No Point To Melee Now

[Sealgaire]

Okay, so this will be my first "ANGRY FORUM POST", but I'll try to keep the vitriol to a minimum.

A couple of days ago I defended melee against someone who was claiming there was no point to using it over guns. Now I couldn't agree more with him. As it was I had to specialize my Excalibur to an absurd degree to even bring my damage potential close to that of guns, and to be honest it was still much easier for him to just shoot dudes. I had something like +420-495% melee damage from mods (depending on whether I needed +power damage for high level missions) that combined it with shields and recharge bonuses. It took more time than I'd like to admit to get these mods just to make him viable as a dedicated melee artist, and was my primary focus when playing this game.

I just ran Hades with him and discovered it took at least 6 slashes to kill a crewman and more to kill a moa. I got bored after a while of this and started one shotting everything in the mission with my Lex. I can't imagine I'd get any kills playing with someone who was using a Gorgon or HEK. After, I looked at my mods and discovered all the +melee damage bonuses had been removed or changed to weak armor mods. If you intended melee weapons to be used just to save ammo when killing low level infected, well, that's your prerogative, but it undermines an entire class of weapons and build styles from the game and makes it much less interesting for people like me.

It's a pretty universal concept in games that allow both melee and rangeed combat that melee does more damage. This is for obvious reasons, melee users have to close distance to be effective and be within range of more enemies at a time. It should be the style of high risk, high reward gameplay that I love.

Before the most recent patch that buffed shields again and lowered enemy damage across the board (as I'm assuming the case is considering how easy the game is again), this build was a complete blast to play on hard missions. I actually had to use the sliding and dodging mechanics to stay alive and in general stay hyper mobile and block sight lines while closing. It was frantic and exhilarating and by far the most fun I've had with the game. He could one shot everything but the boss, but he had to as staying under fire for even a couple seconds would have killed him. This was the perfect level of difficulty for me and was hugely rewarding. Enemies did alot of damage but could (and had to be) be killed quickly, making you actually feel like a badass space ninja. Now I can just either lazily run around the level whacking on guys until they fall over then moving to the next or mow them down with a gun.

So I guess I should offer up some suggestions instead of just *@##$ing, huh? First off, allow people to actually specialize in different combat styles again. The actual differences between frames are already pretty thin, and removing build variety just makes my frame even more generic compared to someone elses. Second, please make melee a viable alternative to gunplay. I'm sure you guys are smarter about game balance than me, so I won't offer up specific figures, but melee needs to do more damage than ranged if anyone is going to get any use out of it. Third, and this is more of a general difficulty suggestion; change the balance so enemies have less health but do more damage. Bullet sponge enemies are never entertaining to fight, because it also usually means they can't do much damage to you in return. It promotes slow, tedious gameplay that should be anethema to a game like this.

I'm still kind of amazed you nerfed melee damage before multishot. When are you getting around to that?

[Aggh]

Hoping this was unintentional, melee bonuses just straight up disappeared from the mods.

Used to be a 40% melee, 10% sprint speed

Used to be a 70% melee

[Enjio]

I was absolutely &!$$ed off when I saw my melee on warframe mods blank. But it was mentioned in the Update 5.4 post and DESteve said they're looking into it or something. So hold onto them hoping they fix it sooner than later.

https://forums.warfr...__80#entry28717

Check Page 4

Edited January 15, 2013 by Enjio

[MobileSuit]

It seems charge damage is the only option now. Charged attacks are unaffected by +melee damage mods so i still doing 11k crits with pretty S#&$ty mods with my furax.

[oGsShadow]

Can't say I feel the same. 400% melee damage? That's insane man, you must have gotten really lucky/farmed a shlt ton for those mods but thinking about the math figure ~ 30 damage base+maybe ~10 after all damage upgrades, lets say 40 flat when maxed. 40*4 =160 damage per hit. If you're not ignoring armor via mods or the Furax, this gets reduced by a good chunk but I'll have to find the exact amount. Lets be generous and say you are only being reduced by 25% on amored targets so 160*.75=120 per hit. 4-6 hits is 5-700 damage to kill which is inline with my Furax currently 2/3 heavy hitting since im diong upwards of 200 damage per hit so thats 400-600 damage. It is less effective than using a gun but its still enjoyable and with the right mods it will be more effective. Min maxing is really hard since the damage doesn't update in arsenal and we don't have game data laying around to pick through for juicy numbers(at least that im aware of). I lost track of what I was saying... Idk I guess I just find a happy balance. I shoot some baddies at range then go melee if theres 2-4 in close proximity.

[Sealgaire]

Can't say I feel the same. 400% melee damage? That's insane man, you must have gotten really lucky/farmed a shlt ton for those mods but thinking about the math figure ~ 30 damage base+maybe ~10 after all damage upgrades, lets say 40 flat when maxed. 40*4 =160 damage per hit. If you're not ignoring armor via mods or the Furax, this gets reduced by a good chunk but I'll have to find the exact amount. Lets be generous and say you are only being reduced by 25% on amored targets so 160*.75=120 per hit. 4-6 hits is 5-700 damage to kill which is inline with my Furax currently 2/3 heavy hitting since im diong upwards of 200 damage per hit so thats 400-600 damage. It is less effective than using a gun but its still enjoyable and with the right mods it will be more effective. Min maxing is really hard since the damage doesn't update in arsenal and we don't have game data laying around to pick through for juicy numbers(at least that im aware of). I lost track of what I was saying... Idk I guess I just find a happy balance. I shoot some baddies at range then go melee if theres 2-4 in close proximity.

Yup, he was insanely specialized for melee as I already stated, and it was still faster and easier to kill enemies with guns. Why do you switch to melee when enemies get close? Your gun will kill them much more quickly, and theres no penalty to using guns close range.

[Aggh]

https://forums.warfr...__60#entry28038

Yup, he was insanely specialized for melee as I already stated, and it was still faster and easier to kill enemies with guns. Why do you switch to melee when enemies get close? Your gun will kill them much more quickly, and theres no penalty to using guns close range.

For infected, it cancels the explosion on the sucide mobs. Grineer Melee units also tend to be a quick one hit too and it conserves ammo.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Aggh

[ULessa]

Yup, he was insanely specialized for melee as I already stated, and it was still faster and easier to kill enemies with guns. Why do you switch to melee when enemies get close? Your gun will kill them much more quickly, and theres no penalty to using guns close range.

Because some people like the satisfaction of tearing things apart or sending them flying across the room

Edited January 15, 2013 by ULessa

[oGsShadow]

Yup, he was insanely specialized for melee as I already stated, and it was still faster and easier to kill enemies with guns. Why do you switch to melee when enemies get close? Your gun will kill them much more quickly, and theres no penalty to using guns close range.

Because Its more fun. Certainly less effective sometimes but If it takes me 5 seconds to kill them with my sniper or 15 with my fists, I'm going to choose my fists. I see your point about making melee stronger but I don't feel melee is so gimped as to not be an albeit, slower, way of killing. Also Aggh ^ makes a valid point that is also applicable to moas.

Edited January 15, 2013 by oGsShadow

[fifafifa]

._____. are u going to do ANYTHING about the people that put so much time into getting these melee mods? i mean that was the only thing that i found fun... using the melee to slice and dice, now that they are weaker than a pack of kool aid in the ocean >:(

I THOUGHT I FOUND A GOOD GAME! >:O

[MobileSuit]

._____. are u going to do ANYTHING about the people that put so much time into getting these melee mods? i mean that was the only thing that i found fun... using the melee to slice and dice, now that they are weaker than a pack of kool aid in the ocean >:(

I THOUGHT I FOUND A GOOD GAME! >:O

Read da topic. It was said 500 times it will be fixed

[Sealgaire]

I saw that post by Steve. I'm hoping very badly it means the mods will be returned to normal. I wasn't shy about letting the devs know they were broken as hell, by the way. But they should still make melee an option.

[[DE]Steve]

Hang in there, it was a mistake on my part. Should be deployed soon.

[Ced23Ric]

Why is the assumption always that the developer wants to &!$$ in your cereal? Holy hell, so much rage. Steve said, right in the Update notes, that it will be fixed. All is well, no need to rage and spit bile.

[[DE]Rebecca]

Locking thread as not to get DESteve's response buried.