Help with a melee build that suits my style?

[Mesolimbo]

I'm a new rank 5 player and I'm wondering what's the basic crit or hybrid melee mod setup I can easily get that can enable me to continue past Saturn? This is on my Atterax (potato'd up). I can't afford expensive mods like Maiming Strike or mods dropped from planets I have no access to. I'm using volt as warframe.

I like Atterax but it's sluggish. Melee AoE is my style but I find myself depending solely on slide attacks all the time because of how sluggish it is despite of fury. I like doing combos for damage while using slide attacks only to reach further enemies. Do you have other suggestions for similar melee weapons/setups I can work on without fearing them becoming useless around end game?

Thanks for your time

[aligatorno]

1 hour ago, Mesolimbo said:

 I can't afford expensive mods like Maiming Strike or mods dropped from planets I have no access to. I'm using volt as warframe.


 

I would recommend the following : Either farm Blood rush on Lua Spy, either buy it off chat for 15-20p.  It's a worthy investment that will serve you well with almost every melee weapon. If you are not going in high levels, two 90% elementals will serve you better with a crit build. Don't use Magnetic at all, it's practically useless. Use Corrosive for Grineer, Infested and Corrupted, and Viral or Gas/Toxin for Corpus. 

A standard crit build would look like this

(Primed) Pressure Point + Blood Rush + Drifting Contact  + Organ Shatter

Berserker + 2 elemental mods + a utility mods [ Fury , Life Strike, Healing Return etc] or another elemental mod [don't use Spoiled Strike, it;s counter productive with most weapons]

 

If you plan to go in high levels , meaning 80+, using two 60% dual status elementals [Voltaic Strike , Volcanic strike, Vicious Frost, Virulent Scourge] considering you don't have weeping wounds or maiming strike. 

[icecream011]

Ironically, the Atterax's claim to fame is its spin attack. A few changes that would drastically improve your damage output:

Remove Shocking Touch, Vicious Frost, Relentless Combo, Fury, and Rending Strike. Add Blood Rush (cheap in plat, but also easy to farm if you've completed the Second Dream), Drifting Contact (Nightmare missions), Berserker (also cheap, but can be a pain to farm in the void), Organ Shatter (just ask in region chat for a spare one) and finally Weeping Wounds (This will be the most difficult to acquire, because the mob that drops it is linked to an event). Building up your combo will increase your critical chance and status chance from Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds, ie more consistent critical hits and more consistent slash procs. Berserker takes over the role of Fury, where each critical hit will give you a temp attack speed boost. Organ Shatter to take advantage of the 3x critical multiplier. Finally, Drifting Contact to increase your combo counter duration by 10 seconds and also give you additional status chance. 

The nice thing is the Atterax is a slash focused weapon, it means the majority of the procs you do will be slash damage, or "bleed" damage. Bleed damage ignores enemy armor, so you can mow down high level enemies with ease. Because you also mentioned that you prefer AOE melees, I would suggest you use a spin attack bind. They're easy to set up and don't violate the EULA.

Hope this helps.

 

 

[Xekrin]

48 minutes ago, Mesolimbo said:

I like Atterax but it's sluggish. Melee AoE is my style but I find myself depending solely on slide attacks all the time because of how sluggish it is despite of fury.

Try berserker instead of fury, it stacks 3 times so might help more.  Also use gas, especially with an invisible frame, that has major aoe potential.  Beyond that, try a different weapon.  I find pole arms (orthos, lesion) to have better mobility and wider range than whips for normal melee attacks.  

Your best bet would be to try out at least one of all weapon types and find the one that best suits you.  This may sound time consuming and it is, especially with limited weapon slots to work with but a big goal of this game is to master rank everything anything so in the end that will work out well.

Unfortunately Atterax is heavy on slide attack damage, in fact most weapons do better with slide attacks.  

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

1 hour ago, Mesolimbo said:

Do you have other suggestions for similar melee weapons/setups I can work on without fearing them becoming useless around end game?

Sadly, it's not the weapons, but the mods, that determine end-game viability in melee. Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds and Drifting Contact are all important to have for endgame builds. After that, you just have to forma the weapon enough to fit them on. Almost any weapon will do for a Blood Rush build. Weeping Wounds is best on Slash or Pure Elemental weapons with 15% or more status.

Also, drop the magnetic damage. It does very little damage to most factions, except the Corpus, and Toxin/Gas is better vs. Corpus anyway.

[Airwolfen]

Melee AoE does limit your options a LOT. Mostly limited to slide attacks with the atterax tbh. So you can only really go for better and stronger builds as long as that is your preferred style.

Lots of weapons can hit multiple targets but when you really want range then yeah.

Getting the berserker mod is strongly advised, but icecream made a pretty good post about what build you could go for, berserker included.

Cant really give you my preferred list as those are still quite a bit out of reach for where you are...

[Avynire]

Try orthos, prime if you can. It is no whips but it got the reach and boost atk speed. Blood rush + drifting contact/ body count economy maiming strike.

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

There's not many weapon categorys that offer both, appropiate damage and range sadly. 

Middle ground are swords (single, not dual wield. Those are the low range, high weapon varriant) and Heavy Weapons. I'd recommend the Galatine. It's kinda missing the crit but offers a pretty good slash status chance and base damage, what probably works rather well for your current MR. Get yourself the Cleaving Whirlwind stance (Ancients) or Tempo Royale (Baro on a regular base) for heavys. Broken War (War within quest) plus Crimson Dervish (Grineer Bombards) for sword.