The Problem of Boom-Kong and High Explosives
Ever since self-damage was removed from explosive weapons, these explosive weapons have rocketed in popularity. But are these weapons too good or powerful? Some people think so, others don’t. As for me, I am someone in the middle. So let’s have a nice, calm conversation about explosives. And a familiar monkey friend.
AoE weapons are very strong
Warframe is a horde shooter. You have to kill a lot of enemies to get anywhere in this game, whether it’s a simple rescue mission or an hours-long survival. And rather than killing enemies one at a time, it’s much more efficient to kill multiple things in one attack. Area of effect weapons are by far the easiest way to kill mobs, followed by area of effect weapons. With the proper gear, one player can easily kill all the enemies in a single room. Or at least most of them.
However, if one person is doing all the killing, what is everyone else supposed to do? This is the biggest argument against explosives, that no one else gets to play. We’re already competitive enough when it comes to kills, and explosive weaponry just enlarges the gap. Another argument is that explosive weapons are making the game too easy. You can lazily work through missions spamming explosives all over the place. Meanwhile everyone else just gets table scraps. And, with some effort, you can get some crazy strong explosive weapons early on, since Lich and Sister weapons, despite being MR-locked at rank 15, you can easily claim them from the foundry at rank 5.
Wukong just makes all of this easier
The thing is, if you play Wukong and give an Ogris to your Celestial Twin, now you have an aim bot with infinite ammo by your side. Celestial Twin uses whatever gun or melee you are using. If one is using their primary weapon, Celestial Twin will use one’s melee weapon, and vice versa.
But if you dislike the monkey god, you can simply equip a Nukor or an explosive weapon on your specters and on-call crew mates. While these are both options, neither are quite as efficient as Celestial Twin. Warframe Specters tend to get lost and shoot walls, while crew mates have a cooldown and can only use certain weapons. Celestial Twin on the other hand controls (at least it can switch weapons as you switch weapons) better and can be re-summoned at will. The Twin is also pretty tanky, and copies Wukong’s other abilities as you use them.
What do we change or nerf?
It’s easy to cry for nerfs, but the question is, how much do we nerf, without pissing off pretty much everyone involved? It’s very easy to lean too far either way, either not making enough of a change on one end, and completely killing explosives on the other end. A middle ground needs to be found.
What that middle ground is though, I don’t know. I don’t think the damage is the problem though. It’s how far the damage spreads out. But weapons like the Kuva Bramma and the Ogris have already had their area of effect falloff reduced. That did some difference, but maybe not quite enough. Some have suggested re-adding self-damage, but, unless it’s minimal damage, that’s just going back to square one. On the other hand, we could nerf specters in some way, maybe tweak Celestial Twin as well.
No matter what we do, someone will be unhappy.
“But Medic, what about melee?”
That’s a whole different can of worms. It’s best to save them for a different article.