Melee After The Removal Of Stamina

[Aekhon]

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.

Source, please?  I've tried tons of different weapons and have still seen zero damage reduction.

 

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 : |

Okay, blocking is completely broken yes, but melee is hardly unplayable.  Read my earlier post in this thread.  You can still be pure melee, you just have to go fast.  In my opinion (and whether or not DE intended this), Rush is now the second most important defensive mod in the game for melee builds.  It doesn't stop you from getting hit completely, but with the enemy accuracy being dependent upon your speed, the faster you go, the harder you are to hit.  With Rush slotted in, in many cases, you don't even need to block.

 

And a big HELL NO to bringing back stamina.  There are plenty of other ways to fix this without a rollback.

Edited August 2, 2015 by Tantalus010

[Stormfrenzy]

I'm so glad stamina has been removed from the game. In my view it never served any real purpose apart from gimping the feel of you playing an insanely powerful Space Ninja.

 

I never liked that blocking was so insanely efficient before. It felt like you basically cheated when you went full melee because with a tiny amount of effort you became nearly immortal. Not so now where you have to move as well as Block in order to be efficient. I like that a lot more than the old "Cross Your Arms" super-block.

 

I do think that the Energy drain should have Mods that affect the drain being done by blocking and that more dedicated melee weapon mods should be introduced in order to offer more diversity (the interesting element in Warframe is not what your current build is good at, the interesting part is what are you willing to sacrifice in order to gain a certain advantage?

[ShogunGunshow]

Source, please?  I've tried tons of different weapons and have still seen zero damage reduction.

 

My own hand-testing and recording, examining frame-by-frame to see damage. Didn't do super extensive test. First was against a level 2 Grineer Lancer, but his 3 damage a shot wasn't good for much other than confirming reduction was happening (Galatine blocking took the damage from 3 to 1, Obex from 3->2). 

 

Next I tested on Saturn, Janus against a level 15 Elite Lancer. From a base damage of 7, Galatine/Scindo reduced damage from 7->2, Jaw Sword/Dual Ether Blades 7->3, and Obex/Fang/Dark Dagger 7->5. Channelblocking drained energy at the same rate across all weapons against the same mob, BUT appeared to drain more energy blocking the Elite Lancer (lvl15) than the normal Lancer (lvl2), suggesting that the amount of energy needed to block is not flat, but increases the more damage you have to negate. Coupled with Efficiency mods not doing anything for Channelblocking, this suggests to me Chanblocking is not going to be viable at higher levels. 

[Deidaku]

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.

100 % only on shields imo

 

otherwise havign a damn shield  is pointless

[Aekhon]

My own hand-testing and recording, examining frame-by-frame to see damage. Didn't do super extensive test. First was against a level 2 Grineer Lancer, but his 3 damage a shot wasn't good for much other than confirming reduction was happening (Galatine blocking took the damage from 3 to 1, Obex from 3->2). 

 

Next I tested on Saturn, Janus against a level 15 Elite Lancer. From a base damage of 7, Galatine/Scindo reduced damage from 7->2, Jaw Sword/Dual Ether Blades 7->3, and Obex/Fang/Dark Dagger 7->5. Channelblocking drained energy at the same rate across all weapons against the same mob, BUT appeared to drain more energy blocking the Elite Lancer (lvl15) than the normal Lancer (lvl2), suggesting that the amount of energy needed to block is not flat, but increases the more damage you have to negate. Coupled with Efficiency mods not doing anything for Channelblocking, this suggests to me Chanblocking is not going to be viable at higher levels. 

Hmm, I'll do more testing and see if I can corroborate your numbers.  I tested on Earth, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Phobos, and Uranus with the Glaive, Tipedo, Kronen, Gram, Nikana, and Redeemer and have noticed no damage reduction so far.  The rate at which my shields depleted from incoming attacks didn't seem to change when blocking.

 

As for channel blocking, it drains energy so fast that it's not even viable at low levels, much less high.  Three Earth Grineer took my energy from 100 to 3 in about 3 seconds of channel blocking.

[nipsen]

The thing about melee before u17 was that it was actually balanced really well with the stamina mechanic. Starter frames would get a decent buffer against low level enemies, just as a well-modded melee-frame with stamina upgrades would have a short grace-period against high-level enemies. But if you overextended yourself and depleted the stamina (by attacking - specially with heavy weapons), your guard would break and you would be vulnerable. That was the concept I had for several builds - transforming puny mobility based, non-armored frames with abilities typically used on range, modded into being more effective fired point blank. Faster casting, lowered range and duration, or efficiency to max at cost of duration and strength, etc. High-risk, high reward.

 

And what we get now is a melee concept that perhaps has to buff shields and shield recharge instead of stamina. Which really makes melee block work exactly the same way as it did for low-level enemies - you're still mostly invulnerable while blocking. Or, you could simply not block, and still be mostly invulnerable. :p But where the incoming damage over a certain level is so high that it rips through the block and the shield on the first shot, and forcing you to either use guns, or jump around with the new head-skipping and bullet-jumping to avoid being hit altogether. At the same time, you would be shot to pieces on most missions if you didn't mod for stamina and block before u17 anyway.

 

So any of those melee concepts simply don't work after u17 (either on low level with low level frames, or high level with high level modded frames). And I'm kind of reluctant to criticize as well, because I've been mostly on board with the changes DE have made so far, since you can kind of see where they're going. But here they're just removing customisation options (like they did with removing the power mod cards, before introducing the augments), and really removing melee as a primary altogether as well. Basically, they're creating rules that completely favor the annoying off-hand quick-melee use, by making the option to it useless. It's no different than just removing the option to have melee weapons as a primary for "simplicity".

 

Not a good change, in other words. And I don't think it should be "fixed" by making block have higher damage reduction, or letting channeling be more energy efficient. Because then you're still missing the entire point with using melee as a primary - where you sacrifice attack for a usually very short time, and gamble everything on getting in a good hit (for example with channeling). Or where you're getting solid defense for a short time while retreating, if you didn't overextend yourself in a fight and ran out of stamina. Sliding and blocking when closing in, for example - also doesn't work now.

 

What they could have done, was to let stamina stay, and have bunny-hopping, wall-climbing, etc., drain stamina fairly slowly. And that would have worked better than an invisible timer - that often sabotage you if you're hanging over a bottomless pit as well, when you actually need to know how long the timer has run, instead of when you're just skipping randomly on the walls in a hallway and you don't care about falling down, if you decide - for whatever reason - to start the countdown timer moves.

 

Not well thought through, simple as that. I mean, they could have a block that has 100% damage reduction while the glide/hold/slow-down timer runs, that then drops down to normal half reduction afterwards. But that again would still not work as well as blocking through stamina did. Wouldn't be balanced to only work with high stamina frames either.

 

So no, not seeing where they're going with this. Unless it was to annoy people who used the rules to actually make primary melee work better than guns, if you could deal with the risk, etc.

[NDroid]

Blocking should just stop all damage. Melee was already less useful than ranged weapons and typically required specific frames or builds to be used effectively. Even with 100% damage reduction you still can't attack while blocking and are vulnerable from all directions other than the front. Blocking all damage wouldn't make it OP, at most it would make Melee more viable. 

 

And I really hope DE won't introduce some blocking percentage bandaid mod, melee doesn't need nerfing in the form of additional essentially mandatory mods. 

 

As a side note, the changes to blocking have affected Excalibur's Energy Blade which now also only reduces a fraction of the damage unless you're channeling. This is a pretty significant nerf although I'm not sure if it was intentional. 

[Kcham375]

delete

Edited August 3, 2015 by Kdog777

[Varzy]

I like the suggestion of putting a time limit on blocking.

There could be a mod for your weapon that boosts this time.

Once the time limit runs out, you fall back to percentage damage blocking, and it takes a certain amount of time for the full blocking to recover.

[Acidulant]

Meleeing after Stamina removal is f'in useless

 

They really did some "good math" on deciding that miniscule damage reduction will do the trick

[WilYen]

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). 

 

i can confirm that this is true. polearms dragon nikana and heavy weapons block 75%. as long it's not a bombard or napalm

[Aekhon]

i can confirm that this is true. polearms dragon nikana and heavy weapons block 75%. as long it's not a bombard or napalm

Well, it's not true for me.  I just did some tests on Earth and actually wound up taking more damage while blocking than I did without.  Went from around 15 dmg per shot to my shields to around 24 dmg per shot while blocking.  Something's definitely very wrong.

[StonedMakak]

Never thought I'd miss stamina, at least for blocking O.o.

 

The new blocking mechanic is a really bad knee-jerk reaction, to nerf the supposed "invincibility" of non-stamina blocking. I said this in another thread, I'll say it again - there is no mission type currently that can be accomplished by sitting in a corner, holding block. None. There is no benefit to it. 

 

If you want to differentiate between melees, use the something else, like the frontal cone block size that someone already suggested. Guns were always better than melee. Right now they outclass them in every conceivable way. Unless you are an Excal, spaming EB's waves from behind a crate, because the new blocking actually punishes you for trying to use EB like a melee weapon. Valkyr (Hysteria), Loki and Ash (Invisibility) also get a pass. Everyone else needs to use guns.

 

What was that thing about parkour 2.0? Encourage using melee for combat, not mobility, and introduce some variety? A job well done, too bad new blocking completely invalidates that.  

Edited August 3, 2015 by tisdfogg

[kleerr2]

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.

I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how anyone could possibly think that a 100% infinite block that only protects the front direction of your character is even remotly OP in a game where you get swarmed 99% of the time and you have to be facing the enemy you are blocking/attacking which means that you are going to be exposed to dmg from the sides and back 99.9% of the time.Seriously blocking is absolutely pointless atm it will only get you killed in higher lvls and in lower lvls there is no point in using it since you can bear the dmg.You are better off spending energy on abilities to survive rather than on reflecting.

[StonedMakak]

I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how anyone could possibly think that a 100% infinite block that only protects the front direction of your character is even remotly OP in a game where you get swarmed 99% of the time and you have to be facing the enemy you are blocking/attacking which means that you are going to be exposed to dmg from the sides and back 99.9% of the time.Seriously blocking is absolutely pointless atm it will only get you killed in higher lvls and in lower lvls there is no point in using it since you can bear the dmg.You are better off spending energy on abilities to survive rather than on reflecting.

 

Yesterday I was doing T4 Surv solo with Excal. I don't spam EB that much, usually use it when I get overwhelmed. At 40 mins mark I head to extraction. Just to check how long, will the new blocking allow me to last at this point, I activate EB and step out from cover, shields at 300, health at 740. Heavy Gunner unloads on me for about two seconds. Shields gone, health reduced to about 360. Imagine if someone was determined to go sword alone for the entire mission till 50-60 minutes, like you can do with guns. 

[kleerr2]

Yesterday I was doing T4 Surv solo with Excal. I don't spam EB that much, usually use it when I get overwhelmed. At 40 mins mark I head to extraction. Just to check how long, will the new blocking allow me to last at this point, I activate EB and step out from cover, shields at 300, health at 740. Heavy Gunner unloads on me for about two seconds. Shields gone, health reduced to about 360. Imagine if someone was determined to go sword alone for the entire mission till 50-60 minutes, like you can do with guns. 

They killed Xcal's EB with implementing standart U17 blocking on it.Now if high lvl enemies are not CCed you are literally f****d as its infinite blocking was its innate survivability.Gool luck runing void solo when the eximus/nulifiers(WITH A BUBBLE AS BIG AS LIFE ITSELF) pop up!Why buff a Frame just to level it to the ground a month later?

Sorry for going so offtopic and for poor English.

[(PSN)L-B-H-100]

I'm sure the developers want to balance the combat between melee and firearms, but i don't understand why they would balance it like that! if what you say is true, than you're basically taking damage the entire time your in combat. even if its a small amount of damage you still take damage, and you are in combat for long periods of time during survival and defense. 

 

THAT'S NOT FAIR!

 

maybe it would be more simple and balanced if it only effected shields and not health?

[Invalid_Infinity]

I'm sure the developers want to balance the combat between melee and firearms, but i don't understand why they would balance it like that! if what you say is true, than you're basically taking damage the entire time your in combat. even if its a small amount of damage you still take damage, and you are in combat for long periods of time during survival and defense. 

 

THAT'S NOT FAIR!

 

maybe it would be more simple and balanced if it only effected shields and not health?

So now shields is stamina 2.0..........

 

Not a fan.

[Aekhon]

Okay, did another test against a Corpus Prod guy on Mars, and blocking with my Kronen protected me from only 1/3 of the damage (I took 18 instead of 27).  So, it's "working" for me on some enemies, but not on others.  Even if it were working for me on all enemies, 1/3 of damage is a pathetically low amount give the size of the Kronen...they're huge!

[Fifield]

Given how weak melee is, perhaps DE should revert this change (for PvE).

[taiiat]

note that different Melee Weapons have different Damage Reductions on Blocking.

Shields make you almost completely invulnerable.

you're not just invulnerable with any Weapon because then there's no reason to ever have a Shield. if a Shield isn't defensively better than something else, they're literally pointless.

previously, Shields used almost no Stamina to block Damage. now, you're almost invulnerable with them.

some Melee Weapons are better or worse at Blocking than others.

however, it would be nice if specific Melee Weapons had 'Blocking effectiveness' shown. rather than each Melee Archetype being bundled together.

and ofcourse, Channel Blocking will consume Energy to make you completely invulerable. i... presume Channeling Efficiency affects it but haven't tested myself yet.

Edited August 4, 2015 by taiiat

[Aekhon]

note that different Melee Weapons have different Damage Reductions on Blocking.

Shields make you almost completely invulnerable.

you're not just invulnerable with any Weapon because then there's no reason to ever have a Shield. if a Shield isn't defensively better than something else, they're literally pointless.

previously, Shields used almost no Stamina to block Damage. now, you're almost invulnerable with them.

some Melee Weapons are better or worse at Blocking than others.

however, it would be nice if specific Melee Weapons had 'Blocking effectiveness' shown. rather than each Melee Archetype being bundled together.

and ofcourse, Channel Blocking will consume Energy to make you completely invulerable. i... presume Channeling Efficiency affects it but haven't tested myself yet.

Neither blocking nor channel blocking make you invulnerable.  You can still be hit from the sides and behind and will take full, unblocked damage from those hits no matter what (which makes sense and is completely fair).  As it stands, channeling efficiency currently does not affect channel blocking.

[taiiat]

courtroom litigation

wow, if you're not Blocking an Enemy, Blocking doesn't help you survive!

howbout that.

please take your Courtroom Litigation elsewhere. talking about Blocking is in reference to you vs the thing you're Blocking against. not what you aren't.

[blazinvire]

Blocking does seem a bit odd since the update, but to be honest I haven't used it as much as I probably should be due to the fact I can bounce all over the room and run circles around my enemies.

Melee feels fricken awesome now, with only a few hiccups interrupting the flow, though I'm not 100% sure if it's more effective or not, but I can use the slide attack a dozen times on the same enemy within a few seconds, so there's that.

 

I'm sort of with the crowd that feels 100% infinite blocking isn't as OP as it sounds, considering you can't get anything done just by blocking, but perhaps there does need to be some sort of limit.

If I were to tweak blocking to be roughly the same, I'd try and target some sense of realism, no matter how fast we swing a blade, if there's enough bullets flying at you there's bound to be some getting through, and some attacks would just carry too much force to block so casually.

 

So if there were some sort of internal timer on blocking that worked between milliseconds, and a damage cap on each individual shot, you could control how many bullets a given weapon can block per second, and how much damage each block can soak.

Maybe a heavy weapon blocks less bullets but soaks more damage, and stuff like dual daggers blocks tonnes more but soaks less damage.

And then you could turn channeling into perfect block that ignores the timer and damage cap, rather than some weird, weak jedi-bullet deflection.

[Fifield]

Great ideas, blazinvire.

Melee is still seriously underpowered, being completely situational when enemies are over level 70 for ~90% of frames -- with such situations being rare.  Hence I think melee mode needs defensive buffs.  More info here:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/500793-melee-after-the-removal-of-stamina/page-2#entry5607039

Edited August 4, 2015 by Fifield