I'm having trouble with Primary Merciless after U32. Anyone else?

[Rasdan]

Primary Merciless used to be a must have for AoE weapons due to how easy to build the stack. Ever since the AoE ammo nerf, I tried to use more diverse weapons on different missions. Sadly, It's really hard to upkeep Primary Merciless stack.

I tried putting them on:

High Fire Rate - Hold Mouse for Rapid Fire/Spool - High Magazine weapons like Prisma Grakata, Tenora Prime, Soma Prime, Tenet Flux Rifle. Upkeeping stacks on headshots is still hard, even with Punchthrough mods (Primed Shred) still doesn't cut it.

High Fire Rate - Burst Shots weapons like Sybaris Prime, Kuva Quartakk is also too hard with Primary Merciless. I tried to change this to Deadhead, but proccing deadhead is even harder (due to enemies mostly died of status proc instead of direct hit).

Secondaries, however is easier if your weapon has Heat and Cascadia Flare.

 

Is this it? Is it time to return and make a broken melee build with Primary Dexterity? Or spamming OP Warframe nukes with new mods/arcanes?

 

[trst]

That was always the case with Merciless since you only get 4 seconds between stacks.

I'd recommend switching to Deadhead on anything that isn't an AOE. It's trivial to get accidental headshots between the buffed multiplier and the extra buff from R5. Plus you only need 3 kills for a max buff with 24 seconds before a stack decays.

Dexterity is easier to stack but between that and Deadhead it depends on if you want to use your melee more often or if you want more damage on your guns.

[(XBOX)Tanta Cinta]

I've been enjoying Cascadia Flare on my secondary weapons as I use corrosive/viral + heat almost 90% of the time. I took off Secondary Merciless on most of my guns because of how much better CF is at buffing damage from heat procs. I do hope a primary version of the arcane comes out, would be dope to run on my Quanta Vandal 👌

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Yep, and it makes me question their choice to remove Merciless ammo max increase.

Because it was clearly done to nerf AOE weapons more, but now AOE weapons can’t even use merciless do to how infrequently we’re forced to use them now.

[Ace-Bounty-Hunter]

It was definitely an oversight on DE's part. I really think Merciless' stack duration should be bumped up to be on par with Dexterity or Deadhead's stack timers to compensate. 

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

Yep

Merciless was Never viable on 'single target' weapons.

Its just this latest update pushing people away from AoE that makes the problem more obvious.

 

with a decay of 4 seconds, you must consistently get a Double Kill every 4 seconds in order to Increase Stacks, and at least 1 kill every 4 seconds to Maintain Stacks. That's a tall order for a single target weapon that takes half your magazine to get just 1 kill in Steel Path.

 

DE needs to go back and give the arcanes another look.

now that we aren't using AoE, merciless needs a rebalance to be usable for other weapons.

Suggestion: change the 'on Kill' condition to also count Assists -its a co-op game after all

or just double the decay timer (though this has a danger of making Deadhead redundant, must be carefully considered)

 

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

3 minutes ago, Ace-Bounty-Hunter said:

It was definitely an oversight on DE's part. I really think Merciless' stack duration should be bumped up to be on par with Dexterity or Deadhead's stack timers to compensate. 

If Merciless and Deadhead had the Same Timer

yet one requires Any Kill, but the other requires a Precision Headshot

there's a danger of making Deadhead pointless.

[Skaleek]

1 hour ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

Merciless was Never viable on 'single target' weapons.

I use merciless on all my single target weapons just fine. The real "hump" to get over is the first 3 kills to get galvanized aptitude and galvanized chamber online.

[Ace-Bounty-Hunter]

52 minutes ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

If Merciless and Deadhead had the Same Timer

yet one requires Any Kill, but the other requires a Precision Headshot

there's a danger of making Deadhead pointless.

So just like how Merciless is pointless right now? There is absolutely no reason to run Merciless over Dexterity and Deadhead since the stacks run out too quickly. This has always been an issue with the arcane since its inception, but the spammy room nuking nature of launchers could make it work. 

Buff the timer to 10 seconds or add another useful stat to replace the one they removed. But as it is right now, it's completely unusable.

[Tiltskillet]

3 hours ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

Merciless was Never viable on 'single target' weapons.

Untrue.  Though they need certain things to work. High RoF is really basic, especially with some punch through.  Gas or electric can help enormously too.

I'll use Deadhead and Dexterity more than previously.  But Merciless is going to remain my most used arcane, even though I'm a pretty avid headhunter and like mixing melee with shooting.   

 

 

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

2 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Untrue.  Though they need certain things to work. High RoF is really basic, especially with some punch through.  Gas or electric can help enormously too.

 

 

 

 

Note how your suggested tricks involve hitting multiple targets at the same time, converting the gun to Functionally AoE.

when I said not viable for single target, I meant strictly single target.

[Marvelous_A]

10 minutes ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

 

Note how your suggested tricks involve hitting multiple targets at the same time, converting the gun to Functionally AoE.

when I said not viable for single target, I meant strictly single target.

Arcanes that requires multiple kills to activate is useless when there's nothing else to kill? Shocking!

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

3 minutes ago, Marvelous_A said:

Arcanes that requires multiple kills to activate is useless when there's nothing else to kill? Shocking!

exactly!

we need another option doesn't require either getting a bunch of kills fast, or having to aim for the head.

maybe one where you get stacks just for making Hits. the way Melee Combo works.

[Tiltskillet]

15 minutes ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

 

Note how your suggested tricks involve hitting multiple targets at the same time, converting the gun to Functionally AoE.

when I said not viable for single target, I meant strictly single target.

High RoF is the only essential one if you're insisting on literally plunking targets one at a time due to...a solemn religious belief or something?  Be careful not to hit any exploding barrels though--I imagine that will require confession and whatever your equivalent to a dozen Hail Mary's might be.

[Skaleek]

I will say the only place that merciless really suffers is on boss fights without adds. Why? Well you can guess, you guys have been talking about it. On kill effects in general sucks for single strong targets, but deadhead and the melee ones suffer from this too, to a lesser extent because they need less charges to hit max stacks.

[L3512]

Dexterity on both primary and secondary is easy to upkeep with any glaive heavy attack build.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

6 minutes ago, L3512 said:

Dexterity on both primary and secondary is easy to upkeep with any glaive heavy attack build.

But if I'm already effective at getting all my kills with my Melee

why would I bother swapping to a gun?

Dexterity goes against the purpose of letting guns compete with the Melee Meta, since it relies on the melee weapon.

[L3512]

1 minute ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

But if I'm already effective at getting all my kills with my Melee

why would I bother swapping to a gun?

Dexterity goes against the purpose of letting guns compete with the Melee Meta, since it relies on the melee weapon.

Dexterity increases melee combo counter so it's more symbiotic than cross purpose (or it was when Zenurik had 60% heavy attack efficiency, now it's niche.). In modes like disruption there are more clearly defined roles for weapons and less spawns so dexterity has more use.

During a SP defence fissure I had issues balancing ammo vs merciless with a K Ogris (no ammo mutation to see what difference the changes made.), AOE can't really use deadhead so the only other option is dexterity.

As a side note for why, big AOE will still generally kill more enemies faster than glaives for 99% of the content people play.

[Ace-Bounty-Hunter]

9 hours ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

But if I'm already effective at getting all my kills with my Melee

why would I bother swapping to a gun?

Dexterity goes against the purpose of letting guns compete with the Melee Meta, since it relies on the melee weapon.

Because it allows you to comfortably utilize your entire loadout in a mission. Use your melee to pick off nearby enemies and build stacks on your dexterity arcanes, then use your guns to pick off distant enemies. Namely Eximus units because they can royally mess you up if they get too close. The added combo duration on the arcanes also means I don't have to mod for it on my melee.

This is why I rarely used Merciless, even before it got nerfed. Because I've always switched between all my weapons in missions rather than relying solely on a single one like the meta morons do. The only reason people didn't use ranged weapons back in the melee dominant days was because they were as effective as peashooters.

[Rasdan]

2 minutes ago, Ace-Bounty-Hunter said:

Because it allows you to comfortably utilize your entire loadout in a mission. Use your melee to pick off nearby enemies and build stacks on your dexterity arcanes, then use your guns to pick off distant enemies. Namely Eximus units because they can royally mess you up if they get too close. The added combo duration on the arcanes also means I don't have to mod for it on my melee.

This is why I rarely used Merciless, even before it got nerfed. Because I've always switched between all my weapons in missions rather than relying solely on a single one like the meta morons do. The only reason people didn't use ranged weapons back in the melee dominant days was because they were as effective as peashooters.

True, but what would happen if you get a one weapon sortie challenge, and it's a mission that encourages splitting up (Defection, Excavation).

I suppose i can only rely on warframe abilities, then?

[Numerikuu]

Defo needs a slight duration buff. Maybe a slight fire rate buff as a passive too? Regardless it feels like it needs something extra in order to be on par with Deadhead and Dexterity.

[Ace-Bounty-Hunter]

8 minutes ago, Rasdan said:

True, but what would happen if you get a one weapon sortie challenge, and it's a mission that encourages splitting up (Defection, Excavation).

I suppose i can only rely on warframe abilities, then?

That is an extremely hypothetical situation that only affects a small percentage of overall gameplay. And in that case, you'll just have to adapt. 

[SpiritTeA]

I don’t like Merciless either. But I do use it a lot, because my favorite Chakkhurr is good with it. Faster reload, you need shoot only once in each enemy (Unfortunately Deadhead is pretty useless on my build, I don’t kill SP enemy on headshot, it dies from Bleeding Proc which isn’t counted by Deadhead). But yeah would really like to see that arcane buffed.

[Venus-Venera]

vor 16 Stunden schrieb Rasdan:

Primary Merciless used to be a must have for AoE weapons due to how easy to build the stack. Ever since the AoE ammo nerf, I tried to use more diverse weapons on different missions. Sadly, It's really hard to upkeep Primary Merciless stack.

I tried putting them on:

High Fire Rate - Hold Mouse for Rapid Fire/Spool - High Magazine weapons like Prisma Grakata, Tenora Prime, Soma Prime, Tenet Flux Rifle. Upkeeping stacks on headshots is still hard, even with Punchthrough mods (Primed Shred) still doesn't cut it.

High Fire Rate - Burst Shots weapons like Sybaris Prime, Kuva Quartakk is also too hard with Primary Merciless. I tried to change this to Deadhead, but proccing deadhead is even harder (due to enemies mostly died of status proc instead of direct hit).

Secondaries, however is easier if your weapon has Heat and Cascadia Flare.

 

Is this it? Is it time to return and make a broken melee build with Primary Dexterity? Or spamming OP Warframe nukes with new mods/arcanes?

 

arcane is currently the biggest garbage. because on sp you don't get as many kills to keep buff up. that's still possible with maxed and overpriced builds. and even there you have to optimize everything for ammo. so it's more of a joke!

I would not recommend anyone to play sp for arcane. because such a waste does not need a weapon.
rather switch to secondary and buff with heat proc arcane dmg.