Heavy Attack Builds - A New Contender in Melee Builds?

[CrispyJieffs4Sale]

I've been seeing a new kind of melee build cropping up from the new heavy attack move, which have been widely disregarded by the community due to it costing your entire combo, resulting in its  incompatibility with incredible mods like Blood Rush and others. 

https://youtu.be/v4ZoFjM2CRc

TLDR, use weapons with guaranteed slash proc on heavy attacks, mod for high raw damage, so PPP and CO, Attack speed is mandatory for wind-up, slap in 2 60/60 mods of choice, with Killing Blow and Corrupt Charge making this build whole with heavy attack damage and instant X2 counter. Crit damage and range mods are optional. 

What do you think? The video shows its effectiveness against lv 165 corrupted heavies  and manic bombards (its existence I wasn't even aware of). This also brings some other mods to mind that can shine with this build, like Life Strike for the deathless. Maybe one can argue that you can replace PPP with another mod? This is such a new way to play melee, that I am eager to hear your thoughts and discuss it with you, fellow Tenno. 

Edit:

I found this video here, showing a Fragor P sporting more or less the same kinda build, wiping the Kuva's Fortress floor with cloned degenerates. Looks tasty

Edited November 12, 2019 by CrispyJieffs4Sale
Found more relevant information

[schilds]

Working as intended, I think. Looks like there are meant to be two paths for melee builds. First is the old sustained crit build with BR and the second is to use regular heavy attacks. 

A couple of design choices of the new melee system, that make it difficult to combine BR with heavy attacks, indicate this is deliberate.

• Inner Might and Power Spike being on separate spoiler mode trees.
• The higher your combo counter, the more expensive/inefficient heavy attacks are.

The reason a number of players jumped straight into dismissing heavy attacks (and have been asking for the above two design choices to be "fixed") is, I'm pretty sure, because they were testing them out using their old BR weapons, builds and playstyles without realising they needed to change all of those (not to mention, possibly, recraft their zaws and reroll their rivens :-P)

Having said that, you can make heavy attacks work with BR if you take advantage of abilities that cluster enemies like the guy in that video is doing.

Edited November 12, 2019 by schilds

[Acos]

"Combo Efficiency" is a stat you should look into; What it does is reduce the amount of combo points your heavy attack drains so that you can start chaining them together instead of blowing your entire combo meter all at once.  

You can find it in the mod 'Focus Energy' which is 60% Lightning Damage + 40% Combo Efficiency, and in the Zenurik Tree as "Inner Might" for another 60% 

I have been replacing Shocking Touch with Focus Energy in my builds so that I still have access to Corrosive damage for its' armor bypass while giving me a lot better mileage with Charge Attacks. I don't think Killing Blow is mandatory for charge attacks either; Condition Overload is often better damage overall since it buffs everything provided your status chance is semi decent and works naturally with combo attacks (you'll apply status effects as you build the combo meter, then you can use your charge attack for big damage.) 

I value Killing Blow more when the charge time for a weapon is excessive; Greatswords go from 1.1s to 0.7s which is a notable improvement. Nikanas on the other hand go from 0.5 to 0.3 which I can kiiiind of notice, but not by enough that it makes a big difference to me. 

Edited November 12, 2019 by Acos

[schilds]

Was just rerolling a riven, and possibly the other way to make heavy attacks work with BR is a riven with:

• combo efficiency
• chance to gain extra combo count
• some 3rd stat to cover whatever mod you're replacing (+dmg would probably be the most flexible)

The cap for efficiency is 90%, so a weapon with high disposition could probably almost cap that with just the riven.

 

However, I hope for the most part that stacking "the lot" (BR, CO, heavy attacks, slash, etc etc) doesn't become a new meta, and is a niche thing that only a few specific frames and weapons can make work, and then only to the same level as taking either path separately.

Edited November 12, 2019 by schilds