(PC) Melee Phase 2: TECHNIQUES Feedback

[schna89]

DE, please bring the zenistar as it was before this new method is not possible to use it becomes unfeasible and bring the mod primed reach as it was before in% has a dagger to have 3 more range and a rod only 3 too.

[Dash_Lambda]

2 hours ago, Maganar said:

New players DESERVE an intuitive melee system that teaches you how to do finishers by allowing you to discover them when you do them by accident - not requiring people to know in advance exactly what conditions trigger finishers, what key to press to do so, and then to execute the finishers.

Except executing finishers with the melee key is not intuitive.

When I was a new player, I was extremely confused as to why I would suddenly go from moving around and hitting things to being stuck on one enemy while a special animation plays. I actually thought it was a bug at first, and when I found out it wasn't I continued to consider it a bug in principle. If I press a button, I want to know exactly what it's going to do. Context-sensitive actions should depend on greater context, not circumstances: Gun mode, melee mode, operator mode, menus, etc. are contexts, a fleeting prompt that shows up right before you hit something isn't context.

What's more, tying it with the melee key meant there were certain circumstances in which you would be totally unable to use a melee weapon normally. I used to absolutely hate having an Inaros or Excalibur on my team because their abilities would force me to use finishers on entire crowds of enemies.

And I'm not a spin-to-win guy. My favorite weapon type is brawlers/claws, where I'm not just sweeping up rooms of enemies. So even when I'm going enemy-by-enemy, even when the finishers are fast, even when the animations are fun and satisfying, having finishers on the same key as normal melee attacks pisses me off because I'm telling Valkyr to swipe the guy, not suplex him or climb up on his back and break his neck.

So for some people it's not that finishers interrupt their happy little spinning macro, it's that they hate the disconnect that happens when you don't have control over what your character is doing.

Edited November 4, 2019 by Dash_Lambda

[Casardis]

To whoever's working on the combos strings in DE, please consider reading my extensive feedback on the Wise Razor stance, currently only for the Tatsu weapon.

I am particularly fond of the Tatsu and Wise Razor stance, despite being subpar compared to some others. However, in Phase 2, a lot of the mobility has been removed due to the combo structure, so it's even worse now. This post will attempt to pinpoint what's wrong about the stance and how changing the combo flow could help, especially since the weapon itself isn't even that strong on its own.

Outlines of the issues I found

1. Neutral Combo's last attack takes too long to reach
   • Possibly its fastest multi-hit strike with a bit of mobility, but it's reserved to the end of the neutral combo, which means you'll rarely ever see it since moving forward will change it to the Forward Combo.
2. Neutral Tactical Combo is missing. 
   • Some weapons like Scythes are also missing such combo. As a result, the diversity in combos and tactics (lol) are lessened, weakening its potential.
3. Forward Combo doesn't have a seamless loop
   • Unlike what the TECHNIQUES page advertize, Wise Razor's Forward Combo doesn't loop into the first one, and stops you on your track as well. It's outdated, as if it's still stuck in Phase 1's system.
4. Forward Tactical Combo has no distance-closing
   • Unlike some other stances, from Tempo Royale to Carving Mantis, there's basically no mobility to this. Again, it's like it's still stuck in Phase 1's design. Also, the combo ends with a Lift attack, which ideally should be reserved for Neutral Tactical Combo for versatility in usage, but see point 2...

These points, possibly among others, make the Tatsu very unbearably sluggish compared to many other stances. In fact I'll argue that it's slower and more sluggish than ALL THREE Heavy Blade stances. It doesn't help that its distance-closing attack, which previously had a much longer forward dash in phase 1 similar to the Stinger attack in Devil May Cry (before it was nerfed due to buggy momentum allowing you to cross Orb Vallis in a single dash), is still missing any utilty for what it's supposed to do: distance-closing.

In light of these elements, here are my proposed changes\overhaul to the combos and some details on how they should work, in order to make the Tatsu more fluid and enjoyable to play, but also overall better performing. Feedback from the community's welcome, but things like "I like the way it is" or "I prefer it this way" without explanation for the rebuttal will be ignored

Forward Combo (Forward + Melee)

On 2019-10-18 at 1:58 PM, [DE]Bear said:

This allows you to attack without initially interrupting movement with the first 1-3 swings (depending on the weapon Stance). The last attack in the sequence will loop seamlessly into the first, so that you can keep a level of mobility while attacking.

- Remove third slash for a quick thrust that seamlessly loops back to the first slash when repeated. 
- Unlike the current version, this proposed change will have no slow downs in your steps, allowing you to keep running and slashing.

Forward Tactical Combo (Forward + Block/Aim + Melee)

On 2019-10-18 at 1:58 PM, [DE]Bear said:

This move is usually a distance-closing opener, bringing you closer to the enemy and getting you within range to continue a harder-hitting string of attacks. The beginning or end of this combo can have a slam effect, allowing you to control the enemy, and during the mid-point of the combo, attacks will be large and sweeping, allowing multiple enemies to be hit.

- Full overhaul: First attack performs leaping triple slash, allowing you to close the distance quickly.
- Distance traveled should be around 8m, which is the same distance as Tempo Royale's Forward Tactical's first attack
- Last strike will have an AoE slam effect causing Knockdown (again, similar to Tempo Royale's Forward Tactical Combo). This will give a good CC tool to get in close and "control the enemy."

Neutral Combo (Melee button only)

On 2019-10-18 at 1:58 PM, [DE]Bear said:

Hard hitting, movement-free attacks to allow a player to destroy their target. The last attack can either have a knockdown effect, or throw them into the air and hold them there, if one set of strikes does not finish the job.

- Remove the 4th attack completely (which has been repurposed for the Forward Tactical Combo).
- Third, stronger slash will now hit them with a staggering attack, opening them for a Finisher for a second or two.
- While not a Knockdown nor a Lifting, the Finisher idea plays with the concept of a more "refined" weapon style compared to Heavy Blades' many Knockdowns and Lifting attacks, rewarding you with possibly a quick kill on a single enemy if you perform the whole, arguably slow triple slash.

Neutral Tactical Combo (Block/Aim + Melee)

On 2019-10-18 at 1:58 PM, [DE]Bear said:

First hit will likely be a longer thrust or throw of a weapon to increase range. Further attacks will be hard-hitting, and will often finish in a ragdoll effect or a Lifting Attack, as opposed to a knockdown or stagger.

- Full overhaul: repurposed the second Heavy Attack into this combo's first attack (Heavy Attack will only be the one spin as a result of this migration)
- As a neutral tactical combo, the first attack's aim to hit and stagger all surrounding enemies (similar to Defiled Snapdragon's Neutral Tactical).
- Follow ups allow you to bring those enemies into a Lifting status with the slam, opening your options for more combo.

Feedback are still ongoing for Melee Phase 2, but I'm not sure how much DE are willing to change specific combos themselves. However, since the Tatsu's currently alone in its category, with only one stance, I hope they take some consideration in my proposed changes.

Thank you for reading ❤️

Edited November 5, 2019 by Casardis

[vaarnaaarne]

1 hour ago, Dash_Lambda said:

Except executing finishers with the melee key is not intuitive.

When I was a new player, I was extremely confused as to why I would suddenly go from moving around and hitting things to being stuck on one enemy while a special animation plays. I actually thought it was a bug at first, and when I found out it wasn't I continued to consider it a bug in principle. If I press a button, I want to know exactly what it's going to do. Context-sensitive actions should depend on greater context, not circumstances: Gun mode, melee mode, operator mode, menus, etc. are contexts, a fleeting prompt that shows up right before you hit something isn't context.

What's more, tying it with the melee key meant there were certain circumstances in which you would be totally unable to use a melee weapon normally. I used to absolutely hate having an Inaros or Excalibur on my team because their abilities would force me to use finishers on entire crowds of enemies.

And I'm not a spin-to-win guy. My favorite weapon type is brawlers/claws, where I'm not just sweeping up rooms of enemies. So even when I'm going enemy-by-enemy, even when the finishers are fast, even when the animations are fun and satisfying, having finishers on the same key as normal melee attacks pisses me off because I'm telling Valkyr to swipe the guy, not suplex him or climb up on his back and break his neck.

So for some people it's not that finishers interrupt their happy little spinning macro, it's that they hate the disconnect that happens when you don't have control over what your character is doing.

An added thing to this is that it also helps with stealth. You don't accidentally wiggle a hair into the wrong direction (or the enemy shuffles an inch in the wrong direction) and end up attacking normally instead. It's kind of a failsafe there, which is good.

[Randulv]

Please fix Gunblades. You can't even use them properly anymore. It's fine in a static environment such as Simulacrum where enemies are standing still but trying to use them in a "real-world" environment is very very frustrating. Half the time you just swing it once instead of shooting even when you're trying to stand still and wait for it to register. Othertimes your aim gets thrown off due to the weird combos. I get that they are called "Gunblades" and you guys want them to be "melee & range" in one package but the reality of the situation is that nobody wants to use them for their melee capacity.

Trying to have the "best of both worlds" is not feasible. Go ahead and try, I guarantee you will miss a significant % of all ranged shots due to how the combos work. Sometimes you will roll and it throws your cursor off. Other times you just end up shooting behind the enemy while you are in melee range. It really doesn't work well in a hybrid capacity at all.

The reason is was a solid alternative to traditional "Smash E + RMB melee spam" was due to the charged shot mechanic. You could get two shots off, in quick succession, and it the pellets landed exactly where you aimed. It made them a viable choice to players that wanted to be a little more tactful and worry less about destroying eveything on the screen in a matter of seconds. A trade off in single target DPS vs group/AoE DPS.

Even putting a large amount of Attack Speed % (Around 140%) does not make up for the clunky style which removes your combo counter when you use Light Attack + Heavy Attack. It works but it's nowhere near the same not even close. I really am just fed up with it. I've tried to use Redeemer after the update and had mixed success. Ultimately I come to the conclusion that its pointless and I might as well just use a traditional melee weapon since it's far more effective and by effective I mean ease of use. Something that Gunblades in general do not have anymore. They're not fun to use. They're not as effective to use. I see little incentive to bother using them in the state they are currently in.

Please consider re-adding normal charge-shot mechanics back to Gunblades. Please make it so you aren't required to stand as still as a scare crow to shoot Gunblades. Thank you.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Randulv
Forgot to add something

[Maxim_M_Payne]

On 2019-11-03 at 3:44 PM, CosmicCat90 said:

The stance mods no longer match the actual moves that you do.

This is my number one greivance, and the main thing truly making me mad. Contrary to opinion, I found using taps, holds, pauses, and RMB+E was perfectly intuitive for controlling Stances and making my melee attacks, and no; I was not, as eloquently and politely stated by some... ...fellow in another thread, "just butthurt about Phase 2 because you can't mash E". 

I never mashed E. I always gleefully used the many, many combos in any of the Stances that we once had, and I found it delightfully fun; and frankly, standardizing combos has encouraged mashing E. There's no longer any point to choosing between different Stance mods, because the animations are barely different from each other; and they now all handle by and large identically. They've lost all identity, their fun, and their prior diversity in motions and attack. This is all even more exacerbated by the hyper-sensitivity of the E key that Old Blood patched in, so even the few combos (not many of them) that still involve a pause have such a massive gap between considering a press a pause that the game interprets me as mashing E anyway. Hopefully, it's understandable why this twitchiness, combined with the removal of all my old, favorite moves; and/or their rearrangment to a completely new rhythym that's incredibly awkward in comparison to the prior one; makes me a bit angry. And by a bit angry, I mean that if it were possible for a man to erupt foot-long claws out of each fingertip and set his forearms on fire without injury, I would be angry enough to enter Hysteria IRL. This entire frustrating, neutered affair makes me want to maul something, and I can't. The old moves are gone.

But, to elaborate, I'm going through every Sword Stance that currently exists to show the scrambling or deletion of signature moves. My hand is forced, and I feel determined to show what was lost; because even the few "bad" stances like Grim Fury were still a choice we used to make, even if a clumsy-to-control one; a choice the player should still be allowed to make, and that once upon a time, making that choice actually mattered. When everything is the same, nothing matters. No Stance has any appeal or a reason to farm for it, because it isn't clear and distinct anymore. You've lobotomized them into either a truncated version of the former state or so homogenous that they can't be told apart.

 

Crimson Dervish:

Pre-Old Blood-

Crimson Orbit: Two horizontal chops, followed by a sublte diagonal flip and reverse-grip slash.

Twisting Flurry: Three sinuous cuts, followed by a corkscrew jump and a series of stabs.

Coiling Impale: Two chops, two reversed-grip slashes, and then a corkscrew with the reversed-grip slashes continuing mid-air.

Post-Old Blood-

Crimson Orbit: Intact, but the new key inputs are revoltingly akward, and where once it was the first combo of the Stance, it now is inexplicably the second. There goes over five years of muscle-memory and enjoyment. It was never meant to be up-arrow+E, up-arrow+E, up-arrow+E. It sincerely worked better as tap, tap, tap-tap.

Twisting Flurry: Two wimpy chops, followed by an ugly mid-air breakdance-thing that makes us look like a startled grandma who saw a spider on the kitchen floor.

Coiling Impale: A corkscrew jump with pathetic range, none of the preliminary cuts, and a ground slam that makes yet more painfully bright sparks. 

 

Iron Phoenix:

Pre-Old Blood-

Wings and Beak: Admittedly, Iron Phoenix was a fairly boring, two-Combo Stance even before; this attack consisted of two chops followed by a foreward stab.

Taking Flight: Two chops, a jumping overhead slash, and then an uppercut-type diagonal cut.

Post-Old Blood-

Wings and Beak: Literally nothing has changed, other than adding in the same obnoxiously high levels of sparks and flashes as everything else in 3.0. Not only did you do nothing to make it less bland, it now makes laser confetti.

Double Slash: Didn't exist before, and exactly as half-hearted and pointless as it sounds; nothing more than two diagonal, left-to-right cuts, spammable in an infinite loop. Mashing fodder.

Taking Flight: A foreward slash-flip, followed by a single uppercut that makes even more of the annoying 20-foot VFX all slam attacks have now. Simpler than it used to be, and boring.

 

Swooping Falcon:

Pre-Old Blood-

Swift Pursuit: Four slow and elegant spinning slashes, looking like a ballet; rather than a constantly rotating seizure as all the new spins resemble.

Slicing Talon: A series of horizontal spin-slashes, followed by two spiraling cuts.

Keen Broadwing: A flurry of spinning slashes, a stab, and then a reversed-grip double-slash.

Diving Kestrel: A twisting, elegant manuevre of spiraling slashes and precise stabs, as you'd expect of a master swordsman.

Post-Old Blood-

Swift Pursuit: Now consists of two slashes with a faster, more irritating spin, and far lower range.

Slicing Talon: Two stabs, followed by a pair of incredibly boring, perfectly horizontal sideways cuts.

Keen Broadwing: A single spin, a half-hearted stab, and a reversed-grip slash that is much smaller and wimpy.

Diving Kestrel: Has inexplicably been moved to being the second combo, which no longer fits the rhythm of the prior moves at all; and the range is shorter with players moving over less ground.

 

Vengeful Revenant:

Pre-Old Blood-

Lone Vengeance: A series of lightly spun and appropriately-mocking-looking precise cuts. After all, Stalker is arrogant, and hates us.

Impending Dread: Spiraling slashes, an enraged upward chop, and a brutal slamming chop back down.

Rising Hate: A spinning flurry of chops and slices, ended by a double-handed, meat-cleaver-like two-handed chop.

Drowning Despair: A cartwheeling dance of slashes and downward chops.

Post-Old Blood-

Lone Vengeance: Nothing but horizontal slashes, with a few paltry rotations of the sword mid-grip. The sass and fun of the Combo is gone. Also has inexplicably been made another second combo when it used to be primary, and again shunted akwardly into being a foreward-motion attack.

Impending Dread: A bland twirl of diagonal downward chops, all from the right, ending in a slam and those ever-present eye-melting sparks.

Rising Hate: Now consists of one spin-slash, one-stab, and cuts straight to the slam without the prior brutality. Doesn't feel remotely as satisfyingly visceral as the old arrangement.

Drowning Despair: One (1) exactly one cartwheel, a downward stab after a half-cartwheel, and a constipated-looking foreward roll that ends in a perfectly horizontal, boringly-straight-across cut.

 

[Maxim_M_Payne]

4 hours ago, Dash_Lambda said:

it's that they hate the disconnect that happens when you don't have control over what your character is doing

Unfortunately, that's exactly the reason that the re-binding of finishers to X and changing of charge/ranged-gunblade/throw attacks from held E to Mouse3 makes me angry. That is making my character no longer do what I control. There is literally and objectively no keybinding in the entire history of computer games or computer-ported games that is worse and more clunky than clicking mouse-wheel/side-buttons. Who thought Mouse3 was what anyone wanted?

[Maxim_M_Payne]

Now that I think of it, let me emphasize this for everyone else in the boat with me that still doesn't like our "better" melee, so those of you calling us "haters" understand:

We don't hate it "just because it changed"; we hate it because the control scheme is substantially more awkward; the VFX are painfully overdone and ruin the look of genuinely cool designs; the beloved Combos we used for years having been gutted, rearranged, or removed altogether in favor of a new one that only bears the stolen name of its predecessor; BECAUSE IT WAS MORE INTUITIVE AND FAR LESS CLUNKY TO USE HEAVY ATTACKS, GUNBLADES, AND GLAIVES BY HOLDING E KEY, because restoring the ability to lock into a genuine melee state is a half-hearted measure WHEN YOU ALSO SHOVE IN A HORRIBLE, NON-DISABLE-ABLE FLASH THAT HAPPENS EVERY TIME A PLAYER LOCKS IN; because Exalted Melee weapons still lack their prior override, which ruins the feeling of rampage they once had, as we stop mid-Hysteria to aim a gun; because MANUAL BLOCKING STILL ISN'T TRULY RESTORED AND THAT ASININE AUTOBLOCK STILL EXISTS; because slam attacks cause a live recreation of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki whenever they connect; because enemies spray more sparks than gore these days, because that annoying-as-h - er, Void ragdoll was thankfully removed, only to be reimplemented in equally annoying fashion as the "Lifted" state applied by Heavy Attacks WE CAN'T USE ANYMORE, since they're bound to Mouse3; and because DE has kept akwardly shoving into melee combat about three dozen other greivances that we listed politely prior, and DE IGNORED THE CRITICISM ANYWAY.

That's why we're mad.

And maybe, I don't know, most of all, because this has now gone on for eight months, and with this track record, they don't seem likely to listen now. Eight. months. Do you know who responded in all that time, and still didn't give any real answer? Bear. Not Danielle, who made the thread then and has made these two threads now. Not Steve, their literal head who you think would have a vested interest in many, many players being mad at him. Not Megan or Rebecca, normally famous (until this year) for interacting with the community and answering questions. Just Bear. And he told us what was tantamount to "IDK, don't ask me lol". 

That's a tiny bit infuriating, and really tends to kill any love for a steadily worsening method of combat you once gleefully used.

[Dash_Lambda]

12 minutes ago, Maxim_M_Payne said:

Unfortunately, that's exactly the reason that the re-binding of finishers to X and changing of charge/ranged-gunblade/throw attacks from held E to Mouse3 makes me angry. That is making my character no longer do what I control. There is literally and objectively no keybinding in the entire history of computer games or computer-ported games that is worse and more clunky than clicking mouse-wheel/side-buttons. Who thought Mouse3 was what anyone wanted?

On my Steam Controller heavy attack is right paddle, normal attack is right trigger (hair trigger), block is left trigger (also hair trigger), dodge is left trigger full pull, use is right pad click. I do not have to move my fingers for anything but weapon switching, powers, reload, and gear.

I don't want to be one of those people that tells you the problem you're having doesn't exist, because I hate those people, but from my biased perspective I think you just need to configure your controls a bit better. Lots of people play Warframe, so I don't blame DE for not making the default scheme optimal because optimal is subjective, and I do think they give you a lot of freedom to set it up how you want.

[Marasco9512]

RIP Melee

Edited November 5, 2019 by Marasco9512

[Xx--Reaper--xX]

RIP melee

[Borg1611]

Just thought I'd add after using different melee's and stances a little bit, a common issue I have vs. using meme strike is that spamming the combos feels like it's going to give you a repetitive stress injury. With slide attacks I just set a macro on one of my mouse buttons to make it easy and I could meme strike for awhile without feeling like I was going to injure my wrists spamming it. I could probably make macros for the new combos, but the thing is that different weapons may have different combos that they favor, or you may even want to swap constantly between them if one is a CC combo vs. the auto slash proc combo or the spinny 'I don't technically count as a slide attack even though I'm constantly spinning in this combo' combo. 

As braindead as meme strike spamming may be, the combat in this game in general when massacring hordes of enemies is always mindless, now it's just more of a pain if you're using melee combos. At the end of the day I'll probably just start favoring ranged weapons now and be sad that my rivened meme strike weapon went from having like 150%+ crit baseline on a sliding attack vs. not even being able to hit 100% now. 

edit: It's also odd that if you still want to use slide attacks, maiming strike and rivens with the same effects are now garbage because of the way they now interact with blood rush. That means you would want to skip mods that actually have a stat that's supposed to entirely revolve around slide attacks and that you may have spent a lot of resources getting for that specific purpose. I think this at the very least needs to be changed. The can be heavily nerfed without being worse at the only purpose they serve than generic mods. 

Edited November 5, 2019 by Borg1611

[Traumtulpe]

2 hours ago, Randulv said:

Trying to have the "best of both worlds" is not feasible.

Not true, just have a combo for close range attacks and others for shooting. Mixing the two things is what causes problems.

"Any direction+attack" could be a simple 2 shot combo that lets you walk around, while "any direction+block" could be a somersault attack that moves you forwards and slashes a few times while in the air, before finishing in a slam attack.

"Neutral attack" could be a longer combo with different shots (like "backwards+attack" was for Bullet Dance) and more damage, "neutral+block" could lift the enemy followed by a series of quick slashes and a big attack at the end with a forced slash proc.

Instead we have combos that do not allow movement, mix slashes/throws and shots, or make aiming all but impossible by flinging you around like crazy (we had that combo before, nobody used it for a reason).

[Yasha-7HS]

Excalibur's Exalted Blade changes were negligible. 

1.) There are no combos that lift enemies. 

2.) Heavy slam and heavy attack are the only ways to lift enemies, but the damage is entirely irrelevant. 

3.) Hitting an already lifted enemy with another heavy attack will throw them across the map. 

4.) Ragdolling was supposed to be removed, yet it is still apparent on the block combo. 

I have no reason to physically move toward any enemy in the game with Exalted Blade, which makes the changes to it completely worthless. There is no significant reason to get close to any of the enemies, especially the ones with radial knockdowns, to utilize heavy attacks at all, especially when it doesn't make up for the damage and status chance I lose charging it. 

 

Enduring Affliction is now completely useless.

While it used to be possible to have a higher risk, high reward build for tougher enemies -- you know, the only ones that could possibly be worth using this mod on -- now all it does is increase status chance by a percentage that can only modify the base value, and does only that. Therefore, it has no purpose on weapons that have low status chance due to not increasing it enough, and no purpose on weapons with high status chance as they already have enough with base mods. At the very least, old enduring affliction had a possible use with everything, as it globally increased the status duration on a target. It had synergy with bad and good primary and secondary weapons, on top of being useful for melee weapons with CO. 

 

Block combos without being in full melee mode are still annoying.

While it's possible to just ignore this, the fact that having done a block combo once in a low string of attacks, and then ceasing the attack to say, block damage, will only result in your aiming your weapon for a single frame and losing your melee weapon is baffling. We had Part 1: Flow for months, and this was reported several times. 

 

Most heavy attacks feel completely useless. 

I can understand not having massive damage at just 2x or 3x combo, but I'm starting to think the damage listed for heavy attacks in the arsenal is at the maximum combo count. They feel completely pitiful. Most of the time I'm wondering why I even stopped using quick attack. On some weapons, it's also ridiculously annoying to even hit it, considering that enemies move out of optimal range and I'll simply attack behind them, the same issue that should've been addressed with the range changes. People didn't like short weapons not only because they couldn't hit multiple enemies, but because sometimes they flat out miss because their hitbox requires so much precision, or because "aim assistance" would keep them out of range to hit their enemy which is STILL a problem for some weapons and combos. 

Also, not being able to use heavy attacks in air as an actual attack instead of a slam is a terrible choice. 

Aerial attacks are completely useless.

1.) The issues of drones don't exist for weapons with ranges 3 and above

2.) AA does not keep you in place to attack the enemy

 a.) You will still be affected by inertia regardless of if you hit an enemy or not

 b) Without aim gliding, you'll just fall after the first attack

 c.) With aim gliding, you still fall in general, just slightly slower. 

3.) Heavy slams and lift combos completely overstep on this territory, being wildly more efficient and simpler to kill airborne units

4.) The combos are insignificant on many weapons, and there's almost no damage increase to justify how little time you have to deal with aerial units

I used aero vantage to supplement half of the problems I found, but that does not change it being completely useless. 

 

Most combos lack power, speed, or point in their respective categories.

My favorite stance used to be Tranquil cleave. Not only does it now have no mobility, all of its attacks are pitifully slow and weak. In contrast, Blind Justice has two massively quick attack combos, immense mobility, and better combo generation wholesale. A lot of slower combos in stances will just not generate enough combo count to be better used against other combos in the same stance. Blind Justice, uniquely, has the block combo which is very good for quicker damage and dps output than the standing combo, but the standing combo generates far more combo count far more quickly while not being bad at damage. Most other stances, however, don't have the luxury, and there's one or two combos that are ever worth using. Crushing Ruin's standing combo has the damage, but the forward blocking combo is just better in every single way as it has speed, wide coverage, multihit attacks with almost no downtime at all. The standing combo on this stance, for a single example, still needs more in order to have any use against the forward block combo. 

 

Almost all of the changed channeling mods are useless.

Nearly all of their values are too low. It might be eye candy for some of the players but a 20% chance increase in combo count and 40% increase in attack speed is simply not overcoming berserker. +30 initial combo counter is not worth -50% combo duration. +20% combo count on a lifted enemy (a condition not all enemies can even meet) it not worth slotting at all. Honestly, none of these mods are worth using unless we had a melee exilus slot. They're all worthless compared to just a 60/60, just a regular attack speed mod, just some crit. They don't do anything better -- or have an affect worth using -- than just a simple mod for a global effect on your melee weapon. Doubling some of these values would simply put them close to the table, but not on it. They still need more. Quickening, to be a contender against berserker, needs at least 45% to make it equal. Corrupt charge needs to increase the cap of combo count in order to be worth using at all, because as it stands it's too easy to gain combo count for it to be considering anything but -50% combo duration for no reason. Enduring strike either needs to be 200%, or needs to add 50% lift duration as well as 50% combo count on lifted enemies. 

Block/Parry cancel.

Rolling cancels are nice, but a lot of the time it doesn't matter, radial knockdowns will ignore the first part of your roll. Block cancels would make that better. 

Edited November 5, 2019 by ShichiseitenYasha

[Arisu]

I like the melee update in general. There's a few minor quality of life things that I'd like to have, and a rather large issue with melee as it stands overall. 

First the minor ones : 
1) I'd like to be able to use heavy attacks at any time, not just when melee is already equiped. 

2) There are some attacks that have a lot of reach to them, for example the shield throw, blade and whip's heavy attack, a lot of the glaive normal stance attacks. These however are always straight ahead and tend to miss anything standing slightly higher or lower. I'd like to be able to aim these at least somewhat. 

3) I would have liked some throwing attacks/stances for spears and daggers. 

4) Parazon "mercy"s are too random and easily missed to really make use of the mods. 

Now for the big one. The heavy attack/combo counter. 
In short : Warframe does not have enough meaty enemies to validate building up a combo counter and spending it all on one heavy attack. But as with most things, it's more complicated than that. 

There are a few builds that benefit from having a high combo counter and keeping it. Builds that use these will not benefit enough from a single heavy attack damage spike to justify losing out on a lot of their consistent damage. Then there's the builds that will be using the heavy attack a lot, using weapons like glaives and gunblades. These however will be using them so often that there's little reason to focus on the combo counter (both in playstyle as in the builds). Now there are some mods that focus not only on increasing the combo duration but also on keeping part of the combo stack after a heavy attack (called : Combo efficiency, took me a while to figure out what that did). But by then, you've spent so much on mods to keep your combo counter up, that they don't do much anymore because you didn't have room for damage mods. 

The default 5 second combo timer is simply not enough for any build that even remotely cares about combo count. And builds that do care about it, care about it too much to justify spending it on one single damage spike. I can think of some weapons/builds that do have some room for building up the combo counter and spending it all on a single damage spike. But even then you are still missing out on some consistent benefits, and there just aren't enough situations where you really need that single damage spike to justify making a build for. 

There's a couple of things I can think about to remedy this. 

1) increase the default combo timer so that it's something that can be worked with by default. (I'd vote for removing it altogether but that might be a bit much). 

2) Rather than a heavy attack removing all of the stacks, have it reduce the combo time instead so that people don't have to mod for both time and efficiency if they ever want to use heavy attacks in a build focused on keeping the combo score up. 

3) Give heavy attacks the oomph that could be expected from the required sacrifice of combo counter. But perhaps more importantly, one that is beneficial even when there isn't a single strong enemy that is in need of sudden spike damage. Some weapons like the Zenistar already have an added effect to their heavy attack based on the combo count. I think giving all weapons the posibility of having one might be an interesting idea. For example using a heavy attack arcane/exilus. Some possibilities : Gaining life/energy (there already is a life version for this as normal mod), gaining damage immunity/reflection, Radial blind (like the Vaykor Sydon), Increasing the next Warframe ability strength/duration/efficiency, etc.

4) This one is more of a random thought, but I already mentioned Parazon "mercy"s are a bit too random in my opinion. What if we could "spend" some of the combo count to initiate one of these as well? 

[Opyt]

Cross posting from Kuva Lich thread, just in case:
 

Quote

 

Melee techniques:

The biggest issue I had with the melee changes were that some of the stances are still "garbage", and we still have the unfortunate situation where some weapons are locked in to certain stances i.e. the Jaw Sword with its Unairu stance default that only has one combo, while the Mire with its Madurai has 3 stances to choose from, some kind of unified stance polarity would have been beneficial prior to the launch of Melee Phase 2.

-Then there's the Tatsu with its Wise Razor stance which seems to have had its combos jumbled up.  The Threshing Grain combo has been linked to the neutral input, while the Cutting Thrice combo has been attached to the forward movement input.  Threshing Grain (the current neutral combo) has you perform a forward spin attack and then slash a few more times after during the combo moving you significantly forward especially when compared to Cut Thrice which performs 3 steps forward in the processing of swinging the sword 3 times.  I'm sure there are other stances that are similarly affected, but that one stood out.

--Followed by the Heavy Attack addition.  The Heavy Attack, for what you sacrifice, never seemed to be worth it.  The outright demand of all of your combo counter in exchange for an attack that does more damage but does not flow smoothly in your combo is jarring.  Then with this update's misstep with Condition Overload, the clear choice is to switch to Blood Rush, which means you expend all of your bonus critical chance for a slightly stronger attack, and then you have to rebuild your combo counter all over again.  Ignoring that the highest combo you can get is 220, which is 12x.  It would be nice to make the heavy attacks flow more smoothly so that you could work them into the combo, while also lower its cost to 1x of your multiplier, but require you to at least have the 1x before you could use it, or as a compromise half of your current multiplier.  The lowered cost as well as making the animations fit more smoothly into the combo could lead to the heavy attack being a nice addition to the system rather than just something that, much like channeling, gets ignored because the cost isn't worth the effect.  Grim Fury (Sparring stance) is a close example to what I mean, being able to comfortably mix in the heavy attack at the end of a series of kicks would look great, but right now the combo has to come to a complete stop and then you get a 2 second animation of lifting your foot into the air and slamming it down.  Maybe this can be tweaked

On a completely unrelated note, a suggestion for the Broken Scepter that I'd have enjoyed seeing: the drain of health/energy orbs be attached to attack speed similar to how finishers were (and possibly still are)?  Selfishly asking because I've gotten my Broken Scepter up to 2.6ish attack speed before buffs thanks to a riven but any time I want to drain an enemy I would be required to stand still for 2 seconds while the drain occurred, in a game that's been advertised as being all about movement.

 

 

[Yasha-7HS]

9 hours ago, schna89 said:

No. 

[HyokaChan]

Machete's stance Cyclone Kraken no longer has the flip attack used at the end of the basic EEEE combo. That was my favorite part of the stance and I hate to see it gone.

[DoomFruit]

12 hours ago, Maxim_M_Payne said:

Unfortunately, that's exactly the reason that the re-binding of finishers to X and changing of charge/ranged-gunblade/throw attacks from held E to Mouse3 makes me angry. That is making my character no longer do what I control. There is literally and objectively no keybinding in the entire history of computer games or computer-ported games that is worse and more clunky than clicking mouse-wheel/side-buttons. Who thought Mouse3 was what anyone wanted?

Wheel buttons - not massively easy to do, but it doesn't interfere with my movement. I use the wheel click here for "cast active power", and it's quite handy for that. For other games which have a "throw grenade" button, I also bind that to wheel click.

Side buttons - now these are incredibly useful. Any game which has a dedicated melee button (as opposed to a weapon which you actively switch out, eg. Doom's chainsaw, UT's impact hammer) gets put on mouse 4 (aka. the back button). The thumb on my mouse hand isn't doing anything normally, so having actions bound to a button there will never interfere with anything else. Conversely to your point, sticking melee on E when your core gameplay depends on movement at all times is one of the stupidest things that I can imagine. I'm going to trip over my own fingers if I'm trying to strafe to the right around an enemy while meleeing them. Likewise, putting use on X seemed very counter-intuitive to me. The use button has been E ever since 1998 (Half-Life). Unlearning that is un-necessary and painful.

Getting finishers off the melee key has made my character more under my control. When I sneak up on a patrol of level 10 grineer, I expect them to die in one normal swing and I expect to make that one swing and keep going right through their bisected corpses to the next group, no delay or slowdown. Getting forced into a finisher animation simply because their backs were turned and their triangle was hollow was INCREDIBLY annoying.

This, incidentally, is one of exactly 3 changes (the others being that polearms are now almost as fluid as they used to be under quick melee, and that you no longer drop your scanner when meleeing something) which I actually like about this update, and something which has been complained at for 6 years now.

Edited November 5, 2019 by DoomFruit

[Ninnjie]

Why did you guys reduce the duration for Zenistar's disc? Spent a lot of time forma-ing the weapon and now with that "nerf", to me its basically trash. The only thing you guys can do (and i'm begging you to) is:

- Revert back the duration for Zenistar's disc from 10s to 40s+

 

If you guys wont change it, better you guys drop Zenistar from the daily login rewards table and put it as a normal acquiring weapon on missions or market because its not even fun to use anymore to be honest. God i hope this will change before the update gets ship to console.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Ninnjie
...

[Arisu]

2 hours ago, Ninnjie said:

Why did you guys reduce the duration for Zenistar's disc? Spent a lot of time forma-ing the weapon and now with that "nerf", to me its basically trash. The only thing you guys can do (and i'm begging you to) is:

- Revert back the duration for Zenistar's disc from 10s to 40s+

 

If you guys wont change it, better you guys drop Zenistar from the daily login rewards table and put it as a normal acquiring weapon on missions or market because its not even fun to use anymore to be honest. God i hope this will change before the update gets ship to console.

The duration increases with combo multiplier now, in case you've missed that. you can have it last 40s or even more, just requires a bit of work before it lasts that long. 

[Monolake]

Im sorry but Heavy attacks are absolute garbage, I can do millions dps at max combo vs what, a single slow attack hitting for maybe one million (if that) and then have my dps tank. SO heavy attacks suck even vs beefy single targets (like Demolysts) and even more so vs constantly killing groups

[supernils]

Wise Razor gap closer: the gap closing move only happens after 1 or 2 stationary hits which makes it useless

in general I think the start up frames of the gap closers shouldn't be dependant on attack speed. With only +30 attack speed they still feel slow compared to slide attack. And slide attack does more damage, too ... gap closer combos should also cover more distance than a slide attack, because the only reason I use them now is for style.

Overall I find the stance rework is the best part of this melee patch.

Edited November 5, 2019 by supernils

[FrostyNovaPrime]

I seriously love the stance changes. Going between combos is very fluid and lots of fun.

However, it seems that some combos got nerfed with the changes. I'm mainly talking about August Maestro from Tempo Royale. The combo used to be the block combo, granted a lot of momentum and a slam attack at the end. Melee phase 2 swapped it with Resplendent Calma, becoming the basic neutral combo and taking away that large leap and slam. Calma is fine as the new block combo/gap closer, but Maestro should be the forward block and have it's leap/slam restored.

[HyokaChan]

17 hours ago, Maxim_M_Payne said:

Unfortunately, that's exactly the reason that the re-binding of finishers to X and changing of charge/ranged-gunblade/throw attacks from held E to Mouse3 makes me angry. That is making my character no longer do what I control. There is literally and objectively no keybinding in the entire history of computer games or computer-ported games that is worse and more clunky than clicking mouse-wheel/side-buttons. Who thought Mouse3 was what anyone wanted?

action MMORPG Phantasy Star Online 2, AKA the Japanese, did allow choosing between sequencing 3 attack skills and linking each of the 3 mouse buttons to an attack skill. This was implemented around 2-3 years ago upon request..

Edited November 5, 2019 by HyokaChan