'Always On' melee channeling.

[TheMostFrench]

Wanted to make this post for a while, it's on the long side but please stick with it! I am confident that you will like these ideas.

I feel that channeling is pretty useless for three major reasons:

• The energy cost.
• The really average channeling mods which rely on you having energy to spare.
• All of the good channeling mods make channeling cost more, which means they stop being useful the more you use channeling.
   

We use channeling by taking out our melee weapon and simply activating channeling with a button press, this causes melee to do some extra damage and also use the channeling mods we equipped. The problem with this is many melee weapons are already very useful with regular melee mods using quick melee attacks, most of the regular mods totally outshine the channeling ones. This means you don't even need melee channeling in a vast majority of situations, except for a bit of flair or variety, and often you will wonder why you bothered to put channeling mods on at all, at the cost of another more useful mod.

My suggestion is that instead of melee channeling being active, it becomes passive. Basically, instead of channeling being 'a thing you turn off and on' it becomes conceptual - The act of specifically equipping your melee weapon is called channeling. If you think about it, by taking out the melee weapon you are focusing all of your tenno skill into wielding the melee weapon to do awesome combos, but at the cost of having immediate access to a firearm.

To balance this in our favour, I propose that the energy cost is removed from channeled attacks completely, again, no energy cost for channeling melee (now that I have your attention). The damage bonus would need to be reworked or removed.

With this new system, as soon as you take out your melee weapon you are in melee channeling mode, and now the channeling mods apply to your attacks at all times in this mode. Suddenly, the channeling mods look pretty enticing!

Here are all of the channeling mods that used to exist and currently exist http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Channeling_Mods - Free life strike. Huge damage from Corrupt Charge + Killing Blow. More +crit% and +attack speed% too! Auto Parry and Counterattack could actually be useful all the time because you aren't gimping your melee weapon which could just be doing quick attacks! (Seriously, I haven't used the block button or any of the block/parry mods in YEARS).

The thing is, all of these awesome mods are only active while you have your melee weapon out. The balance, then, is in the weapon switch speed - In an emergency, will you have time to pull out your Vaykor Hek, Opticor, or Ignis? With channeling as it is now, you will wonder why you bothered even taking your melee weapon out when you knew it wasn't going to be any better than just shooting or quick attacking everything at point blank range, which is exactly what you will do as you run away from a group of Energy Leech Eximi during the few seconds of invincibility you get after clicking 'revive'.

Without an energy cost for melee channeling:

• You still have the energy for ability use which means you still have options.
   
• The mods will always work with your weapon out, and therefore always be useful since you don't have to feed your weapon with energy all the time (life Strike seems like a great idea until it doesn't work and you just wasted a bunch of mod space).
   
• After doing some channeled melee you can then pull out your gun and continue to fight at range, again, this is about giving us options and variety.
   
• There is now a good reason to pull out your melee weapon in the middle of a big fight because when you do you potentially double your damage. You still have to go toe to toe with strong enemies who can knock you down or disable your abilities, but you can be more confident that you won't be wasting your time with channeled melee.
   
• Melee weapons which could be totally ignored now have more potential.
   
• If you are using your melee weapon more, you get to enjoy stuff like the hidden procs in some combos, and the special channeled abilities of some weapons - this is stuff that some people never see because they never use dedicated melee.
   
• Melee channeling rivens which further enhance melee gameplay options and expand the riven market.
   
• There could be more mods for channeling which encourage dedicated use of your melee weapon (remember that melee channeling would always be on). 
  Some I thought of just now:
  • Increased status or crit chance on next attack after a parry.
  • Blocking increases power strength of next ability up to x%. Or range, cost (decrease), duration.
  • Enemies killed with the last hit of a combo give bonus affinity up to x%.
  • An enemy hit directly by a channeled jumping attack will be downed for +x seconds.
  • In channeled mode, two handed weapons have a chance to send enemies flying back when hit.
     
• With more good mods, channeled only builds become viable - Where normally you might just pretend that channeling and channeling mods don't exist, we are now trying to build our melee weapons to be better at channeling.
   
• You don't have to remember to turn melee channeling on or off.
   
• You don't need to keep an eye on your energy use, and can focus more on enjoying the game.

 

In Summary: With this system, nothing that already exists needs to be removed except for channeling efficiency (since it no longer has a cost)

Edited October 28, 2017 by TheMostFrench

[AlphaPHENIX]

As good as it sounds on paper, I don't feel like it will be good in practice. I mean you are basically asking for a nerf of Quick Melee and also that ''Channeld'' Melee be made over powered. There are plenty of balance issues in Warframe as it is, we don't need more, but I appreciate that you care about the channeling system.

[TheMostFrench]

Essentially I'm suggesting that the balance be reversed. Quick melee is currently stronger than channeled melee because quick melee has a wider selection of useful mods and doesn't cost anything to use. Quick melee would not be nerfed at all, it would still be just as good as it is now if you built for it, but by having a channeled melee system with some unique mods, and the potential for greater damage and usefulness means it could be worth using over quick melee. As it stands, there is not really a good reason to use channeling at all, which is the problem I want to see addressed.

Edited October 28, 2017 by TheMostFrench

[(PSN)CrimsonAxure]

The damage multiplier needs a serious buff, 1.5x damage??? wtf?? I could get way more damage with crits alone

Edited October 28, 2017 by (PS4)PS_90210

[AlphaPHENIX]

10 minutes ago, TheMostFrench said:

Quick melee would not be nerfed at all, it would still be just as good as it is now if you built for it, but by having a channeled melee system with some unique mods, and the potential for greater damage and usefulness means it could be worth using over quick melee.

Exactly what I meant, that's what's called an indirect nerf. You are making channeling do a lot more damage (which to be fair makes sence) in a game where doing as much damage as possible is crucial because of silly armour scalling that migth as well be giving enemeis with armour 90% damage resistance.

You said it yourself, ''free Life Strike'' that alone would define power creep and sence Life Strike scales with % of the damage you deal...with that and the increase of damage, whatever balance is left in the game won't just be reversed...it will be destroyed unless DE nerfs the deffault damage of all melee weapons, which would also nerf quick melee. We would just be back at square one, but asking for a buff of quick melee instead.

[EpicBred]

How are the standard melee mods different to the "new" channeling mods then?

Id suggest to just give channeling some good mods, I made a topic about that before.

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

1 hour ago, (PS4)PS_90210 said:

The damage multiplier needs a serious buff, 1.5x damage??? wtf?? I could get way more damage with crits alone

Plus crit affects status while channeling only affects raw. It could be made free without any other changes with how pointless channeling is imo....that way life strike at least wouldn't be inferior to the furis anymore...

[Epsik-kun]

7 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

Suddenly, the channeling mods look pretty enticing!

Eh, no - they do not. Sure, free Life Strike sounds powerful, but that's about it. Look at the stats of every other channeling mod and name me a reason to use them, even for free.

Also, passive channeling would be a step backward. The problem with Channeling isn't the energy cost or the necessity of wielding melee. The problem with Channeling lies in the fact Channeling is so goddamn weak. The concept itself can work and isn't that bad actually.

Buff all the channeling mods tenfold - you'll get viable working Channeling that isn't mandatory nor is a panacea. Bonus points for removing the counter-synergy Channeling has with Combo Multiplier.

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

They just need to lower the energy drain considerably and increase the damage multiplier on channeling and it will be more popular. Channeling should be decent on most weapons without mods, but become really great when fully modded for. It should get even better damage values than crit builds in fact when fully modded for it because ,let's face it , if you're modding for channeling, you should get an even better multiplier than with crits since you're spending energy to get the same results.