The State of Melee in the Game
Bill_ZRT
Member Posts: 1,421
I think it’s fair to say that there is a general consensus among players and even NG that there is a significant imbalance between melee and ranged survivors and that something should be done to lessen or eliminate that imbalance. Melee is already at an inherent disadvantage as they have to be within the walker’s reach in order to attack and damage them while ranged can be far away, unleashing high damage attacks.
This thread is to discuss ideas about how to improve melee so that there is a better balance between ranged and melee survivors. Let’s also discuss how we feel this shouldn’t be addressed. For example, don’t ‘balance’ melee by nerfing ranged damage!
So what can/should melee excel at? These are the categories and solutions that come to mind for me:
Damage mitigation
Control
Damage
Please, Please, Please don’t do any of the following
For the love of Judith, please don’t ‘balance’ melee by nerfing ranged. No one is complaining about ranged survivors. Each ranged class is useful and reasonably interesting. We just want the same to be true of melee - no one wants ranged nerfed to make melee seem better.
Don’t introduce new survivor traits UNLESS you also introduce a mechanism to introduce these new traits to existing survivors. While a new survivor trait might seem good in theory, you have to think of the time, effort and money that people spent building their current teams - especially their elite ‘pink star’ survivors. Introducing useful and interesting new survivor traits without allowing existing survivors some form of ‘retraining’ to get these traits would be a tremendous mistake.
Jerry’s Final Thought (no, not THAT Jerry)
Some of these suggestions are my own and some have certainly been suggested in the past by others. Implementing all of these suggestions would be too much, but I think implementing some of them and understanding how some of these can work off of each other would allow melee to be viable again across all RSLs. I have no doubt other players will have additional awesome ideas.
Let’s keep this thread constructive and not take a crap on anyone’s ideas, even the terrible ones. Be good to yourselves. And each other.
This thread is to discuss ideas about how to improve melee so that there is a better balance between ranged and melee survivors. Let’s also discuss how we feel this shouldn’t be addressed. For example, don’t ‘balance’ melee by nerfing ranged damage!
So what can/should melee excel at? These are the categories and solutions that come to mind for me:
Damage mitigation
- Let bruisers be a true ‘tank’ class. Allow bruisers to have a third health bar that represents armor. Damage to this health bar does not result in a bruise, injury, etc. Once this ‘armor’ health bar is depleted, the normal green health bar is used. This represents that bruisers are tougher than normal survivors and can take more abuse before being hurt. This also sets up some potential synergy with armor traits. This could apply to all melee classes, but certainly it makes sense for bruisers.
- Better/higher dodge chance for melee classes. Melee should be better at dodging as melee combat inherently suggests that you’re both attacking and actively defending yourself. It’s a lot easier to defend an incoming attack with a bat or a spear than it is with a pistol.
- Defender: Armor or weapon trait: When on overwatch, the survivor focuses on defense, not on attacking. Instead of attacking on overwatch, all of the survivors defensive bonuses are increased by a % (dodge, bullet dodge, Iron Skin, Defensive Stance, Stun Resist, etc)
Control
- ‘Kneecap’: Weapon trait which slows a walker’s movement for x rounds.
- ‘Taunt’/’Distract’: Trait which give a % chance for the target walker to focus on the taunting survivor instead of the closest survivor. This ability would have to have a limited range so you couldn’t taunt from across the screen. This would be an armor trait because I’m very hesitant to suggest a survivor trait for reasons I’ll discuss below.
- Improved interrupt for melee; interrupt should be twice as effective for melee as it currently is. Make interrupt on overwatch somewhat viable at higher levels. If the interrupt fails, hopefully one of the damage mitigation options will help.
- Grapple: Armor trait. With grapple, let a survivor initiate a struggle or struggle like state. The walker deals damage to the survivor every round, and the survivor deals damage to the walker every round. Since the survivor initiates the grapple, they enter the grapple with their full health bar, meaning it’s not automatically a 1-star result on a challenge. The grapple lasts until either the survivor or the walker has been killed. I see great synergy with this and the new ‘armor’ health bar.
Damage
- ‘Keen’ weapon trait: This is the melee equivalent of piercing and is much needed!
- ‘Flanking’ damage bonus - when multiple melee survivors are adjacent to an enemy, have their damage and/or defensive traits get a bonus. It’s easier to attack and defend yourself when it’s 2 on 1.
Please, Please, Please don’t do any of the following
For the love of Judith, please don’t ‘balance’ melee by nerfing ranged. No one is complaining about ranged survivors. Each ranged class is useful and reasonably interesting. We just want the same to be true of melee - no one wants ranged nerfed to make melee seem better.
Don’t introduce new survivor traits UNLESS you also introduce a mechanism to introduce these new traits to existing survivors. While a new survivor trait might seem good in theory, you have to think of the time, effort and money that people spent building their current teams - especially their elite ‘pink star’ survivors. Introducing useful and interesting new survivor traits without allowing existing survivors some form of ‘retraining’ to get these traits would be a tremendous mistake.
Jerry’s Final Thought (no, not THAT Jerry)
Some of these suggestions are my own and some have certainly been suggested in the past by others. Implementing all of these suggestions would be too much, but I think implementing some of them and understanding how some of these can work off of each other would allow melee to be viable again across all RSLs. I have no doubt other players will have additional awesome ideas.
Let’s keep this thread constructive and not take a crap on anyone’s ideas, even the terrible ones. Be good to yourselves. And each other.
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But it’s not the better wolf that wins. It’s the one you feed.
Contact [email protected] or send @Bill_ZRT a message to join DTP today!
But it’s not the better wolf that wins. It’s the one you feed.
Contact [email protected] or send @Bill_ZRT a message to join DTP today!
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Comments
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One additional suggestion that I don't think I saw mentioned would simply be giving melee a lower chance of being critically damaged and a lower chance of body shotting higher level walkers.
From an implementation perspective, this might be one of the easiest and most practical things for NG to do in the short-term.
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Basically 6star melee would be equal to 7star ranged.
I know pink stars ruined this game, but we probably can't do anything about that, so..
Thanks @Bill_ZRT , for one of the most constructive posts I’ve read in a long time.
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I think adding piercing into melee would be better, as level 13 ranged with piercing can have a chance to critical hit level 35 walker, melee should have those chance too.
And dont act like I'm off my rocker cuz we all know Nerfing is the NG way.
Will catch up later!
Love it
For Bruisers, disconnect stun from body shots. As in, bruisers should be able to stun any enemy, regardless of level, at least 30% of the time. Bronze, Silver, Gold concussion trait would then increase that chance to be on par with the current stun resist maximum of 75%. This should include Tanks, and Spiked walkers.
For Warriors, an inherent peircing trait should exist with all weapons, since warriors are required to be up close and personal with a multitude of enemies to be most effective, so they should also have a higher probability of dispatching said horde.
And finally for Scouts, they really need to have the limitations of dodge removed. Their trait's effectiveness shouldnt be tied to the level of walkers they are facing. Or at least pushed an additional +3-5 RSL above where it currently sits.
Alternatively, a scout's special trait, besides the extended range, could be the elimination of body shots all together. From the show, any seasoned survivor would never stab a walker in the gut as a means of defense. They all know to go for the head, and you see it so regularly that there doesnt even seem to be any effort required. Our scouts should do the same. Stop the body shots!!
Even at the lower challenge levels, when there's minimal risk of bruising using melee types, I still don't bother because I'm usually just trying to blaze through that low level grind and using assaults and hunters is simply faster and more efficient.
I like the suggestions mentioned so far, and in other threads. Personally, I think I'd prefer some kind of changes to game mechanics to improve melee, rather than new gear traits (definitely not interested in new survivor traits). That way, melee can be improved immediately upon implementation rather than having to deal with the grinding and RNG to find new gear in order to get the buffs. Then, next update, doing it all over again just to get your buffs back. Having said that, I'm fine with a couple new gear trait additions, as long as they're not the main source of the improvements.
There is another imbalance that I perceive which I haven't seen much mention of - the ability to gain more XP using ranged, especially when farming, but even in general I would say. I'm sure if you run two challenges side by side, one all ranged, the other all melee, the ranged team comes out ahead on xp due to extra kills along the way.
When actually farming for xp, I don't think there's any question. Doubt anyone runs xp scavenges with a bruiser, scout, warrior team, repeatedly pressing End Turn until the next spawn "wave" of 2 walkers appears.
So my suggestion would be to maybe double the kill xp for melee classes, or at least increase it significantly, not some marginal 20% amount. Justification? Anyone choosing to use melee over ranged is putting themselves at a higher risk of injuries, star loss, increased gold healing and possible extra gas usage from repeating challenges. With higher risk should come higher reward.
Melee combat mechanics post-wrestler nerf leaves those who love their melee more than ranged at a severe disadvantage. I agree that buffs are in order to begin with.
New traits for survivors IMO would be terrible. If the solution ends up being a new survivor trait, then everyone who had badass melee survivors with multiple pink stars would be ridiculously disadvantaged (take punish as an instance of this--any bruiser worth their salt needs to have this for me and most others, unless the bruiser already had 4 pink stars). Unless the new character trait can be added on top of our existing survivors, there is no way that this is a positive solution.
If a solution is an armor trait, I'd say an armor trait reform would be necessary, keeping in mind high level play. There are already so many traits including some that do not benefit most combat mechanics at higher levels (bullet proof, hazard, training suit, and wrestler is only somewhat useful), and with the two new traits it's already ridiculously difficult to find a suitable piece of armor for higher levels. I'm fine with having multiple pieces of gear for each class (I have around 8 or 9 armors upgraded for each class for different situations.
As for adding a new hero to make melee useful at higher levels, that survivor would not be able to keep up against higher level walkers/freemen so IMO that would not help (plus starting with a new hero from whatever rarity) and would cost a lot of time and/or money to make them useful.
I like the idea of an added action point (but not a second attack except for swift-strike for scouts, except for the bonus attack for warriors, and except for Michonne's trait activating) to be able to move a melee survivor after an attack. This move would have to have a limited distance, likely the distance of a half move for a non-scout survivor.
As has been mentioned by many people on many occasions, bruisers need to be able to stun again, considering that a warrior that has damage reduction is much more useful than bruisers, though Punish was a good first step for bruisers to be viable and relevant.
One thing I will propose is that NG give everyone a free legendary pitchfork or kingdom spear at a level of each players' choosing. I know this is not in the best financial interest to NG and that it would include refunding the cost of a bundle for those who bought one, and as such is very unlikely to happen, but with melee thrown completely out of whack using a long-range weapon is one of the only ways to compensate in the short term (not waiting until the next update to address this issue).
Some thoughts for now
I'll add a single addition which is, new maps should be created specifically to take into account melee play. This would introduce a new dynamic to the game and would lead to much more diverse game play.
Edit: I think modifying luck for scouts would add another layer to the game. Scouts should be given a random chance of opening a locked item, e.g. a gate, in fewer moves than stated. This would allow scouts to do exactly what they are supposed to do - scout.
This would work by giving scouts a chance to perform 2 unlocks in one move e.g. bronze 25%, silver 50%, gold 75%. It would also apply to opening crates, with an up to 75% chance to find the correct crate each turn a scout opens a crate.
My preference would be that this ties into the existing luck trait, but it could be introduced as a new armour trait.
That is a GREAT idea. NG should definitely consider this idea.
Although, I feel like (please don't hate me...) a survivor trait more than an armor trait
With a nice request like that... how can NG not look into it?
What about female characters? Better success with those?
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