Exalted Weapons vs Normal Weapons, Why bother?

[achromos]

Exalted Melee Weapons, like especially Primal Fury, but also including Razorwing(Diwata), Hysteria, and even excaliburs Exalted blade (The reason why they are called "Exalted Weapons/modes"), what's so good about them damage wise vs regular melee weapons?:

Valkyr's hysteria gives you invincibility

Excaliburs Exalted blade gives you a 'ranged melee' wave

Titania's Razorwing gives you more survivability unless you go melee(Which is usually suicidal)

and then you have Primal Fury

Primal Fury which very Temporarily extends itself and swiftly (feels like the blink of an eye)  Shrinks back down to 'normal' range.  However you are giving up something in order to utilize these abilities, Energy Per Second and out of all of them Wukong's Exalted Melee weapon changes the game the least.

Let's take into account the Meta Melee weapons or just weapons with obscene range in and of themselves, the Orthos Prime isn't alone but it is the easiest example.

Keep in mind that this is just the Orthos prime, it isn't Wukongs Primal Fury, this is just a normal weapon with Max Reach equipped.  You sacrifice nothing, no energy per second, no being at the mercy of your combo counter.

If you look closely, the range here is about a quarter shorter then the Orthos Prime, this is Wukongs Primal Fury, something that is at the mercy of the combo counter and subject to fall off if your team decides to nuke the room with their vast array of options leaving you with nothing to upkeep your combo counter.  You could say "Play Solo" if you want to enjoy Primal Fury or do actual damage with your Exalted Melee weapons compared to standard top tier fully decked out melee weapons, but not allowing +Duration to effect them (Drifting Contact does FOR NOW, DE considers it a bug).  Reduces their effectiveness especially Primal Fury by a truck load and Primal Fury is the weakest of them due to this fact, the fact that a normal melee weapon that you can just pull out eclipses it.

Please DE, consider not considering Drifting Contact a bug.  I mean... Will it break the game?  If so, I don't see it.  Excalibur's Exalted blade Waves have a damage falloff, Valkyr's Hysteria has it's own mechanics to worry about in addition to having to get closer (Claw weapons), and Titania's Diwata if you aren't obscenely careful you can get swatted out of the sky.

Edited November 24, 2016 by achromos

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

Titania in razor wing needs to be able to roll, evade better. Your life is effectively over when a bombard missile heads your way, as you slowly try to veer off to the side and hope it misses and doesnt come back....i mean you can pop out and try to do a quick roll, but the lovely thing about bombards is that by the time you've put all this effort into avoiding one, there are even more! And more bombards! And you cant move anywhere but up and down and forward at a super slow pace as if you have nowhere you need to be.

 

[Jackviator]

This.

All they gotta do to fix it is let the Acolyte mods and Drifting Contact affect them. That's it. That's all it takes.

Plus, I imagine a large portion of the player base doesn't even know that they DON'T affect the exalted weapons, because it is stated literally nowhere in the game that for whatever reason, those particular mods don't affect them.

[RealPandemonium]

Shadow Debt mods are OP, that's all. 

[achromos]

38 minutes ago, Jackviator said:

This.

All they gotta do to fix it is let the Acolyte mods and Drifting Contact affect them. That's it. That's all it takes.

Plus, I imagine a large portion of the player base doesn't even know that they DON'T affect the exalted weapons, because it is stated literally nowhere in the game that for whatever reason, those particular mods don't affect them.

Exactly what I was thinking and being honest about it if all they cared about was balance then why are standard weapons much more powerful and require no upkeep?

[achromos]

2 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:

Shadow Debt mods are OP, that's all. 

Giving the Exalted modes +10 or +12 Duration to their combo counter breaks the game, then?

[Birdframe_Prime]

I kind of want to agree, and I kind of don't.

Exalted weapons may appear to be weaker than the meta melee weapons, but think about it; can a Blood Rush/Body Count combo deal the same damage after a five-wave break in Defense? Or through the wave gap on Interception? No. You have to build up that combo counter again, and again, and again. In fact, the second that you miss that 12 second window, you lose all your damage and have to start over.

I know that a good player can get combo counters for an hour or more (my longest is 1 hour 3 minutes on Mot before my frame fell over, if I can do that, a good player can do better), but here's the thing:

Exalted mode is like any other ability, it does the job right out of the box. Instantly you have better damage and other effects based off the ability for as long as you have the energy to power it. From wave 1 to wave 100, it's the same boost, and in many mission modes it can simply out-perform a regular weapon due to the simple fact that many modes force you to lose your combo counter anyway.

It balances out across the game. That's why Exalted weapons work, because there's so many cases where the meta builds will fail you.

1 hour ago, achromos said:

Giving the Exalted modes +10 or +12 Duration to their combo counter breaks the game, then?

Acolyte mods are more than just the Blood Rush and Body Count; giving them +135% crit chance every level of counter does quite a bit, as you can guess, but what about bonus status chance for that counter (inflicting 100% chance of Bleed or Gas procs is fairly lethal at high level), or maybe giving guaranteed 90% base crit chance on slide attacks? And that's just the ones that work off Melee, there's tons for Primary and Secondary that don't work with Peacemaker, Artemis Bow and the Dex Pixia, because those would be really be breaking into the power creep section of the argument.

Besides, it links back to my point about them being abilities; a regular combo counter means that the single ability doesn't eclipse all the other abilities the frame has, getting you to use all aspects of the warframe in concert, not just (in this case literally) pressing 4 to win. They need to act like abilities, not like your regular melee and firearm weapons, despite being literal replacements for those weapons. It's just very difficult to walk that balance, and some of them do fall a little short on performance because of it.

[achromos]

2 hours ago, Thaylien said:

I kind of want to agree, and I kind of don't.

Exalted weapons may appear to be weaker than the meta melee weapons, but think about it; can a Blood Rush/Body Count combo deal the same damage after a five-wave break in Defense? Or through the wave gap on Interception? No. You have to build up that combo counter again, and again, and again. In fact, the second that you miss that 12 second window, you lose all your damage and have to start over.

I know that a good player can get combo counters for an hour or more (my longest is 1 hour 3 minutes on Mot before my frame fell over, if I can do that, a good player can do better), but here's the thing:

Exalted mode is like any other ability, it does the job right out of the box. Instantly you have better damage and other effects based off the ability for as long as you have the energy to power it. From wave 1 to wave 100, it's the same boost, and in many mission modes it can simply out-perform a regular weapon due to the simple fact that many modes force you to lose your combo counter anyway.

It balances out across the game. That's why Exalted weapons work, because there's so many cases where the meta builds will fail you.

Acolyte mods are more than just the Blood Rush and Body Count; giving them +135% crit chance every level of counter does quite a bit, as you can guess, but what about bonus status chance for that counter (inflicting 100% chance of Bleed or Gas procs is fairly lethal at high level), or maybe giving guaranteed 90% base crit chance on slide attacks? And that's just the ones that work off Melee, there's tons for Primary and Secondary that don't work with Peacemaker, Artemis Bow and the Dex Pixia, because those would be really be breaking into the power creep section of the argument.

Besides, it links back to my point about them being abilities; a regular combo counter means that the single ability doesn't eclipse all the other abilities the frame has, getting you to use all aspects of the warframe in concert, not just (in this case literally) pressing 4 to win. They need to act like abilities, not like your regular melee and firearm weapons, despite being literal replacements for those weapons. It's just very difficult to walk that balance, and some of them do fall a little short on performance because of it.

Oh I understand about the other mods, dear god It would be broken... but all I really cared about is the Duration mods (acolyte or no).  I know that the Exalted weapons already have a certain level of strength, but it is very disheartening especially as wukong to watch a whole room get nuked while using your alt and watch your ultimate shrink down faster then a guy jumping into a pool of ice water.

Mostly this was about Wukong, the others I threw in because they are exalted modes too.  However, while they do what they do out of the box, the issue is that they fall off considerably sooner then your bog standard melee weapon decked out with mods and 90% of that would be fixed if they'd just allow for more duration because you'd be able to play in the same room as other people without having to frantically bounce about the whole room like a pinball being denied points at each section if you are a second too slow.

Granted, as you said above, good players can parkour and move efficiently enough to where they can keep their combo counter going steadily, but that 'one' slip up hurts so bad, just one slip up and you lose both damage and as wukong Range that other melee weapons (ala orthos prime) can enjoy perpetually for free especially if they build for their combo counter.  Like my test build with the Venka Prime I had both Duration mods on my weapon (just for laughs) and was able to hold my combo through the end of 5, 10, 15 waves.  I always had to cut it quite close, but I did it.

As far as power creep goes, I do agree that it needs to be kept in check but I highly doubt that letting people at the least utilize Drifting Contact would harm the meta as it stands.

[RealPandemonium]

10 hours ago, achromos said:

Giving the Exalted modes +10 or +12 Duration to their combo counter breaks the game, then?

Combo counter is an awkward, half-baked mchanic to start with.  Eliminating the need for its bandaid mods could be a step in the right direction.  

[Epsik-kun]

On 11/25/2016 at 8:42 AM, Thaylien said:

You have to build up that combo counter again

Shadow Debt melee having any problems with re-building combo counter is a myth forged by people who don't use Shadow Debt melee. For the 99% of the game content, 5 hits are enough for regular melee to outperform Exalted melee.

For the remaining 1% of the game, getting to x2.5 combo is normally enough and can be done over a span of a few seconds. By the time this combo will be required, Exalted melee will also start falling off.

[Dragazer]

On 24/11/2016 at 2:37 PM, RealPandemonium said:

Shadow Debt mods are OP, that's all. 

When compared to bull$hit like the Tonkor, Simulor, and a lot of other guns. Not even close.

Shadow debt mods were the in the right direction for melee to actually be viable against guns.

[Birdframe_Prime]

6 hours ago, Epsik-kun said:

Shadow Debt melee having any problems with re-building combo counter is a myth forged by people who don't use Shadow Debt melee. For the 99% of the game content, 5 hits are enough for regular melee to outperform Exalted melee.

I have to dispute, I just went and tested this for a good four hours, three over-the-hour-long void runs. No, you see the point where damage falls off for an Exalted weapon, around 130-150, is absolutely fine for a shadow-debt melee with a fully charged combo, but when you get to that point and lose your combo, you will quickly find it impossible to build it back up again due to the loss of damage meaning that you can't kill enemies quickly enough to survive until you have even 45 hits for a 2x combo, and even then that's not enough damage.

Apologies if I sound rough, it's been a long evening thanks to this ^^ I'm not being argumentative just for the sake of it, you actually prodded me to go test, so I did.

It's not a myth, it's just a point that only applies when you get to the level of actually needing that multiplier to kill things, the level where all damage, exalted or not, starts to drop off, and enemy scaling has you up against the firing wall.

From lots of testing an exalted melee can deal, well modded, three times that of the base damage of a weapon suitable for the shadow debt mods, so you would need at least that 2.5x combo to get that level of damage. Meanwhile it's also been creating other utility effects, like a built-in life gain from Hysteria, or ranged damage and status on mobs you have reached yet on EB, and it's also capable of reaching the 2-2.5x multiplier without too much hassle (as you said, it's quite easy to get there normally), putting it that much further beyond the regular weapons.

Front-runner for proving that shadow-debt melee is better, though, is the Venka Prime with that multiplier boost. You can reach 2.5x in 15 hits, which does clear up trash-mobs, and can get you up to 3.75 at 45 hits, which is amazing. A little energy for channeling and you even have life gain from Life Strike, which makes everything better.

However, let's be clear, even using Venka Prime and everything I could do with melee to get as far as I could, I still had to switch back to Hysteria when I couldn't maintain the combo any further without the damage mitigation.

Now here's the kicker; Naramon ruins everything. Run Shadow Step, and an Exalted Melee gets run right into the dirt, while something like the Venka will just go and go and go. I know this, you know this, everyone knows this.

But my point still stands; you use Exalted weapons because they hit the same every time you pull them out, they can clear just about everything that a normally-skilled player can with any other kind of melee and they provide bonuses that regular weapons don't, while shadow debt modding works better long-term if you have the right setup and is a risk-reward strategy where the slightest miss in timing can mean you're now up the proverbial creek without a proverbial paddle.

tl;dr

Building up the counter again is only a problem for anyone who has gotten to the point where enemies can one-shot you. Combo counter rebuilding is a serious hassle after that. Exalted weapons can still do utility when their damage is falling off. Venka Prime are good. Naramon is evil and taunts me.

I'm exhausted... bed time ^^

[RealPandemonium]

10 hours ago, Dragazer said:

When compared to bull$hit like the Tonkor, Simulor, and a lot of other guns. Not even close.

Shadow debt mods were the in the right direction for melee to actually be viable against guns.

Those guns are also OP.  We need to cull these outliers instead of making the whole game stupid.

[Aridum]

Exalted Weapons are supposed to be sideways, not better or worse.

An exalted weapon is a just the same weapon but with a little super power involved, and that super power might have some downfalls as well as any other normal weapon. Exalted Blade for example. It's a sword of light that can slice through enemies but is also has its own projectile. Before the whole Excalibur nerf happened, this was a better greater weapon, but now it acts like a shotgun. The farther away the projectile is from Excal, the less damage. Now it's sideways. Now obviously I can lose this argument with Wukong's Primal Fury. Based on the super short combo counter, the length of Bo is increased. But in doing so you lose energy and you rely on the counter. But like most things in Warframe, its situational on the way you look at Exalted weapons. To a new player, Exalted Blade might be a godsend, while the boys and girls on Sedna are looking down upon Primal Fury.

[Epsik-kun]

9 hours ago, Thaylien said:

I have to dispute

Darling, weaker Shadow Debt melee hits 100 minutes of Mot effortlessly in hands of an unranked frame. By that point, you'll have to start wasting your energy pizzas if you're using Exalted Blade.The limit for EBlade would be around 2;20 nowadays, provided maxed-out loadouts and Arcanes. Frames with melee synergy can eclipse that with a fraction of effort and resources Excal will have to use. Banshee will be able to do 3 hours easily. More - if she'll start wasting pizzas.

Exalted Blade can take down armored enemy level 500 relatively quickly - that's true. However, that's also true for quite a bunch of regular melee weapons. More to it, the reason why Exalted Blade can provide any competition to the regular melee lies not in the strength of the weapon itself, but in in the fact Excal has the second best access to stealth multipliers in the game, which are absurdly strong. Essentially, Excalibur without Exalted Blade is currently much stronger than the one with.

And if we are talking not about the overextended content, but the regular one - EBlade can't even attempt to hold a candle to weapons like Atterax or Orthos Prime. It's impossible.

 

Not to mention, I am only talking about Excalibur atm. Out of the three Exalted melee users - he's in the best position. The Blind is that good. Both Hysteria and Primal Fury are pathetic when compared to the regular melee. Hysteria's potential is limited to self-healing and reviving, while Primal Fury is worthless.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Epsik-kun

[ZodiacShinryu]

On ‎11‎/‎24‎/‎2016 at 5:42 PM, Thaylien said:

Besides, it links back to my point about them being abilities; a regular combo counter means that the single ability doesn't eclipse all the other abilities the frame has, getting you to use all aspects of the warframe in concert, not just (in this case literally) pressing 4 to win. They need to act like abilities, not like your regular melee and firearm weapons, despite being literal replacements for those weapons. It's just very difficult to walk that balance, and some of them do fall a little short on performance because of it.

But the fact that they are abilities should be cause to why they out rank normal melee in the first place? You bring up that that the balance for exalted is that they get a boost of initial power (and utility) at the cost of energy but energy is exactly the problem with the balance. Since we aren't able to mod exalted weapons directly the weapons themselves aren't operating optimally in the first place if you want your downtime to be useful as well. Then the boost to power isn't exceptional large (and given that is flat linear rather than multiplicative for bloodrush) in comparison to the energy maintenance. And for the most part the exalted frames have utility abilities (which also cost energy) that are separate of the exalted ability. Excaliburs not using Radial Blind are subpar and his auto block and range waves do not change this. Valkyrs not using Warcry are subpar withholding the arguments whether she should be invincible during hysteria (she shouldn't be btw). Wukong and Titania exalted are not that great in the first place (though at least Titania has guns) but their utility is yet again outside of the exalted ability.

Now since all these frames all have utility outside the exalted ability the question comes back to why go into exalted in the first place. Bloodrush alone is enough to put serious doubts in the use of exalted melee at all. Body count and Drifting increasing the combo timer is what enables the regular melee to surpass exalted at no cost to resources but still benefit from the more powerful abilities of the frames. Exalted on the other hand not only has to manage energy but inherits all the short comings of the combo counter that regular melee does as well as some other glaring weaknesses:

1. Energy management
2. As susceptible to losing melee counter (implying that DE will be nice and let Drifting stay)
3. Canceling exalted automatically resets combo counter (entering exalted resets combos too so building counter into exalted isn't even an option for quick bursts)
4. Leech Eximus, magnetic procs, and Nullifiers/scrambus disrupt the natural flow (given regular melee can ignore the bubbles and aren't as pressured by energy)
5. Ancient Disrupter auras curb exalted performance by severely lowering the damage to itself and allies in range.

So any way I look at it going exalted is nothing more than taste (ignoring valkyrs invincibility). The benefits of exalted don't over come the draws from it especially with Debt mods bolstering regular melee with less catches.

TLDR; If combo timer mods are going to stay, DE at the very least can allow exalted melee to have access to them confirmed and kept. Exalted don't need Bloodrush and certain other Debt mods though perhaps some special mods that bolster exalted melee would be interesting. If we are going to take it a step further, it would likely be best if they stabilize the combo counter in general. If they want exalted to behave more like a boost to melee then the counter has to be seamless when switching between the two modes.

[Birdframe_Prime]

3 hours ago, Epsik-kun said:

Darling

Sweetie. [Flutters eyelashes, pouts lip, twiddles fingers in a wave.]

Also, I disputed due to actual testing, I know what they can do. I'm not taking the side that Exalted weapons are actually stronger than shadow-debt melee, we've seen the evidence that the latter is stronger overall. I was stating that your comment about the 'myth' of rebuilding the combo counter was false due to the issues with scaling in extended content, not the raw data of simulacrum testing. My entire point was that, if you lose the combo counter for any reason, you generally don't survive on the melee alone until the counter is rebuilt, you literally have to use other sources of CC or damage until that's back to snuff. Whereas the two main Exalteds have the damage mitigation or CC built into their base, and can allow you do deal the same reliable damage at any level.

The idea is that, if you're choosing between the two, there is a valid reason to choose the Exalteds over the shadow-debt melee, because while the latter deals more damage overall and therefore lasts longer in the game, modding for Exalted will actually see benefits to the entire frame and can do all the same things the shadow-debt can up until the point where both would struggle when starting from base damage.

In short; At level 130-150 and higher, pick up a no-combo shadow debt weapon and pick up Exalted Blade, or Hysteria, (both without something to help, like Radial Blind, pocket sand, etc.) and they will perform roughly the same. If, however, you are able to survive long enough to regain that combo, of course the shadow-debt modded weapons will kill things better.

Again, not disputing the basic fact that the shadow-debt mods are just that good, only disputing the false statement from your earlier comment. (And also saying that it's quite possible to go the into high-end with a well modded Excal or Valkyr that doesn't have shadow-debt modded melee and reach similar levels eventually. Shadow-debt melee is much faster at it.)

1 hour ago, ZodiacShinryu said:

But the fact that they are abilities should be cause to why they out rank normal melee in the first place?

Whoever said this? DE certainly didn't.

This, I fear, is the entire key to this argument. You use your Tenno power, channeled through a warframe, to create a weapon distinct from the one you had before, replacing it, and it gets stronger based on some of the mods that you are able to put on that weapon. That's it. There is nothing saying that it's the perfect weapon, or that others you build can't be stronger than it.

Exalted weapons do outrank normal weapons. The point I can make here here would be that Shadow Debt modding, while 'meta', is not normal weapon modding, it's a build based on exploiting a single specific mechanic in the game (a valid exploit endorsed by the Devs, but still an exploit) to make a normal weapon go further than it would under normal circumstances.

With the included limit that even if a player mods for this, if they do not know how to actually reach levels of the game where this becomes so good, where they are tactically unprepared for the enemies being able to one-shot their target with a stray pellet, then these things still won't work as the skilled player would be able to do.

So it's a bit of a round-about argument. A specific modding setup will make a normal weapon out-do an Exalted weapon, thus making it not a normally modded weapon, while an Exalted weapon is considered by the players to be 'supposedly' the best example of that weapon and will out-do any normally modded weapon.

1 hour ago, ZodiacShinryu said:

So any way I look at it going exalted is nothing more than taste

Ex-bloody-actly.

So many people don't actually see this as a valid reason to not use the specific blood-rush-body-count combo; there are weapons, many of them, that simply do not benefit from it, there are ones that kill better because they're status weapons, and those elemental damage mods carry over far better to Exalted than a lot of others, meaning that they can have both a good melee weapon and a good Exalted ability. There are many weapons that don't benefit from either a status or a crit build, and need to be built for pure damage, but will still perform a good utility job for the player so that they are able to use all their other weapons and abilities to reach the same stage of the game.

If there were any message to take from this entire conversation it's this: Not everyone, in fact only a very small minority of people, enjoy playing pure melee builds and going onto two hour survival missions just for the glory (since there's no impetus to do so now outside of the Relic farming, which I'll point out has only just this past month become a thing again).

It is purely choice whether you want to run a mod setup that benefits this, or one that benefits the other abilities, or one that utilises the crit-melee setup based on what mission you're running and why you're running it.

You mod your frame and your weapons the way you want, and you go play the game.

Without trying to be insulting to you, or anybody reading, what is so shocking about this concept?

Is that so bad?

2 hours ago, ZodiacShinryu said:

If they want exalted to behave more like a boost to melee then the counter has to be seamless when switching between the two modes.

But this, on the other hand, I can 100% get behind.

Good call, and I think this should have been done from the start.

[Epsik-kun]

2 hours ago, Thaylien said:

only disputing the false statement from your earlier comment

Which one? You can't be possibly disputing the irrefutable fact about dropping combo meaning very little to the Shadow Debt melee - that would be just stupid.

I have no idea what kind of testing you've been doing and what had you tried to prove by wasting your time on hourly runs, but the fact is a fact. You can drop your melee combo against enemy level 200+ and you will have zero problems getting it back up. Yeah, you might be sad for not getting that x5 combo multiplier, but your x4 will do just fine for you.

The "if you manage to survive" part makes no sense. Even if we are taking Naramon out of the equation (which is far from a smart thing to do) - if you managed to get to the combo somehow - you will be able to do it again. Killing stuff in a game with constant spawn does not equal CC. If you hadn't been one-shotted back then - you can spare a few seconds hitting stuff.

And, darling, no one was talking anything about Simulacrum. I say that Excalibur can do over two hours of solo Mot because I've done it multiple times. I say that regular melee is plainly better than Exalted Blade for the purpose because it is, as I used it and I know it well. I say that dropping the combo doesn't mean a thing because I've dropped my combos plenty of times. ~30 seconds downtime and 11% DPS loss are not much. Meanwhile, outside of overextended gameplay, x1.5 - x2.5 combo multiplier range is all you would need.

Also, most importantly - no, against enemy level 150+ Exalted Blade will be nowhere close to the regular melee if you'll take damage amplifying (aka Blind) out of the equation. It will lose in killing the very first enemy - let alone in a long run. It's funny actually, how are you suggesting "Exalted Melee will perform roughly the same as a no-combo Shadow Debt weapon" as something adequate - after the very first enemy killed it will no longer be a "no-combo Shadow Debt weapon".

By the way, I would love to hear details how modding for the Exalted melee ended up allowing to "actually see benefits to the entire frame", given min-maxing Exalted melee means throwing out all survivability and utility mods, while gimping your other abilities. Especially I would love to hear how is it supposed to be an advantage over the regular melee, which allows you to use literally any build you want.

[Rhaenxys]

Drifting contact must stay like it is right now, affecting "exalted" abilties, specially when you have weapons like fragor prime, war or galatine prime with their respective stance multipliers dealing more damage than these types of abilities while taking way less energy per second.

There was always that statement about exalted abilities who are only sidegrades to regular melee or how they dont have to be superior but in fact they need to be better than regular melee, why? simple, energy spend, even most of the time channeling is out of the equation for exalted melee because it will take too much energy to mantain (worse case with hysteria as rage doesnt work when active).

As for primal fury, the only redeeming aspect of the ability is how wukong can be modded enough to mantain defy and primal fury while having room for enough power strength mods plus the must have primal fury augment, damage wise is quite decent (with drifting contact of course...).

As a side note, i feel like we are at square one when exalted abilities were taking your melee stats into account, limiting your weapon choice, there is no reason, not even for balance how i have to choose between using my regular melee with shadow debt mods or using my ability.

Even lowering a bit exalted abilties base damage (200 base damage instead of the current 250) but allowing shadow debt mods work on them would be a good option.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Rhaenxys

[ZodiacShinryu]

5 hours ago, Thaylien said:

Whoever said this? DE certainly didn't.

While not explicitly stated by DE, powers are weighted heavily. The name of the game is Warframe and as such the warframe powers are fairly important beyond just gameplay and is part of the identity of a frame. The warframes were crafted with an ability (exalted class) that transforms them into a specialist (relinquishing the other aspects of gameplay to do a single task). In the case of exalted melee frames, they should by the very purpose they were created be near the top of the melee spectrum. The fact that it cost resources (energy) to maintain this means that they should have an edge of some sort.

However in the hypothetical of pitting a non-exalted melee frame (say Hydroid) against an exalted frame (say Excalibur) with no other powers used. The Hydroid should be working much harder to keep up with an exalted Excalibur but in truth they well be on par most the way. The longer the fights drag on the further Hydroid can pull away (compounded even further if its against anything but grineer). The problem is that Excalibur can just ignore his core ability and not have to worry about that situation because his exalted mode doesn't provide so much utility that its benefits him to be in it.

So the question is why is it ok that a frame designed with melee in mind be simply overshadowed by any weapon that has a couple of mods?

This also ignores that there are frames that exist that have non-exalted powers that are just damage steroids. Chroma, Saryn, Rhino, Mirage, Banshee and even Ember (and probably a few other frames I'm not thinking of) have melee edges on exalted melee frames simply because their powers are added to regular melee (even ignoring modding). Excalibur and Valkyr sort of side step it because they have steroids of their own but they do it by ignoring their signature power. Wukong gets the worst of it.

5 hours ago, Thaylien said:

You mod your frame and your weapons the way you want, and you go play the game.

Without trying to be insulting to you, or anybody reading, what is so shocking about this concept?

I suppose I didn't clarify what I meant by "taste".  This isn't simple sidegrade opinions like snipe focus cernos against shotty bow cernos prime. What I meant by taste was more like if I decided to bring my Lato Prime to Sortie 3 just because I like it. The gun can still perform but I do it knowing that I would have an easier time with something else.

Its odd to see this concept being thrown at me considering I am usually the pro-choice player ignoring the meta to play whatever suits me. But do know that its also a double edged sword because there is no reason not to have exalted be THEE top melee under the concept. The concept doesn't force you to use exalted even if it was the best, the concept doesn't force you to ignore all other abilities. In particular picking an exalted frame should help reinforce that playstyle if that's what your truly want. Any one is free to do as they please for modding and playstyle however if were going to talk about choice then Exalted modes should be given even more freedom.

I personally only care that, as I said before, Drifting Contact remains accessible to exalted modes. Combo counter is a big part of the melee system even without Blood Rush. Its pretty much needed to even keep the playing field level. Personally I'd like combo timer mods just be rolled into the melee system as a whole and then exalted weapons get some special mods for more customization.

[Yowamont]

The problem is mostly only for melee exalted weapons. As others ranged exalted are fine. To solve that problem we could, as melee exalted are a energy-drain, make that combo counter never reset as long as the power is togled. Once it's untogled the melee counter last for the regular duration (unless some melee duration mods are equiped, in which case they would last longer).

This probleme will become a lot more revelant since the introduction of the new melee mods.

[bubbabenali]

On 27.11.2016 at 6:30 PM, Dragazer said:

When compared to bull$hit like the Tonkor, Simulor, and a lot of other guns. Not even close.

Shadow debt mods were the in the right direction for melee to actually be viable against guns.

I don't know what weapons you do the Blood Rush/ Body Count with, but usually these melee weapons outkill Mirage/ Simulor and Tonkor builds.