The melee problem resides on spamming it

[vanaukas]

Guns cannot be spammed unless you invest on mods, arcanes, abilities (warframe/helminth) or using a specific companion (carrier). The magazine size, ammo pool and reload times are 3 restraints on using guns. Melee on the other hand, besides a few enemies and bosses with weakpoints, doesn't have any restraint on infinite use. You can spam E as long as you want and nothing can stop you doing it. This is why it's so easy to achieve ridiculous amounts of combo in short time (besides a few mods that also helps) and why it's more efficient to use rather than guns on most situations.

I can see how speed it's a problem, but melee needs some kind of "stamina" back. IIRC, stamina was tied to any movement (running, jumping, runing on the wall, rolling and melee) and was hated because of that, because the risk of losing stamina inside a cluster of mobs was too dangerous, wich encouraged more abilities usage on nukers or guns being dominant.

I think some kind of stamina system just for melee needs to make a comeback, at least for testing purposes. Some sort of "ovearheating" spamming the melee button will force people to use guns and melee, the system of quick changing to melee or guns already supports that kind of gameplay (streamlined usage of weapons).

I don't believe that nerfing attack speed alone or buffing guns will end with this situation, melee needs some kind of restraint on using it besides the "risk" (already surpassed by shield gating and mods) on being close to an enemy to being hit. That restraint could also be surpassed investing on mods, ablilities (helminth/wf) and some companion.

It doesn't need to be called stamina or something, but this problem will never end if melee can be used indefinitely without restrictions.

[KitMeHarder]

Or go the other direction. Have built-in systems that mitigate the downsides of guns (ammo pool is not a downside 95% of the time). 

• Add a mechanic called "Frenzy", where killing an enemy with a melee weapon reloads your guns. Or better yet, make it an extension of the parazon, so it's less confusing to new players and gives older players a sense of achievement in earning that mechanic.
• Have one where landing ~80% of your shots gives you an instant or an extremely fast reload whenever you empty your magazine. Have multipliers like "headshots give double the percentage".
• Etc...

Melee was already massively nerfed in 2019; And I play this game to be an overpowered bio-weapon with a massive amount of customization at my disposal. Melee is not the problem, nor has it ever been (if we exclude slide crit). Plus, it's one of the things that makes Warframe unique. A "stamina"" system makes no sense.

Where this new conceived issue comes from, is where DE messed up in (mostly) the WF Revised patch.

• Enemy EHP should have never been reduced as much as it was.
• The shift from the corrosive meta to a viral one ruined one of the few good things about guns... their hits per second. (Which while not as good, could be solved by having viral procs be uncapped, with a logarithmic growth.)
• Having status chance no longer being capped at 100% helped melees waaay more than it helped guns. Hopefully in these new mods, they introduce a solution to this.
• And DE now focusing and forcing Steel Path even though they said it would only be optional for those that wanted it, with most rewards being cosmetic. Not to mention the 3x (and now 2.5x) ehp multiplier they added without telling anyone.

[Loza03]

5 hours ago, KitMeHarder said:

Or go the other direction. Have built-in systems that mitigate the downsides of guns (ammo pool is not a downside 95% of the time). 

• Add a mechanic called "Frenzy", where killing an enemy with a melee weapon reloads your guns. Or better yet, make it an extension of the parazon, so it's less confusing to new players and gives older players a sense of achievement in earning that mechanic.
• Have one where landing ~80% of your shots gives you an instant or an extremely fast reload whenever you empty your magazine. Have multipliers like "headshots give double the percentage".
• Etc...

Melee was already massively nerfed in 2019; And I play this game to be an overpowered bio-weapon with a massive amount of customization at my disposal. Melee is not the problem, nor has it ever been (if we exclude slide crit). Plus, it's one of the things that makes Warframe unique. A "stamina"" system makes no sense.

Where this new conceived issue comes from, is where DE messed up in (mostly) the WF Revised patch.

• Enemy EHP should have never been reduced as much as it was.
• The shift from the corrosive meta to a viral one ruined one of the few good things about guns... their hits per second. (Which while not as good, could be solved by having viral procs be uncapped, with a logarithmic growth.)
• Having status chance no longer being capped at 100% helped melees waaay more than it helped guns. Hopefully in these new mods, they introduce a solution to this.
• And DE now focusing and forcing Steel Path even though they said it would only be optional for those that wanted it, with most rewards being cosmetic. Not to mention the 3x (and now 2.5x) ehp multiplier they added without telling anyone.

Melee still has access to individual mods more powerful than everything else in their respective category. Not 'anything' else, mind you, 'everything' else.

Blood Rush provides a higher total crit chance boost than stacking both Maiming Strike and Sacrifical Steel together. It'd still be higher if you could somehow stack the regular true steel on top. Unless you count Sacrificial/true Steel's X2 bonus on heavy attacks, which mind you was only added specifically to keep up with Blood Rush - and Sacrificial Steel is already substantially better than other weapon classes crit mods. Status is only slightly better, as Weeping Wounds, whilst still higher than the cumulative total of seven other mods, is only so by around 9% (as opposed to 335%), although that would basically require choking up another weapon's build almost entirely to achieve.

 

As massive a nerf as the transition from 2.0 has already been, it is clearly not enough, at least when it comes to scaling mods. Melee still has many substantial upsides even beyond that - it has no ammo restrictions, it has access to finishers, innate status procs (including stunlocks), a frontal damage block that protects the player from all damage and innate damage boosts (up to pentuple damage for regular attacks, and much more for heavies). All this for the cost of a relatively short range. For Warframe's immense amount of customisation to matter, everything needs to be on the same playing field in terms of damage. Not necessarily the same, but similar. Melee wasn't before the change, and it still isn't now.

[Andele3025]

9 hours ago, Loza03 said:

As massive a nerf as the transition from 2.0 has already been, it is clearly not enough.

It was more than enough.
What isnt is combo being too cheap to build/skill floor was pushed up so high that people now innately assume a 12x combo on builds with no combo duration.
Before that you would gladly sac a slot to keep that 2.5 for potential 3x or eve 3.5x multi if the mission allowed.
 

9 hours ago, Loza03 said:

 everything needs to be on the same playing field in terms of damage

NO. Everything needs to have its best use scenario and everything needs to be at least usable (in the mk1 bo sense), but falling for the wow fallacy of make every part of your arsenal identical is the death of customization. Same general range is ok if you really want to but a donky dagger should always be worse at smacks than a giant warframe sized slab of metal while that slab of metal shouldnt through someones insane idea of stealth be better at sneakily assassinating enemies/finishing them off with precision or for another thankfully no longer accurate case, a shotgun shouldnt beat the sniper at 300m range shots.

[Loza03]

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

It was more than enough.
What isnt is combo being too cheap to build/skill floor was pushed up so high that people now innately assume a 12x combo on builds with no combo duration.
Before that you would gladly sac a slot to keep that 2.5 for potential 3x or eve 3.5x multi if the mission allowed.

Frankly, Scaling mods are the last vestiges of the complete insanity that was melee 2.0, where melees started out has having rather pathetic damage and relied entirely on the absolutely insane multipliers of scaling to keep up. Remember, back then the Gram Prime had around the same base damage as the Skana does now, and due to how Warframe's stats work, having lower stats cannot be compensated for (since mods have more effect for weapons with higher base stats), they needed to basically break the game's rules to even have a chance of being valuable.

Melee weapons aren't in that place anymore. They don't need rule-breaking items anymore. Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds, arguably Condition Overload (although its case is a bit different since it stacks up per enemy, not globally) and the X2 crit chance on heavy attacks are no longer needed.

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

NO. Everything needs to have its best use scenario and everything needs to be at least usable (in the mk1 bo sense), but falling for the wow fallacy of make every part of your arsenal identical is the death of customization. Same general range is ok if you really want to but a donky dagger should always be worse at smacks than a giant warframe sized slab of metal while that slab of metal shouldnt through someones insane idea of stealth be better at sneakily assassinating enemies/finishing them off with precision or for another thankfully no longer accurate case, a shotgun shouldnt beat the sniper at 300m range shots.

I feel like you misunderstand what 'same playing field' means.

Same playing field means that they're all in the same range of damage. Not the same damage, but the same overall range. Otherwise it's just as much of a death as everything's the same.

If one thing does 100 DPS, and another 100,000, then it really doesn't matter what kind of other benefits the 100 DPS item provides, it's useless to the player, because the 100,000 damage weapon is always going to be the better choice. But in a closer, more reasonable damage range - lets say all 'end-game' loot, frames included deals damage within a range of 10-25K DPS, averaging at 17K-ish and nothing goes outside that - then it's more possible for weapons to still be substantially stronger than their counterparts, whilst weaker weapons with utility benefits can still compete. Where the range actually lies doesn't matter, so long at it's a fair range and enemies are built for it.

 

Now, the cirucmstances in which they deal that damage? That need not be the same. Shotguns could easily have a higher average, perhaps a higher peak as well, but they have their short range - melee has similar restrictions. Within Melee, Daggers perhaps feature disproportionately high stealth attack damage and/or have a much easier time deploying that, whilst a polearm maybe errs on the side of lower, but doesn't experience follow through which, combined with its range, makes it an effective mob-clear weapon. And of course, with Warframe's preference for horizontal progression, not vertical, there's likely room for a lot more circumstances then that.

This also makes boss fights a thing that actually exists? After all, if you assume that 25K DPS weapons would be your boss shredders, then bosses could be made without falling into the much 'loved' (air quotes) mechanics of random invulnerability phases or being overly spongy. These things happen because bosses in current Warframe don't really have a 'fair' health bar because guns operate in one range, melee in another, and Abilties run the gamut of having a DPS of 200 to 2 million. With no reasonable clue as to what amount of damage the player is dealing, the choice is to either lock players into the few weapons and powers that peak DPS which is a few orders of magnitude over everything else, or to go with more invulnerability phases. Or, alternatively, the boss dies in 0.2 seconds and nobody actually really cares about them. Whereas under a level playing field, high-tier weapons would still kill bosses substantially faster, but you'd still be able to kill them in a reasonable period of time with another weapon.

 

@PublikDomain is much better at explaining the likes of this than I am.

[PublikDomain]

It's probably not the spamming, and more the damage and ease-of-use you can get while spamming. You can spam pretty much anything, but melee is so strong that it becomes the best candidate. Melee weapons have scaling damage (CO, BR, WW), can have a huge reach well beyond their physical size, hit multiple enemies at once, cause staggers and CC, have no ammo, and do all of this while holding one button. A lot of this just comes from the game's modding system letting you have all of these things in their best form at once. Something like stamina might just be annoying and restrictive, and could lead to things like heavy builds dominating since they wouldn't need to worry about it as much. You probably should be able to spam melee, and it should be easy and cool to use, but the damage output should be appropriate and there should be risk involved. Which tbh sounds a lot like what DE was talking about on the devstream.

Instead of Stamina, what about copying the sniper combo system? Where you lose a combo if you swing and miss? I wonder if that would counter the blend-to-win playstyle well enough to make people at least think about their hits.

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

@PublikDomain is much better at explaining the likes of this than I am.

Nah, you got it. Damage doesn't need to be identical, it just needs to be close enough that everything works no matter what you prefer to use.

[quxier]

On 2021-03-01 at 5:26 PM, vanaukas said:

using a specific companion (carrier).

I'm using Carrier (prime) 99% of the time I play. There is rarely reason to change so "use specific companion" is not for me.

So magazine size and ammo pool don't matter for me.

On 2021-03-01 at 5:26 PM, vanaukas said:

I think some kind of stamina system just for melee needs to make a comeback, at least for testing purposes. Some sort of "ovearheating" spamming the melee button will force people to use guns and melee, the system of quick changing to melee or guns already supports that kind of gameplay (streamlined usage of weapons).

Imagine 3 sitiations:

1. Person uses mostly melees (shooting some cameras or something with guns)
2. Person uses weapon with stagger effect so s/he has to move away from certain position.
3. Person uses charge-able weapons - s/he has to charge weapon but enemies are NOW attacking.

 

Forcing people to use certain weapon is BAD. What you want to do is encourage it. I love using melees. Guns, or in general non-melees are less interesting. However I find some non-melees interesting as well. Weapons with "interesting" features are my cup of tea. If you want me use guns then let me use some with nice features. Other people may want something else.

[(XBOX)Sir Sponks Alot]

I think DE just ran themselves into a corner with the stacking mods melee has. It basically encourages you to spam and spam and spam for a long time as you are literally rewarded for it. They perpetuated a meta with WW and BR.

I quite like the forward melee closer on two handed swords that lifts enemies, not that it does absurd amounts of damage but its a distance closer and allows good primary capability a lot of the time. 

[vanaukas]

1 hour ago, quxier said:

I'm using Carrier (prime) 99% of the time I play. There is rarely reason to change so "use specific companion" is not for me.

So magazine size and ammo pool don't matter for me.

Imagine 3 sitiations:

1. Person uses mostly melees (shooting some cameras or something with guns)
2. Person uses weapon with stagger effect so s/he has to move away from certain position.
3. Person uses charge-able weapons - s/he has to charge weapon but enemies are NOW attacking.

 

Forcing people to use certain weapon is BAD. What you want to do is encourage it. I love using melees. Guns, or in general non-melees are less interesting. However I find some non-melees interesting as well. Weapons with "interesting" features are my cup of tea. If you want me use guns then let me use some with nice features. Other people may want something else.

I use melee a lot because I use it to travel around the level (blind justice), every point you've mentioned can be neglected by our movement system, wich is why I bolded the part on "just" while I was talking about "stamina" system. It doesn't need to be tied or related to movement system (wich I think it also needs some kind of restraint, you can bullet + dodge jump the entire level under seconds but that's another thread after the upcoming changes DE is doing).

You can also use secondaries and primaries pressing F... And honestly this reminds me to the argument about "but what if you dropped on a island with nothing blablabla...", under those 3 situations we have means to keep on the mission and we all use them all the time. I can't see a downside on that besides waiting a few secs on cooldown if I've spammed melee as a maniac (wich is what I do when I play as a frame and if I don't need ranged weapons for specific situations), you jump - roll - glide and there you are, ready to unleash your fury on E while maybe you were gliding shooting at them, who knows. 

I'm  sure there is a lot of means to fix this, but this is the same with the abilities that scales with enemeis level, no matter how small is the %, if it can be spammable it will lead to the same issue, this is why even energy is another stat that everyone tries to surpass with zenurik, pizzas, mods, some weapons, some companions, arcanes, passives, abilities... If that's not a problem then IDK why people bring the forks when they argue about how "unfair" eximus units are because they drain the energy pool.

[Andele3025]

8 hours ago, Loza03 said:

But in a closer, more reasonable damage range - lets say all 'end-game' loot, frames included deals damage within a range of 10-25K DPS, averaging at 17K-ish and nothing goes outside that

4 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

Nah, you got it. Damage doesn't need to be identical, it just needs to be close enough that everything works no matter what you prefer to use.

Thats already where the game is tho. With a few outliers (more in melee mostly due to derp choice to double crit on heavy and general choices for gunblades and glaives with a few early melee 2.9998 weapons released early and then still buffed like the gram prime having circa 30% of a leg up on other heavy blades) weapons are in a total average of some 40-45k and in good conditions around 150k dps (without taking into account external universal buffs be it from frames or something like viral).

You can fake fluff either side up with stuff like assuming every enemy has 12 conditions on them from the start without accounting for time it took to stack them for CO and cedo, assuming a enemy is invul but can have condis stacked on him then only measuring the non-invul period to make phage/phantasma/really any multishot beam weapon insane, assume perma max combo for 200 mil damage snipers, etc, but thats just lying
 

[PublikDomain]

20 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

Thats already where the game is tho. With a few outliers (more in melee mostly due to derp choice to double crit on heavy and general choices for gunblades and glaives with a few early melee 2.9998 weapons released early and then still buffed like the gram prime having circa 30% of a leg up on other heavy blades) weapons are in a total average of some 40-45k and in good conditions around 150k dps (without taking into account external universal buffs be it from frames or something like viral).

I don't really feel the same way... Simple example, I like the Kuva Kraken. It's nice! But a Kuva Kraken can only put out about a third of the DPS as a Kuva Brakk:

Spoiler

The Kuva Brakk has better damage, a bigger magazine (11 shots until reload vs 9), a faster reload, and better status application due to multishot. And in terms of Rivens, the Kuva Brakk is only 0.2 Disposition lower. The only downside to the Kuva Brakk is the range, but that doesn't really matter in a practical sense. It's a better gun in every way that matters, and not just a little - it's a lot better. So as much as I'd like to use my silly bollocks gun, the Brakk is so much better that it overshadows everything else. And then you look at the Kuva Seer, which on paper can out-DPS the Kraken but has so many downsides like the long reload, tiny ammo pool, obtrusive zoom... Yet these are all Kuva weapons and ought to be around the same power level.

50k DPS is about average for a mastery fodder weapon, but 200k+ is about average for a "good" weapon IMO. Melee is probably in the 200-400k range normally (it's hard to quantify), and my Khora is over 2M DPS and could go higher. My Voidrig's Arquebex is a little over 15M DPS, about 7 times stronger than my Khora and 150 times stronger than my Kuva Kraken. The range of power can be incredibly wide which is what leads to all sorts of the game's balancing issues.

[Andele3025]

24 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

I don't really feel the same way... Simple example, I like the Kuva Kraken. It's nice! But a Kuva Kraken can only put out about a third of the DPS as a Kuva Brakk:

The Kuva Brakk has better damage, a bigger magazine (11 shots until reload vs 9), a faster reload, and better status application due to multishot. And in terms of Rivens, the Kuva Brakk is only 0.2 Disposition lower. The only downside to the Kuva Brakk is the range, but that doesn't really matter in a practical sense. It's a better gun in every way that matters, and not just a little - it's a lot better. So as much as I'd like to use my silly bollocks gun, the Brakk is so much better that it overshadows everything else. And then you look at the Kuva Seer, which on paper can out-DPS the Kraken but has so many downsides like the long reload, tiny ammo pool, obtrusive zoom... Yet these are all Kuva weapons and ought to be around the same power level.

Kraken Alt fire is about a +120~170% (depending on ones accuracy, PHC and 60/60 mod usage; assuming all but 5 bullets are bodyshots) output mod that overframe doesnt show as it has no toggle for it.
That DPS ofc is in practice staggered/much better compared burst by burst due to being one of the mid combat reload cases (aka usecase being to pull out and unload on something like a eximus heavy), but thats simply the different purpose much like how you wouldnt (want to) try shoot a enemy on the other end of a defense map with the brakk.

[Loza03]

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

Thats already where the game is tho. With a few outliers (more in melee mostly due to derp choice to double crit on heavy and general choices for gunblades and glaives with a few early melee 2.9998 weapons released early and then still buffed like the gram prime having circa 30% of a leg up on other heavy blades) weapons are in a total average of some 40-45k and in good conditions around 150k dps (without taking into account external universal buffs be it from frames or something like viral).

Well, yes, but those outliers are what my initial 'it clearly wasn't enough' comment was about. Melee clearly still has many substantial outliers in comparison to the rest of the available arsenal.

[Andele3025]

2 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Well, yes, but those outliers are what my initial 'it clearly wasn't enough' comment was about. Melee clearly still has many substantial outliers in comparison to the rest of the available arsenal.

Thats kinda why they are outliers, in fact it (other than above the curve broken multiplier stances, few early melee 2.99 released in melee 2.0 like gram prime, glaives and gunblades the only "outlier" guns would have as a whole would be mutlishot beam weapons stacking heat; tho within their own categories there is a lot more wonky S#&$).

Most of the arsenal does however keep up with the old "gun with what would be now 2-3x of unmodded melee/800-900 base dps in stats works well", just not compared to said outliers. Either way point of the other bit was there should still be a notable enough when not used for its design damage gap.

[MonsterOfMyOwn]

We can name the "problem" : blood rush, condition overload, weeping wounds, slash procs and in a lesser extent berzerker.

Also guns need to reload which is often longer than "pause" during melee combo.

Slash + viral is a separate problem than melee vs guns, but it also have to be solved (i.e. i don't want to have hunter munition as a mandatory mod for my guns)

[quxier]

22 hours ago, vanaukas said:

I use melee a lot because I use it to travel around the level (blind justice), every point you've mentioned can be neglected by our movement system, wich is why I bolded the part on "just" while I was talking about "stamina" system. It doesn't need to be tied or related to movement system (wich I think it also needs some kind of restraint, you can bullet + dodge jump the entire level under seconds but that's another thread after the upcoming changes DE is doing).

It's not only about movement (it's very important as well) but also about "how it feels". As for certain weapons (melees) I want to use ONLY melee. I don't want to be forced to use guns. Sure some Zenurik dash (electricity + energy) is "fine" but something more.. is not fine.

It's all depends on how you make that "stamina". I guess some kind of "burnout" system where you either:

1) hit harder (e.g. at 150% power not speed) for some time and later at 80%

2) no change - you hit at 100% power

Then I see how I can still play at 2) which might not be optimal but "good enough". In case of 1) it would strongly, that's good word, strongly encourage me to use guns but I still could use my melee.

Still... I would prefer something test my skill (not by random button sequence of previous melee system!) and even better if it was tied to

usage of guns AND melee. I liked melee+gun system of Gunz:

It's very hard to master but when you do something... it's feels so good. I don't think it would fit Warframe but it's still ok to take some inspirations. WF was a game I found after Gunz.

ps. I know that you should use certain frame/weapon for particular job but I mean in general case.

[Andele3025]

12 hours ago, MonsterOfMyOwn said:

We can name the "problem": no gun condition overload, meh acolyte gun mods (why is Argon scope worse than PP), shotgun status nerf by pellet count and people not wanting to aim

FTFY.

Even if in reality people in mission dont do the primer S#&$ for CO number fluffing and just swing one or two more times to kill the enemy instead of swapping to a gun to tap around for a while so CO usually just double Prime Pressure Point on average for frames that add a proc or just "ppp in every case but vs tough S#&$ that lets condis stack up"

[Mu_Gera]

I honestly doubt it's attack speed that's making melees seem strong, when options that should be constrained literally at melee range (with a few exceptions) seem stronger than ranged options in most scenarios, it's probably the attack range itself that's causing the disparity and not how fast you can attack.

[quxier]

41 minutes ago, cococciolo said:

I honestly doubt it's attack speed that's making melees seem strong, when options that should be constrained literally at melee range (with a few exceptions) seem stronger than ranged options in most scenarios, it's probably the attack range itself that's causing the disparity and not how fast you can attack.

Melees have many things that makes it "stronger".

Speed is one of the most versatile (works with different things):

- you can use it for damage ("higher" chance for crit for hitting enemy few times, or simple damage per second)

- proc status (I used it for Sarpa - few shots have higher chance to proc, even with low status chance)

- gaining combo faster and doing everything "better" (Berseker for speed, Bloodrush for crit and Weeping wounds for status)

With range instead of speed you are spreading attacks over more enemies but you may not have enough combo (for mods) and/or status. Of course weapon types matters. Things like Stropha, imho, works better with speed than range. On the other hand Quassus or Arum spinosa may work with both.

 

I think it's more complex than simple "this is cause of melee power".

[Mu_Gera]

1 hour ago, quxier said:

Melees have many things that makes it "stronger".

keep in mind that's all there because melee is supposed to be the best close range option because they're hard limited to close range (again with few exceptions), meanwhile guns can in theory be even stronger at longer ranges just because they can cover it. but if melee can beat guns despite the range differences, then it obviously should be more of a problem than attack speed or mods.

[quxier]

3 hours ago, cococciolo said:

keep in mind that's all there because melee is supposed to be the best close range option because they're hard limited to close range (again with few exceptions), meanwhile guns can in theory be even stronger at longer ranges just because they can cover it. but if melee can beat guns despite the range differences, then it obviously should be more of a problem than attack speed or mods.

With speed mods I can cover the same range as with range mods. So it's not so "obvious".

[Mu_Gera]

4 hours ago, quxier said:

With speed mods I can cover the same range as with range mods. So it's not so "obvious".

saying attack speed is a range modifier is like saying punchthrough is a damage modifier. that's pretty much only gonna matter for forward combos, and that's without assuming all the combos that still lock you in place.

[quxier]

5 hours ago, cococciolo said:

saying attack speed is a range modifier is like saying punchthrough is a damage modifier. that's pretty much only gonna matter for forward combos, and that's without assuming all the combos that still lock you in place.

First not all forward combos are good for movement (I and other people posted about swapping normal and forward combos).

Secondly, there is much more than forward (block) combos that moves you. While some combos may lock you there are other things that allows you to utilize speed: frame speed, jump high/speed, roll speed etc.

[Teridax68]

I think the OP correctly assesses some of the problems with guns, but I also feel kind of goes about the wrong way in proposing a solution. Personally, I think the problem isn't necessarily that melee is unrestricted, but that guns themselves are saddled with too many restrictions, many of which are pointless. Putting aside how the combo counter for melee is likely a major reason why it's dominating over guns right now, guns I think have five main problems:

• They have ammo reserves which either don't matter at all or cause gunplay to grind to a halt.
• They have reload times which similarly leave us standing around doing nothing, and some reload times are far too long. The fact that rolling breaks reloading doesn't help.
• They have stuff like recoil and miss chances that make them just that much less smooth to use. When the recoil is too much, it can be literally nauseating when paired up with our fast-paced movement.
• Most of our guns are single-target, but the game is innately slanted towards AoE due to throwing crowds of fodder enemies our way.
• Whereas melee follow-through has no tradeoffs, AoE guns have self-stagger and knockdown, which blends in poorly with our parkour and frequently cramped tiles.

None of these are necessarily issues that would make guns equal to melee if addressed, but if we're going to equalize both guns and melee, we might as well also bring in quality of life updates to make both systems as fun to play as can be. With regards to balancing melee versus guns, I think it would help to remove the combo counter system and buff both melee heavy attacks and sniper rifles, which would prevent players from being railroaded into melee spam (it would also help to look at Condition Overload, which is far too easy to set up and is basically just a better Primed Pressure Point at this stage). With regards to making guns feel better to use, I'd recommend the following:

• Remove ammo as a system entirely. 90% of the time it's not a problem, and when it is, it doesn't push us to use our other weapons, it just pushes us to easily bypass the constraint through ammo mutation mods and a Carrier.
• Reduce/remove reloads, or at the very least let us reload while rolling. If you think removing reloading as a mechanic is too extreme, go look at the Doom games where guns have no reloading at all, because the game wants us to constantly move and attack, rather than retreat and reload. Warframe has the same core philosophy of encouraging movement and aggression over any sort of cover shooting, so that sort of change could be appropriate to its gameplay. If nothing else, preventing one of our key maneuvers from resetting our reload should at least avoid having us go too much on the defensive when fiddling with reload times, some of which have no business lasting more than 2 seconds.
• Reduce/remove recoil, remove the accuracy stat and make our guns always shoot where we point. There is arguably no real justification for making us miss at random or having our guns jerk around in Warframe, other than to perhaps differentiate some weapons (and I don't think those mechanics really do that successfully either). Given that recoil works especially poorly with our fast-paced movement, to the point where some people get motion sickness, it would probably be worth getting rid of it entirely and let us always aim smoothly.
• Alter certain factions to give us fewer, yet tougher enemies. I don't think every weapon should be given AoE capabilities, but I do think it would help single-target weapons if the game actually gave us situations where single-target damage was more desirable than AoE. Making certain factions throw a smaller amount of more challenging enemies our way could work to that effect, and I think the Corpus in particular could be well-suited to this, as many of their units are complex enough to do the job already. Grineer heavy units could also afford to be a bit tougher in this respect as well. There's a larger problem of our damage being way out of line, which is why our AoE weapons can mow down even heavy units without too much trouble, but that's a whole can of worms by itself.
• Remove self-stagger and knockdown entirely. Let's face it, the mechanic hasn't really worked to tone down the Kuva Bramma, and that weapon in particular could stand to be nerfed again and still be among our stronger picks. Pretty much every other AoE weapon would likely be fine without self-CC, and some would likely still need buffs after that.

TL;DR: Fixing melee vs. guns is likely a matter of addressing the parts of melee that push us to melee at nauseam instead of switching to guns, but gunplay could also stand to be made significantly smoother and less pointlessly restrictive. Guns deserve to not only be as powerful as melee, but also as enjoyable as can be, and so irrespective of balance, there are some changes that could be done in service of that.

[syl42]

Or on the contrary, since guns have munitions and reload, they should do more damage. That's the idea behind the Akarius IMO.

To use this weapon, you need to accommodate to the reload, munitions and stagger. But it deals a serious amount of damage.