(PC) Melee Phase 2: STATS Feedback

[SSI_Seraph]

Pushing out the combo multiplier in favor of heavy attack is imo absolutely not needed.

Trading more upfront damage that was never needed for basicly a hard cap on scaling just seems so wrong to me with how enemies and their scaling are designed.

Would have loved and accepted all of these changes/nerfs if the damage was rebalanced around the new mods and the combo multiplier was kept instead of this whole cluncky "heavy attack system" or if the heavy attacks were an option that consumed combo but it still boosted your damage.  

 

Edited November 1, 2019 by SSI_Seraph

[Voltage]

My favorite melee class is Tonfas. I own the highest quality of Riven Mod for each with the most powerful builds I can feasibly create. Telos Boltace is my preferred choice because of the parkour movement passive, Kronen Prime was my choice to look amazing and deal IPS, and my Ohma was my highest DPS melee weapon through the slide damage being the highest of the game for a normal melee weapon. I also use Ninkondi Prime for the 3x slide attacks. I understand I might be seen as "the plague" as I enjoy the slide attacks of melee. I have been playing slide attacks since before Maiming Strike was even a mod, before Telos Boltace was introduced with the slash AoE, in a time where Dragon Nikana and Orthos Prime were the go-to melees, and even after Telos Boltace was nerfed. I've always enjoyed their niche of not being the best at killing groups, but having deadly slide attacks.

Slide Attacks now feel extremely weak. I understand why they were outrageously overpowered and why things needed to change. However, I went from 3 slides to kill a 165 gunner with an Ohma to taking many many many many swings dealing low damage crits if at all. Condition Overload makes any +Damage Riven give hardly any DPS bonus, and the range of my Machete Wraith with a range Riven now offers more than my Tonfa solely due to disposition.

Tonfas are a class designed for slide attacking. They would do wonders on Demolysts, they were a good alternative to a polearm/whip, and they also provide unique quirks (Ohma having highest base slide damage, Telos Boltace parkour velocity passive, 2x slide hits on all Tonfas, etc.). Now they don't feel unique at all (aside from the parkour velocity on Telos Boltace).

They feel overlooked (Telos Boltace still has Stormpath which is arguably the worst weapon passive in the game bar none). To me, as someone who has used slide attacks on a weapon designed for them, I feel bundled into the group of players who used the Scoliac Riven Disposition (This oversight for years without any sort of correction is a huge issue) and the Plague Kripath (Saryn Prime is good because she can utilize Viral and Corrosive simultaneously. Plague Kripath is no exception to this interaction.). I ultimately feel punished for a problem caused by weapon range, not slide damage alone. The biggest issue with Maiming Strike and sliding was the range at which you reach targets and the AoE you create, not just the damage you deal. This is why you wouldn't bring Ohma to an exterminate over a Secura Lecta, but you definitely wouldn't bring a whip into Disruption over a Redeemer or Ohma. Now with how weak slide attacks feel, I would need to play Oberon in Disruption with a boring scaling max HP damage ability to reach the same heights my previous Ohma could achieve with smart status stacking and premium slide power on single targets.

With all that said, I do believe the changes to melee range are on the right track, and I feel the last piece of the puzzle is adjusting dispositions.

My questions as a Tonfa enthusiast:

Can Tonfa weapons receive a substantially higher slide attack damage boost than other weapons?

Can Tonfa weapons receive a more fluid slide attack speed (buff?) along with a higher slide attack damage bonus?

Will we see Stormpath on Telos Boltace changed for something that actually compliments the weapon class?

Edited November 1, 2019 by Voltage

[George_PPS]

9 minutes ago, SSI_Seraph said:

Pushing out the combo multiplier in favor of heavy attack is imo absolutely not needed.

Trading more upfront damage that was never needed for basicly a hard cap on scaling just seems so wrong to me with how enemies and their scaling are designed.

Would have loved and accepted all of these changes/nerfs if the damage was rebalanced around the new mods and the combo multiplier was kept instead of this whole cluncky "heavy attack system" or if the heavy attacks were an option that consumed combo but it still boosted your damage.  

 

The new melee system is very clunky and NOT warframe. 

5 minutes ago, Voltage said:

My favorite melee class is Tonfas. I own the highest quality of Riven for each. Telos Boltace is my solid choice for the parkour movement, Kronen Prime was my choice to look amazing and deal IPS, and my Ohma was my highest DPS melee weapon through the slide damage being the highest of the game for a normal melee weapon. I also use Ninkondi Prime for the 3x slide attacks. I understand I might be seen as "the plague" as I enjoy the slide attacks of melee. I have been playing slide attacks since before Maiming Strike was even a mod, before Telos Boltace was introduced with the slash AoE, in a time where Dragon Nikana and Orthos Prime were the go-to melees.

Slide Attacks now feel extremely weak. I understand they should feel weak. I understand why they were outrageously overpowered. However, I went from 3 slides to kill a 165 gunner with an Ohma to taking many many many many swings dealing low damage crits if at all. Condition Overload makes my +Damage Riven roll give hardly any DPS bonus, and the range of my Machete Wraith with a range Riven now offers more than my Tonfa.

Tonfas are a class designed for slide attacking. They would do wonders on Demolysts, they were a good alternative to a polearm/whip, and they also provide unique quirks (Ohma having highest base slide damage, Telos Boltace parkour velocity passive, 2x slide hits on all Tonfas, etc.). Now they don't feel unique at all (aside from the parkour velocity on Telos Boltace).

They feel overlooked (Telos Boltace still has Stormpath which is arguably the worst weapon passive in the game bar none). To me, as someone who has used slide attacks on a weapon designed for them, I feel bundled into the group of players who used the Scoliac Riven Disposition (which btw was a huge oversight for years without any sort of correction), and the Plague Kripath (literally Saryn Prime as your melee with base Viral damage) and was ultimately punished for a problem caused by weapon range, not slide damage alone. The biggest issue with Maiming Strike and sliding was the range at which you reach targets and the AoE you create, not just the damage you deal. The range changes in my opinion are on the right track, but can the Tonfa weapons see a much higher slide attack damage increase?

Terrible changes done to the melee system. All new "buffs" can't make up for the HUGE loss of melee damages and also smooth movement in melee 2.0. Very disappointed. 

[Kaaahn]

Melee feels worse.

There are significant problems with the feel, mechanics/design, and stats/power.

The main problem with the feel of melee is that any melee attack, even quick attacks, now stop sprinting. This alone makes melee feel wrong to use, after a while of having to repush the same button after every attack it just doesn't seem worth it anymore.

The new combo and heavy attack system I feel is not rewarding and does not promote its own use. This is from the cost of using a heavy attack being the ENTIRETY of your combo meter. Heavy attacks only seem to do enough damage more than a regular attack when at very high combo this essentially gates your satisfying finisher behind a cooldown. Where for best results you need to have up to 220 normal attacks between every heavy attack. So you use a heavy attack, one hit kill a single enemy, and then have to wait for a cooldown to come back of you rebuilding your combo. This essentially means a heavy attack is locked behind a lengthy cooldown that inflicts you with a damage debuff on use. The other playstyle would be using them more freely and having more frequent weaker heavy attacks, that are used when not at max combo, this however is just worse than normal melee and never using a heavy attack. Since you are gating your combo counter to a lower max than 220. Because of the scaling nature of bloodrush and weeping wounds having normal attacks that are up to a counter of 4x and semi frequent heavy attacks at 4x combo are both signifcantly weaker than just normal attack at the 12x counter and never heavy attacking. 

The only time the slower heavy attacks do enough damage to be worth using it comes at the sacrifice of being able to do additional melee attacks both heavy(cooldown locked) and normal (losing their crit/status level). 

Combo efficiency as a stat only serves to shorten the effective cooldown between heavy attacks and not change their functionality. 

The last problem with the melee changes is the stats re balancing. Everything is just weaker. Other than a12x combo heavy attack everything is worse after the update. The main two problems are bloodrush and condition overload. After the changes weapons that were able to have only redcrits after 2.5x old combo now can never reach this. An example weapon of mine has 75% base critchance and still have majority orange crits at the now max combo. Through the testing I did in order to get only red you have to be at max combo with around 90% base critchance. In addition the capping of the combo counter, makes the problem worse as the counter is capped when red crits start to appear unlike the old counter which could have multiple combo levels that were reached after the all red was reached allowing for bigger and bigger red crits. This paired with the huge nerf to condition overload means that the 2 forms of melee scaling are nerfed to nearly unviability. 

[Raikh]

Most Weapons haven't been properly compensated for the loss of the combo multiplier. A 3x combo was easily doable and not even all weapons get as much damage. Especially noteworthy since you could also get up higher which jsut makes this feel quite bad.

Range on polearms seem lower than before. For most weapons the rnage increase feels great but neither do they reach the range of polearms before the patch nor do polearms do and it feels very off especially since no nerf to the base range of said weapons was noted and working with the numbers given in the notes they absolutely should reach similar range to polearms before the patch.

Heavy attacks suck. Usually don't try to be so blunt but thats just it. They are slow, their damage isn't impressive at all for a one time use nuke and they also don't tend to be notable AoE attacks. The heavy slams are more usable but mostly for clearing out low level things and not for significant enemies either. YOu are pretty much always better off using Blood Rush and ignore the mechanic or if you don't use it just ignore it either way because it snot worth using. For a heavily promoted feature this is jsut excessively disappointing. SHould also not drain your entire combo and melee weapons don't really have the space to use combo efficiency to solve that issue.

Exalted Weapons have ben trashed pretty much entirely. For instance Exalted Blade didn't even get its damage doubled and with Surging Dash getting a combo providing more damage than the buffs was easy and there is nothing comparable to that increase to fill that hole. The auto-parry is missing, too (the one active even when attacking which was fundamental to his survivability) It is also quite silly that the energy wave still don't build the counter since that prohibits proper use of heavy attacks even if they were worth using for Excal without said augment.

Exalted weapons were already suffering due to lack of access to acolyte mods and rivens which made normal melee grow incredibly close or even stronger than the exlated weapons. Since exlateds are ultimate abilities and need to cover for a weapon the 4 ability of another frame this is again incredibly disappointing. If I can just pick a frame with a good 4 and maybe a wepaon buff then I'm already better off than playing an exalted frame because I have more damage and more abilities and non of the downsides exalted weapons (energy drain, loss of combo on expiration) bring in exchange for their supposed power.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Raikh

[Sargeant_Q]

I want to start this out by saying that initially i was really happy with what i was seeing in game.  Went into a Kuva flood assassination of Ambulas.  Had no issues killing anything at all in melee even the boss himself.  However after some more playing I have found some things that i am not so happy with/think got overlooked.

 

First off, Venka Prime appears to have lost its special passive about combo multiplier that it launched with. There was no mention of this in the patch notes.

Also it appears that the increase in range has resulted in some ghost reach.  (IE: The range of the weapon is noticeably longer than it looks.)  Most people probably either don't notice this or even like it.  But i would rather have a shorter weapon that actually matched the model.  That's the reason why i don't actually use Primed Reach.

 

Secondly, Though this isn't technically melee weapons.  it is a result of the changes made here so i think this is where it fits. 

Ash has received a rather large nerf with this update.  The decrease to 25% of Combo Multiplier has resulted in Bladestorm not being able to hit harder than what was a 3x multiplier before the update no matter what you do.  3x multiplier was not hard to get or keep.  He also had a augment mod effectively gutted.  There is no point in using Rising Storm anymore.  You get combo count much to fast for that to be a useful thing as long as combo count has a cap.  And combo duration is not going to matter if you are actually using melee much at all.  ATM i feel like it is better to use the smoke screen augment mod.  even in solo content. 

[Jenggo_Kalem]

Nobody talk 'bout redeemer? Well it's sucks!

Why:

1. Regular shot attack erase the combo counter,
2. Where the blast proc when shooting foe's?
3. My 100% Stat not proc 100%

Please fix the gunblade. Arrrrgghhh....

[Zelmen]

Been trying but still feel the base duration of zenistar is too low... can we get it to 15-20 sec base? Its gone before I can kill enough to get the star back up.

[Lynch_The_Chimera]

Surprised I haven't seen more outrage about it yet, but uh... Yeah, the Zenistar nerf was... Probably needed, but definitely didn't need to be so ham-fisted. It used to fill a niche as the melee weapon you could slap into your loadout to make that weapon slot carry its weight even if you didn't plan on actually using melee combat in your playstyle. Essentially you could swap out your melee slot for a fifth decent Warframe ability with an upkeep and long cast time. Now you HAVE to be actively playing a melee playstyle in order to use Zenistar's special ability to any effect whatsoever, and no matter how hard you try to min-max it, you can still NEVER get it to where it used to be, despite the vastly increased effort. The risk/reward and cost/benefit both went from being pretty favorable to being drastically unfavorable.

Also, this change screams that Ivara's Navigator ability is dead. We really couldn't find much of a use for it aside from Zenistar before, and now that Zenistar no longer exists as itself, Navigator will virtually never be cast again except from misclicks. Ivara went from having 5 abilities to having 3.

[m0b1us1]

While the range changes for low range melees is good, everything else feels awful.

CO is a complete mess now. No real reason to go for more than 3 status on a weapon. After that point you are just wasting space for a marginal increase. 

Blood rush caps at a 580% crit chance boost (1+(.6*8)). So crit melee weapons basically have 0 scaling. A 20% crit chance weapon would cap at just over 100%. And this is entirely lost in a single slow, clunky, unreliable "heavy attack". 

So correct me if I'm wrong, but all you did in terms of stats was make our first couple of hits stronger, but then completely prohibiting us from ever reaching the damage of a 3x combo multiplier with the old system. This is even after all the damage buffs to the weapons.

All for "heavy attacks"... DE... there is a reason NO ONE was asking about the unincluded heavy attacks 7 months ago when the first changes came out. Heavy attacks are slow, clunky, feel horrible to use, and are unreliable at best. The stat changes do not even come close to justifying the use of a heavy attack.

Can you please actually give us the raw numbers rather than just vague descriptions? Show us EXACTLY how you changed the calculations. Overall it appears and feels like you have heavily nerfed melee as a whole. 

[OrionTCB]

Not gonna lie, I don't like the changes about the Combo System and Heavy Attacks (and some stuff related to techniques I guess ?).

First of all, everything about this feels very slow, too slow for a game that wants you to go as fast as possible. Moving seems slow and even killing enemies like lancer +100 (as of this update) seems like trying to kill a napalm +100 (before all the changes) and the worst about this is that I had no trouble taking down enemies above +100 before.

Since the combo system is gone, all (but not exalted weapons or abilities related to melee [the 25% scaling is irrelevant], why is that ?) melee weapons got a ~3× damage boost to "compensate", but it just doesn't work. Okay I guess it's cool to one shot everything below 20 now, but I could do that before as well so it feels pointless, now the problem is that since your weapon damage doesn't scale with how many times you hit/kill something anymore you basically take 1 year to kill any mobs that are too tanky for your sad melee weapon, so you just take your everyday primaries/secondaries without really caring about your melee weapons, which I believe should be the opposite, considering taking the fight at extreme close range may normally be benefiting, but it's not the case anymore, 'cause the damage output is just embarrassing. Even by shredding grineer armor it's just sad really and now that, just as I said, damage doesn't scale up anymore, it may takes even longer to taken down corpus shield, killing units affected by ancients' aura or the ancients themselves at high levels (you know, the "end game" stuff like, sorties, arbitration, siphon, ESO).

Now the heavy attacks. First I really don't understand why it has been promoted to 'Hey, you wanna do any damage to a single target in a game that shouts: KILL THE MOST ENEMIES AS FAST AS POSSIBLE!, then try this out, please'. This really bothers me, this feels like I need to use it to do any killing above +100 now, but I really don't want to, it's slow and I don't want to kill enemies one by one with a melee weapon (like a polearm) every minute, if want to do that, I'll take any sniper or something even as low as a Lato, it may just be even better at this point. Why does this cool little mechanic that you could use anytime you want without any cost (besides time) had to replace and use the most important thing melee had to fight against (or in pair with) primaries and secondaries ? I do understand that they tried to revamp it so that it may be used more when needed and save it from the same fate of the channeling system. They took the concept of combo (which is, the more you hit, the harder) and used it for the heavy attacks, but IT JUST DOESN'T WORK (you hear me Todd Howard ?), why would I spend all the 220 hits (which is the max right now) I did beforehand to do ×12 more damage on a single enemy that isn't a boss ? Why would they place so much importance into this new heavy attack system, do they want us to do just like in the old days, when heavy attacks were just too good ? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this new Heavy Attack system is bad (even if I describe it as if was), it is not, but there is a flaw so big that I don't understand how and why they thought it would be cool to do it this way.

Finally, why I believe everything is just TOO SLOW is about the techniques (but the loss the of the combo system is a great part of it as well). For example, before this update, Clashing Forest's Skyward Limb combo would make me move forward until I reached some distance from my initial position, but now I'm not moving at all, why ? Another one that isn't as bad as Clashing Forest is the spin attack (the famous taboo mechanic, thanks to MS), before the update when I was doing spin attacks to move around with high attack speed (and not even killing) I could move some distance, most noticeable with Wukong's Iron staff where I could move even further (remember that Iron Staff already had some of the mechanics from the current system), now it seems like it was a bit nerfed, it doesn't bother me but since Wukong was already affected by some part of the current I would of believed that it won't change or at least, apply to every other melee weapons.

If I could give any feedback for the devs that may or may not look at this thread, give us back the old combo system (using the old formula and the same values as before : ×1.5 at 5, ×2 at 15, etc...) as a way to make our melee weapons' damage scale with our enemies and compete against primaries and secondaries (just as it did before), revert all the damage buff if you have to and of course, rebalance Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds and anything related to combos. Keep the current heavy attack system and leave the combo as a resource, but when using a heavy attack, don't use 100% of the combo, instead remove the number of hit of our current multiplier (ex: let's say we're at 300 hits, which would translate to ×3 (135). To achieve ×3 (135) from ×2.5 (45) we need 90 hits, when using a heavy attack it would then use 90 hits and waste every hit above ×3 until you reach ×2.5), this I believe would at least give the choice to the player of whether or not to use it (again, just as it did before, do not make it an obligation to do everything) and lastly, I don't know if this what intended but, make techniques what you wanted them to be : smooth and FAST, when I go forward with a forward attack, it should do just that, that goes for spin attack as well.

TL;DR : Revert combo to the old system. Keep new heavy attacks but change the way it consumes combo. Fix(?) techniques.

[Tarasios]

My initial post was wrong.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Tarasios
was wrong

[XaoGarrent]

This patch is uh...

Yikes.

There's too many problems on the stats end of things to list.

[Gurpgork]

Exalted melees really feel left out in the cold on this one, especially Exalted Blade and even more so with Serene Storm. 

For one, they still can't use Shadow Debt mods, even though Blood Rush has been toned down significantly with the changes. This just doesn't make sense anymore. These weapons can use every single melee mod, except for these 4 melee mods from this one event that happened years ago. Please consider changing this.

To my point about EB and SS, they're pretty heavily left out of the combo/heavy attack loop, which largely just makes them feel worse than regular melee, because at least my Fragor can nuke hard with a high combo meter. It's really clunky to do that with EB and especially SS, because the latter has ragdoll combos.

The new lift combo on SS feels really nice, but it's the only real improvement that it got this update. 

I really just think that no Shadow Debt mods on Exalted melee should be reconsidered. 

[sehafoc]

So I happened to do a bunch of melee testing last night,  and then repeated the same tests today...  I primarily use only a few stances I liked previously,  I suspect that I may like different stances now,  but I'll at least give feedback on the ones I've tested

Stances and mechanics feel:
1) Swirling Tiger / Nami Skyla Prime / speed / CO build.  I previously used the pause combo almost exclusively with this stance, and found it tore through things.  Now,  even with the damage buffs I'm averaging about 1 - 2 seconds slower taking down a pack of 165 heavy gunners with the same build.  Range is generally better,  but mobility is actually worse somehow.  This makes the stance and combos less effective overall.  The base damage buff doesn't offset the nerfs to CO.  I'd like to see some representation of the old combo back in the stance

2) Any spin to win build is now a joke "Don't worry you spin attacks aren't going anywhere" -- Steve while talking about the upcoming changes months ago.  Pure lies...  The standard Atterax meme build couldn't kill a fly at the testing level of 165, and it was previously one of the few "cheap" builds that was effective.  It can probably be reworked.  I modified the build to a have higher front loaded damage and while it could kill some things.... it was still a huge nerf 

3) Tempo Royal is a bit of a mixed bag.  While it's still effective and the new combos are okay,  it's not as fun as the old block combo.  This is mainly do to the new effects and how the main combo just seems dissected over multiple combos now.  I'd like to see some rework here.

4) Clashing Forest / many staffs (one of my mainstays). This largely feels about the same! All of the combos were copied into the new formula verbatim. Except!!! the attack speed is slower now on the forward combo... Why? Spin attacks now causing the lifted status is kinda weird... not sure how I feel about that.  

 

Basically,  all of my favorite stances have been made worse, and spin attacks which were used primarily for high mobility reasons are ineffective now


Stat changes:
The stats are generally worse on all builds I've tried.  It seems like I had some super high attack speed CO builds which still shred across multiple weapon types.  Range is better on most weapons, worse on all of my go to staffs though! 

All of my old Rivens are useless now, range and slide crit don't seem to translate as well as they once did.  Attack speed is generally worse on one of my favorite stances.

Basically old spin to win is dead,  CO is nerfed but okay if you run a ton of ele mods and have high attack speed weapons.


Overall feedback:
It seems like DE is just shifting the meta around for reasons I can't really fathom... instead of people playing a variety of frames and a few weapons the meta is going to shift to running fewer DPS frames with a more diverse weapon set.  Then if things continue as they are, those frames are going to be nerfed.  

Side note to DE developers specifically:
If nerfing like this keeps occurring I'll probably go find another game.  Players aren't your QA department... if you can't calculate what are fair values for some of these things before you release them, you shouldn't take it out on the player base who HAS TO WORK FOR HOURS TO OBTAIN THE STUFF YOU TAKE AWAY.  I typically respect DE's efforts to respect player time in a fair manner -- in fact I'll say it's the best in the business.  The last few round of balance passes have left a very sour taste in my mouth.

To explain what I mean... I'm personally a developer myself,  and at a game development conference about 10 years ago there was a paper going around coining the term "Game of Labor". The idea behind a looter -- because I feel like I have to explain it -- is that you work hard for something,  that grants you some thing -- a power or whatever -- and you feel satisfied.  The paper then goes on to describe the various points of psychology which I personally won't go into.  The corollary I'd like to draw,  or perhaps an illustrative point would be more precise, would be that if someone worked really hard, put money in the bank for retirement, and then the bank stole the money... In the same way that person converted their time to money, and stored it in a bank,  we convert our time to fun gear to kill Graneer with in your game.  The adverse effect of balance passes in this manner is that I personally no longer feel like if I work hard for something -- it will still be there in a few months.  In other words, these balance passes are a direct deterrent to actually playing the game to get things.  I have already stopped trying to farm the perfect riven, because that seems pointless now.  I'm almost scared to use weapons I actually like because if too many people like them they'll go away...

While balance may seem like a fun idea,  and some people may howl for it... others will like this time investment to reward of being able to feel like the god of death raining down hell on various fake people.  Furthermore, balancing the game based on usage when everyone just copies builds off the internet is a bit weird.. 

*ANOTHER* huge problem with this games is that you aren't actually encouraged to put a proper build on a weapon and test it!  The min mod capacity really needs to be doubled at the mastery rank (so 15 MR equates to putting full builds on things) and catalysts should be waaaaaaay more plentiful.  What made sense 6 years ago doesn't make sense now that you have nearly 400 weapons in the game.  What I'm trying to aim for is that players can ACTUALLY USE the weapons while they level them! 

In this main line we've seen the death of the Catchmoon, WoF, and spin to win.  Rather than do something sensible like in your balance pass where you modified EVERY weapon in the game, and thought hmmm people like this high mobility and range effect for these builds,  and make stances have higher mobility just generally you kinda nerfed it a bit.  I'd like to see more fluent mobility on the block forward attack and more large sweeping attacks.  They don't need to be spin to win strong, but the speed and fluidity should be better than what they are I think.

I feel like I'm rambling a lot, and I should have made this into at least 3 posts. 

Sorry about that! 

Edited November 1, 2019 by sehafoc
formatting, adding a correction

[Soup2504]

I'm a bit confused by the amount of people saying melee is useless at high level now. I just spent a good few hours testing out many different melee weapons and overall I'm impressed with the high level performance of a lot of weapons that previously weren't very good. Sure, some Standout Hits like the redeemer prime did get hit pretty hard by changes to mods like condition overload, but they're by no means useless now. Ether daggers, fang prime, caustacyst, machete wraith, sheev, nikana prime, silva and aegis prime, etc. all perform very well now, (though I'm noticing that condition overload is a mandatory mod on basically everything now). A lot of weapons perform way better than they ever have now as well. Sure, their overall theoretical damage is technically a bit worse now that melee combo multiplier no longer gives them a damage boost, but the stat buffs made to compensate for this (especially the status and crit buffs) mostly do their job well enough that melee weapons can still perform against level 160 heavy units very well (though I won't lie and say that is the case for every single melee weapon in the game). Melee is far from "useless" after the changes. it still works pretty damn well.

The new combo system is mostly good but there are a good few stances in the game that still only have 2 combos total. I thought this was going to be addressed in this update but, it wasn't. Also stances like gnashing payara, sinking talon, and stalking fan are just.... completely awful now (not that any of those stances were good in the past but. for real they're.... really not good at all now. all 3 of these feel a lot less fluid than previously and they just. god they seriously suck. though credit where credit is due: y'all did manage to make sundering weave bearable now. but cyclone kraken is still leagues ahead of it). It also seems like melee "lock to target" isn't nearly as aggressive as it used to be, and as a result, combos with movement tend to break off of enemies even easier than before, which makes them fairly clunky to use. I've also noticed that sometimes when air juggling enemies with melee, the enemies will randomly decide to fling away from you at warp speed, which makes air juggling... not as good as it should be. To the point that I try to use combos that don't knock enemies into the air so that horrible fling doesn't end up happening.

It's nice to see charge attacks no longer force the the first hit of a melee combo before actually charging, now that it has been moved to a different button, but. they honestly still just don't perform well at all (with the exception of gunblades and glaives of course. and the caustacyst, but that's because it has a special effect). their damage doesn't justify draining your combo counter, and against high level enemies, they do nothing more than tickle them most of the time.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the jat kittag lost its crazy particle effects on slam attacks. please for the love of god...... fix this. the jat kittag just isn't the same without it

Edited November 1, 2019 by Soup2504

[Skyguard1]

Heavy attacks feel weird and out of place, I’d rather the combo counter was used for a rage mode instead. A single slow heavy strike isn’t that useful. 

[-_-Haron-_-]

Since Condition Overload work with another way Zenistar Disk should have damage buff too. Or its should scale with combo counter as heavy attack

P.s. Condition Overload not work with disk now

Pls D;

Edited November 1, 2019 by -_-Haron-_-

[Dragazer]

Alot of weapons still need their base damage increased to compensate for the loss of the combo dmg multiplier.

Gram prime only went from 180 to 300 base dmg. That's a 1.66x dmg boost. Thats pretty pitiful considering how easy it was before to maintain 3x or even a 4x combo multiplier dmg boost

Edited November 1, 2019 by Dragazer

[George_PPS]

 

1 hour ago, sehafoc said:

Overall feedback:
It seems like DE is just shifting the meta around for reasons I can't really fathom... instead of people playing a variety of frames and a few weapons the meta is going to shift to running fewer DPS frames with a more diverse weapon set.  Then if things continue as they are, those frames are going to be nerfed.  

Side note to DE developers specifically:
If nerfing like this keeps occurring I'll probably go find another game.  Players aren't your QA department... if you can't calculate what are fair values for some of these things before you release them, you shouldn't take it out on the player base who HAS TO WORK FOR HOURS TO OBTAIN THE STUFF YOU TAKE AWAY.  I typically respect DE's efforts to respect player time in a fair manner -- in fact I'll say it's the best in the business.  The last few round of balance passes have left a very sour taste in my mouth.

To explain what I mean... I'm personally a developer myself,  and at a game development conference about 10 years ago there was a paper going around coining the term "Game of Labor". The idea behind a looter -- because I feel like I have to explain it -- is that you work hard for something,  that grants you some thing -- a power or whatever -- and you feel satisfied.  The paper then goes on to describe the various points of psychology which I personally won't go into.  The corollary I'd like to draw,  or perhaps an illustrative point would be more precise would be that if someone worked really hard, put money in the bank for retirement, and then the bank stole the money... In the same way that person converted their time to money, and stored it in a bank,  we convert our time to fun gear to kill Graneer with in your game.

DE please READ this and restore some of the stats back. The player is not the only one who has expressed the same thing. I have read countless feedbacks like this and I feel the same way. You are basically destroying what players have invested in terms of time, energy, plat, and real money for the sake of "balancing" aka nerfing. In any games, there are naturally going to be specialist meta builds and meta weapons and that is a great thing. Players  don't get to know what they are until they play more. And players invest their time and efforts into making their weapons great with special builds, top Rivens,and research.

Yet you have been nerfing just about everything players love to use and spend a deal of time to acquire and/or build. Why you want to take away what we work SO HARD to get and/or build. Don't change for the sake of change. Improve what doesn't work or weak, don't nerfing what works. 

Edited November 1, 2019 by George_PPS

[BlindStalker]

I'm sorry for reposting, I just genuinely want to be heard out about this (I did post this in the 'Technique' part of the feedback, but I'm uncertain if it also falls under 'Stats').

I have concerns regarding a weapon synergy that I greatly enjoyed using between Ivara's navigator and the Zenistar disc (I'm sure other Ivara players know this setup as the "Ivara UFO setup").

Please for consideration:

I want to highlight a special setup that was known among Ivara player enthusiasts, the Ivara "UFO setup". It was an amazing weapon synergy that was really fantastic to use in combat. Basically you use Ivara's navigator to control the zenistar's disc and you could control it for the duration of the disc, just flying it around to kill enemies. It was a fun and amazing build and did a lot of damage but it costs a lot of energy to run it as a trade-off.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, I'll just reference Triburos video in the spoiler below so that you get an idea of what it was like.

Spoiler

 

Now I did make a video on my thoughts and issues revolving around Ivara's prowl and the new Zenistar changes (can be seen below), but I will also do text summary further below to sum up issues I want to highlight with the new melee changes 2.0 Technique in relation to Zenistar and Ivara. (I sort of rushed the video, text summary below is more helpful).

Spoiler

 

Given the new changes to how the Zenistar's disc works (working at a base of 10 seconds, and being increased based on the new combo counter) the Ivara UFO setup might be dead because it becomes far too cumbersome to build the combo meter in combat with Ivara and to be honest, Ivara was designed to discourage mindlessly melee spamming with her. Yet the only way to build up the duration on the Zenistar disc is to mindlessly melee spam it first before launching the disc.

Let me re-iterate the restrictions imposed on Ivara's invisibility prowl (base stats, before adding any mods to her)

- 2 energy cost per melee attack (note this also applies to stealth finishers)

- 3 energy cost per second while moving (I think this also gets stacked on while performing stealth finishers so you have to add this drain to the one above)

- 1 energy cost per second while stationary

- 10 energy cost per hit taken (note this even includes on shield damage. So for example, the "shield drain" from disruptions will actually chip away at your energy pool because that sadly counts as a "hit")

- and the basic movement limitations as well and loud weapons dispelling her cloak (there's more but I won't bore you).

None of this is ever shown in-game on Ivara's abilities stat screen. You have to use the Warframe Builder as an example of being able to see these underlying restrictions imposed on prowl.

The point I'm getting at is this. Generally speaking, Ivara's prowl is built with an extra energy drain on melee to discourage mindless melee spamming compared to other stealth frames. With the new system we are forced into randomly melee spamming in order to build up the disc's duration. If you happened to be an Ivara player that greatly enjoyed Ivara's "UFO build" with zenistar, well it's significantly harder to do such a synergy because you must spam the combo counter first (and Ivara is the only stealth frame built with "anti-melee spamming" mechanics to discourage such behaviour). I don't believe I have ever seen Ivara players trying to spam their melee in high level difficult content for good reason (for sake, level 100 enemies and above), especially in public games since stray bullets, AoE rockets and such don't care about who they hit. So it was always important for Ivara players to develop situational awareness of their surroundings and to not get caught in the crossfire between visible teammates and enemy projectiles. Melee spamming the Zenistar to build up the disc combo on high level enemies with stray enemy bullets/rockets is just suicide for Ivara players.

Also important, during testing of the new Zenistar changes, we found out that DE implemented another underlying "anti-afk" measure on the Zenistar disc that accidentally affects how Ivara's navigator worked with zenistar disc. After 60 seconds, if you have not moved, the zenistar's disc will be forcible returned back. Okay fine, except for one thing. I can't move because Navigator locks me in place! So while navigating the zenistar disc, after 60 seconds, it will be forced returned back to me. That kind of sucks. If I were to "theoretically" somehow build up this combo multiplier while in combat without dying to a stray bullet/rocket due to visible teammates, and get over 60 seconds on Zenistar and I try to navigate it, well I'll be forced out of it before my time is up. Wow, all that combo counter built up for nothing. Why bother trying?

And if you say "just don't use prowl" then guys, she's glass. She's paper for health and armour. Ivara has a meagre 65 armour and 225 health at rank 30, she really can't take a hit when things start to get tough. (I'll reference The Fool's 'Frame Tanking list' in spoiler below to give an idea of how glass she is).

Spoiler

She's like at rank 63 out of 67 frames, she really can't take a hit.

 

In closing - I've been wanting Ivara to get some developer review on her for some time now. Potentially speaking, Ivara Prime is next in line for this upcoming holiday prime release. While Ivara isn't in the worst shape, these new melee changes I think will affect how often people use her. She's a rarely seen frame at the moment in public games and it makes sense (for other reasons I won't list) and heavily relied on unconventional melee to be used with her in order to remain actually effective and helpful to your team on the combat field instead of being a hindrance to your team. No one probably wants to revive an Ivara during an arbitration I'm guessing. Zenistar disc + Navigator was an amazing synergy combo, but the current melee combo counter plus Ivara's "anti-melee spamming" restrictions built into her prowl plus the (probably not intended) anti-afk measure which kicks you out of navigating the disc after 60 seconds (due to Navigator locking you in place, accidentally flagging the afk measure) makes this painful to play. Re-iterated bullet points below:

• Melee spamming with Ivara is heavily discouraged because she is glass (don't randomly melee enemies if teammates are beside you because stray bullets/aoe rockets do not care who they hit)
• Ivara's prowl is built with an extra energy drain on melee to discourage mindless melee spamming compared to other stealth frames. But mindless melee spamming is the only way to build up the combo counter
• The anti-afk measure on the zenistar's disc is accidentally activated whenever you use Ivara's navigator on the zenistar's disc for more than 60 seconds (because navigator locks you in place so you can't move).
• A developer review on Ivara is what I desire as well. Since Ivara prime is coming up next, I am wondering how you guys will market Ivara since she's not new player friendly and geared more towards intermediate and advanced players (granted, some of the melee stuff is gutted so even more so wondering).

Some possible proposals to help alleviate the situation.

• Remove the extra energy drain penalty on every melee hit on Ivara's prowl
• Allow Ivara's navigator to override the time limit on zenistar's disc so that she can fly the disc for as along as Ivara has energy left in her energy pool (this is actually how navigator used to function back 2 years ago. Triburos's video above, actually shows him navigating the zenistar disc beyond the time limit).
• Make new melee weapons that are actually geared towards being used with Ivara's navigator that actually work effectively in combat, that are simply not just glaives.  (Yes, I know navigator + glaive was the original combo from Dark Sectors. But out of all the melee weapons we have, that's only one category of melee weapons. Are we seriously expected to be only locked to one melee category with navigator given all the melee weapons we have? The zenistar plus navigator was an amazing alternative to glaives).
• (Oh, I like one of the alternative ideas of what TheLexiconArtist proposed) - "make the duration start at its previous 45 seconds then add some FLAT time per combo tier (5 seconds per tier would even out the duration to the current format at 9x multiplier - cap would be 105 seconds at 12x instead of 120, not a big loss for the QoL of base duration)."

Also, (not exactly related) but glaives + navigator has been broken on client host connections for a while. I've been constantly trying to bump this thread to get a developer to look at it and fix it. This is also maybe why you don't see Ivara + glaive setups while on client (they're also slightly broken). Please remember to fix as well DE

Spoiler

 

Edited November 4, 2019 by BlindStalker

[Magnus]

The decision to remove explosions from Power Throw on Glaives is short sighted and genuinely ignorant, especially for its supposed reasoning.

First off, removing explosions from Glaives doesn't benefit the 41 other frames. How does it? It doesn't make glaives more useable to people not using Chroma. The explosion at all being lethal to the player is by a combination of Power Throw AND Quick Return. At this point, it's like a disc grenade. Much like EVERY explosive weapon in the game, of COURSE it can hurt you. But you aren't removing explosions from Tonkor or Zarr for the sake of 41 other frames, are you?

The fact is, explosive weapons are dangerous, and the people who use Quick Return and Power Throw together know exactly what they wanted from that combo: self damage.

But that in itself isn't everything you gain. Even though its goal is fairly straight forward, a glaive still becomes strong while using Vex. It still has use. Such is not the case of what your'e trying instead to push.

 

Self damage is still integral for Chroma, that means users are going to find another weapon instead. With the glaive, it still had use in general play. But now, to self damage, the best option if Hikou Prime. Are you gonna just remove Concealed Explosives from the game to make Hikou Prime more accessible to 41 other frames later on? Is that the "end goal"?

But it's not just that. Concealed Explosives is a flat damage. It takes no benefit from Vex. The secondary slot, the one people use for their favorite kitguns, is now a dead slot for Chroma. Hikou Prime will fall off without any benefit or bonus to Vex and simply hold the slot hostage, while Glaives themselves could still be used for much longer than Concealed Explosives ever could be. In other words, you're actually HURTING build diversity by doing this.

 

In short: removing explosions from Power Throw to benefit 41 other frames is an outright lie. It does not benefit them, as they weren't going to use the SPECIFIC combo as well as aim down for no reason in the first place. It's a straw man argument. By removing the synergy, you also limit build diversity and force Chroma players into a more specific set up than previously, which honestly is a bit extra bullS#&$ because I legit just picked up a Gaze riven. And explosive weapons are dangerous, yes, but you aren't removing explosions from every explosive weapon to be more accessible for other frames.

All this does is hurt a group of players not as a direct nerf but one directly towards their build diversity. It benefits no one. At all. To imply otherwise is a joke.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Magnus

[-Kritias-]

6 hours ago, UuvoPlajaa said:

Gladiator mod set effect doesn't affect Exalted weapons anymore 😞

Gladiator Set doesn´t work at all. Also on "normal" weapons they have no effect although the UI icon shows up

[Andele3025]

When it comes to mods:
Make life strike work on all attacks with at least 1% life steal OR AT LEAST work universally for 15s after a heavy attack.

Return CO to total damage multiplier, each status 30-50% but not multiply itself/additive to itself.

Return Blood Rush to being a total crit multiplier at 75% instead of 165%.

Make meme strike do double vigilante effect/give instant 2 level of crit (so orange crit on anything) on slide attacks (that works like vigilante and as such has no interactions with blood rush).

[Yamazuki]

I was hoping back when there was the discussion about increasing the range of shorter weapons to be closer to longer weapons would go more along the lines of increasing their ranges, rather than just increasing them a bit while decreasing the others. There's a reason why weapons with long range and Primed Reach was used frequently, it's one of the only ways for melee weapons to even compete with ranged weapons and Warframe abilities. Primaries/Secondaries have projectiles that hit multiple targets at a time from long range and typically of high frequency without even having to use mod slots for it, and then Warframe abilities can just clear a room or two.

Then of course there's the damage issue. I've noticed a pretty significant drop in damage, even with Wukong Staff (due to gladiator mods not working). It takes several swings to just kill level 100-150 Grineer compared to just shooting them once. Previously I could just kill them with a single slide attack or 1-2 hits with Wukong's staff depending on which Grineer they were.

This update seemed to focus exclusively on the appearance of the melee system, rather than the effectiveness of it; because not only are ranges and damage too low, but the issue of combos being too slow from a movement perspective wasn't solved either, which is why some people were slide spamming too. Some of the effects look nice, such as the heavy ground slam, but I won't ever use either heavy attacks because it just results in a dps loss in addition to it being too slow anyways. This is again an issue that Primary/Secondaries and abilities don't have to deal with, and I'm unsure why this had to be added for melee.

All around the melee changes didn't really improve the melee system when it comes to the context of what Warframe has been. Quick movements, and killing a ton of enemies for a given period.