I have been pondering the issues with melee for some time now and think I nailed down the causes for the imbalance. But first some context.

Now the main reason the imbalances are bad is because half of the game is melee. And if half the game is useless or frustratingly difficult compared to the other half that is bad design and game-play.

Recently A dev posted the kills stats for classes, tacs of all races have sky rocketed their kill performance compared to everything else, so much so that there is no denying viability and that there is an imbalance problem between classes.

Here.
http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/stats-that-arent-technically-stats.64349/

There are some people who get a good kill score in the game as melee, but those are not common as shown by the recent stats.

Now after context. Here is an issue melee has that ranged doesn't.

Melee is very rigid, has less DPS, flexibility and risk COMPARED to ranged.

Some examples, just point and aim and shoot, with melee you have to aim and take a shot, if you miss there is alot of time between your attacks with aiming that ranged doesn't have. You also have to commit heavily to each target, your out of cover while ranged is peaking over a corner attacking. Ranged can just sit and DPS with great accuracy and output the damage any melee can.

Melee can easily be stopped and blocked and their DPS can come to a standstill compared to range. You charge at people and hit them with your weapon, one dbash or one swing with a knife stops you and they can just be shooting you down the whole time while you are frozen in place waiting to be able to move or swing again. Ranged can just sit in the corner and keep shooting and attacking non stop.

The main issue that Melee has is that it is easily interrupted or stopped in it's attacks and even a tac with just a knife can stop a power fist with no consequence using a dbash. As well as tacs having the best tools to defeat all melee users.


Now I am aware there are melee tricks to do better, load-outs that help and such, but the best melee tricks and strategies pale comparison the strategic flexibility to sitting in a corner with an ammo mod on your gun. I am also aware that there are situations where a gun should do better than melee, I'm not saying melee has to have the advantage in 100% of the scenarios that happen, but melee has the advantage rarely.

You can easily 1v3 with a gun, just line em up and aim for the head, but it is very difficult and rare now to 1v3 as melee.

The point I am cementing is that melee is at a clear disadvantage compared to ranged and that melee can't output the same amount of damage consistently that ranged can.


The current meta has users spamming chainsword, for the reasons I talked about. It is able to do high dps and can allow the most flexibility in melee and response time. It is the most viable melee weapon since you can easily overwhelm enemies. Space marines have some of the best melee because or thier shield, they are able to get close easily and negate most enemy ranged.


Now onto some small fixes that ARE BASED OFF the current game and meta.

-Disable and elimination of d-bash from all classes. But what will ranged do to defend themselves? They can roll to and away from the enemy as well as use their gun.

-To replace d-bash, classes must pull out their melee weapon and instead of dbash, they BLOCK with their weapon (Uses weapon durability to balance), and if the enemy hits them they can immediately counter attack to do a stun. What will tacs do? They can instead pull out their knife instead of thier gun which would allow them to block melee. Forcing them to make a choice, ranged or melee. Also while blocking you can move around but where you face is where you block.

-EDIT Someone contributed and let me know GW said no blocking. Well here is the alternative, legit parrying, instead of Dbash, the players hold a button, which makes their character put their weapon forward, and if the enemy hits it they can immediately make press another button alloying them to strike back hitting them. The player who succeeds at the parrying hits the enemy while taking no damage except their weapon durability get damaged. If they get hit and missed their chance they get hit by the enemy weapon.

-Also I would give tacs from all races the ability to have the lowest level melee weapons as well if they want to pay the cost for it. Space marine can have a chainsword instead of a knife if they want to pay the amount, Orks a basic choppa, eldar get nothing they are special.

-What about devastators and such? Give them the ability to swap to a knife and pistol from thier races.

-The main point is to stop melee in it's tracks you must be melee. NOTE, these ideas are taken with the current damage and effectiveness that guns do, giving melee a great edge once in melee, ranged must choose between continuing the use of it's guns or getting the ability to block.


Now the next point I make is about spam. What about the power fist spam? Well this idea comes from when the game was not released yet, while in development as the axe and maul was introduced. They were unique weapons, the maul was almost as fast as the sword with high pen, the axe was slower than the maul but had higher damage. The reason there was recently all this powerfist spam and chainsword spam is because these were the only two relevant melee weapons left in the game. High speed and DPS of the sword, or the really high damage of the fist. The other melee weapons because way to slow did little damage to be useful and compete.

To get rid of spam of only 1 or 2 options, the other melee weapons need to viable and great at what they do, they need to be viable alternatives. Axe has high damage but low pen, swings a bit slowr than the sword. Maul has lower damage than the axe but has higher pen and more durability. These weapons need to have value, options that make players prefer them based off their play-style.

Here is an example that show where this principle is done well, for the orks there is the shoota and big shoota. The big shoots melts enemies easy, smaller shoota not as fast. BUT, the big shoota has more of a delay between hip firing than the small shoota. As well as when you are hit by melee, the time to draw you gun to fire after getting hit in melee is longer for the big shoota, long enough that in some cases you never get the chance to shoot anymore. These small subtle differences make me chose the rapid response but less damage of the regular shoota over the Big shoota as my gun of choice.

On the subject of clangs if the clangs consistently work then it's fine.


Note I write this in hope something will change for the better, I am only interested in serious discussion at the chance of making a difference because I do love this game and what has happened to melee is a travesty, especially since the powerfist has no become so useless that swords are all that can still work somewhat.

-EDIT I believe that the best way to balance melee unleash it. KEEPING RANGED DAMAGE AND EFFECTIVENESS AS IS, Ranged can look anywhere and strike almost instantly, during developement melee used to be able to strike where ever the aim icon was pointing too, now it is to where the character is currently facing, at the time it was needed, now it can greatly help melee keep up with the abilities of ranged.


Thank you to anyone who has read this or contributed to the conversation in a meaningful way.

GW said fuck you to blocking, so scratch that out.

I'll say it again...logic dictates that a class with a reach and ability to only affect anything within a 9 foot range IS NOT GOING TO BE NEAR AS KILLY AS SOMEONE WITH A 100+ METER RANGE!!!

The ONLY way for melee to be "equal" to ranged is to make it fuggin broken. And then because melee is fuggin broken everyone now has to go melee or not be viable. You just can't balance guns vs melee weapons. It didn't work for the samurai, it didn't work for ye old knights, and it ain't gonna work here!

The only way your gonna get any semblance of balance in a video game is through map design. Lotsa small tight hallways and constricted areas- melee. Lotsa open rooms with elevation changes- guns. You gotta balance out level design to balance out the two. Even then its not really balanced.

Maybe we rename Ground Assault to melee "S.P.E.C.I.A.L." forces?
Isn't this funny?

Wait seriously?

I think one of the big things that needs to change is that after a guy with a rifle melees and pulls out his knife he should have to switch weapons to get either his rifle or pistol out, there should be no knife knife knife, roll and instantly shooting my gun again.

Melee-ing would be instant but getting to the pistol or normal gun should require that weapon swap delay

Edit: I forgot to say that a pistol should not suffer this, so you still still roll and shoot right away with a pistol, only a rifle would be stuck with knife only

Which would be an auto win at close range for melee. The stagger from getting hit would mess with the range character and you can't roll away due to fast attack lock on spam.

I honestly don't get you guys melee is fine atm if you use it right. I see plenty of ork sluggas and chaos GA running around. Heck I topped the leader board as a Lsm JPA using a powerswird with most kills on a harkus map for my side. I think the problem is melee players want to just roll up on people and smash their skulls in super easy and their mad they can't do that.

Tbh the only unfair thing I've seen range v melee atm is the new chaos unique bolter. It shoots THROUGH targets meaning shields don't work on it. Tested it out vs orks and their shield didn't stop my shots at all.

Imo there must be a reasonable point in between. A way to make harder but not impossible for ranged classes to be efficient in melee.

A slight reduction in duration of stun applied by ranged classes OR a delay in weapon swap should do the job.

It's just a minor change because imo the situation is not that bad. I prefer the game now rather than when it was a power weapon festival. But life of melee is very frustrating even if you get in range one d-bash and you're dead anyway.

I have honestly never seen a game balance the two. Look at Halo melee was OP as all get out but super limited in how often you could have it. Most games just opt for the melee is super super powerful but also extremely situational route. Like battlefiled or CoD where a knife hit is insta death but getting into range isn't always easy. I played an old tps game called guns online that had a good balance between the two. The way they did it was to give melee weapons a knock down skill that could be counter played with a proper button press, and melee could hold shift to deflect bullets. However you could still shoot their feet and a good gunner would still beat a melee easily. People complained about guns in that game as well.

When push comes to shove guns are just going to be better than melee. The only time that isn't true is when melee is extremely over bearing. Destiny was another example where melee was good but balanced around being super limited. Seems like the best way to do melee is to just make it super powered at close range but limit people's ability to actually get in close range. Atm EC just has too much mobility on jumps and too many small rooms and clustered areas to let that be the case.

Agreed to the first part, but dedicated melee should have a decent advantage over ranged, or at least force ranged to be unable to just shoot us in the face inbetween clangs (make knives have 100% full suppression after any clang/clash, successful or not). Or hell, even partial suppression after rolling.

Here's each scenario in which melee is fucked :

If you use a quick attack, they use d-bash and kill you while you're staggered. So quick attacks are out.
If you use d-bash, they slowly walk out of the way and shoot you in the face to death easily. So d-bashes are out.
If you use heavy strike, you have the best chance of getting a kill, but even if you do odds are they managed to break your armor and do some hefty HP damage.

Also note that if any of their buddies are near you won't even get the single kill on the enemy unless they're braindead and hit their ally instead of you.

High risk, little reward. Also note that JPA is simply the better option in all scenarios for melee (well, except for Eldar) since shields are busted right now and have gunfire pass through them. The only way Ground Assault can be worth a shit is if shields are fixed to actually function and if they have a hefty amount of survivability over JPA.

I'm talking nearly +100% effective HP/armor, an extra 2 boltgun shots worth of HP/armor doesn't mean shit compared to flying around and having infinite flanking potential. Especially since the key draw for 2 of the 4 faction's ground melees, shields, is busted.

It just pays more to just be a tactical and flank with your gun. Or even devastator for that suppression. Anyone saying "oh but I got x kills as melee" would get tons more with a simple boltgun and knife, and thats a fact.