Melee Type Enemy Feedback

[Innocent_Flower]

I think butchers got an awesome increase in damage that makes them extremely dangerous to players using text chat. 

 

But seriously: melee enemies in warframe... suck, and it feels like many of them are redundant. There's nothing to set the powerfist apart from the butcher. At most we get the scorpion. They're all weak and only capable of taking down the most stationary of players. 

 

we're ignoring the infested enemies for the sake of the argument. 

 

Anyhow. I'd like to see more variety in melee enemies. Is that much to ask?

Grineer

- Make the powerfist different by giving him the ability to leap slam. Or perhaps charge up a ground slam. Maybe even a short dash. 

 

-Add a heavy enemy. This one could be really easy. Get a bombard. Take away his gun. Take away his stomp. give him a hammer. Preferably give him a "rage" ability that increases his speed. Enemies like this are typically huge fun to take on in games. They can break enemy ranks and change up the way the game is played. 

 

- An enemy with a jetpack. We have sprag. Why not have a more common enemy who can be so mobile as to appear where ground oponents wont. Not running straight for the nearest player, but flying in behind them, trying to deliver an explosive killing blow. An enemy that can surprise you with speed or mobility, that requires skill to anticipate. 

 

Corpus

Invisible prod crewmen. I can't imagine corpus trying anything bombastic like the grineer (other than warframe-like assassins), so wouldn't they go more subtle? They see a rival member of the board, they send in invisible guys to knock out the competition discretely. 

 

Some nice butcher/prodman changes might too be interesting. Be it an ability to sidestep whilst running towards you, or even parkour. 

Edited January 5, 2015 by Innocent_Flower

[AlphaSierraMike]

The sarcastic title is not helpful at all when you're trying to give a convincing argument about this subject.

 

It's not something that needs to be done right now, heavy melee is a good idea, but the invisible prod sound rather irritating, like the current teleporting butchers of Grineer

[TheErebus.]

Powerfists have such a long windup till they attack, that balances out their attack power. 

[Un1337ninj4]

Most intriguing, especially seeing as how we have Anyo.

[fatpig84]

Check them out after Tyl Regor has finished lifting his weights.

[Caobie]

 

- An enemy with a jetpack. We have sprag. Why not have a more common enemy who can be so mobile as to appear where ground oponents wont. Not running straight for the nearest player, but flying in behind them, trying to deliver an explosive killing blow. An enemy that can surprise you with speed or mobility, that requires skill to anticipate. 

 

 

we already have this in the form of hellions.....theyre not a melee enemy sure but jetpack grineer are already a thing and they do use explosives on you once they hover in the air with their jetpack and they use the jetpack to get plenty of mobility on you

Edited January 5, 2015 by Caobie

[Innocent_Flower]

we already have this in the form of hellions.....theyre not a melee enemy sure but jetpack grineer are already a thing and they do use explosives on you once they hover in the air with their jetpack and they use the jetpack to get plenty of mobility on you

They play quite defensively though. The jetpack feature is something they use to avoid fire, not get in close. 

[StinkyPygmy]

I agree.

Powerfists shouldn't be too fast due to their insane dmg but they definitely need some way of closing the distance and a slightly faster attack speed.

They are also due for a redesign in terms of looks. 

Everything about powerfists suggests they should be larger, slightly tankier, heaviliy augmented grineer with much larger furax.

 

I always saw prod crewman as the corpus's main security force along with moa's and not so much as hitmen, I like the idea of temp invis though. They have stun batons which are pretty useless because they rarely proc if they even hit you and electric procs do nothing to us. IMO prod crewman should at least have a chance to stun the player. 

Maybe redesign flameblades, take away their teleport and give it to prods? Seems like more of a corpus thing anyway.

 

I think a problem with melee enemies in general is that most of them are so weak compared to their ranged buddies. Which makes no sense because most of them are pretty slow, have little mobility and do nothing but tickle you. Scorpions are one exception because they are slightly tougher and have a good way of closing the distance.

They need a balancing pass and mechanics redesign badly because they have practically nothing going for them.

We should have some low level melee fodder enemies, but not all of them should be that weak.

Stuff like jet packs, big hammers and shiz for elite melee troops (why no melee oriented heavies?), special attacks like dashes and ground slams (not more knockdowns) etc. 

 

Although all that being said, I was killed by a powerfist once. He just happened to have a perfectly timed swing charged up in a crowd of grineer and hit me as my shields were low.

 

+10000000000 OP. 

This has been bothering me for a long time.

 

Edit: added a bunch of stuff.

Edited January 5, 2015 by StinkyPygmy

[(PSN)VariantX7]

I agree.

Powerfists shouldn't be too fast due to their insane dmg but they definitely need some way of closing the distance and a slightly faster attack speed.

They are also due for a redesign in terms of looks. 

Everything about powerfists suggests they should be larger, slightly tankier, heaviliy augmented grineer with much larger furax.

 

I always saw prod crewman as the corpus's main security force along with moa's and not so much as hitmen, I like the idea of temp invis though. They have stun batons which are pretty useless because they rarely proc if they even hit you and electric procs do nothing to us. IMO prod crewman should at least have a chance to stun the player. 

Maybe redesign flameblades, take away their teleport and give it to prods? Seems like more of a corpus thing anyway.

 

I think a problem with melee enemies in general is that most of them are so weak compared to their ranged buddies. Which makes no sense because most of them are pretty slow, have little mobility and do nothing but tickle you. Scorpions are one exception because they are slightly tougher and have a good way of closing the distance.

They need a balancing pass and mechanics redesign badly because they have practically nothing going for them.

We should have some low level melee fodder enemies, but not all of them should be that weak.

Stuff like jet packs, big hammers and shiz for elite melee troops (why no melee oriented heavies?), special attacks like dashes and ground slams (not more knockdowns) etc. 

 

Although all that being said, I was killed by a powerfist once. He just happened to have a perfectly timed swing charged up in a crowd of grineer and hit me as my shields were low.

 

+10000000000 OP. 

This has been bothering me for a long time.

 

Edit: added a bunch of stuff.

 

 

Agreed on the asthetics and behavior of the power fist. I was thinking along the lines of bumping it up to a heavy grineer unit, and giving it a an exo skeleton with giant pair of furax. This unit would have the leap slam as you and others have described, but the unit would need to be tough to kill as well due to its relative slowness compared to others. This unit could raise its highly armored arms in a "peek-a-boo" stance to close the distance against a target that's shooting at them from distance, so you'd have to shoot its legs to get it to drop its guard to expose the head or,  if you're a using a melee weapon, just bait out one of his attacks and hit it from behind during its recovery phase. Since the arms are armored, you'd need to attack this unit from either directly in front, or behind so it would change up the flow of the battle a little like the shield lancer does.

Edited January 5, 2015 by (PS4)VariantX7

[Twilight053]

Nerf isn't the right word.

 

They aren't actually OP, it's more of a bug--their charged deals way less damage than their quick. DE probably got it mixed up.

[StinkyPygmy]

Agreed on the asthetics and behavior of the power fist. I was thinking along the lines of bumping it up to a heavy grineer unit, and giving it a an exo skeleton with giant pair of furax. This unit would have the leap slam as you and others have described, but the unit would need to be tough to kill as well due to its relative slowness compared to others. This unit could raise its highly armored arms in a "peek-a-boo" stance to close the distance against a target that's shooting at them from distance, so you'd have to shoot its legs to get it to drop its guard to expose the head or,  if you're a using a melee weapon, just bait out one of his attacks and hit it from behind during its recovery phase. Since the arms are armored, you'd need to attack this unit from either directly in front, or behind so it would change up the flow of the battle a little like the shield lancer does.

I fully agree, except shield lancers are pointless because "lol punchthrough". They're less effective at their actual defensive roll and better for knockdowns :/.

IMO punchthrough mechanics need some adjustments or at the very least a shield lancers shield should be immune.

But I digress.

 

I know its not going to be a super popular opinion but I think some of the rarer, yet tougher enemies should be less bullet sponges and have similar mechanics you described when talking about powerfists. Stuff like massive dmg reduction on armored areas (similar to hunters from Halo) with soft spots, extreme mobility similar to hyena's (after all the grinieer do have powerful body augments) and minor abilities like deployable shields etc. 

Obviously stuff like this will only be relevant to elite/special units and not all the cannon fodder but I think its something WF has needed for a long time in order to keep gameplay more interesting, add difficulty that DOESN'T revolve around cheap mechanics, more knockdowns and broken enemies scaling.

 

I think this applies to more then just melee units but they are definitely the ones that need an overhaul the most.