The melee mechanics themselves play fine. It's just that so many parts of it are just underwhelming and frustrating. In comparison to a person with a gun, it's noticeably more difficult to kill someone in frontal combat with a melee weapon than it is with a bolter. Shoot, roll & shoot is just so damn effective. I haven't gone back to using a chainaxe since this patch started because of how bad it is at downing people. I can STILL down people don't get me wrong, but I'm pretty much required to land 1 SA on your backside to give me the greatest chance of doing so. Otherwise I have to get pretty lucky in a 1v1 situation vs a tactical who fights me face first as one missed RPS and I'm going to get a face full of gunfire. Most situations I get shot to death before my 2nd/3rd swing in (and sometimes before I get to swing if they spot me around the corner) The best thing to have in melee is speed. Speed is just essential now to survive the firefights that breakout and to ensure you get to land a blow once you're in close range. There is a reason why WPs just use the Fang now rather than the free power they get. Hell one of my buddies made a vanilla LSM just to go chainsword apothecary and right after he did that his melee kills just doubled. (and embarrassing as it is he actually has beaten me getting the Crusader award along with the Preserver award while doing so...)
I understand the problem about heavy bolters and reapers, but when it comes to melee i want to call bs on the fast attack spam. And wtf with the shield ? How come only two factions have them ? I feel the pain of the melee boyz for csm and eldar.
That has to do with asymmetrical balancing and what not. LSM GAs can get shields but CSMs GAs can cap and wield Melta Bombs, Ork Sluggas can wield shields and cap but their shields are piss in comparison and have a mind of their own when it comes to blocking shots. I play CSM GA and I have virtually no problem not having a shield when I can potentially walk into a point guarded by 1 or 2 men, butcher the guards then then cap the point. If your having problems surviving get a sorc to heal you and don't wander off by yourself to much because you are NOT going to RAMBO melee through everyone by yourself. Fast attack spamming is EASILY counterable and honestly is where I actually get a lot of my melee kills because many people don't know how to properly mix up and predict different attacks.
Yeah the melee/ranged Dynamic is pretty sad right now to put it mildly. Because of how squishy everything became, you'll get shot full of bolter rounds, etc... before you get a chance to down the enemy. Couple this with Friendly Fire, maneuverability control limitations, and the other nerfs we've seen to melee, there really is little point to playing a melee class over a ranged one. 80% of the time you're going to get shot while you're in a melee fight and die because of it. Melee weapons need to do a lot more damage if they are going to keep up with the new squish factor. Otherwise, this just became a shooter and all that work done making the melee system was completely wasted.
Dont feel bad guys, BHVR is on the job nerfing ranged weapons. Unfortunately it's one of the only ranged weapons that is integral to many melee builds. As much as I'd rather see something other than the smart pistol as far as game mechanics that give melee archetypes an advantage in close combat, this is none the less a direct nerf to Jump Assaults. This was a bug report I recently submitted. Psychopski Mar 27, 16:43 ADT The Smart Pistol is quite often drifting off target several feet. This used to never happen. If it's tied to the target or user moving and being done purposefully then you're rendering the weapon unusable. Standing still in a firefight in EC means death. We have to shoot and move, especially on Jump Assaults. Mobility is life on a JPA. If the Smart Pistol is not properly tracking targets when we are running or in flight it's a useless weapon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpXUM5_S__c Nothing against Frank, he's just passing the word down the food chain. Francois Bedard (Eternal Crusade) Mar 28, 16:12 ADT Hi Phychopski, This is by design. Game designers have intentionnaly nerfed that weapon. Hope this answer your question. Frank I find it amusing that we're going on about 6 weeks now with melee being a train wreck, with Bolters and Tacticals reigning supreme and we cannot nerf or tweak one aspect of the current state of melee to help bring balance. YET, we can sure as shit nerf one of the ONLY viable tools that Jump Assaults use to gain an advantage. This is unbelievable.
