What Melee Needs Is Balance.

[Nxai]

Melee needs to be balanced. However, I am not talking about balanced damage wise, that's already coming, and aside from heavy weapons not nearly as bad as it could be. Melee needs to be balanced content wise. Currently everything is out of wack as far as the actual weapon choices and useability go.

 

The nikana grip has three entire stance mods with complete combos, but only two(one) weapon(s), the nikana, and the Dragon nikana (AKA, Nikana +1) while most grips are lucky if they have two stances with two combos each.

 

There are only three duel daggers and only two obtainable in the game. Fang, and fang prime.

 

"Machete" grip weapons don't make any sense and seem like it's just being used as a receptacle for any one handed single weapon that isn't a longsword or a dagger, it also has only one stance, and that stance isn't very fun. Machete desperately needs another stance mod or a tweak to it's animations because hammers and greatswords are more fluid.

 

Longswords are "horribly overpopulated with re-skins of the same weapon +1" Example, Skana>Cronus>Pangolin/ether>Jaw/heat>Dakra. It's a full heirarchy with occasional gimmicks, and two stances, or otherwise balanced out with content to get you through the whole game enjoying that weapon type if it happens to appeal to you, and half of them are even locked behind alerts giving them a rarity scale, something no other weapons types get to suffer (and I use suffer because the community seems to weep and rage at any weapon that they can't go directly to market and buy) except daggers, which brings us to-

 

There are only 5 daggers in the game, one was an event reward, three are alert only drops. The only dagger you can buy is the karyst which is arguably the strongest at 50 flat toxin damage. How many players know the dark,heat, and ceramic daggers even exist? If I had to guess the majority of the players that don't read the wiki or are completionists don't know, and frankly that'd be great if it were spread about evenly between grips, I'd love collecting those rare alert weapons more if there were enough. Until the recent addition of the karyst you couldn't get a non-alert dagger. Which with the recent speed changes so they weren't as bad to use would have been fine for a rare collectible and viable weapon type, until they put the hardest hitting with innate shield ignoring dagger in the standard shop.

 

Which also brings up, why is it that only daggers and longswords are alert weapons, I joined in U7, there has not been an alert weapon addition since then, the only gear added to alerts has been vauban. Why did DE seem like they were all behind giving alerts more content and then stop completely in favor of alert alternatives like invasions which while they make the universe seem more alive, give little to actual content gain other than a place to farm up faction resources like fieldron and two minibosses.

 

 Melee is set up perfectly for a content explosion, DE has the advantage of not only three established places to put normal weapons (Market, clantech, alerts) but has an ample amount of space with 18 entire grip types, but it's not happening. Of those 18 grip types only 4 have more than 3 individual weapons, not counting +1/-1 versions like primes or mk1's. What's worse, We already have more than half the amount in melee weapons as there are primary and secondary weapons combined.

 

TL:DR

 

Melee needs more varied weapon additions and more places to get them then just the market.

 

 

[Temperance000]

Mostly valid points.  This seems to be more a content issue than a balance issue, if I am reading your post correctly.  Basically, you are saying that we need more stances, more weapons, and maybe a few mechanical tweaks to bring weapon types like the machete and long sword up to par with dual swords and the Nikana?

[Aure7]

it also needs charge attacks in form of combos.

first swing of a combo could be "hold E" so we'd have the same old charge mechanic with channeling there as well. DE PLS

[Pandoran_Stallion]

it also needs charge attacks in form of combos.

first swing of a combo could be "hold E" so we'd have the same old charge mechanic with channeling there as well. DE PLS

Charge attacks could take a little longer to execute for a set amount of damage. Making this affected by the channeling multiplier (which should be more than 1.5x and should vary between weapons) would make it great.

[Nxai]

Mostly valid points.  This seems to be more a content issue than a balance issue, if I am reading your post correctly.  Basically, you are saying that we need more stances, more weapons, and maybe a few mechanical tweaks to bring weapon types like the machete and long sword up to par with dual swords and the Nikana?

Exactly, Melee itself is pretty well taken care of especially now that aerial attacks are a thing but the content available is wildly imbalanced.

[MechaTails]

What melee needs is more exploding chainsaws on a whip!

[Eyeless]

What melee really needs is a less artificial/restrictive 'combo' system. Right now all we have is E E E E E and that's not very fun or intuitive. All we can hope to do at best is mash it until we get locked into the correct sequence of 'on rails' animations we like by mashing E at the right moment. 

 

It doesn't help everything we do in the game really seems to lack any sort of impact, as enemies react as if they're being slapped by a wet noodle even as I cleave in with a Scindo Prime. 

 

I'd like to see more variation in how we go about executing our attacks. Continuously mashing E makes it feel lifeless once the initial dazzle wears off.