Deimos: Arcana - Bonewidow Necramech Megathread

[SirArtilleur]

Alright... I ain't gonna restrain my feedbacks in any shape or form : so take it as it is, with all my frustration ,and my spite.

This necramech is an absoloute pile of garbage.

In all ways, and all aspects, this is as broken and underwelming as your fantastic failure at Railjack : initial release. Many warned you during the Test Cluster, feedbacks were provided, lots were telling you to not ship this update ; to keep working on it, that WE could wait... and yet, you did anyway. So be it. This shall be my first, and last review on this game, before finally uninstalling it for good. I've wasted to f***** much time, and spend far to much money, to finally realise this game won't change. You guys won't change.

With the little trust I have left in DE, calling to the simple sence of reason, I share with you all my test results and redesign... Worst is, I doubt those will be listened.

Regarless, after 2 to 4 hours of testing, this is where I conclude :

 

• MEATHOOK :

 

Currently, gimmick at best. I was not expecting to impale gigantic units, despite trying, to be sure of it ; and even less to throw them with such tiny arm ... Still, I was expecting some purpose in throwing a grunt at the face of my enemies. At worst, some ragdoll, at best, to do some TRUE damage. There was no significant impact reported on the grunt thrown, nor the enemies around. Surprisingly, even throwing them at walls did absoloutely no damages ... I highly question to full purpose of this ability. In state, I can answer: none. Further info, the meathook doesn't work if we use it on angular tilesets, and different height zones ... a hill in the plains, for example. Impossible to touch a grunt above or under my position.

Recommendation: Significant Buff + Rework. The meathook reach, and most importantly, the point of contact should be bigger if we want to make this one efficient ... I would suggest an auto aim on the closest target, like the 1st ability of Excalibur. Also, I sincerely ask: why only one target? The claw of the mech could at the very least hold 3 grunt simultanously, at max rank!

For the rework, turning the meathook projectile as a makeshift bomb ! Charged by flux energy, infusing the target with void energy. The longer the body is kept in hand, the more will it stack damages as well as some crit multiplier ( going from x1.5 to x3 bonus crit damage at max cap. ). Holding more than one grunt in hand significantly increase the ammount of consumed flux Then, throwing the makeshift grenade(s) in 1 to 3 directions, in cone, making then detonate on direct impact with any enemies, or a couple of seconds after being thrown if no direct contact detected ... dealing blast damages ... and eventually, slowing down the enemies trapped in the radius of impact.

( Detail ): if you ever do bring special mods for Necramechs to change their abilities, make this ability not a slide forward, but a harpoon, limiting the number of catch from 3 to 1, but allowing a greater range and cast speed, while also infincting puncture damage to uncatchable targets ( the biggest ).

 

• SHIELD MAIDEN :

 

I... I have absoloutely no clue how this piece of rusty metal works. Testing it during the deimos ruins exploration, it "seems" to have quite worked to stop damages, as they came from all directions while the infested poped everywhere . . . But when it came to grineers and corpus on the Plains and Fortuna, in places easier to maintain dogfights, I realised the shield let pass through all shots coming in its front direction ! From grunts to turrets, even some melee damages. Only time to time would it actually stop the course of a bullet or the strike of a prova. TLDR : it works a quarter of time, and overall, doesn't change much as if we equiped it or not, as the Mech itself is significantly tanky... Also, it was impossible to cast the 1st ability while the shield was active, which is quite bothering.

Recommendation : Buff. A shield should be able to protect its user... And with the size of the Necramech, I'm not surprised this basic plate can't do much. I would suggest to significantly extend the reach of the shield protection, not "directly" in size but in detection of impact... Can't much translate what i mean, but, like the Silva & Aegis, naturally : bigger. Also, I would suggest to make it usefull for teamates who may not have acces to necramech, or don't see the use, the need. Maintaining aim with the Necramech could extend the energy emaning of the shield to create a wall, or a half sphere of energy, blocking all in coming damages untill the stak is fully depleted ; protecting those behind the mech and its shield, allowing to safely shoot behind it.

( Detail ) : I don't like the way the shield is put in front of the Mech. It's like an apron... I personally find it ridiculous in design. I'd suggest two options purely cosmetic : to give the ability to hide it, as the rest of the warframe weapons... or, to select where we put the shield : in Front, on Back, directly on left Arm.

 

• FIRING LINE :

 

Using it on the infestation was perfectly useless : the ammount of corpse colliding on eacother was beyond the strengh of the lasers, therefore, they didn't move at all despite countless cast. On the other hand, the Testing on Grineers prooved this ability to work... though it clearly is also gimical, and have little to no physical impact, no ragdoll, no damages, not even the lost of balance. it's like they were gently pushed aside.

Recommendation : Buff. I understand that this ability sole purpose is to be some kind of CC. What I would suggest would be to put that missing impact on the grunts. I would suggest to allow the lasers to cast some ice procs on those touched by the lasers, slowing the ennemies trapped in the reach allowing the players to properly shoot them down.

( Detail ) : if you ever do bring special mods for Necramechs to change their abilities, make those lasers scan slower the radius... but turning it into a damage ability, at the cost of more energy : doing big fire or even slash damages on all passing by the reach of the lasers, rather than regrouping them in the same place. Working like those traps in the Orokin tilesets.

 

• EXALTED IRONBRIDE :

 

By far, the biggest joke of all.. No arguement with that : you missed the shot by miles ! The basic stats are horendous, worst than Veritux, the very first archwing melee ! The animation is clunky and goes in all directions without literally touching any-f*****-thing. The fact that, despite being considered as an arch-melee, the players are unable to change it for any other arch-melee weapon ( that would do the job better by 1000 times, I insist ! ) is literally a shame. And icing on the turd : you have 60%-70% chance to break your nechramech with this ability : the choice being between no blade appearing... Desapearing after a hard land on the ground... Or being trap within the necramech, with no access to abilities, or operator of course... Trapped in a walking coffin. TLDR : you've done goofed !

 

Recommendation :  M A S S I V E  buff + rework.The arch melee were cast aside for a very long time, and it feels like it ! I can understand that for the Nechramech, this blade is the equivalent of an exlated weapon... Well DE, treat it this way. First off, buff it stats by a lot : damages, status, and crit chances are far to low to be viable in any scenarios, even versus the common mods of level 20-25... and especially especially compared to his Brother and its twin guns ! I'd suggest an hybrid weapon ( 25% status/crit chance + x2 crit multiplier ) , or a status weapon as a base of a rework, with just enough crit to make it spice. so ( 35% Status ) for ( 15% crit chance )+ ( x2 crit multiplier ).

 

For the rework... a special / seconday / heavy attack. Since we don't have combo counter on this weapon, it could work like the rest of the Necramech weapons... killing will charge the big damage. And for this attack, I have three form to offer :

- A Glaive like throw, all in crit damages, killing all on its way before coming back to the necramech.

- A Terralyst Ground Slam, All in status damages, launching forward a sucession of energy detonations, devastating and propulsing all mobs on its way.

- An excalibur wave emitter, Mix of crit and status damages, emptying itself on a duration of 10 seconds, throwing at the face of the ennemies giant waves of void energy.

 

 

IN CONCLUSION :

 

This update should not have shipped yesterday. Not before a long time. At the very least two to three more weeks in my books. There is many, so many problems not solved, and it brought even more with it : bugs, netwrok problems, balancing, and so on. Any man of reason would have waited. For I don't know which reason... you did not. Well, since I leave the game for good, I can only suspect greed, in its most putrid form.

Regardless, I don't care any longer. You've lost my faith long ago.You've lost my trust 2 years ago. You've lost the respect I had for you, since Railjack... And now, you've offcially lost the little interrest I had left for this game.

Do whatever you want with those feedbacks, listen to them. Or not. Same goes for the other who like me tried to warn you ; those who went on test field last weekend and highlited all the problems and falgs. Since you do as you wish, I won't sail on this boat any longer. So long to all the friends I met on this road, I'm f***** done with this game, and Digital Extreme.

For the rest of you who still have faith, may you be right. May I be wrong. But right now, I don't think so. Time will tell : not me.

Have fun while it last, put your expectations low, and don't trust anyone. not even yourself . . . . . not even your SELF-self.

Tenno Artilleur, signing out. For good.

[SilverBones]

We have been reading the feedback on the Bonewidow and wanted to give you a heads up that we are looking to make the following changes in a coming hotfix:

Bonewidow Changes:

• Firing Line now has a forced stagger to de-mobilize enemies hit by its rays.
• Shield Maiden now has a larger Health pool and increased angle of blocking (160 by default, 220 when holding Shield and Sword) 
• Exalted Ironbride now has a base damage value of 1500 at Max Rank (increased from original 1000)
• Exalted Ironbride now has a base Critical Chance of 45% with a 3x multiplier (increased from original 5% and 1.5x).

Please note that these example numbers are expected to ship, but as with all things involving development, there may be some tweaks before the final hotfix is deployed. This gives you a general idea of our intention and plans for changes to Bonewidow, however.

Thank you everyone for your feedback, and keep it coming!

[vasRayya]

24 minutes ago, [DE]Bear said:

We have been reading the feedback on the Bonewidow and wanted to give you a heads up that we are looking to make the following changes in a coming hotfix:

Bonewidow Changes:

• Firing Line now has a forced stagger to de-mobilize enemies hit by its rays.
• Shield Maiden now has a larger Health pool and increased angle of blocking (160 by default, 220 when holding Shield and Sword) 
• Exalted Ironbride now has a base damage value of 1500 at Max Rank (increased from original 1000)
• Exalted Ironbride now has a base Critical Chance of 45% with a 3x multiplier (increased from original 5% and 1.5x).

Please note that these example numbers are expected to ship, but as with all things involving development, there may be some tweaks before the final hotfix is deployed. This gives you a general idea of our intention and plans for changes to Bonewidow, however.

Thank you everyone for your feedback, and keep it coming!

increasing combo duration would be great since there's no combo mods for archmelee, 5 seconds is really short, even moreso since you're in a slow mech

[Leqesai]

30 minutes ago, [DE]Bear said:

We have been reading the feedback on the Bonewidow and wanted to give you a heads up that we are looking to make the following changes in a coming hotfix:

Bonewidow Changes:

• Firing Line now has a forced stagger to de-mobilize enemies hit by its rays.
• Shield Maiden now has a larger Health pool and increased angle of blocking (160 by default, 220 when holding Shield and Sword) 
• Exalted Ironbride now has a base damage value of 1500 at Max Rank (increased from original 1000)
• Exalted Ironbride now has a base Critical Chance of 45% with a 3x multiplier (increased from original 5% and 1.5x).

Please note that these example numbers are expected to ship, but as with all things involving development, there may be some tweaks before the final hotfix is deployed. This gives you a general idea of our intention and plans for changes to Bonewidow, however.

Thank you everyone for your feedback, and keep it coming!

Ironbride and maiden changes are a step in the right direction but ironbride, even with 1500 base damage is still laughably weaker compared to the artillery of the other mech.

I mean. Ffs the explosive round from the other mech is default 12000 damage with 50% crit chance. How does it make sense to you people to people that this melee has such pathetic damage?

You realize the mods for archmelee are trash, right? And there are no stances... and its range is melee range...

Like... what is going on with you guys. Is working from home making ya'll crazy or something? We told you, across many pages, on test center that the damage of this thing was dog crap. Upping it to 1500 does not fix the issue.... it needs upped to like 10k to compare with the other mech. Otherwise literally no reason anyone would use bonewidow over the other one. 

Bonewidow is just laughably bad. Which is a shame because it looks really cool.

[Leqesai]

2 minutes ago, rachjumper said:

increasing combo duration would be great since there's no combo mods for archmelee, 5 seconds is really short, even moreso since you're in a slow mech

Is the combo multiplier affecting damage at all? 

[Drachnyn]

vor 43 Minuten schrieb [DE]Bear:

Exalted Ironbride now has a base damage value of 1500 at Max Rank (increased from original 1000)

That's still laughably bad compared to the arquebex and nothing else bonewidow does is useful enough to ever compete with voidrig.

[Mayhemdax]

2 minutes ago, Drachnyn said:

That's still laughably bad compared to the arquebex and nothing else bonewidow does is useful enough to ever compete with voidrig.

I 100% agree with you, Voidrig is way better than Bonewidow, not only for the arqubex but has a 360 shield blocking all incoming damage aswell, if shieldmaiden had a big shield just like (Ex.9) Reinhard from overwatch that would be way cooler and effective and would make sense since this is a PvE game

[-QueenUnicorn-]

Bonewidow is so laughably weak and honestly the worst thing I think I have ever played in this game Xaku on release was a god in comparison.

 

take his damage and multiply it by 100x and he might be in an ok place

 

[Leqesai]

4 minutes ago, -QueenUnicorn- said:

Bonewidow is so laughably weak and honestly the worst thing I think I have ever played in this game Xaku on release was a god in comparison.

 

take his damage and multiply it by 100x and he might be in an ok place

 

Well, 10x not 100x... 100x would be a bit much....

[-QueenUnicorn-]

Just now, Leqesai said:

Well, 10x not 100x... 100x would be a bit much....

nah the swing speed and moveset is so bad that it would need to be insane damage to make it worth while

[I-wanna-spoon-Tohru]

Meathook
This ability should have lifesteal, that would make it a lot more useful and would also solve the problem of Necramechs not being able to heal themselves.

Shield Maiden
In my opinion the shield is way too small, and sometimes projectiles still damage you despite hitting the shield. It would be cool if it would protect a bigger area. Maybe also make it indestructible? I don't know if that would be too busted, but it would make this ability a lot better as currently its a worse version of Voidrigs 360 deg protection.

Firing Line
In my opinion this ability should be replaced by something that closes the distance between the Necramech and the target, maybe something like a free teleport(you get teleported where you look) or Mags pull (although I would prefer a free teleport ability because it enhances mobility).

Exalted Ironbride
Very bad and dissapointing compared to Voidrigs exalted. Uping the damage won't solve the problem as the archwing melee mods are very bad too. The swings go all over the place missing targets and with only 3 different attacks it is very repetetive. It would be nice to have a stance mod with different combos.
 

[Circle_of_Psi]

17 hours ago, rachjumper said:

the ultimate so incredibly underwhelming it's actually insane
I have the voidrig artillery forma'd and maxed out and it does 250k damage per shot in a 6m aoe with no damage falloff and a 100% crit chance/5.4x crit multiplier
it does a raw 1.36 million damage PER SHOT after crit
it also shoots really quick
it works well for voidrig because it's a fairly squishy ranged unit, a glass cannon

bonewidow's main damage would be the sword. SHOULD BE the sword.
but it's not. it's really REALLY undertuned. If I'm going to put myself at risk in melee with a mech that has no way to heal:
1. I need more health and armor
2. I need to be crapping out way more damage then I would with a gun

I'm hitting a couple thousand damage tops with this sword. it struggles to kill starchart enemies, let alone anything past level 30.
all the archwing melee mods need to be dramatically buffed, and the base stats on the sword need to be ALOT higher then they are now.
if I kit this sword out I should be doing AT LEAST the same amount of damage the voidrig artillery does, preferably more since I have to walk up and smack them with it.

other then the sword being hot garbage:
the first ability is a meme but that's fine, I found grabbing frost eximus with their shield up blocks enemy projectiles and is a pretty neat interaction. also tossing annoying enemies away is pretty cool.
the shield could be stronger, if I don't get 360* damage immunity like the voidrig equivalent power, the frontal shield should be blocking a lot more damage to compensate.
the third ability doesn't even work half the time so I can't really say anything on it until it gets fixed, but considering what it does it costs too much energy.

I like the kit overall but all the numbers are way too low.
 

This ^

[Circle_of_Psi]

1 hour ago, Leqesai said:

Ironbride and maiden changes are a step in the right direction but ironbride, even with 1500 base damage is still laughably weaker compared to the artillery of the other mech.

I mean. Ffs the explosive round from the other mech is default 12000 damage with 50% crit chance. How does it make sense to you people to people that this melee has such pathetic damage?

You realize the mods for archmelee are trash, right? And there are no stances... and its range is melee range...

Like... what is going on with you guys. Is working from home making ya'll crazy or something? We told you, across many pages, on test center that the damage of this thing was dog crap. Upping it to 1500 does not fix the issue.... it needs upped to like 10k to compare with the other mech. Otherwise literally no reason anyone would use bonewidow over the other one. 

Bonewidow is just laughably bad. Which is a shame because it looks really cool.

This ^

[Circle_of_Psi]

18 minutes ago, I-wanna-spoon-Tohru said:

Meathook
This ability should have lifesteal, that would make it a lot more useful and would also solve the problem of Necramechs not being able to heal themselves.

Shield Maiden
In my opinion the shield is way too small, and sometimes projectiles still damage you despite hitting the shield. It would be cool if it would protect a bigger area. Maybe also make it indestructible? I don't know if that would be too busted, but it would make this ability a lot better as currently its a worse version of Voidrigs 360 deg protection.

Firing Line
In my opinion this ability should be replaced by something that closes the distance between the Necramech and the target, maybe something like a free teleport(you get teleported where you look) or Mags pull (although I would prefer a free teleport ability because it enhances mobility).

Exalted Ironbride
Very bad and dissapointing compared to Voidrigs exalted. Uping the damage won't solve the problem as the archwing melee mods are very bad too. The swings go all over the place missing targets and with only 3 different attacks it is very repetetive. It would be nice to have a stance mod with different combos.
 

I agree with this!

I'll post my own changes below later

[(PSN)Laughing_Beta]

2 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

• Exalted Ironbride now has a base damage value of 1500 at Max Rank (increased from original 1000)
• Exalted Ironbride now has a base Critical Chance of 45% with a 3x multiplier (increased from original 5% and 1.5x).

cool any plans on adding status? 15% is hard to work with, especially with the archmelee mods we have as of right now.

P.S. I realized skana has 1% more status than the IronBride

[Drachnyn]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb [DE]Bear:

Shield Maiden now has a larger Health pool and increased angle of blocking (160 by default, 220 when holding Shield and Sword) 

Meanwhile voidrig's iron skin protects from all damage, make the shield unbreakable and maybe it will be worth it over voidrig's iron skin in some situations.

[Altomusren]

To be useful, Bonewidow needs survivability. Voidrig does this quite well with Void Shroud, a really good ability that, if used well, can make him absolutely unkillable.

What does Boney have? He has a rusty sheet of metal that doesn't stop anything and has a limited healthpool. This is also ignoring the fact that you will almost always be somewhat surrounded in big open world battles, rendering the shield useless from the beginning.

[Mayhemdax]

They'll probably buff this by nerfing the other mech. After all they need to bring 1st mech in line with the 2nd so it doesn't become a must-play and limit player choice. Because where's the fun in having one decent Necramech if you can have two equally viable pieces of S#&$. If everything is good, nothing is good. If something is fun, useful or popular, it's clearly a toxic influence on the game that must be purged immediately.

[notHunky]

2 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

We have been reading the feedback on the Bonewidow and wanted to give you a heads up that we are looking to make the following changes in a coming hotfix:

Bonewidow Changes:

• Firing Line now has a forced stagger to de-mobilize enemies hit by its rays.
• Shield Maiden now has a larger Health pool and increased angle of blocking (160 by default, 220 when holding Shield and Sword) 
• Exalted Ironbride now has a base damage value of 1500 at Max Rank (increased from original 1000)
• Exalted Ironbride now has a base Critical Chance of 45% with a 3x multiplier (increased from original 5% and 1.5x).

Please note that these example numbers are expected to ship, but as with all things involving development, there may be some tweaks before the final hotfix is deployed. This gives you a general idea of our intention and plans for changes to Bonewidow, however.

Thank you everyone for your feedback, and keep it coming!

I appreciate the quick response, but I hope this is only a stopgap measure and the team will consider making more in depth changes in the future. I've been running Bonewidow since this morning and unfortunately the problems are somehow worse than I anticipated. Taking the proposed changes into account, here's what I found.

Bonewidow specific bugs:

• The slam attack animation locks you in place for almost 4 seconds unless you cancel the animation by sliding.
• Ironbride has a very high chance of simply not working. Bonewidow attempts to draw their sword, but instead they become empty-handed and cannot attack at all until you disable the ability.
• On rare occasions Bonewidow will use Shield Maiden, but the health of the shield will not display and it will fail to block all incoming damage.

Meathook:

• So far this is the only ability where bugs don't prevent me from using it. The thrown enemy at the very least should suffer a much higher amount of damage. Grendel's regurgitate and Kuva Liches' throw ability seem to hit much harder than Bonewidow's Meathook.

Recommendation: Increase the amount of damage enemies take when thrown or impacting any surface/targets. Possibly make it scale off of the enemy's maximum health and power strength mods like Necramech Intensify.

Shield Maiden:

• Iron Skin damage scaling on front facing shields too inconsistent even when the shield works. Iron skin, Snowglobe, and other defensive abilities with damage scaling are capable of absorbing damage from all directions while Shield Maiden will fail to scale consistently due to damage sources from the rear not counting.
• The shield fails to block incoming damage from the front quite often.
• Necramechs cannot strafe without shooting or aiming down the sights, and can only slide/dodge in the direction of your crosshairs. The only way to keep facing enemies while waiting for archguns to reload is to aim down the sights. This drastically slows down Bonewidow and leaves her open to AOE attacks which the shield will not protect her from.

Recommendation: Find a way to fix Shield Maiden's hitboxes, and change the ability to be duration based. Garuda's Dread Mirror. and Volt's Electric Shield are both good examples of front facing shields which are duration based rather than health based. If possible, also make Bonewidow always face the direction of your crosshairs while the shield is equipped.

Firing Line:

• Even with an added stagger, this ability lacks utility. It does not have enough range to be useful in open areas, does nothing to bring distant enemies within Bonewidow's preferred range, and does not increase the offensive or defensive capabilities of Bonewidow enough to warrant the cost of energy.

Recommendation: Totally replace this ability with something else which allows Bonewidow to either increase movement+attack speed, or replace with an ability which closes the gap to distant enemies. No amount of tweaking will make this ability worth using unless you give it lifesteal effects per enemy and increase the range.

Ironbride:

• The damage increase is a step in the right direction, but Bonewidow still doesn't have anything in her kit to deal with enemies from a distance.
• Remember this is a Mastery Rank 15 exalted weapon, it should be steel path viable and absolutely destroy anything in the lower difficulty settings with one swing.
• The lack of available mods for archmelee weapons does not allow for the same level of efficiency commonly seen on warframe based exalted weapons. This weapon needs something other than raw stats to make it stand out.

Recommendation: Either give this weapon projectile slashes similar to Excalibur's Exalted Blade, or allow this weapon to have lifesteal. 

Final notes: I'd highly recommend replacing Firing Line with a mobility enhancement and giving Ironbride lifesteal. Alternatively, you could give Firing Line lifesteal effects and add projectiles to Ironbride instead. The reason for this suggestion is a health and armor based class at the moment is counter-intuitive on necramechs because they are unable to regain health through most conventional means. They cannot pick up health orbs, and most warframe/operator abilities do not heal them. Meanwhile, the enemy variants of necramechs passively regenerate health when not taking damage. 

[Mayhemdax]

5 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

We have been reading the feedback on the Bonewidow and wanted to give you a heads up that we are looking to make the following changes in a coming hotfix:

Bonewidow Changes:

• Firing Line now has a forced stagger to de-mobilize enemies hit by its rays.
• Shield Maiden now has a larger Health pool and increased angle of blocking (160 by default, 220 when holding Shield and Sword) 
• Exalted Ironbride now has a base damage value of 1500 at Max Rank (increased from original 1000)
• Exalted Ironbride now has a base Critical Chance of 45% with a 3x multiplier (increased from original 5% and 1.5x).

Please note that these example numbers are expected to ship, but as with all things involving development, there may be some tweaks before the final hotfix is deployed. This gives you a general idea of our intention and plans for changes to Bonewidow, however.

Thank you everyone for your feedback, and keep it coming!

The hotfix didn't do anything

[Mayhemdax]

2 minutes ago, Mayhemdax said:

The hotfix didn't do anything

Atleast for the shield blocking damage

[(NSW)Gamer-Steve]

10 hours ago, rachjumper said:

I don't have it fully modded but the base stats are pretty telling, not to mention archgun mods are way better stat wise.
https://imgur.com/a/006i8fc
it's a lot harder to level necramechs up now that trinitys 4 doesn't instaheal mechs, so any content where you get a decent amount of xp to level them up just causes them to blow up very quickly.

Hm, alrighty. Sorry for the late response, I haven't had a chance to get the images done until a little while ago. I took a picture of each configuration of the Prisma Veritux:

Unmodded:

Here's the Ironbride stats for comparison:

 (Copied from that imgur image! Not sure if the 300 total damage is due to if it's unranked or not)

 

And the next two setups:

Main Loadout:

 

Small Letter Scanner:   (Instead of small letter opener :) )

• (Not totally related, but Astral Autopsy would be a great Archmelee exilus mod!)

 

I hope this can help bring a bit more light to how Open World Archmelee could work, starting with making Ironbride as good as it can be. Going off of the most recent changes here;

• Exalted Ironbride now has a base damage value of 1500 at Max Rank (increased from original 1000)
• Exalted Ironbride now has a base Critical Chance of 45% with a 3x multiplier (increased from original 5% and 1.5x).

With an unmodded 1500 damage total, I think that's a better direction, and the attack speed might be about right, considering how much damage the weapon may do someday. I wish I could provide some first-hand feedback (I would if I could), but for now this is the best I might be able to do specifically for Bonewidow's Ironbride (Providing my own standard Archmelee build that is).

I hope that the images can provide a good reference for what a fully modded regular Archmelee weapon is capable of, vs what Bonewidow's exalted Archmelee is intended to be capable of.

 

Briefly pertaining to (Open World, etc.) Archmelee, I thought I should pull these off of my own ideas thread that I started before:
Original Thread:

Archmelee Stance mods:

• Creating new stances for a whole melee type could take some time, but some ideas of techniques for large swords in space could start with how existing Archmelee moves work, including;
  
  1. After a back & forth attack (Maybe with a third though), a spin in the returning direction could spin you around to slash two more times, until you reorient yourself.
  
  2. (Depending on the Archmelee type (Veritux or Knux for example!)) Moving forward while attacking could be a vertical spin forward, slashing like a giant saw blade (Sonic the Hedgehog 🙂 ). Or lancing forward at an enemy.
  
  3. A heavy attack for Archmelee swords could be holding the blade at full arm's length, and using your Archwing's thrusters (Or other propulsion) to spin you around in various directions to hit everything around you, like an advanced version of the spin of the 1st technique above. Most likely this will have you take more time to reorient yourself to balance it out.

  • This is at least one idea for an Archmelee sword stance! I hope it helps.

A new launcher gear item for Archmelee, and a "Gravi-hilt" or "Gravi-helve"?

• Hypothetically speaking, if Tenno ever wanted to swing a very big sword around (Or punch with very big gloves (Looking at you Knux)) in an atmospheric setting, one way to implement that could be by installing a unique variation of the Gravimag onto the weapon. The stats should probably be at least equal to how they are in space, but it could use Archmelee stances (Or a Heavy Blade stance, etc.) depending on the weapon.

  • Also depending on the weapon, perhaps to use any unique Archmelee heavy attacks, the Gravi-hilt or Gravi-helve could replicate the propulsion force needed to move the weapon with the same force as in spatial environments! This would lead to an equally decent recovery time for your warframe of course.

  • The Archmelee weapon Launcher hypothetically could have a cooldown similar to the Archgun Launcher, depending on how much it was used, or be tied to how many attacks it's Gravihilt / helve pushed.

I hope that those are some good ideas @[DE]Bear, as far as this goes! I do recall that there are some issues with the Voidrig Necramech (Lack of second energy color after forma-ing it once, etc.; I don't know if Bonewidow has the same issue), but that may be better suited for a bug report thread (I did make one as well, but I remembered that this isn't the place for possible bugs). In any case, thank you for hearing me out.
 

[DrivaMain]

I have played around with Bonewidow. In short, the verdict is : Just use the voidrig and MR FODDER.

Meathook : Damage is laughably bad, 600 damage where enemies can go to thousands of health and ridiculous DR in level 50+ content. My solution is let it scaled off based on grabbed enemy maximum health or use enemy level damage scaling multiplier.

Iron Maiden : Shield is too small, Voidrig's Storm Shroud is miles ahead better because it is full 360 degree coverage and damage reflection. As others have mentioned let the shield expanded a lot bigger akin to Overwatch's Reinhardt.

Firing Line : Not very useful crowd control. Possible solution is enemies are temporarily stunned and/or slowed when hit.

Ironbride : Terrible damage, terrible status, and slow. You guys designed The Arquebex, the strongest mech exalted weapon in the game it has a great area coverage, good damage, and good crit and status. Then you designed this, it makes me and a lot of other players wonder "Why do I even use this? Arquebex is miles ahead better". Ironbride should be stronger than Arquebex to make it's lack of area coverage. Let's not go the nerf route for this one DE. I have some solution :

1.  Buff archmelee mods : Most archmelee mods are extremely outdated, I mean come on 16 drain mod for +110% Damage? Furor is a measly +10% attack speed bonus? Some Arch-melee mods need serious buffing.
2.  Buff Ironbride's damage to 12000, but to compensate increase the energy drain : Let it compete with The Arquebex, Ironbride has a very small area coverage and it's pretty slow.
3. Buff status chance to 50%
4. Buff critical chance to 50%, why stop at 45%?
5. Let Necramech melee mods affect Ironbride too.

 

Finally DE, Do. Not. Use. This. As. An. Excuse. To. Nerf. The Voidrig. Bonewidow is in a very bad state and nerfing the voidrig won't make it better.

When the novelty of the new mech wears out I will put this mech in the storage until it can compete with The Voidrig’s arquebex.

[MasterControl]

Have played with it for a couple missions on Fortuna post-ironbride buff, my thoughts so far:

Meathook is a bit difficult to grab enemies with, and is functionally a bit.. strange. I don't know why you'd use it. It'd be neat if as suggested in this thread, having a skewered enemy healed you a bit, maybe draining your held target of hp all the while. Maybe, the longer you hold the enemy, the more damage it deals when you throw it. It needs something, otherwise it's a gimmick that I don't see getting much, if any, use.

Shield Maiden is completely unreliable and causes a lot of jank. If the shield breaks, you are unable to recast for a few seconds, leaving you vulnerable. When it breaks, it also has the tendency to break the exalted ironbride, causing you to be unable to attack with it. It also will prevent you from using your 1. Frankly I think it needs to be indestructible with a set duration - differentiate it from Voidrig's Storm Shroud, or else Shield Maiden just going to remain a worse version of Storm Shroud. The limited block radius should balance this out - it's how melee blocking already works, after all. Again, echoing the ideas in this thread, it wouldn't hurt if you could protect allies with it by making it physically wider, perhaps while aiming it could extend an energy effect - dunno, but it'd be cool, and necramechs are really just the rule of cool imo.

Firing Line is an ability that I think is mostly limited by the fact that we are in open worlds. I understand the purpose - group enemies in front of you, to where you're blocking and aiming - but that doesn't really pan out in the massive ranges open worlds have to deal with, and seems to really just exist to try to make up for the shortcomings of Shield Maiden. It will be better in the enclosed spaces of normal tilesets, though, enough to where I wouldn't really complain about it too much.

Exalted Ironbride isn't the worst thing ever. It could use a little more status and attack speed (reminder that Furor, the only attack speed mod for archmelees, is a head-scratching 10% attack speed.) The end lag on this combo is crushing, and leaves you wide open for what feels like an eternity - but it's not a bad starting point. It feels fun enough to use.

[BoomBook]

@[DE]Bear is it a bug? My Voidrig Necramech is maxed but my equipments shows 0 rank... and again it's in warframe list.