Feedback On New Melee Weapon Stats And A Request For More Variation

[TeliaRS643]

So, Melee 2.0 is out, and close-quarters combat is a viable option, which is great!  But, well, there's been more than just stances introduced in these changes, and I can't say that they're all great.  With the addition of stances (and better 'coptering' ability across the board), there's more desire to play other weapon classes... unfortunately, weapon classes seem to be the deciding factor as to what stats they inherit, and what damage types they deal, with very few exceptions.

 

Excluding the Dark Sword, Plasma Sword, and Dakra Prime, most of the '1-handed sword stance' weapons fall into the category of dealing primarily slash damage and generally around 35 points of physical damage across the three types, with mostly similar attack speeds.  Now, first of all I'd like to say that the dark-type weapons getting changed to a combined element is awesome.  The rest... well, I might as well just equip the dakra prime.  I mean, yeah, you need to be a higher rank to make it, but you have so many swords and stats to give them that I have to ask 'why'.  Why are swords simply slash monsters.  You have so many other stats to play with - impact, puncture, elemental damage, leap attacks, spin attacks, crit multiplier, crit chance, status chance, stamina, even things we can't measure (but should be able to) like range, channeling cost and channeling damage - but they all feel entirely the same.  You had two weapons breaking the mold prior to the Melee 2.0 update - Plasma Sword and Jaw Sword - that dealt impact and puncture damage respectively for the most part.  It gave the player options and in my opinion was a good game design choice, and hoped it would be expanded on... instead, the plasma sword is nearly identical to the prova now save for the stance used, and the jaw sword is yet another slash monster, which again is pretty much inferior to the dakra prime, or heck, the kama, which doesn't have a rank requirement, has a fast attack speed, a better spin and leap attack than most swords, and has a physical damage of ~45.

The stats issue extends past longswords as well - if you wanna deal puncture damage, you'd better get used to using just short-range daggers.  If you wanna deal impact damage, well, it's heavy, slow hammers, maces, and polearms for you.  If you wanna make the most out of your copters then just equip dual-weapons, any dual weapons have insane spin attack damage!  But if you wanna crit too, grab dual axes, because that's where all the crits are... which, by the way, a critting spin attack with any dual-axe weapon deals 900 damage unmodded, at a base 25% chance, while at the same time dealing similar damage to longswords (around 35 physical damage) with greater attack speed, making dual-axes arguably the best weapon type if you're looking at raw numbers.

Here's a bunch of suggestions to make the majority of weapons seem like re-skins and give them a place of their own
- Start with making channeling multiplier/efficiency visible on the stats list... and for that matter, add a bit more info to the codex - right now channeling is listed as simply 'enhancing your attacks'.  In what way?  Is it simply better damage, or does it affect other things like status/crit chance and crit multiplier too?  The next part would be to vary the weapons accordingly... things like the Cronus should deal more base damage than the Ether Sword, but when channeled, the Cronus should be out-damaged by the ether sword, which is literally an energy-blade, and would take to energy-channeling more effectively, right?  It will give tenno that don't use their powers much another option.
- Vary those damage types.  The Kama look like puncturing weapons anyways, and the Jaw sword returned to sinking teeth into armor (puncturing it).  I always liked the idea of the plasma sword being more of a force blade rather than a slicing one, and was sad when it was changed.  A spread-damage that has equal weight between all the damage types sounds good too (pangolin sword comes to mind - coming to a deadly point for puncture, having an edge due to the plates, and based off of a very defensive animal for impact).
- Crits and statuses!  Oh god you've been passing out status mods like candy for the past few events why are you not playing this up.  The Jat Kittag is neat for it in particular, but there's also the problem with it being one of the slower weapons, which makes it better for procs that scale off of damage, but not procs that are better in quantity than in force (like cold and all of its combined elements).  Having some low-damage weapons with great status chances or crit multipliers/rate would be a plus.

- Combo bonuses and timers... honestly, I didn't see that one coming, and it's a welcome change.  I don't know if it's possible to vary/modify the benefits of combos and their timers, but if they could, it would be an amazing addition.  Having certain weapons being able to maintain a combo better than others due to having extra time, or benefitting better from combos would be another great way to balance a weapon with lower damage.  Mods that adjust these traits would be gravy.

Thanks for listening to whoever read the whole rant. I know you just got melee 2.0 out and there's still things to fix as far as the entire system goes and dreaded RNGesus being a fickle god, but hey, voicing what can be improved is what lies on the beta testers/players' shoulders, ain't it?  I know that there's not a whole lot of weight on my words, being just one player in an ocean of millions, but here's why you should: Playing up the different stats of your weapons will diversify player arsenals further, make them inclined to keep more than just a few (or one of the OP) weapons on-hand and levelling others to 30 and then selling them.  It'll make them want more slots, thus need platinum, thus buy more from you... if not the slots, then the entire weapon (with slot and potato included), either of which is good for you... and, well, if they don't want those weapons with the particular stats and they're fine enough with their kama, that's fine, because the slash monsters still work against level 35 things (which is great, don't change that).

What I'm saying in conclusion, and the tl;dr:
You've made this massive combat system between Melee 2.0 and Damage 2.0, and you're not utilizing all the aspects of them to their fullest potentials.

[Moomabo]

Do this DE. Adding build more variety extends the play-ability and life of a free to play game. It sounds as though proper implementation would let community see that there is more to Warframe than a huge late game grind for an ever expanding pile of weapons and hats. Having the ability to create niche builds and be more unique is always a good thing.

[Riot_Inducer]

Agreed! Was very dissapointed to see my jaw sword got changed from an armor shredder to just another slashy sword, albeit still has higher than average puncture damage but seriously why kill its unique point like that? 

[OptimumBow0]

Bump.

 

More people need to see.

[TeliaRS643]

Bump.

 

More people need to see.

Unfortunately, it looks like people are far too concerned with their personal favorites being less effective or whinging about RNG to look at the weapon balance as a whole.  Oh well.