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Marms[2487706]
· 26 likes · If you expect to win a gunfight with a knife, you gonna be full of holes son.
Ceb[68232]Committee
· 16 likes · I think you're only looking at it through a single lens and you're absolutely right for the case you make which is similarly sized forces going at it, but looking a little deeper things get more complicated. Ideally all 4 …
bogie[148747]Admin
· 12 likes · 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 …
Melees seem like they are in a pretty bad spot. They already were weak prior to the latest parry buff. Now I don't know how anyone can justify melee weapons as a reliable damage source.
Primaries have special ammo and weapon mods which are both huge damage dealers by themselves. Their only drawback is having to reload once in a while. For many of the good RW primaries, the fight is over before a single reload or maybe you only have to reload once.
Melees now have parry (30+% block) and anyone in a 10* strip club (another 30% damage reduction) as hard counters. As more and more parry weapons spawn, even the best red melees will be less and less desirable. That's not even accounting for inherent drawbacks of not having special ammo or weapon mods.
Melee mods have been floated for years and are maybe coming in Chedspeak soon. But what about now? Do people think melees are in a good place or am I just being an old man yelling at cloud? Appreciate people's opinions on this.
I like the lack of reload and higher stealth. I think that is usually enough to make the choice against weaker targets. Melee should probably not over power a primary in a competitive sense.
Slightly off topic... Does anyone know if the parry and melee damage reduction stuff applies to punches and kicks?
I didn't include assault/riot because they are basically equivalent debuffs to both damage types.
I'd still argue riot is the better of the two full sets because the riot helmet is way better than assault helmet.
And lack of reloading is nice, but over the course of a fight it can be negligible. You miss maybe 2 turns in a longer fight. In shorter fights it's not noticeable at all. Plus that definitely doesn't even come close to losing out on inc ammo and weapon mods, let alone parry+strip clubs
Melee weapons are great for noobs who haven't unlocked mission items/edus and for utility bonuses (Healing on NPCs with Bloodlust, smacking temps with Homerun, Eviscerated for a damage % bump, Plunder for mugging boost, Motivation for amplifying balanced stats further, applying radiation with Irradiate, etc.) That's it.
Everything else is countered pretty hard as noted.
Then again, I think that's what Ched wanted based on the fact that melee weapons have been objectively worse than projectile weapons for years. The crit laser crit chance boost and IN ammo damage boost absolutely clown any reload concern.
I don't have enough knowledge about RW items to really say..but it seems too soon to feel the need to buff an item. It feels like most weapons and armor have some sort of counter to it or way you can adjust to it's specials. (If someone has a parry special or is in a strip club...shoot em lol) I think a balance has to be maintained where you have to sacrifice somewhere and no one item is too powerful.
Maybe something to revisit once it's tested more and seen to be more of a problem?
I think you're only looking at it through a single lens and you're absolutely right for the case you make which is similarly sized forces going at it, but looking a little deeper things get more complicated.
Ideally all 4 slots should be working together and eventually swapping loadouts will mean dozens of equipment pieces playing a role in split second decision making situations.
In those cases, melee arent just for damage output but for running special effects like bloodlust, motivation, and wither so guns can focus on things like Expose, Execute, Sure-Shot, and of course Warlord and Stricken.
It's not supposed to be a 1:1 and a lot of interesting things happen because of that.
One of the more immediate cases we can see now is guns being better makes Assault in demand. Assault leaves your face and neck exposed and isnt going to help much when your dome gets rocked by Crusher/Expose on a melee, something people can switch to as an obvious second loadout option.
Some of the less obvious things is the fact RW isnt the only war mode. A lot of the perks like disarm, parry, and backstab help a larger, weaker force take on stronger, fewer opponents. These are cases for tt wars or major combat events. It's the case that if a noob enters a fight and throws a smoke, they can stay there and the fight instance will not refresh. Employing this tactic can mean opponents exhaust their reloads by making hits and getting hit, then the perks i mentioned can be used render even a normally impossible opponent relatively inert unless they're running a strong melee with something like berserk and bloodlust to deal exactly with that situation.
Ammo management is another thing to consider. Not just reloads, but the fact that we're no longer in an environment where only 1-3 rounds of ammo are being used most clicks. A lot of weapons, particularly the new machine guns, eat through ammo and while the heavy caches serve niches that arent always extremely obvious, it's a good thing special ammo is abundant now because it's very easy to see circumstances over the next few years where it wouldnt be enough for sustained conflicts.
Personally, i dont see RW being the end-all-be-all meta in a few years time. Once legendaries saturate into the casual player base and demand slows down when the current arms race is finished, i can see factions kind of disregarding RWs for whatever is more immediately beneficial and the discussion about how melees are used in those situations, hopefully, will be very different.
melee have rw buffs too. they were already the best choice given they have no cost of use (ammo costs) no reloading and the increased stealth (which totally makes no sense but thats a debate for another day).
i think you are shouting at the clouds to a degree dude.
I don't know, with so many serious players going to assault armor as their default melee is not so bad. No reload, plus does not have the ~-25% to damage that many guns will.
But - no special ammo or mods does hurt. I don't know that they need to be as good as primaries necessarily... but in general... yeah they are a bit weak overall.
I mean, they are equivalent debuffs but that doesn’t mean the amount of people wearing them are equivalent.
I’d assume it’s something like
Primaries are stronger than melees -> more people wear assault armor -> Melees are better than primaries vs AA. -> Melees strength is near primaries since the meta is to defend against primaries.
Melees almost get relatively better because of how good primaries are. Almost like Rock Paper Scissors, which IMO makes them balanced.
It's not like the riot sets aren't being used. They are just cheaper than assaults because more people use primaries. This isn't a rock, paper, scissor situation at all since that implies some level of balance between things.
And with inc ammo and weapon mods I'd rather use a primary vs. assault than a melee. You still come out ahead by a fair margin since inc is a 40% damage boost. It negates any assault penalties. And with mods you get a free 5% crit + whatever else you want.
I can put a top tier suppressor on my GAK or armalite, suffer a 5% dmg penalty which is easy to overcome with INC ammo and still enjoy a better stealth rating than a DBK / Macana.
Plunder is unique to melee weapons of course and is a strong reason a lot of people even bother with melee weapons at all, but agree with the OP that a lot of melee weps get dunked on because they are so shit.
If this is purely by design then there's really no point in investing 10b or more on a good red damage dealing melee simply because they aren't reliable enough. The parry change just exacerbates this issue.
This is actually an indirect buff to defense builds since empower can only spawn on melees (iirc the wiki is wrong by claiming empower on smg/rifle) but quicken can spawn in all 3 weapon slots.
The thing is what if someone wants to put a strong eviscerate weapon on their primary and rely on a melee for their damage? This should be a useable build, but it's definitely going to be less and less reliable as more parry weapons spawn and more people join 10* strips for fighting.
I'm fine with all 3 working together, but I'd prefer it not to always be the same: primary = damage and 2 other slots = utility. Giving people build options is still important. I don't want it to be a pure 1 for 1 because things will never be equal. I just would prefer melees being slightly worse/less reliable instead of significantly worse.
One of the most undervalued late game war company types to counter defense potatoes is the Amusement Park. Epi in an Amusement park with a high % Weaken weapon absolutely destroys defense builds, but hardly anyone goes that route. Empower/LSD is totally unnecessary unless the opponent is just spamming sero with a handbag... but even then a single tag team partner coming in with Eviscerated and adding a layer of distraction is usually enough to wreck 'em.
Imo, what needs to be looked at closer is a small per-piece debuff for EOD armor. Even like -8% dex for each piece worn would be viable imo. What we have today, even as rare as it is, is counterless and kind of silly imo.
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