(PC) Melee Phase 2: TECHNIQUES Feedback

[AgasKahn]

PARAZON AND FINISHERS (all finishers)

First of all, hello!

Short version:
What I can highlight most is the bad interaction with the finishers

large version:
with the addition of the parazon I have realized that the finishers are activated with the "x" key regardless of whether they are through the normal weapon, or the parazon, making that within a combo a finisher cannot be triggered through the key "e"

How to repair it?
1- possible solution
set the finishers to be activated automatically using the melee attack key

2- possible solution
set icons above the enemies by visualizing for the player that they are available to finishers, separating the normal ones from those derived from the parazon

 

what i think so the Parazon system? (melee only):
I personally do not like this system, the parazon is a modest but random element, and in a game of a lot of adrenaline I can not be watching when I press x to take out the buffos that give the mods of the parazon, besides they enemys die before I realize that I can finish them

 

How to repair it?
3- possible solution
set the finishers with a parazon, with a 100% chance of low health enemys, or vulnerable to finishers, separating the normal finishers with the key "e" and the parazon finishers with "x"

 

 

sorry for my english, it's not my mother language

[AgasKahn]

hace 5 minutos, Maganar dijo:

t took me two whole days of testing to figure out how, for the love of all things good and true, one is supposed to do finishers anymore.  To do a Finisher, we are now expected to hit the Use key when the conditions are met (sleeping, blinded, or staggered).

This is really, really, REALLY bad - by my far my least favorite part of the update despite how much I already hated the change to Glaive throws and Gunblade firing now working from Heavy Attack.  We know need to DELIBERATELY stop using melee attacks and press a different key on our keyboard entirely to do......... a melee finisher.  Does this seem paradoxical to no one else?  We have to stop meleeing to kill something with a melee?

The flow of finisher-opening warframes like Valkyr and Gara is completely lost with X to finish system (not talking about Parazon finishers, but ordinary melee).  It's also just plain unwieldy on everything else that uses finisher-creating cc like Sleep, Blind, or Blast-staggers.  I don't think DE realizes that it's not just as simple as "use the melee-opening effect and then hit finisher."  A lot of enemies cheese their way through ignoring your first (or second, or third) casts of staggering crowd control by using scripted animations that make them crowd-control immune.  And which enemies do this?  Primarily Heavy Gunners with their fist slam and Arson Eximus units with their heat wave.  You know which enemies are the VERY ONES you'd want to use a finisher on to kill more effectively?  Yeah, the tough nuts to crack like Heavy Gunners and Eximus units.  Under the old system, if they cheesed you by making themselves temporarily cc-immune with that long animation, your attempt to perform the finisher would result in at least doing melee attacks to whittle them down.  In the new system, failing to open an enemy to a finisher results in you standing stupidly in front of them as they prepare to wind up their guns and riddle you with holes.

Likewise, it's going to be much harder for new players to learn what abilities open enemies to finishers when they have to KNOW IN ADVANCE the conditions that open an enemy to finishing to even THINK to use the finisher key, since it's a separate key from melee attacks.

What baffles me most of all is that people were asking for the option to rebind finishers to a different key from ordinary melee attacks so as not to be interrupted while playing spin-to-win slide-crit whips.  DE finally acknowledges that meta is unhealthy for gameplay and reworks melee to discourage it...  then implements as part of that same update a gameplay change that NO ONE WANTED except the slide-crit abusers?  Seriously?

Return ordinary melee weapon finishers to E by default (melee key), not X by default (use key) as it has been changed to.  This detriments everyone now that the slide-crit meta is gone.  The only possible argument for finishers to be on that key was from slide-crit abuse.  At the bare minimum, let us bind Use and Melee to the same key so we can "opt-in" at our own discretion to doing finishers with melee key.  Currently, if I try to bind the alternative key for Use to the same as the primary key for melee, the game unbinds the melee key entirely, rendering me unable to melee at all.

I share 100% what you said

[Maganar]

1 minute ago, AgasKahn said:

I share 100% what you said

3 minutes ago, AgasKahn said:

PARAZON AND FINISHERS (all finishers)

First of all, hello!

Short version:
What I can highlight most is the bad interaction with the finishers

large version:
with the addition of the parazon I have realized that the finishers are activated with the "x" key regardless of whether they are through the normal weapon, or the parazon, making that within a combo a finisher cannot be triggered through the key "e"

How to repair it?
1- possible solution
set the finishers to be activated automatically using the melee attack key

2- possible solution
set icons above the enemies by visualizing for the player that they are available to finishers, separating the normal ones from those derived from the parazon

 

what i think so the Parazon system? (melee only):
I personally do not like this system, the parazon is a modest but random element, and in a game of a lot of adrenaline I can not be watching when I press x to take out the buffos that give the mods of the parazon, besides they enemys die before I realize that I can finish them

 

How to repair it?
3- possible solution
set the finishers with a parazon, with a 100% chance of low health enemys, or vulnerable to finishers, separating the normal finishers with the key "e" and the parazon finishers with "x"

 

 

sorry for my english, it's not my mother language

Your English is easy enough to follow.  I'm glad you agree with my suggestions and I also agree wholeheartedly with your own comments that you made in your post.

[Pariax]

• Melee Heavy Button does not work while not holding a melee weapon. Fixing this would allow access to melee Heavy attack without the requirement to attack first or fully switch to melee
• Hold E combos dont work anymore (except for Glaive and only when wielding with a secondary weapon)
• Disabling the Option for Melee to use fire button makes left mouse button do nothing in Full melee mode. Being able to melee with Left mouse button in full melee but still switch to fire weapon in quick melee would be appreciated
• thrown weapons have targeting issues Aiming at a more distant enemy while a closer one is off to the side makes you miss both as the weapon tries to correct for both, after another
• Thrown weapons have super odd interactions regarding their "heavy attack". Both heavy attack throw and charged throw scale with combo counter, do not consume it though. They do not scale or activate heavy attack mods. The explosion when pressing heavy in midflight again scales the same way, does consume your combo counter but also does not activate or scale with heavy attack mods. It also deals insane amounts of selfdamage. 

[Zaphrinn]

I testet the new melee today and I am surprised how much I like the new attacking movements, the differences between weapon classes and stances. It was really fun to try out all my weapons again. And some of them like the Ohma for example felt really strong and wide-ranged, even though I had it not even fully modded  or an Orokin Catalyst in it.  But again it looks most of the time icredibly fluid and beautiful and the slam attacks are also very fun.

I'm one of the player, who barely played melee at all. For missions, where you have to run to the next enemy it was most of the time very frustrating for me to get stuck in an combo-animation, while the enemy runs away. Only the bigger enemies, which don't move to much were fun to slay with bloodrush and combo counter stack (maybe also investation enemies who run in masses right in to you). In fact it was the best way for me to kill really high level enemies, in the case when my guns loosing more and more the ability to keeping up (for example because of high immunity to some of my gun damage types). 

So for me the new Melee feels really more fluid, more variable and with some of the whirling attacks it ist so much fun to slay around 😄 I think thats just my thing.

Also I NEVER used channeling. I didn't get it really and though I didn't liked it. So i don't miss anything about it. I think I wasn't interested in the deeper aspects of melee before. I can't even say anything about the finishing methods.

So after reading more and more about this Update - I really wonder, if I am the only one who thinks that the melee attack damage felt stronger overall? For example - Hydron is now so easy to run through even with new weapons, which  have barely Mods in them. Maybe I have to try higher enemy levels to get a better oversight. But I liked, that even Levels like Hydron on Sedna could be challenging (regardless of the chosen warframe and there abilities of course)

Definitely DE reached their goal to make melee more interesting and attractive to me.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Zaphrinn

[Miyabi-sama]

Glaive still kills its owner if blown early enough.

Glaive is not exploding on dual wield.

Glaive throw is tied to different keys on dual wield and melee only.

[KCToxic]

I've been testing melee today and like many others likely do, I have a problem with how throws work. I'm going to focus on weapons like the Zenistar and the Wolf Sledge instead of glaives, though. 

Under the old system, throws for these weapons were charge attacks performed by holding the melee button. Under the new system, throwing the Wolf Sledge, throwing glaives, and throwing Zenistar's disc are now assigned to the heavy attack button. It now feels slower to use the abilities of these weapons because it not longer flows into the other combos being performed by using the melee button. On top of that, it means that the Wolf Sledge and Zenistar can't use the regular heavy attacks that other hammers and heavy blades can use, because that button now deploys their special mechanics. 

I feel like assigning throws and special abilities to the heavy attack breaks flow and makes these weapons have one less option in combat than other weapons in their class due to the removal of the ability to also use heavy attacks besides the slam. 

Overall I generally enjoy the simplification of the combo system, combos feel more fluid to perform. I do think that the rapier charge attack (the forward thrust) has significantly less forward momentum than it used to have, which is disappointing because it used to cover decent ground during a fight. . 

[chainchompguy3]

More specific instances where I'd like to voice my opinion:

• The "Have-it-both-ways" re-implementation of Equipped-Melee-Mode was brilliant, thank you 🙂 .
• Auto-block resulting in forced aim-glides when mid-air is extremely frustrating to have happen. I'd appreciate a fix on that greatly. If auto-blocking is found to force any other interactions, such as block-combos or just not being able to perform certain actions, I'd also like those looked into.
  • Overall, still glad Auto-Blocking was added. I only have issues with it's implementation, not it's concept.
• Very glad to have "Interact-triggered-Finishers", and the parazon system as a whole. I just have some minor issues with it's visibility: The previous "Press [meleekey] to Stealth Kill" prompt was near the center of the body (Where the player is looking), and was Opaque. The parazon-symbol is significantly above the enemy's head, and semi-trasparent. In addition, it does not seem to appear for ALL finishers, just Parazon Finishers; leaving melee-finishers without a prompt.

 

More broad feedback I'd like to bring up:

• Mid-air melee is usable now, even fun! I love it 😄 .
  • Melee hover combo was very much "Something I didn't know I needed until now", though it's muscle memory is taking quite a bit of learning. Holding backwards/S-key is something I'd probably personally re-bind, if I had the option. (Then again, I'm lucky enough to have a multi-button mouse, so I've got places to bind it TO).
  • The inability to use a normal Heavy-attack, instead of a Heavy-slam, while mid-air is mildly annoying. Nothing I can't live with, but I'd certainly like it if it could be changed.
    • This becomes especially apparent with Glaives. If nothing else, I'd like to be able to throw glaives while midair without having to dual-wield.
• Melee combo distribution is great...most of the time.
  • Stances like Shimmering Blight give me all the mobility I've always wanted, and the travel-combo gets to the traveling part very quickly. The stance feels simple, but simple in a way that I like 🙂 .
  • Stances like Crimson Dervish feel very restricted, though, and the Travel-combo doesn't actually move the player much. On one hand, I can appreciate some Stances being desinged "Heavier Feeling" than others, but I personally am not going to use them. No amount of Damage multiplier is going to make me walk back into the dark-ages.
• Just wanted to say that I'd be asking of Jumping to also animation-cancel....if [Amalgam Barrel Diffusion] didn't exist. It helps enough that I am satisfied.
• Having the option to enable Fire-button to swing melee for Equipped-Melee-Mode would also be something I would like, but do not necessarily need.

[Aryustailm]

2 hours ago, TinFoilMkIV said:

Poor visual indication of actual melee range. Currently the only indication of things outside a weapons trail range

A billion times this. A lot of attacks are well inside or outside what the weapon actually shows (I can't remember any staff attacks while testing that wasn't well within the length of the old kuva scepter without prime reach thrown on) through its animation.

Even faint perimeters (they don't have to be brilliant but if we can see'em in a dark unoccupied hallway to get a few practice swings in) showing what attacks will reach would allow players to get a better feel for it.

[NovusKnight]

finishers are trash now, and I'm afraid of even testing them with Ivara or BAnshee. jesus, I'm terrified...

... however, a LOT of weapons sudenly became quite powerful. some lost power. for isntance, I never liked the Venka Prime... until now. it's ridiculously deadly with my mod setup. a particular surprise to me was Skiajati; this thing with the reverse grip stance just SHREDS THINGS SO FAST. the Destreza Prime has quite a sense of *finesse* now, and the heavy attacks appear to ALWAYS proc a slash, which, combined with the high crit of the weapon, can sometimes result in hilarious numbers. I had slashes come off of this weapon in the 60.000 ballpark per tick.

my gram prime feels like utter garbage now, though!

[DAplay]

Please change the Gunblade Combos to:
E: Shoot standing still (remove the flip that moves you forward. It's not meant to be a gap-closer). Make it a loop of just the first attack of the current RMB+W+E combo
E+W: OK
RMB+E: Decrease the forward momentum so we move a little less (actually this seems to be the best combo of the weapon... the only one that doesn't shoot the gun =/)
RMB+W+E: OK

[ValinorAtani]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Zaphrinn:

 I really wonder, if I am the only one who thinks that the melee attack damage felt stronger overall?

Its not the damage outcome most people are complaining about. The most problems are simply quality of Life things which screwed up by DE.

[UnderRevision]

Let me preface this by saying that I play with a controller, specifically an X-Box style one, so all my thoughts on controls should be taken in that context.

Overall, I like the new controls for combos.  I always found the combos that required pausing to be rather finicky to pull off.  Already knowing how to do every combo on every stance has really encouraged me to take a look at the stances I never really used before, and to actually use more combos in general.  That said, the fact that a lot of stances appear to be short on combos is a real problem.  Having a few weapons or stances that deviate from the rules is fine and a great way to make unique weapons feel that little more unique, but there are so many exceptions right now that it doesn't quite feel like there's a rule.  At the very least, sharing attacks between a few stances within a weapon category to fill them all out would bring the expected behavior of having each of the four combos do something different.

Speaking of which, the in-game combo screen seems to think that blocking is assigned to left stick instead of left trigger.  I'm not sure if that's a bug or an oversight of some kind.  It also suggests that there is only one attack in the heavy attack combo when it is actually possible to chain into a second, different heavy attack on at least some stances.

I don't feel particularly qualified to weigh in on the nuances of a lot of specific weapon types that took significant changes (like gunblades), but I will echo some of what I've seen about the glaive throw.  The glaive category is one of those times when making an exception to the rules reinforces the uniqueness of the weapon.  This is especially true since it can be thrown with holding the attack button when dual-wielded.  If something is going to be an exception, then it really should commit to being an exception in a consistent and predictable manner.  As it is, it feels like melee-only glaive is a downgrade when, if anything, it should be where a weapon is used to its fullest potential.  Not that I want the throw to be locked behind melee-only mode.  That wouldn't really address the fundamental problem of inconsistency, after all.

Heavy attacks in general are something of an issue.  The controller binding has heavy attacks replacing channeling on the right stick click.  This is a rather awkward binding, to say the least, but it's difficult to remap with how controller bindings are handled.  I'm not sure how to solve this issue, if I'm honest.  Returning the binding to holding down the attack button would make my earlier comments about the glaive problematic as it would require burning your combo meter for every throw, which is not desirable from the player perspective.  My next instinct would be to co-opt the reload button (X on an X-Box controller) while using melee.  Unfortunately, this again runs afoul of the glaives when it comes to dual wielding as the reload button is still very much needed to reload.  It also impacts quick-melee since the player may want to fire until their gun is empty, take a few swings, reload, then open fire again.  It could be done if heavy attacks were restricted to melee-only mode, but that really runs counter to the goal of fluidity.  Or perhaps it could be set to right stick for quick-melee and have an option to bind to reload in melee only?  Perhaps if there was an entirely separate control mapping available for melee-only, since it is a deliberate and distinct mode switch now, it would allow players to have the best of both worlds?  Particularly since the right trigger doesn't do anything when in melee only mode unless that option is set in the menu.  Melee-only is arguably its own full control set already, so exposing that and letting it be customized just like archwing or lunaro bindings couldn't hurt, right?  Well, aside from the development costs.  I'm sure that's a lot more complicated to implement than it looks from the outside.

The other thing I want to mention at this early stage is Valkyr's Hysteria.  I play Valkyr a lot and use her Hysteria pretty heavily and I have to say that I'm not a fan of how she was handled.  It still feels very much like spin-to-win is the better strategy.  Her standard combos are stiff and sluggish, and her forward + block combo has no utility as a gap closer.  Hysterical Assault is a poor substitute in that regard as it requires targeting an enemy to use and is, again, very stiff compared to something like the gap-closer on the Final Harbinger stance for sword and shield weapons.  That combo, compared to Valkyr's, feels infinitely faster, stronger, and just plain cooler.  It turns your warframe into a whirling storm of death to land right amidst the enemies where you can tear them to shreds.  Meanwhile, Valkyr slowly lurches forward a step at a time, stiffly swatting at the air right in front of her.  The end result of this is that spin-to-win still feels like the best way to play her, especially since the slide helps close the gap far more easily and fluidly than Hysterical Assault without costing mod capacity.  To be honest, she doesn't feel at all in sync with the rest of the melee rework.  She's not awful, but she certainly doesn't feel like an unrelenting force of feral rage.

I think that's all I should say for now.  Anything else should really come after I've spent more time with the new system and really dug into it on a wider selection of weapons and stances.

[MarySteinberg]

Heavy attack needs to be faster, please remove/reduce the charging state when you click the heavy attack button. 

It is like the unloved charge attack before, due to its super long charging time, it is unpractical. 

Since heavy attack already consumes all your combos, I don’t think there’s a need for another cost on top of that to keep players off. 

Just make it simple as toggled channeling so we can perform smoothly - maybe with some visual or sound effect to indicate that the next hit will be a heavy attack. The channeling toggle before was not easy to tell if you activated it or not if you were not using a super bright energy color. 

 

Parazon finisher in normal Mission on normal targets are now too niche to be performed. I saw quite a few chances already but my finger just won’t stop pushing e and I know it would be not faster if I reach out down to press x. The movement looks cool but after first few tryouts everything just goes back to routine. I would suggest to make it more exclusively on elite units which would make a parazon finisher worthy, or just like someone said before move the x key back to e so we can just do it without breaking the flow.

[MoyuTheTrinity]

Could you please swap the controls for winding claws and raking flesh on the swirling tiger stance it is weird that what looks like simple slashes isnt the standard combo and the combo you want to do is the one you cant hold forward for 

 

also aiming pulls the gun out it is making it hard to do "block" combos

 

better yet could you just let us pick which button combination does which combo there are too many stances where the old nice combo is stand still or standstill and block and the old quick melee is now the moving and stoping all momentum

Edited November 2, 2019 by MoyuTheMedic

[kapn655321]

4 hours ago, KyoumaSan said:

why there isn't even a melee block keybind is beyond me

That would be good to have around as an option.

[DArthurVaderian]

WTF did you do with combos, they are like frankensteins monsters now, you can barely tell them apart from how you've sewn them together. I liked when they were unique and clearly had a purpose. Gunblades are basically unusable right now, finishers are.... weird. and i really dont like how you ruined endgame high level fighting capabilities with the nerfs of CO, BR, and MS. 

[SPplayer76]

I would like the ability to perform a Heavy Attack while my primary or secondary is out. Having to swing my melee weapon once before being able to heavy attack is really clunky.

[PepsilonEagle]

While I mostly appreciate having easier to remember means of accessing specific combos I am sorely missing the standing finisher setups from Vulpine Mask, Stinging Thorn, and sparring weapon charge attacks. I really appreciated that certain weapons had the option to pull those off without having to bring in a specific Warframe to blind or stun things, and I feel like that being replaced with making enemies float like every other weapon takes away a big part of their identity.

[WolfgangHype]

The reworked combos for Crushing Ruin feel bad. I was looking forward to being able to more easily spam the Shattered Village combo which was my favorite part of it prior to this update. The new Shattered Village combo just feels worse in comparison. Two comparatively wimpy spins, and then an annoying slam attack that interrupts your momentum.

The forward combo also feels like it has less forward momentum than the stationary combo as well, which doesn't exactly make it an appealing alternative.

Edit: Shattering storm's forward combo similarly lacks actual forward momentum. At the very least there should be a forward step with every swing for the forward combo.

Edited November 2, 2019 by WolfgangHype
Tried and was disapointed with shattering storm.

[coolev009]

Alright I've been playing around with the new mechanics a while now and it's definitely something new. I guess i'll have to get used to some things however there are a few problems that I've found.

Valkyr: I was happy when valkyr was finaly fixed after the first phase. But she's been screwed over again in phase 2. With the focus on combo's in this phase, Hysterical Assault is broken again. When you try to use some of the combo's you instead leap at the enemies. Another things I've been disliking after the update is her talons. I always used a higher attack speed on her, but with phase 2 it seems like every time I press the melee button she just pauses a second before going for the next hit. It makes playing with her ult feel very unconfortable. I have Venka prime equiped as her melee weapon and while a different weapon than her talons they are the same type and should feel pretty similair in usage. But at the moment it feels so much better to play with Venka then the Talons.

Air attack: I also noticed that doing a melee attack in the air doesn't propel you forward anymore. I used this a lot before the update to traverse around the map and don't see why this was changed. It would be weird to get a forward boost with some of the new animations when doing an air attack, but I'll really miss that good old boost in speed. Especially because I used it alot with Valkyr. If this could be reverted or added back in some way, that would be great.

Don't get me wrong the update dit a lot of things right, sadly it also got many things wrong and I hope that some of these issues will be fixed in the future.

Thanks for reading.

[Wolfglaive]

Overall I think the melee changes feel really good. It is nice to be able to gap-close on demand, tactical dodge is useful, heavy attacks feel powerful, lifted status is a neat new addition, and air-combos are something I've always wanted. However, I do have one or two problems with the combo counter (depending on if you count them as being the same issue). Heavy attacks immediately remove the entire combo counter, and healing with Life Strike requires the use of heavy attacks, but does not account for the longer time it takes to use them. In the old system, when Life Strike was being used correctly, especially in combination with Quick Thinking, it was possible to heal from 2 health back to full quickly enough to respond to a high level enemy's damage and then keep going. As it is, when I need to heal, I feel punished for using Life Strike because not only does it remove all combo counter (regardless of whether I even make contact with an enemy unit), which removes Blood Rush's buff, but also because when using a Heavy Attack to heal (even if it is at max multiplier), it heals just what is missing despite the time they take to execute and the inherent cost of using them (energy is much easier to regain compared to combo counter/multiplier levels). I feel like a good way to address this would be to change Life Strike to a deferred heal over time somehow calculated based on the charge-attack's damage dealt. Additionally, when using a Heavy Attack, I feel like it may be fair to refund some of the combo counter eaten up assuming you get a kill with the strike, or make a heavy strike not drain all combo counter. I do understand that the buildup is increased, but with the counter only applying to Heavy Attacks directly, and indirectly buffing normal melee with certain mods, losing the entire multiplier all at once feels incredibly punishing relative to the payoff for a single powerful strike. 

[Snaccine]

The lifting mechanic is absolutely god awful. You guys missed the mark on juggling by miles. I shouldn't have to chase down every enemy that gets juggled. Also, adding innate juggling on certain stance combos was a poor decision. Having no control over when it happens is extremely irritating. Chasing down an enemy just to hit them a couple more times before they get juggled again and float away has to be the most troll game mechanic you've ever implemented. Stop trying to be like DMC and stick to what I hope you're still good at, Warframe.

[seventhwalker]

Rapiers lost their free movement during combos and hold down attack

Not sure if it was a bug during the transfer to the melee system, or if it was a design choice. If it was changed that way, am appealing for it to be returned the way it was. Rapiers had short range but it still had its nice niche of being able to just hold the melee button to attack, along with being able to fully control your movement while doing said combos. Now its locked in a predetermined move while doing the thrusts and slashes, not as graceful or safe (able to move out of the way of an enemy attack mid-swing) in using it anymore.


Thrown melee could use some streamlining

It may just be me not getting the intricacies of the new system yet (or a bug), but before the changes you can go from firing a weapon to hold the melee button, it attacks once, THEN throws the weapon. Right now from firing a gun, you need to attack once with quick melee, THEN press the old channeling button, then it attacks once, and then finally throw the weapon. Know that there are button limits (esp with controllers), but there has to be a way to streamline thrown melee, as evidenced by how some mmos can cram all their functions on a controller. You should not need that initial 'attack' before actually throwing, which leads to...


Zenistar disc hardly seems as useful now

With that extra 'attack' needed to switch from firing, coupled with the nerfed duration the disc is out, It seems to be a chore and inefficient to keep throwing out the disc to complement your gun attacks, when you can just keep firing instead. The old duration seemed to have the balance of it stays long enough to compensate your time actually throwing the disc (with that slow animations of one attack before throw, and disc travelling into place), rather than just keep firing your guns, or using a room clearing melee instead.



 

[Borg1611]

As I'm sure others have already mentioned, heavy attacks feel awful to use in addition to being very poorly designed when you consider that some of the best scaling mods work off the combo counter and this clears that counter. 

I was thinking one way to make at least one version of the heavy attack feel worth using would be to make heavy slam attack radial damage scale with mods (currently only the main target damage scales with mods on both regular slam and heavy slams) + make the radius scale with the combo counter (1 meter per count). Then you'd be able to build up a decent sized AoE nuke with a ground slam attack. 

As for regular heavy attacks, those can be the single target oriented version since the slam would be used as a build up AoE nuke. Maybe make that damage scale 2x as much with the combo counter since it wouldn't be an AoE + maybe make it lock onto a target like an arch melee attack so it's harder to miss with it. 

Also, another way to make heavy attacks feel more rewarding is things like Exodia Brave, but only Zaws have arcane slots. Maybe consider adding a way to get arcane slots on non-zaw melee's and adding additional heavy attack related arcanes that you can put onto melee weapons for a variety of purposes.