U36: Jade Shadows - Enemy Health Rework

U36: Jade Shadows brought with it, among many other things, a significant rework of damage types, Status procs, and enemy health types. This post will focus on the latter, which is simpler and easier to understand as well as explain. A future post on the damage/Status changes may come...if I can get my head around them all.

For those uninterested in the details and just want to know the basics, this is all you need to know:

• Enemy Armour is weaker, partial armour reduction is more impactful;
• Enemy Health and Shields are higher; and
• Damage multipliers are based on Faction rather than Health type, and are displayed on the Star Chart.

EDIT 23/06/2024 - Updated with the new Armour Damage Reduction formula.

Health Types and Effective Damage

Before U36:

Previously, there were thirteen (13) different types of Health, Armour, and Shields, plus Overguard for certain enemies. These all had different multipliers from different Damage types, which could make it a nightmare to optimise weapons even against a single Faction. DE themselves presented this in a nice table:

Due to how the multipliers, procs, and health types interacted, what seemed to be the most effective damage types on-paper was not necessarily the most effective in-practice.

Consider for instance a typical Corpus MOA, who has two Health Types - "Robotic" Health and regular Shields. Against Shields, Magnetic, Cold, and Impact all deal bonus Damage. However, its "Robotic" Health is instead weak to Puncture, Radiation, and Electric. Which damage type should you use? Either way you build for, you would quickly deplete one Health type, but have no bonus against the other.

As it turns out, the answer was often none of those - Toxin was often the best option despite its reduced damage against "Robotic" Health, as it bypasses Shields.

Alternatively consider a typical Grineer Heavy Gunner, who had "Cloned Flesh" Health and "Ferrite" Armour. Corrosive damage is the clear best option against Ferrite Armour with a huge bonus multiplier, however if that Armour is completely removed, Corrosive has no bonus multiplier against Cloned Flesh Health and is suddenly dealing just neutral damage. As such, while removing an enemy's Armour is typically seen as a positive, in this specific circumstance it could actually result in reduced damage output.

There were also a few specific cases where a damage type would be super-effective against an enemy's Shield or Armour type, but ineffective against their Health type - resulting in an usual clash of damage multipliers. The Hemocyte in the Plague Star event is one that comes to mind, with Armour that is weak to Radiation, but Health that strongly resists it.

The net result is that while there were many different "optimal" damage combinations against different targets, it was often too tedious to do so and most players simply took the build that was either the most well-rounded, or most effective against the toughest targets. This is partly why the vast majority of build recommendations (including my own) defaulted to Viral + Slash or Viral + Heat - those combinations worked decently against just about everything, even if they were not necessarily optimal.

After U36:

Now, there are just four (4) Health types: Health, Armour, Shields, and Overguard (and Armour is arguably not even a Health type, rather just a damage-reduction mechanism). Damage multipliers have been decoupled from Health types, and instead apply per-faction.

Once again, DE have provided a nice compiled list:

Vulnerabilities deal 1.5× damage, while Resistances deal only 0.5× damage.

An example of the new damage system from Ukko, Void.

As these are Faction-based rather than unit- or Health-based, they are blanket applied for all units of that Faction in a given mission, and therefore can also be displayed on the mission card as a clear guide to the player. Additionally, game mechanic interactions will not mess with these multipliers - an enemy labelled as weak to Corrosive will be weak to Corrosive regardless of their Shield or Armour state.

Health, Armour, and Shields Scaling

It is no secret that Armour scaling made armoured enemies by far the toughest enemies in Warframe - I discussed as much in an older post. Instead of taking damage like a normal Health Type, Armour instead reduces damage taken to Health. It can be reduced through certain means, but depleting Armour is not necessary to kill an enemy (neither are Shields for that matter) - you simply need to deplete their Health.

Stats of a Grineer Heavy Gunner at level 86 (thanks to Warframe Wiki's calculator)

Stats of a Corpus Scrambus at level 86

At high levels, Armoured enemies regularly received Damage Reduction upwards of 95% - in other words, an attack normally dealing 200 damage to such an enemy would be reduced to a measly 10 damage. Indeed, a standard Grineer Heavy Gunner reached this point at just level 86. It was not uncommon in very high level content, to encounter enemies with DR beyond 99% - taking less than one-hundredth of the damage they otherwise would.

Stats of a Grineer Heavy Gunner at level 150

Stats of a Corpus Scrambus at level 150

Steel Path was especially egregious, multiplying armour values by a further 2.5×.

As a result, in almost all high level content, armoured enemies were tougher than any other unarmoured enemy by an order of magnitude. Almost every build would be designed to tackle armoured enemies (e.g. with armour-bypassing Slash procs), and unarmoured enemies were often not a problem to dispatch due to the massive effective health disparity.

This is much less the case in U36. Armour has been capped to 2700, providing a maximum Damage Reduction of 90% - still very significant, but no longer scaling into absurdity. Additionally, Steel Path no longer increases Armour.

DE have also adjusted the Armour Damage Reduction formula (for enemies at least), with the aim of increasing the value of partial armour reduction (e.g. max default Corrosive procs for 80% armour reduction). The two formulae give the same DR at 2700 Armour, the new Armour cap, however the new formula gives significantly lower DR at lower values as well.

Conversely, Shields have been adjusted to scale faster above level 80, and there have been some changes to enemy Shield Recharge Rate and Delay. The general intent here is of course to increase overall toughness of Shielded enemies.

Finally, to compensate for the reduction of Armour, the Health of armoured units has been overall increased. Additionally, enemy Health scales faster across the board above level 80. This makes armoured enemies notably tougher when their Armour has been removed, or when using mechanics that ignore Armour (e.g. Slash procs).

The net result is that armoured and shielded enemies are now relatively closer in overall toughness, at least compared to previously. Without seeing the exact formula changes, I can't say for sure how close they are now, but certainly they are more equal than before.

Conclusion

The Enemy Health Rework in U36: Jade Shadows has overall simplified enemy Health, made damage multipliers much simpler and more accessible, and brought enemy Armour and Shields closer together, with Armour notably becoming a lot weaker. With the multipliers being much simpler, they are now displayed on the Star Chart for the convenience of the player. This makes it much easier for the player to choose a good damage type(s) for the mission.

Status procs are still a significant consideration. Viral procs for instance still apply a universal increase to damage-to-Health against most targets, which often outweighs the bonus damage from the effective damage type. Heat procs still apply both an armour-reduction and a stacking damage-over-time effect, which can make it highly effective against very tough enemies, even if it is not a vulnerability. Indeed, I expect many of the previous top damage types to remain as great options, but that is something for a future post.