Melee 3.0 _ Simplest And Concrete Concept

[Burnthesteak87]

An hot topic since last week is Melee 3.0.

This awoke my inspiration to theorycraft about the actual system and potential solutions to its problems.

 

> Intro: (You can skip it if you want, the concept itself is in the third Spoiler)
 

Spoiler

I’d really like playing Warframe with a more updated Melee Combat, basing on attack, defense, response and reflexes (I’m supporting a lot of good threads around there), but I understand that Warframe involves too many enemies together and implementing a system that would fit in it would mean reworking most of the enemies and their behavior AND all the Melee combos. Which is pretty hard to happen.
That’s why I don’t see it all realizable, and so I will stay on a not so groundbreaker concept.
(Also talking about combos, they’re not meant to be nothing more than something visually appealing, a player chooses one which feels nice and eventually changes to another, there’s no really any other use -over damage multipliers. So I won’t touch them)

> Let’s start by listing what’s not good:

Spoiler

DAMAGE

• A1) The damage scaling for late game (enemy level >= 40) is scarce. This adds up to most weapons being Mastery Fodder and subpar to most Top Weapons.

 

DEFENSE AND SUSTAIN

• B1) No proper working active defenses: going melee in between a swarm of high lvl enemies or staying out of cover defying ranged attacks equals getting killed in 1-2 seconds. (Channeled Parry consumes too much energy basing on the damage incoming and I suspect it’s also influenced by Life Strike’s downsides -%more energy drain)

• B2) No deflecting missles and big projectiles ala Shatter Defense (Mesa).

• B3) No natural sustain, thus relying and depending on Rage and Life Strike loop.

 

POOR MECHANICS

• C1) Melee Combo Counter (MCC) lasts 3-4 seconds with no attacking, which is often a too small window of action.

• C2) Most combos locks you into place making essential the use of Reach/Primed Reach and potentially screwing you if your target is slightly out of your melee range.

• C3) Stairways and frontal attacks... Well, nobody can do anything about that.

• C4) Melee Combo Counter ramps too much slowly to have an effective influence.

• C5) No efficent reward for completing COMBOS.

 

LIMITATIVE REQUIREMENTs

• D1) Going melee requires being Tanky, high EHP (Armor, Vitality) since the lack of a valid Active Defense.

• D2) Strictly depending on Life Strike + Rage and eventually Focus/Primed Focus

 

> Now let's list some wannabe-solutions that could fix those problems:
 

Spoiler

BASE MECHANICS CHANGES:

 

1) EFFICENT DEFENSE: 
Channeling while Parry now doesn’t draw energy basing on the damages received but is drained over time.

Also now if the Shield is UP it reflects projectiles and rockets ala Mesa’s Shatter Defenses. (Ping pong Lightsaber-Fight defense)

Life Strike’s and similar MODS downsides won’t affect Parry’s Channeling anymore.

Energy Drain: In flat percentage or increasing? Like 0-100% in15 seconds? Also there must be an internal cooldown so people can’t abuse it by spamming Parry.

 

This Fixes B1 and B2

 

2) GAP CLOSER: 
The Rush/Roll command (base SHIFT)+Forward while in Melee-Only will now execute a Dash toward crosshair’s Direction; it could be executed during a combo and wouldn’t stop its execution.

 

This fixes C2 (and helps for C1).

 

3) Destroy the Rage + Life Strike combo.

Rage is to much essential in most builds. Energy gain would need a big rework too, but let’s stay on topic.

Life Strike now gives Overshields instead than Vitality.
Or eventually procs an healing over time, instead than assuring an istant Vitality gain.

 

This fixes D2.

 

4) Melee Combo Counter CHANGES:

•  MCC fading is longer, will take more than 3 seconds. Let’s arbitrarily say 6.

• Channeled Attacks and Energy spent on Channeling will feed MCC by assuring more Combo Counters. This is made to take advantage better of the next change.

 

Fixing C1 and C4

 

5) MCC IMPROVED BOOSTS:

Quote

The Damage Multiplier starts at 1.5X the weapon's base damage after five consecutive hits. The multiplier is increased by +.5X after achieving three times the number of hits of the previous multiplier, i.e. 15 consecutive hits yield a 2X Damage Multiplier, 45 consecutive hits yield 2.5X Damage, 135 hits yield 3X Damage, 405 hits yield 3.5x etc.

“WarframeWIKI”

 

Now instead than increasing just Damage, every tot attacks (following the old system) will unlock a Powerup Level.
Call it Beast Mode, Adrenaline Rush, Master’s Awakening, Berserker Fury. Whatever.

 

Every level will garant increasing stat boosts until the MCC will worn off.

 

Boosts Suggested:

 

- Way more damage increase;

- Energy per second;

- Baseline Life Strike;

- Every hit will garant tot Overshield;

- % Damage Reduction;

- Faster Knockdown Recovery;

- Evasion (lower enemy accuracy);

- Special Effects basing on MODS/Focus/etc.? Explosive Demise AKA Hokuto Shinken?
 

Spoiler

 

6) COMBO REWARDS: 
Completing Combos or reaching an high MCC level will garant an effect similar to Powerful Syndacate AOEs.

Unleashing it by holding the R key? Or automatically when reaching the Levelup? Or performing a Charged Attack?

The higher the level, the stronger the effect and Reset MCC after depleting?

Have a look for some inspiration.

 

 

This will fix A1, B3, C5, D1.
 

This way players will have the opportunity to decide if burning all their energy to overpower their enemies, overcharge their damage and survivability through MCC boosts and eventually getting to it by staying for the necessary time in melee.

This has been theorycrafted by putting everything melee lacks as a bonus into Melee Combo Counter and removing or breaking mandatory Mods and Requirements.And also capitalizing on Channeling as a mechanic to ramp up faster the MCC.
 

> Examples and Brainstorms:

 

Let's assume Crimson Dervish's combos would allow the player those effects. 
In this case, you can use specific combos to define your combat flow, or use them to adapt different circumstances.

• You need energy to use your own skills, to feed Life Strike or to abuse Channeling? You'd perform Crimson Orbit to get Energy.
• You're low HP and you're in danger? You'd perform Twisting Flurry to get the Healing effect.
• You'd want to peel off a group of enemies and your warframe doesn't have CCs? You'd perform Coiling Impale to get the Aoe Radiation.

This is a quick preview to show some mechanics demonstration, of course there would need more work to balance those Aoe Effects.

> Buffs afforded could also work in combo with other combos.
Take Galatine with Cleaving Whirlwind for example: maybe Drifting Stampede execution would proc a Temporary Buff increasing attack speed, thus making Broken Bull combo way more devastating.
http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Cleaving_Whirlwind

We can "repair" this combo system by making combos able to synergize and interact for a more skillful use.

A brainstorm list of ideas about effects that can proc out as a Temporary Buff reward:

• attack speed boost;
• allows Evasion for the next X seconds, for self defense of light weapons;
• invisibility on the next BulletJump (need a quick escape? In memory of the old "Super Jump");
• assured Heavy Impact proc on the next slam or ground attack;
• next slam attack or ground finisher creates a crater echoing energy/damage/slowing enemies;
• next charge attack hits for 200% its damage with Finisher damage;
• next charge attack charges faster;
• next charge attack hits for a red crit;
• allows Charged Parry costs no energy for the next X seconds;
• allows Charged Parry to regen energy ala "Rage";
• next Aerial or Wall Attack allows traveling a longer distance;
• next Aerial Attack hits for an assured red Crit;
• assured Retribution mod effect for the next X seconds (http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Retribution)
• assured Explosive Demise effect for the next X seconds (http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Explosive_Demise)
• assured other PVP mods effects: http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Act, http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Follow_Through;
•  
• ...

The simple logic after it is giving specific actions made by the player a stronger effect or an utility. Unlike every mods which give an always active buff like Berserker or Maiming Strike, which are counterproductive and promotes a brainless spam.
http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Maiming_Strike

...

PS:
Another good idea born around Melee3.0 topics was to give different stat boosts to the MeleeComboCounter stack to every Melee Stance, thus promoting diversity, uniqueness and different playstyles.

PPS:

The Dark-Split Sword concept, a weapon able to use 2 different stances, made wonder a lot of players.
Many hoped the stance could be swapped ingame. But unluckly this isn't the case.
This gave the input to think about this idea:

"What about if every Melee weapon could equip 2 stances and they could be swapped ingame with the unused R key?"

It came to my mind the situation where you have a stance to face groups of enemies and a stance to focus on single target fight:

take as an example Venka, having Vermillion Storm which has multiple targets attacks better suiting a crowd fight and a Four Riders suiting a 1 on 1 fight, with Impact procs to keep stunned the target.

PPPS: from 23/07/2016:
In Melee only, let's bound the E key for Horizontal attacks and the R key for Vertical attacks.

Edited July 31, 2016 by Burnthesteak87
I hate this new Forum formatting.

[Bongever]

The best part is this is the simplest melee overhaul concept Ive read and fairly feasible. Good job.

[Nazrethim]

This... this some awesome stuff.

I still think Channel Blocking should go and implement a Stamina-like bar that depletes per second while you Block (which would negate damage until you run out of [insert resource name] then reverting to 50% or so damage reduction) or while Channel, but recharges after 1-3s delay of not using it.

[Cyriann]

This thread holds a gem.

Now to polish it...

I follow Nazrethim on the blocking. It feels not really worth anything to try and block enemy fire in the current state of the game.

For the other points, I need to think more on all this.

Give the time to go through my week of exams and I'll give more constructive things.

Edited January 3, 2016 by Cyriann

[Burnthesteak87]

This... this some awesome stuff.

I still think Channel Blocking should go and implement a Stamina-like bar that depletes per second while you Block (which would negate damage until you run out of [insert resource name] then reverting to 50% or so damage reduction) or while Channel, but recharges after 1-3s delay of not using it.

Thanks.

I thought that since people are going to resort to Rage anyway, that [insert Resource Name] is going to be Energy whatever, and that's pretty much what I've written in my Topic.

Essentially Parrying will be acting like before (negating damage only while Channeling), but draining energy per second (maybe increasing over time) instead than draining energy for every damage source and quantity it blocks.

[Naqel]

The best part is this is the simplest melee overhaul concept Ive read and fairly feasible.

 

Here's an even simpler: Melee 1.0 behavior, with the 2.0 mod changes.

Maybe add an alternative attack with the secondary fire key, for things like staggers and air-attacks.

 

Melee 1.0 was only ever broken through the broken mod system.

With the most critical flaws removed, any further mechanical changes were entirely superfluous.

 

Additionally, anything based off of melee 2.0, as far as reworks go, will always face the most critical flaw of the 2.0, the unwieldy and unreliable control scheme.

Channeling as a system is also something that should not have happened, and the effect is much better utilized in the new parkour moves, where the warframe lights up momentarily when it performs an action that defies physics(more than usual), rather permanently than turning into a christmas tree, complete with sound effects.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Naqel

[Burnthesteak87]

@Naquel: Did you even read anything?

Melee 1.0 Behavior had no better behavior than Melee 2.0. It was simply Quick Melee, Charge Attacks, Slide Attacks, Wall attack etc. Features that stayed in M2.0 (Exception made for Charge Attacks). 
Also talking about the gone Stamina, it didn't really affect anything in Melee.

Melee 2.0 wasn't superfluous, DE tryed giving more importance and identity to melee weapons, they achieved something, but still needs more work.
Consider that plenty of work has been put into combos, DE won't scrap it like it never happened.

For "unwieldy and ureliable control scheme" I can agree for half, but only regarding Combos: even so, they're meant to be spammed and easy to be performed.

"Channeling shouldn't have happened" and so you criticize its graphical effect. What kind of argument is that?
Channeling is pretty nice to boost Finisher and Stealth Attacks, sure talking about  its peculiar Mods and weapon interaction it has some issue, but that's only because it hasn't been developed properly.

Edited January 21, 2016 by Burnthesteak87

[Burnthesteak87]

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Blood_Rush

Yeah, this is the way. First step in the right direction.

Edited January 26, 2016 by Burnthesteak87

[Burnthesteak87]

Since we're fresh from "One Thousand  E  Cuts" Tactical Alert...

Think about what you felt lacking in the past Alert and check out the Concept.

This TA stressed out what are the weak points of melee:
> Dependance on Life Strike+Rage and a tanky Warframe;
> Not every weapon is avialable for melee combat;
> Necessity of relying on Status and Crowd Control spam;
> No active defense. Also the reason because there were no ranged enemies;
 

Edited March 11, 2016 by Burnthesteak87

[TheMightyBaloon]

From what I am reading this sounds like I can't play my excal or banshee or loki in melee without any of my other abilities because I can't take a hit. Ridicule on the side while melee is a gimmick at the moment. It is just okay, you can do combos and be fine. The problem stems down from content and enemy lvl. At lower enemy lvl you just hack and slash through. At high enemy lvl you hit a wall. 

So onto the analysis of your pros and cons since  got nothing else better to do at the moment. 

 

A1) There needs to be weapon diversity. Period. Re-vamping weapons so that they do more damage or being able to be useful is not the right way to go. The damage scaling is okay at enemies lvl 40 since I can take a ranked dual cleavers and do substantial enough damage to kill the enemy in an efficient manner. There are plenty of mid tier weapons that do just fine until lvl 80ish on basic units. The problem here becomes armor and modding for the appropriate type of enemy. Higher lvl bombards are very tanky and while hacking at one of those with a ninkondi might not be sufficient (granted you'd be using corrosive and stripping their armor), using a destreza or a scindo prime might do a better job. What needs to be done is there to be a better streamline in melee specific types rather than making something like the magistar a tier 1 melee weapon by giving it more dmg and attack speed. Basically having a low tier melee sword like the dark sword or jaw sword going all the way up to broken war or the prisma scana. 

B1) You want to jump in between lvl 70-120 enemy swarm with a frame in melee and survive without doing much for over 2 sec? Most rpgs would eat you alive in such a scenario without proper sustain. Channeling is an okay mechanic implemented very poorly. There is a reason why frames like atlas and valkyr exist. It is to please the melee fanatics out there that want to do that what you are describing. Go in a cluster of high lvl enemies in melee and kill stuff. There is a reason we call those frames tanks because they can take a hit. Different frames have different utilities to deal with clusters of high lvl enemies. And while banshee might not be the best choice to go melee in such a case, you can easily sonar and kill them with your rifle. This is not tera and you do have an array of projectile weapons at your disposal. On the other hand if you wanna play be the niche and play a low armor frame in a high lvl enemy mission with melee, so be it but do not complain for being taken down in a fraction of a second because you couldn't take a hit.

 

B2) You can shoot down bombards' missiles. This sounds like you've been knocked down by too many bombard missiles and you don't like it. There are mods that prompt quick recovery from knock down, try those when you gear for melee centered builds. Projectile deflection and reduction on frames would make things just go out of control. Shielding is yer true friend when it comes down to being able to avoid damage to your hit points.

 

B3) This is true there is no natural sustain other than rejuvenation or innate healing from warframes. But there is life strike as a mechanic. While not the most elegant solution it is the life leech version of getting hp. That or using you furis with the leech mod. Spamming healing pads isn't economical unless you got 100+ on you, but those are basically the potions of warframe. Make them, use them.

C1) Currently melee combo is set to 3 seconds capping it at 18 with body count(if memory serves me right). The problem here lies in slotting in body count in every weapon. But I can see why, some weapons scale pretty well with combo counter especially weapons that have innate critical chance. In a proper squad running full corrosive projection and having proper support frames, having a combo counter that persist would make missions feel boring  and while being able to mow down lvl80+ enemies in 2 hits is fun. It gets really boring and brings on the issues of late game content.

 

C2) Yes and no, there is a slight auto targeting. But that doesn't make the use of primed reach essential.  Weapons like the ack and brunt or the destreza have stance that have a great forward momentum combined with slight swings. The range really doesn't hurt them much when you can go from one target to another. While weapons like the jatt kitag or the orthos prime benefit from the longer reach due to them having a larger reach to begin with. Prime reach doesn't optimize your damage but it allows you to strike more enemies. And yes more enemies does ideally equal a faster build up for a combo counter but not necessarily.

C3) I don't get your point on the frontal attacks. Since targeting is done in front of the warframe and there isn't any adjustment on stairways or floating targets like drones, this at some points might be rather annoying. So just switch positions and attack from a different angle. Or jump attack that drone. You don't expect everything to be like "come here and hit me".

C4) From the wiki :  The Damage Multiplier starts at 1.5X the weapon's base damage after five consecutive hits. The multiplier is increased by +.5X after achieving three times the number of hits of the previous multiplier, i.e. 15 consecutive hits yield a 2X Damage Multiplier, 45 consecutive hits yield 2.5X Damage, 135 hits yield 3X Damage, 405 hits yield 3.5x etc. So at just 15 hits you are already doubling your dmg at 135 you are tripling it. Unless you are facing lvl 300+ i don't think this will be much of an issues on lower enemy lvls.

C5) So combo counter gives dmg the larger the combo you maintain. That is plenty of a benefit. Would you like a cookie and a glass of milk too?

 

D1) So this is a game of weapon and frame diversity. Which means different frames do different things. If you'd want to go melee on a frame that doesn't have any proper defenses be my guest, otherwise I see no point in this being on your list. At this point this means you have no proper experience playing the game.

D2) Rage+Life strike mod combination doesn't warrant going melee. With the current zenurik passives I've dropped rage from most of my melee set ups due to the high energy rate regeneration. Frames with pseudo armor like rhino or nezha can go melee without rage or even life strike if you manage to maintain your pseudo armor up. Valkyr doesn't require rage or life strike. Frames that can sustain invisibility do not require rage and life strike. Using naromon doesn't require rage and life strike. It is an option you take when you mod for melee. While the combo is efficient, it doesn't work well when the incoming dmg is greater than your life/shield pool combined.

 

Now onto breaking down your suggested improvements and why they might not work or work.

1) Efficient defense. 

So instead of flat dmg take now you get a consistent  drain. This is fine I guess. My biggest issue here is that the more bullets you take the faster the drain which ultimately is the same thing. And if the duration is fixed this means you can't regenerate energy since you'll still be in draining mode. And capping that drain will basically put a soft cap on dmg taken, which is something that the kids these days define as OP(over powered). 

I do not agree on projectile mitigation while having shields up. People misunderstand the use of shielding. It is there to soften the bullet hits on your hit points and not to be an unlimited defense source. 

Life strike ill still have a downside while channeling since you'd be adding a flat energy reduction to an already draining one. This really doesn't fix the idea of jumping into a group of high lvl enemies and surviving. It makes your energy drain faster than the money given to Greece by the EU.

2) Gap closer. 

While I don't mind the dash mechanic while in melee, there is already something that does that. Slide attack can re-position you during combos while you get the chance to inflict damage. You can also bullet jump/melee  to close gaps.  The dash won't really help with combo locking or combo extension. This is more of a skill issue at this point.

 

3) Rage+Life stike. This is just nonsense. As I've mentioned above melee doesn't depend on life strike rage. It is a pre-conceived notion that you can only do melee when you have rage and life strike. This stems from lack of experience in playing the game and understanding the tools given to you. Life strike giving overshield is another ridiculous idea since slash and toxin bypass that and goes straight through your shield. This will basically make life strike useless against infested and grineer, which is where it is used the most.

4) Melee combo counter.

Fading means slowing disappearing, wrong word to use there. And having it being at 6 really isn't much of a difference than 3 seconds. A better option would be adding an extra mod slot for weapons you can use it for body count. With dmg mods removal in the winds I think body count will see more and more usage in optimizing weapons replacing pressure point and giving a slot for extra dmg or crit mods.. In which case I think de should start testing transition with melee weapons first than primaries.

 

Chanelling feeding combo counter would be an easy way for high energy pool frames to wrack up dmg. Sit still, have channeling feed dmg while you regen with pads. Get an easy 3x combo in 2 min, wreck stuff. Again the issue with channeling is the poor implementation. The main problem with it is the lack of mods that support it. Channeling is supposed to be this super sayan type of stuff for weapons but never got to be one because it got stuck behind a poorly implemented system.

 

5) The damage is already enough for what it is. The combo counter allows your melee to scale up in mid to late game. This is not tera or god of war, or sengoku basara. We don't want warframe to be another hack and slash. There are options in this game, use them. Also the resent lesion introduced an innate passive  that makes status weapons a bit more fun. 

 

6) This will just reward not having a longer combo counter and resetting it to gain that proc/bonus at 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5. Melee is melee. It is not supposed to dominate the system. It is a means of achieving damage in a game with a wide variety of weapons and frames. You use what you want, when you want it.

 

So in conclusion your idea would not fix the current melee 2.0 but will just introduce more problems. It will not give players variety but an idea that melee will be better than using a tonkor to wipe out groups of mobs. It will make the game into just another hack and slash 3rd person shooter.

And I do not get what you mean by breaking mandatory mods? It sounds like you want to run a full efficiency set up on a warframe while having little to no defensive mods in order to survive high amounts of dmg. 

There is a reason why there are suitability mods. To help you survive, not to make you jump in the fray and be a killing machine with every frame. You don't go it games like diablo and pick a demon hunter to be a melee specialist. Or jump into path of exile and make a high evasion set up and hope to evade every hit. You look at what you have, and you use it. In this case, if you want to go melee in warframe you pick atlas, rhino, vaklyr, frost, ash, loki, inaros, wukong and so forth. Frames that can withstand or avoid damage so you can melee. Picking excal and jumping into a high lvl corpus or infested mission and not using your blind and then complaining about it or trying to come up with a way to improve the system doesn't work or help the community. The main problem is with the current channeling system is the lack of mods for it. And while body count fixes the combo counter persistence, it is a temporary solution to a bigger problem.

 

So these are my 2 cents on the matter. Gain experience in the game and think about what you currently have in the box before you try to tear it to shreds.

 

Sincerely yours, 

        TheMightyBaloon.

 

Edited March 14, 2016 by [DE]Danielle
Removed slightly antagonizing comments

[Burnthesteak87]

On 11/3/2016 at 9:55 PM, TheMightyBaloon said:

...snip...

So these are my 2 cents on the matter. Gain experience in the game and think about what you currently have in the box before you try to tear it to shreds.

 

Sincerely yours, 

        TheMightyBaloon.

 

I'm open to criticism but, sorry, this is plenty of misinterpretations and presumptions.

I really tryed reading it all, thanks for your 2 cents.

Edited March 12, 2016 by Burnthesteak87

[stratavar]

On 1/25/2016 at 5:05 AM, Burnthesteak87 said:

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Blood_Rush

Yeah, this is the way. First step in the right direction.

While the "CONCEPT" of mods that rely on the MCC to boost effectiveness is a great idea, Blood Rush is terrible.  All it does is both affirm AND heavily boost the Crit Meta that exists in this game.  "Crit is King" is boring, and it exists everywhere.  Should crit exist?  Sure, but mods like Berserker and Blood Rush are cancerous meta-enforcing mods.  What's worse is the fact that DE made a HUGE deal about weapon-specific melee mods affecting Warframe abilities nearly a year ago, but these new Shadow Debt mods come in, unusable by frames like Excalibur, Valkyr, and Wukong.  Why?  Because they would be TOTALLY broken as crap if they were usable on them - especially Valkyr and Wukong.  It's now generally more effective to ditch Ultimate abilities on these frames, and just use melee weapons if you want to have the best sustained DPS.  The worst part about it is it's the same problem we had back when Syndicate mods were taken from Excalibur.  If you want to mod for both effective abilities AND melee weapons, it is now impossible to have both.  A Fix needs to happen on multiple fronts to allow these mods to be used.

 

First - The Melee Combo Counter needs to be extended to at least 6-8 seconds from 3.  3 seconds isn't even enough time to sneeze, but now, thanks to Body Count, you get 15 seconds.  Even worse, with Wukong and Ash with BS augment, you can reach beyond 20 seconds.  If not extended, then the Melee Combo Counter needs to be adjusted to a system that decays when not attacking enemies, rather than completely disappearing.  Body Count can slow the decay-rate of the counter.  Either way, Body Count's benefits should stay where they are, no matter the change to the base values.  e.g. 15 seconds total should stay 15 seconds after the change.

 

Second - Blood Rush and Maiming Strike need to be nerfed or re-purposed.  This is a perfect opportunity to ditch True Steel entirely as a crit mod.  Blood Rush's values could be reworked to allow for an initial boost comparable to True Steel without a melee combo multiplier built.  A max rank Blood Rush could give ~75% crit-chance.  Seems fair if you started out with that 75% boost to begin with.  True Steel could be re-purposed to a mod that like the OP talked about, could increase the benefits of the Melee Combo Counter.  Although personally, I believe that his original values need serious tweaking.  They are way too high.  In fact, there are some values on the first step that could be on the last step of the MCC.  Each step could even introduce new benefits, rather than starting with the whole package at rank 1.  Lifestrike and Energy per Second could be some of the last.  I honestly don't know what DE was thinking with Maiming Strike.  It's ridiculously OP with Orthos P and other weapons that benefit heavily from Primed Reach.  Slap Blood Rush on there(despite its redundancy) and you'll be Red Critting after your first slide-attack, since Blood Rush seems to calculate Maiming Strike's value into the total value.  IMO Maiming Strike might just have the bite the bullet if it isn't heavily altered or nerfed.

 

Third - Berserker is a huge part of the basis of Crit Meta.  75% Attack Speed completely trumps the puny 30% from Fury.  Even the old Fury at 60%, and the new Primed Fury that we'll be seeing soon enough at 55% just won't be enough to make players seriously consider anything else if Crit is already the best way to maximize DPS - especially since Blood Rush and Body Count have now paved the way for the new Meta.  I honestly don't know an extremely effective way to solve this problem.  My only suggestion that I can think of at the time that doesn't drastically change the mod's purpose would be to change the Crit requirement to a Status Proc requirement.  This would give the Status Side of the tree a serious advantage that could bring some status weapons back up to par with the new and improved Crit Meta, and legitimize Weeping Wounds and other status mods as well.  Other than that, some value adjustments that ultimately water down berserker are the only options to help bring non-crit weapons back into the mix.

 

Fourth - Warframe Powers interacting with Shadow Debt mods.  This is a nasty beast that has reared its ugly head thanks to the introduction of these mods.  They can't be avoided if DE intends to uphold the rules that they put in place nearly a year ago about "weapon specific" mods and universal mods affecting these abilities.  DE stated that these abilities should receive benefits from universal mods, and barred weapon-specific mods like syndicate mods and Covert Lethality.  Of course, myself and a handful of others thought that the elimination of Syndicate Mods was to cover up the mistake that Covert Lethality was.  Who could blame people for thinking that, when a month before, there was a sudden push to ALLOW these syndicate mods to work on these abilties by DE themselves.  Truthfully speaking, Covert Lethality shouldn't exist.  There should never be something that bypasses challenge and instantaneously kills an enemy, no matter their stats and level.  The fact that a dagger with a single mod can theoretically kill a level 1000 Bombard in a single hit is plain stupid.

Now, to the solution for these abilities.  I have 2 possible suggestions:
  1.  These abilities should receive HALF of the benefits of the Shadow Debt mods.  It's a fairly simple fix.  It doesn't by any means truly solve the issues given enough time to build your counter, but barring Excalibur, Valkyr, and Wukong players from benefiting from these mods during their Ultimates just isn't right.

  2.  Replace the Melee Combo Counter for these 3 frames (and any future frames that receive similar abilities) with a system similar to what I suggested above as a possibility for a new MCC.  A Decaying "Rage" or "Fury" bar, or whatever you want to call it, that would be nearly impossible to go very far beyond a 2x Multiplier.  Doing so would allow DE to easily manipulate the values for these Warframes without having to modify the Shadow Debt Mods.  This system, when used specifically for these frames, would allow for a consistent "ramping up" of damage output, and could prevent them from drastically out-dpsing traditional Melee weapons when making use of the Shadow Debt mods.

 

Warframe has way too many issues with its melee system right now.  It does not reward players for strategically linking combos, despite combos existing.  Combo flow is shaky at best.  Tying to actually tie combos to each other in a way that looks attractive is near possible.  With 3, and sometimes even 2 combos for certain stances, it gets boring fast.  The worst part of it is when weapons have multiple stances, but there is an obvious winner as to which one performs best (looking at you Crimson Dervish =__=).

 

Beyond the problems with Melee, a real problem ultimately arises when it is more beneficial to bypass challenge, rather than directly confronting it with skillful gameplay.  Why get 1shot by a Detron Crewman from across the map when he could be Blinded and held up in the air, unable to move, and ready for reaping by a team-comp that doesn't even let the sweat roll down between your butt cheeks.  Enemy scaling should very rarely bring the game to a point where even tanky frames(excluding Valk, for reasons of her Ult) are vaporized by a single enemy.

I would personally like to see more experiences in Warframe much like what you experience in PvP.  A smaller number of enemies that are powerful and agile, relentlessly attacking you from all sides.  A flurry of both bullets and blades that make your head spin while you try to keep up.  Maybe some new units that even encourage melee?  Corpus Assassin Bots with Energy blades and disc-like projectiles?  Grineer Heavy-swordsmen that lunk around and swing with enough force to cause you to slide back when blocking?

My last 2 cents about the melee system might seem somewhat counter-intuitive, but I think it's a legitimate mention.  As we experienced with the transition from Parkour 1.0 to Parkour 2.0, slowing down the process slightly allowed for more deliberate and intelligent gameplay.  Rather than coptering around the map, slamming into objects, we can now skillfully traverse the map with fluid motion and grace.  It might just be that slowing down melee slightly and making it a process much like Parkour 2.0 could heavily benefit the game.

[Ada_Wong_SG]

Melee combo charge up musou attack... which can be released for healing/ recovery

[Fifield]

18 minutes ago, stratavar said:

mods like Berserker and Blood Rush are cancerous meta-enforcing mods.

Spot on.  Berserker's fine on it's own of course.  It's typical of DE's fix-it-with-a-mod approach, which continuously makes the game more and more broken.

I can only hope that Steve saw them as a sticking plaster and will nuke them when the big rework is done -- when is that due BTW, not heard anything in Devstreams?

I 'fixed' melee about 8 months ago.  Shame nobody stickies the best suggestions:

 

[Burnthesteak87]

2 hours ago, stratavar said:

...snip...

I do agree about Crits, for the simplest fact that Critical Hits is a mechanic for RNG based MORPGs and not shooters.
Hitting a target on its vitals is something that requires aim and a bit of luck... But since in melee you haven't the control of your attacks, critical hits are way dumber than critical hits on ranged weapons.
This is an offtopic, I'd like to talkt about it in another Topic.

I quoted Blood Rush because it follows the mechanic I suggested in my topic, "boosting a stat scaling on the MCC".

Also I don't dislike Maiming Strike and similar mods, because they aim to make real what I always predicated on Warframe: not emproving the overall damage, but boosting Single Moves damage, to define a playstyle.
Since Warframe modding is broken, because you've to build just for Damage, while meleeing you've only to spam E because that's the best thing you've to do to get the max DPS out.
If we would have more interesting combos with better rewards or specific moves (slide attack, slam attacks, finishers, etc) with special rewards we could have different playstyles.

Example#1, aiming for knocking down enemies to execute a land finisher, aiming to use countermoves more frequently...
Actually all these moves have no utility, it's way more efficent and relaxing spamming E.
Think about Exalted Blades spin attack unleashing a Radial Blind.
Example#2: Excalibur with Slash Dash Augment, was pretty nice with Body Count, because allowed to stack MCC by the use of SlasDash more frequently and more rewarding in certain situations.
Example#3: Imagine if Channeling would become an active feature in combos and moves, setting on special attacks and aoes.
Used on the correct attack during the combo chain would "unleash a Blast of energy"-kinda things.

DE has to build FLOW in melee. Alternating moves, promoting a playstyle.
I come to think to Legacy of Kain Defiance combat: I aknowledge that it involved less enemies and was more focussed on attack and defense, but there every move had something to get chained to (you could chain whatever attack), you had Crowd Controls and AOE Nukes as an high reward to clear the board and deal with too many enemies.

As you written, I'd like also a smaller number of more challenging enemies, but this clearly go toward DE's development way.
Atm the game is all about the Horde Mode, "close 4 Tennos in a large environment and spawn in Units with special attacks".
Check Infested. They're plenty of useless units which just do number. No need to script units, give em' a standard AI and let them spam abilities.
Scripting enemies behavior may be too hard and eventually a big risk to take, since when enemy units start becoming more than 1 it can damage the gameplay in a negative manner.
Think about introducing an uncommon mechanic, like Nullifiers (which I don't dislike) in Sorties: 1 is bearable, when they start becoming 2 it's way harder to deal with. The difficulty grows in an umpredictable manner, till it's unbearable. Think about Bursas.
(It's just an example, I don't want to open a "Nullifier or Bursa topic" here.)

Simply put, DE developes Warframe on the safest and most modular way possible. They keep it simple and modular, easy to be changed. Sacrifying deepness and preserving boring and half baked features. That's a consequence for keeping it easy to manage.
They always did it, and I suppose they won't change. The problem is when too many overlooked mechanics start to overlap, exactly what we saw in the Thousand Cuts Tactical Alert... the Crit Weapons Meta... the Modding System all for Damage... the Lack of Playstyles and alternative use of Weapons (secondary fire, stances lacking, etc.)...

All I can hope is to drive attention to easy solutions and wait for the incoming Damage 3.0.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Burnthesteak87

[phoenix1992]

I actually like the fact that defense game is picked on - we lack it.
But, people that create those topics - do you consider all weapons, all arcanes and all play styles?
Please keep in mind that some players use melee as of right now, and like it for what it is. 

So back to your topic :
1) Ditto - we lack many defensive options in the game, and pushing those to melee will help.
2) Not everyone is using channeling attacks - there are other means of sustain - and in the current meta I actually fool around with it.
3) The issue with stances is something nasty - there is a big fat reward in completing Tempo Royale, but not for doing so with Cleaving, but stating that "There is no reward" is just not true.

On 1/3/2016 at 5:27 PM, Burnthesteak87 said:

- Way more damage increase;

- Energy per second;

- Baseline Life Strike;

- Every hit will garant tot Overshield;

- % Damage Reduction;

- Faster Knockdown Recovery;

- Evasion (lower enemy accuracy);

4) Power creeping at its finest.  I can back up the Evavsion (you should not be harder to hit, while in combo) but everything else is "I WANT FREE STUFF"
5) Not everyone needs to use Blood rush and Body count. And if you push "combo" changes, you ignore those players.
6) This is overall a playstyle, that players use - it it certainly not the best optimized playstyle.
Right now there are couple of ways to sustain yourself during melee:
a) Zenurk/Vazarin
b) Using syndicate proxy
c) Frame power
d) Gear
e) Arcanes
f) Equilibrium

Please do consider that those things are in the game right now and start building from there.

[Burnthesteak87]

Thanks for your feedback, but there's something I'd like to remark, because probably it wasn't that clear.

1 hour ago, phoenix1992 said:

I actually like the fact that defense game is picked on - we lack it.
But, people that create those topics - do you consider all weapons, all arcanes and all play styles?
Please keep in mind that some players use melee as of right now, and like it for what it is. 

I tryed most of the avialable playstyles with melee, I refuse arcanes for they shouldn't be a must, exactly the focus of my topic:
Making melee viable in most of the cases, without being restricted after optional feaures and Farm Gates.
If I've to consider weapons, then a lot of weapons fall back to being useless, even while being locked after a good farm gate... Venka's Malicious Raptor as an example.
If you like something half baked... Good for you, but it's not a problem of the community and also it's calling for a minorance holding back the Progress.
If the system has a chance of getting just better... Why fearing that change? Why holding back the change? Imho that's a limitative attitude.
To conclude this part, my topic is a sort of brainstorm with a certain level of polishing on gathered ideas, I don't prentend it to be the future of melee.
I don't have all the instruments to test it, so be sure something imbalanced can be hidden in. Usually in my concepts what can be imbalanced is mostly harnessed with the "numbers may change" logic.

1 hour ago, phoenix1992 said:

3) The issue with stances is something nasty - there is a big fat reward in completing Tempo Royale, but not for doing so with Cleaving, but stating that "There is no reward" is just not true.

First of all one exception doesn't negate my point. You've to keep in consideration at least  other 10 stances neglected and bad designed.
Also it's not really an exception, probably you didn't grasp the point of my argument.
I don't really consider a 200% damage boost on a single attack or a slam a reward for completing a combo.
In particular with late game enemies and weapons' subpar damage, those "rewards" won't scratch their armor nor save you from being bishotted.

I've been theorizing of something allowing greater power, like Syndacate Aoes, to have a big reward for keeping up your MCC and staying melee for prolonged times.
It exploits the need for sustain which the Syandacate Aoes don't provide. Cause they're unreliable. They pop out randomly, not after a mindful player's action.
This way a player should know what's at the end of the combo and strive to get it.

1 hour ago, phoenix1992 said:

4) Power creeping at its finest.  I can back up the Evavsion (you should not be harder to hit, while in combo) but everything else is "I WANT FREE STUFF"

Power Creep, from Internet:
"The gradual unbalancing of a game due to successive releases of new content. The phenomenon may be caused by a number of different factors and, in extreme cases, can be damaging to the longevity of the game in which it takes place. As new expansions or updates are released, new game mechanics, units, equipment and/or effects are introduced, usually stronger than previously existing content. Game developers use this primarily to push the new content, as it gives an incentive to buy it for competitions against other players or as new challenges for the single player experience. As new content with more power is introduced, the average powerlevel within the game rises, making it increasingly difficult for older content to remain in balance without changes. This means older content becomes regressively outdated or relatively underpowered, effectively rendering it useless from a competitive or challenge-seeking viewpoint. In extreme cases whole parts of the game will be avoided by the players, as they are overshadowed by newer content."

Syndacate AOEs aren't new. Numbers can be balanced. Warframes pop Aoe Nukes yet, nothing the game isn't used to.

I wrote it in my Topic, it's everything melee needs for sustain, taken away from other features, it's not "I WANT FREE STUFF".
It's a base of balance, it's just a reference, it's not a list written in stone, it's a way to show what could be done.

I also specified in my thread that those passives could also differ from stance to stance to mark the difference and allowing more diversity.

1 hour ago, phoenix1992 said:

Right now there are couple of ways to sustain yourself during melee:
a) Zenurk/Vazarin
b) Using syndicate proxy
c) Frame power
d) Gear
e) Arcanes
f) Equilibrium

Please do consider that those things are in the game right now and start building from there.

 Those aren't a viable and correct systems for Sustain.
a) Gated after Farming.
b) Dependance on an Item... Like Energy and Vitality Pizzas, it's bad design.
c) Again you lock it after Warframe's limitations, thats what I'd like to get over.
d) Same as "b".
e) Gated after Farming. Not really a good buff anyway.
f) Equilibrium doesn't fit melee at all, for Orbs are dropped randomly. It's mostly exploitable and good only on Warframes creating Orbs.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Burnthesteak87

[phoenix1992]

Avoiding walls of text : 

43 minutes ago, Burnthesteak87 said:

*snip*

I quote you, but please, let's not bring up the big walls.

First things first - gating is a good thing, that the game does not do enough. You can't get all the big guns at MR1 to MR8 - and it is okay. We are in Grindframe after all and Game progression is a thing.
Besides, a new player won't feel the heat for a long, long time - "Casual" weapons and mods can get him to complete the Planet Chart and the Void farming.
As I said stances are an issue - instead of bandaiding with "give me reasons to do combos" (beside, you know - stances upping the damage, providing coverage and in some cases mobility), they should just... fix them?  It is not new issue, and DE has received numerous complains about the bad implementation of stances.
 

2 hours ago, phoenix1992 said:

Way more damage increase;

- Energy per second;

- Baseline Life Strike;

- Every hit will garant tot Overshield;

- % Damage Reduction;

- Faster Knockdown Recovery;

- Evasion (lower enemy accuracy);

This ^ is powercreeping. You want free life and free energy.  And you want them, based on the fact that you do not use what we have in the game - you have option to tackle end game content (which is gated), with the gear and skills that you have gained on the road to there.
I really do not want to start an argument, about what is valuable and what is not when it comes to equipment and gear - I do fine, I can survive in the long run, compete with sorties and raids, and so on. But this also comes down, to game style - doesn't it?
And all of this, is stated you work on the assumption that melee is weak. Melee is poorly implemented, lacks diversity and many other cons... but Weak is not one of those things.

Disclaimer : IF you want to point out that many things are gated not with "Hard work" or "Time", but with direct BS... Yes, they are. And again it is not an issue, that is not addressed. We are awaiting changes... For some time.
 

[Burnthesteak87]

45 minutes ago, phoenix1992 said:

Avoiding walls of text : 

I quote you, but please, let's not bring up the big walls.

Wasn't aggressive, was just the needed explainations.

45 minutes ago, phoenix1992 said:

This ^ is powercreeping. You want free life and free energy.  And you want them, based on the fact that you do not use what we have in the game - you have option to tackle end game content (which is gated), with the gear and skills that you have gained on the road to there.
I really do not want to start an argument, about what is valuable and what is not when it comes to equipment and gear - I do fine, I can survive in the long run, compete with sorties and raids, and so on. But this also comes down, to game style - doesn't it?
And all of this, is stated you work on the assumption that melee is weak. Melee is poorly implemented, lacks diversity and many other cons... but Weak is not one of those things.

Disclaimer : IF you want to point out that many things are gated not with "Hard work" or "Time", but with direct BS... Yes, they are. And again it is not an issue, that is not addressed. We are awaiting changes... For some time.
 

That's not powercreeping, it's giving Melee a valid sustain tool without the need of resorting other external, conflicting features.
"Powercreep" implies that it's going to leave behind other systems. But actually most of the features in my concept are yet around. Damage reduction, invincibility, tankyness, Aoe Nukes...
It's giving a player which wants to melee-only through a group of high level enemies the better tool.
It's not a matter of using what's yet ingame, because it's not built in the right way to work with melee.
(Powercreeping is what DE are doing now, giving out new weapons with new qualities, by forgetting others underused.)

As melee is now, you need sustain, you can notice the difference by playing with or without Rage+LifeStrike combo. This is the actual sustain system built in to make Melee viable. Which is awful. It's exactly as Quick Thinking.
Viability of a mechanic, based on a combo of 2-3 Mods is lame; it would be like taking mandatorily Stabilizer on your gun elseway you can't properly shoot.
No, better, that fits perfectly the actual Modding System. Without Damage your weapons are useless.

Taking as example Focus Skills or Warframes' for energy and sustain... You're interrupting your combo sequence and dropping your defense.

Also please, don't mix with other arguments. We are talking about Melee, a base mechanic, not something which needs to be farmed to get it working.

Gating as a progression in the player's experience and gameplay is a thing.
Gating a basic functionality after farming is another. It's like "unless you get it, you can't use it".
You can melee since the Starting Tutorial, what you can farm for -to make it better- mustn't be essential, but a surplus.

PS: Never said expressely Melee is weak. There are too many factors to keep in consideration for expressing that absolute.
It's generally stated it's subpar to ranged fight and skillcasting for a matter of survivability.
And again here we are again, it's all on my first post.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Burnthesteak87

[Cyriann]

I would like to say that.

Since Inaros appeared, melee has returned in many people play styles. And, probably thanks to since return of interest we might see the system getting more feedback on the negatives of its functions, as well as the positive.

For example, I mainly use either my Glaive Prime, Lacera or War, three very different weapons. 

The Glaive illustrates to me the problem of the "no damage=no use" trope, for it in fact needs a massive work in the damage section to beeffective. Yet the combos are all great, offering either range, multiple hits or defense, but that forces to forget the core mechanic of the Glaive, throwing, which is what I love about it, seeing that destructive blade bouncing everywhere in a corridor while slicing everything in its path.

The Lacera on its side, is a terrific status weapon, but it then sure have some flashy combos, but to use it properly you need to work almost only on the fact procs will go off and weaken your target, making the weapon a one on one monster, but quite lacking with hard hitting and numerous ennemies.

Finally, War is... Well War, a crit-meta blade with a ridiculous initial damage output, that gets crazier and crazier each time you swing it around.

Each one illustrates to me a different problem, Glaive is a combo demanding weapon that forgets it's own roots to survive in some situations, Lacera slaughters ennemies as much as it's owner will get if nit precocious enough and War is the power house everyone looks for. In other words, they all are "good" weapons, but their special properties are forced to fade to permit the player to access the highest ennemies.

Which is a shame, but, I can understand that DE as trouble balancing everything all the time, thus, I'm trying to join in here to create ideas for that system, I wish I used more, can become an equal to the gun system without sacrificing it's blades originalities.

[Burnthesteak87]

Added some clarification example in  "Examples and Brainstorms" section.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Burnthesteak87

[Burnthesteak87]

The Dark-Split Sword concept, a weapon able to use 2 different stances, made wonder a lot of players.

Many hoped the stance could be swapped ingame. But unluckly this isn't the case.

This gave the input to think about this idea:

"What about if every Melee weapon could equip 2 stances and they could be swapped ingame with the unused R key?"

PS:
After writing down this post I noticed many other threads hold the same idea, involving eventually different Loadouts and the Alt Fire Key.

Edited June 9, 2016 by Burnthesteak87

[enJohneering]

I'll have to do a more detailed analysis later, but I really like how this approach uses existing mechanics and integrates so many of the things we already love about guns and syndicates into a system that specificly addresses the weaknesses of melee.

That said, a lot of your numbers seem poorly balanced right now (30 energy per second, did I read that right?!?!?), but I like the concept a LOT.

+1 my friend

[Burnthesteak87]

2 hours ago, JoeLorodeath said:

I'll have to do a more detailed analysis later, but I really like how this approach uses existing mechanics and integrates so many of the things we already love about guns and syndicates into a system that specificly addresses the weaknesses of melee.

That said, a lot of your numbers seem poorly balanced right now (30 energy per second, did I read that right?!?!?), but I like the concept a LOT.

+1 my friend

Thanks, of course those numbers require balancing, that's just a raw reference.

[Unibot]

On 22.03.2016 at 2:25 PM, Burnthesteak87 said:

DE has to build FLOW in melee. Alternating moves, promoting a playstyle.
I come to think to Legacy of Kain Defiance combat: I aknowledge that it involved less enemies and was more focussed on attack and defense, but there every move had something to get chained to (you could chain whatever attack), you had Crowd Controls and AOE Nukes as an high reward to clear the board and deal with too many enemies.

 

This! For the love of god, this please.

Melee is a boring 1 button tap. Even combos is a boring 1 direction taps. Melee needs style, needs flow. You should be albe to attack in every direction, not only front.

Melee needs flips, twirls, spins. Current melee 1 button mash is repeatetive and boring.

Add style to melee, make it fancy and glorious.

Edited June 9, 2016 by Unibot