What Is The Purpose Of Melee?

[Hixlysss]

After looking over the variety of melee weapons, what they do, what their mods do, I'm starting to wonder what exactly...is their purpose?

 

Are they intended to be a simple backup in case you run out of ammo? If that is the case why does ammo drop everywhere?

 

Or are they intended to be a weapon for when enemies get close, something you can use to knock them back and escape. If that is the case then why do they all have such low chances to actually stun/knockback enemies so you can escape groups?

 

I'm bringing this up because when you look at the builds you can do with primary and secondary weapons they can beat the crap out of melee in DPS or even straight up damage. Sure Melee weapons have higher physical damage mods, but 90% of 6 damage is still crap but that is the fault of the how the physical damage mods work.

 

Currently, the purpose of Primary and Secondary weapons is clear, you use your Primary to kill the majority of enemies, and then your secondary to kill different types of enemies than your primary is designed to deal with. Such as you can have your Primary kitted to smash through armor, while your secondary can take out shields, so on and so forth.

 

So I ask again, what is the purpose of melee? What is it's role compared to the other weapons? Sure it doesn't use ammo but that is no reason to make it not as good as a secondary at the very least.

 

I'm not saying that melee as it stands sucks, just that it's kinda...just along for the ride. Not useless, but lost, doesn't know what it wants to do so to speak. It can't compete with secondarys or primaries for damage output, it can't disable or stun enemies enough to be a "Oh crap, I need to get out of here!"

 

The only way to find a solution is to find what Melee's purpose is. Is it an alternative to a secondary? Primary? Is it for being able to stun enemies to get away when overwhelmed? Or is Melee just there as an option? Is that the only reason it exsists, to be an option, not even a viable one but just to be there?

[KvotheTheArcane1]

More or less it's mobility until they rework melee. There are a few "good" damage melees, those being galatine = orthos prime > heavy melee weapons

Edited December 4, 2013 by KvotheTheArcane1

[DiBBz]

yeah well to bad you cant knock them back now cause they removed staggering and rare to get a knock-back debuff on a enemy now , depending on how often you use your melee

 

also PS still reading the post

[Qeveren]

Melee could definitely use a rework at some level.  It's both a little dull and a bit low on effectiveness (in many cases, at least).  As it is now, the only time I use melee is to level a melee weapon or occasionally as a knockdown tool.

 

Honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing melee become competitive as a player's primary focus, complete with various styles etc.  Maybe use the current melee button for "quick emergency use" and have dedicated melee become the third weapon-switch mode.

[Exo594]

I've found that Kestrel and Glaive are pretty fun to use.

 

I don't like melee because it has its own button, instead of like in TF2 where you select and click. I'd find the TF2 weapon selection/usage control much more useful because I don't have 9000 buttons on my mouse, so scrolling my powers is pointless/useless.

[Hixlysss]

Melee could definitely use a rework at some level.  It's both a little dull and a bit low on effectiveness (in many cases, at least).  As it is now, the only time I use melee is to level a melee weapon or occasionally as a knockdown tool.

 

Honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing melee become competitive as a player's primary focus, complete with various styles etc.  Maybe use the current melee button for "quick emergency use" and have dedicated melee become the third weapon-switch mode.

 

I've found that Kestrel and Glaive are pretty fun to use.

 

I don't like melee because it has its own button, instead of like in TF2 where you select and click. I'd find the TF2 weapon selection/usage control much more useful because I don't have 9000 buttons on my mouse, so scrolling my powers is pointless/useless.

 

Both are valid points, and an idea I was going to suggest on a possible solution. Either making the Melee tab it's own "switch to" option, where you can swap between Primary, Secondary, and Melee. Doing that would allow for far more variety in using your melee weapon beyond just attack/charge. Ease of use would be one, you could tap your main fire button to do the standard combo's, hold it down for the charge attack, right click to block. Much easier to use than tapping those two buttons off to the side.

[Hixlysss]

No

Why.

[Anarties]

To feel somewhat cool before you die.

 

To give off the illusion that you could actually do something before getting pumped full of lead and plasma.

 

Coptering.

 

Transportation.

[Revel72]

I think that Melee weapons should be designed for nearly one hit kill on PvE right now I more have fun with my Zoren copters.

[Cortanis]

I made one of these threads the other day as well. To exactly this point, even coptering is only as useful as long as you can go with out being bashed/stunlocked. Greneer are pretty solid as far as interupt ability is concerned. So really, they're only there for mastery points and that's pretty much it. As I pointed out in my thread, sneak attacks and ground finishers should be just that. Moves of that nature should full and well instant kills in their own right. Many of the weapons have elemental procs that could be used to decent effect if they were reworked properly as well. All in all, melee needs a rework from the ground up and until they do so it will be nothing but mastery exp farming.

[Phoenix86]

+1, supporting, the long called melee rework must come out asap...

[SpringwoodSlasher]

i used a fragor with maxed reach and a frost damage mod to have knockdown and crowdcontrol.

 

but with the update that's next to useless.

[Cortanis]

i used a fragor with maxed reach and a frost damage mod to have knockdown and crowdcontrol.

 

but with the update that's next to useless.

Does it still have the chance to proc when it hits the ground? If it does, switch it to explosive damage for knockdown and you'll have the next best thing.

[Hixlysss]

I made one of these threads the other day as well. To exactly this point, even coptering is only as useful as long as you can go with out being bashed/stunlocked. Greneer are pretty solid as far as interupt ability is concerned. So really, they're only there for mastery points and that's pretty much it. As I pointed out in my thread, sneak attacks and ground finishers should be just that. Moves of that nature should full and well instant kills in their own right. Many of the weapons have elemental procs that could be used to decent effect if they were reworked properly as well. All in all, melee needs a rework from the ground up and until they do so it will be nothing but mastery exp farming.

Glad I'm not the only one to make this kinda thread. I don't think Melee needs a total rework, it just needs a buff. Sure it's great amazing fun to run through low levels, but anything past say level 20 or against anything but infested tends to be pointless with melee.

 

Look at all the work the devs have put into melee. All the animations, all the weapons, Melee is the most varied in forms of attack. I mean we have Wall Run attacks, Slide Attacks, Charge Attacks, ect. it is good with the stuff it has, it's design is great and solid, but it is lacking primarily in terms of damage against higher level enemies.

 

TL;DR: Melee is not viable for end game.

[Wiegraf]

Melee needs a rework in several ways but it seems that two point come across that counteract each other :

 

- Melee requires no ammo, thus is weaker to compensate since you technically never run out of Slashy McStabbyFacepuncher;

- Melee requires to be in close to your enemy (unless using Glaive or Kestrel) thus in a much more vulnerable position.

 

This leads to the problem that melee isn't efficient since where it's best used at, doesn't deal enough damage to deal with the threats. Sure, you can shoot enemies down but I'd have figured that putting yourself in a dangerous position would definitively offset the "infinite ammo" pro of melee weaponry.

 

Melee is more of a fallback mechanic, which is why it has its own button; you don't have time to switch to melee when a Runner comes up on your side and you decide to slash it to bits else it would blow in your face. Which is somewhat sad as I do like to rush down enemies with dual daggers, punch weapons or even a rapid standard weapon which will only work on enemies way below the strength at which my primary and secondary weapons would perform adequately against. It feels like it's there to be... there... and nothing else.

 

The only viable frames which makes melee decent are Ash, Loki and Valkyr... and even so, Valkyr suffer from very poor survivability since she'll take damage like wet paper in a staple factory gone rogue with Skynet. Ash and Loki only make it viable with their invisibility which improves melee damage and that's temporary. Even if you have a bulky Rhino coming your way, you can expect him to favor a few rounds of his rifle in the enemy's face than bother to even swing his Scindo just because, despite the ammo used up, the "Time to Kill" on firearms way outclasses melee weapons.

Edited December 4, 2013 by Wiegraf

[Cortanis]

I would have thought that they would have done a full on melee damage rebalance with u11 since they were effectively reasigning values to everything anyway. Any one of the weapons should have a base damage more in line with the higher damage heavy weapons in the first place and the heavies should be almost double what they are as well. I'll also point out that I usually melee train with Rhino Wiegraf. If you have a good stomp build you can stunlock constantly and use that to kill farm.

[Hixlysss]

Some nice responses. But the problem with melee isn't just with their base stats, but their mod stats. This can be summed up as the need to standardize mods that modify the same stat to cost the same and provide the same benefit. I.E. crit chance mod for rifle should cost and provide same benefit as on a melee weapon. Same for damage mods.

 

Other than that, a buff to either the base damage of the lower end melee weapons, or an increase in their attack rate to boost their DPS potential to be closer to that of secondary or primary weapons. Failing to do all of those would then require melee weapons to have the highest status effect chance to compensate.

[Archistopheles]

Some nice responses. But the problem with melee isn't just with their base stats, but their mod stats. This can be summed up as the need to standardize mods that modify the same stat to cost the same and provide the same benefit. I.E. crit chance mod for rifle should cost and provide same benefit as on a melee weapon. Same for damage mods.

 

If all the mods were the same, it would not only be boring, but it wouldn't allow certain types of weapons to have higher base stats in certain regards.

 

Giving a crit mod, for example, only +60% max allows for that certain weapon to have a much higher crit chance base without always maxing out at 100% like any rifle would.

Edited December 4, 2013 by Archistopheles

[dashashou]

It's Not that  all this isn't  is a valid well expressed  point  but it's one that has bee called for 100s of times DE is just  doesn't care .

 

Melee has Never been viable. 

[Archistopheles]

Melee has Never been viable. 

 

You're wrong in March, and wrong now.

[Bendoverxnao]

hmm with a loki + galatine charge build, ive been hitting 14k x 5 enemies, per swing. I would not say that melee is unviable but instead that some melee weapons need a buff in comparison to weapons like the galatine and orthos prime.

 

As for its purpose, in my case it is my primary weapon. It can fill many roles and is not limiting. You make an argument saying that the primary and secondary can cover all situations so what is melees purpose? well with damage 2.0 its obvious that we need 3 ways to deal with 3 different damage types. Having the option to have 3 different types of weapons makes sense as you can build 1 for each type. Also melee does a good job at killing infestation, good luck wasting dps and ammo killing small fry infestation.

 

just my 2 cents

Edited December 4, 2013 by Bendoverxnao

[Othergrunty]

Melee in most shooters is usualy a high risk for high reward type of attack.

 

However in the development of Warframe it seems the people in charge have at some point hit a powerfull wall of doubt over what ever this game is a co-op shooter or a MMO RPG, resulting in the melee system working like in some RPGs which are focused on melee, while the entire environment is still focused on being a damn shooter.

 

Steve Sinclair once said in a livestream that the reason we have a blocking system is because he and Scott once had the cool vision of players blocking attacks like Excal does with Vor in the PS4 announcement trailer. However, he also said that they never truely managed to sit down and decide how the system should properly work in game.

So instead they put the blocking function deep down in a to do list and never looked back. Instead just relasing a few useless band aid mods to increase the mod drop list.

 

Blocking is a relict of the past when the game was still fresh in development.

 

In a way, i think their perspective on the melee system is similar. It was once a great idea they had, but eventualy the deemed it not important enough and stopped all direct work on it. However unlike blocking they can't ignore completly, since since it's part of the game's image and premise. Hence why their art team is still allowed to produce countless new melee weapons NOBODY NEEDS.

 

Instead melee weapons are more or less like cosmetics which double as backup attack. They are there to show off what you have or finish the image of your warframe you envisioned.

 

There is also that comment one of them made during a livestream that they don't want melee weapons to be more powerfull or as important as guns. So it's possible that part of the development team are holding them down on purpose.

Edited December 4, 2013 by Othergrunty

[sewens]

In damage 1.0 melee was a AOE enemy control mechanic

 

in damage 2.0 it's a free damage method

 

Melee is viable in a different way from primaries in that it's effectiveness is dependent on your frames health and movement ease and your style of play. Melee needs more moves, stun or disabling utility depending on what weapon, and a synergy with movement.

[Wiegraf]

I would have thought that they would have done a full on melee damage rebalance with u11 since they were effectively reasigning values to everything anyway. Any one of the weapons should have a base damage more in line with the higher damage heavy weapons in the first place and the heavies should be almost double what they are as well. I'll also point out that I usually melee train with Rhino Wiegraf. If you have a good stomp build you can stunlock constantly and use that to kill farm.

 

Then you're the exception to the rule :) Just don't see many of them around given how easier it's been for many to blast things in the face rather than slash them.

 

 

hmm with a loki + galatine charge build, ive been hitting 14k x 5 enemies, per swing. I would not say that melee is unviable but instead that some melee weapons need a buff in comparison to weapons like the galatine and orthos prime.

 

As for its purpose, in my case it is my primary weapon. It can fill many roles and is not limiting. You make an argument saying that the primary and secondary can cover all situations so what is melees purpose? well with damage 2.0 its obvious that we need 3 ways to deal with 3 different damage types. Having the option to have 3 different types of weapons makes sense as you can build 1 for each type. Also melee does a good job at killing infestation, good luck wasting dps and ammo killing small fry infestation.

 

just my 2 cents

 

Problem is, to have melee made viable, you need to use a Warframe ability to enhance it whereas primaries and secondaries are good by themselves.

 

The damage bonus from Ash/Loki makes it worthwhile; being able to suspend targets in place with Rhino stomp make them unable to reciprocate.

 

In constrast to rifles, pistols, shotguns and all that merry bunch, melee weapons requires a secondary ability just to be nearly on par with primaries and secondaries, an ability that, might I had, is completely temporary unless you refresh it constantly where you can just have a well modded rifle mow down rows and crowds of enemies with utter ease.

 

If melee weapons had something to make them viable, by themselves, and not necessarily only in term of damage, then surely they'd be a better appreciated part of a Tenno's loadout than a decorative piece that sometimes gets powered up with an ability to be swung about.

Edited December 4, 2013 by Wiegraf

[Azamagon]

Melee is kind of pointless right now and only really has two roles right now: 1) A sort of viable alternative way of dealing damage if you are using Ash/Loki and 2) Absolute last resort (out of ammo etc). If I would give them a role, I would make them into:

 

* Interruption weapons

* Crowd killers (multhitters)

* Powerful DPS and Bursttdamage weapons

 

Currently, they don't fulfill any of these roles particularly well. In damage 1.0 they were at least (in a few cases) interruption weapons. Only way to make them feel quite powerful right now is to play with Loki/Ash, due to stealth having a 4x damagemultiplier.

 

What would I do?

* Make all melee weapons have 100% staggering effects again. Procs such as Impact's stagger becomes a KNOCKDOWN proc for melee weapons. (Offtopic a little, but I'd do the same stagger/knockdown-buff for all the bows).

* Fix some simple quality of life issues (goes hand in hand with the above suggestion): I'd make ground executions and stealthattacks be triggered with the actionbutton (Default the X-key).

* Increase damage across the board, to such a level that you make stealth only be a straight 50% melee damage increaser, but still leave damage unaffected for Loki and Ash (So, a baseline buff of melee weapons by 2,67x or so...). I don't understand why DE went the OPPOSITE way with the stealthdamage... Just goes to show that they truly and utterly suck at numbers and handling scaling issues...

* Make all melee weapons have multihitting effects. Yes, even daggers and fistweapons! What we hit, animationwise, is what we should be hitting. 1-target limits need to be scrapped for all melee weapons!

* Streamline all mods so you no longer have both regular damageboosters and chargedamage boosters. Only ONE mod should be needed to increase ALL melee damage. (I'd make Pressure Point etc be the general damageboosters. The chargedamagebooster mods (such as Killing Blow) could be melee multhit mods instead, for example! Or vice versa. Attackspeed mods boost both attackspeed AND chargespeed. Chargespeed mods could be made to something else, maybe something related to blocking)

* An indirect fix to make meleeing more viable across the board for ALL Warframes would be to improve blocking. Make blocking a worthwhile mechanic already!

 

Well. there are a lot more issues needed to be fixed, so I'll just leave this threadlink here: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/89931-melee-tweaks/

(NOTE: The linked thread isn't up to date with Damage 2.0, but the main point of what needs to be fixed with melee will probably be clear enough anyway)

Edited December 4, 2013 by Azamagon