New Melee Staggers Are Too Long, Shouldn't Be Attached to Powers

[Lemonpartydragon]

Encumbering the victim of your melee attacks sounds good in theory, and in many ways should be better than forcing the "staggered" animation to play as a form of CC. But encumbrance is such a dramatic hit to mobility both in terms of aerial maneuvers and movement speed that it really should not last as long as it does.

Obviously the point of inherent melee CC is to open a window of time in which melee players can be in damage range of their enemy, and that window should be long enough for a kill - or on tougher frames, severe damage - to occur. However, with extremely low-TTK melee weapons like the Tipedo or various heavy weapons, the window - while long enough to facilitate violence - should not be so long that the melee user receives multiple "chances" per application of the Staggered debuff. While the debuff does its job admirably - utterly castrating victim Mobility - it also lasts a painfully long time, and unless one performs the very unintuitive aim->move backwards->roll combo to perform a back handspring, being Staggered is almost certain death almost twice over. 

Just drop Staggered duration uniformly to 1s, or vary it by weapon so that ultra-heavy weapons do what they logically should and cripple the enemy more effectively.

Also, Staggered really should not be attached to abilities. Where previously skills like Slash Dash allowed for momentary interruption on which one could capitalize with CQC-appropriate weapons, for example, it now makes killing enemies completely trivial with almost anything due to the sheer duration of the debuff it applies. Let abilities like Slash Dash stagger in the "normal" or previous way.

[Nighttide77]

49 minutes ago, Lemonpartydragon said:

unless one performs the very unintuitive aim->move backwards->roll combo to perform a back handspring

So...let's say this tactic catches on and players at even the lower skilled levels just start using this counter-move by a learned reaction.  Wouldn't it make nerfing the stagger debuff almost too much?

I've had plenty of situations where I have tried to stagger debuff a player with melee, only for them to just shoot and kill me.  The only time I was mostly successful was when I used a power that incurred the debuff, but even that had a risk.

[Lemonpartydragon]

2 hours ago, Nighttide77 said:

So...let's say this tactic catches on and players at even the lower skilled levels just start using this counter-move by a learned reaction.  Wouldn't it make nerfing the stagger debuff almost too much?

I've had plenty of situations where I have tried to stagger debuff a player with melee, only for them to just shoot and kill me.  The only time I was mostly successful was when I used a power that incurred the debuff, but even that had a risk.

Even though it is functionally a form of counterplay at the moment, back handsprings do not always guarantee survival. Particularly in enclosed spaces where walls or random scenery often disrupt movement, handsprings may still fail to remove a player from a dangerous area.

With a shorter Staggered debuff duration, handsprings would be natural counterplay, giving melee users a higher incentive to employ more effective tactics like slam-attacking to guarantee harder CC.

At that point, we would just need some way for melee players to (with commensurate difficulty) ground airborne players briefly through some form of air melee.

[Nazrethim]

13 minutes ago, Lemonpartydragon said:

Even though it is functionally a form of counterplay at the moment, back handsprings do not always guarantee survival. Particularly in enclosed spaces where walls or random scenery often disrupt movement, handsprings may still fail to remove a player from a dangerous area.

And that adds a new skill to the table: Medium awareness. Many jump around like madmen without giving it much thought, proper knowledge of where you are and how can you use enviroment to your advantage should be on the curriculum of a proficient Conclave player.

13 minutes ago, Lemonpartydragon said:

With a shorter Staggered debuff duration, handsprings would be natural counterplay, giving melee users a higher incentive to employ more effective tactics like slam-attacking to guarantee harder CC.

Stagger IS the harder CC, as knockdown usually throws the target away unless you do it in a way they will be against a wall, again, medium awareness.

13 minutes ago, Lemonpartydragon said:

At that point, we would just need some way for melee players to (with commensurate difficulty) ground airborne players briefly through some form of air melee.

Landing aerial attacks on airborn players is already difficult. If anything the encumbrance should be applied on aerial attacks if both players are airborne at the moment of impact.

 

[Nighttide77]

2 hours ago, Lemonpartydragon said:

Even though it is functionally a form of counterplay at the moment, back handsprings do not always guarantee survival. Particularly in enclosed spaces where walls or random scenery often disrupt movement, handsprings may still fail to remove a player from a dangerous area.

With a shorter Staggered debuff duration, handsprings would be natural counterplay, giving melee users a higher incentive to employ more effective tactics like slam-attacking to guarantee harder CC.

At that point, we would just need some way for melee players to (with commensurate difficulty) ground airborne players briefly through some form of air melee.

Umm...melee should win in closed spaces. I'm pretty sure it's by design that a gun player cannot maneuver out of the way in narrow areas.

I really don't think slam attacks should be advocated as skillful and strategic in their current implementation. It was looked down upon when a player would just slam attack until they scored a knockdown and then smashed their victim as they got up; pretty sure that hasn't changed much.

Amongst the comments, I don't think anyone brought up how powers also come into play here. The stagger debuff doesn't keep a player from using powers (unlike how stagger used to be), so the moment they see they are debuffed, they can easily push a panic-button power like Iron Skin, Rift Walk, maybe Snow Globe, and others.

Personally, I think there just needs to be a bit more time for players to get used to figuring out how to deal with the new debuff before it is further modified.

[rockscl]

The stagger from melee can be prevented and countered, the countering is harder of course, but that is just fair for me, theres so much easy ways to screw melee players that it feels abusive to not stay in close range.

About the encumbering in powers, i think it should be shorter, that thing is overkill as several powers allow guns to be used right after the stagger is triggered.

Also, the original encumbering from ivara`s powers doesnt allow rolling anymore, that is overkill too.

Edited November 2, 2016 by rockscl

[bernad2218]

are you pythadragon


im throwing baits to get him out 

 

you cant resist this can you pytha

[Lemonpartydragon]

On 11/2/2016 at 2:09 AM, Nazrethim said:

And that adds a new skill to the table: Medium awareness. Many jump around like madmen without giving it much thought, proper knowledge of where you are and how can you use enviroment to your advantage should be on the curriculum of a proficient Conclave player.

Stagger IS the harder CC, as knockdown usually throws the target away unless you do it in a way they will be against a wall, again, medium awareness.

Landing aerial attacks on airborn players is already difficult. If anything the encumbrance should be applied on aerial attacks if both players are airborne at the moment of impact.

 

It should, and for most proficient Conclave players it is, but the maps are so littered with random crenellations, crates, crevices, and crooks that it is not always perfectly clear what will and will not arrest movement even when playing attention. If Conclave arenas got a cleanup pass from the development team, I would find this argument more compelling.

Stagger is not exactly the harder CC; the fact that it does still allow for rolling means that escape is possible, as it should be when engaging in counterplay, but currently there is a disparity in volume of action by either side in equilibrium. In many cases the escaping player must perform an unintuitive movement such as spamming rolls or handspringing multiple times for a stagger applied with one simple action, solely because of the obscene duration. And slams throwing enemies a short distance away is not really a problem; it merely creates a prerequisite for effective use that the slamming player be able to follow up - this exists in lieu of the victim having an "active" counterplay option during the duration of the knockdown.

My only concern with air attacks is the large disparity in different weapon types. It's easy to land an air melee with a scythe or glaive, but not so much with a sword or dual weapon.

On 11/2/2016 at 4:17 AM, Nighttide77 said:

Umm...melee should win in closed spaces. I'm pretty sure it's by design that a gun player cannot maneuver out of the way in narrow areas.

I really don't think slam attacks should be advocated as skillful and strategic in their current implementation. It was looked down upon when a player would just slam attack until they scored a knockdown and then smashed their victim as they got up; pretty sure that hasn't changed much.

Amongst the comments, I don't think anyone brought up how powers also come into play here. The stagger debuff doesn't keep a player from using powers (unlike how stagger used to be), so the moment they see they are debuffed, they can easily push a panic-button power like Iron Skin, Rift Walk, maybe Snow Globe, and others.

Personally, I think there just needs to be a bit more time for players to get used to figuring out how to deal with the new debuff before it is further modified.

Melee should win in enclosed spaces because the melee player is skillful, not because a debuff is long enough to punish the victim twice.

Slamming wildly is crass, I'll agree, but a large part of that comes from the AoE nature of some slams. If Staggered received a change, I think it would best be complemented by a removal of AoE modifiers on slams in Conclave so that they are all approximately Nikana range. This would make it much harder to slam-spam, but still leave slams as an option for CC.

The only panic power that activates quickly enough to deal with a low-TTK melee weapon would probably be Iron Skin. Warding Halo and Rift Walk both have long cast times, Snow Globe doesn't (as far I know) retain its "push" effect in Conclave, and powers based on invisiblity would be rather pointless. Considering that Staggered is always attached to a form of damage (except on Encumbering Arrow), the victim player is almost always going to be at an eHP deficit and using offensive powers as panic buttons will thus almost always result in death as well.

I'm open to the idea that handspringing could gradually catch on, but I still think that the implementation is a bit flawed.

 

16 hours ago, bernad2218 said:

are you pythadragon


im throwing baits to get him out

you cant resist this can you pytha

I am not, but I imagine this bait will be effective.

[bernad2218]

6 hours ago, Lemonpartydragon said:

It should, and for most proficient Conclave players it is, but the maps are so littered with random crenellations, crates, crevices, and crooks that it is not always perfectly clear what will and will not arrest movement even when playing attention. If Conclave arenas got a cleanup pass from the development team, I would find this argument more compelling.

Stagger is not exactly the harder CC; the fact that it does still allow for rolling means that escape is possible, as it should be when engaging in counterplay, but currently there is a disparity in volume of action by either side in equilibrium. In many cases the escaping player must perform an unintuitive movement such as spamming rolls or handspringing multiple times for a stagger applied with one simple action, solely because of the obscene duration. And slams throwing enemies a short distance away is not really a problem; it merely creates a prerequisite for effective use that the slamming player be able to follow up - this exists in lieu of the victim having an "active" counterplay option during the duration of the knockdown.

My only concern with air attacks is the large disparity in different weapon types. It's easy to land an air melee with a scythe or glaive, but not so much with a sword or dual weapon.

Melee should win in enclosed spaces because the melee player is skillful, not because a debuff is long enough to punish the victim twice.

Slamming wildly is crass, I'll agree, but a large part of that comes from the AoE nature of some slams. If Staggered received a change, I think it would best be complemented by a removal of AoE modifiers on slams in Conclave so that they are all approximately Nikana range. This would make it much harder to slam-spam, but still leave slams as an option for CC.

The only panic power that activates quickly enough to deal with a low-TTK melee weapon would probably be Iron Skin. Warding Halo and Rift Walk both have long cast times, Snow Globe doesn't (as far I know) retain its "push" effect in Conclave, and powers based on invisiblity would be rather pointless. Considering that Staggered is always attached to a form of damage (except on Encumbering Arrow), the victim player is almost always going to be at an eHP deficit and using offensive powers as panic buttons will thus almost always result in death as well.

I'm open to the idea that handspringing could gradually catch on, but I still think that the implementation is a bit flawed.

 

I am not, but I imagine this bait will be effective.

it is indeed

[(PSN)Double991]

Conclave Changes & Fixes

• Reduced the severity of the Mobility debuff of Stagger in Conclave.

I did feel like it was a little much. We don't need the melee to be too easy.

Edited November 4, 2016 by (PS4)Double991

[MobyTheDuck]

Does it even matters if all people use is either the Kittag or Glaives, always doing the same slide/spin move that is basically an instakill?

[bernad2218]

4 hours ago, MobyTheDuck said:

Does it even matters if all people use is either the Kittag or Glaives, always doing the same slide/spin move that is basically an instakill?

thats stupid if you get hit by a ground slide

ESPECIALLY a jat ground slide