Meele Weapons Need Rework

[Eddy0815]

dont get me wrong, this is not meant as a rant for more awesome weapons or buff of my favorite weapons, it is just a opinion, so please be reasonable or prove me wrong with math, and do not yell "trololo i call BS on this" or stuff like that.

now that this is out of the way, i start =)

 

first of all, i think the meele weapons are (exept for onehand daggers, which are underperforming since the start of warframe) quite balanced. you got good ones, you got a few bad ones, but that is the essence of a game that every weapon has its own characteristics and some are a little more powerful than others. so that is not the issue i am writing this.

 

what concerns me, is that meele weapons are very underperforming in late game waves of defence missions, and are pretty much useless after a certain level.

 

lemme explain:

 

first of all, lets make the math for primary weapons. i think the example for the at the moment very popular soma is a good start. Soma got at Base a Damage of 10, what at first glance doesnt appear as very much. but now we got a fire rate of 15, which can be upgraded by speed trigger (60%) to a fire rate of 19.1. then, we go to the obvious crit build with point strike, hammer shot and vital sense, what pushes the crit chance to 87,5% crit chance and 840% crit damage. then of course split chamber with 90% multishot and serration which pushes the base damage of the soma to 23,5 damage. and the left slot points filled with a elemental damage of your choise, (i would recommend piercing hit since armor piercing is calculated in every resistance chart by 1 (exept light infested, whitch have 0.5 but these guys doesnt soak that much damage anyways), and doesnt get reduced by the type of enemy you are facing) and a little bit of supportive mods like those for more ammo or faster reload. but that would be up to the users preferance.

 

lets now calculate the somas DPS.

 

with the mods listed above, we have

Base damage of 23.5 

fire rate 19.1

crit chance 87.5%

crit damage 840%

multishot 90%

armor penetrating damage 14.1

Stun 40% (whitch isnt included in DPS, but its nice to have anyways)

 

that gives us a damage per shot of [ (23.5 + 14.1) x 0.90 ] + 23.5 + 14.1 = 71.44 Damage if no crit

and a friggin amout of 71.44 x 8.4 = 600.09 Damage if crited.

but since we "only" have a critchance of 87.5%, we can say that we do about ~ 500 Damage per shot.

 

so now we got a reload time of 3.0, and 19.1 shots per second. whitch means that after 5.2 seconds, your clip is empty and you fired all your shots. so you can add that up to 8.2 seconds, since you need to reload after the next 100 shots are fired. that means you can empty your clip 7.31 times per minute. hell, thats even more as you actually have ammo in basic gear without mods^^

 

but lets say you find enough clips in that time, or you have additional ammo mod bla, just for the sake of the calculation. you got a mag of 100 shots, and you can use that up to 7.31 times per minute, whitch means 731 fired bullets in a minute. that means 731 x 500 damage = 365,500 Damage per Minute.

and you can push that even further by fast reload mods or bigger clips.

of course armor rating and resistance ratings of enemys decrease that number and you wont fire all the time, but you get where i am going. to be honest, i didnt even completely calculate out the obvious choises of bigger clips and faster reload speed, which would still increase the damage output.

 

 

So now we go to meele weapons. lets use the Orthos Prime, which is one of the most badass weapons we got at the moment out there. For the sake of the calculation, we go for charge speed and charge attack, since this is the most common way of playing the orthos.

 

So the Orthos has a Base Charge Damage of 200, and a Charge Speed of 0.5 - which is pretty badass.

so lets say now we use Killing Blow and rendering strike (210% bonus in total) which increases the Charge damage to 620. then we use Reflex Recoil and focus energy, which decreases the charge time by 100% and Fury 60% whitch fastens the charge animation for even more attacks, and gives you a charge time plus charge animation of ~ 0.45 seconds. then we add Sundering Strike, whitch adds up with rendering Strike to a total of 150% AP damage, so 300 AP damage in total. then for tactical advantages i would recommend using North Wind 60% for slowing down enemys after hits, but thats just my personal opinion also increases the total damage by 120 ;)

for the last weapon slot i would consider Berserker, but since i do not know how if it affects also charge time, i would go for the easy way out and add Shocking touch, which adds together with focus energy to a total of 120% electric damage, so another 240 damage. so now lets add together the stuff.

we got:

620 Base charge damage

~ 0.45 seconds charge time plus animation

300 AP damage

120 frost damage

240 electric damage

5% crit chance

150% crit damage.

 

but thats not all! for the lulz, lets consider using ash or loki, which increase the total damage output by another 100% while being invisible. to absolutely max out the damage delivered at the end.

 

so we got (while being invisible):

1240 base charge damage

600 AP damage

240 frost damage

480 electric damage.

 

so lets go to the math now. we got

1240+600+240+480 = 2560 damage per swing if no crit

and 2560 x 2.50 = 6,400 damage when crited.

but since we only crit 5% of our hits, we only get a total damage per swing of about 2880.

 

so now we charge and swing in roughly 0.45 seconds. thats 133 swings per minute.

 

so we got 2880 damage x 133 swings = 383,040 Damage per Minute.

 

if we consider you are NOT using ash or loki, this value is halved to 191,520. and even if you are using one if those two, staying invisible the whole time eats a lot of energy, and dont forget the skill animation, which would use up every time you use it at least one of your swings, if not two.

and thats if you are in the mob, and dont need time to run from enemy to enemy, just hacking and slashing, hacking and slashing. and if we consider the armor rating, the elemental defences (which get pretty high by the way in higher waves by the way) the damage is reduced even more, and the actual elemantal damage is lowe from base since multiple use of different elementals also decrease the total damage by a small but significant amout.

 

 

 

so to put an end to this pretty long post (hell i didnt think it would become so long^^) is that meele weapons are very underperforming after the enemys reach about level 180 - 190 in Defence missions, and you are left to stand at the cryopod, sniping out enemys that run towards you, hoping they dont come into meele range to strike at you. without a frost and a saryn, this isnt even possible since its nearly impossible to stop that rush towards the cryo. 

 

my recommendation to fix it - is not increasing the damage of the melee weapons. honestly, as i stated above, i think they are pretty well balanced and fit good into the game! 

i would say that melee combat should get incouraged by giving out more effective mods for melee weapons. something like - smackdown at a successful charge attack, so enemys need to stand up after a hit! or something like Poison Mods that blind enemys or desorientate them, attacking allys of them. i mean we are ninjas for christs sake, where are our poisons?^^

 

all i wanted to say is - make melee combat useful in high waves, incourage some recless dudes like me to charge the biggies head on, smacking his face with his sword, that actually benefits the team, not punishing them for being gutsy. honestly, in these waves a good hit of a ancient, and you are down, you need to be pretty skilled to actually mess with those guys in melee combat =3

so make it rewarding to actually pull that off, incourage the use of the blade, so your buddys back at the cryo have more time using their weapons and skills, or being able to stop a rush of enemys for a second so one of your guys that got down has enough time to get healed up again!

 

just my opinion, if i screwed up the math, sorry, prove me wrong if i did, you never stop learning new stuff in the mechanics of the game =)

 

so long,

the Eddy

[PsychedelicSnake]

I'm fairly sure everyone is aware melee weapons need a rework.

[KimchiKen_Prime]

Warning: WALL OF TEXT DETECTED

[Maou]

Warning: WALL OF TEXT DETECTED

I wouldnt really consider this a wall, anywho I didnt read it cuz well this has ben brough up a dozen times in the past.

[From_Orion]

Eddy is right, but unfortunately, melee weapons are not the only stuff that turn useless for high levels, many standard (bullet damage) weapons (armor 2.0 could change this point) as well as some warframes turn useless too.