The Death of the Blast Proc on Warframe Weapons
Blast was always my favourite element in Warframe. While Corrosive, Viral and Gas were all more useful, Blast was the most fun element. It was great. You’d mix it with Corrosive to stun enemies and knock them down. In the distance past, it could be mixed with weapons like the Sonicor for ragdoll fun. But with the Warframe Revised update, Blast was utterly destroyed.
The Blast Proc is dead. The current Blast Proc is bad.
Now, instead of knocking enemies down, Blast damage now decreases enemy accuracy. And it doesn’t even do a very good job of it.
One Blast proc will reduce accuracy by 30% for 6 seconds. Subsequent procs will reduce accuracy further by 5%, capping out at 75%. This effect is barely even noticeable. And doesn’t really effect most enemies.
I mean, most Corpus have shit aim. Most dangerous Grineer use area of effect weapons. This is only really good for Corpus Techs and Heavy Gunners. But 30% isn’t very much and most enemies are dead before you can even see the accuracy debuff.
Blast has been replaced by Impact
Now, the ragdoll-esque ability belongs to standard Impact. Actually, I take that back. Impact causes enemies to stagger. It doesn’t really knock enemies down, instead Impact gives a 10% chance to be able to use a Parazon finisher. The ragdoll effect is only caused by enemies killed by Impact procs.
This is bad for multiple reasons. Not only is the stagger not very good, but additional procs only make enemies stagger for longer and increases the Parazon chance. But why would you want to do a Parazon stab when you can… just shoot them?
That wasn’t Impact’s original design though. After the Warframe Revised update, Impact briefly would do Blast’s old knockdowns, but this was replaced with the new stagger effect. Why? Because people didn’t like how they had no control over the Impact Procs.
Old Blast made more sense
The whole idea of Blast is that it’s explosive. After all, almost all explosive weapons do Blast damage. The old Blast proc made far more sense because if you get hit by an explosion, you get knocked down. Putting old Blast on your weapons meant you WANTED to knock people down. Not just with your bullets but with your explosions too.
Old Blast’s damage wasn’t amazing, but it was an efficient crowd control option. Enemies would be knocked literally to the ground, falling flat on their faces. Even older forms of Blast would send enemies flying into the air, where they would die of fall damage or from out-of-bounds damage if they flew far enough.
Impact cannot, in any way, replicate this. Especially now that it can’t ragdoll living enemies.
But why was Old Blast better?
The change in Impact’s proc highlights something odd. If Impact knocking things down was bad and was removed, then why was Blast’s proc good? Because Blast could optionally be modded onto most weapons. Blast was an option, and it was a crowd control option. If I want Blast, I could have Blast. Impact though is on most weapons and fights with Slash and Puncture.
Blast also has better damage overall. It is only really resisted by 25% by Grineer units and 4 Infested bosses that you only ever fight once. Everything else though, Blast does normal damage to. Impact on the other hand has a -25% damage reduction on the same Grineer units AND Corpus units! Impact is only strong against shields, but shields are weak to most things anyway. Overall, Blast and Impact are pretty similar, damage-wise.
Blast as a proc though is just bad.
Now though, there’s no point using Blast at all. The accuracy debuff is so bad that you’d be better off using Magnetic damage. Sure, neither will do anything against Grineer or Infested, but that’s why you don’t use Magnetic.
Okay, sure, Magnetic is also bad, but Magnetic does at least have a use against Corpus. Blast has no use what so ever and, more importantly, it thematically MAKES NO SENSE.
For now, Blast is dead.
The Blast proc is bad. The ability to knock people down with explosions is gone. And frankly? It seems that literally no one else cares.