The melee combo counter - Some thoughts and suggestions

[Azamagon]

The melee combo counter (this will be referred to as "CoCo" from now on) has two issues which really rub me the wrong way:

• Issue #1 - If you get some heavy melee efficiency (which is quite common, considering Zenurik's popularity), but do NOT have Naramon as your Focus school, and your CoCo timer is about to expire? Well, counterintuitively, swing that heavy melee strike, even if you don't hit anything! Why? Because instead of going down to 0 CoCo, you'll just expend some of the CoCo, due to the heavy melee efficiency.
  • Imo, this mechanic is seriously wonky. It feels so counterintuitive and clunky to use as a means to counter losing your entire CoCo.
• Issue #2 - As is rather well known, Xoris and the new Tenet melee weapons with the "Granum Attaché" CoCo passive has a horrendous dissynergy with Warframes which use the CoCo in one or more of their abilities somehow (like Ash with Bladestorm, Atlas with Landslide,  Excalibur with Slash Dash and Exalted Blade etc), in that using said Warframe ability along with having the Xoris or similar melee weapons equipped will wipe out your entire CoCo afterwards.
  • This nerf is exactly the kind of thing I hate in Warframe, where there's some inconsistent annoyance added out of nowhere.

So, to make these issues less annoying, here are some suggestions to hopefully smooth things out a bit better:

• Whenever the CoCo runs out of time, rather than lose all of the CoCo by default, you only lose as much from the CoCo as your heavy melee attack would've consumed. So if you have 100 CoCo points and 50% combo efficiency, you'll just lose 50 CoCo points upon the CoCo timer expiration - the same amount of points you'd have lost if you did a heavy melee attack.
  • This entirely fixes the first issue I mentioned.
• All melee weapons have an innate 20% combo efficiency by default, meaning you will always keep 20% of the CoCo points when you use a heavy melee attack or let the CoCo timer drop off. Mods stack addtively on top of this value
  • This is simply a (quite powerful) QoL for melee in general, to make the consumption / expiration feel less expensive at base.
• The combo efficiency cap is still 90%, but you will always lose at least 5 CoCo points from the timer expiration /  when using heavy attacks. This means that if you have 20 CoCo points and have 90% Combo Efficiency, you'd STILL lose 5 points - not just 2 points, when you heavy melee / the timer expires
  • This is a counternerf due to the poweful above changes, considering combo efficiency will likely be considered to be quite a bit stronger than before (since it can act as a pseudo-Naramon-Power-Spike modification stat).
• The Reflex Coil and Focus Energy mods also get rebalanced:
  • Reflex Coil - Increased to 8 ranks (from 6), granting +5/10/15/20/25/30/35/40% combo efficiency (down from +10/20/30/40/50/60%). Mod drain increased to 4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11 (from 2/3/4/5/6/7).
  • Focus Energy - Increased to 6 ranks (from 4), granting +10/20/30/40/50/60% Electricity (from +15/30/45/60% Electricity) and +5/10/15/20/25/30% combo efficiency (from +10/20/30/40% combo efficiency). Mod drain is increased 6/7/8/9/10/11 (from 6/7/8/9)).
    • These two mod changes are done due to them becoming quite a bit stronger overall.

With this, you have now merged combo efficiency (aka heavy melee efficiency) with the CoCo timer! Due to the impact this also has on Naramon and Zenurik, their combo-related passives also see changes:

• Naramon's Power Spike -> Increases Combo efficiency by 5/10/20/30% and causes you to max only lose 20/15/10/5 combo points if the combo timer expires (NOTE: This minimal combo point loss is still ONLY from timer expiration, NOT from heavy attack useage; using heavy attacks still abides to the Combo efficiency calculations).
• Zenurik's Inner Might -> Now instead grants +3/5/7/10/12/15 initial combo points, and +5/10/15/20/25/30% max energy (for both Warframe and Operator - stacks additively with mods like Flow, and with Operator's Void Flow node respectively).

The reason for these two changes is first and foremost to emphasize Naramon as the school generally best used for melee. Zenurik still retains a melee-related bonus, but not something quite as potent as the now more poweful combo efficiency bonus. This is slightly compensated for Zenurik by also giving that node a small energy-related bonus, which is far more in line with the school's theme.

Along with this, since combo points would be harder to lose already by default, and can be altered further not just with Naramon, but also with mods like Reflex Coil and Focus Energy, the following change also takes place:

• CoCo timer pausing melee weapons, such as Xoris and some of the Tenet melee weapons, no longer have all their CoCo consumed when used with Warframe abilities utilizing the CoCo system - they work just like any other melee weapon for these Warframes.
  • This obviously fixes the second issue I mentioned.

While this is just reverting to the previous state for Xoris (and its similar bunch of weapons), an interaction like this would now be less risky to 100% become "go to statstick(s)". Thus I feel there would no longer be as strong of a reason for these weapons to dissynergize with CoCo-using Warframes.

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Thoughts and opinions? Yay or nay?

[Flannoit]

As it stands right now, I only use heavy attacks so I can reliably do a ground slam for quicker descent. Making combo counter less garbage would be fantastic. Currently, there's only one weapon with any inkling of this suggestion (Xoris, iirc) and the weapon, frankly... Sucks. Not because it has no counter countdown, but because it's an otherwise lackluster weapon that has relatively meager stance choices.

[Leqesai]

Pretty well thought out changes

 The zenurik initial combo thing, however, is way too good for heavy attack builds.

[Andele3025]

DE already solved this problem with the Dexterity Arcanes which make it impossible to lose combo unless you go afk or play missions where a unmodded melee already 1 hit kills.

Sure on undoing the pointless Xoris nerf tho and initial combo should be avoided as it breeds gameloops ten times more toxic than atterax meme meatspins.

[Blackmist390]

I just today installed a catalyst for the Xoris (for granum void purposes) but had watched a video about the Xoris' utility as a stat stick. Naturally, I was pretty disappointed to see my CoCo wipe out after spamming some landslides. I'm going to do some more testing to see if all warframe abilities screw up the combo count (not just frames which use stat sticks) for this weapon. Should that be the case, please consider fixing this. 

Perhaps a solution would be for warframe abilities to not add to combo count (i.e, melee attacks only)?

[Andele3025]

38 minutes ago, Blackmist390 said:

Perhaps a solution would be for warframe abilities to not add to combo count (i.e, melee attacks only)?

 No, there is no point in xoris or any weapon wiping its combo on ability uses. It was a pointless nerf back then and its still a extremely pointless nerf (especially after the new arcanes).
If anything should reset its the stats of the statstick abilities if you have a riven slotted.

[Blackmist390]

On 2021-08-04 at 2:09 PM, Andele3025 said:

 No, there is no point in xoris or any weapon wiping its combo on ability uses. It was a pointless nerf back then and its still a extremely pointless nerf (especially after the new arcanes).
If anything should reset its the stats of the statstick abilities if you have a riven slotted.

At least we're on the same page with that. It's kinda sad that it's the case. It seems to work properly with Excalibur's Slash Dash, but that is about it.