How would you actually fix melee
First of all, i have 1000+ in this game, over 30k melee kills while mostly playing bots and not taking into account that the kill counter has been bugged for 3 months (problem 1)
Whats the takeaway from that? It's interesting enough at its core for me to invest time like that, but since AH is the master of "good idea, bad excecution", this is where we are
** A simple start **
More damage (problem 2). The dmg buffs from a recent patch helped, but didn't go all the way. More good number is always gooder. Melee is unique in a sense that it benefits from weakspots you wouldn't even consider with a gun: arms
Arms don't have much health, shortly stagger the enemy when cut off and disable an attack. When ur chilling underneath a factory strider and he spawns stuff, it will be a good idea to cut off thier pew pew arms in one sweep and move on.
All cutting weapons should have the damage to cut off every arm in one hit (could be done with a dmg multiplier if melee would become "too op"). Also machete should cut bushes
** Fix stuff **
There are bugs that make melee impossible in otherwise safe situations (problem 1.5) Most problematic are what i call the "forcefield" bug, where enemies will sit there witout an animation in front of an obstacle and attack at the speed of light or launch you 50m if they are big bots, and the other bug makes your attack loose its hitbox if you get hit. Very frustrating on pred strain or against voteless sometimes.
** Make attacks avoidable **
While it would be cool, i really don't need a parry or block. What i mean is that you should be able to walk or jump out of the way of an attack in an aggressive manner without getting hit.
Good examples are devastators and warriors. They can be dodged by walking to the side, giving you an opening to attack freely (they also have the good arm weakpoints)
Bad examples are stalkers and overseers (problem 3). They attack super fast with little to no wind up and turn very quckly. Even if you catch them off guard, you get time for 1 or 2 strikes before you getting your ass whooped. Also 90% of bugs blow up on death wtf
** The stunlance **
My first love, the thing that made me buy the game, but got nerfed to the ground (problem 4). Shortly before super earth invasion, it was at it's prime. The b shield just got the abilty to block melee, you stunned everything in one hit and could kill hulks and chargers from the front. I ran spear and shield with no sup weapon on d7 bots and survived!
But Awarehead said NO!
And thus it takes 3 hits to stun hulks and chargers to their butt, the only way to kill em now, which also got harder with a patch. Also, you push around bugs and squids way too much, ruining the ttk. You can get around this on bugs a little bit by attacking the wonderful arm weakspot, as they are immune tonpushing while staggered, but we don't have the damage to kill them in that brief stagger, we would need one less hit against hiveguards for example.
** And this might just be the tip of the iceberg **