Melee After The Removal Of Stamina

[Nuparu92]

First credit where credit is due. I want to thank the devs for there awesome work on update 17.

 

Now on to the topic, melee, or more specifically, blocking after the removal of stamina. Now this isn't a *BAD* Change. No stamina means a lot more melee freedom like KOTRing (Killing on the run). Blocking has taken a hit though with the percentage blocking. With enemies under level 22 this isn't really a big deal, but to be frank getting hit by level 22- bullets was never big deal anyway. Anything above a level 22 will really start to hurt while blocking. Blocking was meant as a way of getting close to enemies so you can melee, now not so much.

 

 

One could argue that now parkour 2.0 is the way to avoid bullets, and you could use that to get close. I would agree if we had aerial melee combos, or different downward strikes, or even a way to glide from enemy to enemy, but we don't. Grounds slam don't particularly work because each melee weapon has a different slam radius, and the slam has a small recovery time. The new parkour just doesn't have the flow with melee that running and blocking does.

 

 

You cant block in something like a T4 or T3 survival. You'll get ripped apart. From my own experience, it seems like melee only blocks 50-60% of the damage, and now you can be proced through melee. This is rough for melee people. I don't really understand how you take damage if you block a bullet, but what evs.

 

 

One might also argue that you could use channeling to block bullets. However, I tried this, and it is VERY inefficient. Those bullets eat your energy faster than a desecrate Nekros without Fleeting Expertise. Reflecting damage back isn't as useful as some people might think. Remember that enemy armor/shields scale along with their damage, so no matter where you go, or how high level the enemies are, you'll always just dink them.

 

 

I understand that this was all done to keep you from infinite blocking. A really cool fix for all this would be to let blocking share the timer with the Wall Latch/Glide timer. Then it scales no matter where you go, and its not OP because you cant just sit in a corner and block. It makes more sense that blocking bullets can get tiring, rather than blocking bullets, and still taking damage.

 

Please discuss civilly ^_^

 

TL:DR ..l.

 

 

Edit 8/5/2015

 

I'm taking another spin with "Blocking bullets and taking damage" deal. I do not believe that the damage taken is "self damage" because blocking a bullet is a lot of force. Jumping 39ft in the air and landing is a lot of force, but we don't take fall damage. Why? Because were warframes. Masters of the Blade and Gun. The stamina system for melee combat worked well. As another player pointed out, as long as you didn't overextend yourself, you were fine. (However in the later levels they still ripped through your stamina like Freddy Kruger trying to open a candy bar)

 

Originally I could see how people would complain if we got 100% FRONTAL blocking. After reading some of your post, I now believe that this is no longer OP. It does require some situational awareness when playing with pure melee. I had several complicated builds for melee play. Now they all don't work because of damage reduction. I've played this game for three years. I played only melee with just the quick melee before melee 2.0 was even a thing!

 

 

The main thing I disagree with, is DE's point of view. (Which you all have brought to my attention)

So DE's current damage reduction system is built so that the bigger the weapon, the more it blocks. I'm really at a loss for words with this, so you'll all have to forgive me. If you think about it that means every weapon would be the same percentage except shields. I'm not going to explain why, ya'll can figure it out.

 

The bottom line is: Melee 2.0 was suppose to bridge the gap between Guns and melee. It did until u17(the removal of stamina) broke it. Hundreds of thousands of players who like melee looked to sky with hope that the removal of stamina would fix some of the problems with melee 2.0. It broke it instead. As purely a gameplay mechanic, not logically, not sci-fi, not anything except pure gameplay, this current system is broken and needs to be fixed. It wasn't GOOD before, but now its worse.

 

As far as logic goes (Its impossible to block every bullet)

 

We can jump 39ft in the air and land like a butterfly!

We can block bullets.

 

We can cast amazing powers!

We can block bullets.

 

We can use our melee weapons to cut straight through heavy armor!

We can block bullets.

 

We can jump up a wall infinitely!

We can block bullets.

 

In this game, shurikens kill people!

We can block bullets.

 

Please forgive me if I seem irritated in this post. I don't mean to be. Hopefully if we all look to the sky, join hands, and sing coombyah, or prayers will be answered. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Discuss civilly ^_^

Edited August 5, 2015 by Nuparu92

[Leavith]

Okay just to add little info

when you play tennis after hitting and returning the tennis ball back or striking the tennis ball you begin to feel pain i your wrist after a while.

Now in the game we are being drilled by bullets going faster then a tennis ball,weighting more then tennis ball ,and more consecutively then a tennis ball match.That is how we are being damaged.

 

Because all that damaged need to be absorb by something while the weapon can stop the bullet it cannot truly stop the actual force of it.Hitting the weapon and transferring that force back to us tenno that are blocking it might not have been so intense cause the bullet got blocked by the weapon but the harder the force and the faster the bullet the more pain we will feel until is actually doing damage.

Edited August 2, 2015 by Leavith

[Storchenbein]

Blocking should just stay infinite 100% damage reduction. It's not like it makes you invulnerable, a hit from the side or back while you're fighting high level enemies and you're still toast. Frontal 100% block is in no way OP.

 

If they still intend on limiting it, the timer as you suggested would work.

 

I didn't use block that much, but it was handy to block enemy hooks or eximus firewaves when you were meleeing. Blocking a firewave now still does a lot of damage up to the point where rolling through it gives you a better damage reduction.

Edited August 2, 2015 by Storchenbein

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

Okay just to add little info

when you play tennis after hitting and returning the tennis ball back or striking the tennis ball you begin to feel pain i your wrist after a while.

Now in the game we are being drilled by bullets going faster then a tennis ball,weighting more then tennis ball ,and more consecutively then a tennis ball match.That is how we are being damaged.

To add a little more info:

We can't block bullets at all with swords. Or fly spaceships, or use energy from some weird alternate dimension to allow us to shoot fire or teleport or create giant swords or wormholes we use to fight robots and clones.

In other words, the tennis ball comparison is irrelevant.

[Leavith]

To add a little more info:

We can't block bullets at all with swords. Or fly spaceships, or use energy from some weird alternate dimension to allow us to shoot fire or teleport or create giant swords or wormholes we use to fight robots and clones.

In other words, the tennis ball comparison is irrelevant.

Now tennis ball comparison is just an example on how we can be damaged.

Sure we cannot stop bullets with a sword but tennis is a slow version of what we are basically doing using an object to block an incoming object and deflecting it to another direction.

When we channel it we are channeling energy in our weapon to absorb the shock and since we no longer have to deal with the shock factor we easily deflect the bullet and direct the bullets back to were they came from.

 

Your to close minded my example is just applying something that we see in real life like a tennis ball, a racket and our wrist and relating it to the game.We are doing the same action just in faster and more extreme scale.

While we could argue that the game does not follow normal logic.This logic does not conflict with things in the game and can easily help explain how we are being damaged.Which is by the force of the object on the player.

Edited August 2, 2015 by Leavith

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

Now tennis ball comparison is just an example on how we can be damaged.

Sure we cannot stop bullets with a sword but tennis is a slow version of what we are basically doing using an object to block an incoming object and deflecting it to another direction.

When we channel it we are channeling energy in our weapon to absorb the shock and since we no longer have to deal with the shock factor we easily deflect the bullet and direct the bullets back to were they came from.

 

Your to close minded my example is just applying something that we see in real life like a tennis ball, a racket and our wrist and relating it to the game.We are doing the same action just in faster and more extreme scale.

While we could argue that the game does not follow normal logic.This logic does not conflict with things in the game and can easily help explain how we are being damaged.Which is by the force of the object on the player.

Well from a logic standpoint I'd expect us to just get Indiana Jones'd over and over. It's not logic that makes this a bad decision; its gameplay.

[Leavith]

Well from a logic standpoint I'd expect us to just get Indiana Jones'd over and over. It's not logic that makes this a bad decision; its gameplay.

 

Now while i understand their is logic behind what i said i was just suggesting to the OP a way that we can explain the damage we receive when we block.i have not mention my side on the topic were i am for reduction or for full 100% absorb so i have no clue why your telling "It's not logic that makes this a bad decision;its gameplay." 

Now i would like to add while the Blocking is now damage reduction is possible that the intention of this change is that other aspect of the game can shine to be use as survival.

Since as we mention if your a pure melee user this is a bad move for you so DE could be making this change to make other melee weapon classes more special then other and to encourage gun & sword fighting.Not just pure melee which this move does not make it impossible to pure melee just makes it less encouraging since now you got to do so much more.

[ShogunGunshow]

Now while i understand their is logic behind what i said i was just suggesting to the OP a way that we can explain the damage we receive when we block.i have not mention my side on the topic were i am for reduction or for full 100% absorb so i have no clue why your telling "It's not logic that makes this a bad decision;its gameplay." 

Now i would like to add while the Blocking is now damage reduction is possible that the intention of this change is that other aspect of the game can shine to be use as survival.

Since as we mention if your a pure melee user this is a bad move for you so DE could be making this change to make other melee weapon classes more special then other and to encourage gun & sword fighting.Not just pure melee which this move does not make it impossible to pure melee just makes it less encouraging since now you got to do so much more.

 

I very much doubt that this was intentionally targeted to stop people from meleeing. If anything, DE has tried to get people to melee more and make pure melee a more viable choice. It just doesn't seem like they thought out the numbers on Blocking very much.

[Leavith]

I very much doubt that this was intentionally targeted to stop people from meleeing. If anything, DE has tried to get people to melee more and make pure melee a more viable choice. It just doesn't seem like they thought out the numbers on Blocking very much.

i never intended to give the impression of me saying DE wanting them to stop melee i was referring to DE wanting a balance of Both melee and gun.

Not just all gun and not all melee,but yes i can agree with you i am sure they numbers on blocks are not very well calibrated.

But i do understand that different weapons will be differentiating themselves from each other in this sense of how much they can block.

What i was referring to is that if you pure melee now is a bad move for you,making you got for other ways to avoid damage.

I actually suspect that this damage reduction actually makes parkour shines,Since now you want to use it more to get out of situation quicker.and only block when your charging towards the enemy.Not to defend block ,but to block to close the gap.

Edited August 2, 2015 by Leavith

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

Now while i understand their is logic behind what i said i was just suggesting to the OP a way that we can explain the damage we receive when we block.i have not mention my side on the topic were i am for reduction or for full 100% absorb so i have no clue why your telling "It's not logic that makes this a bad decision;its gameplay." 

Now i would like to add while the Blocking is now damage reduction is possible that the intention of this change is that other aspect of the game can shine to be use as survival.

Since as we mention if your a pure melee user this is a bad move for you so DE could be making this change to make other melee weapon classes more special then other and to encourage gun & sword fighting.Not just pure melee which this move does not make it impossible to pure melee just makes it less encouraging since now you got to do so much more.

But then what you said has nothing to do with the OP. He wasn't saying "how is it possible that we don't reflect 100%" he was asking why the decision was made.

This doesn't encourage playing with both. It encourages using guns and only guns, because using a gun with cover will always be better than a melee with blocking (with a gun you can take partial cover and shoot, or step into and out of cover between shots, while with melee you have to charge into the center of everything to do damage); this just makes that difference more pronounced.

[ShogunGunshow]

i never intended to give the impression of me saying DE wanting them to stop melee i was referring to DE wanting a balance of Both melee and gun.

Not just all gun and not all melee,but yes i can agree with you i am sure they numbers on blocks are not very well calibrated.

But i do understand that different weapons will be differentiating themselves from each other in this sense of how much they can block.

 

I'm 99% certain DE wants you to be able to go pure gun, mix, pure melee, or anything inbetween.

 

As for damage reduction, heavy weapons block more damage than lighter ones. Fist weapons and daggers are now garbage, blocking ~25%, swords ~50%, and heavy weapons ~75%.

 

Sucks for daggers, but at least they have that stealth kill mod now. Anyone using a fistpunchy weapon like the Obex may as well throw it into storage until DE sorts this. 

 

The only thing I can think of that I might be overlooking here is that maybe lighter weapons extend the bonus evasion/DR of doing evasive moves more than heavy weapons, which would make sense, but would be extremely difficult to test. 

[Leavith]

But then what you said has nothing to do with the OP. He wasn't saying "how is it possible that we don't reflect 100%" he was asking why the decision was made.

This doesn't encourage playing with both. It encourages using guns and only guns, because using a gun with cover will always be better than a melee with blocking (with a gun you can take partial cover and shoot, or step into and out of cover between shots, while with melee you have to charge into the center of everything to do damage); this just makes that difference more pronounced.

My bad i didn't understand the OP intention on his question.

thanks for clearing it.

While i do understand the fact that as we look at i run a mix style of guns and sword and melee block isn't affecting my game play.And i use block to quick melee change and close distance with my target.

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

My bad i didn't understand the OP intention on his question.

thanks for clearing it.

I didn't need to mock you either

[Liminal]

I think the easier way to make blocking worthwhile is to increase the block percentage based on each weapon (and display the value in the armory).

 

However, I wouldn't be surprised if DE released a block % increasing mod (ie: yet another band aid) which would become pretty mandatory for non-invulnerable melee builds.

[ShogunGunshow]

Block is already increased based on weapon type. Heavies are ~75%, mediums (like one handed swords) are ~50-60%, and light weapons like daggers and fist weapons are ~25-30%. Having this displayed would be nice, of course.

 

In my opinion, it should just go back to 100%, allow the energy drain while channeling to be affected by Channeling Efficiency mods (it's not right now), and beef up the reflected damage baked in (reflected damage sucks a big one). 

[Aekhon]

If you saw 50-60% damage reduction, that's 50-60% more than I've ever seen from blocking since U17 hit.  I'm not kidding.  From my own tests, blocking has had zero impact on incoming damage unless I channel (which as you note, is highly inefficient).  Anyway, I agree on all your points.  Blocking has been broken by this update.  It's utterly useless now, so I stopped doing it (except for reflex).  I've even suggested a very similar solution (timed 100% blocking).  It seems, though, that the prevalent opinion on the forums is that we should be able to block at 100% forever.  I wouldn't mind that either, but I could see how others might think that would give melee too much of an advantage (especially given that we can block explosions and fire and the like, which doesn't make any sense).

 

On another note, as a tip for melee players like myself who are struggling with the block changes, just stop blocking.  It's a waste of time and energy.  Instead, slot Rush and mod it up.  In U17, the faster you go, the harder it is for enemies to hit you.  Sprint everywhere.  You don't even need to use the new Parkour system, but if you can do it well, that helps too.  Either way, you'll find that enemies hit you a lot less frequently than they did before.  In most scenarios, I've found that I don't really need to block as long as I keep moving fast (tested up through Uranus).  Yes, I still get hit, and yes, I still take damage, but I can allow myself to be surrounded and not worry too much about it (unless there's a couple of snipers around...they're still really accurate and their bullets shred your shields, but that's fair).

[(PSN)MikeCopa]

I don't see the point in "percentage blocking" or however you want to call it. As OP stated channeling while blocking eats up your energy in mere seconds. And tbh the old blocking mechanic only shielded you from the front, you were still susceptible to attacks from any other direction. To me this change was pretty unnecessary.

[(XBOX)CeaselessSlim]

melee block isn't affecting my game play.And i use block to quick melee change and close distance with my target.

That's the problem. The persons that do enjoy charging in to a room and hacking everything to death (with a nikana or any other weapon that isn't a heavy) will have a huge problem. From what I read it sounds like the melee players are either being forced to use guns or us a specific melee weapon.

The developer's stated that melee is going to be more diverse since coptering whas becoming non-exsistant but if a scindo (heavy) blocks more than a nikana (single-handed)what choice is there?

Edited August 2, 2015 by (XB1)CeaselessSlim

[Sephoroid]

Warframe after this update is totally unplayable for melee lovers.
Parkour 2.0 is clearly built to support gun gameplay. This stupid slowmotion mechanic makes gun gameplay so easy and OP.
You can use slowmotion wi​​thout any limit and spam it all the time. Just jump "C + space" and aim "RMB".
I totally hate that devs even more force you to use S#&$ty guns by taking out blocking ability.

I loved to use melee, so now Warframe is totally unplayable for me.
Please fix this bullS#&$ and remove stupid slow-motion move, this looks dumb and plays dumb.
Total failure update - . - bring back stamina : |

[AlienOvermind]

I understand that this was all done to keep you from infinite blocking. A really cool fix for all this would be to let blocking share the timer with the Wall Latch/Glide timer. Then it scales no matter where you go, and its not OP because you cant just sit in a corner and block. It makes more sense that blocking bullets can get tiring, rather than blocking bullets, and still taking damage.

I don't think the timer would work here. You know, you can just release block button for 0.1sec to reset the timer and then start blocking again. And if resetting timer would take more time blocking would be clunky and unreliable.

 

I would rather have damage limit while blocking. I.e. blocked bullet cannot deal more than some fixed damage number. For example, we set maximum damage number as 20 per shot — then, if a bullet normally deals 6 damage, it would be decreased by 50% and would deal 3 damage, but if a bullet deals 60 damage it would deal only 20 damage instead of 30.

Also, if some mod would increase percentage of blocked damage, it should also decrease maximum damage number.

Edited August 2, 2015 by AlienOvermind

[Fifield]

Haven't done enough melee since U17 to evaluate blocking change.

Here's something I wrote elsewhere:

Rifles and even some secondary can kill 90% of enemies in 2 bullets or fewer.  It doesn't matter where the enemies are, if you can see them, you can kill them in 2 bullets or fewer or basically as fast as you can react. One of the exceptions is T4 after 20 mins.  But the enemy can also kill you in a few bullets...

This is why melee is weak, in order of significance:

1. You have to put yourself in danger, which means that unless you're Valk or Loki, you're going to die a lot with any vaguely challenging enemies. Those who play Loki a lot will know he only ever dies from being stunned when his invisibility runs out.  There's only one ranged stun, it's easy to dodge and even if it hits you, you'll probably be safe.
2. Melee damage is only competitive in melee mode.  To land combo damage (or block), you have to get into melee mode . The switch takes too long (even if separately bound) and actually stops you being able to use a gun.

3. You have to actually move to your target/s, which takes time.

4. There are no crosshairs so headshots are ironically much more difficult to land.

#1 is a particularly large disadvantage and is why buffing Pressure Point isn't going to help that much.  Even if melee did 3x the DPS, it still wouldn't be that useful in T4.

As such, I recommend the buffs be made to melee mode itself:

a) Have it increase armour significantly.

b) Have it include Handspring for free (rank 2 or 3).
c) Re: #2, make the time you have to hold down F shorter and the animation way faster.  Likewise, allow quick switching back to gun.

 

This adjustment can be made to quick melee too:

d) Re: #4, increase the hitbox size for headshots.

Even after all these buffs, I suspect melee will be too weak and buffing Pressure Point will be necessary.

[DrBorris]

I am fine with it being Damage reduction, but it should be much higher. the DR should be at least 50%, and scale all of the way up to 100% (for sword and shield).

 

Also, the DR should vary from weapon to weapon, not by class. It could be a new stat to differentiates the monotonous melee pool. For example, maybe Pangolin Sword would have an abnormally high DR to compensate for it being lackluster in the damage department. And those hammers really should be the lowest DR (logically).

Edited August 2, 2015 by DrBorris

[Invalid_Infinity]

First credit where credit is due. I want to thank the devs for there awesome work on update 17.

 

Now on to the topic, melee, or more specifically, blocking after the removal of stamina. Now this isn't a *BAD* Change. No stamina means a lot more melee freedom like KOTRing (Killing on the run). Blocking has taken a hit though with the percentage blocking. With enemies under level 22 this isn't really a big deal, but to be frank getting hit by level 22- bullets was never big deal anyway. Anything above a level 22 will really start to hurt while blocking. Blocking was meant as a way of getting close to enemies so you can melee, now not so much.

 

 

One could argue that now parkour 2.0 is the way to avoid bullets, and you could use that to get close. I would agree if we had aerial melee combos, or different downward strikes, or even a way to glide from enemy to enemy, but we don't. Grounds slam don't particularly work because each melee weapon has a different slam radius, and the slam has a small recovery time. The new parkour just doesn't have the flow with melee that running and blocking does.

 

 

You cant block in something like a T4 or T3 survival. You'll get ripped apart. From my own experience, it seems like melee only blocks 50-60% of the damage, and now you can be proced through melee. This is rough for melee people. I don't really understand how you take damage if you block a bullet, but what evs.

 

 

One might also argue that you could use channeling to block bullets. However, I tried this, and it is VERY inefficient. Those bullets eat your energy faster than a desecrate Nekros without Fleeting Expertise. Reflecting damage back isn't as useful as some people might think. Remember that enemy armor/shields scale along with their damage, so no matter where you go, or how high level the enemies are, you'll always just dink them.

 

 

I understand that this was all done to keep you from infinite blocking. A really cool fix for all this would be to let blocking share the timer with the Wall Latch/Glide timer. Then it scales no matter where you go, and its not OP because you cant just sit in a corner and block. It makes more sense that blocking bullets can get tiring, rather than blocking bullets, and still taking damage.

 

Please discuss civilly ^_^

 

TL:DR ..l.

On your end point there what you are basically saying is that stamina is instead replaced by a timer......come on seriously?

 

I think the damage reduction should be buffed to around %90 to make mele more viable. 

Directional air melee needs to be reverted back to what it was before U17 because as it is right now is just plain useless. 

Wallrun should be brought back with some changes instead of the "wallhopping" that we have now. Preferably changes that allow us to change directions while running.

[GuyOnCrack]

I think the lowest should be 75% and the obvious highest is 100% with a shield. I think DE will probably address a lot of the issues of U17 but they need time to recover from the crunch that they went through.

 

Or they could do an area of blockage, like 45 degrees of coverage or 90 degrees of coverage.

 

But the main issues are the recovery times on melee moves and melee counter time, they make melee feel so freaking clunky and slow. Like being unable to jump after an attack for like three seconds. And the timer on the melee counter should definitely be increased to like 10 seconds or even 15 seconds.

[tris1]

What they have done to blocking is terrible it's simple.

Blocking should be 100 percent blocking no damage reduction

Blocking in channel mode should not in anyway cost energy that's just stupid especially if you are a channel user

Revert the changes to blocking and just keep the stamina out of it