What are good standalone Melee influencer (no special frame, weapon or companion) builds compared to standard viral/heat build

[quxier]

I wonder where I can use Melee influencer without any particular frame, weapon or companion. Heat makes me do 50% armor stripping. So changing to electricity will make me do less damage to e.g. Grineers.

With massive status chance and/or attack speed Arcane can proc. However it's just some damage around (I've tried it on corrupted heavies or Gokstad officers, dunno if SP version, so maybe that's the case). I cannot see it as anything overly better or different than my standard builds. At this point I don't think it's worth to put on weapon UNLESS it has huge electric status capabilities. Am I missing something fun out there?

[Zakkhar]

1 hour ago, quxier said:

Heat makes me do 50% armor stripping. So changing to electricity will make me do less damage to e.g. Grineers.

Not going Melee Influence narrows your damage reach to your weapon range & follow through. MI hits everything within 20 meter radius, even through walls.

You can full strip with Argonak stat stick(daggers) or Corrosive (req. 2 green shards).

You do not need to have the Electric on the melee weapon as long as you can proc the buff (lasts 20 seconds). This guy explains it the best:

 

Edited February 15 by Zakkhar

[lukinu_u]

If you really need heat to kill stuff, you can always get it from another such as a weapon (so not a specific weapon, just specific build).

But anyways, I think the slighly longer kill time you get from the lack of heat can actually help landing more status to better benefit from the effect on the long term, by landing more successive hit on a target, that will translate to the others and kill everything.
It's not necessarily better but is worth questioning depending your weapon and playstyle.

Just keep in mind this arcane is situational and will not always lead to good results on every loadouts. It requires some conditions to be met, so you need to know what you're and will definitely need to build around it for maximum outcome, rather than just slapping it onto your build and hope it works. 
 

il y a 58 minutes, quxier a dit :

At this point I don't think it's worth to put on weapon UNLESS it has huge electric status capabilities. Am I missing something fun out there?

About this, the way you talk about like you don't understand how the arcane work, and the description is phrased quite weirdly, so I will explain just in case : 
"On Melee Electricity Status: 20% chance for elemental Melee Status Effect to apply to enemies within 20m for 18s"

A slighly longer but easier to understand way of phrasing is : On electricity status from melee weapon, you have 20% of triggering the following effect : "status from melee effects apply to enemies with 20m", and said effect applies for 18s and cannot refresh.

In practice, what it mean is, you need to land one electricity status to get all your melee status effects to spread in a 20m radius for 18s. And while you would benefit from more electricity chance to refresh the effect faster once it's over, you can largely benefit from the effect even with low electricty values that results in a proc every 4-5 seconds.

There is much more to say about it, but I think it's enough for you to get a good grasp of what the uses of this Arcane are.

[Zakkhar]

30 minutes ago, lukinu_u said:

In practice, what it mean is, you need to land one electricity status to get all your melee status effects to spread in a 20m radius for 18s.

Not exactly. It spreads the damage that causes the status along with the damage that is caused by the status (if applicable). So spreading eg. magnetic status doesnt just afflict all the enemies with maagnetic, it also damages them for 100% of the damage that caused the magnetic status proc (unlike standard weapon that only spreads portion of the damage reduceed by follow through depending on amount of targets, has much smaller range & all the damage instances have separate status proc chances so it is not guaranteed to proc eg. magnetic on all of them). It is better in all 3 instances.

Edited February 15 by Zakkhar

[UnstarPrime]

5 hours ago, quxier said:

I wonder where I can use Melee influencer without any particular frame, weapon or companion. Heat makes me do 50% armor stripping. So changing to electricity will make me do less damage to e.g. Grineers.

With massive status chance and/or attack speed Arcane can proc. However it's just some damage around (I've tried it on corrupted heavies or Gokstad officers, dunno if SP version, so maybe that's the case). I cannot see it as anything overly better or different than my standard builds. At this point I don't think it's worth to put on weapon UNLESS it has huge electric status capabilities. Am I missing something fun out there?

So broadly speaking, I think that whether to use Melee Influence or not centers around 3 questions:

How much do I want to melee?

I use melee for 90% of my mission time because I love melee.  And in this context, Melee Influence works great for me.  I'm always meleeing, so Melee Influence is always active and doing it's thing.  But if I was only periodically using melee while mostly relying on my guns, that would lower my Melee Influence uptime and might even mean that sometimes when I did melee attacks Melee Influence wouldn't activate.  So that's something to keep in mind: the more you use melee, the more consistent Melee Influence will be, and vice versa.

 

What do I expect the enemy density to be due to the tile set and my own play style?

The damage potential of Melee Influence is dependent upon how many enemies are within 20m of you.  The more there are, the more damage Melee Influence is going to be dealing, since Melee Influence duplicates not only the procs, but also the damage that triggered those procs.  Furthermore, this damage will be multiplied further the more enemies within the area are clustered together, as this allows the Electric procs to chain and deal damage multiple times per proc.  And having every enemy within 20m CC'ed by Electricity is nice if you're into that sort of thing.

In most levels I just run face first into the oncoming sea of enemies swinging my weapon, and because of that I generally end up with many enemies all around me; this is ideal for Melee Influence.  But if you wait for enemies to slowly trickle in from multiple different paths, that might lead to worse results.  Similarly, if enemies are spread out and not clustered, that will also reduce the effectiveness of a Melee Influence build.

 

Am I more interested in having my melee weapon deal lots of damage to multiple targets or big damage to one target?

For the most part I think this is a personal preference, though it can also be determined by your game mode.  For example, you want to kill those Demolysts ASAP, and there's no way to guarantee that any enemies will be near them.  So if I wanted a tool to take out Demolysts, I wouldn't make it a Melee Influence weapon.  But if you're just hanging out in a Survival mission, there's no time pressure with super tanky enemies to worry about.  In that case, you might want to focus on your overall outgoing DPS, rather than how much damage you're dealing to a single specific enemy at a time.  Or maybe not!  Maybe it's your style to do big numbers to the enemy that's right in front of you regardless of context.  Both are valid preferences.

 

Personally, I've been putting Melee Influence builds on all of my weapons, because in my testing I've found that that gives better results for my style.  I also just like that it's a build that performs better when there are more threats around me, which means that my weapon scales as enemies become more durable and more dangerous.

As for what weapon to use, I think anything with good status chance works great.  I generally build my Melee Influence weapons with Primed Fury, Primed Reach, Condition Overload, +60/+60 Viral, Weeping Wounds, +90 Electricity, and usually +60/60 Electricity to top it off, as well as a Tennokai mod (I know it's not your thing, but Melee Influence loves Tennokai since it spreads heavy attack damage to everyone in 20m).  Generally speaking, this build spreads Viral over a wide area for priming, while also dealing a lot of Electric damage over that same area on each Electric proc.

If you have other ways to boost some of these stats, I can imagine replacing it and the 60/60 Electric mod for Crit Damage and Chance, which will give your Melee Influence hits an additional source of multiplication.  You could probably even take out the Primed Reach, as most weapons probably don't need it...but I like it.

Just for context, I've also got my Dethcube constantly Helstrumming Gas and Cold procs, which gives additional damage increases for Condition Overload.  I use the Narimon Focus school to functionally make my combo counter infinite so I can keep Weeping Woulds and Tennokai at their peaks.  You can certainly function without any of these, so I don't think they're required!  But personally I find that managing the combo counter is a bit of a pain without Narimon, so it makes things more comfy for me and I wanted to be transparent about that.

 

Anyway, it's fun to be able to do this:

Is this a contrived situation that you'll never encounter in-game?  Absolutely.  But those are Steel Path armored enemies, dying to a Slash-less weapon while they still have full armor.  Something about that tickles my brain. ^_^

[Zakkhar]

50 minutes ago, UnstarPrime said:

Furthermore, this damage will be multiplied further the more enemies within the area are clustered together, as this allows the Electric procs to chain and deal damage multiple times per proc.  And having every enemy within 20m CC'ed by Electricity is nice if you're into that sort of thing.

It also quadruple scales with any faction mods/roar. I know faction mods are not everyones tea,

[hyzmarca]

8 hours ago, quxier said:

I wonder where I can use Melee influencer without any particular frame, weapon or companion. Heat makes me do 50% armor stripping. So changing to electricity will make me do less damage to e.g. Grineers.

With massive status chance and/or attack speed Arcane can proc. However it's just some damage around (I've tried it on corrupted heavies or Gokstad officers, dunno if SP version, so maybe that's the case). I cannot see it as anything overly better or different than my standard builds. At this point I don't think it's worth to put on weapon UNLESS it has huge electric status capabilities. Am I missing something fun out there?

The big advantage of melee influence is that it's AOE with 20 meter range.   And that synergizes well with AOE damage status effects,  specifically electricity and gas.  

I mostly use it on Incarnon Dual ichor built for gas/electric.  Dual Ichor has the advantage that melee influence kills trigger its incarnon effect and its incarnon effect triggers melee influence.       

Depending on your frame,  you can add viral with Nourish.    Saryn is great because she can also add corrosive and toxin,  plus a second damage instance.

[quxier]

On 2024-02-15 at 6:36 PM, Zakkhar said:

 

You do not need to have the Electric on the melee weapon as long as you can proc the buff (lasts 20 seconds). This guy explains it the best:

That's not true. At least "not electric on melee" part. I've been running with Volt that proc electric and I've not seen single Influence proc.

I doubt that it can proc from previous procs. I've run 110% duration (12 proc per enemy, afair) and I had no single proc.

On 2024-02-15 at 6:43 PM, lukinu_u said:

A slighly longer but easier to understand way of phrasing is : On electricity status from melee weapon, you have 20% of triggering the following effect : "status from melee effects apply to enemies with 20m", and said effect applies for 18s and cannot refresh.

On 2024-02-16 at 2:00 AM, hyzmarca said:

The big advantage of melee influence is that it's AOE with 20 meter range.   And that synergizes well with AOE damage status effects,  specifically electricity and gas.  

I get feeling something is not right. Putting or removing Viral or gas (2 mods, 60/60) doesn't change results too much (maybe it's Simulacrum bugs).

On 2024-02-16 at 12:46 AM, UnstarPrime said:

 

What do I expect the enemy density to be due to the tile set and my own play style?

The damage potential of Melee Influence is dependent upon how many enemies are within 20m of you.  The more there are, the more damage Melee Influence is going to be dealing, since Melee Influence duplicates not only the procs, but also the damage that triggered those procs.  Furthermore, this damage will be multiplied further the more enemies within the area are clustered together, as this allows the Electric procs to chain and deal damage multiple times per proc.  And having every enemy within 20m CC'ed by Electricity is nice if you're into that sort of thing.

In most levels I just run face first into the oncoming sea of enemies swinging my weapon, and because of that I generally end up with many enemies all around me; this is ideal for Melee Influence.  But if you wait for enemies to slowly trickle in from multiple different paths, that might lead to worse results.  Similarly, if enemies are spread out and not clustered, that will also reduce the effectiveness of a Melee Influence build.

I rarely get lot of enemies. Even things like Netracels aren't great.

 

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, quxier said:

That's not true. At least "not electric on melee" part.

This is explained in the video that Zakkhar provided.  Amp + Virtuous Surge.  Obviously a bug that it can proc Influence.  Another one is Yareli using a sidearm with electric while on her surf board.  There are probably more bugs that do this.

[quxier]

1 hour ago, Tiltskillet said:

3 hours ago, quxier said:

That's not true. At least "not electric on melee" part.

This is explained in the video that Zakkhar provided.

Ah, I thought it was wrong video (tennokai).

1 hour ago, Tiltskillet said:

Amp + Virtuous Surge.  Obviously a bug that it can proc Influence.  Another one is Yareli using a sidearm with electric while on her surf board.  There are probably more bugs that do this.

Even it weren't bug it's tied to specific frame (Yareli) or using OP where I look for standalone (aka melee only) usage. The more step I had to take the less useful it is.

Neverthless thanks for clarification.

[UnstarPrime]

17 hours ago, quxier said:

I rarely get lot of enemies. Even things like Netracels aren't great.

I honestly don't know what it is about Netracells, but they really have terrible enemy density; I assume it has something to do with whatever logic is trying to prevent them from spawning in the red circle or whatever.  I get much better density just running around in a Survival on Sedna or in the Void.