Damage attenuation is a good idea in theory but as this video shows it makes it so that everyone just tries to use mechanics to bypass it and the ones who don't are left with bullet sponges

I had never seen the word attenuation til warframe made it a mechanic. I’ll probably forget the meaning tomorrow, honestly

You can deal a significant chunk of damage with a shotgun with many pellets, because the ramp up is calculated per single fire rate instance. Thats why Kuva Hek with its quadra-barrel mechanic used to one-shot archons because all those calculations were done per pellet separately and Hek does very high crit per pellet. But that also means the damage cap will be reached with single shot - any subsequent shots will be very weak.

I'm thoroughly enjoying these "But Why?" videos. I've been getting more and more into Warframe after a many year hiatus.

Good explanation on a complicated topic, though I'd like to add that Condition Overload like effects, the combo multiplier on heavy attacks, and "increased damage taken" debuffs like Sonar also seem to bypass damage attenuation. And personally I find it convenient to split this topic into three seperate mechanics, "damage reduction", some of which can be situationally adaptable (like Treasurers becoming impossible to kill when slowed by a powerful Gloom), "diminishing returns on damage", which is based on your weapon and usually has a DPS cap, and then the actual "damage attenuation", which is the game reactively slowing you down because you are killing the target too fast for it's liking. Also some enemies just can't take critical damage from status effects for some reason (because DE wanted to nerf slash procs most likely), while direct damage can exceed their DPS cap just fine.

I feel for DE for trying to figure out how to implement actual boss fights, and it's been a rocky road so far I think they're finally getting close with the addition of the Fragmented one, where the damage attenuation is chunky but not impenetrable, and it doesn't rely on uanageable amounts of adds and bullets. It finally feels like a boss fight, instead of either a long interactive cutscene, or an obnoxious bullet sponge. You can actually react to it, unlike profit taker, and you don't feel the need to cheese it, like with archons. I think they should take it a step further and add opportunities to do big "week spot" damage, in short intervals, to make it feel like you're progressing a bit better.

I can imagine doing April fools joke that will start as: A lot of say that Wisp is their favourite frame. But--- And the video ends.

Xata whisper can be used against archon too since for whatever reason void dmg confuses the dmg attenuation resulting in it failing to block some of the dmg.

the worst type of damage reduction in warframe to me is ones that even true damage can not ignore, where the whole point of true damage is to ignore DR

I love these series of videos. Super informative. Couple thousand hours in and still learning things over time. 😅

Great video as always. One ability that i wish you to tackle some day would be Xata’s Whisper, its a funky ability that I never understood it very well.

Glad you did this video because I've been playing for years and had no idea that this even existed

I use roar pretty regularly and like to use the molt arcanes with them, great explanation on the topic!

Glad to see the videos going up in views and you having fun making videos again

After the shotgun update in the damage attenuation formula, (multishot in single instance hitscan damage), I tried a lot of different rapid fire guns on the archons, with the result that the Quellor for whatever reason performs increadably well against them with a galvanized crosshairs build. Both modes of fire chunk them heavyly, the full auto probably because of its low base damage and crit hitting the lower bracket of attenuation and the charge shot probably bypassing the firerate calculation and being an alt-fire maybe scooting by on the primary fires bracket, delivering its way higher damage.

The mag size thing explains why burston incarnon tends to do so well on archons too. A laser beam of bullets will get attenuated, sure, but 300 rounds in it wont matter and there's another 300 before you need to recharge (in 3 seconds) 😆

Bruh, your vids are awesome I tried abit and the dmg increase and amount of fun I have now changing my builds and trying out are both hard to measure 😊 Thank you for making these vids, you explain very good 👍🏼❤

I really hope your but why series helps bring KZfaq to being your primary source of income again because you are a top tier warframe KZfaqr along with the greats like trib, kengineer, leyzar the list goes on but anywhooo thanks for explaining something I never would’ve learned on my own once again LOL

i will become chanel member ! i like your videos you do them for long time !

The original Incarnons' +2000% damage buff doesn't work on Acolytes unfortunately. Source: Wiki

I really like using the Knell Prime or Titania for Archons because they can bypass most of the damage attenuation. Their fire rates are fast which does lower their damage but it also allows you to bypass the 1/20 rule and consistent crits (using Avenger on Titania) bypasses a large chunk of their damage attenuation. Adding roar for even more bypassing damage makes archons really simple

I tried few of the weapons after 1shot builds nerf and eventually settled with Laetum (moderate crit and 2000dmg evolution to double dip, rad+cold dmg ofc, roar as subsume on Revenant) so it all seems correct

I typically use my bursting incarnon with a riven that adds mm dmg and fire and mod for basically full crit with some radiation for that bonus dmg and it shreds them. but also thank you again for explaining something I didn't have much insight on

the Archons damage attenuation now includes the incarnon bonus and rhino roar, which is why its so much harsher than the others (as of update 34, Dagath update)

Maybe why is some arcanes very good? like energize or avenger, most ppl just slap them on because they've been told they're good, but since this is a teaching series, it might be useful to some people

I would love to get damage modding explained; Im still at that time, where multishot dmg and some status did the deal; But nowerdays I just feel lost, even tho i have most of the mods needed for the build. I did a pretty long pause of the game and since all the changes to the different status types and so on i feel kinda lost. Aspecially at Steel Path i feel like I am doing 0 dmg; Meanwhile some rdm video you watch shows a similar weapon or even the same weapon, melting the enemys no problem. I tried to find builds, but i would love to understand it, so i can make one that fits my playstyle. I wanna play fun guns, as well as fun frames and not always rely on one or the other. If you would be so kind and explain it that then even I can understand it would be wonderful. Awesome video. It really focuses on the terms on warframe i like, while also beeing short and sweet. Thank you for still doing the videos.

Last week I just blasted the archon with my dual toxocyst. Worked pretty ok, but gonna be trying knell next week.

Is there a video about ability efficiency? soft cap and hard cap? How does it work on channeled abilities?

the thing that bugs me the most about DA is that warframe, to me, is at its best when i'm theorycrafting for HOURS to completely trivialize an annoying/hard part of the game. I want to feel like a God as i facetank endgame damage and completely melt level cap with my mere presence, not feel like my carefully crafted builds suddenly don't work anymore because reasons DA not only prevents that, but does it in the most lazy bullshit way possible. THAT'S what gets me mad: feeling and KNOWING i have the capability to atomize a mf with the press of a button but not being able to because "DE lol lmao XD". Damage Attenuation is on par with overguard cc immunity for the stupidest fucking thing DE has ever added to Warframe and no i will never stop bitchin about either one.

For archons I run sevagoth with the augment, roar subsumed on the 4. For primary I use Boltor Prime incarnon with a cold corrosive setup, (primary frostbite & riven included), just void strike and melt the archon. They die in like 5 seconds tops with my setup.

Warframe math is a pain. Thanks for clarifying on this, these videos always help a lot.

Does the fire rate check look at the weapon stats itself, or your current fire rate. As in could you reduce its effect by using external fire rate buffs like reinforced bond or wisp motes

I've recently been using Quickening over Fury just to combat this, combo chance is just an added bonus and with Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds, yes it shreds especially with any slash damage weapon

"So the calculation is this:" *shows math Me: "nope"

I have always been using the original Incarnon secondary weapon against Archons and I just found out why I always seem to be only person in the squad that can shred them like paper.

I would really appreciate if you could make a the best defensive mod and why to explain the rolling guard supremacy over simply running vitality or adaptation

Didn't know any of this was a thing. I went into the video assuming it was going to be about the status adapting mechanic sentients have.

heavy attacks from the Quassus an Arum Spinosa bypass archon damage atenuation, use those

Whenever I see stuff about damage attenuation, it's always in terms of weapon stats and mods. Does it not apply to other damage sources, like warframe abilities? (edit: and then do exalted weapons count as abilities, or as weapons?)

Isnt Xata' whisper also considered a faction dmg like Roar?

i run Phenmor with Xata's Whisper and Madurai school. i can almost call it "one-shot" kill on how fast the first phase ends. more or less 2 seconds. 2nd phase tho quite takes some time depending on the situation.

Ive been using the Vulkar a lot for atenuation enemies. It has a bunch of extra damage on headshots (a lot of it if you mod for it) and im pretty sure the game doesnt consider that. Also running 2 headshot damage mods and Internal Bleeding reduces the damage the game thinks i do by a lot, because those mods dont add anything directly to my damage stats.

Here I was thinking I was so smart for putting Smite Infusion on my Kullervo to help my Felarx do more damage during the Archon fights, but I should have used Roar all along? I goofed it.

What do you mean when you say “original archon weapon”?

People aren't confused about damage attenuation. It was added as a last minute "fix" because people were going into Lich nemesis fights and instantly beating them. Keep in mind that Lich enemies already had damage reduction for certain types of damage, thanks to their Cloned Flesh and Ferrite Armour types. Thanks to damage attenuation, weapons that were doing hundreds of thousands of damage were useless if you weren't building specifically into faction damage or using the few weapons that ignore it. I remember at the time you could use Necramechs in missions, and the Arquebex weapon could deal several millions of damage. After the change, I was doing triple digits. Which is basically nothing to a Lvl 100+ Lich. A LOT of people got upset over this change. Even more so the early players that were now stuck with a nemesis plaguing half of their star chart with Lvl 120+ enemies. If you weren't savvy enough to learn which frame abilities and faction damage boosts bypass the attenuation's DPS cap, you'd be screwed. At the time, I was running the Kuva Kohm, which got massively fucked over because the damage attenuation increases the longer you spool up the weapon. I was also using Banshee, her sonar ability creates weakspots that increase your damage by multiple factors, after attenuation, even the combination of these two wasn't enough. All of those forma, credits and endo invested into it were now wasted. Not to mention that the scaling damage reduction from attenuation is multiplicative with armour values. The video goes in depth about the specifics and the calculations pulled from the wiki, which I can appreciate, I just don't think it accounts for how players actually felt about the update.

damage attenuation calculation in Warframe is weird. I use dual toxycist incarnon for lich/archon/acolytes and they melt super fast, however when I use high pellet count shotguns like the recommended kuva hek it always seems to take longer so I don't really get this.

Good Video. But old. I wanted to know about Necramech in Sanctum.

I saw people recommend Xatu's Wisp ability for archon hunts, is it outdated? Does it behave similarly to rhinos roar?

Can u make melee damage video crit and non crit weapons guide

They changed the way damage attenuation works with i think the abyss of dagath update to where incarnon bonuses and crits do not bypass it. They also said something about other buffs being affected so it may have changed how effective roar is as well.

Wait, what? I’ve always heard that devastating nutrition doesn’t work on those with damage attenuation? It certainly seems to not pro on acolytes. I tried using the Felarx and it barely tickled them

isnt xata better to use with incarnons like felarx/laetum/phenmor? or in general weapons with a lot of multishot benefits more from xata, making roar worse than xata in those situations ?

Oooh, so this is why my Necramech didn't work against the infested hemocyte during plague star

Is this why i mimic a build piece for piece mod for mod EVEN DOWN TO THE FORMA COUNT AND ARCHON SHARDS and still can't do 10 digits of damage a second LMAO

So that’s why I do zero damage against the acolytes unless I use a fast shooty

5:24 An electric phantasma is actually somewhat alright against acolytes, because electricity status does damage when it's inflicted, unlike other statuses. This means every proc of electricity will deal damage at least once. I am guessing similar status monsters built for electricity might do alright against acolytes.

I didn't know that the 2000% damage evolution on the first generation incarnon weapons actually affected damage done to acolytes...

Rip my kuva hek, miss one shotting the boss

I think at this point yeah damage is basically the only thing I have a hard time understanding at this point

I think damage attenuation is a symptom (if not the biggest) of the struggle of DE regarding difficulty scaling. To make bosses hard to kill, they simply add more HP. But because damage is too easy to get in Warframe, they need to cap it otherwise bosses will get deleted. I think the right boss/engame content design, and what is missing currently in Warframe, would be to make fights more complex. For example, to have the team destroy shields generators roughly at the same time, or to have two parallel progressions of teams in a level, etc...

i've never even heard of it

While I do agree that fire rate and status procs are somewhat useless against the archon, I would advise not ignoring it. Galvanized aptitude exists, where if you kill an enemy, any status procs stacks you put in an enemy, that includes archons as well, does increase the weapon’s damage. So you would still want to have a primer weapon, just so you can put stacks and stacks of status procs to increase your damage. As for fire rate, as long as you don’t held down the trigger, you won’t notice the damage attenuation taking effect. You do more damage peppering the archon then hold the trigger to the point where your finger goes crooked. That’s what I’ve been noticing when I am paired with random people in a fireteam. People continuously fire at the archon without giving the archon a break, while I do the bulk amount of damage peppering them. I don’t even have rhino’s roar ability subsumed in any of my warframes and it still works.

I'm more confused. Give examples against Necramech for example

Me who just "oooOOO big damage" my way through the game. Never knew any of these terminologies😭

i just use incarn toxycists for my archon hunts and i shred them with inaros + eclipse

funny thing is that the kenginnier did made a vid where he was able to one shot a archon i think he was using ivara due to her prowl giveing extra crit damage on headshots and a kuva hek

Incarnon dual toxycyst kills archon within few seconds

Archon Hunt Use Laetum 4min mission if done right

There's a system similar to this in the MMO I moved onto, PSO2:NGS, although it seems to be way simpler compared to whatever WF's got going on. Figured I'd explain to offer as a point of comparison, if it helps with understanding: Suppose you're at NGS's endgame with a 9-star or 10-star weapon, the current highest ranks we have. If you fight enemies that match your level range and gear scale, there won't be any notable damage attenuation (if at all, but I wouldn't know). _However_ , if you fight enemies below your level range with the same high-end gear, you will do less damage to those enemies. The _difference_ between NGS and WF, though, is that if you want to go super sweaty with your kill efficiency, it would actually be better to have an upgraded lower-rank weapon than to just default to your higher rank weapon. You would still kill enemies quick with the high-rank weapon, but you would be quicker with a weapon that matches the enemy scaling it was intended for. Attenuation in WF, based on what I know from this video alone, seems to only matter for enemies that match your gear scaling because of the massive amount of calculations going on. At the same time, though, those calculations become a headache when players try to find ways to bypass the system for those very enemies. It's interesting seeing how different games do this.

the problem is that DE has just made frames and weapons more and more and more powerful, without really doing anything for weaker weapons or frames. Like yeah we in recent years we've gotten Galvanized mods.... but those just make already strong weapons even more strong. Yeah we've gotten weapon arcanes... but same story there. We've gottan helminth which just makes strong frames stronger, and ofc we have gotten archon shards which, say it with me, just make already strong frames even stronger once again. Yes the game's a power fantasy, but I do feel like it's getting out of control nowadays

Do shield gating next please. :)

1 recommendation for dealing with the acolytes is to legit use anything that has more power behind a single shot instead of an automatic weapon and also damage boosting abilities aren't 100% necessary because I for one melted an acolyte with Octavia's abilities alone with the aid of a panzer as for archons use either Phenmor or Felarx with Roar and build the guns for corrosive and either heat or cold damage

Thanks, I guess Rhino is king here, I mean roar is. So can faction damage mods help too? the bane mods basically

the 20x dmg perk from og incarnons is completely ignored by acolytes

10K views in less than 24 hours, very nice.

Ever since the archons were nerfed so many weapons shred them to pieces in a way it feels like they don't even have any damage attenuation. Just take any gun with any frame that has eclipse on it and you do good damage. I prefer boltor prime with incarnon, as it kills archons in 2 to 3 seconds. Though, it might be just that mirages eclipse is also ignored by damage attenuation, not just rhinos roar. It isn't a weapon damage buff that stacks with serration and other such mods. On a side note I have no idea why but boltor also ignored the invulnerable body parts of necramechs, and I didnt need to shoot the shoulders and back plate to kill them the other day. Just center of mass or face worked fine.

So how come some incarnons are 4 tiers and some 5?

Never even seen that word till this vid

Honestly as long as your understanding of it is "the harder you hit it, the more times you hit it, the more bullet spongey it becomes" you don't really need to understand how the game handles it. Looking up the definition of attenuation would boost your understanding of what the mechanic does by eons and make you realize that it's everywhere in the game, you can even grant it to yourself with adaptation.

Oh so that is why my dual toxosyst does so much damage to stalker kids cuz of my ridiculous critical riven

so basically follow the riven rules? CD CC MS? and avoid shottys/snipers/bullet hoses lol

Now explain to me how gargoyle works for event 🤣

Next, status resistance?

Quickest way of dealing with an Acolyte: Kullervo Literally you can one to two shot an acolyte by just using Kullervo's first ability with a decent weapon. I do this with a Galatine Prime easily, so imagine with a better melee weapon.

So that's why eclipse didn't work as good as I expected 🤔

What I get from this video is use rhinos roar lol

Bad system with good intent that just ends up making things into Bethesda level bullet sponges and makes people not do archon hunts

this is definitely one of my least favourite parts about warframe and causes alot of unnecessary frustration when figuring out how to kill apparently immortal enemies

Ive watched an absolute ton of vids trying to figure out my builds and recently I've decided to stop over thinking it. The math confuses me, and the videos, though well done, dont seem to work out for me for some reason. None of the numbers seem to work out. Anyway, I've decided Gauss /fulmin go Brrrrrrt until Mewan smacks the ears off whatever is in front of him... sooo... You're waaaay smarter at me than this lol

Ya na would rather not know all this xD

I kill 3 hour acolytes in seconds with Zephyr as it has critical inherent capabilities. One shot from Lex Incarnon can do it easily.

wanna good 4-6 min archon build ? Step1: put nourish on any frame you like Step2: take good high mag crit weapon (supra vandal, Telos boltor, burston prime, braton prime, gotva prime, or something else like kuva brakk or dual toxocyst) Step3: mod it RADIATION AND COLD Step4: goo brrrrrrrrrrrr Step5: now you go and waste your lifetime by carrying low mastery randoms that are not even close ot being ready to do archons Step6: Uninstall the Game, breath some air, touch some gras Thank you for your attention! Have a Good Day!

Why can’t developers make it simple and not just DE but like all of them. You deal 100 damage, enemy reduces damage by 50%, you deal 50 damage to enemy. Wow so simple and easy to follow. Why the heck do we need ALGEBRA to deal damage to enemies?

If your fire rate and crit stats are high and your weapon is built for hunter munitions Aaand has at least 1 other element besides viral and the full physical damage spread... .you can overload them with damage before the damage attenuation kicks in.

Yuh

This might get me subs. But now frame silent modded Felnix data whisper. Get buffed by rhino and wisp. RIP anything you shoot.

"Why don't people understand damage attenuation?" Because it's arbitrary and doesn't make intuitive sense. The system is definitely.. doing mostly what it's supposed to, but it needs a lot of fine tuning to remove outliers like snipers and to prevent it from being as punishing to people who don't understand how to build around it. It's one thing to have to tweak your build or to have some weapons perform a bit better than others, but it's another to have entire weapon classes and build styles be nonviable.

I hate damage attenuation so much... I get the game design reasons behind it, but the concept is flawed. It makes sense to balance more competitive games like that, but for a power fantasy game like Warframe, making stronger weapons weaker just for the sake of a slower fight is a terrible idea.

counter: 1

Friggin hate Damage Atenuation in Warframe. HATE IT. More crap funneling you into using specific weapons- dude why have a bazillion weapons and dozens of sick frames if you're only going to want us to use like 3 (Don't talk to me about rivens, you know damn well you're not keeping a STUG riv). I'm MR.29 I stopped buzzing through SP because of how the cracks in the "Endgame" were starting to show and frankly it was starting to get annoying to run anything that wasn't considered hard meta. That being said, I still love warframe, one of my favorite games on my PS5.