Melee Has Some Major Issues

[PhoeniixFiire]

I've been noticing some major issues with melee lately that really put me off from using it.

 

First of all, smaller enemies are often nearly impossible to hit with many melee weapons, especially the ones that crawl on the ground. I can be swinging madly toward an infested crawler and like 1 out of 10 swings actually makes contact. It's infuriating. I end up switching to one of my guns just to take them out. Flying enemies drones and ospreys are also ridiculously hard to hit, especially when doing air attacks. I've experimented with the reach mod to see if this helps but it does absolutely nothing for me. This also happens sometimes when I'm just attacking normally, and with a staff nonetheless. I'll be stealthing with Loki and go up to an enemy to do a quick 1 hit kill (not a stealth takedown), and instead of doing any damage, it causes me to step forward into the enemy and alerting him and the attack does no damage. I have similar issues when trying to attack an enemy that is above or below me, like if they are on a lower step on a set of stairs. The attacks seem to go right over their head, even though I'm aiming right at them. I think the problem is that the melee swings are determined by the orientation of the character rather than the direction of the camera, and I think this is really the main problem with melee. We need to be able to "aim" our melee attacks.

 

Also, I've noticed that air attacks and slide attacks are very inconsistent. It seems like the blade actually has to make contact in order to do any damage, even though we have no control over where the blade will be at any given moment during the action. I can be doing a slide attack directly toward an enemy and if the blade happens to be to one side when I make contact, I do absolutely no damage and either get stops by the enemy or pushed to one side.

 

One more thing. I have a qualm about finishers and stealth takedowns. With finishers, I find them fairly difficult to actually pull off as the prompt only rarely comes up, so instead I end up fruitlessly slashing above them while they slowly stand back up. With stealth takedowns however, my issue with them is the opposite. They trigger far too often. So often I come up to a group of enemies and try to slash them all down in a single slash, and instead the game locks me into a stealth takedown on the first enemy in the group, completely ruining my plan for mass mayhem. What would be great is if we could get a separate key binding for finishers/takedowns, so that we can CHOOSE which one is done. Give us an option to have them mapped to the same key, but allow us to map them separately too.

[IfritKajiTora]

Melee weapons are already weak

I hoep Devs will see it and give us Primed Preasure Point (220% damage)
It wont repair much but always something.

[Senkei]

I agree, the air attack doesn't have any steer that the player can control.

Unless you're a melee lover, I might as well switch to my gun and shoot the drone or crawler.

[Malindros]

you are doing it wrong, in fact most people do melee wrong.  Melee is strong IF you know what you are doing...

 

to the original post, turn off melee auto assist (or whatever the heck is it called) in the options menu.

[PhoeniixFiire]

you are doing it wrong, in fact most people do melee wrong.  Melee is strong IF you know what you are doing...

 

to the original post, turn off melee auto assist (or whatever the heck is it called) in the options menu.

I'm not sure you fully understand the situation. I do know what I'm doing and have nearly 700hrs under my belt in game, and I still have these issues. I turned off melee auto assist before I even played the tutorial, so that isn't even a factor. If I'm doing it so wrong I'd appreciate if you would tell me how you go about hitting a crawler or osprey consistently with melee, or attacking enemies without it triggering a stealth takedown, or hit an enemy that's on a lower step on a staircase, or any of the other situations I mentioned. You can't just tell someone they're "doing it wrong" and not tell them HOW they are doing it wrong.

[DeltaPangaea]

Well, I dunno if this is relevant, but aiming down at a downed enemy gives me reliable results in ground finishers. It's sort of way to let you choose to do ground finishers or not, like aiming down for a groundslam while midair. Aim down at them for finisher, don't for not... And I don't think there IS a prompt for those, only for stealth attacks.

 

I seem to recall that at some point in the past, things like crawlers could have ground finishers done on them at any time, but then it got changed. Wish we could have that back.

 

(Incidentally, have you tried actually landing a non-slam aerial attack with Hysteria? S'feckin' impossible.)

[PhoeniixFiire]

Well, I dunno if this is relevant, but aiming down at a downed enemy gives me reliable results in ground finishers. It's sort of way to let you choose to do ground finishers or not, like aiming down for a groundslam while midair. Aim down at them for finisher, don't for not... And I don't think there IS a prompt for those, only for stealth attacks.

 

I seem to recall that at some point in the past, things like crawlers could have ground finishers done on them at any time, but then it got changed. Wish we could have that back.

 

(Incidentally, have you tried actually landing a non-slam aerial attack with Hysteria? S'feckin' impossible.)

I actually have seen a prompt a few times for ground finishers, but you're right, aiming down at them is a somewhat reliable method of doing them, and that's what I was doing, but lately it seems to not be working so well, especially if the enemy is on a slightly different level than you.

 

But apart from ground finishers, the rest of it is just messed up. I find now that crawlers and ospreys are the most annoying enemies in the game now because it is so freakin' hard to hit them. Even with guns, their hit box is so weird and small. I constantly miss them even when pointing right at them, and forget doing aerial attacks on anything but the biggest enemies, they just don't hit. Spin attacks are also pretty pointless. I can spin attack into a group of enemies and, when it doesn't transition into a stealth takedown on one of them, it will only kill a couple of them. I just hope they will put some work into revamping melee so that it's a feasible fighting style rather than just backup. I rarely even switch to my melee weapon anymore and just end up doing quick melee, and even then it's mostly used for coptering. 

[Thaumatos]

Melee range is being reported by many as 'borked' right now.

 

I put a thread in earlier about the issue of hitting Nyx while in Absorb or bubbles like Nullifiers.  Melee just doesn't do it anymore.

 

Even when using a Galatine, Cleaving Whirlwind, and Broken Bull.  The attack that hits everything in an area twice per use.  Nada.

[DelialFallen]

Hopefully these issues get looked into soon and DE will apply a fix to the broken range issues as well.

 

Some weapons are borderline useless at the moment (Boltace being a noteworthy example).

[PhoeniixFiire]

So while I was playing last night I decided to double check that the melee auto targeting was disabled, and sure enough it wasn't. I know for a fact I had disabled it. One thing I have noticed is that sometimes updates will randomly change some of my settings, which is ridiculously frustrating, and this was one of those times. I disabled it AGAIN and it made melee work SLIGHTLY better. I can now hit crawlers more frequently, but I'm still having many of the others issues. I've been using my Tipedo almost exclusively for a while and even though it's a very long weapon, I feel like I have to swing at point-blank range to hit ANYTHING with it. As Thaumatos said, I'm pretty sure melee range is completely broken. I feel like I'm using daggers while using my Tipedo, which is absurd. They need to fix this pronto!