Constructive criticism melee 3.0

[Mayahai]

I am both concerned and looking forward to the new changes.

While it sounds all good and fun to me (being a meta-addict), I am seriously concerned about the combo counter. It will break many warframes whose scaling relies on it, and to be honest, building up all that combo just to lose again with a single attack that may or may not be AoE doesn't sound fun.

Blocking

Blocking certainly can have its place in this game, but only if it can be used like quick melee. Press <something> to block instantly, regardless of weapon. Otherwise, the slow nature of blocking playstyles just doesn't fit the fast pace of the game.

Every second that you are not shooting and killing, is a second for more enemies to gang up on you, thus the choice to block is already costly on its own right. No need to make it cost anything. While I rejoice that blocking now actually blocks and reflects projectiles back at attackers, I do still think that not all weapons should block the same amount.

In particular, I think the Silva & Aegis should be the only weapon with 100% damage reduction when blocking. It's a sword and shield for a reason. Being able to quick block makes the move more viable overall, but to encourage blocking I would suggest the minimum value of blocking to be 50% instead of 35%, and that all forms of block deflect projectiles after they have dealt damage to you. Then the deflected projectile would behave as expected and damage the attacker.

Blocking is the least of my concerns imho, but I do feel this would make blocking much more usable.

Object collision and walls

Here I am getting concerned, not for me as a meta phukboy but for the insidious glitchy spawns when playing Defense. Melee and some warframe abilities are currently the only remedy against enemies spawning inside walls. While that on its own is not such a problem, it becomes a big deal when you are playing Defense and the objective marker literally tells you to kill it or otherwise the next wave won't start.

This is in particularly noticeable at the Earth tileset. Beyond wave 15, Defense is practically unplayable with all the AI pathing errors and spawning in weird places. Fix your spawning and I won't be complaining. Hitting through walls is pretty $&*&*#(%&ed.

Okay, so assume this legitimately broken mess is fixed, then what?

Well, you mentioned walls and objects. While not as game-breaking as the wall problem, it gets pretty annoying really fast.

As other players have stated before me, dead bodies count as objects and having your attacks be shrugged off by random litter on the map is very annoying, at least with guns you have the advantage of range but when you are playing melee, you are very vulnerable and thus, should be more rewarding.

Combo

This is the meat of my concerns. First of all, the community has complained for years about the combo counter resetting, rather than decaying, this was ''fixed'' with a band-aid Naramon passive and band-aid mods like Drifting Contact. Instead of addressing these, you choose instead to make the slowest, clumsiest and most useless attack consume all of it.

I will give you credit for meeting us halfway by making the combo counter linear.

Then you make it so that only clumsy heavy attacks benefit from it.

That again, encourages slow paced gameplay which really does not fit in Warframe where you have to murder hordes of enemies. Sanctuary Onslaught in particular.

Not to mention that this will make Bloodrush either extremely overpowered or not worth using, depending on whether it works with light attacks or not.

I like the idea of using heavy attacks and making custom combos like that but for it to be viable, heavy attacks absolutely need a rework of their own.

I do note that you mentioned a buff, but that buff would need to be at least 3.0 damage, although, if anything the combo counter gives melee the ability to scale which is very important in endgame content. By endgame I mean endurance runs with 200+ level enemies.

In fact, I would actually scrap all of it and instead make all weapons contribute to combo, but only melee benefits from it, to encourage the variety of play that you seem to crave for, and that the combo counter decays over time, rather than expiring fully after X seconds.

However, not with the linear scaling you proposed, because with mass AoE weapons like the Arca Plasmor, that would be OP. Just keep the current method of scaling.

Added with the inability to hit through walls and the range nerf, this would help curb the spin2win meta whilst promoting variety in gameplay, I mean there is even a Steam achievement for it. (Tenno of all trades)

Yes it would require Naramon's passive to be changed, I would propose Naramon to help build up the combo counter faster while wielding melee.

In this scenario where building up combo is much easier, more varied and doesn't decay, I can still see the idea of heavy attacks have a place here. But for the love of Lotus, do not make them consume all of the counter, and make them faster to execute.

Life Strike

Because Life Strike relies on channeling and channeling is getting removed, I instead propose the mod to simply consume 5 to 10 energy per healing hit, depending on the mod rank.

This would mean that it only consumes energy if your HP is actually damaged.

I came up with these figures because there is a cap of channeling efficiency and 10 energy is what is generally consumed when using a maxed Life Strike while channeling.

A flat 20% life steal with no costs is just too OP.

Stances

I really have no criticism here. I welcome this change with open arms, as I primarily use just regular attacks and can't be bothered to learn a stance. The pauses make it frustrating to execute, especially when using Berserker.

Range

I do not know enough specifications to really have an opinion. From what I have gathered you are planning to nerf range mods but buff base range of weapons. I think that can be a pretty good change, in particular for the less popular weapon types.

Dual wielding

Is there anyone who can possibly dislike this?

[XenMaster]

Id take the decay mechanic of the Combo Counter instead of instantly gone.

[Elanair]

Regarding blocking, you gave me an idea. I agree that not all weapons should give 100% blocking ability and that blocking would be far more useful when you can do it whenever you want. That said, I think a good way to balance it out and satisfy both needs is to make it so when you hold the quick melee key you start blocking BUT only the default x% percentage which currently varies from weapon to weapon (non-channeling) and if you are wielding the weapon in your hand then you get the channeling block where you block 100% and redirect the damage back (channel blocking).

This way blocking is still useful for those who don't normally use melee but for the dedicated melee users it will have a bigger defense advantage because they dedicate themselves to it and due to having to close the gap in order to reach the foe and cut them up.

[EDM774]

the buggy spawns were the thing i was concerned about the most. Fine remove hitting enemies trough walls but only after you make sure no enemies can spawn in walls first! As you said we have a limited amount of abilities that can hit trough walls and meles and with this LoS trend going on I fear the buggy spawns will get at least 20x more annoying. 

[NoLazyShadow]

7 минут назад, Mayahai сказал:

Dual wielding 

Is there anyone who can possibly dislike this?

As for now its buggy, throw cancel reload wich is bad and change throws window need tweaks...and using them under the effects of volt speed/valkyr warcry become imposible

[Syln]

I kind of disagree about the slow/fast pace subject (wouldn't mind slow and well made melee combat from time to time maybe introduced with bosses/unique unite).

Anyway i was here to talk about channeling and the possibility to merge it with heavy attack thus channeling mods would become heavy attack mods whose potency would be affected by combo multiplier.

Exemple : Vital strike : combo x 1 : 5% life leech on heavy melee attack, combo x 2 : 10% life leech etc etc ... 

Could work on any existing channeling mods.and make them interesting after some stat tweaking.

[Fallen_Echo]

3 hours ago, Mayahai said:

In particular, I think the Silva & Aegis should be the only weapon with 100% damage reduction when blocking

We have 4 sword and shield weapon already and you suggest that only this one should get 100% blocking?

May i ask why or did i misunderstood something?

 

3 hours ago, Mayahai said:

Press <something> to block instantly, regardless of weapon.

Regarding this i think in warframe's universe it would be more realistic to pull out a small size weapon like a dagger or such for quick blocking rather than picking out a huge shield.

[Mayahai]

On 2018-05-17 at 4:03 PM, Fallen_Echo said:

We have 4 sword and shield weapon already and you suggest that only this one should get 100% blocking?

May i ask why or did i misunderstood something?

 

Regarding this i think in warframe's universe it would be more realistic to pull out a small size weapon like a dagger or such for quick blocking rather than picking out a huge shield.

To give you (the player) an actual reason to pick a Sword & Shield, encouraging variety in gameplay.

In almost 1000 hours of play, I have literally never seen anyone using Ack & Brunt or Silva & Aegis or any variant of those weapons. So I think giving them an actual unique advantage makes them more attractive choices without nerfing other weapons.

[Hyohakusha]

This is easy.

- Scoliac Disposition reduced to one. +200% range scoliac rivens are responsible for Maiming Strike getting hate. How people haven't figured this out is beyond me.
- Melee now functions off LoS
- Miming Strike was removed from the game, you get 500p, non-tradeable, per copy

Thats it. That's all it would've taken. But DE isn't trying to balance melee. They're trying to nerf it, while using Maiming Strike as and excuse and trying to maintain riven mod prices. That's why, despite a staged video of something I've never seen one player doing in over 2.5k hours in mission, despite claiming that maiming needs to be fixed, they're gutting every single other aspect of melee, without actually touching Maiming, which they claim to be the problem. The slam attacks? Flash to distract you from a nerf.

"Wait and see" is not a valid argument. With the environmental obstruction alone melee already feels horrible to use. No amount of their "fixes" are going to change how bad of an idea that was based on how much random crap is littering every tileset. It's obvious removing mod scaling is a further nerf, as is your basic attacks not scaling in general, as is you blowing your entire combo on a single slow attack. They want to slow down our kills and restrict our ability to do longer runs. Period.

[Fallen_Echo]

2 hours ago, Mayahai said:

To give you (the player) an actual reason to pick a Sword & Shield, encouraging variety in gameplay.

In almost 1000 hours of play, I have literally never seen anyone using Ack & Brunt or Silva & Aegis or any variant of those weapons. So I think giving them an actual unique advantage makes them more attractive choices without nerfing other weapons.

The ack & brunt with electromagnetic shielding is a necesseary equipment for support Nyx tank builds.

You know whats the 2 main reason this weapon class is less used?

First they offer nothing special in terms of offense and even if they get 100% block chance with reflecting that wouldnt be a reason to use them because you cant win a fight here just by staying alive.

Second its the variety they offer. Theres only 4 sword and shield weapon and since none of the 4 became meta they are practically hidden behind walls of swords and staves. The only weapon class what has even less variety are the nunchakus with only 2 weapons existing and i swear i havent seen a single one of them since last years summer.

[(PSN)Black-Cat-Jinx]

1 hour ago, Fallen_Echo said:

The ack & brunt with electromagnetic shielding is a necesseary equipment for support Nyx tank builds.

You know whats the 2 main reason this weapon class is less used?

First they offer nothing special in terms of offense and even if they get 100% block chance with reflecting that wouldnt be a reason to use them because you cant win a fight here just by staying alive.

Second its the variety they offer. Theres only 4 sword and shield weapon and since none of the 4 became meta they are practically hidden behind walls of swords and staves. The only weapon class what has even less variety are the nunchakus with only 2 weapons existing and i swear i havent seen a single one of them since last years summer.

I was using the elemental ones last night.  They'll be trash after the range nerfs and absolutely no one will be using them but on console they're actually quite good, the multihits build your counter to massive proportions very quickly. 

The shields depending on your stance are very uh....acrobatic, and fun to use, but but none of them really fits with the "style" of the characters I play...

[(PSN)BOSS_TPH76]

3 hours ago, (PS4)Echo_X said:

I was using the elemental ones last night.  They'll be trash after the range nerfs and absolutely no one will be using them but on console they're actually quite good, the multihits build your counter to massive proportions very quickly. 

The shields depending on your stance are very uh....acrobatic, and fun to use, but but none of them really fits with the "style" of the characters I play...

Have the same issue.They are quite good....and they look awesome. Used the S&A on my Nova for a while because I liked the look. And they are surprisingly good.  

There are a lot of weapons that are quite good but ultimately suffer from the lack of range icw the enemy scaling. I have some of them stored in my inventory for later forma-ing but prioritized ranged weapons over them for obvious reasons. The comming melee changes will probably see them deleted. Too bad. 

 

[Mayahai]

On 2018-05-17 at 1:12 PM, NoLazyShadow said:

As for now its buggy, throw cancel reload wich is bad and change throws window need tweaks...and using them under the effects of volt speed/valkyr warcry become imposible

Sounds like things that need fixing, not like reasons to stop implementing dual wielding weapons.

[Mayahai]

On 2018-05-17 at 12:39 PM, Elanair said:

Regarding blocking, you gave me an idea. I agree that not all weapons should give 100% blocking ability and that blocking would be far more useful when you can do it whenever you want. That said, I think a good way to balance it out and satisfy both needs is to make it so when you hold the quick melee key you start blocking BUT only the default x% percentage which currently varies from weapon to weapon (non-channeling) and if you are wielding the weapon in your hand then you get the channeling block where you block 100% and redirect the damage back (channel blocking).

This way blocking is still useful for those who don't normally use melee but for the dedicated melee users it will have a bigger defense advantage because they dedicate themselves to it and due to having to close the gap in order to reach the foe and cut them up.

That is also a pretty good idea.

[Mayahai]

On 2018-05-22 at 7:52 PM, Hyohakusha said:

This is easy.

- Scoliac Disposition reduced to one. +200% range scoliac rivens are responsible for Maiming Strike getting hate. How people haven't figured this out is beyond me.
- Melee now functions off LoS
- Miming Strike was removed from the game, you get 500p, non-tradeable, per copy

Thats it. That's all it would've taken. But DE isn't trying to balance melee. They're trying to nerf it, while using Maiming Strike as and excuse and trying to maintain riven mod prices. That's why, despite a staged video of something I've never seen one player doing in over 2.5k hours in mission, despite claiming that maiming needs to be fixed, they're gutting every single other aspect of melee, without actually touching Maiming, which they claim to be the problem. The slam attacks? Flash to distract you from a nerf.

"Wait and see" is not a valid argument. With the environmental obstruction alone melee already feels horrible to use. No amount of their "fixes" are going to change how bad of an idea that was based on how much random crap is littering every tileset. It's obvious removing mod scaling is a further nerf, as is your basic attacks not scaling in general, as is you blowing your entire combo on a single slow attack. They want to slow down our kills and restrict our ability to do longer runs. Period.

I very much agree with you, especially the third option. It is better to fix the root cause than to shaft everyone else with it. However, the linear combo stacking of this rework and the new stances are pretty good changes in my opinion.

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

A hard cap of 1-2m melee punch through would have sufficed on melee instead of completely removing punch through to absolve the wall-camping nature of spamming melee against enemies through  walls. It would have also solved the glitchy matter of object and level geometry forcefully “ghosting” melee attacks that should visibly hit but are not and would restrict punch through into walls based on how thick tileset walls are.

Why this isn’t implemented or considered yet is beyond me, since a lot of players are complaining about their melee weapons not connecting on hit on PC.

[Mayahai]

21 hours ago, (PS4)Lei-Lei_23 said:

A hard cap of 1-2m melee punch through would have sufficed on melee instead of completely removing punch through to absolve the wall-camping nature of spamming melee against enemies through  walls. It would have also solved the glitchy matter of object and level geometry forcefully “ghosting” melee attacks that should visibly hit but are not and would restrict punch through into walls based on how thick tileset walls are.

Why this isn’t implemented or considered yet is beyond me, since a lot of players are complaining about their melee weapons not connecting on hit on PC.

Wow, I hadn't even thought about that. How stupid of me. Mind if I incorporate that into the OP?

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

2 hours ago, Mayahai said:

Wow, I hadn't even thought about that. How stupid of me. Mind if I incorporate that into the OP?

It doesn’t matter to me. I’ve been posting this since the melee punch through removal. Although from what I’ve seen and heard from Youtubers and streamers, at the very least Nullifier and Arctice Eximus bubbles have been fixed to compensate for its removal.