Universal Melee Build: The Combo Counter

[grigorije]

I've been experimenting with different Nikana builds and, as a result, I've made a configuration which is universal and, therefore, suited for any situation. Without being unnecessarily powerful from low- to medium-range content, it can quickly become versatile enough to handle high-level gameplay.

This build is based on the combo counter and is highly dependent thereof. Considering the fact that Nikana Prime is itself a formidable blade, it won't have any problems in dealing with circumstances where the enemy is fragile, as well as few and far between - a scenario which might impede the maintenance of a combo.

On the other end of the spectrum, the advantages this configuration quickly become apparent in combat against NPC-s of lever 40 and above.

Tranquil Cleave - swift, one-handed strikes compensate for the absence of the Berserker mod, to a degree.

Primed Pressure Point - greatly increases the weapon's base damage, increasing its lethality while a sustainable combo counter is not yet an option. It also directly correlates with the final damage output once a stable combo takes hold.

Body Count & Drifting Contact - together, these mods increase the duration of a combo after the last strike from 3 to 25 seconds until it vanishes. Aditionally, Drifting Contact provides a bonus to status chance.

Blood Rush & Weeping Wounds - these are mods that translate the increased combo duration into high critical hit chance and status chance respectively. In turn, the high critical and status chance result in greater lethality. Specifically, the increasing critical chance allows for greater damage, while high status chance increases both damage and combo counter growth with the assistance of the following two mods.

Condition Overload - for each status affecting the enemy, melee damage is increased by 60%. In conjunction with Weeping Wounds, this mod can help further increase the weapon's damage output. However, this mod might not achieve its potential since, unlike Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds provides far less of a bonus percentage per combo counter stage. Furthermore, at this time, there are no mods which increase melee status chance by more than 15% without introducing an elemental damage type into the mix. This may prove a hindrance to the proper function of the next mod.

Relentless Combination - each slash proc increases the combo counter by 1. For this reason it is important not to introduce any new damage types other than slash damage. This mod will allow for a somewhat faster combo growth. Though it may not directly translate into greater damage, it may prove useful in the event that the combo is broken, especially while facing NPC-s of extremely high levels, in which case bringing the combo back is of utmost importance. Aside from that, this mod can help achieve high damage values somewhat sooner.

True Steel - increases the base critical chance, thus increasing the effectiveness of Blood Rush, resulting in greater damage attained much sooner. More importantly, however, it allows for a near 100% chance of red critical hits.

Alternatives:

True Steel may be replaced by Organ Shatter, if it proves more effective.

Seeing how Relentless Combination does not directly affect damages, but is rather a utility mod, it may be removed, thus allowing for both True Steel and Organ Shatter to be equipped, resulting in even greater damage.

This build has been designed with Nikana Prime in mind, but it should work with other melee weapons as well; with some even better.

Recommended warframes:

Ash - slash procs deal more damage and last longer.

Excalibur: melee attacks are faster and deal more damage.

Edited June 9, 2017 by grigorije

[Dragazer]

Condition overload on a build with no elementals?

Body count and drifting contact in the same build?

No attack speed mods on a build that relies on stacking status procs as quickly as possibly?

This has to be a troll build

Edited June 9, 2017 by Dragazer

[grigorije]

5 minutes ago, Dragazer said:

Condition overload on a build with no elementals? Body count and drifting contact ni the same build?

This has to be a troll build

CO works with slash too.

Also, 25s combo duration is better than 15s, is it not?

Edited June 9, 2017 by grigorije

[rapt0rman]

I/P/S all count toward condition overload, according to the wiki at least: http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Condition_Overload

I use variations of this build on any weapon that can get away with it. Except, I never use true steel with blood rush, organ shatter all the way. And the two combo counter mods is usually a situational thing for me.

Edited June 9, 2017 by rapt0rman

[Dragazer]

6 minutes ago, grigorije said:

CO works with slash too... I think?

Also, 25s combo duration is better than 15s, is it not?

The point of CO is to stack as many status procs as possible, not having at least 3 different elements is not making use of the mod.

that 25s isn't even worth it when you don't have a single element on the weapon.

13-15s is enough

not to mention the lack of attack speed mods, how are you going to stack the procs fast enough when you attack slow?

Edited June 9, 2017 by Dragazer

[grigorije]

1 minute ago, Dragazer said:

The point of CO is to stack as many status procs as possible, not having at least 3 different elements is not making use of the mod.

that 25s isn't even worth it when you don't have a single element on the weapon.

13-15s is enough

The reason I use 25s is so I can have a larger window in between strikes.

CO indeed would work better on elemental weapons with high status but it works here as well. I believe Ash has a greater chance to proc slash. Not sure if Shuriken adds to CO, though.

[grigorije]

As for the speed, nikana p is fast enough on its own with TC. I do not see speed affecting procs too much. WW will take care of that.

[grigorije]

10 minutes ago, rapt0rman said:

I/P/S all count toward condition overload, according to the wiki at least: http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Condition_Overload

I use variations of this build on any weapon that can get away with it. Except, I never use true steel with blood rush, organ shatter all the way. And the two combo counter mods is usually a situational thing for me.

Hmm, so Organ Shatter proved more effective?

[Dragazer]

7 minutes ago, grigorije said:

The reason I use 25s is so I can have a larger window in between strikes.

CO indeed would work better on elemental weapons with high status but it works here as well. I believe Ash has a greater chance to proc slash. Not sure if Shuriken adds to CO, though.

Shuriken does proc slash but the nikana already procs slash anyways so its redundant.

Universal builds never work because you never have enough mod slots to make it work. You end up with something mediocre in all aspects. Its always optimally to just stick with one build.

Why try to make a universal build in the 1st place? You can switch your mod  setup on the fly inbetween missions anyways, so it only makes sense to go with specialized builds.

Edited June 9, 2017 by Dragazer

[rapt0rman]

6 minutes ago, grigorije said:

Hmm, so Organ Shatter proved more effective?

Having a small bonus to crit chance before the combo counter isn't necessary, and the extra 60% will be completely lost in a sea of like +660% at a 3.0x combo multiplier. Honestly it's a pitiful amount, and blood rush does everything you need, it's always more useful to up your crit damage at that point.

Edited June 9, 2017 by rapt0rman

[grigorije]

1 minute ago, Dragazer said:

Shuriken does proc slash but the nikana already procs slash anyways so its redundant.

Universal builds never work because you never have enough mod slots to make it work. Its always optimally to just stick with one build.

Why try to make a universal build in the 1st place? You can switch your mod  setup on the fly inbetween missions anyways, so it only makes sense to go with specialized builds.

Well, I said universal as it does not need any specific element.

Quite the opposite, at high level survival, with a 4x combo this build makes sushi out of anything and everything. Did a survival once with an afk frost newbie and held out for 1h. Had 4k on my counter. Then I got bored and extracted xD.

[grigorije]

2 minutes ago, rapt0rman said:

Honestly, having a small bonus to crit chance before the combo counter isn't necessary, and the extra 60% will be completely lost in a sea of like +660% at a 3.0% combo multiplier. it's always more useful to up your crit damage with a crit build.

At 3x combo you get about 119% actually. 190% with True Steel.

[DarkRuler2500]

I use a similar build on my Surging Dash Excalibur.

[grigorije]

1 minute ago, DarkRuler2500 said:

I use a similar build on my Surging Dash Excalibur.

Yeah combo builds like this one become so OP over time and scale so well that most other builds are obsolete xD

[13QZXXTTX]

Personal build of Melees is fun to try. Right now am thinking of reason to support idea abut a good melee system, maybe I am missing some thing?

[rapt0rman]

34 minutes ago, grigorije said:

At 3x combo you get about 119% actually. 190% with True Steel.

Huh, I was unaware that true steel stacked separately from blood rush, but I guess it does. But still... if you take that first build and throw organ shatter in place of true steel you see a pretty large boost in damage.

The thing about more red crit chance vs more crit damage, is the formula for red crits is: (your multiplier)x2-1

So a red crit from a weapon with a 2.0x crit multiplier is still only 3.0x. So your true steel build, at 3.0x combo multiplier would have a 90.4% chance to deal 3.0x crit damage, and a 9.6% chance to do 2.0x.

Whereas with organ shatter you have an 81% chance to deal 3.8x critical damage, and a 19% chance to deal 6.6x critical damage.

Basically, high critical chance with an unmodified critical damage will usually fall behind.

Edited June 9, 2017 by rapt0rman

[(PSN)theelix]

25 minutes ago, grigorije said:

Well, I said universal as it does not need any specific element.

Quite the opposite, at high level survival, with a 4x combo this build makes sushi out of anything and everything. Did a survival once with an afk frost newbie and held out for 1h. Had 4k on my counter. Then I got bored and extracted xD.

Except... 

It relies heavily on Slash and crit. It's not universal in any sense. 

With just drifting contact and a proper elemental set-up both the fall off and scaling could be better than this build, and this build itself is nothing new at all. It's nice that you reach 4x quickly, but that's also where your scaling soft caps as it becomes practically less and less viable to get into or past 5x. 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[DarkRuler2500]

One thing, does anybody know when the +crit chance from Naramon focus is calculated in?
Is it Base x Blood Rush Multipler + Naramon or (Base + Naramon) x Blood Rush Multiplier?

[rapt0rman]

1 minute ago, DarkRuler2500 said:

One thing, does anybody know when the +crit chance from Naramon focus is calculated in?
Is it Base x Blood Rush Multipler + Naramon or (Base + Naramon) x Blood Rush Multiplier?

From the wiki:

Crit Chance = [Weapon Crit Chance × (1 + Mod Crit Chance + Deadly Intent) + Static Critical Chance Modifiers] × (1 + Blood Rush Multiplier × Combo Multiplier)

[taiiat]

Organ Shatter is definitely a must for Crits - it's an outright ~2x to all of your Damage at all times.

Relentless Combination AND Drifting Contact/Body Count is using up your Mod Slots without much gain. pick 2/3 of the Mods, and replace it with any Status Elemental you like. could be something good, could be something not so good. but adding another Damage Type is a huge upgrade to all of your Damage, on every possible front.
your further examples that have True Steel there is okay, though a Status Elemental benefits the Loadout better still.

you were mashing Enemies to pieces with Loadouts like these pretty much soley due to Blood Rush and the Hit Counter multiplying your Damage. ala at a 3x Counter, 152% Crit Chance(i don't know how Stoi got to 119%, something isn't right there. 33*4+20==152. 3x is 4 stacks soo) can be considered 50/50 for either 6x Damage or 11x Damage - not including Condition Overload. (without Organ Shatter since you didn't include it in your examples, if you did have Organ Shatter, it would be 50/50 for 11.4x or 21.8x Damage)
that alone, is a pretty extreme Damage Output, especially the Slash Status from as such. easily ~20xish Damage on your original example Loadout, and easily ~40xish Damage w/ Organ Shatter.

[(PSN)fullblast35]

your build is a fun build, i can't imagine how it would work with a speed volt XD  

 

but this is my current build :