Polearms Movesets

[Signs]

TL;DR at the bottom

Polearms are some of the most popular weapons in the game. Many people thoroughly enjoyed weapons like Plague Kripath, Orthos Prime and Guandao. But the somewhat recent melee 2.99 made it so that quick melee would basically bring the weapon out and allow you to use stance combos. However, quick melee movesets were consequentially removed. This is a huge turn off for me using polearms because non of the stances are particularly fluent. By fluent I think I mean that, when you melee, you don't get your movement stopped (like old polearm quick melee or a single sword without a stance)(I also think this is why a lot of players still slide attack, your movement doesn't get stopped because of it and I feel like all melee types should have a stance that achieves this).

Twirling Spire - Even though Twirling Spire is the best stance for polearms and possess good procs and damage multipliers, the moveset is just god awful. The stance is awfully slow and forces you forward a great deal of distance (like tempo royale first basic attack). And while I'm at it, the slams ragdoll way too hard. It sends enemies flying which is usually not great because you have to chase after them. It would probably be much better if it just knocked down for a longer duration.

No Stance - Similarly bad to twirling spire's moveset and doesn't have the damage and proc bonuses.

Bleeding Willow - This stance is better than Twirling Spire in terms of moveset. It is quite similar to the old quick melee for polearms except it adds a little bit of extra horizontal slashes in the beginning and end.

Shimmering Blight - This stance is the closest to the old quick melee but is still eons away from it because the last hit stops your movement. This ruins the fluidity of the stance by a lot.

TL;DR Melee 2.99 removed quick melee and removed the best moveset for the polearms (I'm sure there are other good movesets that got removed too). The stances of the polearms are clunky because there is a strike in all the combos that restrict movement, which breaks the fluidity of meleeing. Please somehow bring it back (quick melee stance? idk).

Edit: after reading some comments, what if melee alt fire would boost you forward the target enemy? It sort of solves the issue of not being able to get to a target.

Edited June 18, 2019 by Signs

[swiftasacoursing]

[VanFanel1980mx]

On 2019-06-13 at 6:31 PM, Signs said:

TL;DR at the bottom

Polearms are some of the most popular weapons in the game. Many people thoroughly enjoyed weapons like Plague Kripath, Orthos Prime and Guandao. But the somewhat recent melee 2.99 made it so that quick melee would basically bring the weapon out and allow you to use stance combos. However, quick melee movesets were consequentially removed. This is a huge turn off for me using polearms because non of the stances are particularly fluent. By fluent I think I mean that, when you melee, you don't get your movement stopped (like old polearm quick melee or a single sword without a stance)(I also think this is why a lot of players still slide attack, your movement doesn't get stopped because of it and I feel like all melee types should have a stance that achieves this).

Twirling Spire - Even though Twirling Spire is the best stance for polearms and possess good procs and damage multipliers, the moveset is just god awful. The stance is awfully slow and forces you forward a great deal of distance (like tempo royale first basic attack). And while I'm at it, the slams ragdoll way too hard. It sends enemies flying which is usually not great because you have to chase after them. It would probably be much better if it just knocked down for a longer duration.

No Stance - Similarly bad to twirling spire's moveset and doesn't have the damage and proc bonuses.

Bleeding Willow - This stance is better than Twirling Spire in terms of moveset. It is quite similar to the old quick melee for polearms except it adds a little bit of extra horizontal slashes in the beginning and end.

Shimmering Blight - This stance is the closest to the old quick melee but is still eons away from it because the last hit stops your movement. This ruins the fluidity of the stance by a lot.

TL;DR Melee 2.99 removed quick melee and removed the best moveset for the polearms (I'm sure there are other good movesets that got removed too). The stances of the polearms are clunky because there is a strike in all the combos that restrict movement, which breaks the fluidity of meleeing. Please somehow bring it back (quick melee stance? idk).

Most combos will either lock you in place or move you more than you want to, the fact that Melee 3.0 just includes "gap closers" means the problem won't go away.

[Arcira]

In general I like the polearm move set. I was never a fan of the running around at full speed quick melee stuff. You can correct me if you want but I think that´s more about efficiency than aesthetics. I´d prefer to improve on the current iteration rather than going back to the propeller style. Imagine the cool scene from the 300 movie but instead of impact and collision they´d just run past there enemies while killing them. Anyway this scene somewhat shows how I´d imagine the perfect melee combat system. Less massive aoe spam and more fast pace target to target combat.

Locking you in place is certainly an issue in a fast game like warframe but I think it´s a necessary step to make melee combat feel better. That beeing said there certainly is room for improvements especially some kind of animation canceling could benefit the combat flow. For example the ability to use roll or block in order to interrupt the strike animation.

Another thing I´d like to see is a bit more "stickiness" for melee combat. For example with the Shimmiring Blight combo Howling Gale you will perform a twirling air strike. Sometimes you want to use your combo on a single target but rush way past them. On the other hand if you want to use it in the middle of a group but get stuck on one of the enemies doesn´t feel good either. Probably one of the more complicated things to adjust but some kind intelligent melee assistence could improve the combat dynamics.

Last but not least I like scripted attacks like the finisher moves or the new ones they want to implement with melee 3.0. However currently many of them are way to slow either there animation speed should be increased a little bit or (a thing I´d prefer) instead of a static animation you can chain them with additional imput against nearby targets.

Edited June 17, 2019 by Arcira

[DoomFruit]

On 2019-06-17 at 12:33 PM, Arcira said:

Another thing I´d like to see is a bit more "stickiness" for melee combat. For example with the Shimmiring Blight combo Howling Gale you will perform a twirling air strike. Sometimes you want to use your combo on a single target but rush way past them. On the other hand if you want to use it in the middle of a group but get stuck on one of the enemies doesn´t feel good either. Probably one of the more complicated things to adjust but some kind intelligent melee assistence could improve the combat dynamics.

No intelligent melee assistance will be perfect. Only the player knows what the player wants at each individual moment during combat. The only real way to implement that is to completely decouple striking animations and player leg movement on the ground (jumping and rolling is a different story).

This is why, just like the OP, I loved my polearms (staves were almost as good, but the second hit had something like half the range - a big downside). I could hit whatever I wanted while running at full speed in any direction I chose.

Of course, movesets are only half the problem. Melee main players (note that I'm not saying "dedicated melee", they'd still carry guns in case ranged combat was absolutely necessary) hate it when their sword gets plucked out of their hand and replaced with a nausea-inducing random zoom. Gun players hate it when their weapons get taken away and they can no longer alt-fire, see their ammo counter, have syndicate procs or have their weapon automatically reload once it's empty. Quick melee main players (this is me) hate it when we're forced into impractical dancing instead of actual combat strikes. Miners, fishers and scanners absolutely despise it because every single time you need to sword a close by enemy (and this, strangely enough, happens a lot), they need to go an manually re-equip their tool. Every. Single. Time.

Autoblocking is just the cherry on the cake. Gun users might find it annoying, but I've seen that melee mains really REALLY hate it. It completely butchers both combat and navigation flow. Nobody asked for it.

The main "feature" of this melee system, the autoswitch, is its main problem. I never wanted that. That concept is rotten to the core. It was flawed from the very start. Previously, those who wanted their stances used them, those who didn't want them didn't have to use them, and those who were mining, fishing or scanning did not get interrupted. We had actual separate playstyles which the players could actively choose between. Now we get the worst of all worlds and no choice in the matter.

 

Oh, and here yet once again is the same video I've been posting for years which illustrates exactly why flashy stance movesets are abominable.

 

[Arcira]

1 hour ago, DoomFruit said:

snip

It´s true I like stylish combat animations but that´s not really what I´m talking about. It´s more about believable and practical improvements.

Let me give you an example: running towards an enemy while spamming melee attacks would look equally stupid as the guy in the video. For ranged combat I´d like to see some kind of fast forward jump attack like in archwing or something similar to the valkyr leap. This would be an example for an intelligent system as well since the type of attack is ditermined by distance to the target.

Another thing is the whole attackspeed and aoe spam inflation. It´s quite easy to code you just need to increase the animation speed, damage tickrate or the imaginary weapon range. Attacking 5 times a second or killing enemies without even touching them is an awful trend in my opinion. Nonetheless it´s very efficient in terms of dps and status and therefore alot of people push for it. However since we are fight a lot of enemies an alternative system need some kind of flow which melee combat is lacking currently.

My main problem with these "convinience" solutions is they transform games into klicker simulators and things like drop chances and difficulty always have to be adjusts to the more efficient play style thus forcing everyone into using this kind of stuff over time.

Edited June 18, 2019 by Arcira

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

I'm guessing it'll improve with Wukong's rework being released. His staff is supposed to work with the reworked combos, so it'll most likely extend to some part, if not all, of the melee's as an introduction to Melee 2.999992.

[Xzorn]

Some of your information on Polearms is incorrect.

Spamming Quick attack was and still is actually the same DPS in addition to the highest mobility.

The stance combos are actually worse than simply spamming attack esp when Corrosive status is considered. This is mostly from the sheer number of attacks per second that can be performed in spite of having no bonus modifiers. Roughly double the speed which results in quicker combo building, faster armor stripping and CO spoofing.

There was another post a while ago trying to preemptively address this that I did some parsing for. There's before and after testing.

 

[DoomFruit]

21 hours ago, Arcira said:

It´s true I like stylish combat animations but that´s not really what I´m talking about. It´s more about believable and practical improvements.

Let me give you an example: running towards an enemy while spamming melee attacks would look equally stupid as the guy in the video. For ranged combat I´d like to see some kind of fast forward jump attack like in archwing or something similar to the valkyr leap. This would be an example for an intelligent system as well since the type of attack is ditermined by distance to the target.

There's a tradeoff to be made between style, functionality and player choice. Especially for a game, where the latter is the sole thing making it a game instead of a movie. I don't necessarily want to leap straight to an enemy. Quite often, I'd want to be just a little bit behind them, or to the side, or approaching but not quite there, or right up against them. It all depends entirely on the situation around me. This is why it's critical that the only source of my movement is WASD, crouch, jump, sprint and mouse movement (for facing changes). Those sort of intelligent systems are something I absolutely do not want. It'll only ever get in my way.

The only reason they are even needed for Archwing is from several reasons which all mesh together: a) full, free 3D motion; b) inertia mechanics; c) almost everything is constantly moving at a fair speed; d) enemies are comparatively smaller; e) AW melee swings have comparatively less range than with land melee swings. None of these matter for ground combat.