Melee: Present and Future goals!

[KubrowTamer]

1 minute ago, NecromancerX69 said:

I am so mad, I just recently forma my melee weapons and build rivens for the maim strike...

Who is going to give me back the hours I wasted? No one, I am really salty.

thats your fault and yours alone

[MarikBentusi]

I feel like Heavy Attack resetting Combo Counter can only work with a relatively low Combo Counter cap, because then it will feel like additional strikes are probably going to feel "wasted". Without that cap, Heavy Attacks are probably gonna feel "wasteful" because so many other systems that draw on the Combo Counter for power would benefit much more from you never using Heavy Attacks ever. Alternatively, Heavy Attacks could merely reduce the Combo Counter of course, or there could be a "Reposte" system that lets you quickly win back Combo Counter (like health in Bloodborne or Dead Cells after getting hit).

Blocking sounds... interesting. It feels like it's made in mind with a slower game speed than Warframe's meta. Personally I'd like to slow it down because the fast meta eliminates a lot of gameplay options. But the fast meta proponents are certainly numerous. Warframe has always tried to serve both masters, so I'm curious if this will work.

Ground Slam seems more fun now but I'm not sure that it's going to be more useful. Very few game systems seem to interact with this mechanic, so it's rarely worth using aside from some mobility (giving you control over when to end your airborne movement).

 

So I like the direction of this update, but basically all of these "fancy" melee moves still seem kinda weak to me and I'm not sure if players are going to bother using them. Maybe it would be good to include some enemies that heavily encourage (or even require) you to use these "fancy" moves on them. Sorta like what the Nox is to headshots. Something like "heavy attack flips over over turtle bot, revealing the weak spot on its belly that instakills it if targetted with a ground slam".

Also, since it seems like a lot of stuff is going to evolve but channeling is going to become a different beast entirely, maybe consider giving some kuva roll counter reductions (or kuva refunds) on rivens with channeling stats on them. If it's not too much database crawling trouble.

[Lancars]

Charge attacks also end up missing a lot already. No melee noodles!

[GPrime96]

51 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Combo Counter minimum hits per tier adjusted significantly so higher tiers can be reached more quickly and easily. Combo Counter damage multiplier may apply to heavy attack only and all points are spent on attack.

So Blood Rush and Weeping wounds is going to scale slower than normal. Condtion Overload would be the best option then.

[FreezerFlare]

This is a worse workshop than Damage 2.5 when it comes to how it will negatively impact the game.
By removing Combo working on Light Attacks you are not just nerfing the atterax. You are nerfing every single melee weapon in the game. Even the S#&$ ones.

If you want to nerf Maiming, Just Nerf Maiming. Or just whips, because Tonfa's require Maiming to do decent damage.

Nobody wants to use Charge/Heavy attacks, their always clunky and it would be more effective to just use an AoE frame or the Amprex at that point.

But hey go ahead and ignore all the negative feedback and send this through anyway. You wont lose any players at all I swear :)))

[Konachibi]

Here's a question for you that you likely didn't think about.

Right now the draw to using the Furax Wraith is that it has a higher base channelling damage multiplier than any other weapons (x1.75 instead of the normal x1.5).  If channelling is being taken away, this weapon will lose the one thing that makes it unique... so what are you going to do about that?

[ZephyrPrime]

Make channeling cost operator energy! It's finite, gives us a reason to upgrade it, and it recharges! 

[Ezekeel666]

Sounds interesting. Excited to see where this goes.

[Hyohakusha]

45 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Melee attacks (including spin attacks) will no longer sweep through walls or objects.

Okay. We'll just use frame powers instead of melee. And when that gets nerfed, we'll just find something else.

45 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Experiments such as constant energy drain or a separate resource

No one will ever use it if it drains or costs anything. The energy economy in this game is horrible on purpose to restrict us already. Anything that adds to that will be igorned. Just like channeling was by the majority of the player base.

[ChaosCVZ]

Don't want to count how many forma I'm gonna need to remake builds... hope the changes are for the better.

[LordPreda]

57 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Combo Counter damage multiplier may apply to heavy attack only and all points are spent on attack.

It will take quite a bit of work to convince me that this isn't a terrible idea. By far our most useful weapons, the ones that have whole builds created around them, are self-amplifying crit weapons that ramp up a combo multiplier and increase crit chance with it. I'm not saying removing that will only ever have a bad outcome (DE have proven time and again that they do good reworks), but it will take away a lot of high-end gear that people put many game hours into, and after the rework it will be an alien landscape for everyone.

13 minutes ago, Khaos_Zand3r said:

Combo counter multiplier is one of the few things that allows Sword Alone to scale into end game. The other changes will need to be significant to compensate. 

This, basically. Please take your time and consider a compensating change that will make up for the loss.

The other ideas all sound good and I'm excited for the rework.

[Tenno56489]

Can you also rework ZAW's and the Plains of E?

The grind is a #*!%ing disaster. Everything about Cetus and grinding in Cetus is so bad that I've grown it hate cetus and the plains with a passion. Wish the Grineer would just invade Cetus already. They'd probably be a lot better people than the people at the planes. Saved em from a giant infection cyst that threatened their lives and I was still visitor status and keep trying to rip me off with the item prices that they sell. Took me soooo many hours to go beyond visitor and only thing it leads to is even more grinding for even more overpriced items. I've done like 50 bounties and haven't gotten a single eidolon lens either. But I guess this is off topic at this point...

[Zetaikenshi]

As it stands, I do not want the "Spin2Win" into a wall changed until the fact that enemies not infrequently spawn inside walls is patched for a fair time, yes while it is upsetting and not fun to see someone spinning into a wall with a +200% riven and +165% primed reach, it's rare to see someone actually staying in one spot and simply spinning over and over, what you usually see is them sliding and spinning through a mission to accelerate the killing of enemies since sometimes people just don't want to go through an exterminate normally.

TL;DR Enemies spawn in walls, Spinning into a corner is rare, this will only hurt the game until the first thing is addressed.

[sixmille]

It's absolutely not a melee nerf but a nice, welcome change to melee. First we'll be able to get rid off one melee mod, then they're significantly increasing base damage, and finally, none of us knows exactly how all of this is going to work. You will be able to play without caring about the counter. Let's be honest, how many times did you have it above 2.5 during normal play? It's not that big of a deal.

Don't go with your gut feelings. Wait for the real thing, test it thoroughly then report your experience. We've had the same people crying "nerf" about the beam weapon changes and the devs stuck to their guns and it ended up being awesome.

[cursedmoon13]

My biggest concern is probably Relentless Combination. If it continues to work as it does now, in a world where combo counter builds from normal attacks but does not apply to them, benefits heavy attacks but is consumed by them, if any heavy attack forces slash procs, it likely will be the new meta.

Otherwise, I'm worried about mods like Avenging Truth, Enduring Affliction, and potentially all stances.

Does blocking always consume energy? Be ready for players to shun blocking. 

I forget the name, but the taunt-on-block mod might now be an energy killer.

What happens to Zenurik's channeling passive, or Naramon's combo counter passive.

What about Landslide, Primal Fury, Bladestorm, etc.?

Can I still disintegrate enemies by blocking while attacking (for stealth runs)? Can you channel on glaive throws at all? Will glaives throw with heavy attack now? Can you still detonate glaives mid-flight, and with what button?

Bottom line: while I'm sure DE has considered most, if not all, of these points, the complexity of melee means we need a lot of information to be prepared for these kinds of changes, or else it's natural to fall back on "the sky is falling, my favorite x is useless now!"

Example: one of my favorite weapons/builds is a Kripath rapier with Vulpine Mask, Enduring Affliction, Relentless Combination, among others. Proposed changes effect all three legs of this tripod, leaving me little clue as to whether this (imo fun, powerful, not too overpowered) build will work at all, or to what extent. My only option is to hope for the best, and spend what may be it's final days using Gila Fang to the fullest.

[Tyreaus]

Just now, Zetaikenshi said:

As it stands, I do not want the "Spin2Win" into a wall changed until the fact that enemies not infrequently spawn inside walls is patched for a fair time, yes while it is upsetting and not fun to see someone spinning into a wall with a +200% riven and +165% primed reach, it's rare to see someone actually staying in one spot and simply spinning over and over, what you usually see is them sliding and spinning through a mission to accelerate the killing of enemies since sometimes people just don't want to go through an exterminate normally.

TL;DR Enemies spawn in walls, Spinning into a corner is rare, this will only hurt the game until the first thing is addressed.

A quick, possible fix:

Make melee hitboxes able to enter, but not exit, objects. So if something spawns outside, they can still be hit, but the attack can't continue back inside and whack everything else. (Or something like that; I admit I don't know a great deal of how level geometry in Warframe works from a programmatic standpoint...)

[Lancars]

Don't nerf combo counters. A lot of weapons need them to be good late game. Don't just focus on meta you're gonna just turn a lot more melee weapons into mastery fodder and limit what you can decently use.

[Mewvg2]

3 minutes ago, Danjal777 said:

No one ever said you go back to zero combo counter, they said that it uses the combo counter as fuel for charge attacks.  If you seeing that gameplay in action didn't get you excited, then I guess you will just have to mourn the loss of your Atterax; Put the old girl to bed and dream of the other uses all of your wasted time and platinum could have bought you.

The big issue was that it wasn't a simple system, people just found it was more efficient to exploit it.  There was a pretty significant depth to the melee combos and stances, but it was so clunky that it was virtually unusable.  The intent was for a keen player to learn the combos and channel when the heavy hits came, effectively turning a heavy 3x damage slam into a 4.5x damage slam for 5 energy.  We didn't have time for that in the chaotic maelstrom that is Warframe, so we either face tank a heavy gunner and spam E, or we spend an exorbitant amount of time and resources into a slide attack, many even going so far as macro it and essentially stop playing the game and playing something closer to cookie clicker.  DE is making it well known that they are killing the cheese, if you were smart you would sell your exploit items before the BS rapture comes. 

"all points are spent on attack" How is this not clear?

Melee combos were in some cases a massive pain to use, sure. That can be fixed without scrapping the whole current melee system! The simple removal of charge attacks would solve a significant portion of those problems. The 'cheese' is an interaction between two mods, very easy to fix without scrapping the whole current melee system.

A complete Rework is wholly unnecessary.

[Peter]

"Oh no, may 10k scoliac riven now worth 10p, DE plos keep spin 2 win, plox"

 

Cry, Kiddo!

 

I love you DE, thanks!!

[Fire2box]

Who's gonna repair all the wall gashes from damage/range whip rivens now? Think of the factions DE. 

[IronWolfKnight]

My only issue is that the enemies fly across the landscape when delivering a heavy melee attack which makes it hard to keep track of them.

[Sumarbrandr]

Ambiguous text won't do the idea any favors too - we all remember the onslaught changes, don't we? 

 

I recommend rewriting because damn, most of hostility here is because of stuff it should be answered by now. 

[GPrime96]

If the Combo Counter literally scales off of Heavy Attacks, then it's better to not use Drifting contact because Mods like Drifting Contact, Body Count, and the Naramon School is what makes Blood Rush and Weeping wounds so good since those two mods scales off of the Combo Counter.

[Eldirian]

Ok. I thought about another thing. If you're taking away killing through walls and objects pls fix enemy AI. Sometimes in Onslaught enemies would go about their normal daily routine hidden in mazes made up of corridors and killing through wall is the only quick option.

[Xsoskeleton]

52 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Combo Counter damage multiplier may apply to heavy attack only and all points are spent on attack.

As stated here only the damage multiplier from said Combo Counter are not affecting normal attacks. It still does not state how Blood Rush and similar mods (scaling from Combo Counter damage multiplier) works as the mods themselves state that they are scaling with combo counter damage multiplier, which might be specific enough for them to still work with normal attack even with this incoming change.

On the other hand, Combo Counter points are all spent on attack? that'sa  huge nerf to the way melee can scale through endless mission, how about instead of completely clearing the stack, if it successfully lands a hit on enemy then it adds the counter like normal hitting (1 counter per 1 hit on 1 enemy), but if it doesnt hit any enemies, the combo counter goes down by the amount of combo multiplier instead (like in 3.0x, heavy attack without hitting a target makes u lose 3 counter). Charge attack tends to be slow sometimes and at some poitn have a chance to ruin stacked combo counter unless u use combo duration mods, by making it penalize the combo counter upon missing it makes the built up stacks doesnt go away in instant as it changes teh amount means refreshign combo duration.

Making charge/heavy attack eradicate built up damage scaling is kinda horrible. This rather makes people try as much as they can to avoid using heavy attack.