Just some opinions about melee

[tigerbeatsdragon]

Hi. This is my first post here and there are some things i want get get other people's thoughts on. Personally I really like the melee changes overall, but there is still work to be done. Here are some things I want addressed.

1.CO is now additive with pressure point causing some players to stop using perssure point. CO was broken before due to being multiplicative with itself so I think it the calculation of CO should be calculated after pressure point to prevent the strange modding dilemma we have now. It wil also help status melee weapons which are currently quite weak. I think a simmilar calculation change should be applied to blood rush as well, as true steel and sacrificial steel are useless now due to them being additive with blood rush.

2. some stances feel barren (sinking talon for dual daggers, shimmering blight and bleeding willow for polearms etc.) Having only 2 combos. Either combine 2 lackluster stances into one or add new combos to them. I will never use these stances due to lack of options. Also some stances had iconic moves removed (EX: gaia's tragedy rapid punches, vulpine mask rapid stabs). These two examples in particular really bummed me out as those moves were my favorite parts of their respective stances. Also alot of moves don't open up enemies to finishers anymore, but finishers are their own problem.

3. Finisher damage multipers havent changed at all. I dont know if many realize this, but daggers were only used in finisher builds BECAUSE of covert lethality. They actually have one of the lower finisher damage multipliers in-game(about 6x with 8x being the multiplier used by most weapons) even with CL's extra finisher damage, dagger finishers suck now. While finisher builds aern't dead (rapier and hammers have a 36x back finisher multiplier), Daggers are now one of the worst options despite being good when used to slash at stuff. I think dual daggers(which also have a below average finisher multiplier) and daggers should have the highest finisher multiplier to offset their terrible range. Other weapons should also be adjusted for balance purposes. This will serve to make the covert lethality nerf hurt less and increace variety in finisher builds (seriously, I don't feel like a ninja with ash anymore due to using a big ass hammer with fatal teleport)

4. This is not something that pertains to this update, but it's been bothering me for years. Shortly before POE and focus 2.0 came out, stealth was hit with the nerf bat in an undocumented change. Prior to the nerf, you could maintain the stealth damage multiplier on a single target as long as you did not physically touch them with your warframe. After the nerf, only the first hit gets the stealth multiplier no matter what, and you have to wait 5 or so seconds for the multiplier to return before you get another single stealth multiplied hit. What bothered me the most was that NOBODY talked about this. I scoured youtube and these forums the day it was nerfed and I only found 2 posts mentioning it before the threads were closed by mods. Interestingly, the behavior of blinds did not change. Blinds give the stealth multiplier as long as the enemy remains blinded. While people used to think of Loki as one of the best frames in the game, after the gass fixes and this nerf he essentially faded into obscurity. Not to mention that Naramon was really broken back then, essentially invalidating Loki and I think thats why the nerf happened. Despite this, I initially thought it was a bug and decided to wait before posting anything. I've waited 2 years. I think it's time stealth be returned to its former glory.

5. Heavy attacks just kinda suck. I had some fun with them at the start when rapiers didn't reset combo allowing me to oneshot basically everything (guaranteed slash price on a red crit multiplied by 12 hurts it seems), but that was patched a day after the old blood was released. Even with combo efficiency mods they just aernt worth using. I think it would be beneficial to have separate combo counters for mods like blood rush and heavy attacks. Currently its just not worth sacrificing all the crit granted by blood rush for one attack.

 

Sorry for long post but I just needed somewhere to vent.

[Xaero]

38 minutes ago, tigerbeatsdragon said:

Sorry for long post but I just needed somewhere to vent.

Not extremely long and everything's on point.

[Anarbitrio]

I'll keep saying it. If Pressure Point and True Steel are supposed to be the mods you use for builds that take advantage of heavy attacks (Unlike BR/CO hybrid builds that always want to keep a high combo count), then they need, in addition to what they currently offer, additional interactions with Heavy attacks. Animation speed, combo duration, heavy attack damage etc. built in those mods would at least give them a niche. 

Right now they're non-options. I want to have fun with the heavy attack sub-system by using things like dispatch Overdrive, Exodia Brave and Life Strike, but Heavy attacks are just a tad bit wonky right now. I like that the feel more "meaty" than regular attacks, but they're a bit clunky and slow even after modding.

Love the system and it's a refreshing way to play, but it needs some fine tuning. The new stances are really fun.

[shut]

1 hour ago, tigerbeatsdragon said:

4. This is not something that pertains to this update, but it's been bothering me for years. Shortly before POE and focus 2.0 came out, stealth was hit with the nerf bat in an undocumented change. Prior to the nerf, you could maintain the stealth damage multiplier on a single target as long as you did not physically touch them with your warframe. After the nerf, only the first hit gets the stealth multiplier no matter what, and you have to wait 5 or so seconds for the multiplier to return before you get another single stealth multiplied hit. What bothered me the most was that NOBODY talked about this. I scoured youtube and these forums the day it was nerfed and I only found 2 posts mentioning it before the threads were closed by mods. Interestingly, the behavior of blinds did not change. Blinds give the stealth multiplier as long as the enemy remains blinded. While people used to think of Loki as one of the best frames in the game, after the gass fixes and this nerf he essentially faded into obscurity. Not to mention that Naramon was really broken back then, essentially invalidating Loki and I think thats why the nerf happened. Despite this, I initially thought it was a bug and decided to wait before posting anything. I've waited 2 years. I think it's time stealth be returned to its former glory.

 

Yeah, WF's playerbase has always paid little to no attention to melee stealth attacks, despite them being as powerful as the most popular crit builds for as long as they were.

Note the past tense, by the way-- DE has slowly but surely stealth-nerfed the crap out of stealth attacks to the point that it's difficult to rely on them, let alone build around them as your primary source of damage. Stealth mechanics have always been inconsistent between major updates, and over the past year, these changes (undocumented, of course) have been almost always for the worse.

I am 100% in agreement that stealth melee needs to be made more viable. Maybe not by straight-up allowing multiple consecutive stealth hits from invisible frames (cue Loki + Telos Boltace flashbacks), but... consistency has been a worsening issue for a long time now, and even the best stealth frames are currently kinda crappy at what they do.
Examples of unwelcome undocumented changes (some bugs, some not) that I'd like DE to revert:

• Blinded enemies become completely immune to stealth damage bonuses while affected by a Blast proc.
• Blinded enemies will often stop receiving stealth damage when knocked down via some other method (e.g. Slash Dash, Void Blast), but... inconsistently.
• Enemies are completely unable to receive stealth damage bonuses within 5 seconds of spawning. (This destroys the viability of stealth-melee builds in modes like ESO.)
• Non-Blinded enemies are unable to receive multiple consecutive stealth multipliers when knocked down or ragdolled. (This destroys any ability for Invisible frames to land more than a single stealth hit. Formerly, you were able to knock down enemies with a silenced Blast proc and then enjoy consecutive stealth hits before they stood back up. This was the only way that Loki/Ash/Octavia were able to compete with the likes of Excalibur in terms of stealth damage.) ^{EDIT: This seems to have been reverted since U26.0, but who knows how long it survives before it's removed again.}

It's a shame that stealth melee is in the dismal state that it's in, because aside from "special" weapons like Redeemer, stealth damage bonuses have been basically the only way to make pure-Status melee builds viable. With the recent Condition Overload nerf (i.e. with status builds losing one of the only damage multipliers they had), this has become even worse.

 

Stealth attacks need a rework. Players should be able to activate them more consistently, without having to be shoehorned into a "blinding/sleeping" (Excal, Inaros, Ivara, etc) or "invisible" (Loki, Ash, Octavia, also Ivara, etc) frame.

If I were somehow in charge of a rework, here are some of the mechanical changes I'd make:

• Hitting an enemy from behind will always produce a stealth bonus, regardless of the awareness state of the enemy. Smaller weapons (daggers, dual daggers, fists, etc) will have a "backstab cone" of nearly 180 degrees (similar to Spy in Team Fortress 2), whereas larger weapons (polearms, whips, heavy blades, etc) will have a much narrower cone.
  Each enemy's "backstab cone" will become wider when they're not specifically targeting the player.
• When hitting / bumping into an unaware enemy (e.g. from being undetected, or while Invisible), enemies will only become "aware" (i.e. stop taking stealth damage) after ~1.5 seconds from the first contact. Reduce the time taken for this to "reset" from 3 seconds (current) to 2 seconds.
• Enemies will always receive stealth bonuses while affected by "Lifted" status.
• Enemies will always receive stealth bonuses while affected by an Impact proc.
• Expand the variety of abilities that force enemies to become unaware; e.g. Bastille, Spellbind, Stomp, etc; such that Blind/Dessicate/SleepArrow/Rest aren't the only options in the game.
• Very minor, but add a melee equivalent of Hush/Suppress. (Melee weapons DO make noise when colliding with terrain, and the only current way to nullify that is by playing Banshee or Hushed Loki.)

 

EDIT:
Sorry for kinda dumping all that into your thread!
TL;DR: Melee stealth damage has become crappy and inconsistent, even for the frames best suited for it. It needs a rework.

Edited November 14, 2019 by SortaRandom