how to prevent slamkong abuse without nerfing Cloudwalker or Melee Influence

[sunderthefirmament]

tldr: cooldowns

 

Whether or not you think slamkong _{(Wukong making repeated use of slam attacks with an appropriate hammer, often an incarnon, and cloudwalker to animation cancel and reposition quickly)} is a problem, I think it's worth noting that it has some distinctive similarities with Maiming Strike builds in their heyday.  Both feature a single melee attack being used on repeat, largely ignoring the rest of the melee weapon's animations and effects in favor of maximizing area damage.

 

I'm not necessarily saying that I want slamkong to be nerfed.  Why?  Simply put, I'm a little selfish and there are aspects of the setup that I like to use.  I really enjoy Cloudwalker in its current form.  Melee Influence is my favorite melee arcane.  I don't want either of those nerfed, necessarily.

 

So if slamkong is perceived by DE as in need of a nerf, I hope they take a different approach, an approach they could have considered instead of outright gutting Maiming Strike years ago: try a cooldown.  Put a cooldown on whatever effect (a recent buff, I believe) is giving slams their absurd damage so that players are encouraged to use it every so often as opposed to making it their only source of damage.  Alternatively, have a buff that builds up slam damage dependent upon successfully landing normal melee attacks on enemies.  If something similar were implemented for Maiming Strike, it might still see a bit of use, instead of it (and its riven stat) being regarded as largely not worth the slot.  It makes a game more interesting if we are encouraged to use multiple types of attacks.  I think DE knows this, which is why Tennokai exists.

 

My biggest complaint about Maiming Strike when it was popular was how stupid it made the game look.  Ignoring all the hard work DE's animators put into weapon stances, players would just whirl and whirl and whirl on repeat, often making use of macros to spare the strain on their hands from repeatedly executing sliding melee attacks.  Slamkongs look almost as stupid, _{though at least they're invisible when they upload themselves to the cloud}.  I think a cooldown would alleviate some of the spam while also preserving Melee Influence and Cloudwalker as being quite effective.

 

What do you think?

[ReddyDisco]

I found a solution for it, i play solo or switch regions. Slamkong isn't so common in other regions.

[TeaHands]

Which level missions are they doing this? I still haven't come across any yet but I've been hearing about them more and more

[Agall]

25 minutes ago, sunderthefirmament said:

tldr: cooldowns

 

Whether or not you think slamkong _{(Wukong making repeated use of slam attacks with an appropriate hammer, often an incarnon, and cloudwalker to animation cancel and reposition quickly)} is a problem, I think it's worth noting that it has some distinctive similarities with Maiming Strike builds in their heyday.  Both feature a single melee attack being used on repeat, largely ignoring the rest of the melee weapon's animations and effects in favor of maximizing area damage.

 

I'm not necessarily saying that I want slamkong to be nerfed.  Why?  Simply put, I'm a little selfish and there are aspects of the setup that I like to use.  I really enjoy Cloudwalker in its current form.  Melee Influence is my favorite melee arcane.  I don't want either of those nerfed, necessarily.

 

So if slamkong is perceived by DE as in need of a nerf, I hope they take a different approach, an approach they could have considered instead of outright gutting Maiming Strike years ago: try a cooldown.  Put a cooldown on whatever effect (a recent buff, I believe) is giving slams their absurd damage so that players are encouraged to use it every so often as opposed to making it their only source of damage.  Alternatively, have a buff that builds up slam damage dependent upon successfully landing normal melee attacks on enemies.  If something similar were implemented for Maiming Strike, it might still see a bit of use, instead of it (and its riven stat) being regarded as largely not worth the slot.  It makes a game more interesting if we are encouraged to use multiple types of attacks.  I think DE knows this, which is why Tennokai exists.

 

My biggest complaint about Maiming Strike when it was popular was how stupid it made the game look.  Ignoring all the hard work DE's animators put into weapon stances, players would just whirl and whirl and whirl on repeat, often making use of macros to spare the strain on their hands from repeatedly executing sliding melee attacks.  Slamkongs look almost as stupid, _{though at least they're invisible when they upload themselves to the cloud}.  I think a cooldown would alleviate some of the spam while also preserving Melee Influence and Cloudwalker as being quite effective.

 

What do you think?

Don't need to spam slamming to make melee powerful. You could make the same argument against stance interrupting with Slash Dash and some sort of melee influence build, like with [Carving Mantis]'s forward block. 

This just feels like you needed something to complain about so this is what you went with, unlike a real problem.

[Slayer-.]

Cooldowns, nope not on any frame look how Lavos turned out, some got used to it, but a lot didn't.

[quxier]

30 minutes ago, sunderthefirmament said:

Alternatively, have a buff that builds up slam damage dependent upon successfully landing normal melee attacks on enemies.  If something similar were implemented for Maiming Strike, it might still see a bit of use, instead of it (and its riven stat) being regarded as largely not worth the slot.  It makes a game more interesting if we are encouraged to use multiple types of attacks. 

I had similar idea about Exodia contagion:

 

30 minutes ago, sunderthefirmament said:

I think DE knows this, which is why Tennokai exists.

Tennokai exist because... I don't know. At low speed, it's harder to proc Tennokai. Maybe +N duration works fine but it's still not great. On other hand at high speed you can proc Tennokai constantly so it making it "do some melee > heavy" and repeat. It's failure.

So, no, they will probably slap some few second cooldown and call it a day.

9 minutes ago, TeaHands said:

Which level missions are they doing this? I still haven't come across any yet but I've been hearing about them more and more

All I see volts, some fast melees etc Not even once I've seen "Slamkong"?

 

Edited August 23 by quxier

[sunderthefirmament]

3 minutes ago, Slayer-. said:

Cooldowns, nope not on any frame look how Lavos turned out, some got used to it, but a lot didn't.

I was envisioning it more like the red debuff icon Arcane Energize gives you after a proc, or the red debuff icon from Rolling Guard, Wyrm's Negate, etc.  There are other examples that aren't as far removed from the status quo as Lavos is.  Plenty of arcanes have cooldowns.

 

5 minutes ago, Agall said:

Don't need to spam slamming to make melee powerful. You could make the same argument against stance interrupting with Slash Dash and some sort of melee influence build, like with [Carving Mantis]'s forward block. 

This just feels like you needed something to complain about so this is what you went with, unlike a real problem.

That sounds a bit more complicated than slam, 2, slam, 2, slam 2.  And also nowhere near as ugly.  I also don't really see any Excalibur players on the day to day.  Slamkong, while not as ubiquitous where I play as it apparently is on Asian servers, seems to be growing in popularity.

 

I would classify my post as less of a complaint and more of a suggestion for how to stave off nerfs I feel DE may already be pondering.  If you want to read it as someone looking for something to complain about, go ahead, but my intention was never to whine.  I like Wukong.  I like Cloudwalker in particular.  And I really enjoy Melee Influence.  I'm hoping some players' decisions to make heavy use of a strategy that reminds me of something DE already nerfed in the past doesn't lead to things I like getting wrecked.  That's all.

 

15 minutes ago, TeaHands said:

Which level missions are they doing this? I still haven't come across any yet but I've been hearing about them more and more

I see them mainly in Steel Path exterminate fissures.  I will fully admit I don't have usage data on this particular strategy, but anecdotally I'm seeing it more than I did a few months ago.

[Chewarette]

I haven't seen any "slamkong" anywhere. The only Wukong I've seen recently was during a relic run and he arrived at the extract 45 seconds after everyone ?

I'm not sure there is a need for any nerf to a non-existent problem.

[Numerounius]

44 minutes ago, sunderthefirmament said:

Put a cooldown on whatever effect (a recent buff, I believe) is giving slams their absurd damage so that players are encouraged to use it every so often as opposed to making it their only source of damage

I thought it was a combination of everything that is causing slam to have its absurd damage? Don't think you can put a cooldown on just one of them.

Nira mod set,

Slam mods.

Unique effects/Incarnon mode.

Warframe abilities.

Actual build mods.

 

I'd say adjust some of these. Not the first time they've had to adjust mod sets and secondary effects of mods. I don't think it should absolutely be gutted due to being mechanically intense as other stuff like Munitions Kuva Bramma spam but knowing how it can sometimes turn out it'll be a 50/50 shot. I personally think we'll see some nerf adjustments to its high-end damage but using it for fissure run-throughs won't be affected.

Edited August 23 by Numerounius

[sunderthefirmament]

5 minutes ago, Numerounius said:

I thought it was a combination of everything that is causing slam to have its absurd damage? Don't think you can put a cooldown on just one of them.

Nira mod set,

Slam mods.

Unique effects/Incarnon mode.

Warframe abilities.

Actual build mods.

 

I'd say adjust some of these. Not the first time they've had to adjust mod sets and secondary effects of mods. I don't think it should absolutely be gutted but knowing how it can sometimes turn out it'll be a 50/50 shot. I personally think we'll see some nerf adjustments to its high-end damage but using it for fissure run-throughs won't be affected.

While I'm sure it is a lot of things combining to form rather massive damage over a widespread area, it can be traced back to update 35.5's changes to slam damage.  The cooldown I'm envisioning could just be for that.  Slam attacks would only get their radial damage after a brief cooldown or after a certain number of normal melee attack hits.  Or their radial damage could be significantly weakened on repeat.  I just think this is a better target for a nerf than Cloudwalker or Melee Influence.  Again though, I'm not sure a nerf is really called for.

[dwqrf]

Can you post us a video of slamkongs players heavily disrupting your gameplay ? Because myself, I haven't seen any. I'm not saying you are lying about it, far from it, but even if I understand the concept, the associated gameplay ; well, I just haven't seen any. If you claim it's that popular and that gamebreaking, it should be easy to capture it and share it with us. And i'm not really willing to change region to check it out myself.

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

I confess that right now, I don't really have any strong opinions or views one way or another. Half the time I play Warframe its solo, the other half, I rarely come across... this sort of tactic or technique. I think I may have come across in the last two days, as I have been grinding new Prime gear, so doing more Public, PUBs and Recruiting, but if I did, it was in one of the Exterminates or Captures. I also don't actually know if thats what they were doing (Wukongs tend to be popular in those mission types for cracking new Relics, and I wasn't really paying too much attention to them). I did do a few Survivals too, but saw no Wukongs there. 

Basically I am not sure how strongly I feel. Ho intrusive it is to others play styles, how large or popular a technique this is, whether or not in a few months I will see it everywhere, or not really or... Etc. Not that I am doubting that is not more common widespread or intrusive, just my own experience is lacking. 

To compare, the AOE meta didn't really bother me too much either, but I noticed it a lot more, and I also don't personally use AOE that much, and also didn't really have strong negative views on that meta or when they were nerfed either. I wouldn't want Melee Influence nerfed though (i think its relatively interesting), and Maiming Strike I didn't like, and would potentially be one of the metas I actually would be negative towards. 

[sunderthefirmament]

1 minute ago, dwqrf said:

Can you post us a video of slamkongs players heavily disrupting your gameplay ? Because myself, I haven't seen any. I'm not saying you are lying about it, far from it, but even if I understand the concept, the associated gameplay ; well, I just haven't seen any. If you claim it's that popular and that gamebreaking, it should be easy to capture it and share it with us. And i'm not really willing to change region to check it out myself.

Nope!  My gameplay hasn't been disrupted by it.  I'm just noticing similarities to something that DE previously nerfed (Maiming Strike) which I spell out in the original post.  In my opinion, these similarities are strong enough that I thought I would put out some alternate suggestions in case DE decides to nerf slamkong so that the aspects of the slamkong build that I personally use are left unharmed.  That's all.

 

I think you might be confusing my post with several others that I've seen recently that are actively calling for a nerf or complaining about the build.  I guess upon rereading my original post that saying "Slamkongs look almost as stupid" as Maiming Strike could be construed as a complaint, but I don't think that could be equated with "heavily disrupting [my] gameplay" or "gamebreaking."

[dwqrf]

il y a 4 minutes, sunderthefirmament a dit :

Nope!  My gameplay hasn't been disrupted by it.  I'm just noticing similarities to something that DE previously nerfed (Maiming Strike) which I spell out in the original post.

Maiming strike, though, was heavily disruptive...

[sunderthefirmament]

Just now, dwqrf said:

Maiming strike, though, was heavily disruptive...

How so, if you don't mind me asking?

 

I'll be honest, I can theorize why you found it disruptive, but I don't want to assume.

[Agall]

32 minutes ago, sunderthefirmament said:

That sounds a bit more complicated than slam, 2, slam, 2, slam 2.  And also nowhere near as ugly.  I also don't really see any Excalibur players on the day to day.  Slamkong, while not as ubiquitous where I play as it apparently is on Asian servers, seems to be growing in popularity.

Yeah, it is a bit more complicated, its block+forward, 1, block+forward, 1. Same concept, but you're interrupting a stance combo instead of performing a slam. Probably faster when done right, but the Wukong players are too busy catching up most of the time 😄

Hate Incarnon or Xoris can also do this, just with range instead of slam.

[dwqrf]

il y a 1 minute, sunderthefirmament a dit :

How so, if you don't mind me asking?

Anygame was a beyblade festival. Not only were people doing insane aoe+slash+high combo meter ; but they were also invisible thanks to the old naramon ; and while armor was a real issue back then, slash+aoe+invis was totally gamebreaking. Also, you could hit through walls with slide attack, making high range whips a complete broken tool when using macro against a pixel you'd get stuck in. It was either you play that, either you don't play at all.

I understand that Wukong has invis, high speed, and can abuse the slam damage and the animation reset mecanics; but it seems more tedious to master, and doesn't have that much more damage than any other broken build. I think a good ol' saryn still can spread as much relevant damage all over the map faster than a slamkong, unless you provide me with examples.

If slamkong were using macro to perform their dps, then it would surely be a big issue ; but I don't think that's the case.

[TeaHands]

42 minutes ago, sunderthefirmament said:

I see them mainly in Steel Path exterminate fissures.

Ah ok, I still see Titanias way more than Wukongs on Steelpath. But this might be a regional issue or I'm just not playing enough of these on Public

[sunderthefirmament]

1 minute ago, dwqrf said:

Anygame was a beyblade festival. Not only were people doing insane aoe+slash+high combo meter ; but they were also invisible thanks to the old naramon ; and while armor was a real issue back then, slash+aoe+invis was totally gamebreaking. Also, you could hit through walls with slide attack, making high range whips a complete broken tool when using macro against a pixel you'd get stuck in. It was either you play that, either you don't play at all.

I understand that Wukong has invis, high speed, and can abuse the slam damage and the animation reset mecanics; but it seems more tedious to master, and doesn't have that much more damage than any other broken build. I think a good ol' saryn still can spread as much relevant damage all over the map faster than a slamkong, unless you provide me with examples.

If slamkong were using macro to perform their dps, then it would surely be a big issue ; but I don't think that's the case.

Thanks for taking the time to write this out.  I predicted some of the points you bring up here, because I too found them disruptive.  I think it's interesting and worthwhile that you mention the macro aspect.  I don't know if macros are used for slamkongs.  I think it's just heavy attack to slam, 2, and then jump to move upward.  That seems simpler to me than what Maiming Strike required at the time, but I can only speak for myself and my personal issues with Warframe induced repetitive strain injury lol.

 

I'm hoping that your perception on macros is correct though, because I think DE would be more likely to nerf something that takes advantage of macros.  So if you're correct, then maybe Cloudwalker and Melee Influence will be spared.

 

A side by side comparison of Maiming Strike in its heyday and slamkong now might be interesting.  I'm pretty sure slamkong has much greater AOE potential and can move faster through a tileset.  Ultimately though, such a comparison isn't really possible now due to the myriad changes that have been introduced since Maiming Strike was killed.

[dwqrf]

il y a 7 minutes, sunderthefirmament a dit :

I'm pretty sure slamkong has much greater AOE potential and can move faster through a tileset.  Ultimately though, such a comparison isn't really possible now due to the myriad changes that have been introduced since Maiming Strike was killed.

And I also think the issue with Maiming strike was that it was allowing abuse for all melee weapons, even daggers included, even weapons with 1% crit chance, as Maiming strike was a flat +90% crit chance (before bloodrush if my memory is correct). But the Slamkong issue is just a Wukong issue ; not about one single mod potentially breaking all frames.
 

il y a 7 minutes, sunderthefirmament a dit :

I think it's just heavy attack to slam, 2, and then jump to move upward.

I haven't tried it so I don't know how easy it is. But I don't think it's easier than the usual "press 4" already existing is many contexts.

Edited August 23 by dwqrf

[SneakyErvin]

So uhm you want to nerf everyone that uses slam since a single specific setup in one specific region does it slightly better? And you go an compare it with Maiming Strike that was universal?

Plus basing it on one-off missions like exterminate.

Not to mention there are few slam weapons aswell with any particular range benefit. Sancti Magistar and Titron have the furthest reach, but only Sancti Magistar has reliable access to it since it is passive. Full on slam builds with Titron are tedius and inconsistant with building charges, since direct kills from slams do not build charges. And enemies within the regular slam range tends to die to the slam. And we already have regular melee that can reach as far or further than baseline slams and heavy slams.

[RichardKam]

Just delete WuClone already.

[(PSN)Magician_NG]

I'll see a Slamkong for an exterminate incursion every now and then.

Still less frequently than Mirage or Titania.

[sunderthefirmament]

34 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

So uhm you want to nerf everyone that uses slam since a single specific setup in one specific region does it slightly better? And you go an compare it with Maiming Strike that was universal?

No, what I'm suggesting as an alternative to more heavyhanded nerfs wouldn't really affect the average slam user.  It would just disincentivize using slam on repeat and nothing else.  If a player is using slams for mobility or weaving them in here and there, they wouldn't be affected at all.

 

I'm not begging for nerfs here.  I'm hoping that if DE decides slamkong needs a nerf they will take a different approach than nerfing Cloudwalker or Melee Influence, both of which are things I enjoy in Warframe.

 

4 minutes ago, RichardKam said:

Just delete WuClone already.

The clone has nothing to do with a slamkong build.  If you're referring to Wukong in general as "WuClone," then I have to disagree.  I enjoy using Wukong, largely for his 2.  I don't want to see Wukong specifically nerfed.

[trst]

Yeah, no. Killing the underlying system isn't a way to address an outlier.

If Wukong is being disruptive enough, again, then he needs the nerf. The melee system doesn't need changes unless there's more universal ways to cause the same disruption and it's something not exclusively tied to a handful of outliers.

Like if this is only a problem specifically because of the hammer Incarnons/Arca Triton and they can be abused without the exclusive use of Wukong then the appropriate answer is to nerf those weapons. 

 

I will say though the build itself is really stupid in how it's played. I can't imagine anyone actually wanting to just spam two buttons for entire missions. But it is on point for Wukong players.