Issues with melee(general).

(Dirmagnos) #1

Current melee system is kinda crappy.
For example what is the purpose of alternative fire mode with melee ?
Currently it deal double damage with pretty much no penalties. If there is slight increase in swing time its minuscule and can hardly be considered balanced considering damage dealt. Its a de facto default attack mode, since there is no point to go with basic one, considering huge difference in effectiveness. Theres 2 attack modes, with one being completely obsolete.
Second issue is damage dealt. Why melee attacks, even basic ones, deal more damage than most firearms ? Not to mention secondary mode that deals more damage than even sniper rifle. WTH ?!?!
Third issue is damage of each weapon. How to hell is it possible that stiletto does even more damage compared to baseball bat ?

So, the way i see it. First, remove secondary mode completely.
Second, rebalance damages appropriately(and cut them by about 30%):
Stiletto - very low dmg, very low range, extreme attack speed.
Knife - average damage, low range, average attack speed.
Bat - high damage, long range, very low attack speed.
Katana - high damage, long range, average attack speed.
Third, make that crap with Proxy stabbing you in the face to death go away.
100% damage in the front, 150% damage in the rear and backstab for 300% dmg from behind. Bat could have rear and backstack damages in swapped due to fact that its blunt weapon and relies more on force and balance rather than precision.

(Mr-Penguin) #2

That seems a little bit much to be honest. The secondary attack slows you down for longer than a regular attack, making you more vulnerable in a fight against somebody with a gun or multiple people. It’s upside, like you said, was a greater amount of damage.

The reason the melee attacks do so much damage is that it’s quite a risk to get up in somebody’s face and stab them (even if you’re Phantom, thanks to his nerf), especially if you’re attacking a group or running straight at somebody. Also, guns shoot much faster than a melee swings, so they have higher DPS and a lower time to kill at range.

Light attacks (LMB) for melee do nowhere near as much damage as you suggest. The highest damage one can possible do is 60 with the katana on a light attack, which only surpasses the PDP is terms of damage. The lowest is the Beckhill knife at 40, which does less damage than the PDP, which has 45 on a bodyshot. The highest heavy attack damage is only 90 (katana), which is the same damage as a PDP headshot. The other snipers deal 150 or 58 on a headshot, and they instagib at range, which a melee weapon can’t do with some degree of safety.

About the damage of each weapon…well, the game’s not realistic. It’s all in the balancing. The bat has a higher light attack damage, but the stiletto has a higher heavy attack damage. Other than that, all of the other stats are pretty much the same.

If you decreased the melee damage by 30%, there’d be no point in using melee anymore. I’ve won some gunfights when I ran out of ammo by rushing people with my melee, but that usually never works out very well. Melee is fine as is, because for most mercs, it is a last resort weapon for extremely prolonged gunfights that has a high risk for the rather low reward of a single kill.

(Gi.Am) #3

A few points.
Fast attack is faster than heavy melee (otherwise people wouldn’t switch to knife+fast melee to finish but simply use quickstab instead).

The stilnoto stileto is a sharp blade designed to stab/cut vital points. The Cricket bat is a blunt force weapon. Guess what would kill you faster with less chance of recovery in RL.

Melee weapons can’t headshot, have very limited range and a slow firerate. To compensate they get high base damage they are pretty much in the same boat as a shotgun.

The Patch makes melee weapon overall harder to use, and gave the big melee weapons a movement speed nerf, while they have high damage and greater range. Buffing the knifes a bit.

(Indefinite) #4

If you’re getting stabbed in the face by a Proxy, more than once in an entire Stopwatch where you were trying to defuse a C4 or something … you are not noticing a failure of DB, but failing at DB, HARD.

How does a knife do more damage than a baseball (you mean cricket, obviously) bat?
Swinging a baseball bat at someone’s neck or head hard enough to maybe kill them probably will with the same force behind a knife stab, at least without medical attention. Away from vital areas, a swing hard enough to break bone with a bat will reach an artery or vein with a knife.

I love the way the melee system is set in DB. Fewer greater thrills in my opinion, than having some fool think they can gank only to get completely countered and dropped their butt, even putting away a perfectly fine, loaded primary or secondary to do the melee dance.

(Dirmagnos) #5

Better late than never, kinda lost this thread due to move.
Secondary attack may slow player down, but its barely notable, compared to amount of damage dealt.
Whole risk part is irrelevant. Melee should be used as last resort or for special cases, like finishing downed players. Keeping it on par with primary weapon is absurd. With exception of katana, due to specifict of Phantoms class.
One dont compare secondary weapons to primary ones, so melee weapons, being tertiary tier, should be even further in terms of combat effectiveness.
Also, whole dps part should be viewed in perspective. While firearms have higher fire rate, melee currently have pretty much same dps, not to mention that they can kill 3 mercs in a single thrust, making whole dps comparition irrelevant.
I also noted that secondary melee attack is de facto main attack used by almost every1. Thats from where numbers come.
Realism vs balance. I would hardly call it balanced, when sniper bullet deals less damage than a knife poke. There are far better ways to create balance.
About stiletto vs bat. Stiletto is a junk knife, in some sense. Its purpose is concealment, not effectiveness. Blade is smooth and short and it dosnt have a handguard, making it rather ineffective even with stabbing motion. And in RL bat would win by a mile, since it requires far less finess and relies more on force, not to mention having superior attack range.
While combat knife, like M9 for example, is far more effective than stiletto, it also lacks effective range of bat. Not to mention that dealing actually critical damage with it is not a small feat on its own.
Human body is not a jello and being hit even in a chest doesnt always cause critical damage. No to mention that pesky rib cage, that does a fairly good job protecting most vital organs. And penetrating solid bone, in contradiction to all the crap shown in many movies, is not an easy task even for a well aimed and strong thrust.