Melee weapons that ignore armor need balance

[herflik]

I just used a build with all 25% AP/Electric, with one 40% (combined).

Also another build with 15% crit chance, rest into crit damage (98-100% per slot, which isn't even the max you can achieve).

Both oneshot everything. TTK=instant. I'm killing guys as fast as I can fire (including across maps).

You can throw any rank 30 quality mod on guns and give them far better output than melee weapons.

Why are you still talking about guns in melee weapons topic? First balance melee between themself, then balance guns to melee.

Also relaying on 25% crit rate or so isnt actualy one shooting but 1/4 chance to do so.

[t3st]

Why are you still talking about guns in melee weapons topic?

Because I don't look at things narrowly and try to have a broad perspective of game balance.

Also relaying on 25% crit rate or so isnt actualy one shooting but 1/4 chance to do so.

Each individual pellet is capable of crit, I just had one that did 900 damage.

As for the Gorgon, I don't know it's exact spun up firing rate, but it's something insane - making it a rapid firing AOE shotgun/sniper rifle.

If you're going to doubt a rank 30 gun's killing speed, feel free to add me (click on the leaderboards). We can do some Pluto races where you use a melee weapon with "OP armor ignore" ;)

Edited January 21, 2013 by t3st

[Namacyst]

You should look at this thread for what is it then: about MELEE Weapons. -.-

[STARSBarry]

rather than nerfing the few effective end game melle weps we have how about buffing other weps to sit besides them?

they are currently an effective tool.... that is good.... why nerf them back to near uselessness late game like they where before the armor ignore buff?

will I just have to go back to my HEK and Gorgon late game.... LIKE EVERY OTHER PLAYER?

[herflik]

Because I don't look at things narrowly and try to have a broad perspective of game balance.

Really? I find it quite the opposite. This game is disbalanced by many factors, mods are badly balanced, guns to melee is badly balanced, weapon inside their own types are unbalanced. Do something part by part, because if you want to do everything at one time you end up like the game is now.

Each individual pellet is capable of crit, I just had one that did 900 damage.

As for the Gorgon, I don't know it's exact spun up firing rate, but it's something insane - making it a rapid firing AOE shotgun/sniper rifle.

If you're going to doubt a rank 30 gun's killing speed, feel free to add me (click on the leaderboards). We can do some Pluto races where you use a melee weapon with "OP armor ignore" ;)

Thats true for shotgun, but you cant really snipe with it, cant you, so you wont really get so big range adventage above melee like you state. If you need to spin up gorgon its no longer single shot.

One shoting means that you can kill it with single bullet/use, and since you want to compare it to melee weapons you should add some range factor to it. Shotguns dont really have so big range, where gorgon dont have so big dmg per shot.

And ofc guns will TTK vs melee, but because of the range not actualy DPS.

Additionaly your gun vs melee is made mostly because of bad mod balancing, not so much because of the gun itself.

In hybrid game like this you should have limited ammo, to force users and make them think where to use it, rather than spam it all time, find it everywhere and use shop for resupply. Thats one problem of this game, and there is lot of others. To many noob friendly games these times, to easy to abuse the mechanics.

Edited January 22, 2013 by herflik

[lamiadomina]

Additionaly your gun vs melee is made mostly because of bad mod balancing, not so much because of the gun itself.

In hybrid game like this you should have limited ammo, to force users and make them think where to use it, rather than spam it all time, find it everywhere and use shop for resupply. Thats one problem of this game, and there is lot of others. To many noob friendly games these times, to easy to abuse the mechanics.

Yeah, uh. Limiting ammo to the point of forced melee would make this game suck, hardcore. There may be a few valid issues with the fact that guns specialized to big close-range DPS make them obsolete, but melee weapons serve a valid purpose on non-shotgun builds - as a sniper I actually prefer to stun with my sidearm and finish with my melee if I have to engage at close range. If you want to argue that it should be rebalanced to play more like the opening game did, when firefights could be pretty gruelling and closing to melee actually represented an extremely powerful move if you could land it, you might have a point - I did kind of have fun with that style of gameplay. But turning bullets into a resource too precious to even use is a terrible idea. Guns present a hugely greater variety of tactics than melee does and forcing players' focus onto a gameplay element without enough variety to carry the game would make the game boring.

Regardless, I don't think most of us have much of a problem chaining charge hits. If you want to just mash attack and be effective against all targets then the Fragor is there to support your playstyle. There's no reason every other weapon needs to play to the same style.

[t3st]

You should look at this thread for what is it then: about MELEE Weapons. -.-

Right. And this is a game with mixed combat - having any meaningful discussion on melee weapons is impossible without going into their relative power to guns.

Thats true for shotgun, but you cant really snipe with it

I snipe with my shotgun. I take out crowds from rifle ranges, in fact.

If you need to spin up gorgon its no longer single shot.

I never said the Gorgon was oneshot, simply that the TTK in melee range is far better than melee itself. Guns don't have startup/recovery frames, are instant hit. Thought I was clear about that. If you've played any other fighting/melee games in your life, you'd know how important that is. With pierce I can vaporize a thick crowd of enemies (I don't normally run this since things die so quickly anyway), while a melee player is still recovering from a single charge.

Additionaly your gun vs melee is made mostly because of bad mod balancing, not so much because of the gun itself.

Pretty much any rank 30 mods make guns far better than melee, so I'll have to disagree.

In hybrid game like this you should have limited ammo, to force users and make them think where to use it, rather than spam it all time, find it everywhere and use shop for resupply.

I don't believe in limiting ammo to balance weapons - especially not in an over-the-top stylish action game like this. This isn't DayZ, or even COD.

Do something part by part, because if you want to do everything at one time you end up like the game is now.

Nah, I refuse to be blinded by the words "armor ignore", failing to understand how all the game mechanics interact with each other. At this point all melee weapons should either ignore armor, or have partial armor piercing so the damage disparity between guns vs blunts vs swords isn't so great. Blades should get defensive buffs/abilities too. Melee in general needs to be more viable so I'm not forced to use only my primary for optimal efficiency.

Edited January 22, 2013 by t3st

[lamiadomina]

Nah, I refuse to be blinded by the words "armor ignore", failing to understand how all the game mechanics interact with each other. At this point all melee weapons should either ignore armor, or have partial armor piercing so the damage disparity between guns vs blunts vs swords isn't so great. Blades should get defensive buffs/abilities too. Melee in general needs to be more viable so I'm not forced to use only my primary for optimal efficiency.

For reference, what -is- your primary? If it's a shotgun or even Gorgon it's obviously going to thrive at the same range your melee does and step on its toes, some. I'm not saying melee is perfectly balanced right now but that is an issue that needs to be considered - if you could rebalance guns and melee, how -would- shotguns look in your ideal game?

I would tend to agree that only a pretty limited subset of melee weapons are getting use right now. I actually like having my dual skana for infested missions, but furax and fragor definitely dominate Grineer and Corpus runs (I liked what I saw of the plasma sword's stats but I have not been able to get my hands on one. These drop rates are ridiculous). The first question re: Balancing that, though, would be what is actually so wrong with having to combo light-heavy to damage Grineer in melee? Late game the massively higher charge damage on the furax makes it an obvious choice over a sword and that's something that definitely should be rebalanced, but supposing that was rebalanced - what is the issue? It gives any melee weapon a valid way to kill armored targets and at that point I honestly think people crying about the armor bypassing damage on blunt weapons are making a way bigger deal out of that than the role it actually plays in the game. If you want to mash light attacks the Fragor is there for that. I maintain that it is not a problem if other weapons don't behave just like the Fragor.

[Namacyst]

Right. And this is a game with mixed combat - having any meaningful discussion on melee weapons is impossible without going into their relative power to guns.

This... thread...is....about....melee....weapons.

Can someone please paint a picture for this guy regarding the Thread-Topic? Thanks.

*sigh*

Right now Melee comes into play when:

-you specialized your WF for it

-no more bullets

-slide-slashing room entrances

-jump-attack to knock down a boss

-you-know-the-enemy-has-little-hp-left-and-stands-right-infront-of-you-so-why-not?

-you have a big hammer and like to watch something fly

Melee is no alternative to shooting stuff... and it should not be.. thats why we have 2 guns and only one Stick/Knife/Hammer/Axe/Sword/whatever and as long as there is no Warframe specifically fitted for Melee it will never be. But in the end it is one thing... fun! And why should'nt we have equally fun with our choice of melee weapon... if its knife or sword or Hammer. Solution dictates diversity, special attributes per weapon type on a basis of equal attack power and a choice of style for every player to be happy with. That's how i see it.

[lamiadomina]

I actually did kind of find the very early game intersting, where the mk1 Braton was kind of slow to score kills and melee -was- a very powerful but risky ploy. But there are serious issues inherent in balancing the game while preserving that style of play if you're going to allow the player any real variety in weapons - like above, how do you balance a shotgun which is also supposed to be a powerful but risky close-range weapon? What about a sniper rifle that by definition needs to be about killing the target in one or only a few shots? I'm not saying it's impossible, but I definitely don't know how right now. The answer in those cases might involve giving sniper rifles more substantial disadvantages at closer ranges and shotguns... I don't know? If anybody can think how that would actually be possible I'd be interested to hear. Really.

Actually, one last point here, in response to the earlier post claiming all melee weapons should get armor piercing, and toward the idea that all melee weapons should be able to spam light and damage armored targets in general: At present, you can make the case for a Furax, dark/plasma sword or Fragor as all valid melee options for armor. While this does leave out a great number of the weapons in the game, if every weapon got armor negating how long do you think it would take to have this same conversation about everybody abusing the heat sword? Seriously, think about that. Unless melee weapons somehow all got much more distinct movesets you'd potentially be creating even less diversity in actually good options.

Edited January 22, 2013 by lamiadomina

[t3st]

For reference, what -is- your primary? If it's a shotgun or even Gorgon it's obviously going to thrive at the same range your melee does and step on its toes, some. I'm not saying melee is perfectly balanced right now but that is an issue that needs to be considered - if you could rebalance guns and melee, how -would- shotguns look in your ideal game?

I have a R30 Hek, Gorgon, Snipetron, while currently levelling my Burston and Latron. If you want more detailed stats, click "Top Players" in game, and look me up.

The early game/tutorial used to sell the game to new players had the best combat balance. Melee is king at close range, so it's efficient to want to close. You don't sacrifice utility and survivability for it to have any effect. End-game combat shouldn't be any different.

Rather than suggest any shotgun nerfs, melee should scale up along with guns. Eg. Add one target per weapon range upgrade on all melee weapons, so they can be used for crowd control, as guns start getting crazy with mod stacks. Melee should always have the best damage, having the highest risk. Players should also be rewarded and encouraged to use melee with resource gains, so they don't just shoot everything (as it worked in DE's previous melee/shooting game The Darkness). I don't want to fill the entire page, so I'll just link: https://forums.warfr...-to-improve-it/

Melee is no alternative to shooting stuff... and it should not be..

So you couldn't care less about game balance or the concepts of risk vs reward. Right.

Actually, one last point here, in response to the earlier post claiming all melee weapons should get armor piercing, and toward the idea that all melee weapons should be able to spam light and damage armored targets in general: At present, you can make the case for a Furax, dark/plasma sword or Fragor as all valid melee options for armor. While this does leave out a great number of the weapons in the game, if every weapon got armor negating how long do you think it would take to have this same conversation about everybody abusing the heat sword? Seriously, think about that. Unless melee weapons somehow all got much more distinct movesets you'd potentially be creating even less diversity in actually good options.

Devs change the firing rate and base dmg of a bullet by 5, and call it a new gun. Giving AP percentages to bladed weapons is creating diversity. The majority of the melee cast being completely ineffectual against everything except the weakest enemy in the game, isn't diverse. Really though, aside from range and speed, specific movesets and special abilities are the best way to make weapons feel unique. The Cronus has a better AOE kd, Heat sword does a flame AOE, Fragor knocks down on verticals and always staggers - each melee weapon should have a number of unique attributes.

As for people potentially abusing the heat sword, or any melee weapon for that matter - heh. That'll be the day.

Edited January 22, 2013 by t3st

[lamiadomina]

More unique movesets would be cool to see, yeah, although the nature of a fast paced 3D game tends to mean it's impossible to outright make it a fighting game. The stuff you're suggesting would probably be implementable though - I'd be all for that (and please, please stop giving lategame enemies such absurd HP that melee kills become impossible. The spike between Pluto and... anywhere else on the map is just insane). You're still wrong when you say ammo should be so limited that it forces melee just because of sustain issues, not because it's actually the optimal strategy against a given encounter. The early game you're talking about managed to encourage it by making it an actually powerful strategy, not by making it a substandard but necessary strategy because guns were too precious to waste. The late game shouldn't do differently.

The outputs people are quoting from builds stacked with heavy melee mods might actually be contributing to the problem - see my previous post about disparity in mod drops muddying the water to the point that it's not actually clear which group the game is being "balanced" for. If some players are dealing 1000% melee damage then content is probably going to keep being put out that requires 1000% melee damage to be effective and ruling it out as a strategy for anybody else. The best thing for melee really might be to get rid of a lot of those mods alltogether so that we can reestablish some kind of an accepted baseline for the average player's melee damage and calibrate the balance to that, not to the ultraspecialized few.

You keep repeating that bladed weapons are "useless" against armored targets and possibly outside of Pluto that still doesn't seem reasonable. I did fine staggering with light and killing with heavy with my Skana and Cronus and still use my Furax's heavy almost exclusively.

edit: Re - crowd control. Maybe the air smash AoE all weapons get could be buffed rather a lot? I think you mentioned giving some weapons like the heat sword elemental damage on it, which would be just splendidly brutal, but for the others what if melee at least got a ground execution move so you could actually follow up the knockdown? You have a point in how poor melee crowd control is right now, even on weapons like the scindo and dual skana that supposedly specialize it. Those were nice versus infested pre-Pluto but Pluto infested just have way too much HP to even try it with. I take this moment to reiterate that an HP arms race is not the right way to make this game more challenging.

Edited January 22, 2013 by lamiadomina

[t3st]

You keep repeating that bladed weapons are "useless" against armored targets and possibly outside of Pluto that still doesn't seem reasonable. I did fine staggering with light and killing with heavy with my Skana and Cronus and still use my Furax's heavy almost exclusively.

Right, if I have late-game gear and I'm going for power and efficiency instead of style, then it's always better to just shoot someone. I don't have to worry about staggering enemies, or charging for a melee strike, when any of my guns have near-instant TTK.

[lamiadomina]

Right, if I have late-game gear and I'm going for power and efficiency instead of style, then it's always better to just shoot someone. I don't have to worry about staggering enemies, or charging for a melee strike, when any of my guns have near-instant TTK.

That's reasonable, but that gets back to guns > melee, not blunt > blades. I don't have some of the insane pre-patch mods other people do (or just the patience to grind a full melee damage kit) so maybe I'm unqualified to comment on the light > heavy metagame resulting from only light getting frame mods, but I think we've both agreed that that's a problem that needs to be addressed or removed entirely, and even so at this point it sounds like something of a gimmick build - like you're saying yourself, melee builds just aren't very valid compared to guns.

I don't mind in principle that only the Fragor or a handfull of other weapons can be effective just spamming light, though - the idea that most weapons have to rely on a combination of moves to set up their kill strikes just lends itself to more interesting combat. As long as we're discussing what could be done with expanded movesets, maybe weapons could be given a greater variety of armor-piercing moves so that different weapons have more distinctive kill moves? I'd find that more interesting than every one of them just taking down enemies with their basic combo a la the Fragor, although it's fine if Fragor stays the way it is I guess.

But yeah, I would tend to agree that the early game was kind of better balanced, and it was cool when pulling off a heavy melee was kind of a silver-bullet move. I think a lot about the ways enemies and spawn numbers are balanced needs to change to bring that back, in addition to buffing melee in general. I still think this game would really, really suck if melee was forced just to save ammo instead of encouraged to end fights quickly.

Edit: I'm still not entirely positive how you balance shotguns so they don't entirely eclipse melee, although the way they're able to stunlock most targets implies at least some difference - if that stays in (maybe is a little magnified?) it serves to make them highly lethal against single targets but leaves room to lower the DPS at least slightly so that their kill times fall marginally below melee. In practice I'm still not sure how well this would work, though.

Edited January 23, 2013 by lamiadomina