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Melees! Let's flesh this out, shall we

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John Porno:
It's that time again.

For the record, when i talk about melee I mean damage melees with melee or unarmed weapon that target eyes, no crippler or bare-handed haymaker chars. I am also not taking heavy handed into account as explained later on but let's start this off with a quote from the last thread that I will be referring to here and there.

http://fodev.net/forum/index.php/topic,18932.0.html


--- Quote from: Solar on November 08, 2011, 02:17:55 pm ---I think hth fighting will be a different kettle of fish once the new perks are live.

--- End quote ---
I made a build based on the one I mentioned before with 10lk, using all the relevant critperks as well as the dmg boost and bonus hth attacks to have 3 blows at the eyes with a mega power fist in one turn. I didn't take any armor penetration perks because A; I made this build in the first few days of the season when these perks were useless and B; because otherwise the toughness and hp would suffer too much.

After extensively testing this build in hinkley (drugged) I can say that the new perks are not changing anything.

In comparison to the pre-wipe build, which had all the problems mentioned here months ago already, I have:
More HP (216 -> 244)
In your face perk
The same amount of critchance on eyes/head
The same amount of toughness (while burst weapons got boosted)
Less critpower (due to helmet and possible bonehead)
Less crippling capability (due to armor, both chance and critroll affected)

I daresay that I'd rather use my old build with the old crit tables and modifiers than the new one. The hp boost is not noticable as the overall damage was increased and In your Face strangely feels less effective as it reads. In fact, for the first hour at hinkley I wondered if it even was working and that was after the fix.

In actual combat in hinkley, I never managed to kill any burster with my 3 initial strikes at head/eyes and even with targetting groin or legs, I was never able to keep someone actively knocked out or pin him down at a doorway for my teammates to kill him. I only had a reasonable chance if the enemy was already at half hp. In your face never seemed to proc in crucial situations.

Possible Solutions
1.
A buff that could be easy to introduce would be a really strong toughness that has melee/unarmed skill as its requirement, something along the lines of 200+ so that other build cant take it. This buff would have to be pretty intense though, something like 5/20 or more to
A: Make a total tank using all possible toughness perks or
B: Freeing up perk slots by condensing the 2 toughness perks into one

The same thing could be achieved with a melee-lifegiver, though it would be more balanced and realistic imho to buff the defence against bursters.

2
A new perk that focusses on critical damage, either buffing the bonus on critrolls by a big deal (+60 instead o +30) or buffing the bonus hth damage+ to give 25%-30% instead of 15% on critchance.

It would have been possible for my build to put skills into small guns and get the even more crit for an extra 10% critchance, but there was no way to free a perk slot without turning the build into paper and dying from 2 ranged bursts.

3.
As suggested earlier, buffing the base dmg of the power fist. This would be preffered over buffing the melee dmg ( = max dmg) to make the dmg output more stable and reliable. It should AT LEAST be in the range of laser and plasma rifle.

A perk that works like bruiser could be nice here, in case some people are afraid that being a 3-shooter is already more than enough. Reducing the AP by 2-4 while adding 20-40 base dmg can yield interesting results and will instantly create a new class of melee chars. Would also work out nicely in conjunction with buffing the super sledge dmg to have a 3-shot mpf crit build and a 2-shot super sledge dmg build.

The Reason
When thinking about the melee/unarmed class we should always consider the following question: Why would I prefer a melee over build X in situation Y? With the current balancing, there is no answer to this question so we have to find a fitting one and for me, the point of a melee should be to kill/neutralize bursters in close quarter combat..

Notice that all of the above changes will still leave any melee vulnerable to any kind of critical attack due to not being able to afford even the most basic anti-crit perks like stonewall. With it's low ST, a melee is prone to knockdowns and knockouts as well as weapon drops.

About Heavy handed and high ST
After testing a couple of melee builds last season I came to the conclusion that stonewall is not worth it and that the melee dmg bonus from ST is not worth it so all my builds are generally low ST and high AP.

I personally dislike heavy handed very much as it just seems like some bluesuit trolling and is not helping the actual cause of making melee's a viable choice in pvp. First off, a heavy handed char needs 10st and has to sacrifice either AG or LK or both to get there. This will result in either a great number of attacks that deal no real damage or a rate of fire too slow to keep an opponent down.

I didn't bother to level up or even come up with a heavy handed build, but the way I see it, it will either take too long to kill an enemy and as soon as you miss or fail a roll the enemy will be able to run away. A sort of damage-heavy handed might be able to deliver some punch, though after using up his initial pool of AP the enemy is likely to retreat, either to run away completely or to stim. Another thing to consider is that a current heavy handed build can only take on one enemy at a time and is not as useful in a team fight.

-----

In any case, I hope that some people, especially devs/gm take some time to read this post and comment on this. There are still a number of things I left out or could further elaborate on but I can do that as, hopefully, the discussion progresses. I don't want to make melees OP, I don't expect them to be viable in tc (yet) but I would at least like to have a half decent chance at winning any sort of battle in the wasteland with a melee and I am sure that everyone can agree on that.

edit:
About Range
You dont play a melee in klamath, you dont spawn if your enemy can evade you. Please no more suggestions about how to let a melee get closer to its target. If you are not getting close to your target, you shouldn't play a melee to begin with. AC is only good for running away, not for charging in.

Sarakin:
The only viable option is to buff melee/unarmed through items, not characters, otherwise, we just raise melee troll population (3).

Even heavy handed character can pack a punch, but someone playing theme on regular basis can tell more about this subject.

Roachor:
I made an unarmed crit build, I made an unarmed HH stunlock build. Only way to win a fight is to sneak up on someone with a HH build and stunlock them to death, but this only works if they are alone. Short of that you're never going to win a fight unless the person is low level or grossly inept. Range is too important in this game, unless they remove the cap on ac sneaking is the only way to get within range without dying.

John Porno:
I probably should have included it in the OP, but the problem is not even range. Trying to fix what should be the natural disadvantage is the wrong step. What bugs me is the fact that even in very close range and even if you get the first shot, odds are that you still lose or that the enemy just runs away.

If an enemy doesnt want to fight you he's gettign away 95% of the time.

edit: with other words: this is not about meles sucking in klamath, this is about melees sucking  even down in the mines.

avv:

--- Quote from: Sarakin on March 24, 2012, 03:38:00 am ---The only viable option is to buff melee/unarmed through items, not characters, otherwise, we just raise melee troll population (3).

Even heavy handed character can pack a punch, but someone playing theme on regular basis can tell more about this subject.

--- End quote ---

I agree here. The melee and unarmed weapons require a boost, perk related unarmed and melee abilities require nerf. For example in your face could double or triple that armor's defensive abilities when within 1hex range. This way wearing good stuff is rewarded, but wearing nothing is not.

But even if you buff melee and unarmed it will never reach the same level that you can achieve with ranged weapons. Range is simply incredible important when it comes to pvp in groups. Even now low range bgs are sometimes quite unemployed when snipers and rockets do battle. To compensate the range downside, unarmed and melee should totally devastate everything in close combat but that's incredibly hard to balance. Getting close is like the simpliest strategies ever, sometimes you are close to someone by accident. You can't deserve victory just because you got close to the enemy.

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