If both Combo Duration and Combo Efficiency are a thing, Zenurik will be a better melee school than Naramon

[Jarriaga]

At the 18:25 mark of today's Prime Time, Megan mentioned that Zenurik's channeling efficiency passive will be converted to a combo efficiency passive.

Combo efficiency in the new system means that heavy attacks drain less of your combo counter. Prior to that, they showed how some weapon stats will be changed in the revision, showing significantly higher damage numbers for heavy attacks. The thing is, combo duration is also a stat. It was shown with Valkyr's talons. This means that you may still lose your combo counter if you are not on melee, affecting Blood Rush and the Gladiator mod set.

This, coupled with the lifted mechanic and how many mods are being converted to heavy-only push towards weak normal melee that doesn't drain combo, or strong melee that drains it for balancing.

So Naramon = Sustained combo, but weak melee attacks.

Zenurik = Lose combo counter more frequently, but use heavy attacks with more freedom.

They have been highlighting how fast you build combo now, but I doubt you'll want to build your combo from scratch again 1 hour into Arbitration because of a lifted attack or because you could not hit a target on time thanks to Saryn or Mesa.

Naramon's combo counter bonus was for me the reason why it was my default focus school over Zenurik, but now there will be little reason to go with Naramon when heavy attacks are the core mechanic around this update with higher damage scaling and exclusive mods. That, coupled with Zenurik's energizing dash and a combo counter that grows so fast they will nerf WF abilities that scale off the counter by a whopping 75% bonus to equalize combo growth leaves little reason to use Naramon over Zenurik as a melee player unless Naramon will be reworked as well and Megan just didn't mention it. 

Zenurik is already over-used because of energizing dash. This will only further make it the obvious focus school choice.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Jarriaga

[Pizzarugi]

I mean, DE could always bring back the old Naramon melee invisibility perk, but change it to be more appropriate for the melee rework.

Think about this: Procs on heavy critical hits, but consumes more combo counter.

[Jarriaga]

8 minutes ago, Pizzarugi said:

Think about this: Procs on heavy critical hits, but consumes more combo counter.

Unless I am mistaken, the current iteration consumes the entire combo counter at once when a heavy attack/lifting is used and there's no combo efficiency. While bringing back Shadow Step would be a great buff for Naramon, Zenurik would still win because of how frequently you'd be using heavy attacks vs Naramon. This is a problem in my opinion, but I hope I'm mistaken.

Not that it hurts me because I'm maxed-out on all 5 schools and can switch at will. But still, Zenurik is already overused and the efficiency bonus is now a legitimate reason to choose Zenurik like a cherry on top.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Jarriaga

[Univarous]

You guys realize you can literally add +50% base crit chance to any melee weapon with the naramon school for a short period of time? You can also open them up to finishers with a single void dash. Exodia brave? Arcane trickery?

 

Don't be so narrow minded.

Edited October 25, 2019 by TheGreatKazein

[Miser_able]

The way I see it, this view hinges on 4 assumptions. 

1: there will only be mods for buffing heavy attacks, and none buffing normal attacks. 

2: there will be no other way of obtaining combo efficiency 

3: heavy attacks will always be a better option than normal attacks. 

And 4: DE won't take any feedback or data after the update and tweak melee more. (nerfing heavy attacks and buffing normal attacks for example) 

That's a lot of assumptions. I'd prefer to sit back and see how this all plays out. 

[novalery]

12 minutes ago, Miser_able said:

The way I see it, this view hinges on 4 assumptions. 

1: there will only be mods for buffing heavy attacks, and none buffing normal attacks. 

2: there will be no other way of obtaining combo efficiency 

3: heavy attacks will always be a better option than normal attacks. 

And 4: DE won't take any feedback or data after the update and tweak melee more. (nerfing heavy attacks and buffing normal attacks for example) 

That's a lot of assumptions. I'd prefer to sit back and see how this all plays out. 

Thank you

[TARINunit9]

43 minutes ago, TheGreatKazein said:

You guys realize you can literally add +50% base crit chance to any melee weapon with the naramon school for a short period of time?

Yeah except Void Stalker is an easy contender for "second biggest waste of effort in all of mankind" (first biggest already secured by Void Hunter). The bonus starts decaying the instant you leave Void Mode, and it takes nearly 1 second to swap back to Warframe, so you can literally never take advantage of the full 50%: it'll be down to 45% by the time you hit something, and then 40% by the third hit, and deteriorating more and more. You have to keep refilling every 10 to 20 seconds -- and you can't even top it off if you decide to recharge early, because the recharge always restarts at 0% even if you had some left over. So for any given 25 seconds of combat, you're literally not fighting anything for 7 of those seconds

The entire Focus tree system is filled with absolute bunk, and while most of it doesn't get quite as bad as Void Stalker/Hunter I really don't blame the majority of the playerbase for just running Energizing Dash 100% of the time. Nothing else is worth the effort (even if the Executing Dash you mentioned IS pretty fun)

Edited October 25, 2019 by TARINunit9

[Univarous]

1 hour ago, TARINunit9 said:

Yeah except Void Stalker is an easy contender for "second biggest waste of effort in all of mankind" (first biggest already secured by Void Hunter). The bonus starts decaying the instant you leave Void Mode, and it takes nearly 1 second to swap back to Warframe, so you can literally never take advantage of the full 50%: it'll be down to 45% by the time you hit something, and then 40% by the third hit, and deteriorating more and more. You have to keep refilling every 10 to 20 seconds -- and you can't even top it off if you decide to recharge early, because the recharge always restarts at 0% even if you had some left over. So for any given 25 seconds of combat, you're literally not fighting anything for 7 of those seconds

The entire Focus tree system is filled with absolute bunk, and while most of it doesn't get quite as bad as Void Stalker/Hunter I really don't blame the majority of the playerbase for just running Energizing Dash 100% of the time. Nothing else is worth the effort (even if the Executing Dash you mentioned IS pretty fun)

For how long you keep the buff and the decay - it's practically an on demand arcane avenger.

[Jarriaga]

12 minutes ago, TheGreatKazein said:

For how long you keep the buff and the decay - it's practically an on demand arcane avenger.

You lose the buff if you use Void Mode again. It starts building up from scratch again. If it at least refreshed as a whole then I'd see your point, but this is not remotely comparable to Arcane Avenger because you have the entire 30% buff while Arcane Avenger is active. Then there's the "stop and charge" approach to using this ability. While great when there's just 1 enemy you want to destroy, it's use is cumbersome and impractical when dealing with hordes because it makes you play melee in short bursts. 

[Jarriaga]

7 hours ago, Miser_able said:

1: there will only be mods for buffing heavy attacks, and none buffing normal attacks. 

I am certain there will be mods for buffing normal attacks, but common sense dictates that these would still be unable to compete with heavy attacks. Otherwise there would be little to no incentive to use heavy attacks considering the drawbacks.

7 hours ago, Miser_able said:

2: there will be no other way of obtaining combo efficiency 

There will be. Any mod that used to give channeling efficiency will now give combo efficiency. But that's besides the point. This is about how Zenurik would outdamage Naramon in melee if all else sans the focus school being equal because of how important combo efficiency will be for heavy attacks. Here's an example.

Imagine just the Skana with just Primed Pressure Point, Drifting Contact, Life Strike, and a reworked Reflex Coil that gives just +30% combo efficiency. This means that both light and heavy attacks get +165% extra damage, you can sustain your combo for 13 seconds, Life Strike is applied to heavy attacks, and heavy attacks only consume 70% of your combo counter instead of all of it. Based on what was shown yesterday, heavy attacks are on average 4x normal attack damage.

Now let's set a simple combo counter of 100 hits. In Naramon, a single Life Strike hit would drain it down to 30. In Zenurik (Now 90% combo efficiency considering its passive), Life Strike would drain it to just 90, so you can deal a lot more heavy melee hits with 4x damage in Zenurik while Naramon would almost lose its entire combo with the same number of hits.

7 hours ago, Miser_able said:

3: heavy attacks will always be a better option than normal attacks. 

In raw damage? Yes. How would less damage be a better option all else being equal? Care to provide an example?

Mind you, what was shown was a significant gap between normal vs. heavy attacks to the point we can say a single heavy attack equals 3-4 normal attacks in a single hit. Losing the combo counter is the balancing mechanism so you don't use heavy attacks exclusively.

7 hours ago, Miser_able said:

4: DE won't take any feedback or data after the update and tweak melee more. (nerfing heavy attacks and buffing normal attacks for example) 

I don't think they will equalize normal vs. heavy attack damage. The entire system seems to be built around making heavy damage outclass normal damage, but at a cost in order to prevent spamming, making combat more tactical. Equalizing them by making them more or less competitive in damage risks people not using heavy attacks because of the combo loss drawback, so each hit has to be worth what you lose in order to compensate. This resulted in heavy hits dealing a lot more damage as the solution.

 

Edited October 25, 2019 by Jarriaga

[(NSW)Katsuro]

Here is what I think Naramon should be buffed with

[0_The_F00l]

Well... I already used Zenurik cause it is just better than anything else (gives energy, has CC, has sustained  electric damage that can add procs, has universally useful waybounds) 

And now this. 

I am afraid they are gonna Nerf Zenurik now as 80% of players are gonna use it. 

Edited October 25, 2019 by 0_The_F00l

[Jarriaga]

1 hour ago, 0_The_F00l said:

I am afraid they are gonna Nerf Zenurik now as 80% of players are gonna use it. 

It currently has too many advantages. Giving it melee heavy attack efficiency on top of that when the new system was designed around capitalizing on heavy attacks would push it towards "So good that there's really no other choice".

Edited October 25, 2019 by Jarriaga

[lemonforest]

void dash as naramon doesn't open them up to finishers anymore and they nerfed the damage that dashed mobs take. :(

[Cha0zb0rn]

Am I the only one who, after just minutes of play, found heavy attacks to be pretty lacking? I'd rather keep my combo counter up and benefit from whats left from Blood rush....heavy attacks do barely more than a spin attack....or did I miss something?

[lemonforest]

14 hours ago, lemonforest said:

void dash as naramon doesn't open them up to finishers anymore and they nerfed the damage that dashed mobs take. :(

I'm wrong, it still opens them up to finishers. You just don't have the context pop up to (on a controller) press X to finish them.  I don't know what the difference is with a mercy kill and a finisher either. I thought they were the same now.