Self Damage Is No More
Self Damage no longer exists in Warframe, at least when it comes to explosive weapons. No longer can you blow yourself up while using an explosive weapon. You don’t have to play Inaros or Wukong to use the Kuva Bramma. Squishy frames no longer instantly die from misfiring alternate-fire modes like the Corinth. And I no longer have to scoop my Ogris-using friend off the floor every other mission!
Actually, I take that back, self-damage still exists in some exceptions. For example, the Nightwatch Napalm mod for the Ogris. But in 99% of cases? Self damage is gone.
Self damage removal also makes my previous articles on explosive weapons moot, but oh well. At least the Wukong loadout still works.
This opens up a new area of previously unused weapons!
No one ever used weapons like the Angstrum, a pocket triple-rocket launcher, for obvious reasons. No one wants to instantly and often unpredictably die. And removing self damage means that instantly dying helps fix the instant death problem!
In doing so, a lot of new weapons are suddenly no longer a chore to use or level up. Some of these weapons have turned out to be pretty alright to use. And the Kuva Bramma is even more popular now that any Waframe can use it. That thing was so powerful that only Wukong and Revenant had the ability to use it and not splatter themselves across the walls. But now even the squishiest Banshee can happily fire an explosive weapon at their feet and not die. Whether it’s the Bramma or the unused Kulstar, Angstrum, Ogris and more. Or that weird explosive bow augment mod.
There are still downsides though.
We have two new downsides to explosive weapons, to stop them being “too overpowered”.
The first is quite simple really, because firing a rocket at your feet would be somewhat dangerous. Based on how close you are to the explosion’s epicenter, your Warframe will flinch or do badass backflips away from the explosion. Basically, rather than dying, you get stunned briefly based on how much you messed up. Sure, that stun might stop you from rolling away from an enemy, but you don’t die now, and that’s perfectly fine.
The other downside is that area of effect (AoE) weapons now have damage falloff. The falloff is based on the distance from the centre of the explosion. This is fine if the explosion radius is massive like the aft-mentioned Kuva Bramma. On a smaller AoE though, it’s a massive nerf to damage output. The damage falloff has also been applied to weapons that don’t deal self damage for some strange reason.
It’s not all set in stone.
The downsides are actually the reason why I delayed writing this article. Because all AoE weapons had a 90% falloff at first. Then they got changed and tweaked per weapon. It’s most likely the falloff will be changed again in the future. In fact, we might see that falloff removed completely on some weapons.
Actually, we SHOULD see that, because damage falloff based on the explosion radius hurts some weapons. Namely weapons like the Opticor, where the explosion radius is so small that the damage falloff makes it harder to use effectively. And honestly, aside from outliers, most explosive weapons have enough downsides already that they don’t need the damage falloff.
In general though? The changes are great. Sure, the damage loss isn’t the best, but the most powerful weapons in the world mean nothing if you’re dead.