(PC) Melee Phase 2: TECHNIQUES Feedback

[Maxim_M_Payne]

I'm current thinking of another way to express how much I hate everything that's changed this year and why melee is less fun than it's ever been; but until then, let me put it this way:

To heck with my two front teeth, all I want for Christmas is Melee 2.0 back. Melee 3.0 is as "polished" and "fun" as Lunaro and Conclave, and impressively it manages to be even more tedious than them. 

I'm not "excited" for the "very good" changes coming with Phase Three, whenever that arrives; nine months is all the time it's taken for me to realize that any promises made about melee in Warframe are as trustworthy as promises made by the US Government.

Edited December 6, 2019 by Maxim_M_Payne

[Maxim_M_Payne]

But in the mean time, seeing as I already took the time to download every last one of the OLD AND BETTER Stance Combo animations to Imgur to document what's been lost; I'm going to try and express my sentiment via the words of other players and users on the actual wiki.

Let's have a gander, shall we? (And for the record, I asked all players I met in-game personally if it was okay to post this, so don't start that "YeR tWiStIn WeRdS cAuSe YeR jUsT sALTy" nonsense.)

It was one of my favorites Combos on Final Harbinger as well. Of course, Final Harbinger is now Three-inch-range Horsepoop, so there's hardly a comparison as to which was better. Objectively it was the old one.

Farewell, my beloved friend. Once upon a time, I got to be the axe-wielding maniac, but they've killed you...

Moving on.

This is a comment currently on the page for Blind Justice, reaffirming that I'm not the only one who noticed that there are zero new combos, just cut-and-paste butchery of the ones that were fun; and all still without expanding the 2-combo and 3-combo Stances into ones with 4 combos, which is what melee players actually wanted.

If someone without the chill to use punctuation or spelling consistently noticed that you just zig-zagged animations between formerly good moves; then it confirms my suspicion was correct. This is beyond a poor change, and a flat-out manipulative falsehood toward players. Especially toward melee mains.

That remark sure aged like milk, didn't it?

Commented on the page for the Stance Formerly Known as The Good Fist Stance:

That flurry was pretty fun, I fully agree with their anger. To say nothing of the ragdoll you guys didn't fully fix with melee, the fact that the "lifted" is just ragdolling with better PR and as equally annoying as that one floaty Titania ability; when we don't want our foes floating away mid-combo... there's just so much wrecked. Every single Stance that was once fun has been turned into a slam-and flailing-filled mess; without individual aesthetic identity (chiefly on account of them all being twirly when it used to be a handful of "flourish" Stances), all of them possessing scrambled range, and now filled with the same ragdolls and lifts we already said we didn't want. Lovely. Gaia's Tragedy is one of the stances hit worst by all these problems. And to think that before Old Blood, I was actually happy I'd farmed for Tekko Prime, and that folks were finally going to "fix things" after eight months of agony with Phase 1 of Melee 3.0. Boy, was that naive!

The fine people of the wiki yet again, summarizing just how much (DE)filed Snapdragon got Defiled by Old Blood:

Agreed, agreed, and agreed. The ludicrous slashing-and-whipping was precisely what made it feel like a proper space ninja weapon; forget being more immersive, let us keep what was more fun. Blade-whips now might as well be a wet noodle and a pair of child-safety scissors.

Also correct. I vehemently preferred High Noon when it still cut-and-shoot, not just shoot, and shoot, AND SHOOT AND SHOOT AND SHOOT FOR GOD'S SAKE IF I WANTED A THIRD GUN WITHOUT THE "BLADE" PART OF GUNBLADE I WOULD HAVE ASKED.

Cyclone Kraken used to live up to both parts of its name; now we might as well name it "Dizzy Squid with vision that stops after five feet in any direction". Machetes are back to being Mashiddies. We all very much didn't want that.

And finally, last but not least, the one which I utterly agree with, and would never stop agreeing with, because, bloody hell, there is nothing fun left from the Heavy Blade Stance we had; that was completely and totally better than its castrated replacement, here's the reaction to Tempo Royale. My thoughts completely encapsulated by strangers in perfect fashion.

From Artorias the Abysswalker to Jerkymovealot the Awkward. Might as well sell the butchered thing back to Baro, for all the good it will do me as a Stance now.

I don't want this. Anyone that used primarily melee combat before 2019, everyone who's the source of the feedback you should actually be listening to, and not the feedback from the Atterax-slide-spammers; every blasted Valkyr, Excal, Wukong, and Baruuk main out there; we all didn't want this.

I am sick of it. I am not enjoying it. I want the old controls back in full, I want that stupid flash taken out of lock-in, I want manual block restored for real this time, without lying about restoring it, and with that asinine AI block THAT STILL INTERRUPTS AND YOU DIDN'T ACTUALLY TAKE OUT WITH OLD BLOOD ripped straight back out and thrown in the trash, and I have zero interest in Empyrean, the New War, or whatever "exciting new chapters" are coming our way.

You want hype for the future? Fix what you messed up here and now.

Edited December 7, 2019 by Maxim_M_Payne

[Maxim_M_Payne]

And finally, to my fellow players, if you think I'm exaggerating about having preserved every old animation as evidence; I'm afraid, Tenno, that it was not hyperbole.

That's not even one fourth of what's gone. This took multiple pages. That is the depth and fierceness with which I hate Melee 3.0; I was actually willing to go through the several-hour effort of doing this; even with Imgur trying to accuse me of being a robot, and making me fill out a Captcha every five GIFs.

Edited December 7, 2019 by Maxim_M_Payne

[(XBOX)Escthectrler]

.

Edited December 7, 2019 by (XB1)Escthectrler
Want to delete

[Andele3025]

Reminder that if Tempo Royale should have been changed in its animations instead of flat ported, it should have been more like this. With Majestic Abandon being the forward combo having pure 100% free movement,  Resplendent Calma the static combo with the diagonal sweeps and tiny steps during which you cam strafe and August Mestos forward slams keeping all the old properties (soft slide attack like keyboard strafe, camera steer, multiple small slams, speed influenced by player speed and sprint in addition to attack speed, final attack being the "true" slam). Keeping only Bold Reprise as is is the only thing that keeps the new version/"Rompo Teyale" from being average to below average when the OG version was a almost pure 10/10 in smoothness (other than the spin slide during resp calma which was the only move that by all rights should have been removed but was instead kept AND for some ungodly reason NERFED to not just be slower but have a worse hitbox).

 

(swapping MA/RC names if we go by old naming, either way static = diagonal swipes with small steps like the e mash was, forward = doublespin followed by a vertical zornhau with full free movement)

Edited December 7, 2019 by Andele3025

[DCaedus]

About the triple hit spinning combo in Wise Razor, I liked it better before, it felt more rewarding as it took a tiny bit more of work to execute, plus it added one more hit at the start and allowed you to finish on the amazing sword spinning animation.

Now it feels too easy and simple to execute, and not as rewarding.

Altho I love the higher damage bonuses on it, I liked the previous combo better.

One of my fav combos, the animation is beautiful.

Edited December 7, 2019 by D_Caedus

[shut]

 

WALL ATTACKS (melee 1.0) STILL EXIST.

They have survived two full-scale melee reworks over the course of >6 years, with virtually no changes from their initial state. They provide no mobility, are horrifically slow, and briefly freeze the pacing of the gameplay. They have been this way since I first used them in 2013.

 

I don't recall the last time I activated a wall attack on purpose. I don't ever recall activating a wall attack and then thinking "hey, that was useful". I don't think other players do, either.
DE, if you're reading this... please remove wall attacks from the game.

[ENIAK_Prime]

Some of the old "removed" combos don't actually seem to be gone. I notice with some stances if I hold the attack button after one strike I'll do an old-school charge attack.

This is actually pretty annoying because sometimes the game reads my input incorrectly as a held press and then performs this attack in the middle of my combo, which counts as a Heavy Attack that eats up the combo meter I just worked so hard to build up.

[kapn655321]

Coming out of Scanner some times sets my equipped weapon to PARAZON.

I can't do anything with it, but it happens.

[kingdomeTHEMADcthulhu]

1 i want pause and hold combos back standing  for combos or block stand still makes no sense easy fix hear 1 block/standing block 1 combo  moving/standing  1combo  pause and hold combos  2 we have a key for heavy attacks now  why are they still in normal combos they keep triggering heavy attacks this in turn breaks combo counter making combo weapons S#&$ till this unessary heavy is removed geting high combos are are nigh impossible 1 key for heavys thats all that needs to be done to fix that

[T_erry]

On 2019-11-01 at 3:09 AM, [DE]Danielle said:

• Forward Combo (Forward + Melee) - 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.
• Forward Tactical Combo (Forward + Block/Aim + Melee) - 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.
• Neutral Combo (Melee button only) - 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.
• Neutral Tactical Combo (Block/Aim + Melee) - 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. Lifting attacks are detailed in Section 7 of this workshop.
• Air Combo (Melee while Jumping) - Perform a combo in the air without sacrificing movement.
• Hover Air Combo (Back + Melee while Jumping) - Holds the player in place while the combo completes, and overrides the slam attack angle to keep the action going! 

Neutral combo should stay completely still and first attack of neutral combo should be fast enough it should consist of simple-shaped combos

Forward Tactical Combo should make brief so that you use this combo focused on distance-closing open

Forward Tactical Combo's follow-up hit and Neutral combo's large hard hit should be only Neutral Tactical Combo

Forward Combo should be completely movement-free not a single combo can interrupt movement

I feel insufficient in the number of combos especially some forward and neutral tactical combos 

 

[maddragonmaster]

On 2019-10-31 at 5:02 PM, Mattoropael said:

Several things I'd like to point out as a Gunblade user:

• Speed up heavy attack to match pre-Phase 2 charge attack. It's way too slow to use as a substitute even though it's the same animation. It feels like the accidentally-nerfed Redeemer from Silver Grove all over again.
• Allow us to execute heavy attacks directly from "holding a gun" if we bound a completely unique key for it, instead of having to switch to melee first no matter what, to closer match the overall feeling of pre-Phase 2 charge attacks.
• If possible, make it so heavy attacks can be executed by holding E and not releasing (wouldn't clash with the new hold E and release combo this way)
• Bullet Dance in its current iteration is completely borked. The stance is supposed to be all about constant shooting and no actual melee. We don't want pointless slashes, just give us a good shooting stance that doesn't teleport us everywhere.
• Bullet Dance, at the very least, should have the forward combo's first attack switched back to a quick shot.

and now we have a dam hair trigger heavy attack on E. thanks.

sorry for the sarcasm just irritated with the hold E for heavy attack.

i nor anyone can hold a dang combo counter and spend when ever we want because we have a incredibly touchy hold E for heavy attack now. 

Edited December 9, 2019 by maddragonmaster

[SpringRocker]

Melee 3.0 just feels spam heavy.

Previously a stance like Tempo Royal had outstanding mobility, ability to seamlessly go from one combo string to the next (which I think was the aim of melee 3.0 anyway), and quick enough to react to enemies.

Now I find myself doing the little crouch spam techniques to move that extra meter or 2 while swinging the weapon. Not only that but due to how the button inputs are (not to mention the neutral melee combo for the stance feels a little borked) and how the new combos are it seems like best way to attack with that stance in to just spam the slam combos. It's a pity because I felt that it was one of the best flowing stances.

It's also pretty much the same story with the rest of the stances, You're restricted to 1 combo for each stance that has mobility... Not only that but I think all open finisher moves were removed from all combos for all stances. Only thing that has openers are daggers with heavy attack, but there seems little reason to actually do finishers with the dagger when spamming heavy attacks repeatedly do more damage (7x stealth multi for max ranked daggers) than the finishers themselves.

I don't want to sounds mean, but if flowing between combos was the idea then I think the mark might have been missed.

Edited December 10, 2019 by SpringRocker

[Drachnyn]

We still need a toggle option to deactivate the "hold melee to heavy attack". Sometimes our inputs are not precise (be it human error or input device fumble) enough for our attack speed and you get punished with losing your combo counter for no reason. 

[(NSW)Conn1496]

Overall, Melee 3.0 is shaping up to be one of the most fun things for me to play around with in The Old Blood. The Melee buffs and changes to the system are really solid overall and having the option to equip only melee for a while is an honestly huge change for someone who never actually had the experience of that before. I think the lifted status is incredibly fun and not as intrusive as some night have imagined, and the change to slam attacks has made them feel more consistent for combo gain without punting enemies into space (which is really great for someone who plays a lot of the Shattering Storm stance). On top of that, Heavy Melee feels like a really great midway between Channelling and Charged attacks, using but not requiring a resource to be good, and can be done right away as opposed to a hold input.

Right now though I have a few minor complaints for the system:

 "Hold Forward" combos were my least favourite before the changes, and they still continue to feel a little awkward for me. They do make sense in the context of the new combos (in most cases) since they generally move you towards your target, but having to basically look at your enemies - at least on console where aim isn't practically instant - really doesn't feel as fluid to me as it could be for Melee. I usually think of Melee attacks as being good in all directions, but at short range, so not having the option on console to quickly turn to the enemy without ramping my aim speed to unreasonable levels for actually shooting is a little bit of a pain. Being able to toggle "Hold Forward" to "While Moving" (in any direction) in the options would be a nice quick fix for console players, but I'm not sure if it would mess any styles, so it's probably best to keep it as an option.

 After equipping gear, before Melee 3.0 I could Melee to unequip the item quickly. I got pretty used to it and it was honestly a really neat trick for pulling out my Primary quicker than swapping to it manually or unequipping the gear through the gear wheel. It's a small change, but I feel like having my primary weapon ready at all times is more important than having a gear item consistently equipped. I don't know if anyone agrees with this, but it is a personal gripe I have with the new system. If Primaries were the default swap from Melee though, this obviously wouldn't be an issue, but right now if I press swap weapon and I have literally anything else equipped, my admittedly awful Secondary weapon comes out. I actually think that, in general, having the option to choose which weapon is set to "Hold To Equip" while the other two are simply cycled with the swap weapon button could be a nice touch.

 Lastly, Lifted status and Heavy Attacks, while fun, kinda feel like they're the best option for most weapons and situations. Lifted is a powerful guaranteed CC that affects enemies that couldn't be consistently CC'd before, and Heavy Attacks have a great damage output even without a specialised build (and are much easier to build for - some weapons are even innately just better with Heavy Attacks). I know it's not always the case that those tools are better, but I think extra effort should be made for Melee users that don't want to utilise those tools to be viable. Right now, there are mods that make holding onto and gaining your combo meter more than viable, but they require a lot more effort than just mashing the Heavy Attack button and equipping a single Heavy Attack Wind-up Mod (or with some weapons not needing to at all). I honestly don't think LIfted and Heavy Attacks are any more "OP" than any other tools we've had before, but returning to regular attacks having a small bonus for combo gain would be a nice way for that playstyle to catch up without the use of more specialised builds. Light Attacks should be the standard IMO, not the gimmick.

I don't really have any other suggestions (at least not ones that haven't been done to death - hold to Heavy Melee toggle option comes to mind), but special mention should definitely go to this post for legitimately reminding me that Wall Attacks even exist and are quite literally the 100% undeniably worst thing about Melee:

On 2019-12-07 at 5:45 PM, SortaRandom said:

WALL ATTACKS (melee 1.0) STILL EXIST.

They have survived two full-scale melee reworks over the course of >6 years, with virtually no changes from their initial state. They provide no mobility, are horrifically slow, and briefly freeze the pacing of the gameplay. They have been this way since I first used them in 2013.

 

I don't recall the last time I activated a wall attack on purpose. I don't ever recall activating a wall attack and then thinking "hey, that was useful". I don't think other players do, either.

I don't think they should be completely removed necessarily though. If they were just good to use at all (faster, stronger, better range, maybe even just turned into a full lunging attack), I'd love the idea of using them in my kit for style points, but removing them entirely would admittedly be better than them not seeing improvements along with the rest of Melee.

[MysticDragonMage]

i am finding it very hard to utilize charge attacks.

• they are too slow and heavy slam seems to be the more reliable alternative because of it.
• while you can modify the weapon to have a faster charge attack, there is still the speed matter of the actual strike, which is determined by melee speed modifiers. most of these heavy melee attacks are long animations.
• i'd rather build up my combo counter to scale critical chance with bloodrush rather than scale damage to a heavy attack.
• probably the only reason i am using heavy attacks and heavy slam attacks is for life strike. even then, heavy slam attacks with CC and AOE are more reliable to steal health than a slow heavy melee strike.
• even if i try to modify a weapon to have a heavy attack focus, it still feels weaker in comparison to a critical chance bloodrush focused build, partly because most heavy melee attacks slow down player movement.

i personally think that melee speed modifiers should also partly decrease the charge time for heavy melee attacks and charge speed modifiers should be trashed.

[SpringRocker]

10 hours ago, (NSW)Conn1496 said:

I don't think they should be completely removed necessarily though. If they were just good to use at all (faster, stronger, better range, maybe even just turned into a full lunging attack), I'd love the idea of using them in my kit for style points, but removing them entirely would admittedly be better than them not seeing improvements along with the rest of Melee.

I kind of feel like if the lunge distance was increased to a decent distance, allowed you to dash through enemies, had an auto-relatch when hitting a wall, and refilled the glide/latch meter by 1 second it would be cool.

Some would say that it would be niche but still fun. It would only see decent usage in certain situations (close quarters; which is 1 of the 3 general environmental situations) so it wouldn't overshadow much. However it adds more to the wall running/latch aspect (plus I think it would be really cool for places like Corpus's Gas Cities).

Edited December 11, 2019 by SpringRocker

[MysticDragonMage]

1 hour ago, SpringRocker said:

I kind of feel like if the lunge distance was increased to a decent distance, allowed you to dash through enemies, had an auto-relatch when hitting a wall, and refilled the glide/latch meter by 1 second it would be cool.

Some would say that it would be niche but still fun. It would only see decent usage in certain situations (close quarters; which is 1 of the 3 general environmental situations) so it wouldn't overshadow much. However it adds more to the wall running/latch aspect (plus I think it would be really cool for places like Corpus's Gas Cities).

what would be cool is if we could leap toward a target and perform a finisher from a wall latch. it would be less situational that way and more of a convenient method of dealing damage to a single target.

[Maxim_M_Payne]

On 2019-12-07 at 6:43 PM, kingdomeTHEMADcthulhu said:

1 i want pause and hold combos back

I very much desire this as well. The old pause-tap-hold method of performing melee Combos felt infinitely better, smoother, and far more organic. It worked much like tensing and relaxing your body's muscles when swinging a real object does; and it added to the feeling of immersion. Not only do the "new" clumsy, revolting, arrow-key requiring "better combos" interrupt movement even worse than the old melee momentum bugs did; they feel clunky and inorganic. Combos no longer flow into each other in a delightful dance of bloodshed, the way they did before; and I feel like a crappy MIT-built robot struggling to play piano with his single crude plastic crab-claw.

On 2019-12-10 at 1:34 AM, SpringRocker said:

if flowing between combos was the idea then I think the mark might have been missed.

The mark wasn't merely missed, fellow Tenno; somebody actually looked around for the mark, read the previous feedback megathread for Phase 1, and arbitrarily decided to ignore everything said in it; all to continue forcing in the awkward controls and uglier animations of their Frankenstein's creature-like pet project. The mark was never a target. The mark was shoved aside and buried alive by mobsters. Fun was shot in the brain and dropped into the bottom of the city harbor for noticing the murder when it happened. The legal records of both were burned and purged. Nothing about forcing us to use arrow keys as part of the combo makes combat flow the way it used to; and indeed WE SPECIFICALLY ASKED IN THE PHASE 1 MEGATHREAD TO FIX MELEE INTERRUPTING MOTION. Now, melee not only interrupts motion even further than it had already worsened under Phase 1; its mobility and cohesion between Combos has been butchered.

On 2019-12-10 at 1:34 AM, SpringRocker said:

Melee 3.0 just feels spam heavy.

It feels that way because it is. We went from genuinely badass, smoothly-intertwining combos; and then we switched to the cookie-cutter mess of barely-rearranged foreward-key-E-RMB I already pasted earlier in the thread. Combos used to have distinct rhythyms; now they are a homogenous lump of the same two or three patterns, and no longer even match up with their animations. Under the old Stance system, rapid tapping synchronized with a rapid flurry of blows, and pauses/holds logically indicated and synched with a leap, throw, or powerful lunge. This felt natural and avoided any dissonance between what we input into the melee controls and what we performed on-screen.

3.0 doesn't do that. 3.0 is nothing but dissonance. A single tap of E causes a flurry. Leaps and lunges and thrown shields happen arbitrarily; with no held E key to give us the natural feeling of having tensed a muscle before doing something powerful. Blocking manually, contrary to developer claims otherwise, still doesn't work properly and was not successfully patched back in. Trying to aim with guns still randomly brings me into melee block. Trying to do the former RMB combos of Exalted weapons still randomly tears me out of rampage and into guns.

Melee 3.0 doesn't fix spam, it actively encourages it. Things have been turned into such a hot, steaming, inelegant mess that players are more likely than ever to repeatedly mash whatever is now the marginally least awkward of four equally ruined Combos.

And on top of all this, we still didn't get a full set of moves added to the Stances that still only have two or three combos; despite the fact melee players have specifically and repeatedly asked for the neglected Stances to be expanded into a full set of four Combos. Not only did we receive no such thing, the Combos we did have were vivisected into the dissapointing, cut-apart-and-stitched abominations we have now. Lovely....

On 2019-12-10 at 1:34 AM, SpringRocker said:

Not only that but due to how the button inputs are (not to mention the neutral melee combo for the stance feels a little borked) and how the new combos are it seems like best way to attack with that stance in to just spam the slam combos. It's a pity because I felt that it was one of the best flowing stances

Again, completely accurate. Nothing but mashing. Slam-spam and obnoxiously strong ragdolling were already insufferable in Phase 1; all Phase 2 of 3.0 did was re-arrange the mess so that the irritating ragdoll has been replaced with the "lifted" status; which still ultimately causes the same problem, much like Titania's annoying bad-guy-floating ability, because they randomly drift around mid-air and become harder to hit. We don't want lifts, we don't ragdolling, we want enemies to go flying and flailing around ONLY WHEN THEY ARE DEAD AND NOT A MOMENT BEFORE, so that each of our hits actually hits them to begin with. Floating and getting tossed around is only amusing on a slain corpse, not the same enemy when he's still alive.

And all of this is just what I hate about the "ImPrOvEmEnTs" to Combos and Stances. This doesn't even scratch the tip of my full list of grievances; and how Phase 2 further wrecked air attacks; finishers; throwing melees; "heavy" weapons actually feeling satisfyingly heavy; and at the most basic level the ability to ACTUALLY ENJOY what was, prior to 2019, my favorite method of combat.

I'm sorry, DE, but I detest 3.0. I hate it like Stalker hates Tenno. I hate it the way Vay Hek hates fools breathing his air. I hate it like Corpus hate basic decency and compassion, or donations to charity. 

3.0 is just plain awful, I've put up with it in tired agony for a year, Old Blood made things even worse than they'd already been gutted, and I don't trust that any of you are actually listening to player feedback about this. I'm a Valkyr main. I used to love melee, and now it depresses me. This doesn't feel good, the animations look worse, the control inputs no longer match what we do in a Stance, Stance descriptions don't match their own moves anymore, the VFX and weapon-trail opacity are both obnoxiously and eye-meltingly overdone, there's inexplicable irritating flashes and lens-flare upon literally every action we do now, and in every possible facet of what players used to have and enjoyed about close combat, Melee 3.0 breaks my heart. It goes further than breaking my heart. It rips it out, throws it on the ground, stomps on the gory mess, and then laughs at me; bellowing about how "LOL, you idiot, you had fun being a berserker? This is Gunframe now. Space ninja was a marketing ploy, not a promise."

I don't want this. I'm not enjoying it, and Phase 3 is something I regard as a threat to what little I still can have fun with about melee combat; not something to look foreward to, in any way. What we used to have both looked and felt infinitely better.

I am sick of a thousand sparks and bubbles resulting from so much as shifting three inches with a melee weapon, or even JUST WALKING AROUND. I am sick of my beloved Combos having been tossed into the trash heap in favor of a Human Centipede sewn together from their dismembered animations. I am sick of horrifically, painfully bright bloom and lens-flare erupting from every single swing of a melee weapon; whether or not it's a Prime one or even has any elements installed. I am sick of the simple, radial energy ring VFX slam attacks once had being discarded in order to jam in a spherical, hyper-opaque, cornea-shredding skybox lump of the Void map background paintings. I am sick of the fact Sword Alone was restored half-***edly, so that not only does the lock-in sometimes not work and I randomly re-enter using guns; but on TOP OF THIS, THAT HORRIBLE SPARKING FLASH IT DIDN'T HAVE BEFORE WAS "RESTORED" alongside Sword Alone, so locking in gives me borderline epilepsy. I am sick of the fact that range was (actually a good thing) buffed on Scythes, alongside making their models properly two-handed; but that in seeming exchange (a very bad thing) range was utterly scrambled on every other melee category. Having ludicrous 7m long reach with Bo Prime was FUN. What is fun should always take priority over what is "realistic" or "more meta".

I know you are a genuinely hardworking development team. I still appreciate the other things that you have fixed and improved this year; and none of you are in any way slackers. But the things improved this year do not include melee, and I sincerely have not enjoyed using it since mid-February 2019. All I want for Christmas is the old close combat of Warframe back. Stop putting in such a self-harming crunch to rush out changes that aren't even wanted to melee. Get some rest, recuperate, and please, please, just listen.

I don't want, enjoy, or easily control this. 3.0 is horrible. You guys are wonderful, but it's just plain horrific.

I'm so tired and frustrated.

 

[AreeSoothsayer]

The fellow above me fills most of my own greivences. So I won't repeat it my own way, (full of salt an vinegar =(  )

However he didn't mention.... Heavy Blows. It had it's very own key. Perfectly in control of when ME, MYSELF, AND I wanted it to come out. Then a QoS* arrived and now heavy blow wis muscling in on the rapid melee attacks. First the mistake of auto-bork, stealing my control of when I block. ONE YEAR LATER!! Okay we will remove it.... sorta. Little later.. Mwahahaha! You thought auto-blocking was bad, Now you will have heavy attacks messing up your rythm, stripping away your combo, bringing levels of rage to the degreew of swearing like a sailor at warframe.

Get.

Rid. 

Of.

it. 

It has it's own button, Leave it there.

                                                            End of Line.

 

*Quality of STRIFE.

[SpringRocker]

I'm just curious and not trying to be mean or anything, but do they really read through these? There's numerous issues with how weapons and stances now interact but I don't want to take time to a well-made post if that's not the case (don't want to waste my time).

One of the more noticeable offenders is Tranquil Cleave. After 3.0 the Skiajati can no longer use it's special ability unless the player uses a warframe ability to open an enemy to a finisher.

[Maxim_M_Payne]

I'm at the end of all remaining forgiveness and trust in you, DE. You didn't even try to fix Melee 3.0's issues with Old Blood, and despite earlier reassurances, not only was Empyrean released unfinished and riddled with issues, the problems with metallics rendering still persist since Saint of Altra; with December having come and passed. 2019 is the year of rushed-out and enraging content updates that caused issues with what was already in-game, and my hype no longer exists for anything the future allegedly holds. Even Aksomati Prime have proven a dissapointment, in both their pathetic stat increases (80 magazine versus 70, really?! Soma Prime literally has double its default counterpart's magazine size.) and their... frankly, ugly design (QUIT DESIGNING PRIME FORMS THAT DON'T MATCH WHEN THE ORIGINAL PRIMARY AND SECONDARY WEAPONS ARE PART OF A COHESIVE VISUAL SET. AKBOLTO DOESN'T MATCH BOLTOR AS PRIME, AND NEITHER DOES AKSOMATI MATCH SOMA. They don't even match Ivara Prime; she has a jellyfish aesthetic, and they are some sort of flower slapped onto the front of a mess of oversized gun parts slapped together in Maya.). 

But the worst part of 2019 (which has proven the year I stopped enjoying Warframe altogether) by far, so much as I can tell, is everything about Melee 3.0. The absolute worst thing of all, and I mean that as a Valkyr main. I miss earlier this year, in February, when it was merely Buried Debts that had me enraged about melee; I didn't realize how truly poorly you were overhauling things until October arrived. Forget Old Blood, I want Old System and Controls.

The above Wiki user comments are emblematic of just the first of many complaints I have about the countless sins that this stupid, frustrating year of melee-system murder has committed. Nevertheless, on this, the second-to-last day of a whole decade; they succinctly summarize my rage about the stupidest change to melee so far. Old Blood did not fix the issues with melee to that led to mindless Atterax and Acolyte mod spam, it worsened them even more than phase 1 of Melee 3.0. Stances are now so indistinct, visually similar, and clumsy to use that everyone just mindlessly mashes the same Combo that they determine to be the least awkward of our "new and improved" moves. 

You guys could have expanded the Stances with only two or three Combos into a full set of four, like players had long requested. You didn't. You not only failed to expand the tw-to-three-Combo Stances with more Combos, you ruined and ripped out the signature moves players have loved and used for years. Winding Claws, August Mesto, and Vengeful Thrash are all just pleasant memories now.

You could have toned down the aspects of the VFX that there were long-standing complaints about the intensity of, even with sliders for particles set to zero. But you decided to instead universally increase bloom, added inherent blue lens-flare that can't be customized to Paracesis and War, and turned elemental VFX into a bubbling mess.

You could have fixed something which I foolishly believed was unintentional on Stances like Wise Razor, or the reworked Iron Staff: the lack of movement with the air attacks. But you didn't, and in fact, FOR SOME UTTERLY ASININE REASON, you all thought it was in any way a good idea to change all aerial attacks into uselessly-flailing, momentum-lacking "air combos"; a poor decision that ruined a years-old and tried-and-true technique in player parkour. It is HARDER to hit Ospreys and Hellions now, not simpler. All air attacks usually fail to connect as we fall down mid-air, and on top of this, they look plain stupid. Give me back my old, solid, USEFUL horizontal lunge.

You could have reworked the combos that required a backward arrow key, which was clumsy. But instead, you just changed all Stances into making arrow keys OBLIGATORY to perform Combos, which was even clumsier and feels infinitely worse and less fluid than the old Tap/Hold/Rapid-tap system for Combos. God, that control scheme was so much better and let me flow between moves smoothly. REVERT TO IT. 

You guys said you would restore Sword Alone. You failed to do it correctly, and not only does melee lock-in still only work inconsistently, you added in that stupid, blinding flash that wasn't there before AND IT HAPPENS EVERY SINGLE TIME WE LOCK INTO OUR MELEE WEAPONS. EYE. FATIGUE.

You told players you would remove auto-block and restore manual control. Auto-block is still there, it still randomly interrupts, using M2 while in melee still very frequently takes me out of melee and into gun aim, and on top of it all, IT'S A TOGGLE. It was hold-and-release outside of aim-glide before, and it should be again. Aim-glide is also still broken.

You guys could have created new Stances for the weapon categories that currently only have one Stance; such as Two-Handed Nikana, Nunchaku, Warfan, Blade-whip, and Rapier. But you didn't, and instead you messed up what was fun about the single Stance we already had for each of those melee weapon categories, taking the enjoyment out of them.

And as the icing on this entire spectacular, horrible cake, the wiki has changed the GIFs on the Stance pages to the spam heavy abominations that you want to make the new normal. I don't accept that, and it's time to post the better moves of the old system, as preserved on my Imgur account. Whether you told them to change them to the "new" Combos, or they decided on their own, nobody can destroy the evidence of what we've lost this year that easily.

A moment of silence for the REAL versions of every single Stance, and a curse on the name of the rubbish we're now stuck with. Even the Stances that were visually underwhelming and had rather boring moves, like Sundering Weave, only needed a rework; and even then, only reworks that kept the essence of the original motions. Chopping should have remained chopping; rapid punches should have remained rapid punches; and a friggin' rapier, a thrusting sword, SHOULD CUT AND SLASH ONLY WITH ITS TIP BECAUSE THERE IS LITERALLY NO EDGE, YOU MASSACRED VULPINE MASK OH MY GOD.

Let's have a look at what was taken away for no blasted good reason, in order to further force in somebody's pet project in place of a smooth control scheme:

    Gemini Cross.

   Homing Fang.

  Pointed Wind.

  Sinking Talon.

   Reaping Spiral.

   Stalking Fan.

   Clashing Forest.

    Eleventh Storm.

   Flailing Branch.

   Gleaming Talon.

    Sundering Weave.

    Blind Justice.

    Decisive Judgement.

    Tranquil Cleave.

   High Noon.

    Cleaving Whirlwind.

    Fracturing Wind.

    Rending Crane.

    Seismic Palm.

  Bleeding Willow.

  Shimmering Blight.

   Swirling Tiger.

    Crossing Snakes.

  Brutal Tide.

   Grim Fury.

    Astral Twilight.

    Crushing Ruin.

    Shattering Storm.

   Burning Wasp.

  Coiling Viper.

    Malicious Raptor.

    Tempo Royale.

    Four Riders.

    Vermillion Storm.

    Sovereign Outcast.

    Final Harbinger.

    Bullet Dance.

    Atlantis Vulcan.

    Spinning Needle.

   Gnashing Payara.

    Gaia's Tragedy.

    Vulpine Mask.

    Defiled Snapdragon.

    Cyclone Kraken.

    Twirling Spire.

    Stinging Thorn.

    Swooping Falcon.

    Carving Mantis.

    Slicing Feathers.

   Wise Razor.

    Hysteria.

    Exalted Blade.

And finally, at slightly larger file size, let's finish this mess off with Swords. Swords, as they used to be, and shouldn't have been changed from; other than adding new Combos to a non-four-Combo Stance, and fixing hitboxes so that blows connect properly.

  Iron Phoenix.

   Crimson Dervish.

    Vengeful Revenant.

Do you notice how every single one of the old Stances, even the ones that could use a facelift and a third/fourth combo added in, were visually distinct? Each had a separate method of attack, be it twirling flips, mocking flourishes, reveresed-grip flurries, downward-but-advancing-foreward chops, diagonal slashes, or horizontally-striking spinning stabs.

You guys on the development team COULD HAVE and SHOULD HAVE expanded the two-Combo and three-Combo stances into a full set of four, using the existing visual style of their attacks at a guide, but you didn't. You made all Combos into mish-mashes of their old animations or flat-out randomly-flailing replacements for their better-looking and funner-feeling predecessors.

Stances lack distinction now. There isn't any reason to farm a specific one or be excited if we get that Stance mod as loot; as long as Vermillion Storm and Malicious Raptor have both been lobotomized into the same diagonal cutting and random pokes from their original, clear identity from each other, for example; then I've got absolutely zero cause to try and grind for Four Riders.

If I might finish off on a weird metaphor: you all remember BIONICLEs, right? How every kid from six to seventeen who had any interest in swords, elemental powers, monsters, robots, fantasy, sci-fi, or all of the above at once thought they were so cool? Buildable action figures, ones you could reconfigure and customize and combine to make bigger if you felt like it, with a remarkably complex lore spanning eons of time, especially for an expected-to-bomb toyline? BIONICLES were, as they say, the sh*t, and Warframe won me over in 2014 by making me go "Oh my god, it's a videogame that's my grown-up version of BIONICLE. I can collect all these different guys and gals with neat powers and unique appearances, and just look at all those weapons!"

Well, Melee 3.0 is not like BIONICLE. Melee 3.0 is like... whatever Hero Factory was about. It's a loose copycat without the charm, and even if the individual parts are less likely to break, the looks are uglier and the overall whole is much less appealing of a concept.

I feel like it's 2005 again and one of my parents bought me a BIONICLE set, but they did it specifically just to ignore my protests and deliberately break it right in front of me; rather than as a sincere Christmas gift. That's the feeling you've left me with as a melee player, Digital Extremes. In the unlikely event you guys actually listen and fix these things, instead of marching on and forcing in more changes that ultimately make stuff worse to use, it's still going to be a very long time before I get over that betrayed feeling.

I trusted you with a toy I had enjoyed for thousands of hours, and the moment you announced an exciting surprise, I only could watch as you broke the LEGOs trying to nail on new details that weren't even necessary and ultimately messed up the whole set.

I've tried to be polite. I've tried to be patient. But that feeling is an everyday sensation now, I've stopped playing, and I'm not going to "relearn" or "adjust" to an inferior system because you guys won't admit to making mistakes and implementing bad changes.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 2, 2020 by Maxim_M_Payne

[Andele3025]

2 hours ago, Maxim_M_Payne said:

You could have reworked the combos that required a backward arrow key, which was clumsy. But instead, you just changed all Stances into making arrow keys OBLIGATORY to perform Combos, which was even clumsier and feels infinitely worse and less fluid than the old Tap/Hold/Rapid-tap system for Combos. God, that control scheme was so much better and let me flow between moves smoothly. REVERT TO IT. 
 

The one part thats wrong. Hold and pause combos were cancer and their cancer still plagues the "hold to heavy"  implementation being randomly triggered.
Current issues with the forward as modifier (which IMO should be a choice between "forward for forward combos vs back for static combos", as in you either pick if you perform forward combos while holding w and the static with no w input or perform forward combos as default, but static combos only trigger while holding s) is entirely in the added animation locks. DE decided to make forward combos actively slower than no input combos by adding animation locked hard roots while putting forced forward movement locks on almost all static combos.

Ontop of that stances had attack movement slowdowns (where you could still wasd or mouse control, just that the frames movement speed was lowered), sprint during attacks (altering dash length if sprint is held or not) and soft keyboard steer/pseudo strafe (the thing slide attacks still have and that August Mesto used to have before getting butchered) removed from them completely and replaced with said hard animation locks where no matter what the attack is always the same movement for the same distance with the same/attack speed based speed with the only player control being mouse steer.

[Maxim_M_Payne]

On 2019-12-31 at 12:29 AM, Andele3025 said:

Hold and pause combos were cancer

I must respectfully but vehemently disagree with you; in the same fashion I despise nearly all of DE's alleged "improvements". The old control scheme for Stances and Combos was, is, and will remain, smoother. Back when Combos were performed only using block alongside tapping and holding E key, with occasional pauses, I flowed between moves smoothly and easily. Melee was much easier and far more natural to perform; not a convoluted and awkward mess of the same copy-pasted rhythyms that all require an obligatory movement key. That slowness you described above? That came about as a funny little "accident" from DE deliberately slowing down heavy attacks from the previous, more reasonable 1-second charge/instantaneous throw; and it's the reason our melee weapons' (utterly butchered and all over the place) stats now list strange new things like "Wind Up" and "Follow Through". Because, you know, clearly giving us a heavy attack that was actually quick and useful, even when charged, was too much like a FromSoftware control set-up; and DE couldn't allow that sort of smooth fun to go on, so they purposefully chose to make them inconsistent from their previous uniformity of charge-speed and force. On top of, you know, RIPPING OUT THE COMBO COUNTER'S BONUS TO ALL ATTACK; despite the fact that our damage cumulatively mounting as a reward for relentless close combat ENHANCED the feeling of being a space ninja. But they couldn't have that, so now it only gives bonus damage to the same heavy attacks that we are effectively being foced into using; and AFTER DE made them slow, clumsy, and weaker. DE restoring hold-for-heavy after the asinine Mouse3 binding for throw/heavy attacks is not the problem, either. The problem is they reverted it to that easier and more intuitve control only after ruining pretty much everything that was already well-established and years-old about Heavy Attacks; so that, yet again, we're forced into using the only remaining vestige of the combo counter system to "improve" the heavy attacks that they themselves turned into slow, wimpy BS we no longer can use in any useful context. It also rendered certain unique properties of Venka Prime and Fragor Prime pointless.

Real quality work there, DE.

The old melee system was not diseased, the new control scheme is. It worked, this one does not. It felt good, this one feels awful. I am out of patience, and out of calm. Melee 3.0 is a downgrade, it was a downgrade, and it will still be a downgrade with the next batch of rushed and awful changes that DE jams into what used to work perfectly fine. I despise it, and I've come to despise Warframe, when once I found it quite fun.

But yes, it's clearly oh-so-awful that using the old control scheme for Stances and Combos, I could use the full-tapping E E E E combo of Tempo Royale to slice foes around me; follow it up with E E pause E E to lunge foreward with the spiraling-spin slash that Resplendant Calma used to perform; and finish off with a the badass, overhead, front-flipping downward chop of the old August Mesto by using E E+RMB E E. The only thing that should every have been changed about Tempo Royale was making its fourth Combo into one that involved held E, as opposed to the very akward and unintuitive backward arrow key. It was a powerful, only slightly slower attack, much like the old heavy attacks before DE DELIBERATELY slaughtered them; logically, one would think that fourth Combo would use held E. But it didn't and still doesn't, and rather than make the intuitive change, the fine melee dev team decided that we clearly wanted them to implement that clumsy filth ONTO EVERY SINGLE COMBO THAT USED TO LOOK AND FEEL GOOD. So yeah, thanks for that. Totally an improvement. God, I hate 3.0 so much.

I used that dance of all three of the non-movement-key-requiring Combos thousands of times; and I happily hacked and slashed for hours upon hours with nearly every Stance and every weapon category. That control scheme felt natural, more dynamic, and non-mechanical. It became easier to perform Combos once attack speed buffs such as Berserker and Warcry took effect, not harder; the pauses in the Combo would account for the speed buff and then greatly shorten the minimum length of time that they took to "count" as correctly performed. I could strafe left or right and then lunge foreward with Resplendant Calma; or dodge-roll backward from an enemy before slicing him in half as I shot foreward again using it. I could use the continuous E E E E combo to slice apart the four to six opponents knocked down by August Mesto once its slam attack finished (or at least I could prior to the moronically and uselessly strong ragdolling BS of Phase 1); and it all felt as instinctive as my own limb to use. IT WAS FUN. IT WAS FUNCTIONAL. The "sMoOtHeR cOmBoS" and "iMpRoVeD vIsUaLs" of post-Old Blood Warframe are neither fun, nor functional; every single Stance looks and feels worse. Lazily cutting apart and recombinining existing animations is not "new"; and making arrow keys A REQUIREMENT to perform Combos has caused movement, parkour, and sprinting to be interrupted by Melee worse than they already were prior to 2019. 

I loved that Stance control system with every fiber of my Valkyr-and-Excalibur-maining-being, and the retention of that control scheme was, sincerely, the only thing maintaining my sanity and patience after the already asinine changes of Phase 1 of Melee 3.0 (auto-block, useless ragdoll, eye-melting VFX, removal of Quick Melee, removal of Sword Alone). And then, it was ripped out during The Old Blood without option, alternative, or consideration; all in Digital Extreme's blind rush foreward into this much more awkward and clunky wreck of "upgraded" Melee. Rather than fixing anything that was first ruined in February by Buried Debts, it worsened the bad decisions that had already been made and that so enrage melee players.

We now not only suffer from the asinine arrow-key requiring new control scheme (DESPITE THE FACT PLAYERS SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR MELEE TO STOP INTERRUPTING AND/OR LOCKING OUR MOVEMENT AND SPRINTING); but to compound this steaming pile of industrial waste, we don't even get to perform any of the old Combos we knew and loved, as I posted above. We wanted new Combos added into the Stances that didn't have a full set of four; and for awkward fourth combos like the one in Tempo Royale to be re-bound in a way that didn't require arrow key, because to reiterate again: THIS IS CLUNKY, UNNATURAL, AWKWARD, FINGER-HURTING, AND INTERRUPTS MOVEMENT. Combos do not flow together smoothly any more, they're now awkwardly segregated and interrupt each other clumsily if you even slightly hit the wrong arrow/WSAD key by mistake. As attack rate increases, they get worse in their clumsiness. They are the exact inverse of what came before for Stance and Combo controls, and a flat-out downgrade. I will never except this rubbish as the new normal. It should not be the default scheme for anything in Warframe's controls. Much like binding controls to Mouse3, as though everyone actually has a fancy computer mouse or a scroll wheel they can click; it's awkward, infuriating, and just plain horrendous.

True, we wanted the somewhat visually bland Stances like Sundering Weave to get a facelift; but we wanted those visual reworks to still use motions that were fitting for the weapon category, and how historically, such weapons were actually wielded. We wanted, for example, Sundering Weave to do FANCIER chopping, as a machete is literally designed to do pretty much only chopping; we did not mean that someone should add in a nonsensical and unfitting dagger-like twirl-slashes to a category of bladed weapons that are specifically designed to be huge, heavy, and chop-centric.Cyclone Kraken's Combos may still spin, but prior to Old Blood, they were (and this is the vital difference) spinning chop attacks that actually visually fit a machete. Machetes were first invented for clearing dense vegetation, and re-designed for warfare second, they should move in a way that reflects that. The "new" Sundering Weave is, like all the "better" Combos, nothing more than a few maimed and re-arranged animation chunks of the original and superior moves; which are then combined with random, entirely bizarre flailing that doesn't convey the mass or design of the weapon held. You don't slash with machetes or stab with a hammer any more than you can possibly chop using nunchaku. 

Now we have worse controls, lamer moves, and far more horribly ugly of VFX. It is my sincere opinion, as someone that first fell in love with Valkyr exactly because she was the berserker Warframe, that she feels pointless now. Melee feels awful, it looks even worse, and melee-centric Warframes are now just salt left on the wound; lying in our arsenal with years of time and Forma poured into them, but no melee worth even remotely using still in-game. Melee combat just isn't fun any more, and neither are they. I haven't built a new melee weapon since October, and I haven't played in earnest for nearly that long in turn. There's no point. I never liked Warframe for its shooter elements, I liked it for how the game once kept its promise of being "space ninjas". 

It's the first day of a new year and new decade, but there's no intrigue toward the future fo me. Warframe betrayed that aforementioned promise to let me be a ninja. There's no space ninja, and no fun, left for me. All of them over at DE could finally fix and revert all this crap, even if it takes 'til October 2020; but for now, I've lost faith. Close combat is the foundation of why I ever enjoyed the game in the first place; and so far the developers have shown only radio silence toward feedback megathreads like these, alongside a continued blind push foreward that disregards any player criticisms of each thing they keep breaking.

My once-favorite game of the 2010s has entered the 2020s as a disgrace to what made it feel like itself. You want a pure shooter, DE, design a pure shooter; but do not have the audacity to tell us that you're listening about Melee 3.0 when you've all made it clear that you don't. 

My feelings about the previous year, about the POS new Combo controls, and about the entire wreck that is Melee 3.0, are best summarized by Sargas Ruk's vitriol toward the Kavor Defectors:

"YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN INCINERATED, LIKE THE GARBAGE YOU ARE."

 

[Andele3025]

45 minutes ago, Maxim_M_Payne said:

I must respectfully but vehemently disagree with you; in the same fashion I despise nearly all of DE's alleged "improvements". The old control scheme for Stances and Combos was, is, and will remain, smoother.

Except it objectively is not.
Its not better than letting players keybind each attack chain on their own, but because DE coded pause and hold combos to scale off attack speed, you quite literally couldnt ever actually have proper control over attack chains (which plagues even the new melee keybind setup with hold for heavy attacks not being a toggle yet coded like old hold combos were).

Not to mention that pause and hold as a parts of input design were console catchup mechanics to mimic faster pace with less key options by developers that didnt even know what a modifier key is.

50 minutes ago, Maxim_M_Payne said:

But yes, it's clearly oh-so-awful that using the old control scheme for Stances and Combos, I could use the full-tapping E E E E combo of Tempo Royale to slice foes around me; follow it up with E E pause E E to lunge foreward with the spiraling-spin slash that Resplendant Calma used to perform; and finish off with a the badass, overhead, front-flipping downward chop of the old August Mesto by using E E+RMB E E. The only thing that should every have been changed about Tempo Royale was making its fourth Combo into one that involved held E, as opposed to the very akward and unintuitive backward arrow key. It was a powerful, only slightly slower attack, much like the old heavy attacks before DE DELIBERATELY slaughtered them; logically, one would think that fourth Combo would use held E. But it didn't and still doesn't, and rather than make the intuitive change, the fine melee dev team decided that we clearly wanted them to implement that clumsy filth ONTO EVERY SINGLE COMBO THAT USED TO LOOK AND FEEL GOOD. So yeah, thanks for that. Totally an improvement. God, I hate 3.0 so much.

Stance animations being butchered and pasted together with animation locks is not relevant for the actual input method. Ofc unbutchered TR which only had the animation lock on RC (which no, you didnt use/or at least shouldnt have used because it was a S#&$tier AM in both hitbox, cleave, speed AND gap closing control as the spinslide is/was the only bad animation of old TR, even if DE managed to nerf it further from bad to completely dogS#&$ by making its hitbox weaker), but it would have worked identically if the base diagonal slashes were just e, RC was forward combo, AM forward block.

And well Bold Reprise is the same as it always was. Also no, stopping holding w to press s to do a static combo is the opposite of unintuitive.