If you both throw paper you both take damage, just like you would if you and another person actually swung your blades at each other's bodies and not each other's weapons. If you want to take a DEFENSIVE action you Block(which should replace clang), Defensive Bash or Dodge.

Melee Meta should be: Basic > Range > Block > Charge > Dodge > D.Bash > Basic

Spoiler

Basic's attack speed should let players quickly land attacks against enemies, gaining 50% Ranged Damage Resistance and interrupting their enemy's ranged weapon briefly. All melee attack speeds should be slowed when out of Stamina.

Ranged weapons should be able to shoot and deal full damage to any player Blocking without a Shield or dual-wield melee. Ranged should be able to soft counter melee by landing consecutive head shots.

Block should stop Basic, Charge and Sprint Attacks at the cost of Stamina, causing both players to recoil.
Holding Block for an extended period(I.E. 0.5-sec) would apply a move speed debuff and maintain Dodge's cooldown(I.E. 1-sec) until the key is released; Shield users that Block with LMB instead of "Block Key" would not experience those penalties.
Block should allow players to cancel their Attacks.
Weapons with higher Armor Penetration than the blocker should be able to deal damage through the Block, allowing Basic Attacks to soft counter D.Bash.
Block should be unavailable when out of Stamina.
Blocking with a Shield or dual-wielding melee should allow Block to hard/soft counter range.

Charge Attacks, via a well-designed soft lock for melee, should be able to track and chase after enemies, even if they are Dodging. Timing should allow Charge Attacks to soft counter D.Bash

Dodge should be the quickest way to escape a D.Bash.
Dodge should provide brief(I.E. 0.125-sec) Stun Immunity.
Dodge should provide direction-based damage resistance(I.E. -83.5% DMG if dodging away from damage source, based on two 180-degree targeting arcs) for at least half of the animation so that timing can soft counter the damage of Charge Attacks.
Dodge should allow players to cancel their D.Bash.
Dodge should have an increased cooldown(I.E. +50%) when out of Stamina.
Dodge should only cost 10% Stamina.

D.Bash should auto-Block Basic Attacks then land a stunning blow.
D.Bash should be able to break Block for an extended Stun.


Block

Players should lose Stamina each time they Block an Attack, which should also have Stamina Costs.
Each weapon should have a Strength value that not only determines its Base DMG but also its ability to bypass Block.
For each point of difference in Strength the Stamina drain should change by +/- 25%.

Combat Knife Basic Attack Cost: 3.4% Stamina.
It would cost a player with a Combat Knife 3.4% Stamina to Block another Combat Knife's Basic Attack.

Combat Knife Charge Attack Cost: 7.7% Stamina.
Combat Knife Charge Attack Modifier: S+1 for Block
It would cost a player with a Combat Knife 9.6% Stamina to Block another Combat Knife's Charge Attack.


Storm Shields should posses their own Armor Value/Power Field that is able to mitigate all damage. When the Field drops the player should be able to continue to Block at the cost of Stamina. Additionally, weapons with higher Armor Penetration than the Shield's Armor Save would be able to deal a percentage of damage through it.
Combat Shields could be implemented and only large enough to defend the head and torso, leaving the legs, which take reduced damage, exposed. Players with the Combat Shield could auto-Block with it when Sprinting, provided they had the Stamina to do so.

Players with dual-wield melee should be able to Block with both weapons and defend their head/torso against ranged fire in exchange for Stamina. Like the Field-less Shields, weapons with higher AP than the dual-wielder's weapons would be able to deal damage through the Block and like the Combat Shield players could auto-Block when Sprinting.[spoiler

Running out of Stamina should not stun/stagger/whatever the player. It should reduce their attack/move speed, increase their Dodge cooldown and prevent them from Blocking.[/spoiler]

Agreed
A good Lascannon design would have it destroying a Rhino in 5 shots from the rear and 6 from the sides/front. The LC would have a brief delay before firing(I.E. 0.5 to 0.75-sec) during which a targeting laser would appear and either the player's reticle would be locked in place or their aim speed would be decreased. It would need a moment to charge between shots(I.E. 1 to 1.5-sec) and generate heat per shot(I.E. 20%) so that it can overheat if fired too often, reducing its volume of fire without directly affecting its actual firing rate.

So, if fortune favored the user they could destroy a Rhino from behind in 6.5 to 9.75-seconds.

A Heavy Bolter would need 130 Bolts to destroy a Rhino from behind and 388 Bolts from the sides/front.
With a 0.2-sec hip-fire ready-up time and 0.2-sec Fire Rate, not counting possible overheat/reload, it could destroy a Rhino from behind in 25.8 to 26-sec.
Not counting overheat/reload for sides/front it would destroy a Rhino after 77.4-sec of firing.
Able to destroy a Rhino but definitely not the most effective at it.

If the HB was given +25% VEH-DMG it would only take 103 Bolts from behind(~20.4-sec) and 302(~60.2-sec) Bolts from the sides/front.

Well, that was a good post. I actually enjoyed it a bit. With the time left before launch though, I will still push back on the changes to the melee system. There's just not enough time to crack it open, even if it does work. Also, seriously, this isn't the place for melee meta discussion.

As for your continued pushing of design changes down to the hundredths place, we've had devs stop by. I know they lurk around the thread. If they haven't bit off on it yet, they aren't going to, so walls of text advocating it aren't getting anywhere. I''d say stick to commenting on the overall of what you are and aren't liking. More/less of this. This or that is BS. As was stated in other threads, the devs have the data, they just need to know what people think of the experience.

Believe me, that feedback is valuable. Look up the difference between Developmental and Operational Test (DT & OT) if you have a second. I've done both in my career. In a nutshell, DT is "does it meet the specs?". OT is "does the customer like it?". As Early Access customers, we're doing OT, so "does the product suit our needs?" is what we can provide. Not,"build me this" or "here are my specs. Signed, One Random Customer". At least that is my perspective.

They see it that way too I think.

http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/obedience-bonus.53658/#post-1082198

No.

I'm pretty sure we wouldn't see any melee overhaul at least till 1 year after launch, that's if EC can make it.

Concur. Star Wars Galaxies got the Combat Upgrade (basically turning itself into a WoW clone) 3 years after its launch, but that was an MMO, with a subscription (for a while at least). I think the devs will have enough just trying to feed as much content in as possible to keep interest up to worry about messing with any of the underlying mechanics, melee or ranged.

So, what are people running for wargear these days? I've been playing around with three different builds, and without weapon mods and a narrow selection of things each piece of wargear does, I'm finding the choices I'm left with are limited. My three builds are:

CQB: H:202 A:102 T130 DR:10%; Power Armour, Halo of Toughness, Armour Regen
Long Range: H:200 A:145 T:120 DR:0%; Relic Armour, 20 Toughness, Armour Regen
Max ART: H:200 A:140 T:130 DR:0%; Relic Armour, 30 Toughness, no grenades or trinkets

Stamina is of no interest to me, so a bunch of wargear options are excluded, reducing the number of choices I need to make. I find that I can fit the basic Power Armour and a bunch of cool stuff, or the Relic Armour and less cool stuff. I struggled to find a place for Artificer Armour: it either put me over budget, or I shorted myself on cool stuff enough that I couldn't fit it back up to 1000 LP.

I've found that the Max ART build best suits my playstyle, it gives plenty of leeway to step back from a brace position when under fire, and I don't really miss the armour regen. The CQB version can take noticeably more damage overall, but has less leeway before eating into my health, and I don't often get good usage from my grenades.

Overall, with the wargear available to us right now, I'm finding I don't have a lot of interesting choices, it's just a matter of buffing my survivability the best I can for the environment I most often find myself in.

Concur, I have scoffed stamina, and I don't see too much interesting stuff for HB gearing now. Also concur that it is pretty easy to hit the LP cap, and be forced to leave some cool stuff behind. THAT part, I find interesting.

Since toughness is, as I understand it, just for protection against bolters, and I feel I am equally likely to take a plasma hit as I am a bolter, and even more likely to take a melee hit, I went with the following:

Standard armor (due to LP cap), Iron Halo, Armor regen delay reduction wargear for both wargear (I think), and +3/+2 health trinkets. For weapons and gearing, I'm still running with my HB kindness (standard HB), kraks, and ammo pack.

Seems to work decent for me. I usually get a little warning and can react effectively to get to cover before my shield is gone, and it pops back pretty quick. I scoffed the +5 health, but there have been several times where I have been alive with just 1-4 HPs, so I guess it makes a difference sometimes.

The release date is a massive mistake, like many things in this game. It needs to be pushed back so it CAN have the changes it needs, such as Block replacing clang.

The BS of it is the current design of the game. The devs are using data that is wrong, getting metrics based on wrong statistical data.

What I am doing is, "By looking at facts objectively, making these changes to your current systems will factually improve your product."

What a riveting argument. Once you have actual input that is helpful to the situation, feel free to rejoin us.

It has very minimal chance of doing so with its current design and direction, needing an overhaul to ensure it will last.

So, I'll start by acknowledging the common ground. Concur, the release date is too soon for a polished product. Even if they had all the weapons and progression tree in, 2 weeks of dedicated balancing is far too short. However, it is what it is, and I am sure the devs feel the same way, privately if not publicly. The next few months are going to be messy, reviews from Gamespy, IGN, and others will most likely not be kind. But there is still plenty of opportunity for the game to eventually be what it promised, with support from the triad of the devs, the community, and the corporate overlords.

On to the other stuff:

1. The devs are NOT using data that is wrong. Period. They are using data from the game that THEY created, therefore, by definition, it is correct. They made the universe, they set the rules, they collected the data from it. That is a fundamental truth about game analysis. They might be collecting the wrong data, they might be interpreting it wrong, but the data is NOT wrong. Saying it is wrong is, to me at least, like questioning gravity and stating that things should fall sideways due to the motion of the plane of the ground.

2. On that note, when you last fluttered in, I checked a couple of your other posts to see if your comments were better received or worded any better (they weren't). If I am understanding your statements correctly, you took the tabletop rules and "scaled" them to this game. You accused the devs of building to the wrong audience, but using numbers on that assumption is for the completely wrong genre. I think that numbers based on a turn based, table top game where players have literally all the time in the world (or at least a little bit if playing with a chess clock timer) to think, move, and dodge attacks is building to the completely wrong type of game. I would guess the silence from the devs is because they feel the same way. It's great that you put all this time in to making your spreadsheets, it is, in some ways, great that you are so convinced, but your models are based on a flawed assumption (that the table top rules can be directly applied to this game's rules).

3. Folding all this together, you seem like a numbers guy, so you might have heard the Box quote, "All models are wrong; some are useful". What makes a model useful is the fidelity of the model, and the assumptions that are made. The devs are building their models based off of literally every step taken, every bullet fired, and every kill made. Unless you have that same level of fidelity, your model is inferior. Furthermore, with your fundamental assumption being (in my opinion) wrong, everything your models states diverges from the dev models in drastic manner. Therefor, no surprise that you aren't getting traction.

4. I don't agree that the game needs, "an overhaul" to be successful. The baseline is there. It needs the content added, and it needs balancing. Both of which I think can be done, ideally before launch, but can continue after launch due the realities of the current plan. It might need an overhaul to match your assessments, but as I stated above (and not for the first time), your models and ideas don't match this game, no one is calling for their implementation, and if you truly believe the path to a great real time FPS is modeling a dice roll and ruler based game, please seek out a Kickstarter campaign, some really talented people, and make us all look like fools in 5 years when you release "Leaker's an Idiot: A Warhammer 40K Game".