Melee Rework Needed

[Cortanis]

So here I sit yet again forceing myself through another less than sub par melee weapon just to get my mastery rank up and at least try the weapons before I form some kind of uninformed hate for them. It's at this point that I figured I also don't have anything to lose by posting something on this particular problem ether.

 

Let's start with the weapon classes as posted on the wiki. We have short, long, dual, thrown, and heavy. That being said, if you note what melee weapons are actively being used and used because they really want to use them, you'll see that at least 70% of people use almost strictly heavy weapons thanks to the multi hit and the larger damage pools. I see this as a problem due to the fact that this is basically the same problem that they pointed out in the live stream about people being forced to use shotguns who don't want to just to get the mastery rank up. With the u11 additional ways to gain points, that gets a small remedy and only a small one. I have yet to get any note worthy progress doing anything besides mastering weapons/frames.

 

Damage scales in comparison to range/speed/multi hit are another thing I have to take a large issue with. I'm currently slogging my way through the fist weapons and I can't help but note that in addition to the nonexistant range they also don't have a very good damage pool in the first place. They do have a nice 20% crit chance on them, but that doesn't make up for the fact that the base damage pool is in the toilet and they're an extremely short range non multihit weapon. So at best you can do a few crits to a singel target that's in your face and not at a particularly great pace. Frankly, the damage pools need to be a lot higher on all the melee weapons so that they're actually a viable thing in the game outside of the heavy weapons. I don't care how fast you can Zorencopter your way through things. Not all weapons are Zoren like, or even half of them for that matter. The shorter the range weapons, the higher their damage pools need to really be. I've been through most of the short range weapons and long swords at this point and none of them are really worth having or useing in a half serious manner. I can sit there with a stunlocked target off of a Rhino stomp that has already taken that damage and spend 5-25 seconds just punding away at them just to do the same thing that pretty much anyone else is doing at range with multiple targets with almost any gun.

 

The multihit problem is an issue I particularly hate. No matter how fast you make one of the long swords, it will never come close to the damage needed to compete with anything multihit. It's at that point that I've been asking for some time where the multihit/penitration mod is for general melee weapons is at. I even suggested that particular thing and got a response from DE Steve on that one. It still doesn't help that the damage pools on most of these weapons don't help that issue ether. Even if such a mod came in, the damage pool off of say a Skana will not be able to come close to even a Galatine. I'd say that every melee weapon should be multihit, but I know that's pretty much just a pipe dream in the first place.

 

tl;dr version of this. The melee weapons in the game need a hard rebalanceing to make them useable with short range weapons holding a MUCH higher damage capability and their needs to be an access for all weapons to have a multihit function on them.

[Kracken]

one way would be reworking the melee, the other would be adding new mods for the specific melee type ... the first is a little problematic but it will work for a long period of time; when adding mods are not solving the core of the problem and creating a larger pool of mods with limited space to handle is even more annoying ... 

 

i think that specific type of weapon should be specialize to one/multiple purposes (with mods- for that purpose - block/reflect and other should be mowed from frame mods to melee mods )

Edited December 2, 2013 by Cracken

[Loubbo]

I'd prefer a rework on the melee mechanic honestly (looking at Vindictus here and it's combos/grabs). While simply increasing damage and adding multi-hit by default or via mods would help it's not going to fix the limited feel of melee in general. It's rather stiff and more apparent with faster swinging weapons as you run through the same animation. 

 

Another possibility would be adding an additional weapon type, for lack of a better word lets just call them boosters. These "boosters" would be items equipped to the weapon slots that add additional abilities relating to your melee weapon. Used by your basic attack key (Fire rate/reloads/cooldowns, charge up, etc still apply) these would give abilities like teleport to target, volt like shield that remains in front of you when moving, sends out blade shockwaves with a range of 15 (random number) meters in front, etc. This would add some flavor to melee and with some creative ideas from the Devs make some fun and truly melee focused builds without a complete overhaul.

Edited December 2, 2013 by Loubbo

[SoanoS]

What really killed the melee for me in the Damage 2.0 is the new Impact damage and Slash damage mods which no-one seems to have yet and which I can't seem to find anywhere. Lacking both either of these mods makes my impact and slashing damage based weapons (Such as Obex to give an example of an impact weapon) completely useless on anything over rank 10. Puncture mods I have piles of, but that is because of an existing mod being changed to Puncture damage.

 

To add insult to injury these new mods in question seem to be rarer than rocking horse sh*t to find due to their rarity.

[Cortanis]

I actually have all of those mods myself. They don't really make any note worthy effect at all since they're % based and more often than not you'll need a solid 150% boost to a single stat to make any real headway. I've been min/maxing those aspects and to that exact point, it has gotten me no where. Maxing out impact damage on the fist weapons doesn't really do much of anything. Trying to make up for the shortfall of the other stats is even worse because you only end up wasteing your mod points to do it.

 

One thing that would possibly help fix issues like this across the board would be the introduction of a forma like item to the game that would allow you as a player to add X amount of points to said weapon's stats. I remember the old grinder system from PSO ep1&2 and if a similar system was applied to the game with a more refined method rather than a general application then it would allow for a far greater amount of customization. Case in point, the Bolto and Akbolto. Both sets of these are rather nice and I've used them a lot in the past. With d2.0, their effectiveness got shot up quite a bit. Since they have NO blade damage to them, they're trash against light infested. The application of a forma like item to allow a player to add an additional... 10 damage?... to a level 30 weapon at the cost of the loss of all levels like a forma would allow melee weapons to actually be made into something workable. That still doesn't solve the problem of multihit, but that could be solved with a mod like mentioned before.

 

As Loabbo mentioned, the animation set is stale as well. We've all seen this not only on the faster winging weapons, but I've seen it a great deal on the heavy weapons as well. Plain and simple, the attack animations need more variety and to not be so repetative. It's a lot like playing Fable the Lost Chapters in a very bad way with the attack animations. On that note, I'd personally like to see an updated version of Fable's Master Greatsword make it into the game. Looked good in Fable and had the reach to make it work in this game as well if they kept at least part of the attack animation to it.

[Baigan]

Been waiting a melee update for MONTHS now.

 

Cleaving is an issue, many weapons that don't cleave don't excel at single target damage.

Melee is easily outperformed by Ranged weapons.

No risk reward atm.

 

Melee kills should have a baseline chance of dropping red orbs. Like 10 or 20%. That or make execution conditions that heal you when performed. Would be a good start...

[Cortanis]

Even if they did that, you'd still have to be able to actually KILL things. At later levels, around 90+, even thinking about melee is laughable. You may get away with a knockdown effect of some kind, but it will only be so that you can put a bullet in their heads while they're down.

[SoanoS]

Even if they did that, you'd still have to be able to actually KILL things. At later levels, around 90+, even thinking about melee is laughable. You may get away with a knockdown effect of some kind, but it will only be so that you can put a bullet in their heads while they're down.

 

That is because the "ground finisher moves" are truly pathetic on anything over rank 15 at the moment and often leave the enemy slowly stand up and bash your face in again. Finisher should ALWAYS be a critical, and deal massive damage instead of what it currently does.

 

Also, stealth attacks are weak. I stealth attacked behind a Rank 10 Runner with that new Corpus whip weapon (Lectis I think), rank 24, and it was left with more than half of its health. And then it exploded in my face.

Edited December 2, 2013 by SoanoS

[Cortanis]

Screw that.... ground finishers should be just that, a finisher. The same should be in effect for stealth kills as well. These are both what would be considered cue de gras moves and by all means should be an instant win. It's effectively the same thing as the halo sneak attacks.

[Thelonious]

Fix melee:

 

1. Buff pressure point by adding 5 more ranks. Power comes at a price peasants!

 

2. No more target number restrictions, you hit whatever's in range of your swipe. Range is now the only limiting factor.

 

3. Crosshair position determines where the swipe will hit, be hit above you, under you...making headshots easier. No more 2-dimensional flat melee!!! No more pinata games with ospreys!!!!

 

4. Rebalance aaaaallll the melee weapons. More variety in stats now we have multiple damage types and elements (Heat Sword--->Fire damage, Mire-->toxin...and more variety among longswords: slash, puncture, impact)

 

5 . Rework the animations so that they don't hinder freedom of movement while meleeing. A melee  strike shouldn't force movement. Separate upper body (arm swings) from lower body (leg moves)

 

There you go, now melee is muuuuucch better.

[Cortanis]

Fix melee:

 

1. Buff pressure point by adding 5 more ranks. Power comes at a price peasants!

 

2. No more target number restrictions, you hit whatever's in range of your swipe. Range is now the only limiting factor.

 

3. Crosshair position determines where the swipe will hit, be hit above you, under you...making headshots easier. No more 2-dimensional flat melee!!! No more pinata games with ospreys!!!!

 

4. Rebalance aaaaallll the melee weapons. More variety in stats now we have multiple damage types and elements (Heat Sword--->Fire damage, Mire-->toxin...and more variety among longswords: slash, puncture, impact)

 

5 . Rework the animations so that they don't hinder freedom of movement while meleeing. A melee  strike shouldn't force movement. Separate upper body (arm swings) from lower body (leg moves)

 

There you go, now melee is muuuuucch better.

Yep, pretty much this. All of that needs to be done but I still stand by the need for the game to have a base stat adjustment item. Reward for effort and because if they just went with anything current, many of the weapons would only have one or two stats to work with in that respect and of those some are laughably low as well.

 

Additionally, I would also suggest an active charge system to the charge attack. The longer you hold the charge attack the higher the damage multiplier bonus it does rather than the auto release version that we donow. Imagine being able to hold a charge attack that you can actually release when you choose onto a group of targets and have that charge attack buffed more than the high point of the Galatine's 400 damage. That's also keeping in mind that even Galatine doesn't exactly cut it, no pun intended, at later levels.

Edited December 2, 2013 by Cortanis