Berserker (and now Naramon) has forever ruined the design of melee weapons

[Aktriaz]

Almost every single Prime Melee Weapon is crit-capable (15% is the minimum for a crit-build typically). The only exceptions are Fang Prime, Glaive Prime and for the most part Bo Prime. And those weapons are sadly sub-par. Everybody think of your favorite/most used Melee weapon. Chances are it's a crit weapon.

Berserker is the Meta. And now we have Naramon's invisibility that is procc'd by crits. It seems every new melee weapon that is added these days has to have at least 15% crit or people just label it Master fodder.

Yes, I'm making this thread because of Galatine Prime. The normal galatine was not crit (and thus berserker) viable, and thus I expected it's prime variant to be a high-damage/status weapon. You know, to spice things up a little. Give the top-tier weapons some diversity. Have there still be a reason to use ScindoP/War over Galatine Prime. But no. Same run of the mill changes. More damage and crit. Because, really, that's all people want.

So why am I against this? Why do I care? I use berserker a lot on many weapons, so why would I complain?
Because we have nearly identical function in all the end game weapons, there is no build diveristy, and a clear hierarchy of which weapons flat-out outperform others.
Most Axes/Greatswords < Scindo Prime < War < Galatine Prime
There is nothing Scindo Prime has over War (aside from  mostly slash and impact sucks), and nothing War has over Galatine Prime. And they were released in that order. Power creep much?

Am I the only one who thinks this is bad?
These days, crit on melee weapons is just a thing you use to trigger berserker, and now recently Naramon's invisibility.
Back before Berserker and Naramon, people actually modded for crit as a source of raw damage. "Crit" actually meant something. It meant a semi-rare occurrence of massive damage. There were reasons to pick a non-crit weapon over a crit-ing weapon and vice-versa. When berserker was added, that all went away.

I think berserker needs a change. I think it needs to either be removed (and weapons that were designed with it in mind re-balanced) or changed to no longer be tied to crit (tie it to combo-multiplier perhaps? or maybe even triggered by kills?). Naramon's shadowstep could also use a similar change.

Of course, you're free to disagree with me. I'm not trying to speak for everyone. I feel like berserker has ruined the design of melee weapons, and I welcome challenges to that statement.

Edited August 23, 2016 by Actriaz

[bowiespoon]

I agree, crit builds have dominated warframe for to long. We need to make other playstyles stronger.

[Torhque]

The problem is the melee system itself. 

Do you ever feel like you're racing the animations to pull off your desired combo? 

I wish we'd switch to a light attack/heavy attack system like other fast-paced action games utilize (Metal Gear: Revengeance, Ninja Gaiden, etc.)

Then weapon-specific combos or attack patterns would make weapon categories and types actually stand apart from one another

Edited August 24, 2016 by Torhque
Autocorrect

[(PSN)Asdeft]

Lesion is a monster in high levels without any crit mods. I would like more status weapons to be like it, too. 

Edited August 23, 2016 by (PS4)Asdeft

[PoisonHD]

I am fine with crit weapons being released. None of my favorite Melee weapons are them though.

The Orthos P, and the Lesion are my two favorite melee weapons at the moment, as well as the Lacera.

 

If you check my profile, my must used Melee is the Scindo P, but in all honesty I have not used it in months. Personally, I would've preferred the Galantine P as a status weapon, but we already got that in the form of the Tigris P. So I am not really upset over the lack of diversity. 

Edited August 23, 2016 by PoisonHD

[Dragazer]

Melee was and still is inferior to guns, crits, berserker, and Naramon just closed the gap a bit.

I personally think those do not need to change, atm they're the only things melee has to getting anywhere close to competing with guns.

Edited August 23, 2016 by Dragazer

[Vasault]

2 minutes ago, Torhque said:

The problem is the melee system itself. 

Do you ever feel like you're racing the animations to pull off your desired combo? 

I wish we'd switch to a light attack/heavy attack system like other fast-paced action games utilize (Metal Gear: Revengeance, DMC series, etc.)

Then weapon-specific combos or attack pattern effects would make weapon categories and types actually stand apart from one another

this is actually that most people don't take serious, what's the point on having great animations when most people have like >2.0 in atk speed, and the animations have absolutely no importance, i recently played with a nekros prime and his galatine prime, he was so fast, that i couldn't enjoy the mission

[Aktriaz]

1 minute ago, Dragazer said:

Melee was and still is inferior to guns, crits, berserker, and Naramon just closed the gap. I personally don't think those need to change, atm they're the only things melee has to getting anywhere close to competing with guns.

Then isn't that still a problem?
The issue I'm talking about is that Crit weapons are just better than non-crit weapons BECAUSE of berserker and naramon are only triggered by crit.
Instead of leaving crit/berseker/naramon the way it is, why don't we close that gap and make non-crit weapons equally viable?

You completely missed the point.

[Dragazer]

2 minutes ago, Actriaz said:

Then isn't that still a problem?
The issue I'm talking about is that Crit weapons are just better than non-crit weapons BECAUSE of berserker and naramon are only triggered by crit.
Instead of leaving crit/berseker/naramon the way it is, why don't we close that gap and make non-crit weapons equally viable?

You completely missed the point.

Primed fury maxed out gives 55% attack speed, versus berserker, it is only a 20% difference in speed at full stacks. With Maiming strike, any weapon can trigger berserker or naramon.

[Luther848]

8 minutes ago, Dragazer said:

Primed fury maxed out gives 55% attack speed, versus berserker, it is only a 20% difference in speed at full stacks. With Maiming strike, any weapon can trigger berserker or naramon.

Primed Fury can be used by crit weapons to futher increase their speed and you need to sacrifice a slot and build for crits with Maiming Strike for weapons that aren't made for it. Quite frankly all non-crit weapons can do is try to imitate crit weapons.

Edited August 23, 2016 by Luther848

[Aktriaz]

4 minutes ago, Dragazer said:

Primed fury maxed out gives 55% attack speed, versus berserker, it is only a 20% difference in speed at full stacks. With Maiming strike, any weapon can trigger berserker or naramon.

That still doesn't fix the problem. Maiming Strike is only obtained from Acolytes, so good luck to new players trying to get that.
Plus, you still have to sacrifice a valuable slot to fit those mods, and most melee weapons don't have enough damage to justify losing damage for it.

20% crit is usually high enough to trigger berserker normally without True Steel or Maiming Strike, so those weapons don't have to sacrifice anything. And there's nothing stopping people from having Primed Fury AND Berserker. Hell, that's what I do on most heavy weapons. Primed Fury, Pressure Point, Lifestrike, Berserker, and 4x elemental mods. Same build copy+pasted.

My problem isn't that certain weapons can't use Berserker/Naramon (the examples you gave prove otherwise), it's that all the "Best" Melee weapons are Crit weapons.
That's my problem. Crit is the Meta and the direction the Devs go in order to make a weapon "good".

[Gelkor]

Blood Rush means every weapon is a crit weapon.

[Drufo]

41 minutes ago, Actriaz said:

tie it to combo-multiplier perhaps? 

I actually think this since the introduction of blood rush. it would make more sense and no weapon would be "berserker-able" more than the others 

[Aktriaz]

1 minute ago, Gelkor said:

Blood Rush means every weapon is a crit weapon.

True. But some are better crit weapons, and thus better weapons overall.
Why is this so hard for some people to understand? Just because you can use Maiming Strike or Blood Rush to make any weapon a crit weapon doesn't change the fact that all the best melee weapons are CRIT WEAPONS. Plus you still have to use up extra slots for non-crit-ing weapons just to make them reliably crit, while actual crit weapons don't.

[Gelkor]

If you aren't already using Blood Rush on your crit weapons to get red crits you're doing it wrong. Blood Rush Body Count already broke the meta, now you mod every weapon the same, and certain weapons having higher base crit only barely make them better, and sometimes they don't depending on how you use them. See: Orthos Prime.

[Genitive]

I think it's not the problem that crit weapons are overpowered, but rather everything else is lacking. Like we have red crits, but no over-100% status effects. The same goes for focus. There is shadow step, bot not similar effect for status.

Adding mods like Blood Rush and Body Count was a right decision, but there is more to be done to close the gap between crit and noncrit weapons. Like maybe making Body Count innate for all the weapons, rather than a mod, so we don't waste mod slot for something that can be considered an obligatory mod now.

In short, I would leave crit weapons as they are, but add more depth and power for status and pure damage weapons. Just for the sake of variety.

And because Lacera is great.

[Trichouette]

In my opinion you took the problem the wrong way... berserker doesn't ruin the game, crit features do.

It's so OP and easy to get crits, that everybody run berserker.

Imagine if crit were only attainable in X way, like performing a combo, maybe berserker wouldn't be so used, just like I know for sure that most players don't use charged attacks...

[Channington]

Since crit weapons can go over 100% while status weapons cap at 100% makes it really unfair over status weapons.

They could add like a type of red status proc to make status viable aswell as crit.

They should also make a status variant of a berserker too.

[Aktriaz]

2 minutes ago, Genitive said:

I think it's not the problem that crit weapons are overpowered, but rather everything else is lacking. Like we have red crits, but no over-100% status effects. The same goes for focus. There is shadow step, bot not similar effect for status.

Adding mods like Blood Rush and Body Count was a right decision, but there is more to be done to close the gap between crit and noncrit weapons. Like maybe making Body Count innate for all the weapons, rather than a mod, so we don't waste mod slot for something that can be considered an obligatory mod now.

In short, I would leave crit weapons as they are, but add more depth and power for status and pure damage weapons. Just for the sake of variety.

And because Lacera is great.

That is also a valid suggestion and I support it. Giving more reasons to build into status and have melee weapons designed towards it is what we need more of. Also some pure-damage melee's would be welcome.

What I want is diversity. I don't want a linear hierarchy of bad-to-good weapons, like what we have now.

[Slaviar]

54 minutes ago, Dragazer said:

Melee was and still is inferior to guns, crits, berserker, and Naramon just closed the gap a bit.

I personally think those do not need to change, atm they're the only things melee has to getting anywhere close to competing with guns.

Exactly.

When you compare melee to guns it's vastly (and I mean vastly) inferior to guns

[DeMeritus]

On 8/23/2016 at 10:03 PM, bowiespoon said:

I agree, crit builds have dominated warframe for to long. We need to make other playstyles stronger.

Historically, this tends to manifest as DE nerfing popular builds into the ground with nothing equivalent to replace it, at best a bland alternative that doesn't scale is presented.

Status builds and such are really 'meh' most of the time, and it's very unlikely that DE is going to buff that or anything similar to something on par with current crit builds.  Just look at how status proc damage is calculated and you'll see why.  Compared to crit, it's generally kind of... let's just say bad, so as to avoid vulgar language.

At best, status is useful in conjunction with crit, as some of the status effect damage is based off of your base damage, which is multiplied by your crit bonus for the base calculations on the damage a stus effect does when proccing.

Though again, crit ends up being the winner here.  Seems you can't really get around that.

Anyone using builds that work well, which aren't based on crits tends to not share, and keeps things quiet so that fun stuff doesn't get nerfed due to public outcry.

If you come up witha  creative, fun build, then at best you can only enjoy it alone, or share it with your friends and risk the build being ruined shortly thereafter.  So there's little incentive to really do much along those lines, unless you're willing to see your efforts nullified in the next hotfix.

Apropos OP's talk about berserker...  What about a similar mod that triggers off of status proc instead of crit?

Edited August 25, 2016 by DeMeritus

[Darkvramp]

Part of the issue with status is that there is not a regular mod in the game that is not a dual stat mod that give you a reasonable amount of status, crit mods give you 60%, status mods give you 15% or something close to that number.

[Fuemego]

1 hour ago, Actriaz said:

Almost every single Prime Melee Weapon is crit-capable (15% is the minimum for a crit-build typically). The only exceptions are Fang Prime, Glaive Prime and for the most part Bo Prime. And those weapons are sadly sub-par. Everybody think of your favorite/most used Melee weapon. Chances are it's a crit weapon.

Berserker is the Meta. And now we have Naramon's invisibility that is procc'd by crits. It seems every new melee weapon that is added these days has to have at least 15% crit or people just label it Master fodder.

Yes, I'm making this thread because of Galatine Prime. The normal galatine was not crit (and thus berserker) viable, and thus I expected it's prime variant to be a high-damage/status weapon. You know, to spice things up a little. Give the top-tier weapons some diversity. Have there still be a reason to use ScindoP/War over Galatine Prime. But no. Same run of the mill changes. More damage and crit. Because, really, that's all people want.

So why am I against this? Why do I care? I use berserker a lot on many weapons, so why would I complain?
Because we have nearly identical function in all the end game weapons, there is no build diveristy, and a clear hierarchy of which weapons flat-out outperform others.
Most Axes/Greatswords < Scindo Prime < War < Galatine Prime
There is nothing Scindo Prime has over War (aside from  mostly slash and impact sucks), and nothing War has over Galatine Prime. And they were released in that order. Power creep much?

Am I the only one who thinks this is bad?
These days, crit on melee weapons is just a thing you use to trigger berserker, and now recently Naramon's invisibility.
Back before Berserker and Naramon, people actually modded for crit as a source of raw damage. "Crit" actually meant something. It meant a semi-rare occurrence of massive damage. There were reasons to pick a non-crit weapon over a crit-ing weapon and vice-versa. When berserker was added, that all went away.

I think berserker needs a change. I think it needs to either be removed (and weapons that were designed with it in mind re-balanced) or changed to no longer be tied to crit (tie it to combo-multiplier perhaps? or maybe even triggered by kills?). Naramon's shadowstep could also use a similar change.

Of course, you're free to disagree with me. I'm not trying to speak for everyone. I feel like berserker has ruined the design of melee weapons, and I welcome challenges to that statement.

What about playstyles and preferences? Not saying I agree or disagree with you, but would you like it if someone decided to suggest the higher ups to take away your favorite mods? I'm sure many people use Berserk, Blood Rush and Body Count because they enjoy those mods on their weapons. Diversity? What about common interest? There's always some sort of diversity, whether it be through inaccessibility or dislike for in-game melee weapons. Why do you care how people are making their builds? If everyone wants to use said weapon, it's their choice right? Taking away those mods would basically be throwing up the middle finger to people's builds, saying, "Find a new way to kill." Why not make more options instead of deleting some?

Edited August 23, 2016 by Fuemego

[taiiat]

nah, Crits were still superior on Melee Weapons (any Weapon) before Berserker existed too. you still dealt more overall Damage with those Melee Weapons either way.

for Melee, this wouldn't be as large a problem if Melee wasn't so one note and lacking any mechanics other than button mashing.

[Torhque]

28 minutes ago, Vasault said:

this is actually that most people don't take serious, what's the point on having great animations when most people have like >2.0 in atk speed, and the animations have absolutely no importance, i recently played with a nekros prime and his galatine prime, he was so fast, that i couldn't enjoy the mission

Exactly. You can forget trying to execute any E, E, E combos (you can completely disregard the ones with Pauses) unless you map your melee button to the Scroll Wheel or set up a Macro with your mouse's software. 

You can easily remove the attack rate mods (Fury, Berserker, etc.) so that you can reliably perform the desired combos, but it would seriously detriment your combat effectiveness (which is totally backwards if you think about it).