Since embark said they're buffing melee:
The reddit QnA had a really good question for the devs about melee, and how it's kind of just not viable in most situations.
And they said they want it to have some level of viability relative to shotguns and traditional rifles.
So I played a few rounds in TDM. I tend to use mostly dagger-dash normally. (300+ dagger practice hours)
But I had some medium and heavy weekly damage quests. So I slapped on sledge and double blades.
And GOOD LORD was playing specifically sledge absolute torture. If I was a sledge main, I think I'd genuinely go insane. The level of light hatred in this subreddit makes sense if the majority of the playerbase is off-meta heavies.
{I can't even imagine how much it must have sucked to fight in an environment where literally any gun-light could just swap to stun for a legitimate free win against you} (SPECIFICALLY MELEE USERS)
The worst kind of enemy to fight with dagger light is another light. Cause they can just turn around and haul ass, and 90% of the time, it's just a free win or escape for em.
but at least the dagger or sword is lethal enough against light that you can typically atomize them quick enough to mitigate that.
On melee heavy, it's like EVERYONE is that. It's awful. I was pulling off all my little light movement tricks and still barely taking fights. I'd get a winch and Swing QM right off the bat, then chase an enemy around for 2 full minutes like some Sunday morning cartoon antagonist.
Fighting lights was pretty alright weirdly. The light melee hit into QM meant that when I got into melee range, they were pretty much dead.
The mediums were the real issue, tbh.
Medium melee was a bit better, and I have more experience with dual blades, but I still ran into the same issues.
Biggest obstacle actually was a spear heavy who would just spam the spear secondary at me and there was literally nothing I could do but run away. [That was annoying, but if I switched to a gun I would've legitimately farmed them]
Baseline, here's my two suggestions for melee:
- Melee 100% needs better gapclosing
A game where you commit THIS hard to your primary shouldn't have the best way to counter melee weapons in their effective range be "Run away and shoot back occasionally/drop mines behind you for minimum 30 seconds the instant you get tickled"
Spacing will ALWAYS be a good and valid way to counter melee weapons, and it SHOULD be. But currently with the lethality of literally everything except dagger, it just doesn't really match, And Sword only works cause you can actually catch your enemy, tbh. (If you put sword on medium, that shit would genuinely be unplayable)
I can get within kissing distance of a guy using dual blades or sledge, play everything right, and because they have above-slug reaction time and more than 3 hours experience, they just run in a straight line away from me, and if I don't have winch or maybe lockbolt up, that's kind of just it.
Even lockbolt gets me killed, cause they get locked, run as far as they can, and just start unloading their primary with the free distance they've gained.
I feel this super hard on heavy, less so on medium, cause jumping a guy with demat dual blades CAN disorient em enough to actually kill confirm.
- the damage numbers are really weird, and kind of suck
I'm not nessecarily talking about the weapons not doing enough damage here.
But I kind of am.
Let me explain:
The foundation of most melee tech at any decent level is the "combos". Mixing in a QM to maximize damage.
So sledge light swing does 115 damage. If I combine that with a quick melee, it's 155 damage, and a reliable combo kill on a full health light.
Heavy overhead slam with hammer does 200 damage. But why not 210? 210 doesn't really change much, but would open up a heavy slam/QM combo on medium. Which would make challenging a good sledge player at close range a bit more dangerous.
For dual blades, this had annoyed me since launch.
The damage goes 50/50 60/60 60 for the full combo. Which is just genuinely horrible as a damage spread.
If it was rearranged to 50/60 50/60 60 it would allow for a first two swipes and QM combo on a light. It should have always had this, tbh.
my overall suggestions
TLDR: here's the conclusion. If you wanna see my justification in depth, there's the entire post, but basically:
Melee heavy/medium have big issues gapclosing or maintaining pressure.
The damage numbers often fall RIGHT outside breakpoint numbers for QM combos. Which sucks and should change.
So I suggest that all melee primaries make the user run 10% faster. To make gapclosing just generally easier without massively messing up shotgun balance, etc.
(EDIT: as someone pointed out, sword 100% does not need that speed boost. I agree, so just pretend the suggestion says "all melee weapons except sword".)
And change the damage numbers on sledge slam to 210 and the damage dispersion on dual blades to 50/60 50/60 60 to increase the depth and possibility of QM combos. (Would like the same with other melee weapons, but I haven't used something like spear or riot shield enough to really call exact breakpoints)
If ya'll have any good ideas, I'd be glad to hear them as well.
EDIT: as a lot of you have pointed out, goo gun is a lot better for sledge, and I will 100% be using that in the future.
And also the landscape does kind of shift once you get into an actual objective based gamemode, where something like melee not really killing but instead scaring people off actually becomes much more viable.
These are both 100% valid points, and I wanted to acknowledge them here, cause I've seen them a bunch, and agree with them.
I'd still like the changes above for most melee weapons, but maybe just changing the hammer overhead to 210 damage OR a slight speed buff when you have it out would be enough on its own.