On Making Melee Viable

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Melee is broken.  I think (or at least hope) everyone knows this.  The irony of the Galatine is that it is the first in its class that actually has a shot of being viable at endgame content, but it blows everything else out of the water by such a wide margin (it has 87% more DPS than its closest melee competitor, the Orthos Prime, and does more damage per charge attack than any other weapon in the game aside from the Ogris) that it's getting called OP.  Of course, the content it is overpowering is also the weakest in the game by a horrendous margin.  The lowest DPS weapon in the game is the uncharged Paris and even it beats the vast majority of the non-charge melee weapons (the exceptions are the Dual Ichor, the Dakra Prime, and the Fang Prime).

 

As I've said before, I have no actual stance on the Galatine's balance currently and don't really want to get into that here.  I merely point it out to demonstrate how atrocious melee balance is right now.  

 

Let's go through the problems with melee.

 

1. Melee does not scale appropriately.  In short, melee needs a multishot equivalent.  There is no current reason to use melee past the early game simply because it does not get the multiplicative boost that guns do.  The only way for a melee weapon to be remotely viable later on is to make them egregiously OP early game (I'm looking at you, Galatine).  They need their own multiplicative booster mod.  I've suggested it several times before, but it really needs to happen.  It doesn't matter if you call it "Ghost Slash," "Lag Strike," or any of the other dozen names I've seen for it, it just needs to happen.

2. Melee mods and mechanics heavily favor charged attack weapons.  While I go into the issues with melee charge mechanics in my other recent thread, I'll just point out here that the charge damage mods are better and that charged attacks ignore armor, making it far more viable which means that for weapons with low charge damage, they are effectively worthless for anything other than zorencoptering.

 

Melee needs help and it's not even that hard to fix.  Until then, we'll have a bunch of equipment that really isn't good for much of anything.  Melee is supposed to be a high-risk/high-reward style.  You have to get in close which obviously puts you in danger, but you ought to get some bonus out of that.  Right now, you don't.  If you are using a charge weapon, you'll be inferior to your guns but at least scratch your enemies.  If you're using a non-charged weapon, you're just wasting your time.

 

EDIT: to those who say melee is a fallback and should remain so, the issue with that is that it is a poor backup to your guns.  Anything the melee weapon can do, the gun can do better from further.  Even the fact that it has no ammo does not justify such a wide difference.

Edited September 30, 2013 by Volt_Cruelerz

[Grandarex]

The thing is, there just isn't any incentive to use your melee attack.

 

Everything Melee can do, guns can do better, and then some.

 

Only time you'd use your melee is when you're out of ammo. And if you run out of ammo in a middle of a game, it just means you came ill-prepared.  

[Archistopheles]

Where did you get 87% more dps? The initial calculations showed a 13% increase...

[Saenol]

As I've stated elsewhere, I already think melee is perfectly viable and has been for some time.

 

My opinion of melee's place in Warframe is simply different. I do, and probably always will, consider it a fallback or weapon of opportunity; something to be used when you would like to conserve ammo, make a silent kill, don't have time to reload/swap weapons, or need a bit of utility you don't otherwise have.

 

I do not want melee to rival gunplay and do not think it would be good for the game if it did.

 

I have plenty of incentive to use melee, and I make frequent and effective use of melee. It fits it's niche, and this is more than enough to justify it's existence.

 

Where did you get 87% more dps? The initial calculations showed a 13% increase...

 

Someone was probably ignoring criticals.

Edited September 30, 2013 by Saenol

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Where did you get 87% more dps? The initial calculations showed a 13% increase...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlWVt6vp3-YWdHZJRTBvRTBrNGNrb3dNbEZsc0tZVHc#gid=0

Galatine: 8350

Orthos Prime: 4464

 

Originally, my equations weren't well suited to dealing with charge mechanics as they are affected by both charge speed mods and rate mods.  This has been changed/fixed so it should now be as close as possible to the actual in-game performance without manually going through and counting frames (which I don't have the software or desire to do).

Edited September 30, 2013 by Volt_Cruelerz

[Saenol]

I'm not logging into google to view that.

 

Can you sum up the builds used for both calculations?

[shut]

A nice first step would to make all normal Melee attacks ignore armor. Especially considering that any melee weapon whose normal attacks don't ignore armor are pretty much useless against level 25+ enemies when using normal attacks.

[Archistopheles]

Gotcha. Thx Volt_C.

[Saenol]

A nice first step would to make all normal Melee attacks ignore armor. Especially considering that any melee weapon whose normal attacks don't ignore armor are pretty much useless against level 25+ enemies when using normal attacks.

 

Not in favor of this at all. The whole "armor does nothing" trope is even worse than that infinite armor scaling.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

I'm not logging into google to view that.

 

Can you sum up the builds used for both calculations?

Galatine (crit charge build)

-Killing Blow

-Rending Strike

-Focus Energy

-Reflex Coil

-Sundering Strike

-Fury

-True Steel

-Organ Shatter

 

Orthos Prime (rainbow charge build)

-Killing Blow

-Rending Strike

-Focus Energy

-Reflex Coil

-Sundering Strike

-Fury

-North Wind

-Molten Impact

 

Uncharged Paris (rainbow bow build)

-Serration

-Stormbringer

-Hellfire

-Piercing Hit

-Cryo Rounds

-Fast Hands

-Speed Trigger

-Split Chamber

 

Fang Prime uses a hybrid crit/rainbow build to maximize DPS (oddly enough, it's more efficient to give it Molten Impact rather than True Steel)

 

Dual Ichor uses an uncharged crit build

 

Dakra Prime uses an uncharged rainbow build

 

All mods maxed.

Edited September 30, 2013 by Volt_Cruelerz

[Genoscythe]

Melee is broken.  I think (or at least hope) everyone knows this.  The irony of the Galatine is that it is the first in its class that actually has a shot of being viable at endgame content, but it blows everything else out of the water by such a wide margin (it has 87% more DPS than its closest melee competitor, the Orthos Prime, and does more damage per charge attack than any other weapon in the game aside from the Ogris) that it's getting called OP.  Of course, the content it is overpowering is also the weakest in the game by a horrendous margin.  The lowest DPS weapon in the game is the uncharged Paris and even it beats the vast majority of the non-charge melee weapons (the exceptions are the Dual Ichor, the Dakra Prime, and the Fang Prime).

 

As I've said before, I have no actual stance on the Galatine's balance currently and don't really want to get into that here.  I merely point it out to demonstrate how atrocious melee balance is right now.  

 

Let's go through the problems with melee.

 

1. Melee does not scale appropriately.  In short, melee needs a multishot equivalent.  There is no current reason to use melee past the early game simply because it does not get the multiplicative boost that guns do.  The only way for a melee weapon to be remotely viable later on is to make them egregiously OP early game (I'm looking at you, Galatine).  They need their own multiplicative booster mod.  I've suggested it several times before, but it really needs to happen.  It doesn't matter if you call it "Ghost Slash," "Lag Strike," or any of the other dozen names I've seen for it, it just needs to happen.

2. Melee mods and mechanics heavily favor charged attack weapons.  While I go into the issues with melee charge mechanics in my other recent thread, I'll just point out here that the charge damage mods are better and that charged attacks ignore armor, making it far more viable which means that for weapons with low charge damage, they are effectively worthless for anything other than zorencoptering.

 

Melee needs help and it's not even that hard to fix.  Until then, we'll have a bunch of equipment that really isn't good for much of anything.  Melee is supposed to be a high-risk/high-reward style.  You have to get in close which obviously puts you in danger, but you ought to get some bonus out of that.  Right now, you don't.  If you are using a charge weapon, you'll be inferior to your guns but at least scratch your enemies.  If you're using a non-charged weapon, you're just wasting your time.

 

EDIT: to those who say melee is a fallback and should remain so, the issue with that is that it is a poor backup to your guns.  Anything the melee weapon can do, the gun can do better from further.  Even the fact that it has no ammo does not justify such a wide difference.

 

I agree with you, melee really needs to be fixed. It should become a ranged alternative, because nobody who has good guns runs out of ammo that fast that he is in need of melee, especially since ammo-mutation and carrier.

[Skial]

First of all there is something called progression, the guy that will register tomorrow wont jump into 100+ def with a rhino, swinging galatine, and blasting balls with ogris. So  like it or not, not every mele will stand up to galatine's stats. Also there are A LOT of people still using mele (my guns split planets with 1 shot ,but i still use mele JUST BECAUSE I @(*()$ FEEL LIKE IT! and thats a pretty good reason) 
Also there are types of mele. (short / long  /thrown /heavy) Don't expect a dagger to hit 2k+ charges, or a heavy to swing 6 times per "E" pressed.   

The galatine isn't the last wep they will ever make, and by the looks of it, its the first one from "end game content" so quit your biching and wait for armor 2.0. (I agree it was stupid to make it a MR3 wep.)

[taiiat]

especially since ammo-mutation and carrier.

i really wish the Mutation cards didn't troll everyones' ammo. i refuse to use them because of this, i'm not a big enough jerk to increase my own ammo by like 20% for an effective 95-100% decrease in the ammo everyone else has. 

(if you mutate ammo, and pick it up, the 3 other players can't pick up that ammo anymore, i don't think you can even pick it up if you have a weapon for the ammo type it converted to). effectively like how Ammo Scavengers used to work, but even worse. tons of ammo drops that never go away, and can't be picked up. atleast Ammo Scavengers, when they increased the drop rate of ammo type X, meant there was still the same number of items on the ground.

 

on topic:

 

Melee is broken.  I think (or at least hope) everyone knows this.  The irony of the Galatine is that it is the first in its class that actually has a shot of being viable at endgame content, but it blows everything else out of the water by such a wide margin (it has 87% more DPS than its closest melee competitor, the Orthos Prime

you know what, i'm glad someone agrees with me. after using Galatine for 5 minutes i could already see Galatine was easily blowing EVERY other melee weapon in the game out of the water.

yet, people said Orthos Prime was still better. >.>

 

anyways, eat my +1. 

and i'm privvy to the name 'Shadow Strike'. it sounds dark and edgy and ninja like. 

and this time, i'd like it to be an actual friggin 100%. 90%Multishot is bullsh*t. atleast make it a 6 level mod so it's 105% and isn't wasting a mod point because on a polarity, the cost of the card only goes up per 2 upgrades, but 5 level mods only take advantage of this to level 4, level 5 is wasting mod points, theoretically. and then we have that tiny 3 bullet chance, which is something all Multishots should atleast have considering we have '100%' for all of them as it is. 

 

that being said, Gram was/is a pretty baller weapon since it's Charge Attack hits twice :> the first hit for like 50 or 75% of the Charge Damage, and then the full 100% after once the blade comes around. it was amazing. the first hit often killed the enemy, and if it didn't, it certainly stunned the enemy long enough to get the full swing in. 

(i've heard some other melee's may also do this, which made me sad, since i thought Gram was exclusive to that :<)

 

 

edit:

 

 

First of all there is something called progression

i've said it before, and i'll say it once again. if Warframe continues to nullify all it's content every couple months with 10% the content volume it had through Power Creep, Warframe will dig it's own grave. the fantastic game we have here that has honest to god, ACTUAL choice of what equipment players wish to use, will go away, and players will get bored all using the same content.

 

*cough* Battlefield 3. if you look at any 'pro' or 'hardcore' or 'MLG' or whatever you want to call it groups, guess what everyone uses? M16A3, Red Dot Sight, Foregrip, Heavy Barrel, Supressor. the only choice there is between two attachments that are both pretty useful.

the reason for this? that M16 is superior to EVERY other gun in the entire game. it's absolutely horrendus. there's a pretty nice choice of guns, but you're damage output is lower if you're not using that M16. because it's crazy OP(/ everything else Underpowered).

thusly, you've never heard of anyone that plays Battlefield 3 competitively, most likely. because very few people do.

Edited September 30, 2013 by taiiat

[Volt_Cruelerz]

i thought Gram was exclusive to that :<)

Galatine does this as well.  I'm not sure what other weapons do.

[Skial]

i've said it before, and i'll say it once again. if Warframe continues to nullify all it's content every couple months with 10% the content volume it had through Power Creep, Warframe will dig it's own grave. the fantastic game we have here that has honest to god, ACTUAL choice of what equipment players wish to use, will go away, and players will get bored all using the same content.

 

Maaaan if you only knew how many times ive heard that go for Wow, and yet they still have milions of subs. If you dont like nullify content you will leave and some other guy who likes nullify content will take your place. And a game this polished is not digging there own grave that's for sure. 

 

[Volt_Cruelerz]

First of all there is something called progression, the guy that will register tomorrow wont jump into 100+ def with a rhino, swinging galatine, and blasting balls with ogris. So  like it or not, not every mele will stand up to galatine's stats. Also there are A LOT of people still using mele (my guns split planets with 1 shot ,but i still use mele JUST BECAUSE I @(*()$ FEEL LIKE IT! and thats a pretty good reason) 

Also there are types of mele. (short / long  /thrown /heavy) Don't expect a dagger to hit 2k+ charges, or a heavy to swing 6 times per "E" pressed.   

The galatine isn't the last wep they will ever make, and by the looks of it, its the first one from "end game content" so quit your biching and wait for armor 2.0. (I agree it was stupid to make it a MR3 wep.)

 

I really don't see where you were going with this post.  I never said the Galatine was OP in general, only that it smashed early-game content which anyone in their right mind would agree with.  And using melee is horribly inferior to using guns.  That's my point.  Perhaps it is enough for you, but once you really start looking at the numbers, it's an eye-opener.  At least it was with me.  I didn't use to use heavy weapons for charge attacks, but immediately after setting up my tables to support it, I realized just how huge of a difference it made.  It's a similar experience when comparing guns to melee...  It's a horrifyingly wide disparage.

Edited October 1, 2013 by Volt_Cruelerz

[Azamagon]

As i just posted in another thread:

 

* Buff all weapons melee regular attacks by about 50% or so (no increase for charge-attacks... well maybe a 25% boost or so for the weakest weapons, like longswords etc). Make them have more bite in general!

 

* Make all melee weapons have a special armormodifier, which causes any melee attack that doesn't normally ignore armor to always cause at least 40% or so of its damage to be unhindered by armor values (maybe could be done to other weapons as well, but with a lower limit. Melee needs it the most)

 

* Streamline ALL damage to be buffed by Killing Blow (meaning, Killing Blow increases both regular attacks and charge-attacks. Everything. No more division!)

 

* Change Pressure Point's name into something like "Blood Wind", which would be similar to multishot-mods (and should have a cool "afterimage"-effect when it triggers). Chance percentages? I dunno, but could cap at around 100% like the other multishot ones.

 

* Heavy Weapon's ground executions need to be faster, and ground executions need to be a lot stronger in general. The mod "Finishing Touch" is yet another bandaid-mod imo. Finishing Touch should be revamped into something else.

 

* Make all weapons capable of hitting multiple targets. Longswords (and weapons of similar size) should be hitting up to 3 targets (Dakra Prime could have a limit of 4 or 5 to make it more special?), Daggers and Fistweapons should be able to hit max 2 targets, but should also be made quite a bit faster, in particular single daggers.

Some attacks should have more "explosion"-like effects too, such as Fistweapons' ground finishers (which needs an increase in aoe too, as its aoe is a bit too tiny imo). The Kogake's slidekick (and to slightly lesser degree, the Furax+Ankyros' slideuppercuts) could also have quite a bit bigger hitting area, maybe also given a bit of an aoe-effect (as it is kinda hard to hit with them imo, in particular the Kogake's slidekick).

Make meleeing FUN and "mayhemmy" so to speak! :)

 

Note: Individual weapons also need balancing on top of that (For example, i could see the Galatine made slower on normal attacks (but also made a lot stronger), while the charge attack is nerfed to maybe a damage of somewhere between 250 - 300 or so. Due to the above changes, it (and all other melee weapons too) would scale far better anyway)

 

Also, i hope the armor 2.0 will accomplish something similar to the second point of my spoiler (but needs to be emphasized far harder for melee weapons, due to the risks of meleeing)

Edited October 1, 2013 by Azamagon

[Skial]

I really don't see where you were going with this post.  I never said the Galatine was OP in general, only that it smashed early-game content which anyone in their right mind would agree with.  And using melee is horribly inferior to using guns.  That's my point.  Perhaps it is enough for you, but once you really start looking at the numbers, it's an eye-opener.  At least it was with me.  I didn't use to use heavy weapons for charge attacks, but immediately after setting up my tables to support it, I realized just how huge of a difference it made.  It's a similar experience when comparing guns to melee...  It's a horrifyingly wide disparage.

Sorry but "early-game content" is that it? The whole point of your thread is that a new content from the latest update outshines content from 4-5 months ago, and there is a huge gap in between? Let me give an example of how progress works:

 

(example)

"  Just to clarify the "upgrade" thing. This is the top end upgrade at the moment. Don't know if this is going to be upgraded any further.

To see it as tiers:

1. Thunder 

2. Deep Thunder 

3. Stormherald  

                            Stormherald WoWhead"

An upgradable item from wow, which with every upgrade its stats get higher and higher.

 

 

As for my general point, that i was aiming for, ( may not have been obv. in the first post) man you are a total idiot claiming that mele is broken. Do you have all the meles? Are they maxed out to their full potential (potatoed/formad/mods)? I highly doubt that. And if using mele feels inferior to you, well that's your own personal S#&$.  

Edited October 1, 2013 by Skial

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Sorry but "early-game content" is that it? The whole point of your thread is that a new content from the latest update outshines content from 4-5 months ago, and there is a huge gap in between? Let me give an example of how progress works:

 

As for my general point, that i was aiming for, ( may not have been obv. in the first post) man you are a total idiot claiming that mele is broken. Do you have all the meles? Are they maxed out to their full potential (potatoed/formad/mods)? I highly doubt that. And if using mele feels inferior to you, well that's your own personal S#&$.  

I'm saying melee is horribly inferior to guns.  A lot of melee weapons were never that good before enemy levels got bumped, but at least the Furax, Scindo, and Fragor, and Gram were good.  They simply didn't survive the level bump.  Those weapons that weren't that good to begin with just got crushed under the new system and now we have a melee weapon that looks like it might fit the new system.  I was contrasting the new with the old to bring attention to the brokenness of the old.

 

Do I have all melee?  No.  Are they all forma'd?  No.  Are all the ones I have potato'd?  Yes.  But I do have most of the better melee weapons and I do have them maxed.  I would say that I've gotten a pretty good handle on the melee in this game at this point and it's not in the best shape.  There is no point to using melee as a playstyle.*  Even if you're just using it when you need damage while reloading, unless you're doing it for the stun, you're wasting your time.  You may as well just run away and wait for the reload.  The damage your guns will deal completely outclasses anything your weapon will do.*

 

And it's not my own personal problem.  It's not a matter of it "feeling" inferior (though it does by a longshot).  It's a matter of fact that melee puts out a tiny fraction of the damage of guns!  There is no upside to melee aside from guns.  The only thing you might try to argue is infinite ammo, but I haven't run out of ammo on T3 in more than a month and I don't even use mutator mods.  Melee is horribly underpowered.*  There is no getting around it.  There just isn't.

 

 

*not counting the Galatine, but even it gets outclassed by most guns.