Why are long/heavy weapons so bad?

[vixenpixel]

We really need a balance update for melee. Why would you ever use a heavy blade/hammer when they are both slower, does less damage and has worse follow-through. By no measure can that added +1 innate range equate to the dps loss of equipping a heavy weapon.

[taiiat]

the Weapons with high Follow Through, tend to be the ones with low Range. you can Mod for that, but they'll always be roughly half of the Range of the ones that start with higher base values.
there is some Power Creep here, but 

relative speed is from their Stances - the big 'heavy' Weapons will be slower base on average but Attack Speed increases are pretty normal additions to basically every Melee Weapon anyways.

there's again some Power Creep here, but larger Weapons generally don't deal less Damage?

[vixenpixel]

2 hours ago, taiiat said:

the Weapons with high Follow Through, tend to be the ones with low Range. you can Mod for that, but they'll always be roughly half of the Range of the ones that start with higher base values.
there is some Power Creep here, but 

relative speed is from their Stances - the big 'heavy' Weapons will be slower base on average but Attack Speed increases are pretty normal additions to basically every Melee Weapon anyways.

there's again some Power Creep here, but larger Weapons generally don't deal less Damage?

If you check stance damage multipliers, multiplied by speed generally short weapons deal more damage. Base damage is the on-paper damage base which appears to be higher for heavy weapons but since this damage is then multiplied by stance speed dps, heavy weapons actually don't do that much damage. If you further extrapolate into status application and not just pure damage output, fast weapons become increasingly better due to the rate of application of this secondary damage. Corrosive and viral apply faster from weapons that are fast, thus increasing the dps further. Long weapons may start out having double range but this is an illusion because when you put range mods on these don't add a percentage increase range but a flat amount, thus what was twice the range quickly becomes a negligible amount. 

Larger weapons deal less damage as a rule, especially when combating crowds, because the shorter, faster weapons somehow unrealistically have higher follow-through. As if shanking somebody with a stiletto does more damage to the guy behind your target than if you had used a claymore. 

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

The stances are mostly terrible for heavy blades and make the weapons so much slower then their actual attack speeds. On top of that none of the stances have forced slash procs or meaningful forced slash procs. Its a shame.

Edited May 4, 2023 by (PSN)Joylesstuna

[taiiat]

8 hours ago, vixenpixel said:

Base damage is the on-paper damage base which appears to be higher for heavy weapons but since this damage is then multiplied by stance speed dps, heavy weapons actually don't do that much damage.

the Heavy Stance anims worth using IMO have pretty high Multipliers. in the 4-6x Range, and with AoE.

which for all 3 Stances, is either the Block, Block move, or both.
they're the best mixture of fast, high Multipliers, AoE, and offer some extra bonuses like Lift/Ragdoll, or forced Status for that extra bonus Damage.
one or two of those even offer good forward movement, while the rest are sorta stationary unless you have high Attack Speed.

8 hours ago, vixenpixel said:

If you further extrapolate into status application and not just pure damage output

this is fair, but i think the Damage, AoE, and Range are what's being traded there. higher Status proficiency or significantly higher Damage. nothing is stopping one from using a Gun to debuff Enemies, which everyone should be doing since it makes every single Melee Weapon objectively better when you do mix a Gun with it rather than not.

8 hours ago, vixenpixel said:

Long weapons may start out having double range but this is an illusion because when you put range mods on these don't add a percentage increase range but a flat amount, thus what was twice the range quickly becomes a negligible amount. 

your average for short fast Weapons is like 1.3-1.5, vs above 2.5 to 3.0
about double

after adding Primed Reach to both it's still about 1.5x
though the delta is more significant in raw Units rather than Percentage. ala areas like 3.35 vs 4.75

 

 

 

9 hours ago, vixenpixel said:

As if shanking somebody with a stiletto does more damage to the guy behind your target than if you had used a claymore. 

i don't really like the existence of Follow Through either, make no mistake that the reason it exists is just as a Melee nerf, not to make Melee more interesting. if it was to make it more interesting we'd have more Mechanics to it and it would vary more, Et Cetera.
like the big obvious one would be rather than it being like 0.6x per Enemy, it would be more like -0.2x per Enemy. a more sensible reduction per Enemy hit.

[L3512]

34 minutes ago, taiiat said:

your average for short fast Weapons is like 1.3-1.5, vs above 2.5 to 3.0

This is a slight misconception, the only weapons that fall consistently into that bracket are non thrown glaives, sparring and fist weapons. Claws, daggers, dual daggers and warfans range from 1.65 - 2.2 and all have good follow through and arguably better stances by raw damage and definitely by forced procs.

You can also mod for range but can not mod for follow through and there really is no point hitting out to greater distance when the enemies take no damage (looking at you hammers and Incarnon Bo).

Edited May 5, 2023 by L3512

[Salenstormwing]

Tempo Royale makes every heavy blade great. Its the weapon stance that I always pick for Heavy Blade weapons. If you're not using Tempo Royale, you're not having a good stance. Because it's a fun stance.

[taiiat]

3 hours ago, L3512 said:

and arguably better stances by raw damage and definitely by forced procs.

almost all Stances are kinda the sucks thesedays, but that's another Thread

there's a particular usage that Heavy Stances are good at IMO, as i alluded to:
you can do it effectively with Cleaving Whirlwind and Tempo Royale. Rending Crane technically can do something very similar but it's less proficient at it than the other two.
doing anything else with Heavy Melee isn't worth bothering with.

that's the absolute lowest effort form of this, by the way. the Mod Loadout is atrocious. i'm not using any extra buffs that a Player would actually use in Gameplay. i don't like using Heavy Melee other than doing this, i never have.
entirely hinging on raw Damage and spamming Headshots with AoE. and even that terribleness Kills stuff post haste.
suitable for mowing forwards through Rooms like a giant Lawnmower.

Spoiler

 

 

 

the Power Creep has certainly been pushing Melee Weapons closer to each other and edging closer to "everything does everything", which is for sure in part how we're getting to this point.
but there is something that Heavy Melee does, that the other Melee Weapons don't.

Edited May 5, 2023 by taiiat

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

8 hours ago, Salenstormwing said:

Tempo Royale makes every heavy blade great. Its the weapon stance that I always pick for Heavy Blade weapons. If you're not using Tempo Royale, you're not having a good stance. Because it's a fun stance.

Tempo royale is arguably the worst stance. It has some good mobility but both cleaving whirlwind and rending crane have better neutral combos. 

[PhiZero]

As said above, gotta check the stance multipliers and forced procs, someone's even forced ragdolls which feel horrible.

Though it's largely a symptom of the previous couple melee metas.

On launch, heavy blades and polearms absolutely dominated the meta, and it took 2 damage reworkes, and 1.5 melee reworks to come to their current iteration of "just a'ight."

 

Though imo Hammers are still pretty mean with Crushing Ruin, which I still break out my rivened Sibear and dearly miss my Fragor Prime on Steel Path.

The forward combo is still pretty good and can sometimes land headshots, and the aerial melee is pretty gnarly as well if you connect with someone's face; but, outside of fishing for headshots, hammers are more of a primer weapon such as Crushing Ruins Block Foward combo, so without condition overload they tend to fall behind...

[Salenstormwing]

5 hours ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Tempo royale is arguably the worst stance. It has some good mobility but both cleaving whirlwind and rending crane have better neutral combos. 

I never payed attention to what procs you get from certain stances, because most weapons just work fine on their own for applying statuses I want. I value Tempo Royale for its mobility. Having a stance that allows you to move about more freely is something I value in my stances. Is it the best? No, but it is the most comfortable of the Heavy Blade stances. At least for myself.

Now Wise Razor... that stance is garbage because it's the only stance for 2-handed nikanas and it has a really bad combo where you have to wait for it to reset before you can swing it again.

[Tiltskillet]

RE: heavy blades, The new Magus Agress arcane might imply DE thinks they could use some help.  Not that I think an arcane is a good solution, or that I understand why heavy blades might need the help more than, say, hammers or staves.

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

7 hours ago, Salenstormwing said:

I never payed attention to what procs you get from certain stances, because most weapons just work fine on their own for applying statuses I want. I value Tempo Royale for its mobility. Having a stance that allows you to move about more freely is something I value in my stances. Is it the best? No, but it is the most comfortable of the Heavy Blade stances. At least for myself.

Now Wise Razor... that stance is garbage because it's the only stance for 2-handed nikanas and it has a really bad combo where you have to wait for it to reset before you can swing it again.

To be fair I don't think any of them are the "best" so fair enough. Rending crane consistently gets headshots with it's neutral combat and cleaving whirlwinds standing combo has great dmg multipliers so I personally prefer those. At least we have options unlike two handed nikanas.

Edited May 5, 2023 by (PSN)Joylesstuna

[vixenpixel]

Heavy melee has bad follow-through, counter-acting a range that is not even increased percentage-based by mods, thus lending these weapons a diminishing return on range growth AND range damage, which is a big nerf that, combined with a slow speed on the stances, makes you wonder why you'd ever use a heavy melee at all. Thus the actual "chart" implicits that the plus-side of having more base damage and very slightly more base range, is balanced by less speed, less follow-through and less range-growth with range-mods, essentially forcing heavy blade configs to come equipped with arcane strike and primed fury at the very least. Thus it requires alot more mods and modcapacity to counter-act the negative. In my experience you have to balance the slow speed on heavy weapons with at least primed fury/quickening AND arcane strike, or warcry/gauss redline for them to be viable options in any situation where you are looking to deal some of your damage with melee and made the mistake of bringing a heavy blade or hammer. 

Only melee with perfect follow-through is ghoulsaw but it's counter-acted by how absolutely awful the stance is. Perfect follow-thru = terrible at everything else. The rest of the melee weapons have opposite balance, where high follow-thru is paired with fast speed and good multipliers/forced proccs and low follow-thru is paired with slow speed and ...I guess slams? It's mind-boggling to me. Follow-thru is the single best stat to have high on a melee except if you are only using it to take down single targets like demolysts or acolytes for example - in this case alone, melee doesn't give a damn about the follow-thru stat and let's you focus damage. I feel like the S-tier glaive retains it's place as the king of melee, in spite of actually being more of a launcher, in large due to how follow-thru nerfs every other melee in the game (the forced slash procc obviously helps but other melee are also capable of ensuring aoe slash). And the only thing that makes melee actually niche viable is with the dagger/amalgam combo or how the redeemer and stropha makes a joke of steel path bosses like the deimos Elephantis (which is super niche), or on voruna specifically due to how she is able to feed condition overload like no other. 

On 2023-05-05 at 6:20 AM, taiiat said:

almost all Stances are kinda the sucks thesedays, but that's another Thread

there's a particular usage that Heavy Stances are good at IMO, as i alluded to:
you can do it effectively with Cleaving Whirlwind and Tempo Royale. Rending Crane technically can do something very similar but it's less proficient at it than the other two.
doing anything else with Heavy Melee isn't worth bothering with.

that's the absolute lowest effort form of this, by the way. the Mod Loadout is atrocious. i'm not using any extra buffs that a Player would actually use in Gameplay. i don't like using Heavy Melee other than doing this, i never have.
entirely hinging on raw Damage and spamming Headshots with AoE. and even that terribleness Kills stuff post haste.
suitable for mowing forwards through Rooms like a giant Lawnmower.

The enemy in your video are level 165 corrupted heavy gunners, which equals an EHP of about 3 million. I used Exo gokstad officers at 195 which equals around 11m ehp which is about the same as a heavy gunner in early steel path. You are using warcry to get your paracesis online, which kindof speaks to my original point. It's still an interesting experiment. You are basically going for headshots with your melee. I feel like, while that's fun and all, it's more of an incidental workaround to fix something that is inherently broken, than actually an intended balancing factor, if that makes sense? It doesn't really speak to the point of the thread which is about the follow-through mechanic. Furthermore, imo, the slams throwing enemies about, is actually something I don't want to see because it is lowering kills per minute. However, I do think, with warcry, it's highly effective. Admittedly I was using a pretty decent paracesis config with a cc/cd riven and weeping wounds to get slash on the enemy and it would kill the gokstad enemies with the high bleed following those headshots, quite effectively. Not even close to as effective as using epitaph or nukor primer and a grouping ability and any fast weapon with condition overload, but niche effective while completely dependant on warcry or similar. 

[vixenpixel]

If DE wanted to retain the balancing intention of the follow-through mechanic while reworking it to better balance it to the growing prevalence of incarnon primaries/secondaries gobbling up the meta, my suggestion is to make the heavy melee hit harder at a distance and weaker in close range and short weapons do the opposite, full damage inside a short distance and progressively less damage at a longer distance. This would be realistic, a punching dagger is great up close, a heavy weapon with a wide swing does more damage the further out it hits. This would scrap the whole function of every successive enemy lowering damage by an increasing amount (more so for heavy weapons ridiculously) until the last enemy hit takes next to no damage. The weapons would require a skill-check to work to the full extent of their statistics since measuring distance would suddenly be interesting. Big weapons with the larger aoe would hit effectively in a big area and less effectively up close, while short, quick weapons would do their max damage up close and less damage at a distance. This is realistic, the speed the weapon with a long blade travels at at it's furthest point is much higher than close to it's base. Even more obvious when it comes to axes and clubs or staves and polearms, specifically designed to use distanced attacks. A short weapon realistically has all it's damage in close range and would only hit further by sheer momentum of it's wielder passing through the obstacles infront. I think a change along those lines would add character to melee that mirrors the display of the stances and doesn't take a big dump on heavy weapons, but offers them a window where they shine more than their short and quick siblings.

Edited May 6, 2023 by vixenpixel

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

1 hour ago, vixenpixel said:

If DE wanted to retain the balancing intention of the follow-through mechanic while reworking it to better balance it to the growing prevalence of incarnon primaries/secondaries gobbling up the meta, my suggestion is to make the heavy melee hit harder at a distance and weaker in close range and short weapons do the opposite, full damage inside a short distance and progressively less damage at a longer distance. This would be realistic, a punching dagger is great up close, a heavy weapon with a wide swing does more damage the further out it hits. This would scrap the whole function of every successive enemy lowering damage by an increasing amount (more so for heavy weapons ridiculously) until the last enemy hit takes next to no damage. The weapons would require a skill-check to work to the full extent of their statistics since measuring distance would suddenly be interesting. Big weapons with the larger aoe would hit effectively in a big area and less effectively up close, while short, quick weapons would do their max damage up close and less damage at a distance. This is realistic, the speed the weapon with a long blade travels at at it's furthest point is much higher than close to it's base. Even more obvious when it comes to axes and clubs or staves and polearms, specifically designed to use distanced attacks. A short weapon realistically has all it's damage in close range and would only hit further by sheer momentum of it's wielder passing through the obstacles infront. I think a change along those lines would add character to melee that mirrors the display of the stances and doesn't take a big dump on heavy weapons, but offers them a window where they shine more than their short and quick siblings.

Honestly I just think heavy blades should get increased follow through even though 0.6 is pretty standard and I wouldnt consider it bad compared to other melees. As for your suggestion that you should do increased damage at the tip of heavy blades, I don't see this as a good solution.

Edited May 6, 2023 by (PSN)Joylesstuna

[taiiat]

2 hours ago, vixenpixel said:

The enemy in your video are level 165 corrupted heavy gunners

i'm going to stop you right there.

if i wasn't clear enough, it was not an example of Damage, since i was using a terrible Mod Loadout and just whatever Enemy i already had selected in Simulation from the last time i was there.
the demonstration was functionality. the Damage can be orders of Magnitude higher if one wanted to put effort into it. i just don't want to put effort into it.

2 hours ago, vixenpixel said:

You are using warcry to get your paracesis online, which kindof speaks to my original point. 

i am, yes. but to be fair, for normal use that would be far too fast, that's a final Attack Speed of like uhhh
3.2x
for normal use that would be too fast to even use. it's only to let me specifically spam Block and move Block.

but yes, the only way i can stand to use this Class of Melee happens to be with an enormous Attack Speed boost. i'm just not that representative of what would feel good with this Class as i am inherently biased against it, i don't like this type of Melee Weapon in any game. i hate UGS in Fromsoft games, too. i do enjoy heavier Weapons, but not small Buildings with a Handle.

 

2 hours ago, vixenpixel said:

I feel like, while that's fun and all, it's more of an incidental workaround to fix something that is inherently broken, than actually an intended balancing factor,

It doesn't really speak to the point of the thread which is about the follow-through mechanic.

Furthermore, imo, the slams throwing enemies about, is actually something I don't want to see because it is lowering kills per minute.

However, I do think, with warcry, it's highly effective. Admittedly I was using a pretty decent paracesis config with a cc/cd riven and weeping wounds to get slash on the enemy and it would kill the gokstad enemies with the high bleed following those headshots, quite effectively. Not even close to as effective as using epitaph or nukor primer and a grouping ability and any fast weapon with condition overload, but niche effective while completely dependant on warcry or similar. 

that is fair - that's my opinion of the most effective way to use this Melee Class, it's their analogue to the beyblading that some other Melee Classes may do instead.

sure, Follow Through is crap and only exists as a way to nerf Melee. i'll stick to my previous suggestion as i can understand that no Mechanic like Follow Through existing may be too effective, but the way Follow Through is handled is pretty extreme. (ala linearly subtract a Percentage per Enemy rather than Multiplicatively)

in most scenarios you wouldn't actually be throwing Enemies, as you'd actually be trying to increase Damage, would be my argument. so the AoE would Kill or atleast nearly Kill the Enemies, rather than just toss them.

i think they'd be for different scenarios. hitting everything with Ensnare and mashing on that can be best done with something else, while Heavy Melee does have a strength of high Damage while moving forwards through Enemies either to get somewhere and/or when you only care about the Enemies that may be directly getting in your way, versus a grouping scenario where you're likely mostly stationary instead.

 

 

 

there's other options that could be considered in addition too, like more of the swings having forced Impact to help stun Enemies that you're hitting, more Lift/Knockdown, or maybe even something entirely unique.

Edited May 6, 2023 by taiiat

[vixenpixel]

20 hours ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Honestly I just think heavy blades should get increased follow through even though 0.6 is pretty standard and I wouldnt consider it bad compared to other melees. As for your suggestion that you should do increased damage at the tip of heavy blades, I don't see this as a good solution.

If follow-through just did one flat damage decrease it would be fine but the way it works is that it's less and less effective the more enemies infront of you which actually makes range on melees suboptimal. Take the bo incarnon +4 range. It looks amazing on paper. Like players are going to get their power-fantasies in overdrive only to find that it's next to useless in reality because the more enemies you hit with a swipe the less effect you're going to see. It's almost insulting. It's double-punishing long/heavy weapons with low follow-thru and high range by making the range less valuable, whereas for a dagger for example, the added range of a range mod is actually giving you way more bang for the buck than putting it on the big weapon. This is a radical design-choice that makes little sense to me in light of additionally having low attack speeds on these weapons.

The longer range stats on the weapon creates an illusion that heavy/long weapons are good at dealing with large swaths of enemies while in reality, the best weapons for dealing with more enemies is a small weapon with high speed. It's like, heavy weapons have better damage on single targets but you have to sink at the very least 2-3 speed mods and arcane strike into them to actually make it happen.

Follow-through is essentially a feature that turns the melee completely upside-down. What you see on paper is the opposite of what you are getting.

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

6 minutes ago, vixenpixel said:

If follow-through just did one flat damage decrease it would be fine but the way it works is that it's less and less effective the more enemies infront of you which actually makes range on melees suboptimal. Take the bo incarnon +4 range. It looks amazing on paper. Like players are going to get their power-fantasies in overdrive only to find that it's next to useless in reality because the more enemies you hit with a swipe the less effect you're going to see. It's almost insulting. It's double-punishing long/heavy weapons with low follow-thru and high range by making the range less valuable, whereas for a dagger for example, the added range of a range mod is actually giving you way more bang for the buck than putting it on the big weapon. This is a radical design-choice that makes little sense to me in light of additionally having low attack speeds on these weapons.

The longer range stats on the weapon creates an illusion that heavy/long weapons are good at dealing with large swaths of enemies while in reality, the best weapons for dealing with more enemies is a small weapon with high speed. It's like, heavy weapons have better damage on single targets but you have to sink at the very least 2-3 speed mods and arcane strike into them to actually make it happen.

Follow-through is essentially a feature that turns the melee completely upside-down. What you see on paper is the opposite of what you are getting.

I disagree you are still killing and or priming enemies even with reduced damage therefore range is always very important. The amount of overkill damage that we do makes it a non issue even on high level steel path. This isn't to take away that heavy blades need help because they certainly do.

Edited May 7, 2023 by (PSN)Joylesstuna

[Traumtulpe]

On 2023-05-04 at 11:12 PM, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

The stances are mostly terrible for heavy blades and make the weapons so much slower then their actual attack speeds. On top of that none of the stances have forced slash procs or meaningful forced slash procs. Its a shame.

Not anymore, Heavy Blades were the meta way back, and DE nerfed them over and over and over again. They literally do <5% of the damage they once had - this is not an exaggeration.

For example Cleaving Whirlwinds combo "Drifting Stampede" previously had forced slash procs on 50% of it's DPS - now zero. It's "Broken Bull" did up to 4x the damage per hit compared to now.

Heavy Blades had their ~5x combo multiplier replaced with a ~1.5x damage buff.

Way back they even had built in Primed Sure Footed while attacking, much higher range (especially with rivens), they could hit through walls, you could put Gladiator mods on your Sentinel, better follow through (got stealth nerfed too) etc.

Edited May 7, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[Otaiken]

Back in the old days before galvanized mods and primary/secondary arcanes guns really struggled with SP-level content,

Meanwhile using melee with huge range and gimmicks like meme strike was the go-to option.

So when the melee 2.9 came DE saddled melee weapons with negative damage scaling on AoE. Which honestly was baffling to me even then. Meanwhile guns have got stronger and stronger and AoE on them more and more prevalent. Also, AoE falloff on guns is linear unlike on melee.

In short melee got left behind.

Anyone remember the activated "beast mode" that was supposed to come in melee 3.0 which never materialized? The melee system we're currently on is literally unfinished and has been for ages.

Follow-through needs to go at the very least. Also, I suspect DE will try to "solve" the problem by slapping arcanes on all melee so sheer powercreep can overcome the bad mechanical design.

You can tell melee in general is not in a good state when an increasing amount of high level melee guides mention the use of a primer as a core part of the build. So using actual guns is now a part of a melee build. The clear elephant in the room being, if i need to shoot things to kill them with melee why not just, you know, keeps shooting and killing enemies that way.

Edited May 7, 2023 by LocoWithGun

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

49 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Not anymore, Heavy Blades were the meta way back, and DE nerfed them over and over and over again. They literally do <5% of the damage they once had - this is not an exaggeration.

For example Cleaving Whirlwinds combo "Drifting Stampede" previously had forced slash procs on 50% of it's DPS - now zero. It's "Broken Bull" did up to 4x the damage per hit compared to now.

Heavy Blades had their ~5x combo multiplier replaced with a ~1.5x damage buff.

Way back they even had built in Primed Sure Footed while attacking, much higher range (especially with rivens), they could hit through walls, you could put Gladiator mods on your Sentinel, better follow through (got stealth nerfed too) etc.

I'm talking about now currently, not before.

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, LocoWithGun said:

So when the melee 2.9 came DE saddled melee weapons with negative damage scaling on AoE.

According to the wiki, Follow Through has been in game since 2014, but was finally displayed 5 years later with the melee overhaul.

There could have been different numbers before for all I know.  But if so the wiki doesn't say it on the melee page and I haven't seen them.

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

2 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

According to the wiki, Follow Through has been in game since 2014, but was finally displayed 5 years later with the melee overhaul.

There could have been different numbers before for all I know.  But if so the wiki doesn't say it on the melee page and I haven't seen them.

Right? People tend to think melee 3.0 added follow through when it existed long before.

[Otaiken]

So that mechanic is not 4 years out of date. It's almost 10 years out of date.

But since SP is about 3 years old the impact wasn't that noticeable. Since before SP it was pretty rare to reach meaningfully tough enemy levels. Also mods like Condition Overload and meme strike got nerfed somewhere along the way.

So we're about due another melee rework. Or I'd rather DE remove follow-through or make it flat linear value like gun falloff than slap a bunch of arcanes to farm on top of melee. Because there's a reason why zaws are pretty much best in slot for their respective weapon categories.

Edited May 8, 2023 by LocoWithGun