Explain me why Tonkor and Telos Boltace nerfs have to be that huge

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I think the Tonkor nerf was a step in the wrong direction. Other launchers should have had their lethal self-damage toned down, and giving the Tonkor extremely high self damage means that nobody will use it.

All explosives that do self-damage should have a capped damage value (say, 1/3 - 1/2 of the base, unmodded damage, no crits) and the Tonkor would have been raised to that.

As it stands, the Tonkor will join the other launchers in being only situationally used.

Now my zephyr is completely useless for late game. I spent the last few months putting 6 formas on my tonkor. It wasn't OP because the aiming was very difficult. I based a huge part of every one of my builds around the tonkor. With the excessive nerf to the weapon I will likely play the game significantly less.

Guess I'll be selling my Tonkor Riven then :p

I just wish they could have nerfed the telos in a way that doesn't hurt it's can opening properties.

Maybe make it NOT gain combo from the guranteed slash proc or nerf the extent of how good the waves could be instead of removing them.

I've only been playing for two months, but since day 1 I had my eyes on the Telos and it's been my most used ever since acquiry simply because I find something strangely satisfying about those SWHINGS despite having better builds on other melees when I need more umph.

All the weapons they nerfed are AoE, brainless, overpowered weapons. They took no skill, had barely any drawbacks, and did ridiculous damage. Now they at least take a small amount of thought to using them.

As for the one shotting Ruk, that's a bug.

I remember Brozime running Survival for 2 hours solo as Naramon Nekros with Atterax. Telos Boltace just can't compete with that.

I remember seeing a thread about 3+ hour survival using the Telos Boltace and Chroma.

First of all, it's worth pointing out that these are only proposed buff and nerfs and nothing has been finalized yet.

But let's look at the weapons:

Tonkor: - The nerf is justified if you compare it to other launchers. Not only were you able to do massively more dmg, but you were also able to do it without any danger. Now you will still do more damage, but you need to be a lot more careful now, and will, in effect, trade higher dmg for smaller magazine/longer reload. Also don't forget that this is an MR5 weapon, but is massively stronger than, for example, Secure Penta, an MR12 weapon.

When you look at launchers in general, though, apart from Tonkor, they are not that great. They do AoE dmg (which is awesome) and although that damage is not all that much, it can be boosted by a countless amount of Warframe powers, so no problems there, however, unless you sacrifice a mod slot, the self-damage is a real problem. There are two parts of dealing damage: the amount of damage; and how easy it is to apply the damage. Launchers don't really have crazy damage, and trying to apply that damage is not only met with unpredictable results thanks to bounces and what not, but can kill you as well. For someone who plays mostly solo, that means that they are only really usable in situations where you can safely dump ammo on enemies from a distance - like Akkad or similar. For people playing in squads, who don't mind being revived from time to time, they are still alright I guess, since AoE is everything in WF. Tonkor was the only exception.

Personally, I think they should lower Tonkor's damage as they did, but remove self-damage from all the launchers, or at least significantly reduced it. But then again, the balance is dependent on a multitude of things, on how other weapons are changed, on what content we are expected to fight, etc, so it's hard to judge that holistically. For example, although self-damage is a bit dumb and in solo can kill you and in pub your mates can fuck you, self-damage would be a decent point of balance when comparing launchers to single target weapons.

Synoid Simulor - Was quite possibly the best trash-clearing primary in the game, huge AoE, very easy to use and no downsides, except for perhaps the range. Damage wasn't that great either, but again, the AoE is everything and dmg can be improved with buffs. The nerf doesn't even look that bad and, if anything, makes it even better for Mirage, since she just needs to shoot once, then can detonate immediately. I can't really make sense of the range changes (they don't seem to match what we have now), so who knows, and as for the status increase, that's whatever, since you should be clearing everything with one explosion anyway.

Now, as for this type of weapon, together with Ignis and Amprex, they are supposed to be AoE clearing machines, but with lower raw dmg than launchers or especially single target weapons. But as is the re-occurring theme here, the reality is that a weapon having lower dmg ends up not mattering. You can always buff AoE, but you can't make a single target weapon into an AoE weapon (with some minor exceptions). The result is that the bigger the AoE, the more overpowered the weapon becomes. This imbalance would be solved if we actually had to fight content where buffed single target weapons were needed, but alas, we don't.

Tentatively, I would say that Synoid Simulor should be nerfed - but so should AoE weapons in general, at least until there is a regular need to fight high lvl content. If Simulor ends up sucking, it will be only too easy to move to Ignis or Amprex instead. Alternatively, people can use warframe abilities, which for the most part have larger AoEs than any weapon. So if we wanted to balance that as well, there would need to be nerfs to abilities, or energy replentishing options. There is also a question of whether we really want to reduce the overall clear and killing speed in the game (which would follow with large nerf to AoE in WF).

Telos Boltace - Characterizing Telos Boltace as "having a container opening niche" is pretty hilarious. Telos Boltace is without a doubt the most overpowered weapon (forget just melee) in the game, to the point where many people can't even be bothered to use anything else anymore, since there is just no point. You want to kill faster than anyone else lvls 1-100? Then the answer is simple: use Telos Boltace. The fact that some weapons are better for survival runs is irrelevant. Clear speed gives you more of everything for the same time spent - more affinity, more drops, more relics, more missions. Being able to do slightly longer Survival gives you exactly nothing.

The extent of the nerf is somewhat unclear, but it does sound like it's gonna lose the number one spot for clear speed. It would be nice if the new mechanic wasn't just some useless gimmick, but all they really needed to do, was to remove the guaranteed bleed. Bleed procs are busted in general, since they magically bypass armor, but in addition they also get boosted by stealth multipliers, so it's way too easy to just equip Loki or Ash (or just use Naramon for longer missions) and clear Sortie 3 units like they were from the Starchart. With the bleed proc removal, it would still do top notch AoE dmg for Starchart, but for Sortie and higher lvls it will have been more efficient to pick something else, and in general it would put it more in line with other AoE melee weapons like Atterax or Orthos P, which have less range (11 and 9m compared to 25m) but more damage - and full damage across the entirety of their range.

All in all, there is not much to argue about until a clear idea of how this game should be built is introduced and some fundamental questions are answered. Should all weapons be equal to each other, only having different strengths at different points? If not, how should the access to the stronger weapons be limited, by MR, resources, availability? And how much? How should the balance between single target and AoE weapons be managed, would that include an introduction of tougher missions? How does that relate to warframe abilities, especially the ability to increase weapon damage? Do we want slower clear speed in general? How is that gonna increase the grind, affect plat sales? Etc... I am hoping DE are not nerfing these weapons just because they are overwhelmingly used (and the obvious target), and buffing the other weapons just because they are not, but have an actual vision of how the game should look, an actual philosophy on what is good and what isn't, and an actual plan how to go about realizing it.

As for the magnitude of the nerfs, at the moment it's hard to judge (and for sure it's too early to complain, since nothing is finalized). It also depends on what DE have in mind, whether this is just a start of further changes and balances, or whether they are just doing whatever and really have no clue. Without knowing that, there really is no saying where any of the weapons should end up, or where any class of weapons should end up with relation to the other. Maybe DE simply don't want a weapon that they considered top tier to be top tier anymore. And who is to say what weapons should be top tier?

I would say that Tonkor and Telos Boltace are both outliers, Tonkor among launchers and Telos among all of the weapons (Synoid Simulor is probably only marginally better than its peers, although the whole class could be considered too powerful), so something should be done, although I am not certain nerfing them is the best option (as opposed to buffing other weapons, or even better increasing the toughness of the content) since I quite enjoy fast clear speeds and reduced grind that comes with that.

It's like bungie is involved with this game: Nerf the popular shit! Feed me! And they listen.

Personally I'm fine with the boltace nerf as I can still get all the beautiful bleed procs I want with kronen stealth bleed ash

It's funny how they nerf telos boltace and maiming strike price gets plummeted which really shows how people overused telos boltace + maiming strike in litearlly everything and macroers too got DE attention on nerf. 5 Spins in <1 second hello? that's breaking game. Honestly tho, I've been using telos boltace myself for syndicate mission which made it easy runs but now going back to ignis and having a mobile defense kinda sucks as you have to hold onto datamass and can't use ignis at the same time.

tonkor is gone........

I don't think DE are balancing around level 150 enemies. Most players are doing star chart missions or alerts and may never come across an enemy that high. The hardest content they'll likely do is a sortie 3 mission once per day.

All the nerfed weapons are overpowered for this content and require little skill or input from the player. It hurts weapon variety, the experience for other players and just makes for boring gameplay.

I remember Brozime running Survival for 2 hours solo as Naramon Nekros with Atterax.

I ran a 2 hour survival once as a Nidus with a badly modded Hirudo, without Naramon. Your point?

For what it's worth, the reduction to Tonkor fuse time and grenade bounces should reduce the chances of suicides. Think of the times you fire a grenade and lose track of where it ends up.

Frankly, as far as the Tonkor nerf went, it's pretty much exactly what it should have been: Adding self damage on a par with the alternative AOE weapons. That said, all AOE weapons should have some sort of reduction to self damage, I'd suggest a flat value (200-400) irrespective of mods (proximity scaling optional).

The Telos Boltace did not need a nerf as much as an anti-spam rework to reduce screen clutter for other players. The changes they are implementing should be very nice. I do think the pulses should retain some damage though, to retain the container breaking utility, that seems like an unfair removal.

Cutting out cancer can often be painful.