(PC) Melee Phase 2: TECHNIQUES Feedback

[TonyAmor]

I miss the old sparring weapons heavy attack linking into a finisher.

When you are trying to slam them into the floor for a good stylish punisment you just make a boring area stomp that sends everybody away.

Overall, very nice change of pace. I just have problems with ground finishers, since knockdown is way harder to find. The lifted status won't allow me to do any of those finishers and I even have problems doing it instead on combos when I'm on top of grounded enemies.

Btw I know people have said it before, but I still die from explosions from thrown weapons, even after it was said it's gone from the game.

[Scolithy]

Clashing Forest, Resolute flurry needs to be put back onto the forward motion, the stances is terrible the way it is right now as the main damage combo requires you to awkwardly stutter step and that leaves no real option for staves. (Or just let us choose melee inputs.)

[Eneitilyn]

Okay DE Here is my feedback its very little but I  hope this helps and brings some inspiration hopefully!! Now the first thing I want to mention is The Redeemer Prime.. back when I joined Warframe for the first time the first weapons that cought my eye were Veldt and The Redeemer Prime I really liked both but mainly its about The Redeemer prime and my impression of the melee reworks here so basically this new Stance mechanic I really like it the combination of heavy attacks + normal attacks + shielding yourself with the block mechanic whenever you need to that is the best addition this update has brought upon us I love how you have the ability to instantly swap beteen defensive offensive and heavy damaging offensive "stances" with the single click of a mouse right click this is just awesome its not very untuitive for me yet because its gonna take some time to get used to but I generally like the changes what I have noticed is .. the defensive combos aka the "tactical combos that involve holding right click and attacking" usually involve a lot of movement and mobility I like the idea of that its great I kind of wish the mobility combos were moved to standard rotation and the standard rotation was moved to the "tactical rotation" sort of swap it around because usually in melee combat what you would want to do is use the block mechanic almost permanently in order to block damage and then attack by using focused attacks of the standard rotation's attacks not mobility based attacks(tactical rotation) the standard rotation is supposed to be more fast and more sort of "go dash/jump all in" sort of rotation but that would probably make it EVEN harder for people and casuals to adapt the stance swapping between defense and focused offense is supposed to be advanced mechanic only veterans would realize and perfect but its probably better this way for the community to get used to it and but if it was swapped it would be more high skill capped I think at least in my personal opinion its still great tho
 But there is some obstacles to this as well for example on The Redeemer Prime stances High Noon and Bullet Dance the difference between them for me are huge the main one is ..
#1 well a lot of people don't like the fact that you cannot spam ranged attacks with The Redeemer anymore specifically the one where you hold E to double attack I think is what they call it?
now I kind of agree with this opinion its kinda harsh not being able to choose your playstyle with the specific weapon tho there is a silver lining to this I did saw a lot more gun attacks with The Redeemer prime altho they felt kinda clunky and hard to aim compared to old Redeemer prime the reason was probably my own inexperience with the new animations probably and the old Redeemer had even worse aiming problems since it wasnt aiming at all in one of the stances but the main issue is not that here it would just shoot very fast and very quickly right in a focused area of my melee attacks most of the time I like the concept of this I can understand DE's stance on not allowing the players to use a melee weapons only as a gun or its gun mechanic alone it makes sense but I wish they took a more organized approach to this by for example seperating the gameplay styles into different stances this way for example the way I wished and I imagined 2# the High Noon stance would be after this melee update is it would be more focused toward gunning down targets from a far kinda like a gunslinger but be also useful in melee range at the same time if you encounter a melee enemy

3#while the other stance called "Bullet Dance" it would be more of a savage in the fray of a fight kind of stance for example you are again gunning targets down but in melee range instead while combining melee attacks with gun shots now I saw a similar concept in the old stances and really liked this I was like AAAH SO CLOSE to perfection if only I could aim those shots that shoot in random directions!!And then the new stance brought us the same ability but with being able to aim created another problem I saw a single missing aspect in the new stances but what about AOE damage ? This is a melee so I can always slide attack to do some AOE job if I am really surrounded by enemies but the problem here is the fact that it only shoots in the place I am looking at... aka my cursor.. so I kinda wish Bullet Dance would like randomly shoot an random enemy behind me or to my side or just anybody near instead of me having to aim it so what I am trying to say is I miss the ability to have more AOE with this weapon it would be nice if there was a combo somewhere that it just randomly aims at an enemy without me aiming at him and just fires away at him I dont care what kind of combo it is a paused attack or whatever kind of attack what have you its just a lot of weapons have gotten more AOE but this weapon has lost the aoe kind of attacks more since it incorporates the gun mechanic and tries to use it more which automatically means all of your damage is focused in front of your cursor combine dat with a lot of movement and its almost impossible to aim for targets

4# Another thing I wish DE would consider is.. I like the idea of having to Heavy attack in order to shoot but think about this I just spent some combo points in order to use an heavy attack so how am I supposed to get combo points from range attacks if I am to gun down enemies with heavy attacks with the Redeemer? I know combo efficiency is a thing but this basically means I need to lower my total DPS in order to do more DPS by adding a combo efficiency mod which kind of... is contradictive in a sense too ! I think the most important aspect of this rework is making sure every weapon has decent amount of AOE attacks/combos focused single target attacks/combos and mobility based attacks/combos it seems like quite the job but if players give proper feedback on how they feel instead of complaints is the most proper way to handle the current situation of the circumstances!

Abbreviations:
"Tactical Combos"(mobility rotation) - this is when you hold right click in order to block but you use melee attacks while blocking
"Standard Rotation" - basically you pressing E normally without any fancy "shablamo's" and just attacking normally normal combos with a stance or no stance
"Defensive stance"  - holding right click to block incoming bullet damage

So Thank you again DE for the awesome update and the willingness to take feedback in itself honestly is an awesome thing about u guys I think so I hope players give u more inspiration than simply complaints and we find some kind of middle ground to create something good out of this opportunity hehe ^^

Edited November 2, 2019 by Eneitilyn
accuracy ^^

[YourFriendlyNoggin]

Ultra quick impressions here, I tested out one of my old favourites, gram with tempo royale in one of the gift of the lotus missions:

Quick melee is still funky, but as I never really touched quick melee after melee 2.0 it's not a major concern for me. First impressions of the update however are a bit... well... mixed to say the least. Melee mode is back, which is a massive plus for me, however the controls are all over the place, which is usually not a problem due to the magic of keybinding, HOWEVER you can't edit the melee mode keys the same way you used to be able to due to the holdover from the first phase of the rework; mixing guns and melee. So if I try to change any melee mode keys that interfere with firearm mode keys it clears the firearm keys, which means I can't have heavy attack on the same button that I use for alt fire on firearms. Not to mention you still can't have a dedicated "switch to melee mode" button, something which we had in 2.0 (not by default, you had to bind a key to it in options).

Controls aside, I always felt like channelling was an interesting concept which needed expanding, now that it's gone I miss it way more than I expected, chiefly because heavy attacks completely kill all momentum(an issue that plagues this new update unfortunately), leaving you stranded for a crucial second that in any higher level gameplay than what I tested would be suicide for my nearly shieldless valkyr against grineer or corpus enemies. You might say "well then just don't use heavy attacks", sure at level 30-40 enemies that would be fine, but as a melee fighter survivability is key, armour helps somewhat but high firerates still melt you, so you need some kind of regeneration which I used to get from a handful of frames skills and LIFE STRIKE aka "only on heavy attacks" strike. So in order to heal up in the heat of a fight I fight myself stopping suddenly to heavy attack and taking damage during the recovery animation for the attack, there need to be normal speedy movement available during heavy attacks in order for heavy attacks to fit into warframe.

This brings me to my chief complaint(which doomfruit and SOUP.CAN touched on), the new attacks and stance rework(at least for tempo royale, I'll check others later) have butchered momentum. Your animations are great, the knockup is an interesting concept on paper and aerial combos could be fun with the right melee systems, but right now they are getting in the way of movements. Animations now either do or don't have momentum, instead of allowing the player to move around freely you are locked into whatever momentum the animations give you, which means some attacks slow you to a crawl and some have insane forward movement followed by halting combo finishers(like the downward slam at the end of one of the tempo royale combos). This system could work in a slower game like devil may cry(feels weird to call dmc slow but compared to warframe it is) where you can focus on maintaining combos within often limited arenas( looking at you red barriers), however when you need to hop from enemy to enemy and tile to tile it slows you down.

 
Combos unfortunately aren't the only ones to suffer this effect, I will have to confirm with other weapons but for the gram when you use an aerial attack you throw out a limp swipe and hit the ground within the animation, gone are the days of slicing past osprey and other aerial enemies like the old ninja/samurai trope ( See here ). Now we get locked into DMC style aerial combo animations only without the hover/lift that made those moves useful in those games, instead you flop to the ground. 
It's clear they are aiming for this style of aerial combos:

but that doesn't work in warframe unless there is forward and/or upward movement.


So my suggestions are:

-aerial boosts on aerial attacks, like a bullet jump but with damage.

-heavy attacks combo-able, maybe even make 'pause' combos require a heavy attack input instead

-make it so that attacks can speed you up but never slow you down, if one of the combo hits fires you forwards that's fine but if combo attacks lock you in place it messes with the momentum. For example :

 This eleventh storm combo shot you forward, which works great in warframe where horizontal movement feels very important.

-melee mode controls completely separate from firearm controls(allow keybinding for switching to melee mode as well) so that we can reuse keybinds that become empty when you switch modes like alt fire and reload keys.

-free movement during heavy attacks, so sprinting and jumping mid attack

-if not free movement on heavy attacks then lifestrike needs a new home, since the pause caused by heavy attacking is counterproductive to survivability that lifestrike is designed for

None of the issues I've said above actually kill my desire to play(unlike melee 2.9) so you're heading back in the right direction DE in my opinion.

 

Other than that, I'm so happy to have block back, I agree with most of the mod changes, slam attacks no longer flinging enemies away brings a tear to my eye and god damn just having melee mode is bringing me back into warframe and it feels mostly good to be back... mostly.

 

*edit*
Double checked the other weapons, every single one of the weapons I tried has severe movement and momentum issues, the system isn't fundamentally bad like the last rework phase but it has some serious flaws that need ironing out. I feel terrible looking at all the work put into the rework and realising how much needs tweaking, but on the bright side at least this system is salvageable.

*second edit* 

All the forward combos I tried move you forward but only at a snails pace, at this point speed needs to be mostly separated from combos, some combos that have their own fixed movement dashes(see the eleventh storm gif above) are fine but other than that you need to be able to perform these combos at speed or the system just won't feel good in warframe.

Also a bonus suggestions:

-Shorten the charges and allow movement during recovery pauses from heavy attacks, having them be slower attacks is fine but it should be slow during the attack not have a large pause before the attack and then a long recovery time after(during which you can't move at all for a split second) which can end up getting you killed which puts people off using these attacks all together.

I posted this first in the old feedback thread, not realising they had started a new feedback thread, my bad .

Edited November 3, 2019 by YourFriendlyNoggin

[Test-995]

Oh just checked patch note and i realized i missed the weapon change part and  "block + throw to suspend enemies"... but i won't regret what i post on bug report, because there is no description of how to do that in game.

And well, it's now much weaker, we lost the ability to perform suspend throw in the air, it's much more slower, and inconsistent.

Hope it will be changed to old one.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Test-995

[RoachyToasty]

Alright, so these Melee changes have caused a LOT of problems for Melee Mod balance, especially for Riven Mods.

Currently, It seems like Condition Overload being in the same Multiplier as +Damage mods has made other +Damage mods and +Damage as a Riven stat completely obsolete, due to diminishing returns in that multiplier.

Take this as an example: A melee with 2 status effects on a target will give +240% Damage. That's 340% of Base Damage so far, correct? Adding Primed Pressure Point on top of that gives us 340% + 165% Damage, which is 505%. 505/340 is ~1.485x Damage from Primed Pressure Point with only 2 Status Procs on a target. With how melees are right now, I'd expect many to easily hit around 4 Status Procs at once. Currently, that's 580% of Base Damage, being 745% with Primed Pressure Point. 745/580 is 1.28x Damage, which is a very small increase for a single mod, let alone a Primed Mod. This carries on into Rivens, making +Damage a garbage stat to have now. Once more people catch onto that if this doesn't get changed, that entire stat is going to be undesirable.

Now we'll get into the second hurdle, Blood Rush. Simply put, it completely destroys the other two ways of increasing Critical Chance, +CC (e.g. Sac Steel) and +Slide (e.g. Maiming Strike). All three of these mods are in the same multiplier, similar to the situation with Condition Overload, but arguably even worse off.

Blood Rush's bonus of 60% Critical Chance per combo stack will outperform Sacrificial Steel after only reaching 2x combo, also outperforming Maiming Strike at 3x combo. Since melee combo goes up to 12x now at only 220 hits, Blood Rush's maximum bonus of +720% is just ridiculous in comparison to merely 88% and 150%, giving very little reason to use other CC mods and making +CC/+Slide Rivens undesirable as well.

Right, so the thing is, the only stats people are generally going to go for on Rivens now is +Attack Speed, +Range, +Toxin, and +Critical Damage. +Heat is fine with the buffs, but not incredibly flexible and generally seems to dilute Corrosive Procs on Corrosive builds. Typically, the only Heat mod you'd use right now is Volcanic Edge. +Electricity is also pretty good for Corrosive builds, but is also not very flexible. What if I want to do Gas or Viral? That Electricity will negatively affect the weapon and take away useful Procs, similar to what IPS can do right now. The main issue comes with the whole Damage, Critical Chance, and Slide situation. Previously, +Damage was a top tier Riven stat, and just in its name would suggest that it's good (because more Damage is more Damage... right?), even though it isn't right now. +Slide was also great for those types of builds, and while it's true that the game shouldn't be based around "Spin to Win," you can still Spin to Win with Blood Rush, even better than with +Slide right now. Critical Chance was already not the most desirable stat, as there was no room to have Blood Rush and Critical Chance together, with how tight melee builds were. It baffles me to see Critical Chance being even less desirable now, with it not even benefiting from Blood Rush. The worst part is, these changes seem to have created a lot more room in melee builds, so if Critical Chance still scaled with Blood Rush, it would actually be useful for once.

Solutions:

-Separate Condition Overload from +Damage mods, it really hurts the mods in that multiplier. In my opinion, Condition Overload should still have its own multiplier, but shouldn't be exponential. Just make it "+75% Damage for each status type affecting the target," and make it have diminishing returns.

Previous CO was 1.6^Status Count Damage, which was completely insane with higher exponents. This new version should be 1 + 0.75*Status Count Damage independent of other Damage multipliers, just to make Primed Pressure Point and +Damage Rivens relevant again. That would be better for the health of the game.

Old CO scaling to 7 Status Procs:

1.6, 2.56, 4.096, 6.5536, 10.48576, 16.777216, 26.8435456

New CO scaling to 7 Status Procs:

2.2, 3.4, 4.6, 5.8, 7, 8.2, 9.4

But stacks with +Damage, so say goodbye to 2.65x Damage there as well

Proposed CO scaling to 7 Status Procs:

1.75, 2.5, 3.25, 4, 4.75, 5.5, 6.25

While that's lower than both old CO and new CO, how about we take Primed Pressure Point in as well?

Old CO 7 Status Procs with Primed Pressure Point's 2.65x Damage:

4.24, 6.784, 10.8544, 17.36704, 27.787264, 44.4596224, 71.13539584

New CO 7 Status Procs with Primed Pressure Point's bonus:

3.85, 5.05, 6.25, 7.45, 8.65, 9.85, 11.05

Proposed CO 7 Status Procs with Primed Pressure Point's 2.65x Damage:

4.6375, 6.625, 8.6125, 10.6, 12.5875, 14.575, 16.5625

This proposed CO doesn't stack damage exponentially, as you can clearly see, but will make other +Damage relevant again. Condition Overload would technically become a weaker mod, but still extremely powerful and, most importantly, not disruptive to other multipliers, as the current version unfortunately is.

-Regular +CC, Blood Rush, and +Slide should all scale off of base stats still (no ridiculous additive bonuses), but should still multiply with each other.

In order to not make that ridiculous, reduce either the maximum combo amount or Blood Rush's bonus per combo stack. Right now, Blood Rush is far too powerful.

I'd say reduce the maximum combo amount to 6x, which would be +360% CC for Blood Rush. In addition to that, reduce Maiming Strike's percentage back down to 90%, along with the scaling of +Slide as a melee Riven stat. With this proposition, the maximum CC you could hit at 6x combo with Blood Rush, Maiming Strike, and Sacrificial Steel all at once:

360*(1 + 0.9)(1 + 0.88) = +1285.92% CC. Consider that this is 3 mods and only on a Slide Attack, while current Blood Rush gives +720% on its own for all Attacks. Having the option to stack Crit in this way would make lots of sense, reviving two entire CC multipliers. Just like pre-update CC (not +Slide, since that was additive), CC was only decent, since Blood Rush on its own would typically be enough. With this change, Blood Rush alone is enough on a higher base CC weapon, but lower base CC weapons would also have a chance at going into Crit, along with +Slide actually being worth it again without being broken and additive.

Overall, I'd like to see the return of synergistic stats in Damage and CC, rather than Blood Rush and Condition Overload ruining everything, as of right now.

Edited November 3, 2019 by RoachyToasty

[bnuy]

47 minutes ago, RoachyToasty said:

Alright, so these Melee changes have caused a LOT of problems for Melee Mod balance, especially for Riven Mods.

Currently, It seems like Condition Overload being in the same Multiplier as +Damage mods has made other +Damage mods and +Damage as a Riven stat completely obsolete, due to diminishing returns in that multiplier.

Take this as an example: A melee with 2 status effects on a target will give +240% Damage. That's 340% of Base Damage so far, correct? Adding Primed Pressure Point on top of that gives us 340% + 165% Damage, which is 505%. 505/340 is ~1.485x Damage from Primed Pressure Point with only 2 Status Procs on a target. With how melees are right now, I'd expect many to easily hit around 4 Status Procs at once. Currently, that's 580% of Base Damage, being 745% with Primed Pressure Point. 745/580 is 1.28x Damage, which is a very small increase for a single mod, let alone a Primed Mod. This carries on into Rivens, making +Damage a garbage stat to have now. Once more people catch onto that if this doesn't get changed, that entire stat is going to be undesirable.

Now we'll get into the second hurdle, Blood Rush. Simply put, it completely destroys the other two ways of increasing Critical Chance, +CC (e.g. Sac Steel) and +Slide (e.g. Maiming Strike). All three of these mods are in the same multiplier, similar to the situation with Condition Overload, but arguably even worse off.

Blood Rush's bonus of 60% Critical Chance per combo stack will outperform Sacrificial Steel after only reaching 2x combo, also outperforming Maiming Strike at 3x combo. Since melee combo goes up to 12x now at only 220 hits, Blood Rush's maximum bonus of +720% is just ridiculous in comparison to merely 88% and 150%, giving very little reason to use other CC mods and making +CC/+Slide Rivens undesirable as well.

Right, so the thing is, the only stats people are generally going to go for on Rivens now is +Attack Speed, +Range, +Toxin, and +Critical Damage. +Heat is fine with the buffs, but not incredibly flexible and generally seems to dilute Corrosive Procs on Corrosive builds. Typically, the only Heat mod you'd use right now is Volcanic Edge. +Electricity is also pretty good for Corrosive builds, but is also not very flexible. What if I want to do Gas or Viral? That Electricity will negatively affect the weapon and take away useful Procs, similar to what IPS can do right now. The main issue comes with the whole Damage, Critical Chance, and Slide situation. Previously, +Damage was a top tier Riven stat, and just in its name would suggest that it's good (because more Damage is more Damage... right?), even though it isn't right now. +Slide was also great for those types of builds, and while it's true that the game shouldn't be based around "Spin to Win," you can still Spin to Win with Blood Rush, even better than with +Slide right now. Critical Chance was already not the most desirable stat, as there was no room to have Blood Rush and Critical Chance together, with how tight melee builds were. It baffles me to see Critical Chance being even less desirable now, with it not even benefiting from Blood Rush. The worst part is, these changes seem to have created a lot more room in melee builds, so if Critical Chance still scaled with Blood Rush, it would actually be useful for once.

Solutions:

-Separate Condition Overload from +Damage mods, it really hurts the mods in that multiplier. In my opinion, Condition Overload should still have its own multiplier, but shouldn't be exponential. Just make it "+75% Damage for each status type affecting the target," and make it have diminishing returns.

Previous CO was 1.6^Status Count Damage, which was completely insane with higher exponents. This new version should be 1 + 0.75*Status Count Damage independent of other Damage multipliers, just to make Primed Pressure Point and +Damage Rivens relevant again. That would be better for the health of the game.

Old CO scaling to 7 Status Procs:

1.6, 2.56, 4.096, 6.5536, 10.48576, 16.777216, 26.8435456

New CO scaling to 7 Status Procs:

2.2, 3.4, 4.6, 5.8, 7, 8.2, 9.4

But stacks with +Damage, so say goodbye to 2.65x Damage there as well

Proposed CO scaling to 7 Status Procs:

1.75, 2.5, 3.25, 4, 4.75, 5.5, 6.25, 7

While that's lower than both old CO and new CO, how about we take Primed Pressure Point in as well?

Old CO 7 Status Procs with Primed Pressure Point's 2.65x Damage:

4.24, 6.784, 10.8544, 17.36704, 27.787264, 44.4596224, 71.13539584

New CO 7 Status Procs with Primed Pressure Point's bonus:

3.85, 5.05, 6.25, 7.45, 8.65, 9.85, 11.05

Proposed CO 7 Status Procs with Primed Pressure Point's 2.65x Damage:

4.6375, 6.625, 8.6125, 10.6, 12.5875, 14.575, 16.5625

This proposed CO doesn't stack damage exponentially, as you can clearly see, but will make other +Damage relevant again. Condition Overload would technically become a weaker mod, but still extremely powerful and, most importantly, not disruptive to other multipliers, as the current version unfortunately is.

-Regular +CC, Blood Rush, and +Slide should all scale off of base stats still (no ridiculous additive bonuses), but should still multiply with each other.

In order to not make that ridiculous, reduce either the maximum combo amount or Blood Rush's bonus per combo stack. Right now, Blood Rush is far too powerful.

I'd say reduce the maximum combo amount to 6x, which would be +360% CC for Blood Rush. In addition to that, reduce Maiming Strike's percentage back down to 90%, along with the scaling of +Slide as a melee Riven stat. With this proposition, the maximum CC you could hit at 6x combo with Blood Rush, Maiming Strike, and Sacrificial Steel all at once:

360*(1 + 0.9)(1 + 0.88) = +1285.92% CC. Consider that this is 3 mods and only on a Slide Attack, while current Blood Rush gives +720% on its own for all Attacks. Having the option to stack Crit in this way would make lots of sense, reviving two entire CC multipliers. Just like pre-update CC (not +Slide, since that was additive), CC was only decent, since Blood Rush on its own would typically be enough. With this change, Blood Rush alone is enough on a higher base CC weapon, but lower base CC weapons would also have a chance at going into Crit, along with +Slide actually being worth it again without being broken and additive.

Overall, I'd like to see the return of synergistic stats in Damage and CC, rather than Blood Rush and Condition Overload ruining everything, as of right now.

Incredibly well thought out and nicely formatted post. Hope DE takes notice of this, because this is definitely at the moment a huge issue with the new melee mod changes, melee as a whole feels fantastic, but some of the mods need to be changed for the reasons above.

[YourFriendlyNoggin]

On 2019-11-01 at 3:56 PM, DoomFruit said:

Correct. Incidentally, "heavy attack" is exactly the same as the melee 2.5 charge attack - it has the same attack animation, has the same wind-up animation and has the same wind-up sound. The only difference is that instead of having both of them on the same button but accessed contextually (tap vs. hold), there is now a completely separate and un-necessary keybind.

Honestly, I still think that melee 1.0 was the best version. We had quick attacks, we had charge attacks, it never felt clunky to use either one, we could block at any moment if we so wished and when some weapons had similar stats, they were distinguished by having different attack animations.

I knew heavy attack animations seemed familiar, I must have forgotten what they looked like during the break I took after melee got gutted the first time in melee 2.9, still it explains why heavy attacks don't feel like slower but stronger attacks, just attacks full of unfortunate jank. 

That said the real reason I replied is because this second phase and the first phase of the rework got me thinking about melee 1.0 and 2.0.
I didn't dislike melee 1.0, but I did feel like it was so limited in potential, hell I got into warframe in the first place because the mix of melee and gunplay reminded me of the Mass effect 3 mp(which was surprisingly good despite the fact that it was completely out of place in mass effect and no one asked or wanted it). Melee 2.0 however solidified warframe as one of my all time favourite games, melee mode was something I had wanted ever since I started playing in update 7.0 and stances had so much potential for growth. I've been a melee addict ever since 2.0, whereas in 1.0 I used mostly firearms, I used melee more than anything for years, sure it could be improved(like a second attack button to replace pauses and directional inputs for combos) but ultimately it worked well.

Then we reach the first two phases of melee 3.0, honestly I was excited by smoothing out combos and the possible addition of a second attack button, but where the first phase was a giant mess, removing and altering everything that was good about melee, phase 2s only good parts are the bits that brought back melee 2.0 functionality.

Heavy melee should be considered an alternate attack button, used to mix in between the primary attack button in order to create combos. While this seems like the most basic combo system known to gaming it can have a high skill ceiling combined with the movement of warframe, just look at dark souls and how they use a very simple control method to create skill based combat(not to say warframe should copy that since the game speed and style is completely different).

Melee 3.0 has potential still(or at least it does after they started reverting phase 1 changes), but is still mired by odd design choices, like movement locks which you mentioned a few times this thread and I agree wholeheartedly that they should barely exist outside of the few dash type moves.

[Chainlinc3]

...This might have (probably has) been suggested already, but I really want the heavy melee keybind to function as a quick heavy melee button, akin to normal quick melee.  As in, I stab a bunch of people, then leap up, aim glide for a moment to lock onto the next group, then hit heavy melee to do that awesome sla-- Oh wait, nothing happened because the aim glide took my gun out.  I was hoping that heavy attack having a separate keybind from alt-fire meant that would work out of the box, but evidently not.  I can toggle "full melee" on as a workaround, but the fluidity of switching between gunplay and melee as needed is part of the fun for me.

I honestly love how the melee system works and feels here otherwise-- yeah, I'm still figuring things out, but the combos feel so much more organic now, and the addition of "tactical" and heavy strikes make me feel a lot more engaged with my melee combat, which is something I thought was lacking before (Entirely honest, I had melee with a secondary bind to mouse wheel, so I could just flick the wheel and let it spin to blender whatever I was near).  I just want to be able to use all aspects of that fluid combat alongside the gunplay, rather than being forced to choose one at a time.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Chainlinc3

[Twistedsparkle]

wow just wow
Ive been playing nonstop since the U26 launch and Ive been having a blast with the new melee

being absolutely positive that everyone would welcome it
I cant believe how theres so much hate for the new system that in my experience is so much better in every way

oh well atleast I am having fun

sometimes I swear this community is playing entirely different game than I am

[Maxim_M_Payne]

1 hour ago, Twistedsparkle said:

I cant believe how theres so much hate for the new system that in my experience is so much better in every way

It is not hatred without cause; it is specifically a hatred toward a "new" and "better" system with awkward controls, obnoxiously over-done elemental/weapon-swing VFX; and none of the fluidity or sense of solidity found in the prior melee combat control system that I had enjoyed and used for five years; and on top of all this, it's a system that DE presented to us as the new normal without option and choice, beginning the February of this miserable year. This wasn't worth waiting eight months for, let alone with the half-done "fixes" to what Phase 1 already ruined about melee. I'm furious, and I'm not going to be silent. I'm avoiding swearing and dev-bashing, but there my courtesy ends.

Pros (There aren't many this time, and only one really counts as a total good change):

• Semi-Positive: We can lock into melee mode again. But this is, even after eight months of waiting for DE to restore it, unfortunately, ruined by the small but horribly bright flash that happens at the end of the animation when holding the F key; something that wasn't in the original weapon-drawing animation. Take that flash out, nobody wants it. God, I am sick of sparks and bubbles and other needless crap jammed into otherwise cool models; hurting eyes and drowning the UI and HUD. 
• Semi-Positive: We can control our own blasted block again. Unfortunately, this was still a half-effort on DE's part, because that stupid AI automatic block still exists, and it will interrupt you at the slightest bullet grazing you, and then lock you into its guard animation. You can only control your block in full if "locked in", which is not what we asked for when we demanded that manual block and Sword Alone mode be restored.Take auto-block out altogether. It's intrusive, irritating, condescending to our skill as the players, and useless.
• Genuinely good: Scythes are finally long-range and look appropriately two-handed with their new models and hitbox, they did always seem a little short. I sincerely have no complaints about this change; but you'd better not persist on keeping the old plan to "scrap" Scythes as a weapon category. I like Scythes, and there's enough Heavy Blades. Same as Dual Blades, the category is actually greatly bloated. Why not change Scindo to "Heavy Axe" and add Dual Raza/Zoren to "Dual Hatchets"?

 

Cons (sorry, folks, but I don't like this any more than Phase 1; and I sincerely preferred, and will always prefer, Melee 2.0):

• Literally all of the existing Stance Combos that were genuinely fun and good have been rearranged into an awkward, completely different rhythym; or flat-out removed in favor of the post-Old Blood twitching that was jammed in two days ago. I WILL NOT accept this, and I want every single one of the Combos (and order of the keys in those Combos) that we had prior to Halloween back. You simply can't take away Winding Claws, Resplendent Calma, Vengeful Thrash, Dark Light, Shattered Village, Hidden Flourish, and every other one of the classics. They all looked good and were fun and intuitive to use. You can't rudely excise a rare bit of gold from a steadily worsening combat system; I won't tolerate it, and if you don't revert them to their old glory, I am genuinely tempted to uninstall. This is the last straw in a monumentally enraging year. Not to mention that you, as the developers (and other players, for that matter) have had the audacity to tell me not to be angry. I loved and still love all the old Combos, and now they've been scrambled with each other or swapped between Stances in highly unfitting (not to mention lazy) of a fashion. That is infuriating, and ruined what was still enjoyable for me. I didn't think I could hate something more than Phase 1 of 3.0's "sTrEaMLinInG"; but then all my favorite Combos died. Goes to show that you should never underestimate how much worse a year can still get. My former delight in Warframe is at an all-time negative; and my hype does not exist. I don't care about your future new content, DE, you're  unintentionally ruining what we already had. Try to listen. Please.
• The button input on Combos is now too sensitive; and Combos blend together in a much harder-to-perform way. All but the longest of pauses in a Stance don't register, unlike before; and attempting the prior series of tap tap tap PAUSE tap tap tap rhythms in Stance Combos fail altogether; the new input just interprets this as a continous tap. It's hypersensitive as a chinchilla that snorted emphetamines. It's exactly the twitchy mess I feared was going to be added in. Speed can be too high, and sometimes quicker just means downright spastic. This is a seizure, not a system.
• Not only did the old and better Stance Combos get gutted; the replacement Combos consist of overwhelmingly homogenous and uniform twirling that looks nearly the same for every stance. Hardly anything distinguishes one weapon category from another anymore; let alone different Stances from the same weapon category. It used to be that Vermillion Storm was the dancer's Claw Stance, consisting of dainty and elegant kicks and spinning slashes; and that Malicious Raptor was the berserker's Claw Stance, filled with satisfyingly feral stabs, head-butts, ripping, and gouging. Now I can't tell Malicious Raptor and Vermillion Storm apart; because without the prior Combos they once had, not only are they more awkward to perform, but additionally, NOTHING distinguishes them from each other visually anymore. They've lost their identity and distinct style. The same goes for every other Stance. Bring. The Old Combos Back. Immediately. I'm not waiting another eight months for this to be fixed, and I'm certainly not buying a single blasted bundle or cosmetic in the interim.
• Every single impact of a melee weapon into an enemy now causes them to spray annoying sparks; when the only thing they should be spraying is blood and severed limbs. And I really, truly mean it when I say that those annoying sparks happen right upon every singleeye-stabbinghit.

The above cascade is just plain ugly. Enough Micheal-Bay-esque VFX; it's time to start going for quality over complexity. The only thing I want these Grineer to have explode out of their bodies is blood or gore; not fireworks and overly-strong Bloom rendering.

• Scythes may have finally been enlarged (insert ribald joke here); but unfortunately, weapon range is completely broken on them and everything else now. This is presumably and hopefully an accidental consequence of the new adjustments to weapon collision detection and how the Reach/Primed Reach mods work; but nevertheless, weapon range is broken, as well as visually dissonant with the model size of the weapons at the present time. Whips can barely hit a meter away. I've seen Heavy Blades and Scythes slice open a dude a meter from the tip of the blade. Fists, Sparring, and Claw weapons are inconsistent; sometimes suddenly teleporting me into a Grineer's chest as though the blades were magnetized, and other times failing to connect with a Heavy Gunner or Corpus Tech at point-blank range.
• No adjustments have been made to the priorly-complained-about VFX. Weapon swing trails are still horribly bright and opaque; elements are still fast-flickering masses of sparks, bubbles, shimmers, and lightning; and slam-attacks still cause a huge glowing dome, when they used to just be a simple and far-more-pleasing circular shockwave along the ground.
• Mouse3 is, objectively speaking, an awkward keybind in any game. It really did work far better to simply hold the E key when firing Gunblades, throwing Glaives, using Heavy Attacks. I'd strongly prefer it went back to being held E, and I'm not alone in that assessment.
• Air Combos have replaced leap attacks, and they're frankly a downgrade. Not only does gravity still apply mid-air, limiting their usefulness, since the player will be falling before the combo finishes; but additionally, their replacement of the old leap attacks has ruined a very intrinsic part of parkour. The momentum of a jump attack was a part of most of my acrobatic maneuvers, and some of my favorite tricks to pull off are now completely impossible; since, the same as Tatsu and Iron Staff, all weapons now have no momentum at all when using aerial attacks.
• Speaking of momentum issues, melee now weirdly locks the player into animations and slows us down even worse than it did before; rather than less. Not only are players still unable to sprint and melee attack at the same time; but now, also, attacks seem to put us at about 45% speed. Using Fragor turns me positively glacial.
• Parazon has a delay when hacking and causes an irritating screen-shake as it activates; old hacking was visually simple and instantaneous.
• Mercy finishers should be performed with a different keybind than X. X works fine for interactable objects and picking data-masses up, but it's a rather awkward change of button in the middle of melee combat.
• Parazon really should have a hacking animation consisting of an initial stab followed by typing similar to the old animations with the other hand; at present, our Warframes look more like they stuck a fork in an outlet and are convulsing from it.

I'm at wit's end here, people. More than anything, if you're only gonna grant me three wishes, I just want my Combos back, no auto-block, and for my lock-in to not cause that godawful flash. Is that really so much to ask?

[Milliuna]

The Orvius is beyond nonfunctional currently. As of Melee Phase 2, nothing about the Orvius works well. The Orvius was always pretty temperamental about whether or not it would suspend an enemy, maybe only working one in two throws - that success rate has now dropped to one in five throws. Additionally, the only way to activate the Orvius' suspend mechanic is to now switch to melee mode, and hold Alternate Fire + Aim while throwing. This means the Orvius' most unique feature is entirely relegated to the melee switch mode. Here's the thing - while you've thrown the Orvius and it's suspending someone, you have nothing in your hands for the whole duration. You can't block, melee, shoot or do anything except use your powers. The Orvius' suspend mode does not work while dual wielding a secondary anymore. Previously, the Orvius would always suspend enemies when thrown while dual wielding.

Here's the thing: no-one uses the Orvius to use a glaive. People use the Orvius to have a weapon compliment their secondary weapon for dealing status effects and immobilizing enemies. If I wanted to use a glaive, I would use a Glaive Prime which out performs the Orvius in every way as a thrown glaive. With the nerf of Condition Overload, the Orvius is already particularly bad, and making it so clunky is unwarranted. As it stands now, the Orvius is just a glaive with insultingly low statistics that has absolutely no place or purpose in the game so long as you can't easily use its suspend mechanic while dual wielding. It should, at the very least,  suspend enemies when thrown in dual wield mode.

I urge for this to be reconsidered. Not being able to use the Orvius like we're used to is an absolute shame, and is actively discouraging me playing this update.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Milliuna

[AO_Saviour]

Okay so straight to the point..

Was the nerf to the zenistars duration from 40secs to 10secs really necessary? 

Having to build up the combo counter first before deploying the disc to gain extra duration is just a tedious task especially on a weapon which is designed for camping and cc

Now having the disc either add to the combo counter or having the duration stick and not change after reaching the max duration through combo would be better.

Because the main reason players even use the weapon is for the mechanic of the disc which is unique.

The zenistar really didnt need a dmg buff as it was perfect the way it was in my opinion.

 

 

 

[tyrael7]

10 hours ago, Mattoropael said:

On the contrary, using it in live convinced me further that it's hot garbage.

Heavy Attack taking as much time to fire as DE releasing U26 makes it almost unusable in live combat, both for survivability concerns and the fact that you have to keep your aim on the target for far longer than before in order to hit.

What I meant was, if like me you got a lot of mileage out of the Redeemer’s original “hold E double shot”, you can instead try out the other Redeemer combos and you might be surprised with the fluidity and functionality it now has as a viable substitute.

[Gullim92]

First of all, I'm extremely impressed with a lot of the reworks. Stances feel much better (with a few exceptions, notably Bullet Dance) and every single melee feels viable now. I can't remember the last time I took something other than my scythe zaw or Redeemer Prime into a mission and had this much fun, so congratulations on a job mostly well done. Now for feedback, I'll try to keep it brief but I'm warning you now I'm not very good at it:

 

Heavy attacks are just bad, plain and simple. They are slow, the range doesn't compensate for that slowness and the damage isn't anything impressive (mostly as a result of melee overall just being stronger. In 100% of cases you're better off just using normal attacks since you'll kill whatever you need to kill before a heavy attack comes out)

I had this suggestion since a few days ago and in fact I saw something very similar posted on this exact thread. Take out heavy attacks and replace them with a selectable or stance/weapon-specific buff or special "Blade art" for lack of a better terminology. Ideally they should be something that is universally useful for all frames and weapons and is an actual consideration against keeping your combo counter for blood rush. My suggestions would be that using these new heavy or "special attacks" would:

1) Give the player X% damage reduction for X seconds, scales with combo counter

2) Grants the player a second spectral melee weapon that hits twice after you attack for X amount of seconds (imagine Nero's devil trigger from DMC4, every melee swing gets a copy follow-up attack)

3) Unleashes a wide-ranging sweeping attack, Im talking like 35+ meters in a circle around the player, it needs huge. Or a void projectile, similar to that one plague star exodia, that explodes on impact (again, giving RANGE to melee is something desirable and would be worth considering when stacked up against blood rush)

4) Increases your melee range by something like 10 meters for X amount of seconds

Lastly you could add a period of time after using these special attacks where all melee hits and blocks add +2 to combo counter instead of +1, which would give more incentive to use these abilities since building combo back would be even faster, allowing you to actually benefit from these special attacks without sacrificing your combo counter too much (either that or make them not consume all combo counter as default, maybe 50%)

 

Again, kudos on the melee rework overall. I'm extremely excited to see what the last phase and the whole rage mechanic will be like, but please do consider changing your mindset about heavy attacks as they just don't quite fit the style of Warframe.

[megnamon]

1 minute ago, tyrael7 said:

What I meant was, if like me you got a lot of mileage out of the Redeemer’s original “hold E double shot”, you can instead try out the other Redeemer combos and you might be surprised with the fluidity and functionality it now has as a viable substitute.

Well, people Redeemer like " hold E double shot " because its simplicity actually have the fluidity too. You can still move while shooting, not delaying you to active the skills, you can reposition smoothly ( since Redeemer is single target weapon type ) so can avoid being surrounded by enemies. Plus, gunblades stances are poorly done in the first place.

You jump around and around, but enemies still there. Also...Redeemer does have innate Blast, which make things difficult to kill. Even harder when within 4 meter, it just ragdoll enemies instead.

[Roboplus]

Gonna echo again the desire to go directly into a heavy attack while a gun is drawn. Corrupt Charge is a really cool mod, and for once reflects how I typically use melee weapons (which is only an occasional swing here or there). Having to switch to a melee weapon first sort of defeats the purpose.

Diwata is also really weird. It will block, it'll even autoblock, but it will only reduce incoming damage, not negate it. It's parry angle also seems smaller than the 90 that's listed. It has heavy attacks (though their base damage is the same as regular attacks) and those consume your combo meter, but they use the same animations as the regular attacks. Heavy attack mods still work, but if you heavy attack repeatedly Life Strike won't work on every swing (it seems to only work if you snap to a target). Is there not an archmelee weapon animation Diwata could borrow for heavy attacks so it can heavy attack properly, with a proper increased damage heavy attack?

Spellbind and Lantern disable your archmelee snap-to function, and archmelee falls apart without that function (especially on an enemy that moves when you hit it).

Edited November 3, 2019 by Roboplus
Addendum

[Acos]

I made a keybind for holding the melee button for charge attacks and I gotta tell you it feels a lot better. Maybe consider that instead of alt-fire. 

I'm not sure how so much of the feedback here echoes the damage was reduced or that the range is bad? I suppose if all you did was spin-to-win it might, but actual melee feels very powerful right now. I think a lot of people need to tweak their builds a bit to actually take advantage of the new system to really appreciate how it works. Killing Blow + Combo Efficiency lets you go on this big one-shot murder sprees without invalidating the quick melee. In the very first iteration of melee it felt like charge attacks were the be-all end all, then light attacks were the only thing worth using. I think DE finally reached a happy medium between light combo attacks feeding big burst damage. It feels good. 

A big freaking thank you to whoever seperated melee and execute by the way. It was really frustrating playing frames like Excalibur and being locked into single-target one-shot every time I used radial blind when it would often be much higher DPS to cleave into a group of people instead of being forced to kill them all individually. 

I am starting to adapt to weaving spin attacks, air attacks, and forward slashes into a forward moving train of death, but I still feel like a lot of the stances need to have animation pausing trimmed out of their forward combos. The whole point was supposed to be to offer us the ability to cleave on the go but many stances feel like they want to lock us in place instead. 

[FrigidMesa]

i don't think i need to add a much about the combo muti other than bring back the old one and its damage scaling for normal melee as this unintentionally nerfed frames like Atlas and Ash and Khora. and second, Please Bring back the reflect. melee reflect was a fun way to do things as watching the enemies kill themselves was super entertaining. but with the new change reflect now doesn't work and you made the amalgam javlok mod lame. so please return the  Javlock mod to its original 6000% increase to reflected damage and change Reflect to be when manually blocking since channeling is no longer going to be a thing. it was not a super practical way to kill an enemy but it was super fun and you straight up removed it without even talking about it. 

 

[Brian770]

last week i was getting 80,000+ point red crits regularly with my balla, as in for the last 6-7 months, and today i go wild with it and cant even get a orange crit and not many yellows.....was the balla nerfed? no, i never changed my build. i understand NEEDING a change, but changing things just to change them aint cool. the new and "improved" melee system should not affect the crit damage/chance, i thought it was just changing the mechanics of the hit combos, you guys have messed with the entire thing and not improved it one bit. it now feels slow, confusing, and clunky. it was fast fluid and fairly straight forward. never understood why you changed it to begin with.....it wasnt broken.

[crazyN00b]

Just gonna throw a small suggestion here:

Make holding the 'weapon swap button [F]' toggle between equipped and not-equipped melee, as opposed to only equipping it.

E.g. You hold [F] and melee is now equipped, meaning you won't switch to guns by pressing the 'fire' or 'aim' button.

        You hold [F] again and melee is not-equipped (but you're still holding it), thus 'fire' and 'aim' button bring  out the guns.

That way we can more easily access the best of both modes and switch between the two during combat, instead of having to choose one or the other due to the long weapon swap animations.

Edited November 3, 2019 by crazyN00b
typo

[Brian770]

7 hours ago, Twistedsparkle said:

wow just wow
Ive been playing nonstop since the U26 launch and Ive been having a blast with the new melee

being absolutely positive that everyone would welcome it
I cant believe how theres so much hate for the new system that in my experience is so much better in every way

oh well atleast I am having fun

sometimes I swear this community is playing entirely different game than I am

well, when my balla damage goes from 80,000-120,000 damage red crits most of the time to never a red , never a orange, and few random yellow 3000 damage crits.....how is it better in every way? just asking in case i missed something. for the last year i have used melee quite a lot, now after this disaster i simply dread even trying to melee......i feel massive buyers remorse that the thousands of real dollars i have spent on this game helped to pay for this garbage.

[MonsterOfMyOwn]

Short feedback :

polearm are not quite useful now. They either deal too few damages or have too small range.

Redeemer, i'm ok with the gunblade thing but the stances are a bit cluncky. I'd rather have more slash to rise combo before a ranged attack, or even a combo without shot.

Heavy attack doesn't deal enough damages and/or spending all combo meter is too much (yes I know about zenurik). It's fun but not rewarding enough. I want to 1hko lvl 100 bombard with any melee with ×12 combo meter

Edited November 3, 2019 by MonsterOfMyOwn

[Arkandae]

il y a 18 minutes, MonsterOfMyOwn a dit :

I want to 1hko lvl 100 bombard with any melee with ×12 combo meter

Challenge accepted. Is this bad enough : i.imgur.com/gM6GZz3.png ? It one shots lvl 100 bombard easily with 12x combo

Nikana prime heavy attack can do 5m+ damage (if enough status, otherwise it's about 2m : i.imgur.com/ZSYCslO.png) on lvl 165 corrupted heavy gunner without killing blow.

[MonsterOfMyOwn]

23 minutes ago, Arkandae said:

Challenge accepted. Is this bad enough : i.imgur.com/gM6GZz3.png ? It one shots lvl 100 bombard easily with 12x combo

Nikana prime heavy attack can do 5m+ damage (if enough status, otherwise it's about 2m : i.imgur.com/ZSYCslO.png) on lvl 165 corrupted heavy gunner without killing blow.

I get your point but I said "any". I have a reaper prime with which i kill easily mobs using regular attack, but the "heavy" attack is meh. It doesn't feel rewarding enough.