The gun and melee balance have left things uneven in the opposite direction

[(NSW)JigsJosh]

I'm not sure that I like the rebalance all that much on the melee side now. I don't understand why after two great improvements to secondaries and primaries (Galvanized mods and primary/secondary arcanes), we also needed melee nerfs? Major points are emboldened below for faster reading.

I think one of the major reasons melee was meta before is because it was a great way to mindlessly kill enemies. I always felt though that headshots were basically an equating factor primaries and secondaries had before, but because there was nothing that incentivized people to headshot in the past, guns fell short and so people chose melee rather than focusing on getting headshots. Now that we have the Deadhead arcanes that incentivize headshots, that is an edge up that guns have to compete with melee.

Another thing that made melee great was the fact that the damage built up over time because of the combo counter, heavy attack bonuses from the combo counter, and mods like Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds. And now guns have an answer to that which is Galvanized mods.

So why after making two things that would even the playing field between guns and melee would you also nerf melee mods? The logic just doesn't make sense to me. And to explain the logic using numbers its like this: If melee is 10 for example, the meta thing in the game, and guns were 8, falling short. Why would you add +2 to guns to make them 10, and THEN ALSO -1 to melee? Logically it seems this doesn't create a balance, but shifts things back to the way they used to be which is exactly why melee needed a buff in the past in the first place. 

As a Warframe veteran who has access to basically everything in the game and the ability to compare everything, this is my honest opinion. Guns and melee would have had a much better balance if Galvanized mods and gun arcanes were the only factors to the rebalance.

Some things to note and suggestions/balances to make them better:

If you guys at DE felt that melee mods needed a nerf even without a gun buff, why change the melee mods at the increments at which you did considering that you were going to buff guns also? Using Blood Rush as an example, why decrease it at such a large increment as 20? Why instead of going from 60 to 40, why not go from 60 to 50? Or 60 to 55? I think +40% per combo multiplier is a bit harsh.

In Condition Overload's case, I don't mind the increment at which it was changed, but I feel like it was a harsh nerf considering the duration that a lot of status procs have. The number of melee weapons that can use it effectively have definitely been reduced. 6-8 seconds isn't a long enough status proc duration for weapons with a mediocre number of base damage types. I've always felt also that Condition Overload should be based on the overall number of status effects on an enemy, not the number of types, so that it could be used effectively on weapons with few damage types, and people could also mod without having to worry about certain damage types overpowering others and reducing the chance other types will proc, reducing the effectiveness of Condition Overload where it is more effective if all damage types have about the same amount of damage. I feel this wouldn't be a crazy change either considering only having fewer damage types pulls weapons away from the meta which is using damage types to exploit more enemy weaknesses. This change would create a balance for that.

For Berserker Fury, I don't mind that it's a Fury mod now and can't be used with other Fury mods, but only having a max stack of two at a max of 70% increased attack speed is a bit too harsh, especially since the attack speed isn't even based on critical hits anymore, but killing enemies. Because late game enemies are obviously much harder to kill, the speed ramp up is initially too slow. Instead of making Berserker Fury trigger on kill, what I think should be done is changing it to triggering on critical hit and triggering on status effects (so there's no bias towards crit or status since it seems that's part of what the aim was with changing it to trigger on kill).


 

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

No

The Gun buffs didn't do enough.

Melee is still stronger.

 

[(NSW)JigsJosh]

25 minutes ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

No

The Gun buffs didn't do enough.

Melee is still stronger.

 

How so? State your case why rather than just saying no.

[DarkSkysz]

10 minutes ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

How so? State your case why rather than just saying no.

Melee has no reload time... melee can reach red crits in a few seconds without RNG involved...melee doesnt need careful aim for headshots... what else you need to understand that guns still need a lot more love if they want to be on par with melee?

Damn... even the only advantage guns had over melee (RANGE) is not a thing anymore xD

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

40 minutes ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

How so? State your case why rather than just saying no.

I played WF and my Melee was more effective than my Guns even with the Maxed out Arcanes

[Shaden73]

Melee technically is supposed to be stronger than ranged weapon due to being a huge risk getting in the enemies face. The problem with melee that there is no down time and you can simply spam it indefinitely. They could rework the melee animations to give them a finisher(not executions) allowing a bit of downtime.

[(NSW)JigsJosh]

So I've been doing a lot of testing. Comparing my best melee build (Gram Prime) to a few different primaries to see how they compare. I tested this on several different sisters just to make sure it wasn't a resistance thing. They were all built for corrosive. The last test I just did I used the Kuva Hek which is only half modded, had no stacks from a galvanized mod, and no stacks from an arcane. My Gram Prime is a 4 forma build, filled with mods including Blood Rush, two maxed primed mods and Sacrificial Steel maxed, and a good riven. So I go to the RJ node to do my confrontation. I had a 5x combo going when I started wacking her. It took like half a minute (maybe a bit less?) for her shield to go down after a lot of effort swinging at her. Its only taking away slivers of her health, albeit thickish slivers, but still slivers. I swing at her health a bit too just to make sure its comparable damage, and then I pull out my Hek.

TWO SHOTS. And she went down. It only took a second or two after all that effort swinging at her with a somewhat prebuilt combo. I did basically the same thing with the Tenet Flux Rifle in a previous fight, and nearly the same thing with the Tenet Detron in a previous fight. None of these builds are complete or even have rivens, none of these examples had galvanized or arcane stacks when I pulled the weapons out. And it only took 1-2 seconds to down the sisters with them. And to boot, I'm using max melee arcanes on my frame, and yet I can still way more easily take down bosses with half built guns with no stacks?

And we could say hey, maybe melee is better for groups of enemies and guns are better for single hard targets like bosses. But even against groups of enemies you can greatly outshine melee weapons with incredible aoe primaries like the Kuva Bramma. 

I have every top tier weapon in this game. I have all of the best mods. I can compare everything just for the record. And I don't see any cases where melee can outshine primaries or secondaries now. With the +60% crit bonus per combo mult on Blood Rush I used to rip the toughest enemies apart with Gram Prime, now it just pokes at them.

Am I just using the wrong melee weapon? What melee weapons are you guys using? Or what primaries/secondaries are you guys comparing your melee weapons to?

[(NSW)JigsJosh]

1 hour ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

I played WF and my Melee was more effective than my Guns even with the Maxed out Arcanes

Not the elaborate case I was hoping you'd make. Just saying "melee was more effective" could mean that you're not a very accurate shot. Try aiming for the head, and are you also sure you compared good weapons to good weapons?

[(NSW)JigsJosh]

1 hour ago, DarkSkysz said:

Melee has no reload time... melee can reach red crits in a few seconds without RNG involved...melee doesnt need careful aim for headshots... what else you need to understand that guns still need a lot more love if they want to be on par with melee?

Damn... even the only advantage guns had over melee (RANGE) is not a thing anymore xD

Red crits in seconds used to be the case before they nerfed Blood Rush. Have you seen the Blood Rush table now on the wiki? Blood Rush can't even reach guaranteed red crits now without assistance from other mods. It alone used to be able to almost guarantee second tier red crits on weapons with high cc. 

As for the aim, it's faster to lock on for headshots than it is to close the distance with melee. But I suppose its also different for players like myself that use controllers. I assume you don't because you're on PC. Analog strafe aiming is a big game changer at a distance.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

25 minutes ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

Not the elaborate case I was hoping you'd make. Just saying "melee was more effective" could mean that you're not a very accurate shot. Try aiming for the head, and are you also sure you compared good weapons to good weapons?

Yes

[DarkSkysz]

1 hour ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

Blood Rush can't even reach guaranteed red crits

Blood rush was never the only mod to increase crit chance, ya know...

 

1 hour ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

As for the aim, it's faster to lock on for headshots than it is to close the distance with melee

Not really, you don't need to close distance to use melee right now. The time you waste aiming head by head you can just explode the whole room with a hammer. Jumping and heavy atk can almost make you teleport to your targeted spot. And for steel path there are glaives.

 

Guns are still good for open world stuff since only guns can reach 100m+ range. But for normal missions... melee wins all the time.

[CephalonCarnage]

I watched John Strife Hayes review WF with his new player thing and the combat (apart from stealth) nearly always went:

pull out Lato, bang bang bang, 1 dead enemy, starts shooting the next and then there are 3 attacking. pulls out his Bo and they all die.

pulls out the paris, shoots an enemy, shoots another one, there are 4 attacking now, so dive in and pulls out his Bo. All dead

The gameplay repeats that all the way through - the guns do damage but do not kill anything like as quickly as needed, always he's resorting to the melee. This, remembe,r is the unmodded baseline that shows melee beats guns a lot.

In  higher level gameplay I see the same thing - I shoot things, mostly they die but you get a higher level enemy, you just pull out the melee and smash it. Too many enemies for your single-shot gun, pull out your melee and mash it. Always the melee is so OP that apart from playign and having a bit of fun with the guns, it is the go-to choice of finsihing up and time things get hairy. You might as well just go melee-only. You are probably running the same playstyle maybe without even realising it.

 

The damage of guns compared to melee with its combo, special multiplicative mods, stances, and arcanes is just crazy low. Guns should simply do a lot more damage. I would even be OK if the single-shot ones did more damage that AoE, but both need to do more than melee. A stick right now does more damage than a rocket launcher, can take down bad ass enemies faster and more reliably. And doesn't need to aim, reload or run out of ammo.

As for range - some shotguns are pointless, 20 m range? a 4m range melee weapon and a jump forward can cover that in a second, and then hit more enemies too! If your jump is a heavy slam, even more damage and statuses. Or you can plink away with a huge fall-off in damage until you have to reload your tiny magazine.

Adding arcanes you need to be steel patching already to make your guns more capable on steel path (hmm) and galavanised mods that give a relatively small boost is just a sticking plaster. Even then, some of those primary arcanes exist to boost your melee damage! DE just needs to spend some time going through the old gun damage (and sentinels!) and give many of them more base dps. I think its all been a power creep that left guns well behind.

[(NSW)JigsJosh]

7 hours ago, DarkSkysz said:

Blood rush was never the only mod to increase crit chance, ya know...

 

Not really, you don't need to close distance to use melee right now. The time you waste aiming head by head you can just explode the whole room with a hammer. Jumping and heavy atk can almost make you teleport to your targeted spot. And for steel path there are glaives.

 

Guns are still good for open world stuff since only guns can reach 100m+ range. But for normal missions... melee wins all the time.

Why did you quote me and not include the other parts to my quotes? I addressed these points already. Headshot aiming is really quite fast, and of course Blood Rush isn't the only cc mod but it used to be a LOT better.

[(NSW)JigsJosh]

10 minutes ago, gbjbaanb said:

I watched John Strife Hayes review WF with his new player thing and the combat (apart from stealth) nearly always went:

pull out Lato, bang bang bang, 1 dead enemy, starts shooting the next and then there are 3 attacking. pulls out his Bo and they all die.

pulls out the paris, shoots an enemy, shoots another one, there are 4 attacking now, so dive in and pulls out his Bo. All dead

The gameplay repeats that all the way through - the guns do damage but do not kill anything like as quickly as needed, always he's resorting to the melee. This, remembe,r is the unmodded baseline that shows melee beats guns a lot.

In  higher level gameplay I see the same thing - I shoot things, mostly they die but you get a higher level enemy, you just pull out the melee and smash it. Too many enemies for your single-shot gun, pull out your melee and mash it. Always the melee is so OP that apart from playign and having a bit of fun with the guns, it is the go-to choice of finsihing up and time things get hairy. You might as well just go melee-only. You are probably running the same playstyle maybe without even realising it.

 

Lato? Paris? These are trash weapons though (even if you're talking about better versions). Of course they aren't going to do as well against melee. Did you see my examples up above? The best comparison is comparing end game weapons to end game weapons. So why not compare Gram Prime, Kronen Prime, Tenet/Kuva melee weapons to Acceltra, Ignis Wraith, and Tenet/Kuva primaries? 

 

14 minutes ago, gbjbaanb said:

The damage of guns compared to melee with its combo, special multiplicative mods, stances, and arcanes is just crazy low. Guns should simply do a lot more damage. I would even be OK if the single-shot ones did more damage that AoE, but both need to do more than melee. A stick right now does more damage than a rocket launcher, can take down bad ass enemies faster and more reliably. And doesn't need to aim, reload or run out of ammo.

 

What do you mean a stick does more damage than a rocket launcher? Take the Bramma or Ogris to any defense mission. You can literally just stand in one spot and kill everything around the stage easily. In defenses it seems more intuitive to use melee since enemies come to you, but you can literally just kill them in their spawn points with huge aoe weapons and its much faster than melee. You don't even really have to bother aiming either. On run through missions like exterminate, you can just shoot in front of you while you run without having to aim. And you don't even have to see the enemies. Shoot at a door or wall, and the enemies behind it die. And this was before the recent rebalance. Now they are even stronger. I'd also like to mention that ammo isn't really a factor either because exilus mods and pads, but reload (albeit not every weapon has it) is annoying, I'll give you that. 

 

18 minutes ago, gbjbaanb said:

Even then, some of those primary arcanes exist to boost your melee damage!

 

Explain? "Some of those"? Because the only primary arcane that works with melee is Primary Dexterity, and that doesn't boost melee damage, it only increases combo duration at max rank.

[DarkSkysz]

1 hour ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

Why did you quote me and not include the other parts to my quotes?

Because nobody needs a wall of text being copied over and over?

That is why we have quotes...

 

Anyway... you are just complaining about trivial stuff... show me any primary doing 1million or more dmg with no preparation or external buff. Melees can do that...

Ahh and if you think doing 1 million dmg per hit is useless... try steel path.

[Tyreaus]

10 hours ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

And we could say hey, maybe melee is better for groups of enemies and guns are better for single hard targets like bosses. But even against groups of enemies you can greatly outshine melee weapons with incredible aoe primaries like the Kuva Bramma. 

You're starting to compare apples and oranges a touch. If you're talking about a top-of-the-line AoE capable weapon like the Bramma, whose major downside is supposed to be keeping up DPS (due to small ammo reserve), then your better comparison is to something like the Glaive Prime built for heavy attacks that can snap a good chunk of damage in an instant. And probably doing that over a prolonged period to see just how the two fare.

Likewise, if you're going for a multi-hitting combo-based melee against a single target, a better comparison would be an auto weapon of some sort. Given Sisters have caps on status effects, hit rates and per-hit damage numbers can matter quite a bit.

And if you're going to compare groups of weapons, then it's important to consider proportions and averages and the like. Pull up a random melee weapon and a random gun, for example, and you're likely to get a setup that says "melee is better for groups and guns are better for single targets". If you're going to judge the groups at their highest points, then any single outlier (or even just a couple) is likely to wreck the entire balance process and you'll end up with a few good weapons and a lot of total trash.

[CephalonCarnage]

3 hours ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

Lato? Paris? These are trash weapons though (even if you're talking about better versions). Of course they aren't going to do as well against melee

They are as trash as the mk-1 Bo that he was also using. I think its a fair comparison, you're looking at all starter weapons, no mods or even a stance added to his Bo.

3 hours ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

What do you mean a stick does more damage than a rocket launcher?

I take my Kuva Ogris to Deimos arcana vaults, the big jugulus enemies pp up and I fire at it. 5 shots to kill. I hit it with my Orthos prime and its 2 or 3 swipes. Therte are enemies with DR that simply make the rocket launcher useless, and not just the nullifiers that I treat as an exception, but ones where th erocket lauchers do little to no damage but the pointy stick shreds them. Of course, all the mods help build combo and multipliers and prics that build multipliers that end up doing a million DPS (they did nerf it, now only 100,000s), something the rocket launchers cannot compete with.

3 hours ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

I'd also like to mention that ammo isn't really a factor either because exilus mods and pads

Waiting for a ammo pizza to pop out ammo is not what I call a bonus. Nor is using your exilus slot for ammo capacity or ammo mutation when it could be used for something actually useful - like increased range for those limited range beam weapons or shotguns, or recoil reduction etc.

 

3 hours ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

only primary arcane that works with melee is Primary Dexterity

no, that's fair, but the requirement is to use melee to trigger it and then it gives you more melee combo which is a form of increased damage. It doesn't necessarily scream "use guns" now does it.

[(NSW)JigsJosh]

On 2021-08-07 at 4:16 PM, DarkSkysz said:

Because nobody needs a wall of text being copied over and over?

That is why we have quotes...

I'm pretty sure you did that just to cherry pick and ignore things I've already addressed, because you did exactly that, but okay.

 

On 2021-08-07 at 4:16 PM, DarkSkysz said:

show me any primary doing 1million or more dmg with no preparation or external buff. Melees can do that...

Yeah melees can do that... with preparation. What do you even mean by preparation anyways? One could consider building up a combo preparation. And I was just doing sets of 1 million damage earlier today with the Bramma. That's not that hard.

[(NSW)JigsJosh]

On 2021-08-07 at 7:38 PM, gbjbaanb said:

Of course, all the mods help build combo and multipliers and prics that build multipliers that end up doing a million DPS (they did nerf it, now only 100,000s), something the rocket launchers cannot compete with.

Okay I suppose I can give you this. I've actually been noticing myself lately that there are some radial weapons that are falling short like the Ogris. It used to be much more powerful. But also this is my exact point. The million dps is what gave melee its charm, and now it has to compete with guns that can still achieve that like high multishot weapons and weapons like the Tenet Flux Rifle that can proc dozens of times and kill even the hardest enemies in seconds. And a lot of what gives melee its charm still is using hybrid builds with Condition Overload, which in a lot of cases works better with high status guns assisting it.

I've been testing and testing the past couple days, and I still can't find a melee weapon that can compete against some of these newer guns. I'll admit I have yet to test Glaive Prime because Glaives are not my thing though. I've heard it's good, I'm just hoping it lives up to the hype.

 

On 2021-08-07 at 7:38 PM, gbjbaanb said:

They are as trash as the mk-1 Bo that he was also using. I think its a fair comparison, you're looking at all starter weapons, no mods or even a stance added to his Bo.

Do you really think it is a fair comparison though? Most enemies up until like level 50 and even beyond you can one shot easily, even with subpar builds. This is why I've been comparing end game builds against Steel Path enemies, Liches, and Sisters.

And look, I WANT melee to be good. I enjoy it a lot, I really do. But it's really frustrating when melee weapons that are supposedly top tier with incredible builds take forever to kill high level bosses and armored enemies when you can do it in one or two seconds with a half built primary.

And guys there are several other things to consider here. Like the fact that only 2 out of 10 of the most bought rivens are melee. What does that tell you? The fact that the majority of the hype lately has been all about primary and some secondary weapons. The fact that one of the things that gives melee its charm - being able to block - isn't even that effective considering you can still get procced while blocking which is super unintuitive. The fact that there are so many cases where you are forced to use specifically guns against enemies like the Eidolons, or Lephantis, or Tusk Thumpers except I can't think of a single case off the top of my head where it's the opposite and you have to use melee. And the fact that (and I know this isn't a fair comparison, but it still stands) there are archguns but no archmelee, coupled with the fact that for the majority of the game you can (or will be able to in the future) hop into your mech and blow everything away with infinite archgun ammo.

Melee was perfect for what it was before, and I can almost guarantee you now that there will be another melee buff in the future of some sort.

[CephalonCarnage]

2 hours ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

And guys there are several other things to consider here. Like the fact that only 2 out of 10 of the most bought rivens are melee. What does that tell you? The fact that the majority of the hype lately has been all about primary and some secondary weapons.

it means that melee works quite well without them, but guns need them far more.

 

2 hours ago, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

there are archguns but no archmelee

whu?

[DarknessNightshade]

On 2021-08-07 at 7:51 AM, (NSW)JigsJosh said:

So why after making two things that would even the playing field between guns and melee would you also nerf melee mods? The logic just doesn't make sense to me.

Melee mods were slightly nerfed to account for the massive disadvantage guns had even with the Galvanised mods.

For example, with Blood Rush and a maxed out Gladiator mod set (Might, Vice, Resolve, Rush, Finesse, Aegis), you're getting 100% critical chance per combo multiplier, which means you get a massive 1200% critical chance at 12x, and this is after the nerf. You then can add Sacrificial Steel for another 220% critical chance, for a massive 1420% critical chance for any melee weapon.

Critical Chance, affects your crit tier, which in turn affects your Critical Damage multiplier. (Using this as a guide: https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Critical_Hit#Crit_Tiers)

Lets say you use a Nikana Prime, one of the most used/popular melee weapons,your base critical chance is 28%, 28 x (1 + 14.20) = 425.6% critical chance, which is enough to net you Tier 4 red critical hits with a 25.6% chance of Tier 5s. Which translates into 1 + 4 x (2.4 x (1 + 0) - 1 = 6.6x Critical Damage (2.4 being the base Critical multiplier for Nikana Prime, and 0 being the no modded Damage), using no Critical Damage mods (and a massive 8x when you land a Tier 5)

Gladiator Might gives us 60% Critical Damage, so the actual value is 12.36x (1 + 4 x (2.4 x (1 + 0.6) - 1)

Now if you used a Primary such as maybe Kuva Bramma, one of the S tier weapons ranked on Overframe, your base critical chance is 35%, you have Critical Delay and Galvanised Scope as my two chosen Critical Chance mods (and no Critical Damage mods), you have 200%, and 320% respectively (at maximum stacks), which only adds up to 520% critical chance for any rifle weapon, if we do the math, we can figure out the critical damage based on crit tier as before. 

38 x (1 + 5.2) = 235% critical chance, which translates into Tier 2 orange critical hits with a 35% chance at a Tier 3 red crit.

1 + 2 x (2.1 x (1 + 0) - 1) = 3.2x Critical Damage (2.1 being Bramma's base critical chance, and 0 being the no modded damage), less than half of the melee weapon, to my knowledge, the only other thing capable of increasing Critical Chance of primary weapons is via either the Vigilante Mods, which give you a chance to increase your crit tier, and thus your crit damage, or Arcane Avenger, ignoring the Cat's Eye Adarza mod or warframe abilities, while melee can also take advantage of Arcane Avenger.

As you can see, there's a massive divide between Melee and Guns even with the nerfs and Galvanised mods introduced. 

 

[Parcialsobriedad]

Guns have other disadvantages that should be looked upon such as utility stats , reload , holster speed.

You can switch instantly between melee to secondary/primary and the other way around but you are affected by holster speed only when switching weapons.

[Wolfwaffe]

Melee does not have to compete with guns. It's guns who have to play catch-up.

- First and foremost: Combo counter. Yeah, it no longer increases the damage for basic attacks, but you don't use it for that. Nope. You use combo counter for BR and WW and Gladiator set to increase your crit and status chance. And heavy attack. And mods for initial combo counter. Guns don't have that. The only guns that have combo counter are sniper rifles, and those are entirey different can of worms on their own.

- Galvanized mods and cancercanes needing kills to activate. When you're soloing, it's not a problem. When you are in the squad... Minor inconvinience, really. Still, melee does not have this spin-up delay. You whack enemies with a pointy stick, pointy stick makes status, next hit with pointy stick deals more damage right away. Oh, and the primary/secondary/triary/tetriary agility cancercane is  a laugh. Why would I switch to gun when I just whacked a bunch of guys to death and, in fact, can continue to do so?

- Lack of utility. Melee has two universal healing mods, Healing Return and Life Strike. One gives 11hp per status type on enemy hit, other gives percentage of damage dealt on heavy attack. Shattering impact removes armor, but let's be fair, only weirdos like me use it in normal gameplay, but still, it's there if you want it. Need a quick CC? Jump-slam.

What do guns have? One life-leech syndicate mod from New Loka for Furis. Furis! Not even Akfuris. Single furis.

[Walkampf]

I joining the camp of melee still being stronger.

My 3 favorite melee weapons sill perform way better than my 3 favorite ranged weapons.

I think the recent additions for guns were certainly a step in the right direction.

 

vor 22 Stunden schrieb (NSW)JigsJosh:

Like the fact that only 2 out of 10 of the most bought rivens are melee. What does that tell you?

That a melee weapons are far more balacned across the board and across different sub-types,

where there are only very few guns which (even with a riven) are viable.

 

Listing a single fact out of a complex issue is useless.

For a similar example, look at former US President Donald Trump who once argued,

"corona numbers are up, because we are testing."

If you look at only this one statment, yes, numbers of confirmed covid cases were going up, when the US started testing more for covid.

Of course, if you start looking at the bigger picture, it quickly becomes obvious, that tests are not actually the cause for more infected actually being infected.