Melee Inconsistencies, Confusions, And Annoyances + Some Solutions To Them

[Azamagon]

INCONSISTENCIES AND CONFUSIONS:

You know how we have 2 different types of damage mods for Melee weapons? One type that increases "regular" melee damage (Pressure Point & Spoiled Strike), and another type that increases "charge" melee damage (Killing Blow, Rending Strike & Corrupt Charge). Then technically there is also a third type, the "finisher" melee booster (Finishing Touch), which only helps to boost your ground finisher attack.

 

Not only does this split up meleeing variety (either you go for "regular" or for "charge", building for both is a waste of modslots and modpoints), it can also get a little confusing. The confusion starts when you look at what OTHER melee attacks these mods affect. Look at this:

 

Charge mods increase: Charge damage, ground finishing damage, stealth attacks

Regular mods increase: Regular attacks, slide attacks (and i think wallattacks?)

 

That kind of makes sense right? Well, to make things more confusing, this isn't always the case!

 

Kogake, for example, does NOT work like this. Ground finishing attacks are affected by REGULAR melee mods (not CHARGE mods) and for some strange reason is NOT affected by Finishing Touch! That last part has to be a bug...

 

 

SOLUTIONS TO ABOVE INCONSISTENCIES AND CONFUSIONS:

Now when you think about this, isn't this just unnecessarily complex? What could be done with all this then? Streamlining the mods comes to mind:

 

* Killing Blow, Rending Strike & Corrupt Charge could increase ALL melee damage! (Corrupt Charge could need a renaming though, like Corrupt Offense)

* The aura Steel Charge could also increase ALL melee damage, not just regular damage!

* Pressure Point & Spoiled Strike can become "multihit" mods (Melee equivalent to multishot), which works on ALL kinds of melee attacks, charge and regular alike! Pressure Point could need some renaming (Shadow Strike?). The animation could look like a blurry and/or shadowy "afterimage" when a multihit occurs?

* Fury and similar attackspeed mods could increase both regular attack speed AND chargespeed!

* Reflex Coil and similar chargespeed mods could then increase something else. How about increasing how much you block with your blocking skill? Or how much blocking costs in stamina? Or interact somehow with a new "counterattack" system? I dunno, something else at least.

 

When speaking of melee mods, here are some other meleerelated mod-thoughts:

* Shouldn't Reflection (& Parry?) become a Melee mod, rather than a Warframe mod?

* Second Wind, couldn't that become HEALTH on melee kill instead of STAMINA. Or maybe give both?

* Melee Channel, couldn't the bonus be an AoE-energy explosion instead (To make it a more viable mod)?

* Parry and Reflex Guard are lackluster as they are right now. Here is my thoughts on them and what i would do to change them:

 

1) Parry needs a tweak. Its intention is decent, but very flawed in implementation. So here is my version:

Parry Stasis Guard - (Warframe or Melee mod, dunno. Basecost of 2, with 4 ranks (from 0 to 3)

When you block a melee attack with good timing (almost at the very instant the attack lands, with a 1-second leeway or so, to help with potential lag etc) the attacker is knocked up, put in stasis (similar to Rhino Stomp) for 0,5 - 2 seconds (time dependant on rank ofc) and then falls knocked down to the ground.

Not being chance-based is the point here. If you do an active, manual action, there should ALWAYS be an effect, luck should not play a role in wether an effect should happen. Otherwise a good idea behind the current mod.

 

2) Reflex Guard is just a really poorly implemented mod. I mean, it can even take away your actions! It needs a big revamp:

Reflex Guard Evasion Matrix - (Warframe mod, Basecost of 6, with 6 ranks (from 0 to 5)(?))

You have a X% chance when you are attacked by melee or direct ranged attacks (meaning, doesn't work against AoE-effects) that you completely avoid the attack (Blurry evasion-graphics similar to the agents in Matrix when they dodge bullets! Thus also the punny name for the mod).

Most importantly: This evading animation should NOT intervene with your actions in any way (Which the poorly implemented Reflex Guard currently does a lot, urgh). It would only be a quick indicator that your Warframe had uber reflexes and just dodged the attack. The evasion-chance would at max rank absolutely max be at around 30% or so (So, 5% per rank)

Not only is this a far COOLER mod, it is also way BETTER, not only because you evade an attack COMPLETELY, but also because it does NOT intervene with your manual actions!

Also note, this is a completely passive effect, thus, luck CAN be part of wether it triggers or not!

 

 

OTHER ANNOYANCES:

Playing around a lot lately with the Kogake, there is one thing that annoys the crap out of me: How the ground finishing attack is activated! Sometimes it triggers too early, causing you to punch in the air, missing the target completely. What i would do to fix this attack:

1) Trigger it with a different button! The actionbutton (X) comes to mind. This could be done for stealth-attacks too

2) Give back some of its "homing" properties. Finishers just flat out MISS so much these days!

 

 

Well, there are more things that could be done for melee, but this post is long enough already. More thoughts are here: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/89931-melee-tweaks/

Edited October 20, 2013 by Azamagon