Thoughts on melee builds and some more general comments

[OF| Strawberry Shortcake]

This will probably be a wall of text. I'll TL;DR each section and then again at the bottom.

Melee first:
One of the best, most satisfying parts of SW and SW2. It's done better in SW than most games. The problem is that the loot/balance/item systems destroy melee at higher difficulties and make it basically unviable
The reason melee is unviable at higher difficulties boils down to you needing too many different stats to make it work. You need:
- Damage resistance. You're going to get hit. Fact. Especially when most enemies are spawning with swift. No damage resistance also means a character with 250HP can be 1-shot by most specials as they also spawn with mighty. And that's before you take pack size into account (moe enemies = more chance something lands a hit). Some attacks are also borderline impossible to dodge (such as the Fang mutliple bit attack which is also homing. You cannot dodge an elite Fang with Swift when you've come in for an attack).
- Life leech. You're going to get hit. You need to heal that damage. Relying purely on your heal spell is not an option if you want to have any kind of damage up-time.
- Elemental damage. Most enemies at higher difficulties are physical resistant. Lots of them are physical immune. You will not win any kind of fight even at Tier 1 insane without elemental damage. Elemental damage is also one of the most upgrade intensive modifiers in the game. Getting a decent elemental weapon usually requires dedicating at least 2 slots on a weapon to elemental mods.
- Move speed. Get in, get out. No amount of damage resistance and life leech is going to let you face tank the enemies in this game. To have any kind of chance of dodging attacks, especially from swift enemies, you need move speed. There is a small, but noticeable, cooldown on dashing and the jump->dash->jump movement combo is great for putting lots of distance between you and an enemy, but it's not great for kiting and whittling packs of enemies down.

And all of the above is without taking into account any of the other things you might want: chi drain, ammo/item/money/karma find bonus, unique modifiers, rage modifiers (for a Ryuken build), ammo save modifiers (for other weapons or for Plasma Cutter/Bladez [sic] of Zaibatsu build) etc.

Now the mods you can get don't individually give enough of anything to allow you to not invest several slots in having a specific trait, but if you do that you won't have enough slots for all of the other things you need. I hope the big general issue with melee is becoming clear. Even all of this doesn't take into account that enemies can and will block your attacks, causing you to have even more downtime. Take a swing at a pack of enemies and it's guaranteed that one of them will block your attack and stop it from connecting properly.

TL;DR - Simply put, melee builds are too slot starved. The itemization for general late game melee builds simply does not exist.


Problems with specific melee builds:
Ryuken build
For those that don't know, Ryuken is a sword that has a unique implicit mod that causes it to refill rage. As you can imagine this sword is the one you want if you're going for a rage build as your rage downtime should be fairly short in comparison to other weapons.

Now rage is powerful, extra damage mitigation/damage/life leech/etc, and the rage mods are typically stronger than their permanently active counterparts, but obviously they're only active during rage, which is nearly impossible to have 100% uptime with (unless you're really lucky with Ryuken procs or are hacking), but Ryuken has one more great big disadvantage: it can only equip common and rare upgrades (white and blue coloured), which means it's highest possible stats bonus from each slot is limited. And it's harder to find top tier white/blue upgrades than it is to find top tier yellow/orange (at least that's my experience). Also, because you can only apply white/blue upgrades, it means that Ryuken is a really bad weapon for elemental damage, so late game where just about everything is physical resistant/immune your damage just drops off a cliff. Unlike Wile E. Coyote, your damage never recovers from the fall.

Arm of Orochi
Once upon a time this was the shining hope of melee builds. Then it got hit so hard with the nerf hammer we had to re-inflate it with a bicycle pump. No, seriously, FWH definitely over-nerfed this one.

But there's still one reason you might consider going for an Arm of Orochi build: ATTACKS CANNOT BE BLOCKED! This is a seriously major point for melee. Enemies will block your attacks far too much, with non-Arm builds. Unfortunately, unblockable attacks is not enough to carry this weapon and it's now just as garbage as every other melee weapon because it suffers from exactly the same problems.

Blade of Exile - Chance to cast vanish on critical hit
This is actually a really strong weapon, or it would be if it were possible to scale the chance on the implicit mod at all. The utility you get from the vanish procs is seriously very powerful and the extra damage from attacking out of vanish really helps deal with enemies.

The problem with Blade of Exile is that the best way to utilise its mod is to use the chi wave (back+right click) because it travels through several enemies and yes, it does count as a melee attack even though it's ranged. At least the damage buff from vanish seems to think it's a melee attack. Ok, so first up you have the issue that chi wave takes some time to cast, then if you want some damage it takes a LONG ASS TIME to charge. That's a lot of time where you're running around doing absolutely no damage, can't heal, getting hit by enemies etc.

You also need really high crit chance to be able to proc the vanish mod on BoE because the chance to activate vanish is 10% ON CRIT. So say your crit chance is 20%. You have a 10% chance of a 20% chance to proc vanish. That's like 2% per enemy hit to get vanish. Not very reliable. The lack of reliability is also why you don't try to fight up close with Sting or Vortext special attacks: if they don't get a vanish proc you're just left next to an enemy who is going to punch your face in.

But the big problem with this sword is the wave the chi wave/vanish proc is handled. Let's say you have a group of 4 enemies. They're clumped up because they're chasing you. You use chi wave and shoot it at them. If the first enemy hit gets the vanish proc, then the second enemy hit will cancel the vanish (because you count as having attacked from invisibility) so actually a lot of the time you will get a vanish proc and then immediately be made visible again, thus losing all of the utility of vanish. Also the Vortex special attack has the same problem with immediately cancelling invisibility.

TL;DR Ryuken+Rage build doesn't scale, RIP Arm of Orochi, Blade of Exile has reliability and quality of life issues.

Incidentally, the best melee weapons for lower tier insane are actually the two sets of dual claws. Their chi waves do more damage than any of the other melee weapons' chi waves (they have 3 waves, which can each hit the same enemy so 3xDamagexCrit Chance). They are also the only melee weapons that can be scaled properly with elemental damage (because there's no reason to do anything except chi wave because you triple your damage so you need less damage mitigation and life leech).


General comments:
- Enemies who are immune to types of damage are silly. Resistances are fine, but outright immunity needs to go. This is especially true at higher tier insane difficulties where multiple enemies in a pack will be immune to different things meaning that AoE attacks, which are absolutely necessary for dealing with packs of enemies are basically useless and become single target abilities that can also potentially injure the player (rocket attacks, explosive barrels, BUNNIES!!!!!)
- The best buff shotguns could receive is to narrow their damage spread meaning more shots actually hit a single target at medium range. The best way to use a shotgun is to isolate one enemy, get real close and BAM! The worst way to fire at medium range into a pack of enemies. You'll never kill anything.
- SW2's late game enemies out-scale player itemization, which is why the Arm of Orochi nerf was such a big deal. It was the one and only truely late game viable melee weapon. (Yes, I know it wasn't being used as a melee weapon, but that's not the point - RIP MELEE). Also it was so cool. Now you just feel like a useless idiot when you're running around shooting chi waves at enemies who just. don't. die.
- If Flying Wild Hog want to go down the Diablo 3 route, then they need to add in ways for players to construct builds that amount to more than the sum of their parts. The equivalent of this would be Diablo 3's set items which are absolutely the most powerful items in that game (at least since Blizzard nerfed the tornado sword - RIP Wizards).
- There's too much grind right now in SW2. If people want to grind, they can go do it in Path of Exile or Warframe and have a better time because grinding is only fun when there's a really expansive late game to grind into. SW2 does not have an expansive late game so you're just grinding for the sake of it and the game never changes and you never get that feeling of being a god after you've spent 100 hours min/maxing a character. The upcoming buff to karma gain might help fix this, but there's more work to be done.
- Ammo is too expensive at low levels. No seriously, that ♥♥♥♥ needs to be discounted. At high levels it's fine because you've got the money and ammo find mods and know where the ammo shrines are, but the first time through needs to be easier on the wallet. Maybe introduce an ammo price scaling based on player level.

Final TL;DR Melee sucks late game because you need too many slots for things, a discussion of problems with specific melee weapons (Ryuken, Arm of Orochi, Blade of Exile), damage type immunity is silly, buff idea for shotguns, builds need to be more than the sum of their parts for ultra-late game, too much grind to reach late game and not enough late game variation to be worth grinding for.

[gameragodzilla]

In the original game, issues with taking damage in close range was solved by the skill that gave you health when you land a special sword strike. So you took a ton of damage but could also get health back and that allowed you to stay in the fray a lot more often. Life drain/leech is kind of like that but it's based on kills rather than hits AFAIK, so that means it doesn't help against powerful enemies who take a ton of damage.

Another thing Shadow Warrior 2013 had was a shield ability which also significantly reduced the damage you took. Rather than being a passive random ability in Shadow Warrior 2, this was an active ability you could buff.

Both of these would help your issues quite a bit.

I assume these were removed because Shadow Warrior 2 has the Vanish ability which gives you breathing room to allow you to heal but this encourages a much more hit and run style melee combat rather than the "jump into the fray" gameplay the early game has.

[Saya]

I am only 46 level and dont see problem with killing anithing in t2 insanity using arm of orochi. Just +1 strike sometimes after this updates.

[Drowning witch]

good wall of text OP, i'll be sure to comment on it once I reach that far. at around lvl 20, i'm still having no issues with melee on insane.

[OF| Strawberry Shortcake]

Originally posted by gameragodzilla:

In the original game, issues with taking damage in close range was solved by the skill that gave you health when you land a special sword strike. So you took a ton of damage but could also get health back and that allowed you to stay in the fray a lot more often. Life drain/leech is kind of like that but it's based on kills rather than hits AFAIK, so that means it doesn't help against powerful enemies who take a ton of damage.

Another thing Shadow Warrior 2013 had was a shield ability which also significantly reduced the damage you took. Rather than being a passive random ability in Shadow Warrior 2, this was an active ability you could buff.

Both of these would help your issues quite a bit.

I assume these were removed because Shadow Warrior 2 has the Vanish ability which gives you breathing room to allow you to heal but this encourages a much more hit and run style melee combat rather than the "jump into the fray" gameplay the early game has.

The active shield was removed, but there is still % life steal on hit. The problems with % life steal is that you don't steal very much in terms of actual %, enemies have high damage resistance and it steals based on damage done after mitigation, and enemies hit so bloody hard that you actually cannot out-life steal the damage. Life steal on kill is useless in SW2, I see no reason to ever get it. It heals less than the % life steal and only heals once as opposed to every time you hit something.

Originally posted by ..:

I am only 46 level and dont see problem with killing anithing in t2 insanity using arm of orochi. Just +1 strike sometimes after this updates.

It's not that you can't kill things, it's that it takes a really long time if you're just using the ranged waves. And that is boring. Also it leaves you open to over-aggroing enemies, getting swamped and subsequently dying.

[OF| Strawberry Shortcake]

Originally posted by Drowning witch:

good wall of text OP, i'll be sure to comment on it once I reach that far. at around lvl 20, i'm still having no issues with melee on insane.

Yeah it's once you hit level 31+ insane you'll notice the difficulty ramps up. You'll start suddenly taking like 100 damage from enemies that you used to be able to face tank (but not all the time) and the number of resistances will increase as well. By level 60 you'll start seeing enemies that are immune to multiple damage types and that can 2 or 3 shot you with ease.

[wakey wakey]

Melee weapons just need 4 or even 5 slots while 1/2 of them are reserved for damage reduction/lifeleech/movespeed/chileech. They need to add those secondary gem slots for all melee weapons limited to gems which doesn't increase damage at all and most issues would be solved.

Just try it with ~60%+ damage reduction and 8%+ lifeleech. Yes it takes forever to kill anything but you actually be able to take more than 1-2 hits without dying. So it's possible to survive the issue is just like Strawberry said, - there are too many stats you need to make melee viable, outside the "vanish/1shot/repeat" combo.(which works well but is completly boring).

[gameragodzilla]

Originally posted by holychair:

Good original post and (mostly) good comments thus far. I'd like to try a pure katana run (or maybe katana & bow run), but my main problem really is that there's only those three slots. Basically, I'd like to fill them with pure crit (chance and damage) gems, but there's just too many enemies immune to physical. So what I'll have to do is actually have a wide range of swords on my wheel to cover all elements.

There's two things I really miss from SW 2013:

- Getting health back from using special katana moves
- the game pausing when I bring up the weapons-wheel.

The last point would make the constant need for the change of weapons in midfight more bearable. We could just do it wherever we stand. Maybe I'm just too slow with my perception of things on the weapons wheel or something, but atm I feel I often have to flee first to buy me some time just to change weapons.

I don't have too much of a problem with skills. There's very many that are just "nice to have", but not necessary. Contrary to OP I feel that even movement speed skills aren't really indispensable (and that we can't waste points on karma/money/ammo is a given). What I need is all the sword skills maxed, the elemental skills maxed and serene mind. Lastly chi, vanish and a bit of healing/health.

I think one thing that could help is to boost the damage or crit chances on elementals as well. Physical immunes weren't too bad on patch 1.1.2.0 because I just rocked 4 swords with one elemental slotted into each and they were all perfectly viable, just switching swords on the fly when new immunities and vulnerabilities came along.

Now that enemies are incredibly bullet spongy, you practically need a maxed crit build sword to deal enough damage but that precludes elementals.

[Saya]

Originally posted by holychair:

I'd like to try a pure katana run (or maybe katana & bow run), but my main problem really is that there's only those three slots.

If you have chainsword from preload - then you good with max sting and critchance+critdamage+damage setup.
Or you can try little perversity like reckless gem of fluke+ stinger gem of peril + swapping elemental gems on fly.

[wakey wakey]

Twin dao is rather nice for a crit build. It crits for about 16xx dmg against non resistant enemies with vanish(+186%melee dmg). If it crits in vanish even chapter bosses lose like 40%-60% hp. oO

[VIOLATORu666]

nice topic and first post contentment
the following discussion encouraging

as from the experience here after around 100hrs game-play
most of it was playing with that "TWIN DAO" as main swords
they seem a really good speed range and effectiveness
favorite with freeze chance and crits also leech is best

later on with switching some weapons gems and rest..
that TDAO still like second best swords (i don't like any Exile Orochi... stuff)
now first best melee is that Primal Blades that makes a lot of Rabbits around
even that 2% chance is quite enough to get spawning crazy rabbits ON
just make sure not revive King Rabbit in the middle of something

there is a way to test 2,5% rabbit spam may be we try it out

[lich0]

Originally posted by holychair:

- the game pausing when I bring up the weapons-wheel.

The last point would make the constant need for the change of weapons in midfight more bearable. We could just do it wherever we stand. Maybe I'm just too slow with my perception of things on the weapons wheel or something, but atm I feel I often have to flee first to buy me some time just to change weapons.

Weapons wheel?
Can't you use 1-9 keys to change weapons instantly?