Update 30.5: Melee & Primary Balance Changes Feedback Megathread (Read First Post!)

[Zilotz]

So it is time to give some feedback on those changes as they are in the game now, right?

Then first things first:

A) The problem: Gunplay is a bad alternative to melee and abilities.

A1) Gunplay is less convenient(you need to keep an eye on ammo pool so it constntluy gets interrupted more or less depending on a weapon, sometimes you are just out of ammo in seconds).

A2) Primary weapons are mostly underpowered for higher level content so they are inefficient.

A3) Secondaty weapons mostly are or weak enough or are melee-ranged. Also they mostly hit too few targets.

A4) Gunplay damage falls short very fast as enemy levels grow.

So we have 4 reasons already to not enjoy the gunplay ... without even looking at melee at all.

Mostly people prefer something both convenient and efficient, right?

Especially for things they use literally for hours and days and months.

B) The problem: Enemies and their problems(apply to both guns and melee but guns deal with them less efficiently)

B1) Enemies quickly become bullet sponges

B2) Some enemies have damage gating, damage mitigation and resistances that grow to crazy amounts as levels grow.

B2.1) NOX - unless weakpoint is it it has over 99.9% damage reduction(no matter how hard you hit damage never goes over 300).

B2.2) Stalker - has building up damage type resistance that can be removed only with operator or specific melee(if you do not use Xaku at the moment).

B2.3) Juggernaut  - has insane damage resistance unless you are hitting a weak spot.

B2.4) Deimos enemies that have innate immunity to Viral effect and some of them have insane armor adding to a big health pool and extreme amounts of damage.

B2.5) Stalker's helpers - adding to their huge damage they are resistant to status stacks, have shields and armor and completely ignore most of abilities including invisibilty(which i consider more a bug than something that should be intended).

B2.6) Troublemakes: Nullies, Combas, Scrambuses, Drones(especially Arbitration Drones), Ancients, Juggernauts, all kind of energy leeches/parasites/magnetic enemies. As levels grow they literally flood the area and killing them first becomes impossible as they are like 20% of enemies and are literally everywhere.

B3) Enemy amounts and time to kill - in all endless missions amounts of enemies are big and you need to kill them fast.

So combining A and B we already have a huge disadvantage of gunplay that explains why it is not as popular as melee or abilities.

C) What guns do lack in mods and functionality

C1) Armor strip (Shattering Impact)

C2) Health restore(Life Strike)

C3) Combos and combo mods

C4) Consistent damage output(because of reload/ammo)

C5) AoE or fast killing for most of them

So how to fix that?

1) Add Pax Charge option for evety weapon and even boost it by significantry reduciing charge delay. (Fixes C4 and partially A1)

2) Add new mods/arcanes for both primary/secondary/archguns to give alternatives to Shattering Impact and Life Strike (C1 C2)

2) Add combo systems and mod sets for primary/secondary (C3)

3) Boost the damage numbers for guns so they will not fall short so fast, add more punch thru and AoE(C5 A4)

4) Undo melee nerfs as they do not make guns any good as well as mods/arcanes that work from "on kill" condition.

[Deoxystp]

On 2021-07-07 at 7:38 AM, --END--Rikutatis said:

Amen. I'd like this post 10x if I could. I'm appaled at this feedback thread, it genuinely feels like:

a) people are just salty about not seeing red crits covering their screen anymore and being hyperbolic and disingenuous about the nerfs/buffs, in which case 90% of the feedback in this thread is worthless and will just confuse DE

b) people genuinely have no clue how to mod. They just copy paste overframe or youtube builds and didn't try to swap or adapt their builds yet. 

I tested several guns yesterday, some of them actually performed better than melees. People saying glaive is too nerfed are delusional. All it takes is swapping one single mod in your build. I mean honestly, I expect glaive will be nerfed again, this nerf didn't change anything. And then more salt will flow. 

You most be talking about the glaive and the glaive prime, you should try something like the pathocyst or the orvius, they feel much slower to charge throw and generally less fun to use. They need to adjust the speed values for each one or just change the glaive prime itself.

[Daiwulf]

Quote

(From the DEV WORKSHOP)

However, these changes also introduced a common issue: players with high melee attack speed would sometimes accidentally throw their Glaives when trying to perform simple melee strikes, and the “catch and release” mechanic sometimes resulted in multiple unintended throws. In reviewing our Melee system, we felt it was a good opportunity to address this concern, while also doing a balancing pass to reflect the power in this newly reworked melee class.

First, the heavy attack wind-up speed is being increased from 0.6 seconds to 1.2 seconds. With more time on the wind-up, it is much harder to accidentally throw when you are trying to swing.

It sure may have been an issue with players that didn't want to throw their glaives, but with the wind-up change, heavy throwing feels awful now with the wind-up delay.

For people that want to only heavy throw the glaives, we could use a glaive-only mod that decreases the wind-up time so it won't impact other melee types: either make a new mod for it, or change the current glaive-exclusive WHIRLWIND mod that only adds flight speed (so, meant to be a mod only for throwing builds) and add "+50% Heavy Attack wind up speed" on top of it.

[Hodor_Roe]

Hi, DE. I understand that y'all think stacking berserker and primed fury is all about getting ludicrous attack speed, but for some weapons, that is the only way to get anything resembling a NORMAL attack speed. Pretty much every stance is unbearable to use with an attack speed below 1.5, and some weapons just can't reach that threshold without stacking the only 2 viable attack speed mods. I don't care all that much that you nerfed melee mods just enough to drown out all the mediocre weapons and leave the top tiers untouched, I just want my fragor prime to get an attack out sometime before I get dementia and forget that I started attacking with it.

 

Edit: Honestly, the game kindof feels like S#&$ to play now. I've spent around 4 hours since the update, and most of what I'm noticing is that I can't use non-meta melee weapons, liches went from bearable with most setups and even pretty quick with top tier builds to grindy and agitating without very specific setups, and still dull as hell then. We don't have any previous reference for sisters, but currently they're pretty much exactly the same as liches, except for the part where they can get WARDING HALO. I don't know whose bright idea it was to give an already tanky and boring to fight enemy a goddamned defensive ability, but they should probably find a therapist and try to resolve or at least confront their past traumas rather than reflecting them onto us. In any case, I'll be watching the patch notes, but I think I'm done with Warframe until things get better.

[ShyPup]

I think at this point DE either hates us, or they hate their own game, because instead of really giving primary weapons a buff to bring them up to par they added mods with terrible conditions and insanely high mod capacity requirements that still don't make them match up to melee. How about instead of nerfing all the things that made non-meta melee weapons fun and useful in order to "buff" primary weapon gameplay, you just actually buff the guns? We don't need more pointless mods that only give boosts to already good weapons, we need either straight up buffs to underpowered weapons stats, or mods that do flat damage increases so that less powerful weapons can (theoretically) be buffed up to useable levels while weapons with already good stats don't become broken from % increases. 

That and enemy scaling needs to be worked on, do you guys even bother testing your ideas against anything above level 30? Of course the new content destroys low level enemies, literally anything in the game can. Maybe actually do some testing against rank 5 kuva lich missions and Steel Path grineer enemies? Who on the dev team thought that anything about Yareli or the new primary weapon mods would hold up in Steel Path? 

We shouldn't have to be forced into using meta weapons and mods and picking and choosing between weapons and frames we actually like to use, and the ones that are actually useable in end game. DE, you need to face the fact that you have failed on this update with basically everything you were aiming to do, actually listen to your community, and fix this. Go back and revamp things that do not work in endgame content at all, instead of giving us mods that are either entirely useless or only make already good/meta weapons even better while leaving less powerful weapons still weak. Mods that give buffs on kill are a joke, because that requires you to actually be able to kill with the weapon in the first place and keep that kill chain up, which means that the weaker non meta weapons aren't gaining anything from this. Not to mention that even with them, melee is still just way more useful.

Go back, rework stats on weapons, rework how some of the mods work, and rework frame abilities so that anything can actually be useful in the end game. First two things that come to mind because I've experienced how lackluster they are recently are Yareli and Inaros' abilities. They have no worthwhile scaling at all, Inaros becomes entirely useless at around level 50-60 apart from his massive HP pool, and Yareli doesn't even have that going for her because you gave her basically no way to survive unless she's on her terrible skateboard thing. Weapons still have basically the same problem as well, the new mods only make already powerful weapons even stronger while leaving weaker weapons in the dust, % increases to stats and requirements like "on kill" only really buff weapons with already high stats that can actually kill things without the mods on kill status kicking in. 

[Gnignegno22]

Being able to powercreep your character with different builds and weapons was exactly what made this game fun and unique. If I want to be nerfed every other patch I can go play a pvp game. 

 

I really hope DE will prove me wrong but we all know they are just going to ignore AGAIN all the feedback from their own players. It's very sad becouse in reality all the angry posters are just heartbroken fans. 

[AgasKahn]

hace 5 minutos, Gnignegno22 dijo:

It's very sad becouse in reality all the angry posters are just heartbroken fans. 

I couldn't have described it better

We players are the ones who play the game, imagine being playing and having the rules continually change as if you were dealing with an infant, clearly it would cause discord and frustration

I don't mean to sound rude, but I can't find any other words to say that the direction they're taking is the wrong one

the mod "bladed rounds" was not popular because you need to kill to activate its advantage, and now they put reversions of that concept...

[Flavor-Savior]

Perhaps I'm in the minority, or perhaps nobody else has tried the arcanes yet, but I'm tentatively happy with the new arcanes.  The on-kill condition is pretty easily triggered in Steel Path, especially with Dexterity and a decent melee weapon equipped. Moreover, the arcane damage stacks decay one by one whenever you miss a refresh, so in my experience these timers are pretty forgiving. Experimentation with less immediately powerful weapons continues, but I suspect that Dexterity reduces dependence on the individual weapon to refresh timers.

Arcane grinding is pretty hardcore though, after two hours of pubbing Steel Path survivals for Acolyte spawns, I still have only one arcane ranked to 2, and given how you need more and more arcanes for every subsequent rank, I'm not optimistic about being able to get all of them to rank 5 in a reasonable time frame. Can't see much point splitting the arcanes between primary and secondary varieties unless it's some kind of technical backend limitation. Given how strong Dexterity is at rank 1, rank 5 definitely seems worth grinding for.

Another small UI-related nitpick is that between ability timers, specific mods like Adaptation and now these arcanes, there's way too many small icons and timers to keep track of in the upper right corner of the screen, and trying to keep track of what's what and what needs to be refreshed is much less intuitive at a glance than it should be. Depending on what's been procced or refreshed these icons change order as well, so when I check the top of the screen the Dexterity or Merciless timers might inexplicably be buried in the middle of the order when they were clearly on the outside last time I checked; more concisely, the timers are small with vague igons, hard to keep track of, and generally pretty inelegant. Not the most immediately pressing thing, but I hope it gets addressed at some point.

[Retrn2Monke]

It's virtually impossible to kill high level enemies with raw damage before status effects kill them. Galvanized Scope and Galvanized Crosshairs almost never get any stacks built up during high level content because the on headshot kill requirement excludes kills done via status effects. If the proc requirement of these mods was changed to on headshot or on kill then it would be possible to build up the stacks for these mods at high levels (steel path, arbitrations, etc.).

[ShyPup]

28 minutes ago, Flavor-Savior said:

Perhaps I'm in the minority, or perhaps nobody else has tried the arcanes yet, but I'm tentatively happy with the new arcanes.  The on-kill condition is pretty easily triggered in Steel Path, especially with Dexterity and a decent melee weapon equipped. 

 

Yeah uh, that's kind of the issue here. The point of these changes with the new arcanes on primary weapons and new gun mods was to make guns more viable, not melee. The on kill condition being easily triggered in steel path with a decent melee weapon is the opposite of what they were trying to do, which was make primary/secondary weapons viable in steel path not buff already decent melee weapons. 

[MasterTorh]

I'm just sad for the direction of the changes that DE has implemented, brutal modifications to the main mechanics of the game that do not solve any of the problems, They only ended up making the meta more limited.

[ShyPup]

15 minutes ago, MasterTorh said:

I'm just sad for the direction of the changes that DE has implemented, brutal modifications to the main mechanics of the game that do not solve any of the problems, They only ended up making the meta more limited.

I think at this point it's time to face the fact that the devs themselves don't do anything in their own game that is higher than level 30 basically and have forgotten how most of the things in their own game work. Remember in devstream 155 when they were talking about the sisters hounds and their huge shield amount? One of them mentioned they thought they would see the rise of "magnetic meta"? Yeah, pretty sure they forgot toxin exists and what it does. They keep implementing ideas that won't work in the end game, and then showcasing their new stuff against level 10 enemies as if that's supposed to give us any kind of idea about how it will actually work in practice when the majority of their playerbase is on end game stuff at this point. Of course Yareli's abilities and the new mods/arcanes seem impressive against level 10 enemies DE, I could softly tap a level 10 enemy on the head with the butt of an unmodded, unranked pistol and it would die. Try testing the things you plan to implement on end game content, and do it without your unlimited energy active and see how it goes. 

Plan to give Yareli really low armor and a K-Drive she needs to survive in normal tilesets? Go play on the more cramped tilesets with that ability active at all times against level 50-60 enemies at least and tell us how it feels to run into walls constantly. Plan to make liches/sisters have insane amounts of damage reduction because players might use a necramech against them? Cool, now go fight a rank 5 lich or sister with the new damage reduction active using no mech, only the new frame/weapons you plan to introduce and see how it holds up. Then swap to using some more of the "meta" builds and see how they hold up against the new damage reduction models you planned. Lemme tell you how, terribly. Yareli gets sneezed on by a lich and she dies, while builds that used to demolish liches now barely scratch them because they decided to basically build everything about the new lich changes around the idea that some people might use a voidrig to nuke them, thus making it almost a necessity to use a voidrig to nuke them. 

Nerfs to melee mods and new primary mods with requirements to fully activate? Go test them on Steel Path and against the new changed liches you plan before you actually release them. And don't test the nerfed melee mods on super high tier meta weapons, go test them on weapons that needed those mods to actually be worth using. Now we get to see the next devstream where DE acts all surprised that people stopped using as wide a variety of melee weapons and the meta has gotten even more narrow, and that primary weapons are still basically useless outside of normal low level missions because mods with "on kill" and "on headshot" type requirements are pretty much useless.

DE, if you even bother reading this, do you know how long it takes to go from just starting the game to being at the point where you can hunt kuva liches and do sorties? It takes around 2 days of gameplay. I got my friend into this game about 2 days ago, his account playtime shows just a bit over 48 hours when we checked, and in that time he has gone from starting the game to at least a basic understanding of how it works and reached all the way to almost completing the star chart and most of the end game content available except for steel path and arbitrations. Introducing frames/weapons/mods that are basically useless outside of early game content is literally introducing things that are relevant for less time than they take to actually build. Just face the facts that you need to go back and rework a lot of this stuff, and a lot of the game in general could use a look at as well. We shouldn't feel forced into using whatever the "meta" frames and weapons are, it's a PvE game, we should feel like we can use any frame or weapon in the game and have it actually be viable during end game content. It shouldn't be a question of "will this work for end game?" but a question of "do I like this stuff enough to keep using it?". We shouldn't have to ditch our favorite frames and weapons in favor of things we don't like as much, just because the things we don't like are the only things worth using.

I absolutely love Yareli's theme, her animations and ability ideas, but when put into actual practice she is almost entirely useless outside of open world areas or really low level missions. I shouldn't have to ditch using Yareli or Grendel or Inaros or whatever other frames I like just to be able to actually play most of the content in the game. 

[Flavor-Savior]

18 minutes ago, LittleSnowNeko said:

Yeah uh, that's kind of the issue here. The point of these changes with the new arcanes on primary weapons and new gun mods was to make guns more viable, not melee. The on kill condition being easily triggered in steel path with a decent melee weapon is the opposite of what they were trying to do, which was make primary/secondary weapons viable in steel path not buff already decent melee weapons. 

Dexterity doesn't buff melee, it buffs guns when used in conjunction with melee, and it has a pretty generous timer allowing you to switch back and fourth. I was able to clear Steel Path enemies pretty comfortably with a rank 1 Dexterity active. I haven't tried Merciless yet, but I'll concede that a 4s timer is quite short, with a pretty small increment per stack, which makes it seem much less desirable. Hopefully the reload speed buff helps, but I can't tell for a while because the arcane has to be maxed out before this benefit gets added. I would also be happier if Deadhead procced on a headshot rather than a headshot kill, but I haven't tried it with any snipers yet.

[ShyPup]

2 minutes ago, Flavor-Savior said:

Dexterity doesn't buff melee, it buffs guns when used in conjunction with melee, and it has a pretty generous timer allowing you to switch back and fourth. I was able to clear Steel Path enemies pretty comfortably with a rank 1 Dexterity active. I haven't tried Merciless yet, but I'll concede that a 4s timer is quite short, with a pretty small increment per stack, which makes it seem much less desirable. Hopefully the reload speed buff helps, but I can't tell for a while because the arcane has to be maxed out before this benefit gets added. I would also be happier if Deadhead procced on a headshot rather than a headshot kill, but I haven't tried it with any snipers yet.

But it still requires melee to actually be useful, which at that point why bother using my guns? If my melee weapon already kills them fine on it's own, then why in the world should I swap from using something that already kills enemies without the use of these new arcanes, even after being nerfed, into using something that literally requires me to use a melee weapon that they were trying to nerf to bring my primary weapon up to par to be able to kill? The point of this melee nerf/gun buff was supposed to be making melee weapons not needed to actually kill anything in steel path, and yet the one thing you point out as being good is the one that requires melee weapons to be used to kill anything in steel path. How about instead of requiring me to kill an enemy with my melee to make it so my primary is actually able to do anything to a SP enemy, they just make it so our primaries can actually kill SP enemies on their own?

[Skaleek]

I was gonna post feedback, but my feedback is that i know how little it matters what I think.

[Flavor-Savior]

1 minute ago, LittleSnowNeko said:

But it still requires melee to actually be useful, which at that point why bother using my guns? If my melee weapon already kills them fine on it's own, then why in the world should I swap from using something that already kills enemies without the use of these new arcanes, even after being nerfed, into using something that literally requires me to use a melee weapon that they were trying to nerf to bring my primary weapon up to par to be able to kill? The point of this melee nerf/gun buff was supposed to be making melee weapons not needed to actually kill anything in steel path, and yet the one thing you point out as being good is the one that requires melee weapons to be used to kill anything in steel path. How about instead of requiring me to kill an enemy with my melee to make it so my primary is actually able to do anything to a SP enemy, they just make it so our primaries can actually kill SP enemies on their own?

People say "just buff guns,  buff guns" but they don't seem to remember that most of the guns work just fine as they are at standard star map level, they work just fine at sortie level and they work just fine at Kuva Lich rank 5 level. Guns only start "struggling" at Steel Path level (if you aren't relying on frame-specific buffs) because of absurdly inflated enemy EHP values. Guns don't need buffing below Steel Path level because that would make the already trivial pre-SP content even easier. To answer your question, I've used the Shedu, Corinth Prime and Acceltra to grind SP survivals, and I found these weapons complimented melee quite nicely under the effects of Dexterity because as powerful as it is, melee still only hits enemies at close range. Switching from melee to ranged combat and back allows you a much wider coverage, and the added efficiency is quite helpful if you're trying to keep your life support drops coming.

However yes, these weapons are quite meta and have a pretty wide AOE. Outside of survivals, high coverage and efficiency is less crucial, so I'll be putting more arcane adapters on less effective weapons once I've finished the extremely protracted grind for maxed weapon arcanes.  

[ShyPup]

6 minutes ago, Flavor-Savior said:

People say "just buff guns,  buff guns" but they don't seem to remember that most of the guns work just fine as they are at standard star map level, they work just fine at sortie level and they work just fine at Kuva Lich rank 5 level. Guns only start "struggling" at Steel Path level (if you aren't relying on frame-specific buffs) because of absurdly inflated enemy EHP values. Guns don't need buffing below Steel Path level because that would make the already trivial pre-SP content even easier. To answer your question, I've used the Shedu, Corinth Prime and Acceltra to grind SP survivals, and I found these weapons complimented melee quite nicely under the effects of Dexterity because as powerful as it is, melee still only hits enemies at close range. Switching from melee to ranged combat and back allows you a much wider coverage, and the added efficiency is quite helpful if you're trying to keep your life support drops coming.

However yes, these weapons are quite meta and have a pretty wide AOE. Outside of survivals, high coverage and efficiency is less crucial, so I'll be putting more arcane adapters on less effective weapons once I've finished the extremely protracted grind for maxed weapon arcanes.  

If that was even remotely true, then we wouldn't see people running the same guns on kuva liches and sorties, we would actually see people using a wider variety. Do guns work fine in star chart stuff? Sure, for the most part at least. But when it comes to sorties and kuva liches, especially now that kuva liches have insane damage reduction, I see basically nothing but the same 5 or so guns over and over again. Want to prove that all guns are fine against liches and in sorties? Fine, go build yourself a Tigris shotgun or something that has become less meta and popular lately, mod it out however you like, and go hunt a rank 5 lich with it. Then come back and tell me how it went. Then, take your best meta gun, and do the same thing, and compare how much fun you actually had between the 2 experiences. 

[Genitive]

5 hours ago, (NSW)Windbornesword said:

The more intelligent move would have been to use stance mods for the same effects.

Oh, I like this. It would alleviate capacity shortage and reduce forma required to fit all the mods.

[Yulfan]

Yet one more mod category, with more mods, more expensives, requiering more farm and more formas, resulting with only more frustration but clearly not more enjoyement. They trivialize the content already trivialized but struggle where it should matter. At this point, Galvanize Mods are not expanding the possibilities but are just more band aids.

Digital Extreme. The game need a proper rework to include ranged weapon into the end game content, and not just more mods supposed to do all the work. Galvanize Mods as they are right now is simply a mistake and you should get rid of them.

When it come to scaling, the combo counter is the feature that comes to everyone's mind. This is where you should focus your efforts. I already talked about it in a previous post, but you can rework the combo counter so that ranged weapons can benefit from it. By reworking the Galvanize Mods, you can make them act somewhat like Aura and Stance mods, but for primary and secondary weapons (making it consistent with warframes and melee moding). Equiping them (in a dedicated slot) would change how the combo counter influence the weapon (for example : a Galvanize Mod "Marksman" focused on long range attack which tied the combo counter to headshot multiplier and recoil, or a Galvanize Mod "Frenzy" influencing multishot and reload speed, etc …) and these specific stats would become dependant of the combo counter and increase with it.

That alone would encourage players to switch between melee and ranged. We will still need to use our melee weapon to increase the combo counter, but then the player will be free to use their entire arsenal as everything will be dependent on a single and meaningful stat (easy to view, manage and balance, unlike all these independent timers that accumulate in a corner of the screen), and so ranged and melee weapons will really be on an equal footing.

I honestly think that's the direction gunplay needs to take to be truly enjoyable and relevant through the entire content of the game.

[Flavor-Savior]

1 hour ago, LittleSnowNeko said:

If that was even remotely true, then we wouldn't see people running the same guns on kuva liches and sorties, we would actually see people using a wider variety. Do guns work fine in star chart stuff? Sure, for the most part at least. But when it comes to sorties and kuva liches, especially now that kuva liches have insane damage reduction, I see basically nothing but the same 5 or so guns over and over again. Want to prove that all guns are fine against liches and in sorties? Fine, go build yourself a Tigris shotgun or something that has become less meta and popular lately, mod it out however you like, and go hunt a rank 5 lich with it. Then come back and tell me how it went. Then, take your best meta gun, and do the same thing, and compare how much fun you actually had between the 2 experiences. 

Trying to gage weapon effectiveness by popularity in pubs is a poor litmus test because people in pubs will always opt for the most efficient tool. I tend to run sorties solo and rotate weapons and frames for variety. Even if I give you rank 4-5 liches and level 3 sorties, most of the arsenal is viable for a (conservative) 60-75% of the game. Steel Path right now is essentially post-game with no mandatory content.

DE could revise and rebalance every individual ranged weapon to be viable for 100% of the game, but I think they made it quite clear that they prioritize pushing new content over very thorough reworks of old content. I think it's also clear they aren't interested in a fully balanced arsenal anyway. Honestly I'm pleasantly surprised that the arcanes are even half as effective as they are, so conditional buffs aside, it's still a step in the right direction.  

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

Will there be a look at some combo/set melee mods working properly on Robotic companions, they should get their own combo system separate from ours.

[TheLexiConArtist]

3 hours ago, LittleSnowNeko said:

I think at this point it's time to face the fact that the devs themselves don't do anything in their own game that is higher than level 30 basically and have forgotten how most of the things in their own game work. Remember in devstream 155 when they were talking about the sisters hounds and their huge shield amount? One of them mentioned they thought they would see the rise of "magnetic meta"? Yeah, pretty sure they forgot toxin exists and what it does.

They didn't forget about toxin. Neither hound nor Sister shields can be Toxin bypassed, but in different ways:

• Hounds work as Capture targets (Toxin damage is applied fully to shields)
• Sisters work like the original event Demolysts (Toxin damage is reduced to zero while shields are present)

That latter one reeeally doesn't help the whole "absurd damage reduction against rapidly-regenerative shields" issue, while doggos don't seem to have the super-resistance either so they just die.

[--END--Rikutatis]

5 hours ago, Flavor-Savior said:

Perhaps I'm in the minority, or perhaps nobody else has tried the arcanes yet, but I'm tentatively happy with the new arcanes.  The on-kill condition is pretty easily triggered in Steel Path, especially with Dexterity and a decent melee weapon equipped. Moreover, the arcane damage stacks decay one by one whenever you miss a refresh, so in my experience these timers are pretty forgiving. Experimentation with less immediately powerful weapons continues, but I suspect that Dexterity reduces dependence on the individual weapon to refresh timers.

I swear everytime I come check this thread I roll my eyes so hard they almost fall off. I totally agree with you, I have absolutely no clue how so many people keep claiming guns can't handle high level content. I bet a good 80% of them probably didn't even try. They must have started the game at the era of melee 3.0 and never bothered to try anything else. Because it baffles me. I'm not an MR chaser and don't have all the guns in the game, far from it, but this week alone I already tested between 8 to 12 guns that effortlessly anihilated Steel Path enemies. The better ones were killing enemies faster than they could respawn and group up. As fast as some of the best melees I'd say. And I was using merciless, not dexterity. For the best AoE guns, merciless is a no brainer. The enemy density in SP is too high. You'll keep the buffs up continuously, unless you're fighting a boss like a Railjack Lich showdown or something. 

even BEFORE the buffs I was already using guns in Steel Path to similar effects. I mean, sure, there are a LOT of older, oudated, weaker, (specially single target) guns that can't handle those high level enemies fast enough, but there's also a lot that do. So people should at least specify what they are talking about. Saying guns in general can't handle high level content and that the new mods/arcanes didn't make them even more powerful is absolutely delusional. I hope DE doesn't listen to this nonsense too seriously. 

Was these mods and arcanes the best way to buff guns in the game? No, I don't think it was. I'm sure there'd be better ways that included more comprehensive reworks. But DE already did a pass on ALL guns a couple years ago and adjusted all stats. I'm sure they don't have the time or the resources to allocate to do that ALL over again right now when they have to keep pumping out new content to keep the business afloat. But these mods do give the good guns some nice buffs and scaling potential for SP. Which I think was the goal.  

[feralknights]

I was okay with a lot of the over and under on the weapon changes here but the glaive charge time being extended really needs to be rolled back.  If people don't want to throw the weapon that is literally designed to be thrown, then give them an exilus mod that prevents them from throwing it or something.  This feels awful.

[Valthryn]

Add regenerating stamina for melee attacks

p  r o b le m  s o l v e d 

If there is a consequence for using melee attacks, then you have a real angle to balance melee from, instead of decreasing the ridiculous speed and damage modifiers for unlimited use weapons to an arbitrarily selected set of lower, but still ridiculous speed and damage modifiers for the same unlimited use weapons.

Regenerating stamina is an idea that has been implemented in numerous other games for balancing purposes and is sorely needed in Warframe if melee is ever to have any sort of balance.