Melee: Present and Future goals!

[DreadWarlock]

I'm liking the Channeling changes. I personally thought that we should've had the return of Stamina Bar for channeling only a long time ago, this way no one would have ignored Channeling because it wouldn't spend hard to come by energy that could've been used for your powers. Stamina would replenish automatically to prevent you from spamming it.

And with this new proposal it would add a bit more of a skill ceiling to melee, people would actually have to learn when to block and which attacks to block, and when to dodge roll. Together with skill cancelling, this would allow melee to be more flexible and allow for more mobility in combat. It will also allow for some survivability on our fragile caster frames. A reall good alternative for gunfights.

[MirageKnight]

52 minutes ago, Xydeth said:

healing return *cough*

It's an option, but it only works well with status builds, so the mod's use is a bit situational.

[(PSN)Gin_Da_Merciless]

5 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

It's an option, but it only works well with status builds, so the mod's use is a bit situational.

Lifestrike can just work when u use heavy attacks and/or finishers.  If u look what i posted not too long ago i say that it could work when you hold down one of the possible melee buttons.

[Absolute_Kriatura]

I know I'm late to the party but all this melee changes... will make archwing melee weapons better?? will we be able to finally use "block" when in archwing melee mode?? I hope DE didnt forget us, those who love archwing missions.

[TheGrimCorsair]

1 hour ago, (XB1)Architect Prime said:

Thoughts:

- What happens to life strike? It's a critical mod to many MANY melee builds. 

- will stances with spinning attacks change (e.g. broken bull combo)? 

- Should I expect to have any non-maiming builds be annihilated?

- What happens to mods like blood rush (also a CRITical mod) when combo counter multipliers become easier to achieve? 

-Would guess it probably only applies to Heavy attacks once a certain threshold of combo meter has been achieved (FWIW, probably only the first rank/bar)

-Curious about this, 'cause Broken Bull has long been horrifically overpowered. Hopefully they'll remove the damage multipliers from it, as well as the first couples inputs before spinning occurs. Would be neat if it keyed off heavy attack and used a combo charge per 2 spins.

-Yeah, this seems pretty likely to be honest. On the plus side, all your Maiming Strike builds will probably also go the way of the dodo (and nothing of value is lost there).

-From what they've revealed so far, it's fair to infer it will only apply to heavy attacks, so it'll be of less benefit for people that don't use their melee weapons drawn very often.

[Xolgys]

vor 9 Minuten schrieb MirageKnight:

It's an option, but it only works well with status builds, so the mod's use is a bit situational.

there are enough forced proccs on stances and abilities applying proccs besides the melee weapon so its not really too situational. when enemies start taking more than 1 hit its worth it since u can easily have 1-2 proccs at that point. basically any build where condition overload is worth it healing return works too if needed. since melee tends to hit multiple enemies its even better since its also independant of the dmg u deal. later if u dont have 100% armor strip armor will lower dmg and hence heal from life strike, healing return always heals the fixed amount. companion mod hunter recovery is also worth it btw. ppl tend to underrate dmg from companions...1 attack -> full health. melee synergy with them is also very good.

greetings~

[OrochiFuror]

You can't do that to the combo counter, it will gut melee. Having to attack X amount of times just to then charge up your real damage attack is bad. You'd have to triple or quadruple base melee damage to get close to what we do now, but then what's the point of all the combo mods. Why not tie the COMBO counter into actual COMBOs. Make the damage only work on combos, change the stats of combos so the primary combo spam we do now gets half the combo counter damage and the advanced combos get full or even more on the attacks that deviate from the main chain to give them superior damage. Make your combo system worth using. This keeps things similar to how we have it now, but makes combos and skilled melee more productive. Maybe give a bonus for swapping up your attacks, doing a slam or spin will buff the duration or speed you get combo counter.

Just something to bring the parts you have now together to make them all worth using. Put some stats on all of the stances basic attack though, like slide and slam, they have specific names in the stance but don't do anything special. Putting channel into block makes it easy to use, maybe bring back stamina specifically for channeling and give some bonus channel only slots, or make the bonuses amazing on the mods. Also weather you bring back stamina for channeling or not, take off the energy cost, it's never worth it. Maybe make channeling more of a thing that you absorb all the damage you block to multiply it by your channeling efficiency into your next attack, making channeling a sort of counter attack system.

 

[(XBOX)Architect Prime]

1 hour ago, Xydeth said:

healing return *cough*

What about non status weapons?

[(PSN)Gin_Da_Merciless]

If they keep the hold button attacks in the game then lifestrike can just work with that. No?

[Xolgys]

vor 26 Minuten schrieb (XB1)Architect Prime:

What about non status weapons?

read 2 posts above this quote of urs.

[Ceadeus]

So...uh...

This sucks.

A.  The simple fact that there's still an "if" factor as to whether channeling should play a role in melee combat is the single most mind-numbingly dumb idea I've ever heard.  "Oh yeah let's make channeling as this big flagship feature of melee 2.0.  THEN when it underperforms because we refuse to give at even remotely decent value compared to any other possible build option, let's just scrap it entirely and put it all towards making blocking actually block like it should have in the first place .  On top of that we'll also now add heavy energy drains to channeled blocking (which we're forcing you to do now) so it's even more inefficient and worthless of a strategy to rely on.  Oh but don't worry, we moved heavy attacks to their own button so you don't have to do the stupid light attack intro first... Just don't think about the fact that this should've been a simple tweak to melee 2.0 about right after we revisited heavy attacks at all."

B.  I can already 100% guarantee you that LoS checks on melee weapons is going to be a buggy mess at best causing even more instances of just complete nonsense where something that should absolutely happen in the player's favor just doesn't for no explicable reason.  I can also 100% guarantee that people will just shift to the next thing that doesn't have LoS checks until that inevitably gets nerfed, because you're not allowed to have actually efficient methods of dealing with content, you need to sit there and use the sub-par guns to shoot each individual enemy for at least 30 seconds all while they can 1-shot you at literally any time.

C.  Combo counter only affecting heavy attacks and being reset after  1 attack?  You better up the damage multipliers of combos then so any attack I burn my entire combo stack on is a guaranteed 1-shot...  This is honestly just plain stupid.  In what possible world is a MASSIVE nerf to overall DPS justifiable by the simple fact that heavy attacks are moved to their own button?  Because that's literally all there is for compensation.  Combo counter already affected heavy attacks, and didn't get expended on one attack.

So what is supposed to make this entire idea (as in this entire thread) feel like anything more than one of the largest nerfs in history with a cherry or two on top?

[(PSN)Oracle-Raven]

"We do not think Melee is at its best when you are facing a wall and spinning into it over and over again."
"We want to make melee better overall."
"our data shows this method in particular is often abused by automation, and our minds show it just simply isn't fun."

What you mean to say is that you don't want lazy players who don't feel like putting any effort into a 10+ minutes Survival mission.
However, Warframe is a very repetitive game by nature, where players go through the same game modes over and over and over again. Obviously, this level of repetitiveness encourages players to find ways to make the game less tedious. It might not be fun to face a wall and keep spinning, but it's less tedious.

You want to make Melee more fun, and that's a laudable goal. But making it more tedious in the process might not be the wisest approach.

Primary and secondary weapons require players to be engaged in the action. They need to aim, shoot, time their reloads, decide if they should go for a head shot or center mass, etc.
But Melee weapons don't require most of that. And I think that's a very good thing. In my opinion, melee should remain convenient. Players need a way to clear a room full of enemies and open a bunch of containers without having to consistently aim at each individual target. Otherwise the game just becomes even more tedious than it should be.

"the clear 'spin to win through walls' is our first step in this plan of making all things melee engagement better."

Better in what way? Because for me, better melee means more convenient. And not being able to hit enemies through awkward geometry is incredibly infuriating.

In my opinion, melee attacks should feel much more like Dynasty Warriors, and much less like Devil May Cry.
Now it sounds like you're planning on doing the exact opposite, nerfing melee range mods and the "convenience" of melee as a whole. Not good.

"channeled damage has never really been celebrated beyond 'cool factor'."

Pretty much the only mod that made channeling useful has been Lifestrike...

It kinda sounds to me like you just never bothered adding any good mods that would make Channeling builds a great alternative to Critical and Status builds...

Maybe you should try adding some. You know, to give people an actual reason to use Channeling and create builds around it?

"Dodge canceling any melee attack!"

I'm sorry, but if you have time to dodge cancel a melee attack, your attack speed sucks. Swinging a Magistar or Fragor at the speed of a frozen Lech Kril is not fun. That's why people use Primed Fury and/or Berserker.

[(PSN)Orta_the_Wise]

As a valkyr player I'm just wondering how life strike and melee frames like valkyr will be handled, I really don't want to be nerfed

[Noctis_The_Buckethead]

...NO nononono nono NOOOOOO... i am tired of trying to be polite when stuff like this happens, so i will be blunt, this is by far one of the stupidist "changes" (slighty less stupid than the attempted damage 2.5 changes that were once in the works) i have seen in any game i have played, this will likely make melee almost if not worse than melee 1.0 if it ever sees the light of day, RIP range, being able to hit enemies with melee if there is a body in the way, likely most methods of scaling melee damage other than condition overload, Scott and whoever else has been working on this needs a time out and to have their nerf hammer privilages revoked ASAP. Never listin to a Loud minority of players that complain and say "NERF EVERYTHING", just dont.  Also to all those who say this is a good thing because "its just the memeing strike losers" just shut up and read, this will likely ruin nearly every melee weapon that is even close to being good, heavy blades, sword and shields, dual swords, the zenistar, hammers, ect, some of the few unaffected things will be condition overload weapons that use builds lacking bloodrush and range mods, and covert lethality daggers.

here is a better idea have enemy bodies not count as objects to melee weapons that can block their strikes, add a script that insta-kills any enemies stuck in the level geometry, like hyekkas getting stuck in the walls at hydron, buff the range of weapons like daggers, tonfas, claws, ect, or add a change to their stances that allow them to chase down enemies faster and switch between targets in quick sucession, rounds of stat buffs to the weaker melee weapons, like giving the plasma sword useable attack speed, DONT nerf the range mods, but make them more effective to the lower range weapons, preferable by raising all their base ranges to about half the galatine's range. allow dual daggers to use covert lethality. make the machetes not garbage (only 2 half decent ones being the nami solo and the gazahl machete), scrap the combo multiplyer not affecting normal attacks, and the heavy attacks taking the entire multiplyer. the part about melee not going through walls is ok, so long as things like bodies, fences, clutter, boxes, and grineer blunts are still able to be attacked through, or at the very least revert the change that made grineer blunts immune to non-melee damage.

 

If this change goes through, people will be fully justified in wanting to leave the game, because as i have said multiple times before in this post, its not just the memeing strike cheese, its nearly anything that makes melee viable being affected, so lets hope this gets the damage 2.5 treatment and disappears.

[Serialkillerwhale]

About blocking: One of the best things about blocking is that it costs nothing to use and lets you lower, but not negate damage taken. Making it cost resources is only going to make blocking worse, even with 100%. I see no reason to force people to use channeled blocking.

[Hennils]

My primary concern about not being able to hit through walls anymore are bugged enemies.

Quite regularly enemies and loot crates still end up inside walls and (besides few, usually low-damage Warframe abilities) melee weapons are currently our only way to deal with those.

[(PSN)Gin_Da_Merciless]

7 minutes ago, Serialkillerwhale said:

About blocking: One of the best things about blocking is that it costs nothing to use and lets you lower, but not negate damage taken. Making it cost resources is only going to make blocking worse, even with 100%. I see no reason to force people to use channeled blocking.

There could be a bar for how much blocking u can do before it drains your energy. Timing blocks will restore the bar or give energy back.  Timed blocks stun enemies around u when meleed and reflect bullets back at enemies stunning them breifly.

[Neith7]

Here is a wild idea: blocking gives energy instead of taking it, like 0.1 for every damage point blocked.

It would be like a weak Rage effect.

Nah that’s too good I know but a Tenno can dream.

[Serialkillerwhale]

Just now, (PS4)marcellusg90 said:

There could be a bar for how much blocking u can do before it drains your energy. Timing blocks will restore the bar or give energy back.  Timed blocks stun enemies around u when meleed and reflect bullets back at enemies stunning them breifly.

And that will be a huge nerf compared to currently, where you can negate all but 15% of damage with the right weapon, after which it has to go through your armor. Enemies fire lots of bullets at you, any meter reasonable for earlygame starchart will be absolutely shredded lategame.

[Kino8]

I do like the sound of many of the changes you are speaking of implementing, however I do have some thoughts as well.

Melee channeling revisit & removing attacks through solid objects I feel is a must. Glad you're doing this.

I'm quite interested to see how the combo multiplier / heavy attack synergies will play out.

What I'm not enthused about is the simplification of combos. Raids were already removed from the game and the industry as a whole is getting so streamlined and bland. Choosing a weapon, practicing with it, and bringing it to group content should have a certain level of player skill involved. I think weapons having their own combo moves makes them more interesting and arguably attracts players such as myself who enjoy specific weapons. Having different combo sets makes each weapon actually feel different when used. Removing this in my mind is another step towards casual play and reinforces button mashing.

[RottedApples]

I'm scared this rework is going to ruin melee. I do have a certain amount of trust in you guys to either pull off reasonably successful changes or at least attempt to follow up on them when they don't quite work, but this is just something that I'm not sure if everyone is on the same page here.

My main concerns:

Channeling: Channeling isn't bad as a whole, it's not a bad system, it needs tweaks, number changes, better economy etc. I think it's cool, I've always wanted to make a channeling build for the synoid heliocor but i haven't because i want to get a riven for it, but if the channeling changes go through then i guess i won't bother. Also i know of people who play melee exclusively for channeling despite the state that it's in compared to, well not channeling. What will happen to them and their rivens? All that time and effort and kuva/plat invested into that?

Combo Counter: I think it's cool to slightly reduce the exponential nature of the combo counter and allow you to spend some of it to amp up your attacks but I'm not looking forward to heavy attacks completely draining it for 1 swing which by nature of heavy attacks being slower than normal ones is less consistent and guaranteed than normal attacks. This also ruins the infinite scale-ability of melee, not that it's necessarily healthy for the game for that to exist in the state it's in now, but it will make it harder to do things at higher levels if that 4x combo isn't actually doing anything now and you need to spend it all on 1 attack. And what does this new combo system do to blood rush? Combo counter doesn't affect normal attacks now right? But if blood rush(and the status version) become exceptions then they end up horribly over powered because of easier combo multiplier and the slide attack meta becomes even stronger than ever, but if blood rush gets looked at and nerfed then it could very well end up in a weak state pushing us into a status meta where no one will use crit. Blood rush is a big reason for the slide attack crit meta, and while i really enjoy pushing weapons up to red crits and doing the big scaling, I just don't know where all of this ends up after the changes.

[MirageKnight]

2 hours ago, Xydeth said:

there are enough forced proccs on stances and abilities applying proccs besides the melee weapon so its not really too situational.

That depends on if other folks bring weapons decent status or not, but still - good point.

2 hours ago, Xydeth said:

greetings~

Howdy^^

2 hours ago, (PS4)marcellusg90 said:

Lifestrike can just work when u use heavy attacks and/or finishers.  If u look what i posted not too long ago i say that it could work when you hold down one of the possible melee buttons.

Agreed.

36 minutes ago, RottedApples said:

I'm scared this rework is going to ruin melee.

Valid concern if you're a big fan of melee.

Worst case scenario, they can always go back and revert to how things were before. Other than that, they just need to fix whatever's broken and tweak whatever's OP or UP.

[JohnMorte]

no thanks, I want none of these changes. I opt out.

[seprent]

On 2018-05-15 at 12:41 AM, BringMeYourAzz said:

i cant stop staring at this it looks really cool

edit: woo made a new page welcome to page 41 don't die from potential over dosage of salt 

[(PSN)SolidInstinct_]

Would love to see combos between melee and primary/secondary weapons. 

E. G. Canceling a melee combo and quickly switching to your primary weapon for a couple of shots and quickly switching back to melee to finishing off your combo. This can create a lot of combo combinations between our weapons. 

For swords and shelid weapons, can we equip the shield for blocking/parrying whilst also firing our primary and secondary weapons? It gives us another option for protection rather than always having to find and take cover against heavy fire. 

 

Thank you for all your hard work, DE. Please take your time with melee 3.0 and ship it when it's ready and you're happy with it.