Most Optimal Way To Mod Melee Weapons

[ss4chris]

so with a week since melee 2.0 has passed have people figured out the best way to mod your melee weapons?

 

 Im torn between modding with killing blow and   corrupt charge for me channel dmg  since its a certain percentage of extra dmg onto your base dmg or another element mod and a slash/ impact/puncture mod of where the mod is specializes in. people on youtube say  another element mod and another dmg mod ends up the better result. would like more insight.

[ss4chris]

From what I have been reading, not for Frames like Ash, Loki and Excalibur with their 4x damage.

  I dont wanna switch my builds just to compensate for 2 warframes lol.

[Grimtongue]

I've been testing different combinations of damage / elemental / channeling with my Valkyre.  All of my tests were on the dual-zoren, so my first six mods were always:

Pressure Point

Spoiled Strike

True Steel

Organ Shatter

Berserker*

Life Strike**

 

*stack up berserker before casting hysteria = profit

**life strike to not die between hysterias

 

While in Hysteria mode with Warcry active (and steel charge aura) the difference in damages becomes very clear with the numbers that pop-up on a strike.  Using a non-channeling damage build, I would see maximum damage numbers around 8,000 per hit. I tried all of the physical and elemental damage mods, but the damage stayed in the general range of 7000 to 8000 during hysteria.  Outside of hysteria, the mobs died almost just as quickly, but the lower rate of critical hits meant fewer yellow damage pop-ups for me to study.

 

As for the MOST OPTIMAL damage:

 

I continued testing by putting the 2 channeling damage mods into the last two slots.  While channeling, I started seeing consistent damage pop-ups of 13,000; however, I also quickly ran out of energy between Warcry, Hysteria, and channeling.

 

 

Conclusion:

On Valkyre, during Hysteria all damage is converted to an equal amount of slash, puncture, and impact.  This yields consistent damage regardless of what faction is attacked.  If you aren't using Valkyre, a faction-oriented damage build may be more optimal (such as corrosive against grineer).  Also, channeling all the time with the optimal damage build depletes your energy pool super fast even with a necro in the party.  After hours of testing different combinations, I settled on the following as my "most optimal" build for both damage and energy efficiency for end-game content:

 

Pressure Point

Spoiled Strike

True Steel

Organ Shatter

Berserker

Life Strike

Rending Strike

Jagged Edge

 

This build drops any non-heavy unit in one punch at least 90% of the time, and heavies go down in a few hits even after 30 minutes in T3 survival.

Please note that this post is based on actual game playing, so theory-crafting may have different results. Also, damage numbers varied widely on weaker, unarmored enemies.

[ss4chris]

I've been testing different combinations of damage / elemental / channeling with my Valkyre. All of my tests were on the dual-zoren, so my first six mods were always:

Pressure Point

Spoiled Strike

True Steel

Organ Shatter

Berserker*

Life Strike**

*stack up berserker before casting hysteria = profit

**life strike to not die between hysterias

While in Hysteria mode with Warcry active (and steel charge aura) the difference in damages becomes very clear with the numbers that pop-up on a strike. Using a non-channeling damage build, I would see maximum damage numbers around 8,000 per hit. I tried all of the physical and elemental damage mods, but the damage stayed in the general range of 7000 to 8000 during hysteria. Outside of hysteria, the mobs died almost just as quickly, but the lower rate of critical hits meant fewer yellow damage pop-ups for me to study.

As for the MOST OPTIMAL damage:

I continued testing by putting the 2 channeling damage mods into the last two slots. While channeling, I started seeing consistent damage pop-ups of 13,000; however, I also quickly ran out of energy between Warcry, Hysteria, and channeling.

Conclusion:

On Valkyre, during Hysteria all damage is converted to an equal amount of slash, puncture, and impact. This yields consistent damage regardless of what faction is attacked. If you aren't using Valkyre, a faction-oriented damage build may be more optimal (such as corrosive against grineer). Also, channeling all the time with the optimal damage build depletes your energy pool super fast even with a necro in the party. After hours of testing different combinations, I settled on the following as my "most optimal" build for both damage and energy efficiency for end-game content:

Pressure Point

Spoiled Strike

True Steel

Organ Shatter

Berserker

Life Strike

Rending Strike

Jagged Edge

This build drops any non-heavy unit in one punch at least 90% of the time, and heavies go down in a few hits even after 30 minutes in T3 survival.

Please note that this post is based on actual game playing, so theory-crafting may have different results. Also, damage numbers varied widely on weaker, unarmored enemies.

rendering strike and jagged edge only increase one aspects type of dmg in contrast to an element that increases your base dmg mods and all 3 types.

and hysteria is kind of nerfed/ clunky atm no?

Edited May 6, 2014 by ss4chris

[Darzk]

Rending Strike

Jagged Edge

 

Yeah, these increase IPS but do NOT affect Hysteria damage. Nothing you could drop in would help Hysteria, but a +75% element will certainly massively increase your damage against specific factions when not in Hysteria, making healing from LS much more energy efficient.

[Grimtongue]

Yeah, these increase IPS but do NOT affect Hysteria damage. Nothing you could drop in would help Hysteria, but a +75% element will certainly massively increase your damage against specific factions when not in Hysteria, making healing from LS much more energy efficient.

 

Well, that explains a lot... I was trying to figure out why my actual damage never matched my theoretical damage during Hysteria.

 

Switching to the radiation combo (2 mods for +180% radiation damage) is doing a little more damage to regular enemies when compared to the slash damage mods.  From what I've seen, it appears to add roughly 500 damage on a critical hit with steel charge and warcry active.  I'm killing heavies in fewer hits.  Also, the radiation procs are proving useful.

[Darzk]

Well, that explains a lot... I was trying to figure out why my actual damage never matched my theoretical damage during Hysteria.

 

In addition, apparently Hysteria was stealth nerfed/bugged to no longer be influenced by +melee damage% or +power strength% at all anymore.

 

Radiation shouldn't be proccing during Hysteria. Are you sure its not your sentinel or another teammate proccing it?

[ss4chris]

Well, that explains a lot... I was trying to figure out why my actual damage never matched my theoretical damage during Hysteria.

 

Switching to the radiation combo (2 mods for +180% radiation damage) is doing a little more damage to regular enemies when compared to the slash damage mods.  From what I've seen, it appears to add roughly 500 damage on a critical hit with steel charge and warcry active.  I'm killing heavies in fewer hits.  Also, the radiation procs are proving useful.

elemental combos are always going to out do slash mods.

[Saenol]

also when is it good to use crit mods?

 

If the weapon has a high crit chance and high critical multiplier, you add crit mods.

 

Play to a weapons strengths first, then minimize it's weaknesses, then stack on the most useful elements for the situation.

[Grimtongue]

In addition, apparently Hysteria was stealth nerfed/bugged to no longer be influenced by +melee damage% or +power strength% at all anymore.

 

Radiation shouldn't be proccing during Hysteria. Are you sure its not your sentinel or another teammate proccing it?

 

I misspoke.

I was actually using GAS (fire & poison mods).  Also, the extra damage is only appearing in normal melee attacks with the aforementioned boosts active.  Hysteria does not appear to benefit from ANY of the elemental or damage mods (stealth nerf?).  However, Hysteria most certainly still benefits from organ shatter and true steel - the damage increase is several thousands higher on a critical hit, and critical hits are more frequent (3 of 4 hits are critical).

 

Another thing I noticed while testing: using the slash mods instead of the elemental mods results in a lot more dismembered limbs.  While using normal melee during defense missions, the ground quickly got covered in piles of dismembered body parts.

[Suarez123]

you dont get the full percent dmg of killing blow and  corrupted charge when you  channel though. its 50-60 percent added to your base dmg. is it worth it  though. other players say no its better to use elements and another dmg mod and channel will be  fine.

 

 thats why im asking those who actually know the numbers math behind the dmg not just assumption/ opinion based.

 

From what I saw when using my dakra prime, i just simply added both channeling efficiency mods and a killing blow, and in a T3 Surv with vauban i was wandering around doing 5k damage per each landed crit, for me, just a bit of channeling, dunno about you, but you should try capping out efficiency.

[Grimtongue]

I finally built a dragon nikana over the weekend and got it to max rank last night.  I tried it with my loki (who has no melee buffs equipped) and I'm seeing consistent damage popups around 3,000 from normal strikes.  Stealth sliding attacks are doing around 7,000.  Here is a link to the build that I'm using (although I have Decisive Judgement stance instead of Tranquil Cleave).

 

http://warframe-builder.com/Melee_Weapons/Builder/Dragon_nikana/t_30_240000002_230-4-3-234-7-3-236-0-5-240-6-3-241-3-5-245-2-5-247-5-5-254-1-5-306-8-3_236-6-254-6-245-11-241-11-230-7-247-9-240-7-234-9-306-10/en/4-0-53/2514/0

[Kiaru]

 

one build for each  faction.

No life strike? Mandatory mod.

[Toom1275]

My method is to equip these mods when I have points to, in this order:

 

Pressure Point

Fury

Spoiled Strike

Reach

Reflex Coil

Killing Blow

 

And then either a Focus energy or whatever element / pair I want to stick to the weapon.

[sneakatone]

http://warframe-builder.com/Melee_Weapons/Builder/Dakra_prime/t_30_230000002_228-2-5-236-0-5-241-1-5-243-3-3-244-6-5-245-7-5-247-5-5-254-4-5-307-8-3_236-6-241-6-228-7-243-9-254-11-247-9-244-9-245-11-307-10/en/4-0-12/6045/

 

heres an example of what I typically do for all factions. fury can be replaced with what ever cause its not always necessary with combos. I like viral damage so I would use that mostly. and fire gives a  little extra while making the weapon look cool.

[Kiaru]

berseker is only good on weapons like ichors and dual zorens with high crit. other than that Fury is the way to go for  most  builds. IN addition to the attack speed it seems most weapons in exception to the heavy heapens liek fragor and galatine have that " zoren copter" effct now.

 

you would need the weapon to have  a crit around 30-40 for even berserker to be considered.

Berserker is good as long as a weapon has any crit at all. Nearly full uptime on 5-10% crit weapons. The buff lasts LONG.

Edited May 15, 2014 by Kiaru