Ive been considering piling up a bunch of suggestions that i think could help melee become more enjoyable. I have mentioned earlier that i dont think ranged is being played a lot because its OP or anything even close, i think it is being played because the choices are not as enjoyable at the moment. You can get that thrill of headshotting someone which can often result in a oneshot (i think, at least thats what happens to me but i dont wear much headarmor atm), and melee simply do not have that same satisfactory feeling.
Most of this will just be my ideas on how to make classes stand out more as their own gimmick. This can be considered in a sense of Fun/Frustration, when you are fighting someone using X you will be aware of their strong sides and will probably get frustrated if you lose to them. But on the other hand, using these strengths of a class is what makes them Fun, it makes them stick out. You cannot really have one without the other, if something doesnt have such a strength it wont be frustrating to play against but it wont be very insteresting or fun to use either. A chessboard with only pawns and a king.
For starters i would like to see more melee damage in general. I think a
Power Strike buff could improve the satisfaction of hitting someone as you wouldnt have to hit them 4-5 times before they go down. Instead maybe 2 good hits would be enough or a clean head hit could even potentially oneshot. This would make strength builds all the more satisfying as well, because they would be brutes.
I've made another thread arguing to revert
turnrate nerfs, which i still stand by and think it could only make things more enjoyable. The control you get makes everything much smoother. I dont think frustration at controls should be a thing, it simply makes people not want to use thrusts or overheads. That is not a very enjoyable gameplay change.
Ground hitboxes need to disappear, 1h overheads hit the ground constantly, and so do other weapons. It's as previously mentioned, a change that simply makes you not want to use certain attacks at all because the risk isnt worth it. It also makes hillside fights incredibly awkward if your weapon is decently long.
Can nudges be made to counter nudges, as they do kicks? Could a neutral nudge be made to drop someone doing an attack or block nudge on the floor? Would be very nice as a way to counter all those pesky nudging turds these days.
However ive got some specific weapon class balance ideas too that may require a bit more effort to implement, and they may not work out as well as i would wish even if they were, but the core gist of it is finding a middle ground between what we've got and what native is. When i delve into native i find all these incredibly fucked up weapons killing me, but i also enjoy
abusing them for those particular reasons. See them maybe as a different balancing philosophy to peak into, rather than playing it safe with small tweaks.
One Handers/shieldersThis weapon class is alright now the cut buffs from a recent patch, but i think they could be improved to become more explosive. As currently it seems like the best tool they have is the stab, left swing shortly after and right swing third. Over head hits the ground too often, its good for feinting with left swing but you dont want to actually use it. Everyone remember the left swing spam we've had, but its not really there anymore and i kind of miss it.
Native has the 2 swing meta, where you basically always do a
double left swing spam because it works well and is hard to fight. I like that, i think One handed weapons should be close range spam machines that are capable of insane pressure while obviously lacking the range other classes have. Frustrating to play against immense pressure because its scary to deal with, you have to really pay attention to the openings, but on the other end its really quite enjoyable to have full control over your specific scenario.
At some point this seems to have left crpg, i dont know when as i havent been that active as a 1h untill recently, but even with a steel pick now it takes far too long to ready another swing. I might be wrong here, but essentially im asking for more speed/ less stun from having the attack blocked.
For shields in specific i simply refer and agree with Jonas thread
http://forum.melee.org/suggestions-corner/shield-rebalancing/2 HandersI would say this is the least affected class from the balance patches of the mod. The strength of 2h has always been their animations being very clean, objectively the best if im not mistaken. Best sweet spots, best range increase, best for feinting and better for spamming. Even in native when i get a great long axe i ditch the polestun instantly for 2h animations. This is why, at least from my observation, the best players still use 2h and simply outperform most others with them. It is the well rounded beast of melee, and will probably always be the duel weapon choice. I dont mind them having that status at all, people like their 2h swords and they should be good.
Because it is
still so well rounded i dont have many suggestions to improve them outside the general enjoyability from higher damages and regain of control from turnrates. I can however mention that the thrust glance is brutal, i love hitting a jackass 2h that glanced with his stun but it seems a bit too much for something like that. This actually goes for 1h too, same issue on thrusts.
PolearmsThis is a weird class now because i dont see much point in actually playing it over 2h outside style points. The right swing is probably the only actually good tool for polearms but thrusts are rather poor, left swing is not very good and overhead is decent but not really impressive. Thrusts are only really good here because the class has weapons with good stats that make those weapons very good, the animation itself though is weak. But these things go mainly for the swingy polearms (ill mention thrusting polearms later), they have some decent damages and some are pretty long but in general it just boils down to holding right swings (which i do enjoy quite a bit, but when you switch to 2h and can actually left swing with good reason you get sort of sad when you look back).
Which makes me suggest adding back the
stagger, not the RNG free hit one but the movement stagger that stops people dead in their tracks. This at least made polearms a respectable weapon in any teamfight situation because losing mobility if only for a short bit is quite deadly. It makes the class unique from 2h because polearms will never be on par with their animations, but at least they have something to fear outside their slightly higher damages.
Stabbies kind of redeem polearms as a category because they are still very useful in teamfights, even without staggering people. Highly affected by turnrates makes them less enjoyable because they just completely rely on being able to turn into sweet spots to avoid glancing. Dont need much changing to be honest except for the turnrates as mentioned.
Hoplites however could use another attack animation. Ive suggested a left swing before, a sweeping left swing would help a lot i think, a simply mixup to the otherwise only 1 directional arsenal would be nice, just any kind of attack.
CavalryI still consider cavalry the most destructive class in battle, highest mobility, highest damage and so the highest potential. Yet i would ask for more,
lance angles should be like in native. It would help picking off archers and other pesky slippery turds that are alone. An indirect nerf to archers i suppose though infantry will probably suffer more. I also suggest more speed in general, bigger surprise attacks and faster exits, maybe even more maneuvering in general. If possible i would also suggest reducing the speed loss that slants and hills cause, to make people even with high ground not feel safe.
However with such a change cavalry would become incredibly strong so ive got some suggestions to counter the imbalance that may present itself. First off i would like glancing thrusts to rear horses again, as it was removed for whatever reason. Secondly i would like
all thrusts from all weapons to rear horses. A big nerf obviously but i think it would even out with the lance angles and etc since they are still the ones picking their fights and with lance angles they could do so much much safer. When cavalry picks you off you basically die in one hit, with this any class would be able to stop a reckless horseman and maybe even kill him.
A minor nerf/buff i'd like to see is to make Stakes actually hurt horses. In fact id like them to one shot horses often, like they once did, as of now they basically just infantry traps.
Thats it for now, i could add more about ranged and other stuff i suppose but i dont really bother with them much now. I'd like to see stats on the % of kills per class, im sure horse ranged would be at the bottom with negative kills (fuck off stop shooting me damn teammates), would also help take class effectiveness into consideration. My current assumptions are Cav/2h on 1st and 2nd spot, then pole/1h 3rd and 4th, and lastly scattered remains of whatevers.
Like mentioned the entire thing is more of a balance path i would like to see taken to diversify classes again, there could be many more ideas better than mine but i try to keep simple and close things that are easy to fall back to native for.
