Is Melee Influence too powerful?

[(PSN)Sentiel]

Since it only spreads elemental status effects and cannot spread Heat not Toxin afaik then it's extremely situational and you have to dedicate a complete build around it. That said, when you do so it is very powerful.

I've modded Caustacyst, which has innate Corrosive, for Viral, Electric, and high Status. Paired with two Emerald Archon Shards and Melee Influence, this weapon can fully armour strip, stack Viral and Electric in 20 meters. As long as there are enough enemies around so the status effects don't expire, it will work as a portable nuke. It works very well on Volt with Nourish and Shock Trooper, who can adjust the elemental distribution as needed and increase the melee attack speed.

To make it even better, Caustacyst also does some long range Corrosive wave on heavy attack, followed by a sludge on the ground, which all can further spread the statuses. It also has forced Slash on heavy attack and blinds nearby enemies.

If anything is getting nerfed, it's this particular combo.

[Berzerkules]

3 minutes ago, (PSN)Sentiel said:

Since it only spreads elemental status effects and cannot spread Heat not Toxin afaik then it's extremely situational and you have to dedicate a complete build around it. That said, when you do so it is very powerful.

I've modded Caustacyst, which has innate Corrosive, for Viral, Electric, and high Status. Paired with two Emerald Archon Shards and Melee Influence, this weapon can fully armour strip, stack Viral and Electric in 20 meters. As long as there are enough enemies around so the status effects don't expire, it will work as a portable nuke. It works very well on Volt with Nourish and Shock Trooper, who can adjust the elemental distribution as needed and increase the melee attack speed.

To make it even better, Caustacyst also does some long range Corrosive wave on heavy attack, followed by a sludge on the ground, which all can further spread the statuses. It also has forced Slash on heavy attack and blinds nearby enemies.

If anything is getting nerfed, it's this particular combo.

There are several combos that work very well. I have Speed nova + argonak + RDD build that I did a 1 hour survival yesterday and got 11.5k kills but I could probably get at least 9k+ with a similar nova build and a regular slash based melee build and primer with no melee arcanes. This is probably more of a speed nova breaks things kind of situation really.

There are also other builds out there with incredibly high kps averages. I've gotten 9k+ kph on mag and xaku fairly recently. Back when SP just came out Khora was 20k+. 

Influence is good but a lot of things are also very good. Nerfing it will probably happen at some point but there will always be something else. 

[Xzorn]

It's technically bad design.

You generally want to avoid AoE layering effects and it was esp apparent when it stacked with Exodia Force.
My riven powered Cyath was a complete monster essentially triple AoE layering. 1) The weapon 2) Influence 3) Force,

ARPGs often make this mistake along with a few turn based CRPGs like Divinity OS2. When you have an effect that hits all enemies in an AoE for say 500k damage. Then you clump those enemies together. You're damage is no longer 500k. It's (500k ^ Number of Enemies). It gets out of control very quickly.

Warframe already has AoE layering issues. Esp with groups. I'm mostly explaining how easily such a thing becomes very powerful.
When I design or mod a game AoE layering is always in my mind as something to avoid or fix.

[crimsonspartan1]

7 hours ago, Ace-Bounty-Hunter said:

If it had the ability to spread slash procs it absolutely would have been busted. But it only spreads non physical damage types.

In addition, you have to intentionally build for electricity (if the weapon doesn't already provide it innately) which needs a high enough weighting to proc reliably in order to maintain the buff. Furthermore it is only really effective in missions with extremely high enemy density (Steel Path survival).

This makes it a pretty niche use case depending on the weapon and stance you have equipped. 

As we mentioned earlier, some weapons can do electric procs regardless with certain attacks, like the slam attacks of the Ohma and Prova and the Korumm's special attack, but you'd need to frequently do those specific attacks to trigger Influence instead of just activating it by attacking normally, so some weapons can definitely use influence without needing electric on the build itself, but it's more difficult to trigger on those weapons. 

9 hours ago, UnstarPrime said:

It's the Electric Procs that are doing the killing, magnified by the Viral procs.  And each instance of the Electric procs that gets spread is hitting multiple enemies, which really balloons the damage, to the point where it's enough damage to carve through armored enemies at a speed that feels like you're cutting through with Slash procs.

 

I guess it depends on what you mean by "grouping", but when I think of grouping I think of Pull, of Cordon, of Vortex...you know, abilities that take enemies and compact them into a 5 meter area.  Your mention of the Lex makes it seem like this is what you mean.

And that's not what I'm talking about.  A 20 meter radius means that if enemies that are 40 meters apart will be part of the same group as long as there's an enemy between them; so just wading into any mid-sized room with multiple enemies works.  A Lex Prime Incarnon can indeed carve through enemies that are tightly packed, but it's not hitting everything in a 40 meter diameter sphere.

 

Haha, mostly because it was just the first mod my brain thought of when I asked myself "what's an example damage mod".  My actual builds generally use Condition Overload for this, which I agree is going to be a better pick in many if not most scenarios. ^^

At higher level, steel path enemies those electric procs aren't going to kill as quickly against high-armored enemies. Lower level enemies or non / low armored enemies will definitely get melted, but tankier enemies become harder to kill, and influence doesn't have much effect against certain enemies that have a cap on the amount of status effects can be inflicted on them, like Liches or the Necramechs in the Sanctum. My main source of damage tends to be my melee itself with it's slash procs via direct hits while influence is mainly for AOE stunning with electric and priming enemies with Viral and for Conditional Overload. The Nami Solo actually became one of my favourite melees with influence coming out due to the amount of range I can have on the weapon itself and the ability to use a pure status build with zero crit mods and just massacre everything that doesn't have a status cap.

Influence definitely feels like a weird case IMO. On one end it's really powerful, but on the other you have to mod for electric unless you use specific weapons with electric built in or have a way to proc electric on a melee without needing electric on the build itself. It might get nerfed in the future, like having a cooldown or having it's range reduced or whatever, but it could easily be way more overpowered if it was capable of spreading slash procs. It definitely outshines the other melee arcanes, but mainly just because of the ability to spread elements in such a wide radius.

[ReddyDisco]

4 hours ago, Xzorn said:

You generally want to avoid AoE layering effects and it was esp apparent when it stacked with Exodia Force.
My riven powered Cyath was a complete monster essentially triple AoE layering. 1) The weapon 2) Influence 3) Force,

Hotfix 35.0.4 (2023-12-20)

• Fixed Melee Influence spreading status effects applied to invulnerable enemies.
• Fixed Melee Influence being able to trigger Exodia Force.

 

Looks like the exodia force thing was fixed

[SneakyErvin]

It's balanced by itself and what it requires. It's a great arcane, probably the best out of the bunch, but that isnt because it is too powerful, just that the others are kinda weak.

Since Influence requires Electric to work it locks us out from Toxin and Heat by default, with the exception of Saryn due to her Lash which does not combine with other elements. It also locks you out from Corrosive and Radiation unless the weapon comes with either as innate effects. Some weapons can circumvent the electrical modding requirement by having innate non-combinable electric, like Ohma slam and similar. But that instead limits the arcane to specific weapons if you want to utilze Heat or Toxin spread.

I enjoy it with either pure electric modding in a Nourish build or modded for Viral+Electric atm, where I prefer the Nourish approach. I had the idea of going Viral+Gas+Electric, with Nourish then mods to achieve Gas+Electric, but it is kinda pointless to spread out the elemental damage since the damage on proc is based on the modded element that procs. So you are better of with one reliant proc that can occur that benefits from all mods on the weapon for the direct damage instance of the spread. I would if I could mod Dual Ichor for full electricity, but as it is those mean lads come with innate toxin, so going viral+electric is needed.

I do also enjoy the Exposure arcane, but that is pretty much only used on my Contagion weapons for more upfront damage, since those lack status chance to enable and make Influence reliable.

[UnstarPrime]

10 hours ago, KitMeHarder said:

Every area effect in WF is shown as a radius. Reiterating it as a diameter just comes off as fearmongering.

Not the intent at all; the person I replied to seemed to think that the projectile from a Lex Prime Incarnon covered a similar area as Melee Influence, so I wanted to add a supplementary framing in an attempt to help clarify.  It's easy for folks to confuse radius and diameter, so in case that was part of where the misunderstanding was occurring, I used both diameter and radius in the same post.

[UnstarPrime]

10 hours ago, KitMeHarder said:

This is not my experience, nor does it seem to be most other's. Just to put it out there, you need an absurd (and I mean absurd) amount of electric damage to do anything to Alloy armor. Mind posting a video?

Yeah a video sounds like a good idea, I'll see about getting one up!  A picture is probably worth a thousand words here ^^

[UnstarPrime]

22 hours ago, crimsonspartan1 said:

Melee influence requires you to mod for electric unless the weapon itself has a way to do electric procs without modding for it

10 hours ago, Ace-Bounty-Hunter said:

In addition, you have to intentionally build for electricity (if the weapon doesn't already provide it innately) which needs a high enough weighting to proc reliably in order to maintain the buff.

10 hours ago, (PSN)Sentiel said:

you have to dedicate a complete build around it

I've been really surprised to see comments like the above, and I'll be honest: I personally don't understand this sentiment?  Or at least, the way I'm interpreting it.  To me, this reads as "a downside of the build is that you have to use the mods that make the build happen".  And that's puzzling to me, because isn't that the same for every build?

But multiple people seem to be expressing this idea, so maybe I'm the one who's missing something?  If I am, I'd love to learn.

[(PSN)FrDiabloFr]

4 minutes ago, UnstarPrime said:

I've been really surprised to see comments like the above, and I'll be honest: I personally don't understand this sentiment?  Or at least, the way I'm interpreting it.  To me, this reads as "a downside of the build is that you have to use the mods that make the build happen".  And that's puzzling to me, because isn't that the same for every build?

But multiple people seem to be expressing this idea, so maybe I'm the one who's missing something?  If I am, I'd love to learn.

Not a whole lot to miss, you’ve been told by multiple players why this build is niche and that reason is because of the amount you have to dedicate to proc this arcane/element damage and utilise the build effectively, when most builds can be min maxed relatively simply.

Edited January 29 by (PSN)FrDiabloFr

[----Legacy----]

Been playing with it myself and i think that anyone who says it's weak hasn't tried Melee Influence on Incarnon Dual Ichor modded for viral + electricity.

*Throws smoke bomb and bullet jumps away*

[KitMeHarder]

25 minutes ago, ----Legacy---- said:

Been playing with it myself and i think that anyone who says it's weak hasn't tried Melee Influence on Incarnon Dual Ichor modded for viral + electricity.

It's hard to call the entire arcane "too powerful" when that's only the case on a singular weapon. And even then, unless your hyper-building for it with something like a 300-400+% ability strength Roar Saryn, it still tends to struggle with armor.

[(XBOX)Big Roy 324]

I've heard it's strong on the xoris.  So I might try to get it going on there.

Other than that..

Idk

[Ace-Bounty-Hunter]

1 hour ago, UnstarPrime said:

I've been really surprised to see comments like the above, and I'll be honest: I personally don't understand this sentiment?  Or at least, the way I'm interpreting it.  To me, this reads as "a downside of the build is that you have to use the mods that make the build happen".  And that's puzzling to me, because isn't that the same for every build?

But multiple people seem to be expressing this idea, so maybe I'm the one who's missing something?  If I am, I'd love to learn.

That's because all min-maxed melee builds have been using the same cookie cutter loadouts for years with very few flex slots. Electricity is also not a very good element for melee weapons (Outside of high density maps or grouping builds). Especially if the particular weapon type doesn't have a stance with forced slash procs (eg: Tonfas, Warfans) to offset the damage loss.

It's a trade-off, basically. You're sacrificing more up front damage for more aoe and status spread. So I can't see this arcane getting nerfed.

[----Legacy----]

1 hour ago, KitMeHarder said:

It's hard to call the entire arcane "too powerful" when that's only the case on a singular weapon. And even then, unless your hyper-building for it with something like a 300-400+% ability strength Roar Saryn, it still tends to struggle with armor.

It's hard to say it's the case with a singular weapon when people here have already been listing several weapons that make Melee Influence nuts; incarnon Dual Ichor just makes it insane since its clouds inherit melee damage and bonuses which triggers further instances of Influence to a point in which it becomes almost self sustainable.

And you don't need to hyper-build a 300-400% STR roar Saryn to get there when you can stack multiple layers of the same effect in the same area to get a similar or even bigger effect (Roar or Vex armor on high STR would just make that particular interaction even dumber than it already is)

Edited January 29 by ----Legacy----

[UnstarPrime]

4 hours ago, (PSN)FrDiabloFr said:

that reason is because of the amount you have to dedicate to proc this arcane/element damage and utilise the build effectively, when most builds can be min maxed relatively simply.

This doesn't really get me any closer to understanding, though.  You say that "most builds can be min-maxed relatively simply?, but aren't we just talking about putting mods in mod slots?  How is putting a different set of cookie-cutter mods into those slots in any way more difficult?

[Agall]

Simple answer is no, and any disagreement to such will be met with extreme hostility, not limited to "1v1 me bro" or affirmative declarations of heresy.

 

The limitation of electric is perfect, given you're limited to blast/radiation/viral/gas for a secondary status, if you're not having to compensate for an innate damage type already. There's plenty of builds that just don't work very well having to do so, where I'll usually elect for gas/electric with how well it scales damage. The only exception I've found is Korumm, who's innate electric special attack doesn't combine and does proc Melee Influence. The rest, you're usually forced to run gas or blast, especially incarnons, with the innate Heat damage.

[KitMeHarder]

2 hours ago, ----Legacy---- said:

It's hard to say it's the case with a singular weapon when people here have already been listing several weapons that make Melee Influence nuts

Like what? I disagree. Even the Xoris, which seems like a perfect match for MI, often does no MI damage because you one-shot the enemy and you get no damage transfer. So then you use it on enemies you can't one-shot and now all the heavies barely take any damage (as eventually you have nothing to chain off of).

2 hours ago, ----Legacy---- said:

And you don't need to hyper-build a 300-400% STR roar Saryn to get there when you can stack multiple layers of the same effect in the same area to get a similar or even bigger effect

I can almost guarantee you that you will be doing little to no damage to SP armored enemies without significant faction damage Triple dipping MI. Videos are welcome to prove otherwise.

Even with 100+% faction damage, I just watched a video where the heavies and eximus weren't dying. Again, I wouldn't call that "too powerful".

[UnstarPrime]

15 hours ago, KitMeHarder said:

This is not my experience, nor does it seem to be most other's. Just to put it out there, you need an absurd (and I mean absurd) amount of electric damage to do anything to Alloy armor. Mind posting a video?

Alright, I put together some short videos attempting to showcase what these weapons can do after their engines are revved up.

Here's Nikondi Prime:

Here's Bo Prime:

Hope that helps to illustrate how Melee Influence tears through armored enemies even if you haven't solved their armor.

(videos don't show the Dethcube build, but it's just doing Gas + Cold procs with Helstrum)

[(PSN)FrDiabloFr]

53 minutes ago, UnstarPrime said:

This doesn't really get me any closer to understanding, though.  You say that "most builds can be min-maxed relatively simply?, but aren't we just talking about putting mods in mod slots?  How is putting a different set of cookie-cutter mods into those slots in any way more difficult?

Ace bounty, said it very well melee in many aspects is very limited, easily min maxed because as you said “cookie cutter” builds are unfortunately pulled back by very limited end game modding capabilities, there isn’t a huge diverse playstyle to melees as ace said, there is grouping builds ranged builds etc.

Edited January 29 by (PSN)FrDiabloFr

[KitMeHarder]

1 hour ago, UnstarPrime said:

Hope that helps to illustrate how Melee Influence tears through armored enemies even if you haven't solved their armor.

I appreciate the videos, but in my first post I did say how biased the simulacrum was for showing off MI. I get similar results. But once you go to a real mission like SP kuva survival, it looks no where near as good.

• Once you start killing, enemies aren't this dense.
• All the fodder dies, so you can't damage loop the heavies.
• You start one-shotting things like Butchers, so no MI proc from them.
• A lot of enemies are left half-dead and CC'd no where near you.
• Etc..

[Lord_Chibi]

On 2024-01-28 at 1:24 PM, UnstarPrime said:

Melee Influence:

On Melee Electricity Status
20% chance for elemental Melee Status Effects to apply to enemies within 20m for 18s. Cannot refresh while active.

In my subjective opinion and experience, I've noticed that when I'm building a melee weapon lately, there's nothing that can come close to the efficacy of a Melee Influence build*.  As long as the weapon has decent status chance, there's just no other build that can handle groups more effectively.  And while this is a really fun new way to play melee, it has me wondering whether it's so powerful that it's drowning out alternative choices.  Does a weapon have great crit stats?  Doesn't matter, because blow-for-blow, crits can't give me the same amount of damage output that building for Melee Influence's status application can.  Other arcanes?  I haven't found a build for one that can match up to Melee Influence.  For me personally, it definitely feels like Melee Influence has no realistic competition.

But let's be holistic here, because Melee Influence builds aren't without their downsides.  They thrive on clusters of enemies: the more enemies, the more procs and damage it's dealing.  Which means that a single durable enemy without any friends won't be taking much damage, and thus in this situation Melee Influence is most definitely out-shined by other builds.  But that's a really rare and exceptional situation to find yourself in a horde shooter, making Melee Influence feel like the melee build for general play.

And the thing is, from a design standpoint, I like what Melee Influence is doing here: it's found a way to make pure status into an effective killing tool.  I remember back in the day when I would hear about "crit builds" and "status builds".  Nowadays, if you want your weapon to kill, it's rare to see something that's just a status build, because the better answer to "crit build" or "status build" is "both in the same weapon", since we now have more than enough tools to do that.  So at least in my experience, I'm not seeing much that is pure status outside of primers...until Melee Influence.  So it's cool to see Melee Influence give life to an alternative strategy!  I just wonder if it may have tilted the scales a bit too much in the other direction.

Anyway, all of that is based on my subjective experience killing level 100-200 Steel Path enemies.  What are your thoughts?  I'm genuinely curious to hear others' perspectives on this.

 

*Something along the lines of Primed Fury, Primed Reach, Primed Pressure Point, +60/+60 Viral, +90 Electricity, Weeping Wounds, (flex slot)

Tennokai sacrificial steel blood rush Wrathful advance incarnon build:

Edited January 30 by Lord_Chibi

[ShortCat]

vor 11 Stunden schrieb KitMeHarder:

I appreciate the videos, but in my first post I did say how biased the simulacrum was for showing off MI. I get similar results. But once you go to a real mission like SP kuva survival, it looks no where near as good.

• Once you start killing, enemies aren't this dense.
• All the fodder dies, so you can't damage loop the heavies.
• You start one-shotting things like Butchers, so no MI proc from them.
• A lot of enemies are left half-dead and CC'd no where near you.
• Etc..

Simulacrum does not change the potency of the Arcane though. You do not need to hit 20 enemies to multistack the damage, as damage dealt to one enemy is enough. If you overkill one enemy, the same damage is transfered to everything within its radius. 

The issue with Melee Influence that does not match the destriction (and the most likely object to a change/nerf) is that the arcane does not only spread the status proc, but it also duplicates the strike that dealt this status proc. In other words, when the arcane is active and you hit an enemy with 12x combo and proc a viral status while doing 20k damage, now every enemy in 20m radius will take that same melee hit with 20k damage and a viral proc. Not sure how it works when you proc several status effect in one strike though.

Melee influence is very powerfull. High status weapons and daggers can squeeze the most out of it. Everyone who is telling anything else is either ignorant to its power or is covering it with misinformation.

[SneakyErvin]

12 hours ago, KitMeHarder said:

I appreciate the videos, but in my first post I did say how biased the simulacrum was for showing off MI. I get similar results. But once you go to a real mission like SP kuva survival, it looks no where near as good.

• Once you start killing, enemies aren't this dense.
• All the fodder dies, so you can't damage loop the heavies.
• You start one-shotting things like Butchers, so no MI proc from them.
• A lot of enemies are left half-dead and CC'd no where near you.
• Etc..

In SP the density is simply so high that you will always have things that procs MI while sustaining a high KPM. I have a hard time believing your KPM/KPS is so high that you actually get downtime on spawns, since even with a self sustaining Dual Ichor that reaches around 3KPS you never run out of mobs. And that is when the Ichor is out strolling on its own and commiting genocide several rooms away in all possible directions.

Even weapons on the worse side for utilizing MI wrecks maps with it aslong as you make a build suited for MI. This includes weapons without forced or high slash weighting to annihilate heavy mobs. You quite simply just build a bit differently from the other old cookie cutter builds.

But it is like everything else, if you dont build for it, it prolly wont give the return you seek. So far with builds to make use of MI I've had great success with it on Dorrclave, Dual Ichor (bonkers), Bo Prime Incarnon, Sancti Magistar Incarnon, Nami Solo Incarnon, Prisma Skana Incarnon, Kronen Prime, Prisma Ohma, all the 2h Nikanas, Praedos, Silva & Aegis Prime, Ceti Lacera, Venka Prime, Ceramic Dagger and Furax Wraith. This has been with different frames with different potential, but even those that bring little on their own like Revenant make it work real well. The main thing is that most of those builds use Nourish, so I can mod for electric and HA improvements, like effeciency. Which gives me both constant AoE damage and the option to 1HK anything heavy if needed. The exception is when using Dual Ichor since it has innate Toxin, so needs an elemental combo anyways.

These builds have worked very well in SP endless and makes short work of netracells and archons.

And while electric isnt the best element for damage when compared 1:1, people seem to forget or ignore that MI deals more instances of elemental damage in addition to spreading the status effect. So while electric might be behind a bit, it still deals a full instance of extra electric damage whenever it triggers the status when MI is active.

33 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

The issue with Melee Influence that does not match the destriction (and the most likely object to a change/nerf) is that the arcane does not only spread the status proc, but it also duplicates the strike that dealt this status proc. In other words, when the arcane is active and you hit an enemy with 12x combo and proc a viral status while doing 20k damage, now every enemy in 20m radius will take that same melee hit with 20k damage and a viral proc. Not sure how it works when you proc several status effect in one strike though.

That is very likely intended. It does however not duplicate the damage of the hit, it takes the modded damage and applies it again. So the damage you see on surrounding targets depends on which elements triggered on the attack and their % of the damage spread on the weapon. And the number you see are all statuses combined into a single number.

Edited January 30 by SneakyErvin

[KitMeHarder]

2 hours ago, ShortCat said:

If you overkill one enemy, the same damage is transfered to everything within its radius. 

2 hours ago, ShortCat said:

Everyone who is telling anything else is either ignorant

You do not. If you kill an enemy, MI does not transfer any damage from them.

1 hour ago, SneakyErvin said:

I have a hard time believing your KPM/KPS is so high that you actually get downtime on spawns, since even with a self sustaining Dual Ichor

That post was about weapons besides the Dual Ichor, and specifically about the fact you will not have 20 enemies in range (like you do in the sim) most of the time (nor will every enemy be hit by multiple tesla effects). And this is just solo SP endurance. Anywhere else or anytime you have teammates and it'll be significantly less.

1 hour ago, SneakyErvin said:

Even weapons on the worse side for utilizing MI wrecks maps with it aslong as you make a build suited for MI.

Again, I'm not saying MI isn't a good arcane. I'm saying it's not "too powerful". It's also overestimated and people tend to forget how much the same set up with a different arcane would still be doing. 

But again, an in mission video (doesn't have to be yours) you think is being absolutely carried by MI would be appreciated (besides Dual Ichor). Preferably with no faction damage, but I understand.

Edited January 30 by KitMeHarder