An Observation About The Role Of Heavy Melee Weapons...

[[DE]Momaw]

It came up in today's dev stream that melee weapons are in a bad place and need some adjustments...  The term "DPS" came up.

 

Rather than running around making everybody feel disappointed with incremental adjustments to numbers here and there, personally I think what is needed is a more systemic approach to what it means for a melee weapon to be a quick little dagger or short sword versus a two handed cleaver or maul.  Currently the strongest identifying mark for a melee weapon is deeps, and I think that's kind of sad.

 

Soooo...  Basically, weapons of a similar class should share gameplay features, and DPS is not at the head of the list for all of them.   In general, short and fast weapons should be your "DPS melee";  high attack speeds, good crit chance, good stunlock potential, easy parries, all aimed at getting into an enemy's personal space and shivving the crap out of them. They should also have things that they are bad at. Things that heavy weapons should have as their strengths.  Traits like good reach, inertia (resistance to interrupts while swinging), ability to knock enemies down, massive status procs, and being better at shielding the player while blocking.  They should still be good at killing things, and they do definitely need a huge buff in basic damage, but using a heavy melee weapon should open up new ways of fighting and should feel distinctly different than the frenzied DPS-based slicing of light weapons.  Using a Scindo should feel... thoughtful and deliberate and weighty, not only in how fast you (can't) mash the attack key, but in the kind of moves it can successfully accomplish.  While people with daggers and hatchets bounce from target to target and rely on raw shredding power to end enemies, a two handed axe should be about waiting until they're all withinin deathblossom range then executing a vicious cleave that bisects everybody.

[direcyphre]

The factor for all weapons is the amount of damage they do, so that part will never change. We do need a more noticeable difference in melee types however, making heavy just as viable as light, perhaps under different circumstances. What they all need are more special features, rather than a traditional move set or combos.

[LordMelvin]

I have a feeling that weapons will start getting channel traits based on their type. So heavy weapons will probably get better multipliers while dagger will probably have cheaper costs.

[CY13ERPUNK]

+1 OP

[LukeAura]

It's a pretty tricky subject within Warframe's context. 

It's generally the weapons that keep within a certain level of extermity of their stats that excel, while others that extend to extreme high and lows start to fall short. They need their strengths, but I think the key failure in a lot of weapons is actually that their weaknesses are too crippling, that no amount of buffing their strengths is going to make them satisfying. And with the Directional Attacks coming in I think Heavy Weapons are going to see a great improvement to their key weakness, a lack of mobility. Rarely outside of the infested will you actually get the 5 clustered grineer/Corpus units to sweep up in one massive swing, so being able to hit more targets isn't exactly all that valuable an asset to them. While lighter weapons should definitely be faster than heavy weapons, heavy weapons need not be so slow they'll never achieve value. 

[notionphil]

I agree with this thread very, very much.

[Sasquatchias]

I think one way to help differentiate the weapon types would be reducing the enemy stagger on Light/Medium weapons, and increasing it on Heavy weapons. 

[Sannidor]

Was there ever "bring back charge attacks" megathread?

 

Considering how many new players come they don't know what missed them anyway, so "bring back" would mean nothing to them.

 

"Old" charged moves were not perfect but made more sense than "combo multiplier" out of nowhere or guaranteed procs at the end of sequences, artificially prolonging use of combos but not making them more fun. I feared that "sword alone" mode will grant melee damage bonus or more than one sword would be equippable, but I did not expect something as lazy as channeling.

 

Now that the "give me the old I'm scared of changes" is not an issue, it's time to remind devs what brought new imbalances in place of the old ones.

 

ALL melee weapons would benefit from optional charge attacks.

 

These kinds of attacks should not cause ten times more damage than normal stabs & blows, but instead have unique properties.

 

"Charged" should be a stance/state in which you can still move to adjust your position, only having stamina slowly drain.

Throwing discs/boomerang have charge attack implemented, which was removed with M2.0, brought back and STILL is glitched when performed in melee stance. There is little time to adjust but at least it's there.

 

Therefore, if "power moves" exist at the end of combos why not put them at the start as an option? I often see a mob in front of me so I measure my distance and timing for something like hammer slam to hit, making a few useless swings. Needless to say, when things get rough, none goes for melee, but even then - air jump slam/jump kick, ground stab, slide spin - or stunlock with basic move, work better than ANY melee stance combo, multiplied, channeled, sparkly or not.

 

This is COUNTER INTUITIVE, good combo branches should give me options to choose variety in-between attacks not just redirecting.

 

Holding a button is easier than adjusting with "front" and "back" inputs we have to deal now.

 

Heavy weapons can be saved with ease if their combo branches would allow to charge at any point.

 

Wall attacks have been fixed to some point. New air moves look ok. except for channeling extensions.

Why not replace crouch+attack awkward animations with high arc/launching attacks? Or anything useful?

 

Melee in Warframe defies logic on many levels - why would ANY enemy, disregarding it's level, survive a stealth attack? Or a post-parry finisher?

 

"We will never satisfy everybody" is a poor excuse for justifying wrong direction that Melee 2.0 is heading.

 

Filling the gaps in a less awkward way possible can result in more imbalances and further denial.

 

For example, flashy channeling is horrible but it's here to stay but proper charge animations will never return, right?  ;__;

[Lukap99]

Was there ever "bring back charge attacks" megathread?

 

Considering how many new players come they don't know what missed them anyway, so "bring back" would mean nothing to them.

 

"Old" charged moves were not perfect but made more sense than "combo multiplier" out of nowhere or guaranteed procs at the end of sequences, artificially prolonging use of combos but not making them more fun. I feared that "sword alone" mode will grant melee damage bonus or more than one sword would be equippable, but I did not expect something as lazy as channeling.

 

Now that the "give me the old I'm scared of changes" is not an issue, it's time to remind devs what brought new imbalances in place of the old ones.

 

ALL melee weapons would benefit from optional charge attacks.

 

These kinds of attacks should not cause ten times more damage than normal stabs & blows, but instead have unique properties.

 

"Charged" should be a stance/state in which you can still move to adjust your position, only having stamina slowly drain.

Throwing discs/boomerang have charge attack implemented, which was removed with M2.0, brought back and STILL is glitched when performed in melee stance. There is little time to adjust but at least it's there.

 

Therefore, if "power moves" exist at the end of combos why not put them at the start as an option? I often see a mob in front of me so I measure my distance and timing for something like hammer slam to hit, making a few useless swings. Needless to say, when things get rough, none goes for melee, but even then - air jump slam/jump kick, ground stab, slide spin - or stunlock with basic move, work better than ANY melee stance combo, multiplied, channeled, sparkly or not.

 

This is COUNTER INTUITIVE, good combo branches should give me options to choose variety in-between attacks not just redirecting.

 

Holding a button is easier than adjusting with "front" and "back" inputs we have to deal now.

 

Heavy weapons can be saved with ease if their combo branches would allow to charge at any point.

 

Wall attacks have been fixed to some point. New air moves look ok. except for channeling extensions.

Why not replace crouch+attack awkward animations with high arc/launching attacks? Or anything useful?

 

Melee in Warframe defies logic on many levels - why would ANY enemy, disregarding it's level, survive a stealth attack? Or a post-parry finisher?

 

"We will never satisfy everybody" is a poor excuse for justifying wrong direction that Melee 2.0 is heading.

 

Filling the gaps in a less awkward way possible can result in more imbalances and further denial.

 

For example, flashy channeling is horrible but it's here to stay but proper charge animations will never return, right?  ;__;

 

I agree with this post so much it's not even funny.

Sometime during U13, while I was still a meme-sprouting little... you know what I mean. I stated "DE can't into proper melee".

It seems that this still applies. I wish it didn't, but reality is against me on this one.

 

If I remember correctly melee was going to use both the left and right button in combination with charge attacks. Whatever happened to that?

That had a lot more potential than the current stance mods. And it seemed to fit with the "DMC inspired" action DE was advertising.

In the end the "DMC inspired" action we got was just some anime-ish combos. It's disappointing.

Not to say that melee 2.0 is bad, but I'd say it's barely 1/4 of awesome it could have been.

[Davoodoo]

Its pretty simple.

 

Daggers- fast with low dmg

swords etc. - average in speed and dmg

heavy melee - high dmg low speed.

 

Except that we have rather fast dragon nikana with really high dmg and dakra which is also pretty high in dmg without sacrificing any speed, ichors swing pretty heavily due to crit and swing way too fast.

 

So yeah for the lack of speed heavy melee should actually have higher dmg, but as always theres a problem.

 

Since we can oneshot enemies with really any weapon ppl will gonna choose faster ones anyway so sure you can balance dps but without reducing power curve it wont make heavy weapons any more viable.

[Batsdrob]

I agree OP.

 

It kind of bothers me that all melee weapons seem to have the same base channeling multiplier of 1.5. I think the heavy class should have a higher base multiplier, because right now, Dragon can do Scindo P's job and do it much faster.