De, Pls Don't Give Weapons Different Channeling Multipliers

[Phaeton0]

As the title says, I've been seeing people suggesting this, mostly in response to the fact that heavy melee weapons (and other weapons that used to rely on charge attacks) now feel sub par. The suggested idea is to give certain weapons a higher channeling damage multiplier, but...

 

Balancing weapons around this would only work if you have your melee weapon equipped, since you can't channel with quick melee. Unless of course DE wants certain weapons to be better when equipped, and others to be better with quick melee. That would depend on their design philosophy, which is totally up to them.

[se05239]

I agree with this.

I would rather have the heavy weapons' damage buffed. 

[Sirabot]

wait, so why wouldn't you want this? It would help with diversity... Rather than every weapon just having Slash, Puncture or impact and 100% channeling damage.

 

Giving weapons different channeling would be akin to weapons have different charge attacks again. I haven't used killing blow since 2.0 because why channel when I can just spam hit them and deal just as much damage in 2 or 3 normal hits without using my much needed energy.

 

Doing this, DE could also make channeling damage % visible in the UI so we could see how our mods were effecting it.

 

Right now we have stances with hidden damage multipliers. and we can't even see channeling damage.

 

 

We really need more diversity among our melee weapons right now as far as damage types. Channeling builds aren't really viable because they're a generic 100%. which means the BEST channeling build IS ON THE SAME weapon that has the best non channeling build.

 

 

EDIT: I just can't find sense in your logic.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Sirabot

[DoomsDayDan]

I miss the Arsenal UI showing channeling damage

[Wallace24]

on the contrary, I think channeling-specific weapons are needed to add diversity to the weapon pool. it would be a great way to make channeling more popular (I really don't use it much. the new mods sound cool and all, but I'm fine without channeling). it would be similar to the soma, I feel, where it's normal stats are abysmal, but its crit stats make it great. same principle could be applied to channeling

 

we have crit and status weapons already, and then some that are just good damage without crits and status. but with melee, there's a whole other aspect that can be explored: channeling. I think that if DE didn't make any melee weapons that had naturally boosted channeling stats, they would be doing themselves a disservice now that melee 2.0 is in place and all

 

of course, we would need an arsenal UI update that showed stats while channeling for melee weapons. if that had been there from the beginning, we wouldn't have to guess at what channeling actually does to boost your damage. and people wouldn't be confused when quickening and true punishment don't affect the arsenal stat screen

 

I actually made a post about it a week or so ago. that no one paid any mind to, of course, but that's just how it is

[shut]

I agree entirely with OP.

 

Giving separate channeling multipliers doesn't help with variety in the same way that giving weapons naturally high critical values doesn't help with variety. It only forces the user to stick with one specific build to max out their damage, with every other build (e.g. a non-crit build for Synapse) being completely laughable.

 

With the current +50% channeling system, players are able to choose whether they want to build for channeling for maximum possible damage, or build for regular damage for a much higher minimum but lower maximum damage. Several mods aside, the current channeling system (and the way that it's calculated) is quite well thought-out.

[Sirabot]

I agree entirely with OP.

 

Giving separate channeling multipliers doesn't help with variety in the same way that giving weapons naturally high critical values doesn't help with variety. It only forces the user to stick with one specific build to max out their damage, with every other build (e.g. a non-crit build for Synapse) being completely laughable.

 

With the current +50% channeling system, players are able to choose whether they want to build for channeling for maximum possible damage, or build for regular damage for a much higher minimum but lower maximum damage. Several mods aside, the current channeling system (and the way that it's calculated) is quite well thought-out.

except the best channeling build would be on the same weapon that had the best non channeling build because it would still be on the SAME weapon.

[Tarille]

Diversifying the channeling percentages would be a way to bring those heavy weapons that had low base stats and high charge damage back into the usable/good tier of melee weapons.

 

It would be unique way of using the weapons (Much like Charge was before - Most faster weapons had pretty lousy charge damage and did better with spam attacks) without needing to buff their base stats to potentially god tier levels.

 

The downside would be that it would shoehorn those weapons into channeling builds, which is not a fun aspect of weapon building - The fact that certain weapons have specific builds to make them good (Such as crit weapons mostly requiring a crit build)

 

That said, with current iteration of channeling mods - They are almost literally useless, with elemental mods outclassing them on damage for the most part (Killing Blow - The highest damage increase channeling mod - does less than an elemental mod. It will very slightly outperform a 3rd elemental mod but not to a meaningful degree)

 

Having different channeling values and as such higher channeling values on some weapons (Perhaps other channel based stat differences similar to old Charge based stat differences (E.g. Galatine's old 50% crit chance when Charging compared to 10% normal)) would help make channeling mods more worthwhile without needing to buff them to the point where they become THE build for maximising damage.

 

But yeah... There's several ways to balance out those now lackluster weapons and the lackluster channel mods:

- Give weapons unique base channeling modifiers making the mods more worthwhile and competitive with rainbow builds

 

- Buff base stats of underwhelming weapons and tweak the mods to be more on par with rainbow builds

 

- Return Charge stats to underwhelming weapons and have ways to utilize it via the combo system (Such as having combo finishers that utilize "Charge" damage of a weapon) and tweak the mods to be more on par with rainbow builds

 

- Leave them how they are but introduce OP Combo's that help them become on par with other weapons (Downside are the non-underwhelming weapons that share stances - Like Scindo sharing Galatine's stances) and tweak the mods to be more on par with rainbow builds

[shut]

except the best channeling build would be on the same weapon that had the best non channeling build because it would still be on the SAME weapon.

 

And you get to choose between those builds, with both being perfectly valid depending on your playstyle. That's what variety is.

 

Giving weapons different multipliers, as I said, forces one build down your throat in the same way that "crit weapons" are useless without crit builds.

Edited May 1, 2014 by SortaRandom

[Mehbah]

Balancing weapons around this would only work if you have your melee weapon equipped, since you can't channel with quick melee.

 

This, exactly, is the problem. Especially since they turned old weapons into channeling-focused weapons. Simply put, channeling is bad. You can't use it with quick attacks, and holding your melee weapon is terrible. The game isn't designed for melee only, as is evident by how many elements there are that just don't work with pure melee. Doors that drain your energy unless you shoot a specific spot, flying drones and bosses, arc traps, toxic and disruptor ancients, enemy leaders - and a bunch of other stuff I can't think of at the moment. The game isn't built for melee combat, period. It's built for gun and melee combat, which is why the idea to make it cumbersome to use your guns is terrible. For example: say you're killing infested with melee. You see an ancient disrupter or toxic running towards you. If this was melee 1.0, you could shoot it pretty much right away. Problem solved, melee and guns work in harmony. Now with melee 2.0, you have to waste a second or two switching to your gun (and if you weren't holding the gun you want when you switched to melee before, or you're going to have to switch weapons twice) before you can shoot. It's clumsy and not at all suited to how fast-paced the rest of the game is.

 

Anyway, back to channeling. If they want to add weapons that are supposed to only shine when used with channeling, I don't have a problem with that. Problem is, they turned weapons that weren't channeling weapons into channeling weapons. Case in point, Galatine. The coolest melee weapon in the game is now completely useless, unless you use channeling. If you happened to like Galatine before, this sucks. Hard. I wasn't using Galatine because I wanted to make myself less useful by locking away my guns or wasting energy. The reason I used a catalyst on Galatine is that I liked Galatine being Galatine. Then they changed Galatine into not Galatine and that catalyst, as well as my enjoyment of the weapon, were thrown away.

 

It's like crafting and upgrading a shotgun because you want a shotgun, only for the devs to turn it into a sniper rifle.

[Vaskadar]

Adding a fluid transition to wielded/equipped melee after X amount of strikes would be ideal, honestly. Fluidity should be a focus in coming updates, making wallrunning smooth (and less grabby) like (as much as I hate to admit it, the blockbuster hit has pretty fluid wallrunning transitions and parkour) Titanfall, that would be awesome.

[neKroMancer]

I don't see the point of not having different channeling multiplier since it's similar to different charge damage in melee 1.0. It will turn melee into three categories: fast, non-channeling weapon, channeling-based weapon, and flexible mixture type.

 

Turning all weapon into fixed and same channeling multiplier will probably kill some weapons that rely on this mechanic especially low damage, high channeling weapon. Their channeling multiplier will be lessen and decease performance.

 

However, the issue of melee 2.0 is the fact that we don't have a quick shot function to make small burst of range attack with secondary weapon while playing in melee mode. Adding that will make the game more fluid.