it can not be done at all. And I would suspect that there is a very small number of players who did do it on Nightmare, and most of them can not do it at all any more.
Oh well, I’ll still be doing “Casual” content with my frames, because I do not have the group to go higher… and now it seems I’ll never be able to get “higher” tier content even if I did find the right group…
No idea how they will do DAMAGE 3.0/Scaling. There was some discussion on the Warframe forums regarding it, but 70% of the posts were negative feedback to 18.3 and the other 30% were people ridiculing the other 70%. :)
Wow. I’m super glad to be a casual. All of that doesn’t interest me at all. I like getting new stuff, trying it out, changing my playstyle to accommodate. Much like Destiny, I’ll probably never do a raid. But this seems to always have something new around the corner.
The alert today was pretty much a snooze with Valkyr solo. Eh. Easy new dual-pistols (w/catalyst & slot!), though. Most of the plat I’ve bought has gone to slots. Fair enough.
Yes. their change should makes “casual” (i.e. probably the majority, and definitively anyone picking up the game) games more fun, for example having the riot shield on the volt is probably pretty cool in low/medium level content.
Here is a video of how a Interception mission vs level 100 mobs looks like now:
on 2m10s I hardly do any damage vs the mobs with my weapons.
or even better at 3m45s —
at 11m10s you will see how the map is ‘locked’ down by a banshee CC ability (I bet this is the next one to be nerfed)
Mind you; I didn’t have the “best” frame for the job.
(Also notice the Valkyr I think, kills everything :) )
That video doesn’t exactly make the best case for sortie missions being too hard, lol!
Probably could have picked a stonger weapon loadout. Radiation damage is weak versus infested, and puncture damage is just average. Eximus mobs are tougher than normal too. FWIW I was 1- or 2-shotting lvl 100 grineer with a lex prime on today’s assassination mission.
About that mission: I went in solo with Loki, as I am wont to do. Made it to the last boss stage, but I couldn’t do enough damage to overcome his regen. The fight turned into a stalemate, so I just aborted.
I sat at the arsenal screen for a couple of minutes, thinking about which frame might be more helpful, and selected Nova. Molecular Prime is awesome at making crowds of low-level enemies explode, but it’s also a nice debuff versus high-level enemies as it slows them down and increases their vulnerability to damage. I was looking more at Antimatter Drop though. It can do a ton of damage if it’s charged up (by shooting at it), but I’ve rarely used the ability.
I did a quick test run on Oro to see if I could land AM Drop on Hek, and to see if M-Prime even works on him. M-Prime worked, with a reduced duration. Hek still moved around quickly though, so AM Drop was a little tricky to land. I was able to 2-shot his final form with it though. That worked. But even against the level 20-25 mobs on Oro I was taking a lot of damage, so there was no way I was going to solo the sortie mission.
I entered the pub queue, and join a team with a Loki and an Inaros. I was a little concerned about the Loki at first, but he was cool. He was using an Irradiating Disarm build, so he disarmed and confused the mobs while I slowed them to a crawl. The Inaros player took much of the aggro from Hek and had to be revived two or three times, but it worked out great. I was able to land a few AM Drops, and we beat the hell out of Hek.
And my reward was a part for a weapon that I already own.
But the crappy reward is not the point. The sortie mission was hard enough that I couldn’t just take any loadout and roflstomp my way through it. I had to think about my choices, and move a little outside of my comfort zone (I tend to use invis-spec Loki a lot). I might even be a better player than I was when I logged in today.
That’s what I like about the sortie missions. That’s why I think they’re in a good place difficulty-wise.
Is there a secret to “getting good” as it were? I got matched into a couple games with other people around MR2 (my current rank) and it feels like they’re doing laps around me wrt damage. Is it all based on upgrading and equipping the right mods? My mod set is still extremely limited so if I know it’s a gear issue I’ll work on fleshing that out a bit.
Short answer: yes. You need more stuff. Proper equipment, and mods to put in it.
Long answer: I had a few problems with the game (documented a few pages back) when I started last fall. First was the comparatively slow rollout of equipment at the beginning. You get to choose a Frame, and one of each weapon- but aren’t given any real info on what these choices mean. You then have to stay with those choices for quite a while, and their effectiveness in various situations can be mediocre.
This compounds the problem of how opaque the systems are. Damage 2.0? If you look into it, it makes sense eventually, but if you don’t actually have any equipment to capitalize on it, you’re SOL. Very few of these things are as spelled out in-game, but there are copious online resources to get you up to speed.
All that said, however, it isn’t just what you have, but how you use it, too. Playing your Frame effectively isn’t just the mods you stack in it, but knowing what the powers actually do, and how they interact with everything else, and then doing the right things at the right times.
The loading tips when you start a mission are quite handy, they didn’t have them when I started.
There is a lot of synergies to be had between the various frames.
For example my Banshee ability might put a little targetable area on each enemy, and if friendlies hit that, they might do 3-4x the damage they usually do.
If a Rhino has used his buff ability and I then use my banshee scream, I believe it will be a lot higher, etc.
You also have weapon mods that give for example TOXIC damage that some enemies are vulnerable against, and then you can mix Toxic with another type of damage to create new options.
I use that web page quite a bit to check out stuff :)
I have also struggled with getting good at Warframe. I solo 99% of the time (except for some Lotus Gift missions) and once and awhile you kind of hit an undocumented difficulty wall. It can get frustrating because there is no clear “kill level 1 stuff, level up, get better gear, kill level 2 stuff, etc…” path.
For me the first wall was probably based on standing still too much. I was trying to play it like a cover shooter and it really didn’t work much past Venus. Constant movement, sprint, slide, bullet jump is key. I also stopped trying to shoot everyone and picked up a new melee weapon, I would suggest getting an Orthos. A lot of the time the best defense is to slaughter everyone. Quickly close to melee range and swing away. I think it is just fantastic game design. Warframe is not a game about space ninjas with guns tacked onto a MMO skin. You really have to play like a space ninja or you die.
Other things to think about or “mistakes I made for a long long long time”:
Mods are key. Both increasing the rank on your mods and picking up new ones. While there are variations on starting stats for weapon damage and Frame survivability but they are not as great as in other games. The real key is to only use mods that play to the strengths of the starting stats. Most of the mods are percentage based, so + 30% crit on weapon with a starting crit rate of 10 is less efficient that on a weapon with a 20 starting crit rate. Same is true for frames; Mag has great starting shields but crap armor. Steel Fiber will help a tiny bit but is it worth the capacity cost? I think I spent 100 hours with Steel Fiber, Redirection, Vitality and Fast Deflection on every single build. Once you start acquiring more mod options it is not worth wasting capacity in that way.
Elemental Damage is the way to go. Do not mess with +% dmg to enemy type X at all and only use +puncture/slash/impact when it coincides with the above tip. Don’t use + Puncture, even against Grineer on an Orthos.
It can get frustrating because there is no clear “kill level 1 stuff, level up, get better gear, kill level 2 stuff, etc…” path. I am by no means an expert, I have only unlocked up to Uranus and used Rhino as a crutch for most of Jupiter and Saturn but I feel I have recently gotten a bit better. Researched and Built Amprex, farmed Orthos Prime (I just love polearms), got some cool new mods from derelict missions and transmuting nightmare mode drops, etc. Don’t give up, because once you get over a difficulty wall in Warframe a whole host of fun awaits.
It’s all about the mods. When you start steroiding your mods up (and the right ones), then the gameplay gels into a super-fun, furious, insanely kinetic experience.
Before that point, while you’re still a schlub with only a couple of good mods with 3 or 4 pips in them, the gameplay is fun enough to keep you engaged, but it doesn’t quite sing. teh mods are the key to unlocking the Warframe experience proper (so to speak), with both weapons and warframes.
Then the game becomes all about murdering with style. (And incremental steps towards perfect min-maxing.)
Just to expound on this: elemental damage mods look at a weapon’s total base damage for their calculations, while physical damage mods only look at a weapon’s base damage of the same type as the mod.
For example, an unmodded Orthos does 50 total damage: 35 slashing, 7.5 puncture, and 7.5 impact. If you dropped in a mod that gives +60% cold damage, it would add 30 cold damage to the weapon (50*.6). if you added a mod that gives +60% puncture damage, it would add only 4.5 damage puncture damage (7.5*.6).
IIRC most of the obtainable physical damage mods only go up to +60%, while elemental damage mods can go as high as +90%, so those physical mods have two strikes against them. Outside of rare specific situations, those mods aren’t worth using over other options.
There are some rare physical damage mods that can give up to +120%, and can be worth using in weapons which do mostly that damage type. They were originally event-only mods, but I think the void trader will occasionally sell them now.
Thanks for the tips – I ended up buying a Strun, Lex, and crafting Dual Ethers to help raise my MR and have to say they’re faring a lot better than my old gear. Still trying to find the last piece to build Rhino (6 chassis blueprints so far…) which seems to be widely accepted as a solid frame to grab after your starter, but good to be set on the right path. The gunplay in this game is great, I just wish that there was more in-game guidance when you’re starting out.
This year’s Humble E3 digital ticket has a Warframe booster in the PWYW tier again – but this year it includes 75 plat along with the 7 day resource, affinity, and credit boosts. This works out really well for me as I was looking to add a few more weapon and frame slots.
Oh, time to grab one :)
Really getting pissed off by the matchmaking method in the game - for ALERTS.
Queue for an alert, instead of it just picking me as host and having people join me it starts looking for other hosts… and it ticks… and ticks, and after 4-10 seconds it will find a group.
Except it wont, and I’ll be immediately dropped and have to ‘requeue’… tick tick tick tick tick…
Then I’ll get into a group, but the host is just disconnecting, so you get dropped from the group again… more loading, then requeue and tick tick tick tick tick…
Then once you complete the mission, perhaps the host will disconnect as soon as you get the scoreboard, so more loading as the rest of the party are now moved to someone else before you too can ‘drop’ the party after a successful mission. I bet the loading time increased once they added how all the player ships are ‘gathered’ in space around your ship, so you can see theirs from your cockpit. I’d rather have LESS loading time and quicker network connections to a game than all this loading…
I know you can pick “Single Player”, “Friends only” and whatnot. But how about an option to:
START THE F’ING GAME AND LET OTHER PLAYERS JOIN ME IF THEY QUEUE AND DO NOT HAVE THE SAME OPTION SELECTED, SINCE I PROBABLY HAVE BOTH A BETTER COMPUTER AND BETTER NETWORK CONNECTION THAN THEY DO, DAMN SCRUBS.
Meanwhile I’ve found the best way is to just go into the “LFG” chat and announce that I am a taxi for the mission, and invite the first person that PM’s then start the mission… anyone else can join through the normal means.
So… An option to “If you cant find anyone to matchmake within 5 seconds (according to the ping settings I have selected) just make me a host and have others join me…” would be very much appreciated in the game…
:-)
So apparently they read my post earlier as the latest patch that also introduced a new PVP Mode (that I haven’t tried yet) akin to Speedball!! (We ALL scream for ice-cream!)
LUNARO -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnDZDnr_X9E
had these Matchmaking updates:
Improved matchmaking using world-position estimates; we hope this will accelerate squad searches and help you find hosts with less lag. Please note that we’re testing considerable improvements to this system that we expect to deploy early next week; thank you for your patience!
So, back to space-ninja-pew-pew!
Soon MR21.
Yea, the MR stuff they did earlier is kinda neat, when you get a new gun that starts at rank 0, if you are say Mastery Rank 15, you will already have ‘15’ points to spend on mods (or 30 if you put in a catalyst…) so get leveling!
Soon they will introduced a new massive quest AND yet another frame! (And I still need 2 Prime ones to get my collection completed…)
Warframe™ - The Gift that keeps on Gifting. (Even if pugs are sometimes idiots on Spy missions and Syndicate missions when they exit instead of picking up the 5000 rep item)