Exalted Melee needs rethinking?

[SolarDwagon]

Sp, I've been looking at all the Exalted melee frames recently. (For those confused, Exalted is the most commonly used descriptor for abilities that replace your normal weapons). The number of mods that don't work with these is becoming wider and wider, which pushes me further and further away from using these abilities, which does weaken the frames utility overall as well. Excalibur still has the advantage of projection on his Exalted, and the new augment definitely improves it, but otherwise.... both Hysteria and Primal Fury are getting outclassed by what normal melee builds can do using the second (third?) generation of melee mods. Primal Fury is especially outclassed given that it's one selling point can easily be duplicated in a single mod that is worth using most of the time.
Hysteria still has it's place, but personally I've gone off it completely due to all the issues that can end it suddenly-personally I want an actual rework (not a cost rework) of this to make it truly a "berserker" ability.
Am I underrating these abilities, has melee power creep gone too far, or what?

[Airwolfen]

Dont know personally because I did not really like those abilities anyway.

I really do not like the primal fury stance and Eternal war Valkyr has been my preferred way to play Valkyr ever since that mod released (Paired with a cleaving whirlwind for example)

EDIT:

Thinking about it. eternal war valkyr feels a LOT more like a berserker

Edited June 22, 2017 by Airwolfen

[SilvaDreams]

Primal Fury is under powered simply because it is 85% impact damage with the rest being puncture.

So it is garbage against anything but the Corpus and Infested units with no armor.

That and the fact that it has a much shorter range than even the Orthos Prime when maxed out.

 

The rest of the Exalted Mellee has had to be nerfed because it is so good.

Hysteria rips through enemies but has no range thus her invincibility while in it which has finally hit that balance it needed so you can't run it 24/7, but still is powerful.

But yes most tend to build for Eternal War as it gives CC and buffs your team mates as well as you but you still see Hysteria builds running around.

 

If you allowed Bloodrush and other mods to work with Exalted weapons we'd have to go through all new rounds of nerfs as it would bring them to new levels of Broken.

Edited June 22, 2017 by SilvaDreams

[(PSN)theelix]

I agree entirely. They're too powerful, and the only way they keep it in check is by screwing us via our mods and melee choices. Blood Rush, Body Count, Weeping Wounds, Maiming Strike, every augment and other such staple mods that make melee useful in high levels aren't able to be applied to Exalted Melee, which makes them feel really nice and look cool in lower levels, but causes them to be outpaced in higher levels.

To be honest, at this point they're all going to need ANOTHER rework. ESPECIALLY Excalibur. Exalted Blade has been nerfed so many times, and is undoubtedly going to be hit with another nerf to the augment as well as a global Exalted melee nerf via Drifting Contact disablement that we're going to be back at square one. He already has his absolutely useless Radial Javelin which can barely ever cap out Furious Javelin properly, and is entirely pointless without the augment unless you're low level nuking (which is still inefficient compared to something like Saryn, Equinox, Ember) and next his Exalted Blade is going to be ruined again, he needs two new abilities that work, are balanced, and don't polarize his weapon loadouts. 

Wukong second due to his first being pretty much useless, and his melee being garbage for damage and meh for CC.

 

[LSG501]

Lets just say I'd be quite happy if the laser shooter called excalibur had a cooldown applied to the exalted projectile.... listening to the 'swish swish swish swish' as an excalibur runs round firing off the beam constantly even though there is nothing there (hmmm scripting is fun) gets rather annoying if you just can't get away from them. 

[Lakais]

One problem with "exalted melee" is that it receives buffs from two sources. Weapon mods that do apply, and frame ability mods. Not to mention that most of these have a secondary feature that add a whole other layer of "possibly break everything". 

Then the question is about the dynamic between powers and weapons. Meaning if the primary source of sustained offensive capability is to be in the weapons or the powers. I was always under the impression that power weapons were supposed to be short-lived power multipliers. Insanely powerful, but unsustainable. Problem is, WE made them sustainable. So we basically broke any semblance of power-balance between us and the enemy. Some might ask "what's wrong with that?" I'd say everything. The enemy needs to be a threat and not just in the 100+ level range. 

In Excal's case, his sword and gun were the primary source of damage, and Exalted Blade was meant as a power that is incredibly powerful, but also short-lived. But people fidgeted the system so EB became the primary source of sustained damage that never stopped. That is when EB was first nerfed. 

So, how do we fix this? Well, here's an idea for EB specifically. What if rather then being a sustained power drain ability it was a single activation, timed ability that instead of having a 25 point activation cost and then a drain, just flat went "Needs power pool at X%, drains 100% of power, deactivates all energy gain, lasts for Y seconds." So in practice it would mean that, it does not care what your power pool size, energy efficiency or duration is. It activates, drains everything, lasts for Y time and is over. Benefit of this system is that it can then be buffed to be world-shatteringly powerful. Not your primary weapon but a gamechanger you use when the time is right. Granted, we have energy pizzas so you can still sustain it, but that puts an additional cost to this ability and personally I'm ok with it. Pizzas can quickly drain a person of their resource stockpiles. 

[SolarDwagon]

47 minutes ago, LSG501 said:

Lets just say I'd be quite happy if the laser shooter called excalibur had a cooldown applied to the exalted projectile.... listening to the 'swish swish swish swish' as an excalibur runs round firing off the beam constantly even though there is nothing there (hmmm scripting is fun) gets rather annoying if you just can't get away from them. 

Honestly? It annoys me when I PLAY Excal :P then it's ALWAYS at full volume. You get off easy >.>

Heh, this thread reminds me of what I still consider DE's biggest mistake-corrupted mods. Too powerful and too big an investment-the latter being why they can't nerf them without risking massive chunks of playerbase. FE is, IMO, responsible for nearly every source of broken gameplay since it's release.

[aligatorno]

3 minutes ago, SolarDwagon said:

 FE is, IMO, responsible for nearly every source of broken gameplay since it's release.

How so?

[SolarDwagon]

2 minutes ago, aligatorno said:

How so?

Because it is more or less responsible for breaking the energy economy, for both instant casts and for toggles.

[aligatorno]

2 minutes ago, SolarDwagon said:

Because it is more or less responsible for breaking the energy economy, for both instant casts and for toggles.

And how exactly has this played a main source in breaking all those gameplay mechanics? How's giving casters a chance to play without micromanaging breaking so many mechanics? 

Edited June 22, 2017 by aligatorno

[SolarDwagon]

2 minutes ago, aligatorno said:

And how exactly has this played a main source in breaking all those gameplay mechanics? How's giving casters a chance to play without micromanaging breaking so many mechanics? 

Literally read the comments above mine.
It's turned powers that were meant to be crowning moments of awesome into fire-every-room-and-forget nukes, and it lets progressive drain abilities stay active forever.

[Kaokasalis]

3 hours ago, SolarDwagon said:

Sp, I've been looking at all the Exalted melee frames recently. (For those confused, Exalted is the most commonly used descriptor for abilities that replace your normal weapons). The number of mods that don't work with these is becoming wider and wider, which pushes me further and further away from using these abilities, which does weaken the frames utility overall as well. Excalibur still has the advantage of projection on his Exalted, and the new augment definitely improves it, but otherwise.... both Hysteria and Primal Fury are getting outclassed by what normal melee builds can do using the second (third?) generation of melee mods. Primal Fury is especially outclassed given that it's one selling point can easily be duplicated in a single mod that is worth using most of the time.
Hysteria still has it's place, but personally I've gone off it completely due to all the issues that can end it suddenly-personally I want an actual rework (not a cost rework) of this to make it truly a "berserker" ability.
Am I underrating these abilities, has melee power creep gone too far, or what?

Which mods are you thinking of in particular?

[SolarDwagon]

3 minutes ago, Hieracon said:

Which mods are you thinking of in particular?

Blood rush, weeping wounds, condition overload, some of the other new ones, and then an odd smattering depending on which exalted.

[LSG501]

35 minutes ago, SolarDwagon said:

Honestly? It annoys me when I PLAY Excal :P then it's ALWAYS at full volume. You get off easy >.>

at least you can stop the swishing by not firing triggering it....

[SilvaDreams]

1 minute ago, LSG501 said:

at least you can stop the swishing by not firing triggering it....

Ya never had that issue because I use all his powers. Blind then swish a few times and get those crit finisher slash procs... Even the Sentients die fast.

[SolarDwagon]

28 minutes ago, SilvaDreams said:

Ya never had that issue because I use all his powers. Blind then swish a few times and get those crit finisher slash procs... Even the Sentients die fast.

Try that it any endless mission, now you get to flash yourself every ten seconds and THEN burn your ears out =D
(I'm taking the piss here, just in case anyone missed it.)
I don't really play excal much, I much prefer my other cheap tricks.

[Kaotyke]

Wukong needs better combos, has anyone tried to do the EE(Pause)E...? 9/10 times I cant use it because of the small time window.

To make it actually better would be to get rid of most slams and just make sweeping motions, if it had the Orthos Prime reach at the begining, it wouldnt matter the damage because you would be hitting everything in a large radius.

No need to be at THIS Point

But, you get my drift.

[(PSN)theelix]

3 minutes ago, Kaotyke said:

No need to be at THIS Point

But, you get my drift.

Fallacy. The power pole should be long enough to bat the moon into the sun if need be. 

[(PSN)DBR87]

Okay, Wukong's Primal Fury may need a buff. I wasn't really impressed with it. I think it's more of a the fault with the stance itself rather than its damage. It has so many slams that just scatter enemies everywhere and the range doesn't seem long enough.

Hysteria is okay. I am more of an Eternal War user and only use Hysteria as an emergency button.

I think Exalted Blades is in a enjoyable place right now. Focus on DUration and Efficiency and just ad about 50% power strength to your base and you can go on for a long time in a survival. And some people in this topic see that as a bad thing because it allows Excal to press four and mash E for eternity, but need I remind you, unless you farmed an Arcane Energize set Excal is going to get to the point where he is surrounded by high level Energy Drain Eximus auras combined with whatever random heat auras or magnetic auras come with it, and like all power house frames outside of Inaros, he'll fall. In theory Exalted Blades could scale forever. In practice we have super annoying...but seemingly necessary...eximi units that stop all but 95% of the community from doing 4 hour survivals.

When it comes to his power in Sortie levels, what's the difference between Excal one shotting rooms of level 100 Grineer with Exalted Blades and Inaros one shotting rooms of the same type of mobs? The difference is Excal presses 4 and then mashes E. Inaros mashes 1 and spams slide attacks. Either way, room is cleared. I don't blame powers for that. That is just how powerful melee is right now. Exalted Blade paces with basic melee, and that's only with Drifting Contact. Primed Reach and Cleaving Whirlwind can net the same result without the energy drain Exalted Blades does.

Exalted Blade had the range advantage but DE nerfed the blade waves so do nothing outside of maintain combo counter. Now some people are annoyed by the sound effects *shrug* but that is a silly reason to ask for a nerf.

[Lakais]

One of the problems I have with balance related discussions has popped up a few times: Scaling enemies. Personally I am of the thought that in such discussions, endless and non-standard missions are not to be included. They, by their very nature, ultimately break the game. At some point the math goes off on it's own and there is no way to account for it without making abilities and weapons basically function in a way that ignores scaling altogether, putting into question the validity of levels. 

Basically, I think any discussion of balance should start and end with non-sortie, non-endless, standard missions. So lvl 40-ish. If a weapon and ability can do it's thing with reasonable effort at that point, then case closed: working as intended. After that is DE raising their hands up and pointing at a sign that says "Beyond this point, proceed at your own peril!" 

It'd be a clearer baseline around or to which weapons and abilities are built for. It'd be interesting if DE had instead gone for a static enemy lineup where difficulty is based on the type and number of enemies thrown at us, not their stats being inflated via an algorithm. The baseline would be clearer and many of the scaling based issue would not exist. 

22 minutes ago, (PS4)DBR87 said:

I think Exalted Blades is in a enjoyable place right now. Focus on DUration and Efficiency and just ad about 50% power strength to your base and you can go on for a long time in a survival. And some people in this topic see that as a bad thing because it allows Excal to press four and mash E for eternity, but need I remind you, unless you farmed an Arcane Energize set Excal is going to get to the point where he is surrounded by high level Energy Drain Eximus auras combined with whatever random heat auras or magnetic auras come with it, and like all power house frames outside of Inaros, he'll fall. In theory Exalted Blades could scale forever. In practice we have super annoying...but seemingly necessary...eximi units that stop all but 95% of the community from doing 4 hour survivals.

Again, EB is an ultimate. If it were far more limited in duration, as in a fixed one, the ability itself could be enhanced and buffed. Why it was nerfed was partly because it was far too powerful for the duration it could theoretically have. Hell, I run a non-power excal, so I have 150 energy with nothing in duration, power or efficiency. But with Rage I can potentially go on forever at high levels simply because I am tanky enough to take the hits to regen energy even if I am knee deep in energy drain eximi. 

Edited June 22, 2017 by Lakais

[Newnight]

6 hours ago, SolarDwagon said:

Sp, I've been looking at all the Exalted melee frames recently. (For those confused, Exalted is the most commonly used descriptor for abilities that replace your normal weapons). The number of mods that don't work with these is becoming wider and wider, which pushes me further and further away from using these abilities, which does weaken the frames utility overall as well. Excalibur still has the advantage of projection on his Exalted, and the new augment definitely improves it, but otherwise.... both Hysteria and Primal Fury are getting outclassed by what normal melee builds can do using the second (third?) generation of melee mods. Primal Fury is especially outclassed given that it's one selling point can easily be duplicated in a single mod that is worth using most of the time.
Hysteria still has it's place, but personally I've gone off it completely due to all the issues that can end it suddenly-personally I want an actual rework (not a cost rework) of this to make it truly a "berserker" ability.
Am I underrating these abilities, has melee power creep gone too far, or what?

To be fair they could just fix it to allow the acolyte mods to work on the exalted class. Would be interesting to see and fix issues that are gonna pop up if they keep add-in in more mods. 

P.s: lore wise I do not know why they do not work on valkyr and excal and the others.

[(PSN)DBR87]

4 minutes ago, Lakais said:

One of the problems I have with balance related discussions has popped up a few times: Scaling enemies. Personally I am of the thought that in such discussions, endless and non-standard missions are not to be included. They, by their very nature, ultimately break the game. At some point the math goes off on it's own and there is no way to account for it without making abilities and weapons basically function in a way that ignores scaling altogether, putting into question the validity of levels. 

Basically, I think any discussion of balance should start and end with non-sortie, non-endless, standard missions. So lvl 40-ish. If a weapon and ability can do it's thing with reasonable effort at that point, then case closed: working as intended. After that is DE raising their hands up and pointing at a sign that says "Beyond this point, proceed at your own peril!" 

It'd be a clearer baseline around or to which weapons and abilities are built for. It'd be interesting if DE had instead gone for a static enemy lineup where difficulty is based on the type and number of enemies thrown at us, not their stats being inflated via an algorithm. The baseline would be clearer and many of the scaling based issue would not exist. 

Again, EB is an ultimate. If it were far more limited in duration, as in a fixed one, the ability itself could be enhanced and buffed. Why it was nerfed was partly because it was far too powerful for the duration it could theoretically have. Hell, I run a non-power excal, so I have 150 energy with nothing in duration, power or efficiency. But with Rage I can potentially go on forever at high levels simply because I am tanky enough to take the hits to regen energy even if I am knee deep in energy drain eximi. 

Potentially being the operative word. In reality, you will get one shotted from your blind side. There is  little the player can do when surrounded by Toxic auras that drain health, Ice auras that slow your animations, Fire auras that knock you down, and drain auras that sap your energy. Quick Thinking, Rage, and Life Strike work when you can actually use them but if the player is getting CC'd to death they won't save you.

But I can see your point with scaling. Unless you're in a Eximus sortie, you're not going to be surrounded by Eximi on a normal bases below level 150. But at this point it would be foolish for DE to balance the game around level 40. One reason is because since the void was a thing, enemies can start at level 40-50.

100-150 levels seem like a better balance point because you can go into a mission and fight those levels from the gate, either NM LoR or Sorties.

Your "Beyond this point, proceed with your own peril" should be set at level 200+ because players do not see those levels of enemies unless they actively stay in endless missions. Anything lower, DE presents those enemy levels to you from the start of a mission.

[Vrcross]

The solution for this is simple, and it is preferable that it happens before melee rivens hit: Find a place in the arsenal to mod exalted weapons separately from our weapons. This allows DE to freely keep balance on these powers while not limiting us to non-optimal builds on our weapons. There is also potential for them to add mods specific to exalted weapons or allowing us to have varied stances for the melee ones.

The only negative to this that I see is how to deal with polarities and forma. My personal opinion would to just give them unlimited mod capacity, but I could see DE turning it into  its own little grindfest.

[---UMBRA---]

2 hours ago, Kaotyke said:

Wukong needs better combos, has anyone tried to do the EE(Pause)E...? 9/10 times I cant use it because of the small time window.

To make it actually better would be to get rid of most slams and just make sweeping motions, if it had the Orthos Prime reach at the begining, it wouldnt matter the damage because you would be hitting everything in a large radius.

No need to be at THIS Point

But, you get my drift.

Nerfed a long time ago

[SenorClipClop]

4 hours ago, SolarDwagon said:

Blood rush, weeping wounds, condition overload, some of the other new ones, and then an odd smattering depending on which exalted.

I personally disagree with this, as Lakais makes some good points about how exhalted weapons work:

5 hours ago, Lakais said:

Spoiler

 

One problem with "exalted melee" is that it receives buffs from two sources. Weapon mods that do apply, and frame ability mods. Not to mention that most of these have a secondary feature that add a whole other layer of "possibly break everything". 

Then the question is about the dynamic between powers and weapons. Meaning if the primary source of sustained offensive capability is to be in the weapons or the powers. I was always under the impression that power weapons were supposed to be short-lived power multipliers. Insanely powerful, but unsustainable. Problem is, WE made them sustainable. So we basically broke any semblance of power-balance between us and the enemy. Some might ask "what's wrong with that?" I'd say everything. The enemy needs to be a threat and not just in the 100+ level range. 

 

 

For me, I like building toward weapon/power synergy in these cases. Taking Titania for example, Tigris Prime works wonders for the Dex Pixia because the applicable mods work on both quite well, but I often take the Daikyu since it has similar synergy but is longer range for backline support play when I'm not in Razorwing. With Excalibur, I know there are certain sacrifices I have to make from my melee build to maximize EB, but that's okay if EB is going to be my primary mode of melee damage (and I mean come on, EB is strong enough without Blood Rush or Condition Overload).

What would be great for exhalted melee is if combo multipliers were able to carry between standard weapons and exhalted ones when switching. I feel like the inability to do this encourages many players to remain in one mode for longer periods of time.