Ideas How To Buff Glaive Weapons And Ideas For Melee Weapons That Could Be Used In Similar Fashion.

[Umaryu]

Hello everyone!

I would like to present my ideas that could make throwing melee weapons like Glaive and Kestrel much more enjoyable and useful than they are now. I will use Glaive Prime as example how small changes could buff this type of weapons,and create possibilities for new interesting ones without making then unreasonably strong.

Lets start with looking at statistics of Glaive Prime.
 

When Thrown:

Projectile Speed- 40.0 m/s

Range Limit -30.0 m

 

Normal Attacks:

Physical Damage- 35.1

Impact- 5.3

Puncture- 5.3

Slash w Slash- 24.5

Crit Chance- 5.0%

Crit Damage- 150.0%

Attack Rate 1.2 atks/sec

Status Chance- 10.0%

Stamina- 7.5

 

Charge Attacks:

Charge Time .7 sec/charge

 

Jump Attacks:

Physical Damage- 105

 

Slam Attacks:

Physical Damage- 70

 

Slide Attacks:

Physical Damage- 175

Stagger- Yes

 

Damage is not so impressive, it has low chance to critically strike and only 10% chance for status. It may seem reasonable because it can be thrown to hit enemies at distance  , but... Weapons like Soma or Paris Prime can strike critically at much higher distances without leaving you defencless at melee range with only difference being that Glaive bouncess of the walls and enemies and can detonated.

 

I will start with presenting changes that i think should be applied to Glaives and Kestrel (not every thrown melee weapon wich i will explain later with example of new weapon of that type).

 

1. Mod Fury applying to Charge Time and Projectile Speed, but only while returning.

Idea behind this change is rather simple, being able to charge it faster would not only let you throw your Glaive faster but it would also allow you to throw it more times in the same period of time compared to what we can do now, wich is basically more Attack Speed. It would also make fighting with Glaive in melee range more viable because of DPS increase. 

2. Mod Reach applying to Pojectile Size and Explosion Radius.

This is second change that would buff bot throwing and melee potential of weapon. In melee range Glaive has really low range making it really hard to hit some enemies like Crawlers or Feral Kubrows, with that change picking this mod up would be reasonable and actualy worth it unlike it is now.

 

3. Ability to Detonate your Glaive after any bounce.

 

With this change you wouldn't have to waste mod slot for Quick Bounce allowing you to get your Glaive faster if you get swarmed by enemies to defend yourself in melee range, it would also open up use of mod Rebound (seriously, thats one of most useless mods at the moment) making long bouncing builds viable and safer.

4. Boost either Critical Strike Chance and Critical DMG or Status Chance or both minimally.

 

These buffs would make Glaive viable for long endgame (T3,T4 survival/defence missions), and would make using FORMA a need to unleash full potetntial of the weapon.

As example for this change i will use Paris Prime (i will ignore reasoning main weapon>melee weapon in this case). You can get it to above 100% crit chance and it has 20% status chance while operating at higher distances. Glaive looks like weapon that should inflict grevious wounds, but you can't really feel that without striking critically or status effects if youre using elemental build.

 

Please remeber that im using Glaive Prime as example.

Option A
Boost Critical Chance to 15 - 30 % (from 5%)
Boost Critical DMG to 200 - 225 % (from 150%)

Status Chance stays at 10%

This change would not only allow for more diverse builds (at the moment elemental build is the only way for Glaives) but also would boost melee of these weapons. This option would allow Glaives to become alternative for Bows.

Option B

Boost Status Chance to 25-40 % (from 10%)

Critical Chance stays at 5%

Critical DMG stays at 150%

 

With this change elemental builds wich are only reasonable option at the moment would allow weapon to be alternative to stronger melee weapons that cannot be thrown but have higher Status and Crit Chance and some of main weapons that operate at bigger distances. It would open up amazing possibilites, example:

One of your teammates got swarmed in small room and is bleeding out, with build based on mod Rebound and elements like ice or explosion you could throw your Glaive to bounce off many times, meanwhile freezing or knocking down opponets while you could help your teammate get up.

Option C
Boost Critical chance to 10-20% (from 5%)
Boost Critical DMG to 175-215% (from 150%)
Boost Status Chance to 15-20 % (from 10%)

 

This option would allow both Critical Strike builds and Elemental build to become viable on Glaive Prime allowing for crazy diversed builds and making weapon much more popular, for more reasons look at Options A and B.

 

Numbers are something that could be discussed and changed if these buffs would make it, these are numbers i figured out and may be too high or too small (would like opinion on that)


Now let me present ideas of new weapons that could be used both in melee range and at distance like Glaives. I won't provide any numbers mostly because i have no idea what could they be like.

Idea Number 1 Spear/Javelin

 

Refference picture:

Polearm type weapon like, for example Orthos, that could be charged up and thrown, it would pin enemies to walls. It would have to be shorther with smaller range in melee and hight puncture damage. It would either have to be ammo based (wich would be one of a kind idea) or have some kind of chain/rope that would be attached to your right arm (one you would use to throw it) and that would be pulled after pinning enemy to wall (it would have to extend at lets say 30 M range, if enemy impaled on javelin wouldn't hit wall at range of 30M rope would be pulled to return your javelin without pinning enemy to wall).

Idea number 2 "Cannon" Axe
 

Refference picture:

 

Axe type weapon that could shoot it's head for around 10 meters after being charged up, when reaching 10 meters it would would be pulled back by chain so you could use it like normal axe again. Would do heavy slash and/or impact damage.

 

Im looking forward to your opinions and i hope this wall of text was not exhausting to read because of my poor english. Cheers :)

Edited July 23, 2014 by smajdor