To the people who miss the point of so-called "melee nerf"

[Epsik-kun]

For clarity:

Spoiler

what I refer to is the recent change to the invisibility mechanics in Warframe which makes enemies who were attacked (or bumped into) ineligible for receiving further stealth-multiplied melee hits until said enemies return to the "unaware" state - about 4 seconds after stopping being attacked. Prior to recent patches, all sources of invisibility forced stealth multipliers on enemies for an indefinite amount of hits with the only condition being for said enemy not to have another target to attack.

Disclaimer: I regularly use Naramon, I love Maiming Strike as it is, I love Blood Rush melee.

It seems that a surprisingly large number of people don't understand the so-called "stealth nerf to melee". Some even go as far as to state "it was this way for years, why DE does it now instead of changing %name_to_change".

Well, in fact, it is a bug fix. Or, if you consider this to be a "stealth nerf", then it's a stealth nerf to a stealth buff.

The recent behavior of invisibility resulting in it forcing stealth multipliers onto everything is, in fact, recent. As in "it wasn't this way before". I doubt even half a year passed since invisibility started to behave this way.

Even after the Shadow Debt even release, no source of invisibility forced stealth multipliers on enemies - it behaved exactly as it does right now.

Also, contradicting to a seeming popular but inherently incorrect opinion, the current interaction of Maiming Strike and Blood Rush was never changed since its release. They always were multiplicative to each other.

So, sometime after Shadow Debt was released (I believe around the end of the fall) the behavior of stealth was changed without any of the patch notes reflecting it.
Only then the invisibility had changed to its current behavior and started forcing stealth multipliers onto everything.

And, in my opinion, that was an incredibly stupid thing to have. It never was this way, it broke the atmosphere as it made no sense, it moved Naramon from just a powerful survivability tool to the position of the strongest melee buff in the game while making a large number of abilities effectively pointless. That happened prior to the stealth double dip on damaging proc getting axed, so back then it was even more absurd than it's now.
It was a completely uncalled for and unnecessary change.

After seeing all this panic about the "nerf", I jumped into Simulacrum just to confirm - and yes, invisibility was simply reverted precisely to the state it was always in - to the state that makes sense, unlike what we had recently.

For me personally, it means that the max Power Strength build for prolonged Survivals on Excal (which is my main frame) is yet again dead, but I'll gladly take that over the absurd state of invisibility in the game.

And just so you guys know, all the blinds in the game still force stealth multipliers on enemies with no "cooldowns" between the hits. And there are still ways to force stealth multipliers through invisibility which are available after fulfilling a specific condition which can be used by any frame to an extent and extremely effectively by selected few frames.
I won't tell you how exactly you do that, so have fun figuring it out on your own. If you're willing to dig into the forum's history - I've brought up this topic multiple times before - prior to invisibility becoming utterly broken.

I personally want to thank DE for this change, because it makes the diversity and options in melee so much better. Thank you.

Edited July 22, 2017 by Epsik-kun

[Cyborg-Rox]

I had no idea about these "nerfs", but I wholly agree with all your points. Glad to see someone taking their time to exclaim some reason.

[Kalvorax]

what nerf? the only one i saw that was major was the fix to gas damage (maybe toxin in general?) getting rid of the additional x8 multiplier so we are down to (8x?) when invisible.

that being said, I really havent seen a change (did a Mot survival with a pug and the 3 of us went 40 minutes easy....though i was using excal with naramon and a gas chromatic blade *toxin on broken war, fire on the EB) and was still seeing good numbers against level 75 enemies...kind of sad that almost any long endless past level 75, you need a good tanking frame or stealth to stay alive. (or CC, but that is another topic lol)

(though I DO despise being locked into EB once it gets tougher to getting one shot by a single bullet.)

[Destiny2Captain]

Good job DE instead of nerfing naramon nerfed all the stealth frames which were already underplayed.And the thing that bothers me the most is that they did it secretly in order to confirm their policy that we are registered losers.

 

[aligatorno]

2 minutes ago, Kalvorax said:

what nerf? the only one i saw that was major was the fix to gas damage (maybe toxin in general?) getting rid of the additional x8 multiplier so we are down to (8x?) when invisible.

that being said, I really havent seen a change (did a Mot survival with a pug and the 3 of us went 40 minutes easy....though i was using excal with naramon and a gas chromatic blade *toxin on broken war, fire on the EB) and was still seeing good numbers against level 75 enemies...kind of sad that almost any long endless past level 75, you need a good tanking frame or stealth to stay alive. (or CC, but that is another topic lol)

(though I DO despise being locked into EB once it gets tougher to getting one shot by a single bullet.)

The enemies have a period of invulnerability to stealth multipliers once you hit them with one unless you blind them. But it is inconsistent, the next hits sometimes do 1/3 damage of the first hit, 1/2, 10x lower from my tests.

It is most likely a bug. 

[Voltage]

People cry nerf on the forums regularly when anything is useful. Melee is fine as it is because this is a PvE Horde Shooter. What is ironic is the people that say "X ruins my fun" cry for a nerf to ruin everyone else's fun.

I really do not understand this "fairness" mentality, and wanting everyone to be at a similar power level because someone says something is overpowered.

Edited July 22, 2017 by --Q--Voltage

[Kalvorax]

1 minute ago, aligatorno said:

The enemies have a period of invulnerability to stealth multipliers once you hit them with one unless you blind them. But it is inconsistent, the next hits sometimes do 1/3 damage of the first hit, 1/2, 10x lower from my tests.

It is most likely a bug. 

now that you mention enemy the one i do remember them doing was that 5-10 second period when they first spawn in.

[aligatorno]

4 minutes ago, --CoB--Captain said:

Good job DE instead of nerfing naramon nerfed all the stealth frames which were already underplayed.And the thing that bothers me the most is that they did it secretly in order to confirm their policy that we are registered losers.

 

There are only 4 stealth frames : Loki, Ivara, Ash and Octavia. And they are not underplayed at all, all 4 of them are rather popular. 

Blinding frames still work the same as before, which means Radial Blinding Excal, Sleeping Arrow Ivara, Sleep Equinox, Blind Inaros, Paralyze Valkyr etc are not affected by this change. 

[DrBorris]

This is just more evidence for Banshee being the superior stealth Warframe.

 

And melee is still the most powerful and easiest way to deal damage, no tears shed here. 

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

1 minute ago, DrBorris said:

This is just more evidence for Banshee being the superior stealth Warframe.

 

And melee is still the most powerful and easiest way to deal damage, no tears shed here. 

I love you, brother Tenno of Warframe, another Banshee main if I'm reading in between the lines of this post correctly.

If given the opportunity, I'd buy you a beer.

[rapt0rman]

Or it's just a bug because there's literally nothing for DE to gain by stealth nerfing easily accessible, easily testable game mechanics.

DE. Will. Tell. You. When they break your favorite toy.

Edited July 22, 2017 by rapt0rman

[cghawk]

22 minutes ago, rapt0rman said:

Or it's just a bug because there's literally nothing for DE to gain by stealth nerfing easily accessible, easily testable game mechanics.

DE. Will. Tell. You. When they break your favorite toy.

same could be said when they nerfed credit gains for a year, was only fixed after a year because people wouldn't stop complaining about the nerf.

[tnccs215]

46 minutes ago, --Q--Voltage said:

I really do not understand this "fairness" mentality, and wanting everyone to be at a similar power level because someone says something is overpowered.

Oh boy, you must be fun to discuss politics with.

"Oooh, I don't understand these peasents demanding things like, equal opportunity  and fairness and freedom.  What's the issue of benefiting only a specific group for completely arbitrary reasons? Who is it hurting (except everyone who doesn't have such an easy access to everything)?"

[Voltage]

21 minutes ago, tnccs215 said:

Oh boy, you must be fun to discuss politics with.

"Oooh, I don't understand these peasents demanding things like, equal opportunity  and fairness and freedom.  What's the issue of benefiting only a specific group for completely arbitrary reasons? Who is it hurting (except everyone who doesn't have such an easy access to everything)?"

"I cannot get kills in missions so can we please nerf telos boltace, mirage, and synoid simulor?" 

Equal opportunity and the "fairness" mentality to do with nerfs are completely different. People complaining when the mission is still complete is just plain annoying.

What you are discussing is completely derailing and not what I am talking about

Edited July 22, 2017 by --Q--Voltage

[Dragazer]

1 hour ago, Epsik-kun said:

Well, in fact, it is a bug fix. Or, if you consider this to be a "stealth nerf", then it's a stealth nerf to a stealth buff.

Your join date was 2015 so I'll put in a little history.

Invisibility, ever since the game has been in closed beta has always forced stealth damage regardless of hits.

It was until a change in June 2014 that changed this accidentally.

That is 100% intended the proc came from melee weapon and is supposed deal more damage while invis

It is not a bug, but actually a bug fix from a really old bug back in June 2014:

And from the above post quote from DE Reb: 

Quote

Some degree of this is intended and it will be fully stated in the coming hotfix thread for maximum exposure. What (as you can see) appears to be happening here is basic enemy awareness on contact or sound of invisible units will trigger a response of some kind instead of full ignorance. The intent is to add a level of fine-control skills to the Invisibility mechanic. You've raised very valid points about how different ranged approaches make this fair/unfair, and I'm hoping to get clearly insight shortly to intent.

It wasn't until recently this year that DE managed to fix this issue:

The Glast Gambit: Hotfix 19.6.3

Changes

• Enemies no longer receive a mental perception of an attacker, but rather mental perception of the source object. This causes them to play a reaction and become alert, but not have any extra information about the player. Enemies that are shot with projectiles that are silent and/or without a sound effect will now report a visual perception (rather than doing nothing). Previously enemies knew the exact location of their attacker when taking damage, regardless of the source. 

 

 

The stealth multiplier not applying on every hit was a bug along with enemies somehow knowing your exact location despite being hit by silent weapons when they changed stealth mechanics back in June 2014

 

Edited July 22, 2017 by Dragazer

[Evanescent]

Until I get official word on if this is intended or not I'm taking both sides with a pinch of salt. You guys and rebuff or justify it all you want, if it was a change it should have been listed. From my experience, changes made without mention are almost always bugs.

One thing I am curious about is what you mean by forcing multiplier on 'everything' and 'breaking the atmosphere'.

@Dragazer points out the likely truth of the matter quite succinctly above.

Edited July 22, 2017 by Evanescent

[Epsik-kun]

24 minutes ago, Dragazer said:

It is not a bug, but actually a bug fix from a really old bug back in June 2014:

I see. I assumed that such behavior might've been present in the older version Warframe, but I didn't know for sure. Thank you for the clarification.

However, I have to disagree with this part:

24 minutes ago, Dragazer said:

The stealth multiplier not applying on every hit was a bug

As even [DE]Rebecca had stated that "some degree of this is intended" while agreeing on the point of this being unfair in relation to the short-range melee.  The whole change appears to me as an attempt of making invisibility more realistic if anything. I don't see this exact statement or anything similar anywhere.

And even if the "by merely being invisible the frame gets access to unlimited stealth damage multipliers" is the correct behavior, I'll stand my point and disagree with it being "good" behavior. It's unhealthy to the game and there are ways around it that are both balanced and realistic/atmospheric.

22 minutes ago, Evanescent said:

One thing I am curious about is what you mean by forcing multiplier on 'everything' and 'breaking the atmosphere'.

Flavour-wise it makes no sense that an enemy who's aware they are being under attack to receive the same exact penalties as enemies who are completely calm and unaware of the danger. This is what "breaks the atmosphere".

Balance-wise it makes no sense for invisibility which is dirt cheap and almost passive in all of its forms to provide the full benefit of Blind abilities which force stealth multipliers onto enemies. By "forcing stealth multipliers" I mean the situation when every single of melee attacks becomes multiplied by stealth bonus. For example, blind abilities force stealth multipliers on enemies no matter were they aware of the player prior to that or not.

 

Edited July 22, 2017 by Epsik-kun

[tnccs215]

24 minutes ago, --Q--Voltage said:

"I cannot get kills in missions so can we please nerf telos boltace, mirage, and synodic simulor?" 

Equal opportunity and the "fairness" mentality to do with nerfs are completely different. People complaining when the mission is still complete is just plain annoying.

Except not. In case you haven't noticed, the enjoyment isn't drawn from the mission complete screen - specially not in this game, where that is a given - but yes from the process of completing the mission. People like to do stuff, and not being able to do anything isn't fun. And I'm sorry, but your fun isn't more important than the one of the other one to seven people in the squad. 

You wanna strawman and reduce people to ridicule? I can do that too. 

"I cannot get all the kills in missions can I please have the stuff I enjoy be orders of magnitude better than everyone else's?" 

And you know why that's more pathetic than the one you presented? Because the "fun" derived from getting all the kills directly ruins everyone else's fun, which is derived from getting a fair amount of the kills. While getting some of the kills without taking too many of other people doesn't ruin anyone's fun - well, it does ruin the fun of the selfish people whose enjoyment comes directly from taking the others' away. 

One type of fun allows others. Another doesn't. Which one should be taken away? 

24 minutes ago, --Q--Voltage said:

What you are discussing is completely derailing and not what I am talking about

Oh no, I'm not derailing; I'm simply calling out your fallacies and contradictions. 

Thing is, if this "nerf" made invisi-cheasing (because this isn't bloody "stealth") a less viable playstyle, you could have a case. Other people would indeed be diminishing your fun to levels below their own, and that would be unfair. But that's not what happened. This nerf simply made invisi-cheasing more on par with other playstyles - hell, it's probably still more powerful in a lot of ways - so any insibility user claiming to be the prejudiced entity in here is at best wrong, and at worst a liar. 

Edited July 22, 2017 by tnccs215

[Dragazer]

35 minutes ago, Epsik-kun said:

I see. I assumed that such behavior might've been present in the older version Warframe, but I didn't know for sure. Thank you for the clarification.

However, I have to disagree with this part:

As even [DE]Rebecca had stated that "some degree of this is intended" while agreeing on the point of this being unfair in relation to the short-range melee.  The whole change appears to me as an attempt of making invisibility more realistic if anything. I don't see this exact statement or anything similar anywhere.

And even if the "by merely being invisible the frame gets access to unlimited stealth damage multipliers" is the correct behavior, I'll stand my point and disagree with it being "good" behavior. It's unhealthy to the game and there are ways around it that are both balanced and realistic/atmospheric.

I am most certain this is unintended and a bug. When they fixed stealth gas damage triple dipping, they would have fixed this as-well if it was unintended but they didn't (I mean this behavior is extremely and obvious to notice.)

Like Reb said some degree of this was unintended 

Intended: Losing stealth dmg upon warframe contact with enemy

Unintended and was fixed on Hotfix 19.6.3 but messed up again in the last fix: Losing stealth dmg upon hitting the enemy with just the weapon.

Looking at the history and the fact that something this big was unmentioned in patchnotes leads me to believe last weeks change is a bug.

Unhealthy in what way? Loki, Ash, Ivara, and Octavia were all designed with invis in their kits.

If anything I see Naramon being the issue giving perma invis to frames that were never designed to go invis.

No one ever complained about invis until Naramon showed up.

Now every frame can go invis permanently, for no energy cost, and with complete immunity to nullifiers, or any other Warframe ability dispels like Stalker's.

Yeah in case you forgot those 4 frames get their invis dispelled by nullies, but Naramon doesn't.

Edited July 22, 2017 by Dragazer

[AuroraSonicBoom]

It was a step in the right direction when it comes to making stealth play actually stealthy and not just a synonym for "press a button to stop being targeted and do more damage". Invisibility supported stealth play in Warframe never was tactical, and funnily enough, sneaking around the map fully visible, even though the actual benefits from doing so are completely negligible, come much closer to the ideal idea of what stealth gameplay should be focused around. I've always laughed when people here on the forums treated the invisibility mechanic like it's the cornerstone of engaging stealth game play when the exact opposite is the case. Enemies outside of general power disabling units like Nullies and the 6th sense infested moas have, possess no counter. No blind firing of units that have been bumped into, no raised suspicions from hearing an invisible frame run by at full speed, or a door opening with no one coming through. To make stealth work it has to loose it's capacity to be abused in generic run and gun shooter gameplay, and this is where I see the nerf having brought stealth just a little closer to a different way of playing and further away from being "yet another damage buff" that is was and is still being used for.

 

Also, friendly reminder to DE that Shadow Step still isn't canceled by Nullifier and Comba disruption fields, and the same goes for Shade's Ghost and Huras' Stalk.

Edited July 22, 2017 by AuroraSonicBoom

[Kalvorax]

1 minute ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

Also, friendly reminder to DE that Shadow Step still isn't canceled by Nullifier and Comba disruption fields.

and how it should be...its not a warframe specific POWER...and neither is it a toggle for that matter.

 

1 minute ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

To make stealth work it has to loose it's capacity to be abused in generic run and gun shooter gameplay

well this isnt really a game with stealth focus..its a horde shooter...with differeing objectives to make it feel likes its a different game

[Dragazer]

6 minutes ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

It was a step in the right direction when it comes to making stealth play actually stealthy and not just a synonym for "press a button to stop being targeted and do more damage". Invisibility supported stealth play in Warframe never was tactical, and funnily enough, sneaking around the map fully visible, even though the actual benefits from doing so are completely negligible, come much closer to the ideal idea of what stealth gameplay should be focused around. I've always laughed when people here on the forums treated the invisibility mechanic like it's the cornerstone of engaging stealth game play when the exact opposite is the case. Enemies outside of general power disabling units like Nullies and the 6th sense infested moas have, possess no counter. No blind firing of units that have been bumped into, no raised suspicions from hearing an invisible frame run by at full speed, or a door opening with no one coming through. To make stealth work it has to loose it's capacity to be abused in generic run and gun shooter gameplay, and this is where I see the nerf having brought stealth just a little closer to a different way of playing and further away from being "yet another damage buff" that is was and is still being used for.

 

Also, friendly reminder to DE that Shadow Step still isn't canceled by Nullifier and Comba disruption fields.

1 hour ago, Epsik-kun said:

Balance-wise it makes no sense for invisibility which is dirt cheap and almost passive in all of its forms to provide the full benefit of Blind abilities which force stealth multipliers onto enemies. By "forcing stealth multipliers" I mean the situation when every single of melee attacks becomes multiplied by stealth bonus. For example, blind abilities force stealth multipliers on enemies no matter were they aware of the player prior to that or not.

 

Invis was fine on frames that were designed for it

1 hour ago, Dragazer said:

Loki, Ash, Ivara, and Octavia were all designed with invis in their kits.

If anything I see Naramon being the issue giving perma invis to frames that were never designed to go invis.

No one ever complained about invis until Naramon showed up.

Now every frame can go invis permanently, for no energy cost, and with complete immunity to nullifiers, or any other Warframe ability dispels like Stalker's.

Yeah in case you forgot those 4 frames get their invis dispelled by nullies, but Naramon doesn't.

Each of those frames have counter balances to make sure things didn't get out of hand

Loki: Extremely squishy and deals no dmg with abilties. 

Ash: Offers zero team utility or support cc

Ivara: Very limited movement, and loses invis upon firing loud weapons

Octavia: Cannot go invis on demand (must crouch on beat.)

 

Naramon was what came and ruined this, giving perma invis to frames that weren't balanced around the fact that they could go invis for zero energy cost.

 

It isnt fair to screw over 4 frames because of one focus ability

 

Edited July 22, 2017 by Dragazer

[AuroraSonicBoom]

9 minutes ago, Kalvorax said:

and how it should be...its not a warframe specific POWER...and neither is it a toggle for that matter.

No it's not fine. It's an ability fueled by Tenno powers, which is exactly what Nullifiers are supposed to prevent. Then again, Shadow Step wouldn't even be a problem if enemies could react to invisibility, but since they don't this is what needs to happen.

Invisibility itself needs to be brought down in terms of survivability, but not by nerfing individual frames. That be too much work to touch every single frame. To future proof enemies against being completely helpless against invisible enemies stealth detecting units need to be introduced to every faction, like DE said they would do when they designed Hyekka Masters.

Edited July 22, 2017 by AuroraSonicBoom

[aligatorno]

11 minutes ago, Dragazer said:

 

Ash: Offers zero team utility or support cc

 

 

Not quite. He can give invisibility to all his teammates or he can strip armor to speed up the kill time. It requires augments, but he can do it. 

Edited July 22, 2017 by aligatorno

[Dragazer]

6 minutes ago, aligatorno said:

Not quite. He can give invisibility to all his teammates or he can strip armor to speed up the kill time. It requires augments, but he can do it. 

All require augments, Smoke Shadow is limited to 5 meter range (unaffected by mods), Seeking Shuriken only removes 2 at a time at best and requires high power str and duration to make it worthwhile(Remember the augment takes up a slot too). 4x cp or status weapons kinda already do the job for you.

Like I mention Ash has zero cc abilities 

Edited July 22, 2017 by Dragazer