D bash used to clang or automatically parry any attack for a brief period. They took this away on patch 22 or 23 IIRC. They also made the pre-release patch make the kick stun regardless of whether or not you fast attack....the release patch or first post release patch made it so that it takes durability away when you d bash... I don't like any of these changes. I think patch 21 the melee felt the best the bugs with melee components notwithstanding.
Wasn't that a bug? Bash was always supposed to lose to heavy attacks in the system. That part is working perfectly right now, honestly. I don't think I've encountered a time when a heavy attack didn't beat a bash and stun the opponent.
@GodKingWashington You seem to have a little better idea of what might be a code bug or not b/c (I could be wrong) I get the feeling that you speak with the Devs personally from time to time. Good on you if you've got that kind of relationship with them. What has been bothering me is that while I've noticed that some animations might be a little slow, I and others have commented that the RPS system seems to work perfectly when playing during off-peak hours, which indicates (to me as an IT Pro) a capacity issue. The team mentioned checking on such things shortly after launch in the performance thread and I made a reply there to educate a layman (decent read if I say so myself) who didn't understand that servers do not make an infrastructure, but I haven't seen or heard word one about it since. I've even gone so far as to bug Nathan about it on his profile page asking for info. All that to ask: Do you think we'd be better served by pressuring bE to dig more into a possible infrastructure capacity issue? The online nature of this game means that the code could be just fine and an infrastructure bottleneck is causing warp shenanigans. You've got good suggestions, but I'm worried that we're getting ahead of ourselves and just assuming it's the code. If you've got info that indicates that this isn't an infrastructure issue, could you please share it?
It's very possible that it's an infrastructure issue. I hope it's not because they use Amazon EC2 to host their servers, which I can imagine is already very costly. However, I've stated for a while that the bash is not a true punish. By design, you are allowed to dodge away from the kick. The clang alone is not enough of a punish to stop spam, and I can see this in games where there isn't much server lag. I also don't really have a personal relationship with the devs. Sometimes I say hello, but that's where it stops mostly. They're busy enough without having to deal with me.
Knowing a little about Amazon (I work for a direct competitor) and managing a private cloud architecture every day, I can honestly say that it wouldn't surprise me. On your other point, as a melee class, FA will always be bread and butter. I personally use a combination of all available options and watch RMB spammers get the crap knocked out of them by savvy players. You're right that the clang alone isn't enough of a punishment to stop spam, just as landing a single jab in a fist fight generally won't stop a determined opponent. It may be that a "heavy bash" option with a longer wind-up but much longer stun time is needed, but that's just me spitballing. As for being able roll away or evade a bash, that's a twitch mechanic and I think removing something like that would detrimental.
It should be a twitch mechanic, in theory; but pre-launch when things were running a bit smoother with a much smaller population (~200 people daily in July), I can say that the bash follow-up was never hard to dodge. You could easily mash it out. I also wish they would go back to look at the overall design of melee, yet it seems they are completely against changing this (in its entirety anyway which is understandable). The system is getting a lot of caveats and nuances, and it even appears to break its own rules. Again, whether that is a bug or not remains to be seen, but I imagine that it is certainly causing new players to back off from the game. It's just frustrating to me. This mechanic was introduced about 10.5-11 months ago and hasn't worked 100% correctly since. The shooting is so solid and the game has so much potential. But it's held back by this. I'm just looking for something quick to help band-aid the current situation since it seems many suggestions aren't even mentioned by the devs.
I've actually seen the bash beat a heavy attack on a fairly regular basis. Granted I always assume it is due to poor FPS and latency causing the heavy attack to register activation slightly later then the d-bash is recognized thus causing the kick to connect before the heavy attack goes off, but yeah it happens quite a lot.
I imagine everyone has different experiences in melee due to latency. I'm based in NYC so I'm fairly close to their servers in Virginia--at least that's where Nathan said they were located. I don't know much about EC2. I'm not surprised in the least that someone has experienced another longstanding issue in melee. Are there a lot of people on the forums saying the same thing? I've seen a lot about not being able to follow up on a bash stun, but little about strong attacks not breaking bash in the recent patches. Not that your experience doesn't matter. I trust you.
You know, if they wanted to take the easy route they could just do this. 1.) If a Fast Attacker hits a Dbash, the actual "clang" off of the mitigation portion of the bash is what will actually cause the stun. So basically, the stun is promised because the clang causes it. 2.) The kick loses the stun ability, and now just applies the damage it currently does. So the attacker clangs, is stunned because of the clang, and then is hit by the kick while they are stunned (and the kick obviously already does low damage so it isn't the end of the world). 3.) The stun lasts just long enough for the kick animation to end, so the attacker's stun wears off at the same time as the ranged player's kick animation ends. 4.) OR, they could just go with #1, and remove the kick entirely, and leave the player to decide what to do during the stun. This is what I'd rather have.
