Melee needs help.

[BalaDeSilver]

Look, I won't pretend I haven't been playing this thing for over 7 years and that I know what a Glaive Prime is. I still remember the old Telos Boltace, Atterax, Mios, Secura Lecta, Plague Kripath, Venka Prime and a lot of other metas. I know the history of melee weapons because I lived through it. While melee was too busted back in the day, it is too weak, now, due to power creep (and a couple nerfs, but honestly, not too many).

Nowadays, you can clearly make a distinction between three groups:

1. Melees with high slash disposition that have something else going for them - Lesion can remove a toxin mod and an attack speed mod to make space for more damage, Dual Ichor Incarnon has the same benefit, Argo & Vel are just good, the entire concept of Anku Incarnon, etc;
2. Glaive Prime;
3. Everything else, too weak to do anything meaningful past mid Steel Path;

If you're really good at the game and is a Voruna or Kullervo main, the Corufell is actually really good, as well as any rivened Exodia Contagion Zaw, but that's a very narrow field, since you're either ignoring armor with guaranteed slash procs or just jacking your crit so high, it doesn't matter anymore. Still, that's two Warframes that go really well with melees, and that's their whole purpose, and it's outside the scope of this essay, since you can just as well use Glaive Prime and do 500x the damage. It's hard to outdamage a one shot on anything.

I'm not saying we should nerf Glaive Prime, since it's pretty much the only standalone melee that's viable for the end game, without any help from any other item in the game, but maybe those 786 damage missing from Pathocyst since August 2021 can be taken from the Glaive and given back to the Pathocyst as a treat. Once it's back in line with the other melees, we can buff the weapon slot as a whole, so it's on par with the current state of the end game. On the same update.

My suggestion as a means to help melees is intentionally modular, so it could be taken in parts by the dev team as individual suggestions. Here is what I've came up with:

• Have it so combo counter actually impacts damage directly.

Back in the day, before the Melee 2.x system, the combo counter would directly increase melee damage, albeit it took exponentially more combo to get another 0.25x damage. My suggestion is a 10% damage bonus, additive to PPP and CO, for every current combo increase. So, a 110% damage bonus at 12x (since x1 gets no bonus, like Blood Rush and the like). The reasoning behind this suggestion is just that, without arcanes, melees are left behind in damage potential, and I don't think arcanes would be a good idea, design-wise. Not with the other suggestions, at least, since it would just revert the status quo to melee being god and everything else being too weak, again. The point is to get it in line with other weapon slots, not above. Venka Prime would, of course, cap at 120% damage bonus, and, in this universe, it would also cap at 500% Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds, at 12 stacks, which it doesn't currently. It's a free Pressure Point (not Primed), it's not a lot.

• Add en Exilus slot for melee weapons.

One thing that helped immensely with the current state of ranged weapons is the addition of Weapon Exilus adapters. Composed mostly of utility mods, it actually makes a difference to always have utility equipped. Be it extra ammo in Ammo Mutation, silent weapons, more range or more accuracy. The same could be true for melee weapons. Although (Primed) Reach woul probably be a bad idea to have as an Exilus mod, Spring-Loaded Blade would. Primed Reach feels mandatory to reach enough enemies per swing, so one mod to mitigate it without punishing players who don't want to increase their range feels fine. Other Exilus mods could include (but not limit to) Lasting Sting, Healing Return, Body Count (although not Gladiator Rush or Drifting Contact), Enduring Affliction, Dispatch Overdrive, Proton Snap, Relentless Combination, Tek Gravity, Enduring Strike, Corrupt Charge, Energy Channel, Focused Defense, Life Strike, Melee Prowess, Parry, Motus Impact, True Punishment, Guardian Derision, Seismic Wave and some other type-specific like Glaives and etc. It would bring a lot of utility to the table without too much power creep to other weapons.

• Straight up new mods.

Just add more mods, like one that increases follow through (probably an Exilus), or another fusion of Condition Overload and Pressure point (like Boreal's Contempt), but weaker, more Nightmare mods to serve as in-between stat fillers. Of course there's more to consider when it comes to balancing and adding more straight damage mods, but Melee is a category that lacks so many slots, we'll probably not use a new mod unless it replaces something else. If a new mod is released, we can't just add them to our builds, because it already has 8 mods, something has to come out, and since our build are already so optimized (and still lackluster), so it's relatively safe to add something new, as long as it isn't too crazy. It'll most likely simply revolutionize the melee meta than break it because weapons suddenly deal too much damage. I know it's more complicated than that, but it's not too bad.

Now, to close this post, I'd like to ponder a second over why I'm making it. I know this should be in the beginning, but I'm not a good objective writer.

For as much as balance kinda matters to Warframe, even being a PVE game, it is undeniably fun to use melee and just spam (or hold, hopefully, with upcoming QoL) E and be a ninja with their killing stick. In some ways, this is lost in higher levels now, without some very specific builds that aren't that accessible (My Voruna build has 5 Primed/Archon mods counting her and her melee) but are extremely fun to play. Maybe I'm preaching too much accessibility because I lost touch with the mid game a long time ago, but even to me, these builds are so far off the best ones in the game, to a point where I feel like I need to play something far from optimal to have fun. That is not a good feeling when playing a video game.

Maybe if not implemented, at least a voice is heard that melee is kinda in a bad state now. IDK, I'm not a developer yet, so I know there's more to consider than just how one player feels about a system, but hopefully this sticks a little. Well, thank you for coming to my ted talk :D

[(XBOX)elementXGHILLIE]

I will join you in saying melee needs a buff.

SPECIFICALLY, non-heavy attack builds. 

[Traumtulpe]

5 hours ago, BalaDeSilver said:

While melee was too busted back in the day, it is too weak, now, due to power creep (and a couple nerfs, but honestly, not too many).

Right. Not *too* many.

• Half the procs on stances deleted.
• ~5x combo multiplier deleted, replaced with ~2x base damage.
• Follow through reduced.
• Damage multiplier on stances reduced (from 400% to 100% in some cases).
• Set bonus from mods on the companion weapon removed (-330% crit).
• Blood Rush nerfed (-220% crit).
• CO nerfed (-33% damage)
• Berserker and Primed Fury nerfed (less attack speed).

And those are just the most important, recent changes. It is not hyperbole to say that some melee weapons have been nerfed by over 95%.

[(XBOX)elementXGHILLIE]

11 hours ago, BalaDeSilver said:

Maybe if not implemented, at least a voice is heard that melee is kinda in a bad state now. IDK, I'm not a developer yet, so I know there's more to consider than just how one player feels about a system, but hopefully this sticks a little. Well, thank you for coming to my ted talk :D

The fact that you can identify a problem puts you ahead of a lot of devs.

Good luck, and hope you get there.

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

Melee is absolutely fine where it is at. We don't need melee to be the end all be all it was for over 5 years. Sure some stances are garbage and there are issues here and there but melee remains a very strong option. I agree with more mods, exilus slot, and changes to heavy melees though.

[BalaDeSilver]

10 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

Right. Not *too* many.

•  

I completely forgor what exactly changed from old melee to the new one :v

Comparing to how many buffs they gave Primaries and Secondaries, that's not a lot, tho. The sheer amount of mods and tools they gave to guns in Arcanes, Galvanized mods, Exilus, Hunter Munitions (I know it's old, but the fact it dodged nerfs is incredible), Hemorrhage/Internal Bleeding, actually good and impactful Incarnon upgrades (only Anku got an actually busted Incarnon form while every other melee incarnon is either average or just bad, while Telos Boltor, Torid and Latron are allowed to exist), buffs to headshots, etc. It feels like melees were left to power creep more than they were directly nerfed.

It still feels bitter to only have Glaive Prime as a good melee and everything else is a heavy attack fiesta, the Anku or not worth using. #*!%, even Hate Incarnon is a lot better as a stat stick for its heavy attack, the projectiles just pale in comparison to the Hate heavy attack. Ignoring Hate Incarnon gimmick and using the heavy attack instead is a better use of its 100% damage bonus and 10% base crit increase than using the projectiles that should increase its damage, especially when you use Stalker's Legacy and get increasingly rewarded for just spamming heavy attacks without needing to build combo.

Another pondering we can make is that the entire point of combo consumption on heavy attack is lost on players that are rewarded for not building combo at all. In a vacuum, the combo system is fine, but when you factor in the speed of the Warframe meta, it just falls apart. We don't have time to build combo and spend it on a heavy target when you can just one shot it with a Torid or Strun Wraith. The Incarnon system is a better reward for spending combo than a simple heavy attack, leading players to ignore the combo multiplier for heavy attack build whenever they can, we simply slap a Corrupt Charge and the 2x combo is good enough. The system is working as intended (it's keeping melee in check), but in doing so, it is disengaging players from itself. There is a reason for Ceramic Dagger being so good now, and it is not the projectiles.

1 hour ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Melee is absolutely fine where it is at.

Lastly, I want do address this. In a vacuum, it is perfectly fine, yes. We don't live in a vacuum. You can do so much with a Torid, Kuva Zarr, Felarx, Ocucor, Lex Prime, and so many other primaries and secondaries, it isn't worth it to use melees. Especially non heavy attack builds. It just can't keep up, unless you use a Glaive Prime specifically. I'm specifically not asking for a returnal to the old meta where it was melee or nothing, just that melees get a little help to be on par with other playstyles in the game. In the post, I specifically talk about how that meta wasn't really good, but current meta, despite being slightly better, still isn't perfect and could use a bit of improvement.

[Fred_Avant_2019]

If we're gonna talk melees, we're here for a while, considering there are so many types.

While some are really outrageously op, some are Stug levels of unredeemable trash.

Let's try to go over each type "briefly" :

Révélation

• Assault Saw :
  • Otherwise known as only the Ghoulsaw, has the outstanding stat of 1.0 Followthrough... and nothing else worth talking about. The only stance available for it, Butcher's Revelry is an awful slow mess that needs you to pause between your attacks to avoid doing counter productive slam attacks. Basically only good against crowds you'd make with Airburst, Larva or Ensnare.
• Blade and Whip :
  • Jat Kusar is great, the rest isn't really worth talking about. Questionnable stance.
• Claws :
  • Venka Prime is no joke. Good stances. Underused weapon type, just Venka, Garuda's Talons, Ripkas and Keratinos.
• Daggers :
  • Mostly fine, but you're also mostly only going to use Innodem or Ceramic Incarnon, the rest isn't really worth your time, though I do like the Karyst Prime.
• Dual Daggers :
  • Under represented weapon, Spinning Needle is the only stance worth your time. Desperate for Okina Incarnon or Prime.
• Dual Nikanas :
  • Just Sun & Moon as of now, proves to be great with actual good movement.
• Dual Swords :
  • Alot to chose from, but also alot of disappointment, Swirling Tiger is nice for procs.
• Fists :
  • Furax Wraith Incarnon or Tekko Prime. Ankyros will never come close to those two.
• Glaives :
  • Glaive Prime is king. Xoris lost its niche  with pseudo exalts, Falcor has too low crits. Halikar can disarm, which is pointless when other things can just kill. Kestrel has the funny ragdoll, which is hilariously the cheesiest way you can do mastery rank 9 test. Orvius is a thing I guess. Pathocyst is just straight up bugged.
• Gunblades :
  • Never saw people use this without a Heavy Attack build or using the actual melee attacks of the stances. Also, some people consider Sarpa decent, I'm not one of them.
• Hammers :
  • Stances aren't great and don't provide Slash, so it's usually a big turnoff for most people, but I like the weapons, as they all have different enough niches from one another.
• Heavy Blade :
  • Disappointing lack of Slash on stances, also Cleaving Whirlwind is punishing you for no real reason. Weapons are great overall.
• Heavy Scythe :
  • Hespar is questionnable, the stance is questionnable, Corufell's heavy attack is the only thing worth your time there.
• Machetes :
  • Good overall. Ended up buying Cyclon Kraken because drop tables are funny.
• Nikanas :
  • Good overall, but not much choice in terms of weapons.
• Nunchaku :
  • Dead melee type. Shaku has got to be one of the weakest melees in the entire game.
• Polearms :
  • Good overall but stances lack in variety.
• Rapiers :
  • Stance is weak, only has two weapons, three if you include the Zaw, four if you count non primes.
• Scythe :
  • Good overall, not too many of them, not too many stances, but just enough of everything.
• Sparring :
  • Disappointing. Lacks weapons. Will basically never apply Slash.
• Staves :
  • Polearms but with less variety in weapons and different stances. At least Tipedo Prime is good.
• Swords :
  • Plentiful and have mostly good stats. Stances aren't built equally though. Far from it.
• Swords and Shields :
  • Good overall.
• Two-Handed Nikanas :
  • The stance has an awful flow to it, just as bad as Butcher's Revelry. At least the few weapons that go in this category have really good stats.
• Tonfas :
  • Easily some of the best melees with one of the best Stances.
• Warfans :
  • Fast with good procs with good stances and good stats. Also with some good gimmicks.
• Whips :
  • Biggest no for me. Never use this under any circumstances Verdilac memes aren't worth your time. Stances are garbage, Follow Through kills the weapon's extended range.

As a comment previously said, while melees can range from unusable to god tier, let's try to put them in a real gameplay context, where they have to compete with guns. While some can easily outperform any gunplay, others (obviously whips) will struggle to get anything done where your average equally modded gun would've dealt with the target in one clean headshot.

 

Also. Mods. Let's have another brief talk about those I think need attention :

Révélation

• Energy Channel :
  • Channeling is gone and most likely never returning, I didn't get to play alot with it, but I didn't hate it. A flat +200 is worthless, considering it's not affected by mods or anything. Nothing can ever justify using this. Even on spammy Warframe builds you're not getting any benefit.
• Finishing Touch :
  • Pretty much worthless, Finishers are either a clean oneshot or don't even come close, even if you fully spec'd into them.
• Seismic Wave :
  • Aside from some Arca Titron memes, you're never slotting this. Slams are never something you want to use to deal damage, aside from a couple of meme builds.
• Enduring Afflcition & Strike :
  • Both of them require you to Lift your target. Rarely happens, and the bonus provided for such an uncommon occurence is far too weak on both mods.
• Focused Defense, Parry, Reflection, Guardian Derision :
  • Just no. You're never putting this in any melee slot. Ever.
• Maiming Strike :
  • You knew it was coming. Spin to win needed to be nerfed, but that much?

 

A couple mods need some revision, some stances, some mechanics as well. Only then can we discuss the need for Galvanized Mods and Arcanes for melees.

[BalaDeSilver]

14 hours ago, Fred_Avant_2019 said:

• Energy Channel :
  • Channeling is gone and most likely never returning, I didn't get to play alot with it, but I didn't hate it. A flat +200 is worthless, considering it's not affected by mods or anything. Nothing can ever justify using this. Even on spammy Warframe builds you're not getting any benefit.

From what I can recall, Energy Channel has always been like this. I don't know if the cap was +50 damage, which was fine back on the day, or it's only because the images on the Wiki are unranked, but the mod never had anything to do with the Channeling system, which always confused me back when I started playing :v

That mod was always a meme, at least since I started on january 2016. Maybe 200 damage was fine before that, but by that point builds were getting really refined and a flat +200 was no longer worth it.

15 hours ago, Fred_Avant_2019 said:

Finishing Touch :

• Pretty much worthless, Finishers are either a clean oneshot or don't even come close, even if you fully spec'd into them.

Someone doesn't know how bugged Ash currently is, but otherwise it's a hard agree. I miss old Covert Lethality, maybe another rework of that mod could factor in the enemy level to increase damage or something.

15 hours ago, Fred_Avant_2019 said:

Focused Defense, Parry, Reflection, Guardian Derision :

• Just no. You're never putting this in any melee slot. Ever.

Guardian Derision + Electromagnetic Shielding + Trinity's Link used to be one of those memes that actually worked as a functional build. It's another one of those things that I just wish would come back, but they destroyed the viability of both this build and Trinity in general on end game.

Point still stands that Glaive is too good and more melee weapons should be closer to it.

[Tiltskillet]

18 hours ago, Fred_Avant_2019 said:

Finishing Touch :

• Pretty much worthless, Finishers are either a clean oneshot or don't even come close, even if you fully spec'd into them.

 

Finishing Touch is an important way to extend  those clean oneshots to tougher enemies if one doesn't have a finisher damage ability.  Even with those it can still be BIS8 if the ability strength isn't super high.

Finishers themselves edge too close to worthless though.   I'd love a melee combat and content revamp which addressed that.  But I never had much hope of it, and what little I had basically disappeared after DE introduced extra fancy finishers, aka Mercy Kills.

[CrownOfShadows]

Well, like I said in another similar post, melee is under-performing but honestly not by that much. I think the real issue is it just isn't scaling hard enough anymore. 12x combo with CO, Bloodrush, Weeping Wounds, Gladiator Crit & a juicy riven just cannot compete with a phenmor or a laetum or a lot of other guns.

The incarnon wave also really inadvertently destroyed melee even more because it widened the gap. Melee incarnon had so much potential and it was completely robbed of it.

Giving some power back to CO or Bloodrush could be enough to bring it back up to performance. Alternatively you could do things like allow combo up to 14x but everything after 12x decays almost instantly out of combat (regardless of naramon) to feed more scaling power back in, put it on a curve y'know.

[PollexMessier]

Mele was the entire reason I got into the game cus prior to this game, I absolutely would not even touch shooters. It's incredibly frustrating that DE has just decided mele can't stand up to guns anymore. I always find it frustrating when mele is weaker than ranged cus it's also a lot riskier and more challenging to need to run up into an enemy's face to deal with them (especially since the eximus rework), than it is to delete them with a gun the instant they come within line of sight. And if the thing I already have in my hand kills things 2 feet in front of my face just as good if not better than a mele would, why would I bother using the mele? They really need to be significantly stronger than guns just from a reasonable balance perspective. Otherwise what's the point of them? DE seemed to care so much about us actually seeing their animation work when they nerfed berserker fury into being a garbage mod, and then they went and made it so people rarely ever pull out their mele weapons at all.

[BalaDeSilver]

Another cool suggestion is that melee decays by 50 or 40 combo by default instead of 240/infinity. That would remove the necessity to run combo duration in every single build because Blood Rush is just so damn mandatory. Even if you don't run Weeping Wound (you should), Blood Rush has become a staple of melee build because it's just a requirement to do any semblance of damage at this point. Even at 40 combo per 5s, a rank 1 Naramon Power Spike would still be a huge upside (its decay by rank is 20 / 15 / 10 / 5 per run out).

I still feel like there are too few mod slots for melee weapons because there are too many mandatory mods. Primaries have only 2 mandatory mods (Serration or Galvanized Aptitude, depending on if the weapon is explosive or not, and Galvanized Chamber), secondaries have 3 (Galvanized Shot or Hornet Strike, same criteria, Galvanized Diffusion and Lethal Torrent) and even then, we're starting to optimize Lethal Torrent away from our builds as Lex Prime doesn't include it if you're being absolutely optimal. Melees have 4 mandatory mods (Primed Pressure Point, Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds and Drifting Contact), then you add more range, viral damage and attack speed and you're out of mod slots. Sure, you don't need range on *every* melee weapon, especially since some don't have the Follow Through to support it (which is another problem in and of itself) but that's extremely limiting when compared to other weapon slots. Even a heavy attack build will use PPP, Killing Blow, Sacrificial Steel and Amalgam Organ Shatter, it's still 4 mandatory mods that you lose too much if you don't use them.

Granted: heavy attack builds are currently in a much healthier spot than non heavy attack builds, but it's a weapon class still bottlenecked by its own building blocks. Simply improving those building blocks would lead to too many problems down the line, so just buffing mods would fix some issues today but completely throw the game off in the future, so we need a better solution than to just tweak the mods or weapons themselves and think of a more systemic approach to fix the underlying issues of the current meta. While fixing mods worked on the past and was the right answer (spin to win wasn't really a healthy meta), I don't believe it would work today. Mod reworks should be welcome, but just changing their numbers shouldn't be a good solution here.

[Fred_Avant_2019]

Il y a 17 heures, BalaDeSilver a dit :

Someone doesn't know how bugged Ash currently is, but otherwise it's a hard agree. I miss old Covert Lethality, maybe another rework of that mod could factor in the enemy level to increase damage or something.

I don't want to acknowledge this due to its shady nature. It's kind of a pseudo exalt, but at the same time, not? You also do kill with it, but it's not tracked down in stats when you press tab. There's too much going on in the "ARE YOU SURE IT'S FUNCTIONNING AS INTENDED DE ?" department for me to talk about it. Next thing you know they change it with no mention of it, break half the ability again, and no one knows what works on it anymore.

 

Still, I find unfortunate there are so many mods you can't ever slot on a melee, just because build space is that tight. Someone previously mentionned getting Exilus slot, which I'm not exactly a fan of, but if we were to get some, maybe Energy Channel could be one of them. Other meme strats mods would belong there just the same.

[Tiltskillet]

4 hours ago, BalaDeSilver said:

Primaries have only 2 mandatory mods (Serration or Galvanized Aptitude, depending on if the weapon is explosive or not, and Galvanized Chamber), secondaries have 3 (Galvanized Shot or Hornet Strike, same criteria, Galvanized Diffusion and Lethal Torrent) and even then, we're starting to optimize Lethal Torrent away from our builds as Lex Prime doesn't include it if you're being absolutely optimal. Melees have 4 mandatory mods (Primed Pressure Point, Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds and Drifting Contact)

Odd list of mandatory mods.

[CrownOfShadows]

I do agree that melee builds are the most overcrowded of all. You need so many things to make them work, even more than warframes who demand augments, which are also painfully tight.

I almost always come down to a choice of sacrificing attack speed vs weeping wounds. I'm completely miserable without attack speed for most every melee, so wounds is usually the loser. All the other slots are taken by mods that are simply too important to sacrifice, unless you have a riven that does the work of 2 mods or a specialty weapon that has an appropriate innate elemental.

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

12 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

I do agree that melee builds are the most overcrowded of all. You need so many things to make them work, even more than warframes who demand augments, which are also painfully tight.

I almost always come down to a choice of sacrificing attack speed vs weeping wounds. I'm completely miserable without attack speed for most every melee, so wounds is usually the loser. All the other slots are taken by mods that are simply too important to sacrifice, unless you have a riven that does the work of 2 mods or a specialty weapon that has an appropriate innate elemental.

It im using melee I almost always use arcane strike. It's just so nice to be able to offload attack speed to something else other then the weapon.

[vixenpixel]

If they removed follow-through it would be an easy fix also. That whole mechanic is crippling melee. Well except glaive i guess. *rolls eyes*

[vixenpixel]

Currently, for melee to work you need to put alot of effort into other weapons. You need nukor/epitaph for condition overload. But then you get to skip any element mods on the weapon itself, which you kindof have to because you need weeping wounds, blood rush, 1-2 attack speed mods, probably range, 1-2 crit damage mods. This leaves 1-2 slots for utility like a riven or a primed bane mod. But in most cases with this setup you are dependant on a secondary to buff your kit and also naramon as a quality of life extension of your combo timer. So that's basically alot of utility to make something work when your torid incarnon is going to do the same better anyway. Melee has been reduced to an old senile granpa you visit for nostalgia and a sense of guilt for not visiting enough. 

Meanwhile, at the same time as primaries were being improved off the comparable chart in the wake of nerfs to CO and Blood rush, nothing has been done about melee. I really don't get it, because one of the major things that sets warframe apart from the rest of the 3rd person shooter, discounting the story and the excellent movement mechanics, is the melee. All those other popular shooters have great gunplay and lousy melee. Warframe already had amazing melee execution, but DE has been working overtime to nerf it towards unusable. I expect the reason is that alot of people were complaining that melee was the only way to play warframe. But now that melee is in such a sorry state that if you want to play with melee for the novelty of it, you need to invest everything into it, including your focus school (and the only way to skip this part is to force yourself into the incarnon melee cubicle with anku and furax - but even then you simply must put on a secondary dexterity unless you enjoy a 5s combo timer stress). 

A year+ ago, there were some utility reasons to keep a melee on your loadout, like putting shattering impact on it but with the update that upgraded armor shred abilities, there's no reason to use this archaic means of stripping armor. 

Follow-through: I was hoping that DE would see the posts I've been making on follow-through mechanics and fix this glaring issue with melee, where in fact players are being punished for putting reach on their melees. The more reach the less damage you do, the bigger your weapon, the less impactful it's reach is. It's actually so dumb. A little knife is better at killing groups than a big axe. The fact that a big weapon gets +1 range is just an illusion really. You put on a primed reach and suddenly that +1 seems kinda miniscule because reach mods add flat range, so the return becomes smaller - add to that that they have an average of 0.5 follow through and you have yourself a clear distinction between melees that simply states, big weapons are awful and small weapons are alright. Look at the Bo. A whopping +4 range on the incarnon. Sounds great doesn't it? Na, it has 0.5 follow-through. This means that if you are doing 200 dmg on the first enemy, you get to do 100 on the second with the same strike and then 50 on the third and 25 on fourth and 12.5 on the fifth. If you got a dagger with 0.9 follow through and you hit five enemies doing 100 dmg base, you end up doing 90, 81, 72~. Already on the third enemy you see such a difference. The more enemies you are able to stack up the more damage your dagger is doing in total. To a point where if you want to hit 3 enemies with your hit, you are always better off using a small weapon with high follow through. It boggles my mind that this is not the nr one discussed absurdity of warframe right now. 

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

10 hours ago, vixenpixel said:

Currently, for melee to work you need to put alot of effort into other weapons. You need nukor/epitaph for condition overload. But then you get to skip any element mods on the weapon itself, which you kindof have to because you need weeping wounds, blood rush, 1-2 attack speed mods, probably range, 1-2 crit damage mods. This leaves 1-2 slots for utility like a riven or a primed bane mod. But in most cases with this setup you are dependant on a secondary to buff your kit and also naramon as a quality of life extension of your combo timer. So that's basically alot of utility to make something work when your torid incarnon is going to do the same better anyway. Melee has been reduced to an old senile granpa you visit for nostalgia and a sense of guilt for not visiting enough. 

Meanwhile, at the same time as primaries were being improved off the comparable chart in the wake of nerfs to CO and Blood rush, nothing has been done about melee. I really don't get it, because one of the major things that sets warframe apart from the rest of the 3rd person shooter, discounting the story and the excellent movement mechanics, is the melee. All those other popular shooters have great gunplay and lousy melee. Warframe already had amazing melee execution, but DE has been working overtime to nerf it towards unusable. I expect the reason is that alot of people were complaining that melee was the only way to play warframe. But now that melee is in such a sorry state that if you want to play with melee for the novelty of it, you need to invest everything into it, including your focus school (and the only way to skip this part is to force yourself into the incarnon melee cubicle with anku and furax - but even then you simply must put on a secondary dexterity unless you enjoy a 5s combo timer stress). 

A year+ ago, there were some utility reasons to keep a melee on your loadout, like putting shattering impact on it but with the update that upgraded armor shred abilities, there's no reason to use this archaic means of stripping armor. 

Follow-through: I was hoping that DE would see the posts I've been making on follow-through mechanics and fix this glaring issue with melee, where in fact players are being punished for putting reach on their melees. The more reach the less damage you do, the bigger your weapon, the less impactful it's reach is. It's actually so dumb. A little knife is better at killing groups than a big axe. The fact that a big weapon gets +1 range is just an illusion really. You put on a primed reach and suddenly that +1 seems kinda miniscule because reach mods add flat range, so the return becomes smaller - add to that that they have an average of 0.5 follow through and you have yourself a clear distinction between melees that simply states, big weapons are awful and small weapons are alright. Look at the Bo. A whopping +4 range on the incarnon. Sounds great doesn't it? Na, it has 0.5 follow-through. This means that if you are doing 200 dmg on the first enemy, you get to do 100 on the second with the same strike and then 50 on the third and 25 on fourth and 12.5 on the fifth. If you got a dagger with 0.9 follow through and you hit five enemies doing 100 dmg base, you end up doing 90, 81, 72~. Already on the third enemy you see such a difference. The more enemies you are able to stack up the more damage your dagger is doing in total. To a point where if you want to hit 3 enemies with your hit, you are always better off using a small weapon with high follow through. It boggles my mind that this is not the nr one discussed absurdity of warframe right now. 

Because of the damage that we deal with primers, viral, and slash follow through isn't near as punishing as you suggest. Even with follow through, you are still applying slash and statuses which will kill high level enemies anyways even with the reduced damage. Melee is a perfectly viable option for sp and level cap. People are just upset it's now not the only viable option. Is follow through a good mechanic? No but is also doesn't matter with how strong melee is.

Edited September 30, 2023 by (PSN)Joylesstuna

[vixenpixel]

12 hours ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Because of the damage that we deal with primers, viral, and slash follow through isn't near as punishing as you suggest. Even with follow through, you are still applying slash and statuses which will kill high level enemies anyways even with the reduced damage. Melee is a perfectly viable option for sp and level cap. People are just upset it's now not the only viable option. Is follow through a good mechanic? No but is also doesn't matter with how strong melee is.

If you read my post you can see that I'm not strictly comparing melee viability with gunplay viability. I'm also comparing "long weapon" vs "short weapon" and the fact is that short weapons are simply outclassing the long ones in damage vs multiple enemies. I'm not here to discuss whether or not you are able to use melee to kill things effectively up to level cap. Obviously you may do so. I call the current meta use for melee a niche category of usefulness. Personally I use melee because I really enjoy it but it's nothing special anymore unless you are strictly using a melee build like voruna - in which case it's amazing. If I wasn't such an enthusiast for melee in the game, I would not be trying to affect change. Moving on.

There are issues with melee, exacerbated by the introduction of new incarnon gunplay that simply outshine melee in most avenues. The fact that we are forced to use a primer to make melee viable whereas a primer still also buffs your primary/secondary dmg output while these are not dependant on them, is one of the reasons I'm saying that gunplay is outshining melee in these avenues. Furthermore, the fact that you are strictly, always stronger taking out big groups with gunplay. On single target demos or similar, it's debatable what is the best weapontype but that is quite niche indeed. The new incarnon melees are not as impressive as the new incarnon guns. Apart from the sheer utility of ceramic dagger and the furax and anku pause combo timers, you are almost always better off shooting enemies with your primary. So, I'm hoping melee gets some good updates in near future and I'm very much hoping that DE's add of Dorrclave occasional 1x followthru is them TESTING what happens if they scrap follow-thru or revamp it, rather than them simply cementing follow-thru as a staple warframe mechanic.

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

4 hours ago, vixenpixel said:

If you read my post you can see that I'm not strictly comparing melee viability with gunplay viability. I'm also comparing "long weapon" vs "short weapon" and the fact is that short weapons are simply outclassing the long ones in damage vs multiple enemies. 

Can't argue heavy blades are in a bad spot. It's a shame because of the mostly great stats they have. I don't think it's fair to compare melee to the incarnons and AOE weapons though, which is what your second paragraph does mention.

[vixenpixel]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Can't argue heavy blades are in a bad spot. It's a shame because of the mostly great stats they have. I don't think it's fair to compare melee to the incarnons and AOE weapons though, which is what your second paragraph does mention.

Well what are you using melee for in the game? As long as you are playing kullervo or voruna your melee is supposed to kill groups but when you arn't playing one of these warframes, it is always just better to use a gun than a sword. This would be interesting if melee added some utility to gunplay but priming with melee is inferior to priming with epitaph or nukor. I guess you can put shattering impact on but why would you do that when abilities are ten times better at armor stripping. Melee is an optional way of taking out enemies but it's more a novelty than actually on par with guns currently in the meta. The only real advantage melee has is when it acts as a statstick. In which case melee is still very relevant in the game. Other than that, melee seems to have been, over the course of a few years, pushed into the backseat. That's fine if everyone is okay playing a space ninja shooter. Personally I want to be able to choose without feeling that one option is just simply superior. The balance between gunplay and swordplay is not really apparent in the game. There's very little reason to swap to melee. It's almost always better to simply reload your gun. If more weapons had pocket-reload abilities, maybe I'd find more use for melee... But currently, melee is very much a backseat alternative, only truly allowed to shine in the hands of frames with specific powers that take advantage of melee. 

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

2 hours ago, vixenpixel said:

Well what are you using melee for in the game? As long as you are playing kullervo or voruna your melee is supposed to kill groups but when you arn't playing one of these warframes, it is always just better to use a gun than a sword. This would be interesting if melee added some utility to gunplay but priming with melee is inferior to priming with epitaph or nukor. I guess you can put shattering impact on but why would you do that when abilities are ten times better at armor stripping. Melee is an optional way of taking out enemies but it's more a novelty than actually on par with guns currently in the meta. The only real advantage melee has is when it acts as a statstick. In which case melee is still very relevant in the game. Other than that, melee seems to have been, over the course of a few years, pushed into the backseat. That's fine if everyone is okay playing a space ninja shooter. Personally I want to be able to choose without feeling that one option is just simply superior. The balance between gunplay and swordplay is not really apparent in the game. There's very little reason to swap to melee. It's almost always better to simply reload your gun. If more weapons had pocket-reload abilities, maybe I'd find more use for melee... But currently, melee is very much a backseat alternative, only truly allowed to shine in the hands of frames with specific powers that take advantage of melee. 

Melee never will compete with AOE weapons anymore but that doesn't make them useless. I use melee for sp survival fissures as my main form of damage. Not for all builds or course. It's simply an alternative to guns and strongly disagree with most of what you said. Melee works well with many frames not included in your list like Nezha and wisp. Melee was the superior choice for over five years and the balance between guns and melee has never been better. There are of course issues and some of your complaints are completely valid but saying there is no use for melee in most situations just ain't right. I do not understand how people can say melee weapons are bad because that is far from the truth. Anyways, you are entitled to your opinions just as much as I.

[vixenpixel]

On 2023-10-01 at 8:55 PM, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

Melee never will compete with AOE weapons anymore but that doesn't make them useless. I use melee for sp survival fissures as my main form of damage. Not for all builds or course. It's simply an alternative to guns and strongly disagree with most of what you said. Melee works well with many frames not included in your list like Nezha and wisp. Melee was the superior choice for over five years and the balance between guns and melee has never been better. There are of course issues and some of your complaints are completely valid but saying there is no use for melee in most situations just ain't right. I do not understand how people can say melee weapons are bad because that is far from the truth. Anyways, you are entitled to your opinions just as much as I.

Well now you are just twisting my words. I never said there was no use for melee and certainly not that it was useless. I said gunplay is almost always better. You also claim that I called melee weapons bad and that's not quite the truth. I listed the reasons for why I think there is an imbalance right now. I thought I was being clear and constructive. 

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

37 minutes ago, vixenpixel said:

Well now you are just twisting my words. I never said there was no use for melee and certainly not that it was useless. I said gunplay is almost always better. You also claim that I called melee weapons bad and that's not quite the truth. I listed the reasons for why I think there is an imbalance right now. I thought I was being clear and constructive. 

You are being clear and constructive but I'm not sure how else to interpret you saying there is very little reason to swap to melee.