Huge changes are coming to Warframe’s melee system, as Phase 2 of the melee rework will arrive with The Old Blood update. Phase 1 can be viewed as just a minor rework in light of all the changes that are coming in Phase 2. To help ease us all into it, Digital Extremes have posted a detailed Dev Workshop to the official forums for us to read.
There are a few highlights of the rework that I want to run through here, but you should certainly read the full post over on the forums. First up, manual blocking is back! I’m pleased about this one, and I am sure a lot of other players will be too. You can once again manually equip a weapon, and manually block with it, giving you full control of your defensive actions again. Blocking will now stop 100% of incoming damage, but all weapons will have a blocking angle that provides different degrees of coverage.
We are also getting dodge canceling, allowing up to break melee combos with a dodge roll, another thing I am looking forward to. Dodges during combos won’t be full dodges, but will instead be shorter, tactical dodges, so as not to break up the flow of combat. Stances and Combos are also getting reworked to make them much smoother.
Channeling is out, replaced with Heavy Attacks instead, which means a full mod rework for anything that used to give Channeling stats. There will also be a complete rework to all melee weapons within the game, stats-wise, so your old favorites that have fallen by the wayside might just become your new favorites again.
Mastery Rank, base damage, and base range will all be getting juggled, for all weapons. Mastery Rank to make sure that all weapons properly fall in line with the power spikes a player will need for the Star Map and progression, while the base range and damage will be buffed for everything.
I could keep going, but needless to say, these are substantial changes that are coming, and they will take some getting used to when they arrive! I strongly advise you read through the full Dev Workshop for all the details. The Old Blood update does not have a release date just yet, but we will keep you updated when we learn more!
