Yes like let's say you were doing high level circuit and you lose all your stacks, you'd like to have a bit more stability when ramping up damage rather than dealing next to nothing. This is where mods like serration come in.
Yeah and the Merciless stacks are only 4 seconds anyhow. On secondaries we do not have this problem you described as we can just use something like Cascadia Flare for fast 480% base damage boost. On primaries either just slot base damage also or use something like primary dexterity and get the base damage from melee kills witth glaive prime or something.
Funnily enough, after years now of having replaced serration with arcanes, I find myself going back to slotting both into my builds because depending on the stacks feels so bad on lots of weapons.
considering they never tell you this outright this is very useful to know, which is why i like the differentiation in path of exile with increased and MORE damage on items as one is additive and the other multiplicative.
actually both games will have read/watch wiki and guides online anyways. WF does that by providing as little info to its mechanics as possible. and POE does it by using terms that sound similar but they have different calculations. i remember the famous chart made on reddit for explaining how hp leeching works and what different nodes do to it.
I'm with you here regarding Bane mods. I really don't like using them because I never know what I am gonna be fighting next. The ONLY time I'd consider using them is if there is absolutely nothing else I could add to the build to make it better (which still hasnt happened yet).
@@technoviking2415they are not saying it doesn't do a lot of damage. What they are saying is that it doesn't make sense because we don't have just one enemy type, most of the time we fight different types. And unless U make different builds or have time to change your build your not going to care what you fight. Plus it's not like we have only 10 weapons where we can just take our time and make builds for each weapon. De needs to make a Baine mod that is for every faction(Universal) but a lil less damage
@@technoviking2415mfs just don’t wanna put banes on their guns Banes shouldn’t even be in the game i feel like it’s not even worth my time to change it every single time bro
One big note: Hunter Munitions scales off the weapon’s modded base damage. It is not affected by the “multipliers” provided by elemental mods or physical damage mods. I realize that Hunter Munitions isn’t typically used for its damage but as a synergy for viral. However, it’s important to note that if you have a low status chance / high crit chance weapon and you’re using Hunter Munitions to add DoT, it’s in your best interests to have mods like Serration (Amalgam Serration, because more sprint speed is always better) on your build.
@@noahedenborg4221 I'm like the guy in the video. I don't have any interest in having to create special builds just to gain some sort of niche meta that really isn't needed. That being said, I don't use bane mods. They're the bane of weapon modding.
I'm with you on this. If I run viral slash, I run serration anyway because I want the bleed dot to be bigger end of story. I hate running bane mods as well so the choice I am left with is more elemental which won't have a big effect on armored enemies or serration which will help inflict bigger slash procs. The choice is alarmingly simple in that regard.
@@NiceGameInc roar is just an ability to replace bane mods either way. Ive gone up to level 700 enemies without bane mods or roar so it doesn't really matter to me. (I usually get bored around lvl 500)
I have learned more in this series of videos than in years of watching build guides. Its so nice to actually understand why certain mods are used in certain places!
how many years u're in warframe? cuz most veterans knew Kengineer is always there making videos about the game's mechanics there, at least now u know Kengineer exist, well.. or this guy too, Kengineer if u want in depth knowledge or this guy that have simple yet quick to understand, or both... choice is yours
I agree, having it explained *WHY* you do certain things in builds is always nice. Maybe it's just my brain, but I much prefer knowing WHY I should do something a certain way.
Faction bane mods are the opposite of QoL and I'll never use them except very niche scenarios like my Tenet Diplos Profit Taker Shield Breaker. I use Rifle most of the time, Amalgam Serration for sprint speed. Guns for me are utility or single target, and most content even steel path don't require the loadout juggling every mission.
As a warframe veteran (back when endurance was a thing), i do love this "but why" series and if i am getting somebody into the game and theyre just starting to get to the point of trying to figure out modding in depth, I'll be pointing them to this video. Its capital I-Informative in the best way.
I really want to thank you for this video of the series in particular (The But Why vids are all great). I have stayed aware of warframe but rarely played it much for the last year or 2 and i alway wondered what was up with serration and the others not being in builds. And this actually helped me understand the numbers of WF so much. Great Job, and thank you!
Don't forget that you're not removing a base damage mod AND THEN PUTTING NOTHING IN IT'S PLACE. You're removing the base damage mod and then putting another mod affecting a different multiplier on, this will be enough to get the kills to build up stacks.
@felix_patriot In theory... Yes... But not in Practice... Serration Provides a 2.65X increase to your Build.... Anything else you might want to Add is usually lower even if it will be eventually higher once the Arcane Ramps.... That's assuming if it can Even Ramp up in the First Place... Especially with Arcane Merciless's 4 Second Deadline. Some Weapons just don't Kill that Quickly without a Pre-Existing Base Damage Source. No amount of Maff Theory can Uncover this Discrepancy... It's something you notice when llive Testing a Build. 👀
@@lookalike4805 The first kill will start slow undoubtedly. But then you have 30% base damage which is acting multiplicatively with whatever is in your would-be serration slot. By the time it's at 60% the snowball will have likely rolled far enough that you're already doing more damage than if serration was in that slot, and it's only getting way easier from there. And on the end of that you have a far more optimal build. If the weapon in question can't achieve without serration, the mere 2 kills required to get that ball rolling, perhaps we should be asking why we're using that weapon in the first place.
@felix_patriot First of all... That's just a 1.7 Damage Increase (after Factoring the Resulting Maff that would Occur if you replaced Serration with a Primed Faction Mod).... That's essentially Nothing. A Fact that will become apparent when the Timer runs out before you can reach the 60% Threshold despite it being Multiplicative. 2nd of all... Why are we using those Weapons you ask ? Well because The Circuit doesn't Give you a Choice. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm not saying people SHOULD use Serration with those Arcanes... But I totally understand why they do. Serration's Big Upfront Damage Increase Ensures that you will meet Arcane Merciless's 4 Second Deadline more Consistently even if the Final Damage Output is lower after getting Fully Stacked. Giving the Impression that it's Better in practice. Which brings us back to my First Response... Vigorous Swap. It's basically like having A Serration that can be Turned on When Needed but Turned Off when it's not. And all it costs is a 0.6 Second Animation 😎 It also Costs a mod Slot but since we're trying to get the Weapon to Work I usually Find IL always be able to Slot it in (specifically For Primed Warframe's).
Love these, no one else is explaining WHY the game is how it is. By giving the information of why and not a build, it truly lets people understand what they are doing. Love this MC
Man this video changed my life and gave me a greater appreciation and love of a game i have been playing for many years now (also came back after an hiatus so was still rolling the old way...). Thank you so much man 👍
There are more problems with how this is explained: When you care about elemental damage and use that for your calculation, you need to remember that slash procs don't benefit at all from elemental damage. In hunter munition builds, it's actually quite benefical to use one base damage mod together with an arcane to increase damage of your slash procs while ALSO using elemental damage like heat (best single) element to profit from seperate status procs. It's even better to not use faction mods and use Roar for that sweet faction damage multiplier increasing both your slash and elemental procs on all enemies in the game(!), which also frees up a mod slot for even more mod space.
Heat and Slash directly contradict each other on Status or Hybrid builds, with Slash ignoring armor entirely while Heat removes said armor. Not very useful to have both on one build. Sure, Slash doesnt benefit from elemental mods, but that can be built around, especially considering the fact Viral and Magnetic can still affect Slash in external ways, being the effect of the status itself. In this case, elemental mods are still contributing to the build. (Yes, I know Magnetic Slash isnt a good combo, I just listed it cos its the shield equivalent of Viral.)
very nice and informative video! everything was explained well and understandable. i actually couldn't remember if serration and arcane mods worked well together, but this video cleared up my confusion. thanks for that! 👍
Ay let's go - this video addresses a suggestion I made, and I must say, this is probably the clearest and well-explained video about this topic. Great job! Also, not to be a sweat, but Longbow Sharpshot is a unique multiplier to bows, so do with that info what you will. Primary Merciless is more consistent though for bows that can't score easy headshots.
Sort of off topic but can we collectively sigh in relief that vets like us will be able to use the 500+ of EACH acolyte arcane in whispers to transmute into new arcanes? I'm sure they are adding a resource to prevent players from doing it without farming but still, what a relief. They are worthless in both plat and credits and i literally have 500 of each primary and secondary arcane lol.
You know, I never understood what people meant when I heard them talk about "multiplicative damage vs additive damage" before but you explained it perfectly. Thank you.
I never really thought about diminishing returns between my Arcanes and serration. That being said, I usually use the Arcanes as a bonus, as I don't have them farmed to max, so they're really not core to my build, but knowing this does actually allow a little more freedom, freeing up a mod slot for something else that could be more fun. I don't look up builds for anything building is just half the fun for me, so even when looking at your builds I largely only look to see if you're using something interesting that I wouldn't have thought to put on there. But this makes sense, especially for Arcanes that are a little easier to ramp up like Cascadia Flare which will stack off simply applying a heat proc. Honestly, even as someone with 2500 hours in the game, thanks for this one, there are so many things I can do with this XD
The best way to demonstrate this effect to someone ingame is to use a secondary weapon. Equip Hornet Strike to it, you'll see the damage numbers on the left go up. Equip Augur Pact to it, you'll see the damage numbers on the left go up again. Then, ask the person what they think will happen if you replace Augur Pact for one of the 90% elementals- the response is normally "the damage will stay the same since they're both 90%". But then you swap out Augur Pact for the elemental, and the total damage number is higher.
and if you swap serration for a bane mod the numbers on the left go down, Which is why its hard to understand why a bane can sometimes outclass serration. Additive and multiplicative can be thrown around all day but truthfully the typical person sees number go big or number go small. Love the game but they really could do well to make the UI show things better.
Serration, Hornetstrike and such are less good if one uses the basedamage arcanes, but man, dry shooting at the start of a mission or after a revive just feels horrible. Or more a me problem I like using abilities to kill or have aoe primary, singletarget secondary or heavy attack melee for the same purpose, usualy no primer due to no fun for the extra apm stress, but loosing stacks on all other currently unused loadoutparts breaks some of the gameflow, sure deadhead or dexterity have longer stack uptime but force themselfes on you making them less comfy.
I am going to start playing the game again as cross save is being added, its crazy to think the game has evolved so much, there are so many new mods and arcanes now its crazy.
This is the most useful video yet, you just broke down the most important part of this game in a very understandable way, even though you were explaining spaghetti code
With crosssave finally being added I have returned to Warframe after a 6 year hiatus. I went through and tried all my guns and old builds out, and what the absolute heck was Yung me thinking. Weird that I saw this video the morning after discovering how to actually mod and do damage in Warframe. P.S. good to see you're still educating the community
this is why I prefer arcanes like blight and reset and frostbite, I dont like my damage winding up like that lol, it bugs me if am guna use one of those acolyte arcanes its usually dexterity
I've been working on a Frost build with my Torid to go into this a bit. The Torid on its own is a Gas crit machine with hunter munitions, but my Frost is adding viral and cold on top for not only more raw damage but even more multipliers with both viral status and cold cd boosts AND additional statuses to make Galvanized aptitude even more lethal. And because of the disgusting 205.2% status chance I'm racking up all these statuses in less than half a second on multiple bodies in a horde. It's so gross I don't even need to avalanche to strip armor.
Saying that flat damage should never be combined with Acolyte Arcanes can be *very* misleading It would probably be better to encourage players to be careful of diminishing returns in general There are 8 mod slots but only 6 major stats types that affect DPS: damage, cc, cd, muli, fire rate/reload, element This means that raw damage builds (aka boss damage builds) will inevitably stack some stats, especially with a riven (Since most relevant bosses are immune/resistant to status, status chance is mostly used for triggering special effects without their own direct DPS) Damage becomes desirable as flat damage mods have the highest ratio to corresponding Acolyte/Galvanized gear. For example, - Galvanized Diffusion is 230% multi, but the only other compatible multishot mod is a mere 60% (0.23x efficiency) - Acolyte Merciless gives 360% damage, while Serration gives 165% (0.46x efficiency) The main competitor to flat damage is elemental damage at 0.55x efficiency for normal elemental vs Primed elemental. The +0.11x powered up dps comes at the cost of ~50% lower unpowered dps, so builds with low innate killing power will need flat damage to get started. Enemy elemental weaknesses can't make up for the difference in unpowered damage, but will turn the max +0.11x bonus into something close to +0.52x assuming 75% weakness.
Ahh I see, so thats why not running serration on everything is okay. Great video! no preable, no bs just straight to the point, heres the explanation, heres a example with pictures, bish bash bosh Nice!
Dear Warframers and general number crunching enthusiasts. Do not confuse diminishing returns as opportunity cost. While it's easy to understand the concept that's being alluded to here, a sequence of "100 * (1) = 100, 100 * (1 + 1) = 200, and 100 * (1 + 1 + 1) = 300" does not diminish in returns. Diminishing returns would look look akin to "100 * (1) = 100, 100 * (1 + 1) = 199, 100 * (1 + 1 + 1) = 297". Ignoring the seemingly incorrect math, this example conveys diminishing returns. Opportunity cost is the concept that's being alluded to here. Opportunity cost is loss incurred when an alternative would provide a larger benefit. "[...] the objective of opportunity cost is to ensure efficient use of scarce resources." Your scarce resources are mod slots.
I basically always use Serration equivalent on my builds anyway, because I just don't care enough to bother changing builds so everything has to be universal. And honestly, I don't play missions for over an hour anyway so everything still dies quickly.
This is fantastic! However, peep my 100 video special. It doesn't matter if you do 100 billion damage, when 100 THOUSAND damage is more then enough for max cap. :) so you go ahead and put on that Amalgam Serration if you wanna. That 25% sprint boost is niiiiice.
counterpoint: i run serration + bane with a acolyte arcane because none of my other primary arcanes are high enough rank to be better and making serration an elemental mod makes my bleeds do less damage
If I use a bane mod.. all weapons have three load outs to start.. so I will use one for Corpus one for infested and one for grineer. then when I equip it I just pick the load out for the faction I am about to face. just use the in game label on the load out and its pretty easy to do.
This is always what gets me on builds, thanks for the explanation. A follow up I would have would be: what is the role of an optimal Riven mod in this type of build setup? Replace one type of mod with another depending on the primary attribute and squeezing in extra attributes? It seems like the general use of Rivens is to double up on damage multipliers that are already in the build but would be diminishing. For example, I have a +damage +infested +multishot -status chance riven for Dread. With this video's build of Dread looking pretty tight, would the best mod to replace be Hunter Munitions? Or am I just dampening my damage by slotting in the riven at all?
You would definitely be hurting your damage by replacing Hunter Munitions for the riven. Even with diminishing returns, the Riven can add a whole lot of damage to the build as long as it’s got a good roll and you know what should be replaced for it. What mods do you currently have on your dread, if you don’t mind me asking?
I think the reason why people don't know this still is because in every video I seen it explained its looks super complicated or the numbers don't add up.
I have arcane merciless on my weapon but I'm always running arcane rise on my Warframe and the damage goes through the roof that I can just basically solo steel path with a unmodded character but my survivability is quite low at that point
It's actually not a big deal to use those arcanes w serration because most missions are only 20 min and extract.and for bosses you actually want the upfront damage.
@MCGamerCZ I noticed that your Helios doesn't use deconstructor and it is on a frame that doesn't spam abilities , can you share your build please, I returned to WF but not sure if the "bound" Helios build still works after the fix.
But is there any benefit to put in a specific base-damage type mod like Buzz Kill to change the weapon basic damage distribution, and changing the status application priority?
Hm, had no idea the arcanes were sufficient enough to substitute for raw damage mods. A shame there's still not enough room to avoid builds being cookie-cutter, but it's something.
Yeah, though their are a selection of weapons where you’d still want to have something like Serration, on top of the flat damage arcane, because their upfront damage when building stacks is lacking without it
Yes but, without stacks, good luck killing anything to get your stacks so, yeah, it's more efficient when it works but, when it doesn't, it's a real pain. I'd rather have the reliability of serration, even if it means less efficiency.
I feel like everyone who would benefit from this advice already knows this, while newbies do benefit from putting serration on a weapon even with an arcane, because they aren't efficient enough in their gameplay to make full use of the arcane. Or they don't have a maxxed arcane.
@@lookalike4805 It's really not that hard to make it there. It takes time, yes, because you need to do all the quests. But you don't need to fully understand damage theory in Warframe to get to it.
You don't need to understand that in Steel Path Either. And Time is one of those Things most Noobs haven't Accrued that much of Anyway so I think Anybody who's Grinded far enough to unlock Steel Path shouldn't be considered a Noob.
I think in my opinion primary merciless need a little buff not dmg but duration 4 secs seems bad and not long enough especially in early steel path where it takes 10 secs to kill something
It’s 4 seconds PER stack, not the whole stack of 12. And I mean this in the best way possible but if you’re taking 10s to kill an enemy in base SP (were talking about the same base level of 100-150 right?) you need relook at your builds to figure out what’s going wrong
Well for raw dmg builds deadhead IF they can kill via headshot Merciless for every other build And dexterity if ur going melee or have down time like disruption
I actually had no clue about this and with the new update and cross save coming out the 13th (if my friend gave me the right date) then I need to reconsider every weapon I've modded RIP
If I ever meet the person who originally decided to bastardise the phrase 'diminishing returns' the way that gamers have, I'm not sure I'm going to get tired of punching them in the face. There are no diminishing returns in the damage calculation. Like actually, there isn't, we have diminishing scale of effect. For actual diminishing returns, we look at the DR calculations involved for armour. Let me put it to you like this. If you have an apple, and I give you another apple, you have a 100% increase in the amount of apples you have. If you have 10 apples, and I give you an apple, you still get a whole apple out of it, but your relative increase is 10%, the effect of which is said to be scaled, but the 'returns' are unchanged. By comparison, if I give you a 'cut' of apple based on what you already have, and you started out with 1 apple, well, 1/1 is still one, so you get your full 100%. If you have 2 to start with, 1/2 is 50% so you only get half an apple. Start with 3, 1/3 is a third, start with 4, 1/4 is a quarter, and so on. In this way your _returns_ per iteration is _diminished_. This is diminishing returns. I get that this isn't on you, pretty much every gamer out there seems to think that diminishing returns is something other than what it mathematically is, and it's just easier to go with the majority, especially for a content creator making videos, but dammit I find it irksome. Ad populum! XD
I am very bad at math, never bad (Hell, I'm a historian, only numbers I know are years) so I always thought "more damage means bigger boom right. cuz. higher... numbers... and stuff. yes?" And then I saw all these meta level cap builds and I didn't see serration and I was like "huh... but... damage..." I never understood it so I just ignored it, but you actually make it understandable. As soon as I have maxxed out my Merciles I will say buhbye to serration and hornet strike
Imagine this: You have 8 arms in your inventor., and you are 1 person capable of carrying up to 50 kilos, but you dont have arms to grab them so you cant actually carry that weight. Now, the task is to lift a 50 Kilos bucket to your neighbours house. How do you carry it from your house to there? Answer is: you put 2 arms from your inventory to you, and now you have the capability of lifting it and carrying it. So far so good. Now imagine you have to lift a bucket of 100 kilos, but your whole body still can only lift 50 K. What do you do? Wrong answer, and this is what adding Serration and more raw damage mods does: You select another 2 arms from your inventory and put them into you aswell. If 2 arms allowed you to carry 50 kilos, then a 4armed person should carry 100 kilos, right? The answer is no, because your arms allow you to lift the bucket, but you actually carry it with your whole body, so 4 arms still carry 50 Kilos bucket. Correct answer: you select 2 arms from your inventory, and put them into another armless person. Now this person can carry 50 Kilos aswell, so job done. You might say, hey but you didnt tell me that there were more armless people in my house. And thats precisely it. You know that there is raw damage, but you dont know that there is Faction Damage, Elemental Damage, Status-Slash procs damage, Critical Damage. You learn them on the run. So, landing the example unto warframe: if the goal is to do the highest damage possible (carry the most buckets), wouldnt the answer be to 'allow/activate' all the people in your house to everyone carry a bucket? That is, to use your mod capacity/arm inventory to give them arms so they all can now lift buckets? Thats what you do in warframe when you add different types of mods. 1. Raw damage like serration, heavy caliber and that arcane, are like 2 arms in a person, so equipping them together is like putting yourself 6 arms to lift more. The more arms doesnt necessarily mean you can carry more weight, because you lift using your back muscles and legs. 2. Elemental damage you literally enable it in many guns until you put elemental mods, same as in the example, you activate your helpers until you give them a pair of arms. 3. Critical Damage exists by default, but you need Chance for it to happen, so you here must also enable them by adding more arms/mods here. 4. Status, also exists but need to build it up so it becomes useful, by also pouring mod capacity/arms from inventory. 5. And there might be more hidden people in your house. I read yesterday that warframe Mirages Eclipse increments total damage, Rhinos Roar are a universal faction damage mod, and so on. So if you see, thats the general idea. Now, why does this work this way? Because most things in life, by default, already do something by themselves. it is until you couple some of them together that they work best, or different. The detail is to understand them, and see what things need tweaking/enabling/an upper hand. Final example, a tire can rotate and move easily, an engine transforms one energy into another, and a wheel allows to steer something. By themselves, they already work, but when you use mods to activate them and tweak them, and add them together. You get an engine, connected to a transmission, that allows the tires to spin and thus move in a certain direction, and a wheel that guides the general body of what you just created. What did you roughly assemble? A car. tl:dr: things already work by themselves, the trick is that together, they work way better. The important part is to know them so you can tweak them to do certain tasks up to the best of them.
@@lookalike4805 there exists something called tl dr that means Too Long, Didnt Read, in case you dont want to read something massive. I put one on mine comment.
i just wish you rephrased this the general premise of the video is informative and true... but you can use a dmg mod with an acolyte arcane, and it's not always bad you need dmg, speed, cc, cd, ms, elements that's 6 things but you have 8 mod slots and an arcane slot so once you have your 6 things covered you still have like 2 mod and/or arcane slots left over then you make marginal decisions with those 2 leftover slots at that point 15% more damage is still fine... and if you want to spend a slot to help get over the initial damage hump before the arcane ramps then serration is totally reasonable generally those last 2 slots aren't going to be a huge deal and u can customize how you like
I actually wonder, so say if I were to have a shotgun riven which has damage on it, or if I had primed point blank, how would that work with a steel path arcane?
Okay I appreciate this being made because I see all these builds using the arcane and never understood and no one would tell me why Guess it’s my fault for being MR24 and still not understanding warframe’s damage formula
These videos are helpful guides and it really helps, but it would be even more great if you were to actually share your builds with us, like builds for weapons and frames, I can already imagine how great that would really be
Wish they just reworked 3 acolyte arcanes to make it closer to like primary blight or secondary shiver Right now is you use anything but 3 acolyte arcanes you are just shooting yourself in the foot
With the recent changes to puncture and cold this isn't the case anymore. Shotguns value Blight, Frostbite, Vendetta, & Voltage now and is a valid choice in competing with Aco Arcanes.
Correct me if I'm wrong but dead head and merciless turn into a 3.2x multiplier, increasing the base damage that is affected by other multipliers by 3.2x. With that being said, adding another 1.6x with serration onto that makes it a 4.8x multiplier to base damage which then is affected by other multipliers. So that's an increase of total damage by 50% vs not having serration.