Melee feedback

[Archmagel]

I know I'm not very far along, only having beat Octavian on Brutal so far, but I'm sensing a trend that makes me disappointed with melee. That is to say that the bosses all seem heavily skewed in favor of ranged. Even if I were to perfectly play in the boss's face with melee and two block moves, it's just achieving on par or below what I could do at range.

I know the ship has sailed on this, but if there's more plans in the works to expand upon the game or make a new one, I'd like to see some love for melee. Less bosses that have attacks that will just chunk your entire health and give you a status effect like Vincent's ice bolts, the blades from Octavian, and such. At range, you only have to dodge one or two of them, usually without using a dash. In melee, you have to spend your dash or block them (if you can even block it in some cases).

Overall, the further I get, the less viable melee seems to be and it just saddens me that I can't use my favored weapons because the game is just better if you spam your ranged attacks to avoid eating ♥♥♥♥ or at least taking far less damage comparatively.

I feel like innate damage resistance on melee weapons would help, but I'm not sure how much it would help when I also feel that the fights don't scale well with co-op. Maja Blast was the biggest example to my friend and me of not wanting to do some bosses in co-op, which is another sad issue. In solo, she did about 57dmg. When my buddy was there, it went to 157dmg, which is quite a bit for us when we only have around 500hp, so I just solo'd her and we both got credit.

But, I digress. This is just my feedback on my own experience with melee, again, only having finished the Act 2 boss (and Ziva, but I just kited her and spammed my bolts and spells, per usual).

[Archmagel]

Originally posted by DiSiEi:

towards the end i found melee to be easier

once u unlock more abilites ( but certainly i got better at the game too ), melee gets more viable

i rly got to like lightning curtain

but best is to combine melee + ranged, not go purely for one or other

I just got the lightning curtain after beating Angram. Not played since then, but I'm hoping it makes it feel better for me.

Originally posted by DiSiEi:

towards the end i found melee to be easier

once u unlock more abilites ( but certainly i got better at the game too ), melee gets more viable

i rly got to like lightning curtain

but best is to combine melee + ranged, not go purely for one or other

I took the plunge and spoiled myself a bit. The later abilities and weapons definitely look like they improve melee quite a bit. When I try to do the battlemage, so I toss spells and such from afar to weave in and out trying to avoid the big damage/unblockable phases.

[LuckyToShoot]

Melee is fine as is, I find most of the bosses including the fast few in the end easier with melee than with ranged, most ranged weapon attacks locks u in place during attack animation and get u killed more than using a melee weapon does in brutal mode. Like sure there's a few specific bosses i think ranged is easier, but that's only about 5-7 of them if not less.

[GreatPalm]

if it is too hard to the point it is not fun - reduce difficulty. In Load Game menu you can tweak your server settings. I tweaked hp and damage to 1.25. Sadly, cannot do that on off servers.

[ImpactHound]

Originally posted by Archmagel:

I know I'm not very far along, only having beat Octavian on Brutal so far

This game has a lot of content, I'd say that's pretty far on Brutal IMO. Especially if you were solo.

[Elymnir]

I'm nearing the end of the content (normal difficulty) and I think melee would be more viable if our walking speed was just a bit quicker to enable viable hit and run strategies. Sure, you can get little speed buffs from gear, but the difference isn't that significant in my opinion. One thing I long for in this game would be a speed buff potion, something like 10-15% more speed.

[Archmagel]

Originally posted by ImpactHound:

Originally posted by Archmagel:

I know I'm not very far along, only having beat Octavian on Brutal so far

This game has a lot of content, I'd say that's pretty far on Brutal IMO. Especially if you were solo.

Not solo. Mostly just a duo in offline. We are just playing the game when we can with work schedules and such.

[lordmilier]

Originally posted by Hefutoxin:

Range is always easier to fight with than melee. The distance gives you more time to avoid attacks.

Adding damage reduction to melee weapons means you will fight at range, then switch to melee weapons to absorb hits as if they were free block spells. You'd still be fighting at range though.

it is very easy to fix this make it a buff and make so you need to wield the weapon for 10+ seconds and if you un-equip it the buff is removed instantly.

[carlisle73]

Having read some of this (not all) I do have a suggestion to help balance melee and ranged combat.

1: Some bosses could be altered to have certain mechanics ONLY when characters are outside of a range. This way it encourages people to fight up close. (Could exist and I just don't realize it).

[theworld]

Originally posted by carlisle73:

1: Some bosses could be altered to have certain mechanics ONLY when characters are outside of a range. This way it encourages people to fight up close. (Could exist and I just don't realize it).

Dracula and Adam already have this.

[Dribs]

Coming back to this thread I keep thinking that feedback like this is kinda irrelevant unless its from someone with multiple complete playthroughs.

When I first played through this game I cheesed almost every boss around a rock or something else.

That didnt mean bosses were too hard, I just sucked at the game.

Now I just smash all of them with my greatsword.

In the words of Sir Magnus, the overseer: «I hope you get the point»?

[The Undead Watcher]

Originally posted by Dribs:

Coming back to this thread I keep thinking that feedback like this is kinda irrelevant unless its from someone with multiple complete playthroughs.

When I first played through this game I cheesed almost every boss around a rock or something else.

That didnt mean bosses were too hard, I just sucked at the game.

Now I just smash all of them with my greatsword.

In the words of Sir Magnus, the overseer: «I hope you get the point»?

It's just super weird. Every TIME someone talks about Melee, they seem to only be mentioning either using the Greatsword or the Slashers. It's like there are no other melee weapons in this game that are worth using.
This begs the question whether they should be considered in the discussion about melee balance.
Every weapons has it's use cases, but the Greatsword and Slashers just seem to be universally the most useful melee weapons.

Also are we really gonna put this dumb opinion out again that you need to play a game for 5000+ hours before your opinion even matters? Someone can be inexperienced for sure, but that doesn't mean that their opinion is unfounded.
Vets are more than welcome to present some useful tips on how to deal with the games systems.

[aSmolGoth]

Honestly, I've found the most success with melee. A lot of bosses simply can't turn around fast enough when you kite to their backside. With bosses that have a lot more AoE, this doesn't work quite as well. Bosses with a sense of a DPS check tend to also favor melee (overwhelming minions, AoEs).

Honestly, melee seems fine, though some are definitely more versatile than others. I still enjoy reaper. I think the whip could use some light love, seeing as it's roughly the same range as pistol, locks you in place with each attack like pistol, but pistol has that rapid fire attack that just gives more mileage compared to whip's abilities. I'm surprised there isn't increased damage to draculin or vampires on it, given the crossover. This would give it a clearer niche to occupy (also like reaper). The only nifty thing I noticed about the whip is it having a sweet spot that does extra damage.

[The Spoon God]

Don't play on brutal, but imo the issue with melee is just that the risk vs reward factor inherent in melee, especially in this game, is very lopsided. I prefer the ranged weapons for a multitude of reasons, this included - the melee weapons simply do not have enough damage to justify their risk of being close to enemies that attack frequently, especially when you only get one dodge and one or two shields here and there. It limits you to a very defensive spell setup. It's one way to play and I'm not tossing that, but it feels like you kind of have to play that way in order to make melee 'proper'. Opinion, though, so I'm not saying this is just 100% the case.

On the topic of greatsword.. I hate that weapon. Perhaps I haven't used it enough and so I haven't learned to enjoy it? But I prefer axes way better. Slashers are good too for my melee build, but I tend to use them for the camo with ranged. I wouldn't say they need to be in this discussion because it's mainly just that ability, and ffrom what little I've heard the same goes for GS because of the i-frames of the E ability. If anything they should be in the discussion *against* melee because they're great because they give you invis or invul, lol.

I haven't used my melee build for rift 2's, so I'm not actually sure how it fares there (again, in normal), but I think if they're going to limit our dodges the way they do, we need to make melee a bit safer overall in order to account for that.

On the off-topic topic of dodges, here's a fix for that: Give us unlimited dodges with i frames, but a cooldown on the veil effect (elude, heal, and elemental effect) specifically so that we can actually evade enemies.

[Kabirbd]

Wow. You guys are really good at melee. I guess I should watch some melee boss fight after finishing the game. I am still in my first playthrough and I just directly focused towards bow and crossbow completely after a while. I just keep a spear just in case some smaller mobs get too close.
At close range, I struggled to dodge attacks and the movement speed at close range doesn't seem enough to be move while attacking. Some boss even having counter attack or casting medium range spell surrounding them.

[The Spoon God]

Originally posted by Kabirbd:

Wow. You guys are really good at melee. I guess I should watch some melee boss fight after finishing the game. I am still in my first playthrough and I just directly focused towards bow and crossbow completely after a while. I just keep a spear just in case some smaller mobs get too close.
At close range, I struggled to dodge attacks and the movement speed at close range doesn't seem enough to be move while attacking. Some boss even having counter attack or casting medium range spell surrounding them.

Yeah, that's the main issue with melee. You don't have enough mobility to land a decent amount of attacks and still get out. Every hit after the first becomes greedy, especially if your dodge is off cooldown. Shield spells help too, but they don't block every attack (i.e, aoe's or certain jump attacks that I've noticed).

I like to run power surge with blood rage and slashers and axes for the funni, it was working nicely in silverlight but not tried it on bosses or rifts.