The Halikar - Time For A Revisit

[Djego27]

Well I sold mine long time ago, while the glaive prime is even my most used melee weapon. I do like throwing melee weapons for her utility, since you can use them at the same time as guns and you are not restricted to close range with them as well.

 

I would agree on most of the issues, haveing less damage on it while throwing might be ok if it does more damage at close and got more utility(disarm). However that utility is not really there since it often goes after a random target what makes this kind of pointless. It should not pick targets outside of a certain arc(lest say 45°) of the direction where you throw it and go after bombards, heavy gunners, techs, rail moas first. A alternative would be to remove target tracking, at least on pc(then again this would not work so well for a pad). Disarm on the first target should be guaranteed(this is the hole point of the weapon), scalable by status on the bounces if there are any. With this the weapon would have a high utility and the throwing damage would be not so much of a deal.

 

Radial disarm is one of the strongest powers in the game because it disarms everything around you. The halikar does only disarm 1-2 targets with a throw and last time I checked it doesn't even manage to do that most of the time, leave alone to disarm the right targets.

Edited July 22, 2015 by Djego27

[Insizer]

Point. Although, the principle of 'aiming' at an enemy and throwing something at its head should at least be translatable in the most basic sense, shouldn't it? The Halikar seems to be coded to aim for center mass, but in a weird way that causes it to seek weaker targets. It should at least be possible to make it so that the part the Halikar locks onto is the head.. but the more important part is still getting it to hit the enemy closest to the reticle.

 

I have heard that some abilities like Rip Line have some tracking capacity like that. Shuriken definitely has homing, and while it's buggy, it's not quite as buggy as Halikar - those might be decent places to start on a QoL.

The two are not really translatable, at least not in the definite sense that I think you are trying to get at. Computers are the smartest lightswitches in the world, they do what they are programmed, nothing more, nothing less. They cannot truly grasp what you are mentally thinking or which enemy out of the group of five huddled together you are aiming at.

 

That is not to say that you can't fix the Halikar without removing homing. By employing smaller targeting cones and more predictable/reasonable target prioritization, one can emulate intelligent homing. But sometimes I don't want homing. For example, I take out nullifiers by throwing my Kestrel at their feet, having them be damaged and killed by the resulting explosion. The angle between an enemy's chest, you, and the ground in front of said enemy can be very slim and no amount of shrinking a targeting cone will fix that, at least not any amount that would leave anything that you could homing on the Halikar. This issue is not only with nullifiers but the explosions in general, which are great with life strike.

[FelisImpurrator]

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They don't have to be "intelligent". I'm well aware of the basic facts of programming. But what I was trying to get at (well, having just woken up, so apologies for lack of clarity) was that, as you mentioned, whatever targeting code they use can be optimized to make it at least functional.

 

That said, I forgot about how it would interact with the floor explosion (which is one of my favorite uses of thrown melee, assassinating nullifiers, so I get where that's coming from). Although - I haven't had any trouble striking the floor with the Halikar, as useless as that currently is with the broken explosion, so I'm not sure how much of an issue that is. Honestly, all I want is for it to be able to compensate for sudden enemy movements - homing should only kick in if the enemy in the center of your reticle when you throw abruptly decides to take three steps to the side halfway through the Halikar's flight path, for instance, if at all possible. In another thread I was told that RIp Line works that way - the enemy you cast it at is 'marked' by the ability, and it compensates a bit if said enemy moves out of the way, but otherwise travels in a straight line.

 

(I never was able to get Life Strike working with thrown melee explosions, but maybe that was some odd bug. I should give that another try.)

[Ryusuta]

I'd say that thrown weapons as a whole need a rework. They're just plain bad.

[Djego27]

I'd say that thrown weapons as a whole need a rework. They're just plain bad.

 

They are only bad if you expect them to be as effective at point blank as other melee wapons. Then again it is mostly her hitbox and useing the swing that has next to no range at all instead of the short throws(about 2m I think) like in the combos for autoattack. Used in combination with other weapons they are very good, since you can use them like another ability, while uesing your primary or secondary at the same time and depending on modding they not only can do damage but also CC targets or used very effective against groups with the AOE explosion. They are also incredible when it comes to stealth gameplay because you have 20k+ crit damage hits on heads with the stealth multipier or stuff like accelerant, absolute silent and can be used at range. Another thing is that they are also very good for life strike, because of the high single hit damage of throwing attacks in stance and because you don't need to hug targets what is incredible useful with lots of toxic or energy drain auras around at high levels or in general with more squishy frames that are not build around melee combat.

 

That does not change that the halikar really needs help, since the main feature of the weapon doesn't work to a degree where it would be a fair option compared to other throwing or melee weapons.

Edited July 24, 2015 by Djego27

[FelisImpurrator]

*snip*

True. Very true. I've heard they're the last vestige of the old Charge Attack system - when Charge returns, we might see some improvement to throwing melee functionality anyway. But for now, they're god-tier for stealth runs - even daggers with the U17 augment will have a tough time competing, guaranteed stealth kill or no. They're reusable grenades that can head crit, yes, and can be thrown at any time. That said, I STILL haven't tried seriously getting Life Strike to work with the explosion.

 

But it is still a problem that throwing melee is just plain bad as regular melee - for a variety of reasons. Note that the Redeemer, while not a thrown weapon, is still a melee with a ranged charge and is thus similar enough to be counted here.

 

One: Low base damage on regular attacks. Glaive Prime only has a little more base IPS than a Skana. That wouldn't be so bad - Prisma Skana is brutal - except for the other reasons.

 

Two: (Relatively) low attack speed. Throwing melee swings are slow. Their listed attack speed is high, but that's based on animations in their weapon class, and their animations aren't the speediest thing to begin with. Fury only partly alleviates that. So while they're mostly not sluggish by themselves, they can't make up for low damage with fast attacks and massive multihits quite as well as other weapons - unless you use stances. One stance is made of unobtainium until DE rereleases the Bursas; the other is still extremely rare. And throwing in full melee mode is delayed by the first awkward swing you do when you press E. So quick melee really is the initial benchmark, since it's the most likely kind to see use in regular play.

 

Redeemer is even worse, being actually slow and yet only having under 50 base damage in its main IPS type, slash.

 

Three: Not one of them has crit chance, and the highest status is 15% on Halikar (or the Redeemer's odd multi-pellet behavior). While status is not a dealbreaker - more of it on the Halikar, with the disarm proc scaling, could potentially swing right back into overpowered mini-Loki - the utter lack of a crit ranged melee means none of them can compensate for their absurdly low swing speed with Berserker in the slightest.

 

Four: Yes, the range. Their reach seems to be even worse than that of daggers without taking into account stance combos. Primed Reach alleviates this somewhat, but it eats a valuable mod slot, and if you have a full complement of throwing mods, that means half of your build is already taken.

 

Five: There isn't much variety to their actual melee statistics. Just IPS spread. As melee weapons, they don't fill different niches or feel significantly different. Even the swing speeds are the same on Halikar and Glaive Prime (which in itself is barely an upgrade to the Glaive). Melee in general could use more diversity, but within their class, thrown melees suffer from this so much that most of the (relatively few) who do use them treat them as bouncy grenades with infinite ammo (and on that note, bounce is horribly broken and far too random, but that's another story).

 

TL;DR: As a throwing melee fan, even I have to recognize they're mostly awful as actual melee - they hit like blunt knives, but when you throw them, suddenly they become insane, exploding flying guillotines. Just because they have charge shots doesn't mean they have to be gimped as melee - hopefully, when Charge 2.0 surfaces at last, evening the playing field for charge capability will come with a few tweaks to make them equally viable at short range or long.

[Insizer]

They don't have to be "intelligent". I'm well aware of the basic facts of programming. But what I was trying to get at (well, having just woken up, so apologies for lack of clarity) was that, as you mentioned, whatever targeting code they use can be optimized to make it at least functional.

 

That said, I forgot about how it would interact with the floor explosion (which is one of my favorite uses of thrown melee, assassinating nullifiers, so I get where that's coming from). Although - I haven't had any trouble striking the floor with the Halikar, as useless as that currently is with the broken explosion, so I'm not sure how much of an issue that is. Honestly, all I want is for it to be able to compensate for sudden enemy movements - homing should only kick in if the enemy in the center of your reticle when you throw abruptly decides to take three steps to the side halfway through the Halikar's flight path, for instance, if at all possible. In another thread I was told that RIp Line works that way - the enemy you cast it at is 'marked' by the ability, and it compensates a bit if said enemy moves out of the way, but otherwise travels in a straight line.

 

(I never was able to get Life Strike working with thrown melee explosions, but maybe that was some odd bug. I should give that another try.)

I have no doubt that the functional code could be jerry-rigged to work for the Halikar, but considering how low on the priority list this is for the devs, I doubt that such a rework would come about, sadly. And yes, I'm aware of the broken explosion system of the Halikar, and I assume that it will be addressed if the Halikar is reworked.

 

Anyways, you should try Lifestrike on throwing melee explosions. If I recall (I've been raising other melee weapons recently), you don't even need to trigger the explosion to get it, just channel and have the weapon explode naturally on the surface it hits. It yields a huge amount of health.

[FelisImpurrator]

Anyways, you should try Lifestrike on throwing melee explosions. If I recall (I've been raising other melee weapons recently), you don't even need to trigger the explosion to get it, just channel and have the weapon explode naturally on the surface it hits. It yields a huge amount of health.

Oh, I know it's low priority... but hey, so was Supra. One day, throwing melee fans will get their day.

 

Just tried the Lifestrike explosion. After a few "glaive" mistakes (read: Suicides by explosion), I got that to work as you described. Triggering the explosion doesn't work, and just kills you if it's too close.

[Insizer]

Oh, I know it's low priority... but hey, so was Supra. One day, throwing melee fans will get their day.

We can only pray.