Armed, a Thread

[Prestige]

i can't believe mouse is dragging me to talk about melee. please spare me the downvotes i am only here to argue against mouse's points. i don't care for the balance of this tree (anymore). :pleading:

Let's do it by points:

Arguing that melee is fine because beams outdamage certain spells is actually the weirdest thing to do. Beams are the hardest spell to land in the game, and yes, it rewards you if you're good enough to land it or abuse a cheese mechanic (pyro, hey!). Cheese aside, it's rare for people to even go for beams. In fact, I dare you to go out and see how many people / characters in game have beams right now without Metal/Sand/Explosion to support them. My guess would be less than 5. And I am being lenient here.

Let's move on.

Fatal Strike is a semi-homing spell (everyone knows this by now, right?) combined when combined with dash. You also didn't count Fatal's damage after bleed, but that's alright. I'll ignore that part. I do want to say that, again, comparing it to a beam is dumb. If beams were as good as you say they are, people would dip for them. It costs 20 RPP to reach Water Beam. Go ahead. Is it really so good that the entire server sleeps on it or is it just... A high-skill spell?

I think we -both- know the answer.

You can compare it to Blood Beam maybe, but... It'd cost you... 75 RPP to buy Blood beam. On the other hand, it costs you 35 RPP to buy Fatal. Surprise, surprise. Another point for melee!

Dash strike straight up ignores slows and quite literally does NOT register certain spells. It'd literally allow you to pass through them and take no damage. 6 Seconds CD that is brought down to, let's say, 4? You're right. It is a second dash. You have two dashes every four seconds. Cool.

I think saying that melee, on average, has an advantage over mages is a kneejerk.

It really isn't though. Look at the numbers. Look at the cost of the tree. Look at the best homing ingame that is a BASIC spell. Look at the fact that, for some reason, everyone considers the AP stances to be a 'standard' so rejecting someone's application for it is almost cruel-- and there you have it. Melee is better. But if you're not convinced quite yet, allow me to continue.

You also forgot to mention P.Smash.
So let me do that for you: this move that used to be about skill (and you could very much miss!) had its range increased to 2. Not a big deal. And then you realize that with Garuda (which everyone has, either normally or on an AP stance) it's increased to 4. 13 Damage / 27 seconds of CD. The funny part is that you used to be able to whiff it since you could cast it anywhere. Now? You can only cast it if you're in range. Crazy. Give melee another crouch for...
Actually, I don't know why it was given another crouch.

I could go on and on, I could give more examples for traditional homings vs phantom strikes. Spells with Fatal's damage that are harder to land and have less damage (and cost way more to buy), or even spells similar to Power Smash - but is there really a point? You can see it in this thread. When someone tries to even mention the balance of this tree they are met with: downvotes, of course (hence why the meme is a thing btw. bog and i were -40'd for just saying 'melee is not balanced' when it was much worse than now)... And well, people telling them they're wrong while blatantly ignoring facts.

I'd love to discuss this though. If someone thinks they can prove me wrong— please do.

I might even mention how dumb the AP stances are with melee when you involve element boosts from spells.

[Park]

Honestly? Nah. Not really.

Armed has the potential to put out a lot of burst damage all at once, but I don't know that I'd go anywhere near calling it 'consistent' or that it's the most easy to abuse tree in the game. Just look at the swathes of ice and gravity mages, for example. You are correct in that there's a lot of high damage low CD spells in the game, but I think your entire understanding of the tree, and the way some of these spells work, is inconsistent. Just to go down the list of spells you posted;

Dash Strike - Melee's only real 'gap closer' and even then, it's effectively just a second space dash. I don't think this is egregious or a problem at all when it's literally the only way a lot of melees are going to be able to land any of their spells.

Double Strike - Strong, sure. But effectively, this spell has a range of literally nonexistant. You have to be inside of your opponents sprite to land it. Maybe not the most difficult thing to accomplish, but this spell can also fire even if you're out of range, effectively making this skills counter.. Walking away from your opponent.

Sweeping Cleave - This spell is actually so broken that I honestly have never seen a melee outright use it unless they were a combo build. 19 seconds of CD for 12 spell damage might seem like a lot until you realize the entire damage box is a small box in front of you. And that moving in diagonals sometimes causes it to miss. And that sometimes it just misses in general. It being GCD also makes this required to be a 'finishing' move to a combo, of which there are much better options in the game currently, even in mage trees. Honestly, this is comparable to spells like Blood Whip(which is better by the way even after nerf) but don't require such an awkward set up to land it. If it's just the CD to Damage output you're looking at.. Realize, again, this is pretty close to what the bog standard "melee range big damage" looks like for quite a few other spells.

Fatal Strike - A good spell that's extremely easy to punish. Press a beam or a knockback and watch as the spell, in its entirety, falters. This isn't always the case and it's not always applicable but 14 Spell Damage on a 20 second CD, but is comparable in many ways to a beam or javelin spell. The beams may look as if they have lower spell damages, but with how many times they tick, in a lot of ways, in a 1:1 scenario where a beam and fatal gets launched at the same time, the beam is going to do more damage.

Of course, this doesn't actually explain /why/ Melee seems to be so strong, then. Surely if all of those spells alone are outright worse than mage spells, then surely melees should never win, right? The answer to this one is pretty simple; Certain melee spells being GCDE allow combos much easier and often times makes it appear that specific spells are the problem. For instance, you can dash strike into double strike into fatal pretty easily. Or you could chain a slow into your combo as well, almost guaranteeing that you hit it. That said, it is pretty apparent to me that melee becomes very reliant on these sorts of things, but I don't even necessarily think it's in a very oppressive place at the moment.

Maybe I'm wrong and this is just me, but I feel like with the tools given to most magi right now, and with how easy it is to dip into other trees after the constant attunement RPP nerfs, that answers to these problems are more common than ever. Even with mistform being changed(and honestly, this impact probably impacted melees too given they now don't have an easy way to avoid CC!), I think saying that melee, on average, has an advantage over mages is a kneejerk. That you've seen one or two fights, or you've lost to a melee who has a good combo against your build, and the instant response was to make a thread about it.

Not to call you out or anything; I digress, I just thought I should address this from my point of view as you gave it from yours.

Moving on, your secondary problems are with Powersmash and Phantom Strikes, and you say that both of them are guaranteed hits. To this, I agree with you, but only halfway. Powersmash, until its range buff, was atrocious to hit without Garuda. Sure, maybe therein itself lies the problem, that most melees are garuda because it covers melees most awful downside(its range), but Psmash was definitely /NOT/ a guaranteed hit until last night. Pstrikes? Yeah, sure. Pstrikes has been a problem for a while. But this is a separate point.

Pstrikes is 3 ticks of 4.5(presumably, if the tooltip is correct) damage that occurs over a second or two. This adds up to a total of 13.5 damage, in which the caster is essentially invulnerable, and then sets up for a potential combo(or avoids the danger of being punished). This has a cooldown of, tested at 170 agi, around 16 seconds. If you're curious, blood beam does more damage on a shorter cooldown than this. If they respond properly, almost every single beam in the game does more damage on a lower cooldown than this. A lot of spells do a lot more damage than this on a shorter cooldown. The only reason why this spell is viewed so poorly is because it's essentially free damage that you can't punish out of, that avoids other spell casts. It's rough, but there's an easy solution for it that Hoovy posted the other day, and I thought was a clever idea.

Lower the amount of time it takes to cast. Seriously. Instead of the second or two it takes now, just have it go off almost instantly. It'll look more crazy because of the burst, but it'll give more of a chance for those involved to get a spellcast off to stun or punish them out of it. Which, IMO, it doesn't need because it's really melee's only 'guaranteed' damage(ignoring dash strike ok...), but it's whatever. If thats the route we go, that's how to fix it.

Armed is a strong tree. I'm not trying to deny that. However, I think that in most scenarios, against a mage who has the proper tools to deal with it, it's maybe not a 50/50, but pretty close. I think most of the recent wars that I've watched have promoted this as well. When melee is good, it's very good. But there's a lot in the game that makes melee not so good that people will just pick up normally. Slows, stuns, almost every status effect in the game, mistform, cleanse. Not to mention that Melee has slowly been getting phased out when it comes to CC immunity or damage mitigation, I think we're still in a place where armed is.. Fine. Maybe a little worse than fine. Maybe a little better than fine.

But I don't think sending melee into another 'balance spiral' like has happened so many times is the right way to do things, especially when I think most melee spells line up almost exactly where you'd want them. Weaker than normal, very low range, but easy to combo.

: mouse :

edit: P.S. the 'oh no i talked bad about melee pls don't downvote me!' meme is bad and i hate it.

First of all, thank you, seriously, for such a detailed response. A lot of what you said has clarified things, and I agree and disagree at various points, but I mostly do agree.

I don't think armed needs to be run through the mixer again, i think for the most part it is as you said, a bit more or less than fine. I didn't scramble to the forums to make this thread upon losing to armed builds (though i did lose to several) but rather I was very reluctant to make this an outspoken point. Not that I care at all about downvotes, especially considering every single one has been from an armed user. 

Anyway..

Fatal Strike, I'm really not complaining about too much. Very low cooldown, very high damage, and as you said, for a good verber it's very easily tied into their combo. I wouldn't really mess with it.. besides maybe cooldown tbh.

Dash Strike.. well, I have to disagree. It is a -very- useful ability. GCDE, 6 second cooldown, insta mobility. Like you said, it's a second dash essentially but gcde and can be comboed into immediately. Now, can it be punished? Of course. That is the gimmick of armed. Still, punishing it only does so much when 3-6 seconds later they are trying again, meanwhile your counter is still on cooldown for 20 more seconds. Better have dancer I guess? I don't honestly think it's bad as it's essentially arms entire gimmick aside from burst damage, but it's certainly the ability that makes me say that this is the most consistent tree because of it's short cooldown into what is essentially an auto landing combo now. I've played armed before, and I would say that it's a stretch to say that missing double strike or psmash is something that happens often. And if it fails? Ten seconds max.. and you're trying again.

Phantom Strike, not much to discuss here because I entirely agree with what you said about it.

Honestly I'm not here to say I even have answers as to what to do with armed without spiting it's entire gimmick, but I think that with it's low cooldowns and high damage, it can generally outclass most builds simply be being off cooldown much earlier. Of course, there are other issues with the combat as well, I'm an Ice user and I agree that things such as the uncleansable slow are no bueno. 

Admittedly calling it busted is an overexaggeration, but taking 20k+ damage from a combo on a 20 second cooldown MAX is what makes them so strong. Even if they eat a shockwave, or are slowed. That's okay, because they can try again in 3 seconds. 

Again, thank you for the constructive criticism Mouse. I was definitely hoping for more of that, and less memeing.

[Mouse]

in response to dani, all i have to say is this;

space dash fatal is dumb
garuda being mandatory is also dumb
styles letting people abuse ap stacking is also dumb
and i was also using beams because a lot of them are relevant to melee skills, requiring you to be close up to land them to any great effect

i might type out a larger response later but for now i'm too busy. ty for replies.

[Park]

i can't believe mouse is dragging me to talk about melee. please spare me the downvotes i am only here to argue against mouse's points. i don't care for the balance of this tree (anymore). :pleading:

Let's do it by points:

Arguing that melee is fine because beams outdamage certain spells is actually the weirdest thing to do. Beams are the hardest spell to land in the game, and yes, it rewards you if you're good enough to land it or abuse a cheese mechanic (pyro, hey!). Cheese aside, it's rare for people to even go for beams. In fact, I dare you to go out and see how many people / characters in game have beams right now without Metal/Sand/Explosion to support them. My guess would be less than 5. And I am being lenient here.

Let's move on.

Fatal Strike is a semi-homing spell (everyone knows this by now, right?) combined when combined with dash. You also didn't count Fatal's damage after bleed, but that's alright. I'll ignore that part. I do want to say that, again, comparing it to a beam is dumb. If beams were as good as you say they are, people would dip for them. It costs 20 RPP to reach Water Beam. Go ahead. Is it really so good that the entire server sleeps on it or is it just... A high-skill spell?

I think we -both- know the answer.

You can compare it to Blood Beam maybe, but... It'd cost you... 75 RPP to buy Blood beam. On the other hand, it costs you 35 RPP to buy Fatal. Surprise, surprise. Another point for melee!

Dash strike straight up ignores slows and quite literally does NOT register certain spells. It'd literally allow you to pass through them and take no damage. 6 Seconds CD that is brought down to, let's say, 4? You're right. It is a second dash. You have two dashes every four seconds. Cool.

I think saying that melee, on average, has an advantage over mages is a kneejerk.

It really isn't though. Look at the numbers. Look at the cost of the tree. Look at the best homing ingame that is a BASIC spell. Look at the fact that, for some reason, everyone considers the AP stances to be a 'standard' so rejecting someone's application for it is almost cruel-- and there you have it. Melee is better. But if you're not convinced quite yet, allow me to continue.

You also forgot to mention P.Smash.
So let me do that for you: this move that used to be about skill (and you could very much miss!) had its range increased to 2. Not a big deal. And then you realize that with Garuda (which everyone has, either normally or on an AP stance) it's increased to 4. 13 Damage / 27 seconds of CD. The funny part is that you used to be able to whiff it since you could cast it anywhere. Now? You can only cast it if you're in range. Crazy. Give melee another crouch for...
Actually, I don't know why it was given another crouch.

I could go on and on, I could give more examples for traditional homings vs phantom strikes. Spells with Fatal's damage that are harder to land and have less damage (and cost way more to buy), or even spells similar to Power Smash - but is there really a point? You can see it in this thread. When someone tries to even mention the balance of this tree they are met with: downvotes, of course (hence why the meme is a thing btw. bog and i were -40'd for just saying 'melee is not balanced' when it was much worse than now)... And well, people telling them they're wrong while blatantly ignoring facts.

I'd love to discuss this though. If someone thinks they can prove me wrong— please do.

I might even mention how dumb the AP stances are with melee when you involve element boosts from spells.

. . . my actual hero.

[Dreamspeaker]

My argument why melee is superior:

Give me 200 RPL EC, allow me to distribute RPP in any way I want & equip me with standard enchanted mythril gear, and give me 1 Hidden that is Affinity Empowerment bladestyle - all phys turns to certain pow.

Watch me club everyone over the head.

You already know the answer.

[Shadovarn]

Yeah, sure. Why not.

[Mali]

Some of ya'll 'bout to be real mad at me...But it must. Be said.

We've had this topic for the past year now and nothing has changed. Whether or not you would like to believe it, I am one-hundred percent certain that if I were to refund my current build right now and go 'Melee' with similar specs...I would, quite literally, out-perform my current self. You can say what it is that you want, but Chance has spoken upon this subject time and time again. The things that Melee have to offer, from the existence of 5 rpp to custom blade styles, to the hiddens that you can get (I.E. Perfect Body, Omega Overcharge, Pandemonium), Melee is quite literally the king. And when you place it next to spells that a mage would have...You will always see them blow mages out of the water. Perhaps, this might've been different if Melee were it's separate stat once more.

But it is not. So NOW, when you decide to buff spells- you also buff that meleer which makes balancing them more problematic. The truth of the matter is that Melee has far more options, they punish people much harder, and they do twice the damage that I could ever do as a mage by pressing two buttons while my entire rotation is on CD. You may hate the game of cat and mouse...

But there is no other choice when you are going against a melee user. You either run or you get minced in 10 seconds. Melee is not okay. I'm sorry, but it is not.

[Lloyd Durages]

is it bad i read it in the voice of that lady

[MurderMaid]

i will be the melee i am cauz that is oke

[Park]

Perhaps, this might've been different if Melee were it's separate stat once more.

But it is not.

yes.