Eh. EOD is super rare/expensive and should be good. Like, the whole point of end game items is to give people something to strive for. This would be like saying GAKs need to be weaker without lowering their price tag.
If anything marauder needs to be buffed to be at least a little closer to EOD. It's crazy to me that between the two red armor cache options, someone could justify using assault or delta over one, and the other is by far the best armor in the game.
Advantage of melee weapons is stealth. And that´s it at the moment. But melee weapons have potential and I hope Ched will use it and find some ways to buff melees a little bit. Mods may be an option. e.g. special sharp blade, balanced handle, hardened inlays etc
Yeah, but 55.00 base armor with perfect coverage with a huge chance to multiply the attacker's damage by 0? Wtf was Ched thinking!?
At 1/200 armor caches, it is indeed fairly rare, but only rare today. Armor caches are being introduced exponentially higher as higher and higher ranks are unlocked. Then factor in rerolls of other garbage items into armor caches...
mans just put my build out here and called it bad. I am disappointed in myself. In reality though I haven't come across too many people running parry in any fights I've been in, but I do have to say the parry buff is kinda stupid. You don't have to use your parry weapon (on defense) in order to get the benefits of using a parry weapon so there's zero downside to just having it sit there while you spam your primary. That should never be intended, and I agree 100% it f**ks over anyone that has to go up against it. The only advantage you have is that you can see that your opponent has parry and just choose to be locked out of your melee if you don't feel like gambling the fight.
It will be a while (if ever) that rerolling into armor caches are worth it given bunker exchange rates. At current prices, armor caches are the least efficient to roll into. And I don't think ever will be worth it. After roughly a year in existence, less than 10 full sets have spawned. Even if the pace doubles next year it'll only be 30 full sets. These are never going to be affordable to the average player nor will there ever be enough to saturate the market.
Eventually, all factions will be in their proper rank and the pace of new spawns will slow down. It will be years before even 100 full sets exist and that's still a drop in the bucket.
You're right though that the armor is strong. You're wrong that no counterplay exists. Puncture/penetration weapons and piercing ammo at least provide a soft counter to the high armor. For the actual bonus, it still only shows up <40% of the time even with a full set with high rolls. And I still think that's justified given that a full set is always going to be unaffordable to the overwhelming majority of players. It's like an armor version of a GAK so it should be good.
It's not a bad build idea. It's just not reliable at higher level play where people have better gear. I'd like for it to be more reliable because there's plenty of primaries that could make good utility weapons, but for reasons in the OP I wouldn't rely on melees long term.
tbf if I could simply find a single revit MP9 on the market while I had enough money set aside for it I'd be set with a great fallback option, in the meantime I just spam my mag since 24% evisc + 6% choke + 40% inc on 64.44 damage is just under 110 damage, which is certainly usable.
I dunno man... +55.00 armor with full coverage over the head is laughably overpowered imo.
The EOD chest coverage is broken AF too imo.
If we're going to keep that armor thickness and coverage (which as you noted, is counterable via armor penetration), the bonus needs to drop from 20% - 27% to 12% - 16% with the set bonus being +5%.
Melees should be equal to guns after the first round, if not more powerful. A sniper rifle is no use when I am a foot away from you weilding a nice sword or two...
I'd rather see the marauder bonuses buffed. The armor values should be on par with EOD and the health values should be doubled.
I fundamentally believe that rare, expensive items should be considerably better than any alternatives because they give people something to strive for. If red primaries can outpace GAKs then it's only logical for red armors to be significantly better than any alternative. If red weapons drops aren't absurdly good, then it'll push down cache value which will make factions less likely to do RW.
I mean small arms cache prices are kept up solely because of revitalize. Might as well have good pie in the sky drops be the thing that keeps armor caches propped up. They still are the worst to exchange by bunker points.
Personally I feel melee's, some of them, are very balanced into gameplay.
One could ask, what f**king use does a Grenade have also?
Melee's typically come with a high stealth rating, great for mugs if you want to conceal yourself. The best rifles in the game don't even come remotely close to comparing stealth capabilities.
IMO Melee is much more viable then many people give them credit for. That being said it would be nice to Melee mods, gun mods have made this much more interesting and fun and having them for melee would be great. Regarding parry, I'm not a huge fan of it as it is just a passive thing that hard counters without having to do much. Personally I'd prefer if it was reworked in some way to make the chance higher but only if it is being used or something else to stop it just being a 3rd slot passive.
Stealth off every day! More fun for ppl to know you're hitting. And purely "stealth" shouldn't be the only thing keeping an entire set of weapons useable especially when stealth is meaningless in wars. Also picos + suppressors have higher stealth ratings than any melees. Just saying.
They were in a better place prior to 10* strip club changes and especially prior to parry. Now they aren't outright bad, but any build reliant on melees as your main damage source will run into a number of players that f**k you up when they shouldn't.
And that may be your strategy. Not everyone plays with stealth off. I dabbled with it for awhile, but found it not suiting to how I prefer to play so I turned it back on.
Also pico+suppressor may be better. But would you rely on a pico+suppressor in a hard fight? I'd rather go in with a DBK or Macana personally.
I'm all for the no stealth strat (no stealths ever...)
I think melee weapons serve a great purpose from a newbie perspective, it used to be that primary and secondary weapons basically were irrelevant by comparison to melees...
But now the meta is to use top tier primary weapons from ranked warring (or GAKs), and melees and secondarys as rightful reserve pieces. With your standard macanas/DBKs still serving as great intro weapons for newbies.
One thing I'd like to see changed personally would be sight mods, I think that they're ridiculously underpowered for what they require, a thermal sight only giving +1.75 accuracy :/ lame... meanwhile stuff like TR ammo is crazy OP (+10 accuracy!).
Buff thermal sight mods... give them the ability to override smoke grenades plz Ched.
From a player perspective... I'd like to see some sort of special "temporary" items for melee weapons, akin to how special ammo works, applying poison to melee weapons or barbed wire... so "mods" but only temporary as they wear off and break...