Buffs For Heavy Melee Weapons

[IANOBW]

With the advent of melee 2.0, heavy melee weapons took a lot of punishment with the loss of heavy attacks, whilst retaining their slow attack speed and moderate overall attack damage. Because of this, weapons like the galatine - which was the king of melee weapons before melee 2.0 - are just not used anymore. No suprise, they are terrible at this point in time.

 

So, could we expect them to get some better stats in the near future? Clearly, what they need is the heavy hitting power they used to have, so a damage buff would be in order as oppose to say attack speed or stamina usage. With U14 coming within the next 2 months, could we see a return of these weapons into high tier games? I'd love to be able to bring my fragor ("what is a fragor?", you may be asking) into a t3/4 and be able to as much damage as my nikana. After all, it is a huge hammer, it should be able to do so.

 

Thanks

[(PSN)Abyss_666]

something that came to my mind is remove fixed canneling and make it weapon dependent. Fast weapons have a lower damage boost but cheaper channeling costs maybe keep the +50% and 5 energy per swing for swords like the dakra and dragon nikana, +30 or 40% and 2 energy per swing for fang prime and dual ichor and then for weapons like the fragor, scindo or gram make it +100% damage and 10 energy per swing and further boosted by channeling damage and efficiency mods. The galatine could get its 25% crit chance on channeling

[MDRLOz]

Heavy melee weapons do seem to be a bit lacking of late. 

 

However Scott said he was focusing on update 14 work and wont be looking into frame/weapon balance much till that was out. 

Edited June 24, 2014 by MDRLOz

[AlchemistMute]

Charge attacks should be brought back as quick, easily executed combos that come with guaranteed procs or extra channeling damage.

[Casardis]

Yeah I've made a post about it only shortly after U13 to talk about that. The way it's currently made, I think, has heavy weapon not being compensated for their slow speed, moderate range (they don't have such good range to be honest, unless you're using Galatine), and their slow-build up combos (huge stamina cost too).

 

They don't even hit harder than many fast weapons either, especially when you don't have a stance (stance shouldn't act as bandaids either), and those fast weapons, such as Dragon Nikana, Dakra Prime and some dual swords, don't seem to get much disadvantage for the huge power they can wield. Wielding heavy weapons don't feel like you're actually doing so; instead it's almost like just a slower version of a normal sword. Charge attacks didn't have to be removed, and like AlchemistMute said, it could bein the form of "charge" combos as well. They did it in Okami with the greatsword and it was simple; they made the "hold" mechanics actually feel like you're charging an attack, not just an arbitrary button assignment for the sake of executing a combo:

E (hold) --> E (hold) --> E (hold) --> E (hold)

 

If not about base damage, they could have been balanced by making their melee channeling more powerful and unique. However, it doesn't help that, to be honest, the channeling system lacks depth in more than one area. For one thing, things are put into mods instead of exploring innate abilities for weapons, to create more diversity even among similar ones. Looking back at archived topics and some other suggestions people made, including myself, I feel the current channeling system is just a shallower version of The Spirit of the Prime.

Edited June 24, 2014 by Casardis

[BiancaRoughfin]

Heavy weapons look more like feather knifes on Melee 2.0 , im no Galatine Fan but yeah, i used to see 9 out of 10 players with it before the melee update. I personaly like more the Gram but i see no reason to use it now since it does no more damage then a thrown card board box.

I cant wait to see a Gram Prime come out with status that pare up at least with the Dragon Nikanas.

[Kestral9999]

I still don't fully understand why they can't incorporate charged attacks in with melee 2.0 if you hold down your attack buttoh while in "melee mode" what happens? You just perform a single regular attack. If you hold down your quick melee button what happens? Another single regular attack. Why not toss charged attacks back in the mix? There doesn't seem to be any other command overriding it or preventing it.

[IANOBW]

I still don't fully understand why they can't incorporate charged attacks in with melee 2.0 if you hold down your attack buttoh while in "melee mode" what happens? You just perform a single regular attack. If you hold down your quick melee button what happens? Another single regular attack. Why not toss charged attacks back in the mix? There doesn't seem to be any other command overriding it or preventing it.

 

This is all kinds of correct. They did so with thrown melee and that seems to have no problems, so why not with any other melee? It just makes melee 2.0 look like a cheap replacement, which it shouldn't have been, its should have been an addition to make melee more viable.

[Kestral9999]

You know? You have a good point, I just remembered that my glaive prime can still be thrown, or rather I remember that it was thrown via power attack. There truly is no sense in removing power attacks at this point especially if one weapon type still has them. I could understand that it might mess up combos given by stance mods if you could just perform a power attack in the middle of them, but if you made it the same as thown weapons where you can power attack by holding the melee button on your first strike it would actually give validation for weapons like galatine again.

 

DE, get on this!

Edited June 25, 2014 by Kestral9999

[Archistopheles]

Give them the ability to copter, and I'll go back to using my Scindo 24/7.

[Cyborger1]

The Galatine is still a very good weapon when used with Cleaving Whirlwind. The spinning attacks from that combo deal triple damage, can hit targets twice and has a pretty large AoE. Do not underestimate that.

[Kestral9999]

The Galatine is still a very good weapon when used with Cleaving Whirlwind. The spinning attacks from that combo deal triple damage, can hit targets twice and has a pretty large AoE. Do not underestimate that.

That's all well and good, and trust me I realize how powerful CW can be, however when you are in the heat of battle and getting shot at from all sides the last thing you want to be taking into account is exactly when to pause to pull off a combo. The ability to execute a simple power attack without any convoluted (and rather poorly implemented) combo shouldn't be underestimated or overlooked either. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I love melee 2.0 and I like the addition of the stance mods, but the fact that they took one of the most useful features of melee to implement it kinda rubs me the wrong way and I can't personally see the logic in it. (Read my previous posts for further clarification.)