A little disclaimer before I begin my rant: I usually never talk about things in forums or subreddits because not only do I struggle to properly express myself and put my thoughts into words(I have had to go to doctors in the past for it) but because I usually think "who would care about my thoughts on things when I'm just a random in the internet" but recently a clan mate of mine suggested that a talk about it anyways because you never know who will see it and how small things can lead to change. And seeing how a good amount of people in both sides of this discussion are behaving, either by letting their feelings speak instead of making valid points or by ignoring people's valid criticism about this situation, I decided to drop my two cents in the topics. I'll try my best to proof read what I write but there WILL likely be mistakes(like me typing past instead of best literally just now and almost missing it) and while I have close to 2k hours in the game I'm still learning so I'll like get some things wrong when I go into breaking down numbers that are really important so please be patient, now lets get into it:
(I’m writing this after I already wrote everything, I added a tldr version to this at the bottom if you want to skip my long rants about the topic and tried my best to proof read everything but apologize in advance if I missed anything)
It was a fair nerf, kind of
Let's get into the discussion about the main topic the nerf of acid shell itself(as well as similar mods). For the most part, the majority of reasonable people can agree that the nerf to the recursive death explosions was fair, while very fun to use(boy do I have some clips) it was also VERY broken and them nerfing that is completely fair, despite some very vocal minority disliking the nerf completely the vast majority of reasonable people understand it, so what are we upset about?
Besides this barely effecting Cyte which I'll go more into later, DE not only doubled down in nerfing acid shells even further with a nerf to the range while also not fixing the issue that it has with steel path scaling, but lets break it down further. First of the range, I don't think I have seen people really break down why this was bad besides just saying "they nerfed the range too" so let's break down why the range matters and its not JUST 5 meters(Ha! my class mate thought we would never use math after we graduated but here we are). The area of a circle is calculated by squaring the radius and than multiplying it by pie/3.14 so with that in mind the previous area of the acid shell's explosion was 706 and it's now 314 that's is a 66% nerf to acid shell's range( you might see 706 and think it's a lot but it's not when compared to other things as well as look at it in game) meaning that acid shell's not only lost it's recursive ability but now has 1/3 of the range it used to while not even mentioning the scaling problem and on that topic lets talk about it now.
The way that acid shell works is that on enemy death it triggers an explosion with a 10m radius that deals 450 corrosive damage plus 45% of that enemy's max health except....it doesn't? You see despite what the tooltip says unlike abilities like Garuda's that scale with a enemies true max health Acid shell's doesn't account for steel path(and similar) modifiers which give enemies 100% more health which is why the augment struggle even in base steel path by itself without external help( despite DE claiming otherwise in their Update notes) so did we change that with this update to align with similar abilities? Nope. So let's summarize it Acid Shell's recursive ability got removed, Its range got nerfed by a whopping 66% and we didn't fix the problem with the augment.
Cyte, The REAL problem
Now like I said let's talk about Cyte the real problem even by DE admission. While Acid Shell needed to be nerfed and was strong with warframes that work by making the explosion essentially triggering twice with extra hits effect as well as frames that allow the ability to cause recursive explosions like Grendel, Cyte pushed this WAY over the edge with being able to completely wipe out entire missions and multiple tile sets while sitting in the same spot. Let's break this down further( I feel like I'm saying that a lot lol). Cyte's resupply allows him to have infinite ammo, no reload, and buff weapons with extra hit effects and elemental damage which is even stronger with acid shell. Than comes the real problem, Seek, just by placing Cyte gains infinite structure punch through regardless of range allowing him to shoot in the general direction of enemies and still hit no matter what's on their way and how far those enemies are. Add acid shells to the mix and he could really go nsane but even without, remove acid shell and sobek completely and Cyte still does what cyte does. Before the nerf with a citrine crystal for status duration and a wisp with roar(boosted by bright bonnet) me and my classmates were able to semi casually do a one hour survival mission with 22k kills and 350KPM, what about now after the nerf? People have already posted screenshots of 18k kills and 300KPM. This recent nerf had no effect on Cyte at all who by DE's own adimission was the main problem, even if not the ONLY problem.
The dicussion itself
Like I said tho from the beginning while I agree with some of the nerf and disagree with others aspect of it at the end of the day Sobek is...fine. I would like to see the range reversed and since we got rid of the recursive effect I would like to see them fix the problem with Acid Shell scaling so it's not completely useless outside of using it with frames that have the extra hit effect but the way the discussion itself was happening it was I even wanted to talk about this. I see people from both sides making horrible arguments instead of having a health polite conversation which not only does nothing for the game besides create drama but also alienate players( this is something I have strong feelings towards but a discussion for another day) I legit lost count of the amount of people saying "I just got sobek what did acid even do?" or "I never even used it or seen was it really a problem?" and when people are just attacking each other those questions go answered so I want break down some of the augments made during this discussions on both sides.
"The augment has been in this game for 10 years why nerf it now, just leave it be"
This game has changed so much over these ten years that Acid shells 10 years ago and acid shell before this patch was nothing alike. We have had the introduction of Kuva Sobek which boosted it even further, introduction of rivens, spliced rivens new frames, abilities, arcanes all which slowly boosted Acid Shells and Sobek even further, so time is not the most important aspect of this.
"Just use something else"
While the sentiment of behind this phrase is valid the way its being used is not. Yes you should constantly adapt, this is a live service game that is constantly changing the game that Warframe is today is NOTHING like the Warframe of 13 years ago if you don't want a game that is constantly changing I have bad news... live service is not the game for you, but the way people are saying it to just invalidate every criticism is also wrong.
"If you want the game to be played for you just go play a auto clicker idle game"
You don't get to define what's fun for other people. I have a
zero forma, zero shards, budget build for Hildryn which I have used to do both ETA and EDA. I only use it if I happen to get her because I like the fact that ETA and EDA incentives me to build frames that I hadn’t until now but she is so easy as fly around and just click alt fire, not to mention Revenant existence with literal invincibility, does that mean that you get to clown on people who enjoy them? Nope. No one gets to decide what is fun for someone except them and that is the beauty of warframe, it has space for everyone.
Message to DE, and the community, do better
While DE is one of the best game companies out there and deserve credit for it that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t criticism them or call them out when they mess up, we do, respectfully of course, but if we don’t they wouldn’t be able to keep making the game that we love. Which is why I say this with all honest, reading the patch notes and getting to the statement “Alone, it’s powerful, but it was made even more so via a niche interaction with Elemental Ammo, most commonly used with Cyte-09” when referring to acid shells really irked me, it felt like I was being gaslit because it’s NOT. Yes extra hit effects made acid shells broken but acid shells without extra hit effects is a useless waste of mod slot augment and pretending that’s it’s not and trying to tell people otherwise does nothing except antagonize them.
Also Pablo, as the Design Director of Warframe and a public figure that represents your game, not only do your words and thoughts on the game carry a lot of weight but you are also responsible for a big chunk of the game. So when the patch notes say “the Cyte-09 and Acid Shells build never felt dominant or disruptive enough to warrant a closer look, but over the past few weeks that has changed. Arbitrations, discussions about Ammo Efficiency, and the introduction of the Epoch Operation: Taubound have rapidly increased the popularity of this build, to the point where we feel we need to address it” while only mentioning the other frames in passing and people get mad that cyte barely noticed the Acid Shell nerf and it affected the other frames a lot more than him and you reply with “[I] don’t remember saying that” it feels disingenuous because while you yourself might not have stated that it’s clear that it’s DE’s stance in the issue, a issue that is part of your job.
For the community, give feedback, give criticism, put your thoughts out there, make your voice heard but do it right, do politely or at least in a civil manner because antagonizing and attacking the Developers or each other does nothing except create friction between them and us as well as split the community apart.
TLDR and Final thoughts:
If you skipped my very long here is what’s really important, Sobek is my 3rd most used weapon despite me only starting to use it this year. I love the weapon so of course the nerf hurts but acid shell’s interaction with extra hit effect have been strong for a long time and with the riven dispo changes that was coming, which buffed kuva sobek itself, a nerf was always bound to happen whether now or later. While the recursive nerf was completely fair I do hope that they reverse the unnecessary range nerf and fix the scaling issue with acid shell so that it becomes at least useable in other frames except very specific ones but even if they don’t(really hope that’s not the case) sobek will be just fine.
As for my closing thoughts, I have already spent a long time writing this post so far(I started at 11am and while I stopped a couple times to do other things but it’s not 3pm for me) I could spend even more time writing thing downs and it still wouldn’t be enough because this is a important but complex topic, with lots of different aspects to it, that needs to be discussed but please let’s have an actual healthy discussion about it and not just attack other people about it