Melee weapons need serious buffs and quality of life, melee rework [melee 3.5]

[IfritKajiTora]

At the moment melee weapons are really weak, to the point I'm not using them at all, and I think this is what melee needs to have changed at the moment:

1. The air melee attack should push you forward so you should make dash while doing that slash, except for the weapons that throw projective.

2. The wall attack at the moment is useless, I think it should get also a quick dash forward momentum and a lot quicker attack speed, to make it useful.

Thanks to those two changes. that maybe we will be able to use wall attacks by doing earlier attack aiming the wall, pressing aim button to attach into the wall and quickly aim to the enemies.
Making aerial attacks and wall attacks useful cool stuff.

3. Would be nice to have more cancels, for example jump could cancel any melee attack you are doing at the moment, giving us more combat fluidity and use more of air slash and wall slash.

4. At the moment firing weapons got too much buff thanks to the arcanes and galvanized mods, the melee weapons feel useless at the moment.
Melee weapons need the arcanes just like the firing weapons got.

5. Depending on what melee arcanes could provide but I think melee need some changes with combo counter.
If you are not using the melee focused Operator School then it feels really bad to hold your combo counter, and the problem might be with too many combo multipliers and how many combo you need to actually do.

so first of all melee weapons feel weak, only when you get 12x combo counter you are able to get a lot of Critical chance from blood rush, you need to also apply a lot of status chances where and also attack speed from berserker mode, and it all just making the beginning of melee power from combo 0 really weak.

So why not just remove some combos multiplier and let it stuck at combo multiplier 5 which just need 80 melee hits, which give you just double damage boost, but making all melee weapons to deal two times more damage, instead of having combo multiplier x12 where it needs 220 melee hits.
so even if you lose your melee combo counter you can just quickly build max combo and do some decent damage from combo 0 count.
Of course all the mods will need to be changed to match the new max combo multiplier of only x5.

6. Melee stances need some reworks and I don't mean changing the animations or something like that, but I think all melee stances should be equal in power where some melee stances provide good forced status chances and some have No forced status chances and that's bad. All stances should get some base IPS guaranteed status chances to make all of them good to use, you should chose the melee stance by your likeness,

7. Charge attack status rework, some weapon types have forced slash status and they are the only ones that are good to go with charge attack build and I feel it's bad.
Charge attack should be rework to force all three base IPS statuses which are Impact, Puncture and Slash, they should give stacks and damage depending on how many % of each IPS they have.
For example weapons stats:
23 impact
42 puncture
35 slash
Total 100 damage
So on charge attack it should force on all hit enemies: 2 stacks of impact, 4 stacks of puncture and 35 slash status damage. Slash is the only one that gives one status because all that matters about slash status is damage it provides. All the rest of impact and puncture doesn't apply damage overtime they need to stack to provide bonuses.

That way all melee weapons will have good charge attack depending on what you need in the weapon, if you want most slash damage, you should look for weapon with mostly slash status.

Also with just max 5 combo multiplier it would not be a big pain to use charge attack and losing all the combo counter when you can quickly gain 80 combo hits again.

8. With feeling the melee weapons are too weak, I'm just running around with Glaive prime which with good build it just destroy all melee weapons. You throw the weapon, detonate it in decently large area and it just gives a lot of slash status procs that is doing all the work of killing almost everything. I think the glaives on detonation need changed forced status to Blast, not making Glaive prime as guaranteed Slash status. With boosted base damage of 2x due to combo multiplier changes of being max 5x, this melee weapon would be still decently good but not making it overpowered of making all melee weapons pointless.

[BIGF0O7]

1 hour ago, IfritKajiTora said:

2. The wall attack at the moment is useless, I think it should get also a quick dash forward momentum and a lot quicker attack speed, to make it useful.

 

This already happens if you hold aim/block while wall latched and let me tell you, as someone who enjoys zaws, if there was one thing i could remove from the game, it would be this. You wouldnt believe the amount of times ive launched directly into an acolyte i was trying to pick off from a distance with contagion because of this stupid animation

[IfritKajiTora]

2 minutes ago, (NSW)BIGFO0T said:

This already happens if you hold aim/block while wall latched and let me tell you, as someone who enjoys zaws, if there was one thing i could remove from the game, it would be this. You wouldnt believe the amount of times ive launched directly into an acolyte i was trying to pick off from a distance with contagion because of this stupid animation

At the moment you are not moving from the wall, I attach my self to the wall, press melee attack and the warframe just does swing while not doing any dash.
Also I meant that the dash with swing should be a lot faster to make it actually usefull.

[BIGF0O7]

1 hour ago, IfritKajiTora said:

4. At the moment firing weapons got too much buff thanks to the arcanes and galvanized mods, the melee weapons feel useless at the moment.
Melee weapons need the arcanes just like the firing weapons got.

 

This is wild tho. Baruuks fists alone outclass every aoe weapon in the game, let alone glaive, contagion and others that benefit from combo count

 

1 hour ago, IfritKajiTora said:

So why not just remove some combos multiplier and let it stuck at combo multiplier 5 which just need 80 melee hits, which give you just double damage boost, but making all melee weapons to deal two times more damage, instead of having combo multiplier x12 where it needs 220 melee hits.
so even if you lose your melee combo counter you can just quickly build max combo and do some decent damage from combo 0 count.
Of course all the mods will need to be changed to match the new max combo multiplier of only x5.

Current damage is 3 or 4x at 12x combo. Why would anyone want to take a nerf? Plenty of ways to get around the combo count thing outside of naramon, like weapon swapping, incarnon perks thay grant combo count with ammo pick up. Hell, most of my melee builds that dont use strip in frame rely on unairu and i have no problem maintaining combo count

 

1 hour ago, IfritKajiTora said:

With feeling the melee weapons are too weak, I'm just running around with Glaive prime which with good build it just destroy all melee weapons. You throw the weapon, detonate it in decently large area and it just gives a lot of slash status procs that is doing all the work of killing almost everything. I think the glaives on detonation need changed forced status to Blast, not making Glaive prime as guaranteed Slash status. With boosted base damage of 2x due to combo multiplier changes of being max 5x, this melee weapon would be still decently good but not making it overpowered of making all melee weapons pointless.

Glaive is good but its not really an active melee playstyle. You can get higher kps on everything from reaper prime to dual kamas prime, any of the big boi hammers, hell even niche stuff like verdilac and wukongs 4 can easily out dps/kps glaive prime. Its all about playstyle.

Im open to melee changes but it seems like alot of your criticisms of melee in its current form are issues of playstyle, rather than design flaws. Naramon isnt necessary for combo count and 12x combo isnt hard to hit without naramon as plenty of mods offer combo chance and plenty of stances have high multihits that give alot of combo quickly. The combo system is fine imo

[IfritKajiTora]

49 minutes ago, (NSW)BIGFO0T said:

This is wild tho. Baruuks fists alone outclass every aoe weapon in the game, let alone glaive, contagion and others that benefit from combo count

The arcanes could not work for exalted type weapons.
 

49 minutes ago, (NSW)BIGFO0T said:

Current damage is 3 or 4x at 12x combo. Why would anyone want to take a nerf? Plenty of ways to get around the combo count thing outside of naramon, like weapon swapping, incarnon perks thay grant combo count with ammo pick up. Hell, most of my melee builds that dont use strip in frame rely on unairu and i have no problem maintaining combo count

What nerf? It's a straight boost for start and decrease annoyingness in melee combos.
At this moment we have up to 12x combo counter where you need 220 combos, and that gives you 4x damage multiplier to melee weapons.
And the problem is with getting that high combo multiplier and also holding it since base duration for melee combo is just 5 seconds, it's really short window and also if you don't have heavy melee attacks efficiency then nobody is using heavy attacks because it means you will lose all 220 combos.
Also if you just start doing combos the melee weapons are just too weak, only with high combo you get decent damage from them and it's just frustrating to feel pressure of not losing combo counter.
So here I provide a lot better solution of having base melee damage doubled, but reducing max combo multiplier to only 5x which needs just 80 combos. So if you know that math It's the same as 4x damage because we double the base damage and then on combo count 5x it also doubles damage so it's also 4x damage at max combo multiplier.
So I'ts not a nerf, it's a boost to having at start decent damage for melee weapons and removing that pressure of fear losing combo count, because you will be able to quickly to do 80 hits and because of that you will also be not afraid to do heavy attack.

About combo count duration, yeah there are mods that can give you more time, but it feels like Naramon is must have for melee, because melee have too many stuff to be modded and not enough slots. If melee could have 10 mod slots then maybe it would be enough, but with only 8 slots there is too mutch modifiers to boost, while shooting weapons have really easy job. Not to mention even the damage difference.

  

49 minutes ago, (NSW)BIGFO0T said:

Glaive is good but its not really an active melee playstyle. You can get higher kps on everything from reaper prime to dual kamas prime, any of the big boi hammers, hell even niche stuff like verdilac and wukongs 4 can easily out dps/kps glaive prime. Its all about playstyle.

I'm not sure how but with just one detonation of Glaive prime with the build I have I'm applying slash status that does 40K slash damage per second and ofcourse you can stack it with another throw and detonation. So that's a lot of damage, with most melee weapons I'm not doing that much damage, until I first apply a lot of statuses with Kuva Nukor, but otherwise melee weapons feels just weak by killing everything faster with shooting weapons.

Edited May 28, 2023 by IfritKajiTora

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

Other then fixes to heavy attacks(especially initial combo) I think melee is in a fantastic spot and still competitive with guns. Melee was the end all be all for over five years and so happy those days are over. Melee is still amazing, it's just not the only right option now. Some stances needs to be reworked for sure but adding arcanes similar to primary and secondary would be a terrible thing and bring us backwards.

Edited May 29, 2023 by (PSN)Joylesstuna

[IfritKajiTora]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Other then fixes to heavy attacks(especially initial combo) I think melee is in a fantastic spot and still competitive with guns. Melee was the end all be all for over five years and so happy those days are over. Melee is still amazing, it's just not the only right option now. Some stances needs to be reworked for sure but adding arcanes similar to primary and secondary would be a terrible thing and bring us backwards.

Well somehow I just ignore melee, because to kill enemies it takes more time than just to fire from distance and kill.
Especially that to make use of melee potential you have to build combo counts and it disappear really fast so I don't like the pressure and slowingnes of building combo. When the combo count disapear I feel like I wasted my time building all that combo. So it would be a lot better to build the combo counter faster by blocking it just to 5x, but increasing base double damage to make melee weapons decently good from combo 0.

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

1 hour ago, IfritKajiTora said:

Well somehow I just ignore melee, because to kill enemies it takes more time than just to fire from distance and kill.
Especially that to make use of melee potential you have to build combo counts and it disappear really fast so I don't like the pressure and slowingnes of building combo. When the combo count disapear I feel like I wasted my time building all that combo. So it would be a lot better to build the combo counter faster by blocking it just to 5x, but increasing base double damage to make melee weapons decently good from combo 0.

Melee combo can be built just as fast as it takes to get 12 merciless or 3 deadhead stacks. Could combo last longer? Can 12x be reduced to a lower number? Yes and yes but I don't think those two things are deal breakers for melee and allow melee to differentiate itself and have a different play style.

[IfritKajiTora]

3 hours ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Other then fixes to heavy attacks(especially initial combo) I think melee is in a fantastic spot and still competitive with guns. Melee was the end all be all for over five years and so happy those days are over. Melee is still amazing, it's just not the only right option now. Some stances needs to be reworked for sure but adding arcanes similar to primary and secondary would be a terrible thing and bring us backwards.

About arcanes, the Arcanes could provide small damage boost if the melee is somehow that good for example +15% damage for every kill stack up to 9 times, but I don't find them that good as shooting weapons, but mostly I would like to see arcanes that except for damage they should provide additional combo count on hit, combo duration, heavy attack efficiency, some % status chance boost on every kill, on every inflicted status chance you apply random status chance.

Something like that would be a go for me:
"+15% damage for every kill stack up to 9 times.
melee attacks hit twice, but you no longer build combo counter."

So no benefits from combo counter and no boosts from mods like weeping wounds or Blood Rush.

Edited May 29, 2023 by IfritKajiTora

[quxier]

16 hours ago, IfritKajiTora said:

1. The air melee attack should push you forward so you should make dash while doing that slash, except for the weapons that throw projective.

No. That's what arrows are for. You press "up key" it moves forward/up.

18 hours ago, IfritKajiTora said:

2. The wall attack at the moment is useless, I think it should get also a quick dash forward momentum and a lot quicker attack speed, to make it useful.

Thanks to those two changes. that maybe we will be able to use wall attacks by doing earlier attack aiming the wall, pressing aim button to attach into the wall and quickly aim to the enemies.
Making aerial attacks and wall attacks useful cool stuff.

I think it needs quick attack, large radius but slow recovery (e.g. you wall attack, it's on the ground in 0.1 second creating 20 meter wide damage, you stay for 3 second or roll to cancel).

18 hours ago, IfritKajiTora said:

So why not just remove some combos multiplier and let it stuck at combo multiplier 5 which just need 80 melee hits, which give you just double damage boost, but making all melee weapons to deal two times more damage, instead of having combo multiplier x12 where it needs 220 melee hits.
so even if you lose your melee combo counter you can just quickly build max combo and do some decent damage from combo 0 count.
Of course all the mods will need to be changed to match the new max combo multiplier of only x5.

That's one way of doing it. Other is making faster to gain combo, make it degrade on default (e.g. 10, school make it to 5).

1 hour ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

3 hours ago, IfritKajiTora said:

Especially that to make use of melee potential you have to build combo counts and it disappear really fast so I don't like the pressure and slowingnes of building combo. When the combo count disapear I feel like I wasted my time building all that combo. So it would be a lot better to build the combo counter faster by blocking it just to 5x, but increasing base double damage to make melee weapons decently good from combo 0.

Melee combo can be built just as fast as it takes to get 12 merciless or 3 deadhead stacks. Could combo last longer? Can 12x be reduced to a lower number? Yes and yes but I don't think those two things are deal breakers for melee and allow melee to differentiate itself and have a different play style.

The thing is if you want to use melee that way (use combos) then you have to build that way. On default you have 5 seconds and even 12x combo goes "puff". Some weapons has easier combo gain on default. As fair I remember moded Stropha could take 1-2 shots to max 12x combo. On default it's probably fast enough.

 

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

3 hours ago, quxier said:

No. That's what arrows are for. You press "up key" it moves forward/up.

I think it needs quick attack, large radius but slow recovery (e.g. you wall attack, it's on the ground in 0.1 second creating 20 meter wide damage, you stay for 3 second or roll to cancel).

That's one way of doing it. Other is making faster to gain combo, make it degrade on default (e.g. 10, school make it to 5).

The thing is if you want to use melee that way (use combos) then you have to build that way. On default you have 5 seconds and even 12x combo goes "puff". Some weapons has easier combo gain on default. As fair I remember moded Stropha could take 1-2 shots to max 12x combo. On default it's probably fast enough.

 

There are many ways to get +combo time without modding the melee for it which most of us don't. Even the primary and secondary arcanes give combo time. Combo timer isnt normally an issue especially when it can be recovered rather quickly.

Edited May 29, 2023 by (PSN)Joylesstuna

[quxier]

8 minutes ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

There are many ways to get +combo time without modding the melee for it which most of us don't. Even the primary and secondary arcanes give combo time. Combo timer isnt normally an issue especially when it can be recovered rather quickly.

Except melee & frame/weapon specific there is literally 3 sources of +6-7.5s combo duration. And there is Naramon with decaying combo. That's not "many". And all of those requires either SP arcanes or school. Only Aura is less hard to acquire.

And even with all of those, you still have to build specifically for. I cannot slap mod for my Carrier to increase combo duration (or decay). I'm already doing it with ammo. That's difference.

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

23 minutes ago, quxier said:

Except melee & frame/weapon specific there is literally 3 sources of +6-7.5s combo duration. And there is Naramon with decaying combo. That's not "many". And all of those requires either SP arcanes or school. Only Aura is less hard to acquire.

And even with all of those, you still have to build specifically for. I cannot slap mod for my Carrier to increase combo duration (or decay). I'm already doing it with ammo. That's difference.

I guess I don't understand your argument then because sp is part of the game and those arcanes are very easy to get. They are also extremely important for most builds. Limiting yourself from getting them is a personal issue not a design issue. Offloading combo duration to anything other then your melee is incredibly useful and helps make melee flexibile.

Edited May 29, 2023 by (PSN)Joylesstuna

[quxier]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

1 hour ago, quxier said:

 

I guess I don't understand your argument then because sp is part of the game and those arcanes are very easy to get.

It doesn't mean everyone plays SP. Some people are not yet at that level.

[(PSN)Vexx757]

I do agree the melee needs another lookover, I would prefer it going the hack & slash road with combos, melee 2.0 was similar to that, yes it had dumb button presses like left x,x,x but it was fun now it`s just the boring button mashing.

• I think the damage on one combo should be removed. Think about it if the block combo had did slash damage there is no reason for anyone to use any of the other combos, to me you should get the damage at the end of the combo (maybe) also each combo needs to have a purpose to use them.
• Wall attacks need to be improved, if your hanging on a wall and you press the melee button targeting the enemy you should zip to them similar to slash dash but not exactly.
• Maybe not for warframe but I think drifter (and operator) shout get a heavy attack the lifts enemies in the air attacking the enemy while in the air will keep you airborne, warframes can also be airborne will attacking.
• There are some stance that only have 3 instead of the full 4 its suppose to have, so give them ones another combo.
• Also I don`t like that one press of a button does like two or three hits, I think it should be 1 button press = 1 hit, it would make the combos feel better and you are able to cancel out of it easily.
• Jump cancel need to be a thing I agree with that.
• I also think we need the ability to target an enemy like what the drifter can do except blocking will be the button to be able to target an enemy.

And operators need void melee where they can activate void rage (D trigger) state just imagine how this it would be.

 

Edited June 5, 2023 by (PSN)Vexx757