After the melee weapon switching change, keep the quick melee keybind's ability to do combo-less attacks

[DoomFruit]

On 2019-02-17 at 1:27 AM, tekmansam said:

Not only do I agree with the OP 100%, I too am dreading this change for one related issue.  I--barring polearms--really do not like spamming E for melee.  I much prefer having melee bound to left click.  Spamming E is actually pretty hard on my poor phalanges.  With these changes, I fear that I will no longer be able to use left click for melee.  This is quite upsetting to me.  This could be solved if E were some sort of "quick swap" that did a strike and switched your weapon.  You could then continue to use left click as your attack key.  As I understand it is to be--I am dreading it.

The problem there is the utterly incomprehensible reason of having E as the default button for melee attacks. I bound mine to Mouse-4 (the "back" button) the moment I installed the game, the same button I've used for quick melee in every single game which has implemented it. The game's design mandates simultaneous movement and attack - whoever put a very frequently used attack command on a button which conflicts with movement had absolutely no idea what they were doing.

[Internet_Toughguy]

I am a Quick Melee user exclusively. Ever since I was a noob and I saw a Distant Observer video explaining that the best combo is a Polearm Quick melee attack (i.e. combo-less/no stance) I was hooked. It clears the room faster than using stances and I have full control over both my actions and the enemies. Sure a combo can do an impressive hit, but that is just one hit. While you are twirling and dancing around with combos, I will have cleared the room and moved on already. Now maybe at the 200+ level enemies a combo would be better, but I have never found a reason to fight that high, so I am referring to level 150 and under enemies. (edit: Quick melee outperforms).

I have been testing melee weapons to find a replacement for my polearm once this goes live, and the best options I have found appear to be Sword weapons. Both the single blade swords and the sword/shield weapons seem to be pretty fluid (I think I had to remove the stance mod in some cases if I remember). I swear that DE once said on stream that "most users just use quick melee anyway", so if I am correct, it seems like this will be a big problem for them once the masses find out that Quick Melee is going away.

 

Edited February 23, 2019 by Internet_Toughguy

[Xzorn]

35 minutes ago, Internet_Toughguy said:

Now maybe at the 200+ level enemies a combo would be better, but I have never found a reason to fight that high, so I am referring to level 150 and under enemies.

 

It doesn't. Polearm stance actually scales considerably worse. I've put it to the test on Endurance runs in the past.

Add in that Quick Attack can use weapons like Zakti to spoof Condition Overload and force melee Executes. No contest.

This actually happened to be done with Lesion, Zakti and Ferrox.

Something I thought was funny in those dev stream example is Valkyr keeps energy drain but is no longer immortal when she swaps.

Who would do that?

[Apav]

8 hours ago, Internet_Toughguy said:

I swear that DE once said on stream that "most users just use quick melee anyway", so if I am correct, it seems like this will be a big problem for them once the masses find out that Quick Melee is going away.

I am wondering this too. When talking about these changes DE has not once acknowledged the people who prefer quick melee attacks, but I do remember them admitting that most people prefer quick melee attacks on a stream once a while back. They have the stats, so if they said that then that probably means that's what the stats show. So either they haven't put two and two together for all of these changes yet, or they know this and are assuming that people will just eventually get over it and adapt. 

I'm thinking it's more of the former than the latter. From their latest workshop post:

Quote

OPTIONS:
We are adding a toggle to preserve one aspect of the older melee system. You will be able to toggle an option, allowing you to continue melee attacks with the left mouse button once in melee mode.

It's not the option we were looking for, but it shows that they are willing to give us options to keep certain things from the old system that people prefer. And the fact that they're willing to do this increases the chance of eventually getting more options. Besides, a separate keybind for "Quick Melee" doesn't sound that difficult to implement. They technically already have it, they just have to make it so that it switches you to your melee.

And there are other things these changes will either massively nerf or break that they haven't even acknowledged let alone gave a solution for. Take for instance these mods and weapon after blocking now being an automatic response to incoming fire instead of being able to block as long as you want by holding down RMB.

 

Again, I'm not sure why they couldn't leave a toggleable option for being able to block with a keybind/mouse click. It's the simplest solution. And if they absolutely don't want you to hold down block anymore and will eventually change these mods and weapon to make them work with the new system, at least it's a stopgap until they do so.

Edited February 23, 2019 by Apav

[Apav]

@Xzorn Changes are live, have you checked it out? 

[GrimAtrament]

honestly all this is showing is that polearm stances need help.

[KaronaFalseGod]

I'm not the OP but can confirm Polearms are dumpstered now. Even if unequipping all stance mods, Polearm forces you into an animation that locks up your feet.

It makes no sense because Staves got a new stance-less animation, but it still gives you free leg movement.

Hopefully this gains enough traction to get some kind of free movement back. Polearm is the only melee I've stuck since I started playing because it has both range and mobility (without resorting to Whip spin-to-win).

There's no rhyme or reason in this game:

 

Dagger: locks motion even though it's a "light and nimble" weapon

Gunblade: locks motion in quick melee, free motion in Bullet Dance charge shots

Staves: free motion in quick melee, locks motion in stances

Great Sword: locks motion in both

 

It feels like the only criteria is "did they film the mocap actor's legs that day?" or something. Regardless, I'll take mobility over taking controls away from the player, every time.

 

Edited March 8, 2019 by KaronaFalseGod

[Apav]

38 minutes ago, hazerddex said:

honestly all this is showing is that polearm stances need help.

Even if they make combos worth using and make a universal button system for them all, that doesn't change the fact that combos are inherently restrictive. Them giving us a separate keybind or option to do combo-less attacks does not invalidate them fixing stances and combos, so if they actually didn't overlook this and are against it I really cannot think of why. 

Edited March 8, 2019 by Apav

[GrimAtrament]

6 minutes ago, Apav said:

Even if they make combos worth using and make a universal button system for them all, that doesn't change the fact that stances are inherently restrictive. Them giving us a separate keybind or option to do combo-less attacks does not invalidate them fixing stances and combos, so if they actually didn't overlook this and are against it I really cannot think of why. 

if you want comboless melee just remove the stance mod. also there is next to zero reason to use quick melee over combos that give you bonus damage and procs.

Edited March 8, 2019 by hazerddex

[Apav]

9 minutes ago, hazerddex said:

if you want comboless melee just remove the stance mod. also there is next to zero reason to use quick melee over combos that give you bonus damage and procs.

That doesn't work. Stanceless attacks are different attacks entirely. This is stanceless polearm attack, nothing like the attack in the first gif in my OP:

And as this person pointed out in a detailed video/post, quick melee was actually a lot better damage wise:

On 2019-02-17 at 4:30 AM, Xzorn said:

Okay, I did some basic editing on that video comparison for kill times between Polearm Quick Attack and Stance Attacks. Added a timer for reference and re-did a test in order to make sure I show the number of hits for the Quick attack version. Again, stance used was Twirling Spire's Block Combo.

Only three mods were used in this test. A Maxed Primed Pressure Point, a Riven with +%Damage and +%Atk Speed and Drifting Contact. That's it. No Elemental mods, no Condition Overload. Base Electric damage against Ferrite armor. A neutral damage modifier to produce the least variance possible without my finger falling off.

• The timer starts on the hit and ends when the model breaks.
• One accidental ground finisher was performed during the stance test.

Sorry for the 21:9 aspect ratio. feel free to skip through. I probably should have increased the playback speed.

Analysis:

• Quick Attack took exactly 2 minutes in kill time
• Quick Attack took exactly 502 hits and ended at 3.5x Combo
• 3.5x Combo begins at 405 hits. 97 Attacks were performed at 3.5x
• Stance Attack took exactly 2 minutes 13 seconds in kill time
• Stance Attack took exactly 301 hits and ended at 3.0x Combo
• Stance Attack took 201 less hits to kill the target.

Conclusion:

As I originally estimated Quick Attack is doing the same DPS as Twirling Spire's Block combo however it's hitting twice as fast. The difference of doing an additional 97 attacks at 3.5x apposed to 3.0x means the combo damage multiplier is what prevents it from showing exactly x2 speed difference via hits-to-kill. Any weapon making use of Condition Overload will receive benefits from faster attacks but more importantly Corrosive weapons will receive a tremendous performance boost using Quick Attack since Corrosive status functions as a direct counter to exponential Armor scaling. Every Corrosive Status is essentially doing +%eHP in damage so if no DPS is sacrificed. Faster is better.

Twirling Spire was buffed from it's original modifiers and it obviously needs more.

It doesn't really matter what build the Polearm is using Quick attack is either equal or considerably better. Especially if mobility is sacrificed.

 

Did it deserve some form a nerf then? Maybe, but removing it from the game is not the way to do it. There is absolutely no reason to completely get rid of free flowing attacks with nonrestrictive movement. For balance sake they should do less damage, but there is nothing adverse about having more melee attack options. Not only for variety, but being able to use the attack that is better for the circumstance you're in. 

Edited March 8, 2019 by Apav

[GrimAtrament]

9 minutes ago, Apav said:

That doesn't work. Stanceless attacks are different attacks entirely. This is stanceless polearm attack, nothing like the attack in the first gif in my OP:

And as this person pointed out in a detailed video/post, quick melee was actually a lot better damage wise:

Did it deserve some form a nerf then? Maybe, but removing it from the game is not the way to do it. There is absolutely no reason to completely get rid of free flowing attacks with nonrestrictive movement. For balance sake they should do less damage, but there is nothing adverse about having more melee attack options. Not only for variety, but being able to use the attack that is better for the circumstance you're in. 

combos are still free flow in the new system. your not locked into a combo you can cancel it at any time and do a diffrent combo.

Edited March 8, 2019 by hazerddex

[Apav]

6 minutes ago, hazerddex said:

combos are still rpitty free flow in the new system. your not locked into a combo

What I mean is, combos stop your movement and you can't move around as you're doing the animation (unless part of the combo animation is movement but you cannot control that). There is essentially no way to freely move around as you're attacking now, which was a huge boon to a fast paced game like this.

Edited March 8, 2019 by Apav

[GrimAtrament]

5 minutes ago, Apav said:

What I mean is, combos stop your movement you can't move around as you're doing the animation. 

you can move around while doing the combo now. i was able to do it with gardua also  the movment can easily be incressed with patches

Edited March 8, 2019 by hazerddex

[Apav]

28 minutes ago, hazerddex said:

you can move around while doing the combo now. i was able to do it with gardua also  the movment can easily be incressed with patches

 

Compare this to the gifs in my OP. It's almost exactly the same as the bottom gif, except for the beginning. The first few attacks are free flowing, but then it t does this swipe attack that immediately stops my movement short and repeats another swipe attack the next time I hit E. I can sort of do what's shown in the first gif by switching back to my gun right before the swipe attack and waiting a second to melee again, but that's a lot less fluid, requires another frequent key press, and the wait cuts down on DPS. It's hardly a solution, and a far cry from what it used to be. 

Edited March 8, 2019 by Apav

[Xzorn]

7 hours ago, Apav said:

@Xzorn Changes are live, have you checked it out? 

 

No I haven't messed with it yet and it will probably only affect me negatively for polearms as melee is still an all or nothing concept with the combo meter dependency. I'm a heavy Zenistar user and will use that weapon exclusively for it's amazing utility over a melee weapon unless I choose to go full melee. It's a very binary choice for me.

This entire "flow" thing is around 90% pointless for how I play Warframe. It's a very casual concept for levels where you don't need the combo multiplier, spin to win or do a bunch of run through missions. None of which I care much about. Until they remove combo meter mods there's probably not much change in how I will play.

I just see this as a nerf to polearms which I'll test again and a buff to other weapons as I can now spoof them with Zakti like I did with Polearms.

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

Don't quite get why u guys removed dedicated melee while holding weapon swap this early, before making sure quick melee improvements really made it obsolete.

Overall, I like the fact you can now pull off full combos in quick melee. Auto blocking is cool in quick melee (since b4 you could not block). Can't however bind my channeling and weapon aiming at the same time on a controller, which means channeling is gone for now, which sucks.

Still, I kinda miss full melee, with a dedicated button for blocking and channeling. I think for now at least, during the "growing" pains, you should restore dedicated melee as an option... Since you haven't keybound anything yet on hold weapon swap.

Eventually , once quick melee is fixed and it can do everything old melee did, then maybe consider removing dedicated melee swap and replacing it with archwing heavy weapon deploy.

But for now, why remove it if nothing takes it's place and if some people enjoy it (more control over blocking , all shoulder buttons used for melee, channeling that's not shared with other functions like secondary fire or context actions).

Edited March 8, 2019 by (PS4)Stealth_Cobra

[Gene_Freak]

6 hours ago, (PS4)Stealth_Cobra said:

Don't quite get why u guys removed dedicated melee while holding weapon swap this early, before making sure quick melee improvements really made it obsolete.

I think they wanted to start phasing these changes in as things became ready - and it so happens that these changes were quicker to implement than the other, more thorough overhauls to melee. And I get the logic, but it does mean that we're getting an incomplete look at the new system. I would have rather had the stance updates first, too, but that probably would have taken considerably longer to release.

In devstream 114, they showed off the new way they want stances to work. If they follow through with this, it should (hopefully) alleviate a lot of the problems with losing quick melee (start at 32:25)

This also shows off the block-lunge that I will surely mourn if we don't get our block key back

[SilviaS12]

I really just want to be able to select my melee independently and block and slide glide with melee again, I can't play the game like this. It's over. My warframe career is finished. my poor Ninja Nidus build is doomed.

[Kuldor]

I don't like melee in warframe, no offense, I see why people do, I just don't.

 

So I had a couple of polearms built ONLY for quick melee, Lesion and Guandao, these won't work anymore since quick melee has been removed and combos are trash for them, so I'm pretty much pushed towards not using melee at all, which sucks, because it was really nice to get rid of some enemies and to do infested missions.

 

So far, I really really don't like the new melee system.

 

EDIT: The weapon staying out after any melee action is something that's pissing me off a lot the more I play.

Edited March 8, 2019 by Kuldor

[SteveCutler]

+1 for this thread.

I like the new system overall, but it definitely has issues, and I absolutely hate and cannot stand the lack of mobility while meleeing. Getting chained to the ground and moving along at a snail's pace while meleeing feels horrible. Especially if I'm playing Volt. I miss the days when I could run around with high sprint speed and quick melee enemies while zooming past. Now? I can zoom along fast, but as soon as I hit melee I'll immediately stop and turn from Sonic into a snail.

[fox_news]

Am I the only one who noticed that they pushed this to make melee more smooth, yet removed the smoothest melee they had? 

[FlyingFrog51]

I like the smoother transitions, but the option to toggle on the melee weapon and use the mouse needs to come back.

As someone who uses Valkyr as a main, having to use the former quick melee key even in hysteria mode is not great. I went into hysteria today, clicked my mouse, and pulled out my gun. Pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to work.

Spamming the mouse is much faster (for me anyways).

 

[Steel_Rook]

18 minutes ago, FlyingFrog51 said:

I like the smoother transitions, but the option to toggle on the melee weapon and use the mouse needs to come back.

There is an option to use "Shoot" for meleeing once your melee weapon is selected. It's under "Controls," I believe. Try that and see if it helps.

 

3 hours ago, Kuldor said:

So I had a couple of polearms built ONLY for quick melee, Lesion and Guandao, these won't work anymore since quick melee has been removed and combos are trash for them, so I'm pretty much pushed towards not using melee at all, which sucks, because it was really nice to get rid of some enemies and to do infested missions.

A friend of mine was very disappointed in a similar fashion. Now that we're all forced to use Stance combos, he's been triggering some kind of Staff lunge attack on accident, sailing past his target and falling off of platforms. I tried the stance he's using, and I think he's triggering the Hit/Hit/Pause/Hit combo. As combos get faster due to melee speed buffs (Fury and Valkyr, say), the "pauses" can get so short that even rapid button spamming can sometimes read as a gap.

I suspect DE might be changing how combos work, and frankly - that can't come soon enough. Spamming the inconvenient "quick melee" key and having to worry about inconsistent timing in a game with this much else going on is I think making the new melee system feel far worse than it is.

[FlyingFrog51]

6 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

There is an option to use "Shoot" for meleeing once your melee weapon is selected. It's under "Controls," I believe. Try that and see if it helps.

Thank you!! That needs to be advertised. Unless I just missed it somewhere.

Edited March 9, 2019 by FlyingFrog51

[Xzorn]

@Apav

Here's the result on my post-comparison.

Same setup used before. Primed Pressure Point a Riven with +%Damage +%Atk Speed and Drifting Contact.

Again there was one accidental ground finisher on the stance test.

• Spam attack (Previous Quick Attack) killed in 1 minute 48 seconds. Down from previous 2 minutes.
• Spam attack took exactly 569 hits to kill the target and ended at 3.5x combo. Up from Previous 502 hits.
• Spam attack performed exactly 164 attacks at 3.5x combo. Up from 97.
• Stance attack killed in 1 minutes 55 seconds. Previous 2 minutes 13 seconds.
• Stance attack took exactly 309 hits to kill the target and ended at 3x combo. Previous 301 attacks.
• Stance attack took 260 less hits to kill the target. Previous was 201.

It would appear the same still holds true that spamming attack produces similar kill speeds with faster attacks. Interestingly the previously Quick Attack combo seems to be slightly faster now than it previously was. This feels true through testing as well since the animation is smoother on the first few attacks. Though the kill time is within margin or error on Quick Attack Vs Spam the hit count varies by 67 hits. In all it would seem we mostly just lost the unhindered mobility of Quick attacks.