The Damage Attenuation system in Warframe has been a hotly debated topic over the years, as it causes bosses that take massive DPS to receive damage reduction based on that damage reactively. This ruins the experience for lower-level players, as it makes their own damage output close to negligible. Damage Attenuation has since been reworked to allow newer players to contribute while making it fairer for players with high-end builds. The following will explain the new Damage Attenuation system in place.
Damage Attenuation Through Health Scaling
Of course, as you do content on lower levels, enemy health and defenses like Armor and Shields are appropriately scaled. As you get into higher levels, these values increase. Once you reach Steel Path, enemies with levels past 120 begin to scale exponentially, making them very tanky. With Damage Attenuation being a flat value regardless of enemy level, this makes Steel Path bosses extremely tough to kill.
Because of this, Damage Attenuation will now scale based on an enemy’s max health. As the boss gains more maximum health, the maximum damage cap for Damage Attenuation will also increase. This prevents fights from dragging on too long, but it won't prevent bosses from being one-shot.
In short, players with high-end builds will still feel the power of their endgame builds, while giving bosses a chance to execute their mechanics. The time-to-kill ratio will be more reasonable, rewarding players who have invested in a powerful Warframe setup.
Independent Damage Attenuation
Previously, this system was applied to the entire squad during multiplayer sessions. What this means is that squad members with powerful builds will deal their full damage, setting the Damage Reduction bar extremely high. This shared Damage Attenuation will severely affect a newer player’s experience during a boss fight, making them feel like they cannot contribute.
Now, Damage Attenuation on a boss will only affect each player independently. This means that a low Mastery player can now deal their full damage and not be affected by Damage Attenuation, while high Mastery players will only affect themselves.
Standardized Damage Attenuation
Kuva Liches, Sisters, Murmur bosses, and Archons used to have bespoke Damage Attenuation values, making each boss vary wildly in difficulty. This will be changed so that all bosses in Warframe will use the new standard for Damage Attenuation. To balance this change, all bosses across the board will be given an increase to their base maximum health.
