Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

Melee Hero Weapons

Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Age of Wonders: Planetfall 3784 Bug reports 1669 Suggestions 539 User Mods 95 AoW: Planetfall: News and Updates Archive 41 Multiplayer 55
Garresh

Garresh

Captain
11 Badges
Jun 24, 2018
361
44
  • Teleglitch: Die More Edition
  • Age of Wonders III
  • Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic
  • Age of Wonders
  • Age of Wonders II
  • Shadowrun Returns
  • Age of Wonders: Planetfall
  • Age of Wonders: Planetfall Sign Up
  • Age of Wonders: Planetfall - Revelations
  • Leviathan: Warships
  • Magicka
Something of note in this iteration of AOW is that range is significantly longer and more deadly than in previous games. This is something of a problem for melee heroes. Honestly, melee in general struggles somewhere, but its significantly worse for heroes.

Melee weapons should provide defensive bonuses of some sort. Whether that be a flat damage reduction, a bonus to shields/armor, or something along those lines, they should have a means to make heroes safer in the front lines. Because melee just doesn't scale.

FWIW: This is not my idea. Had the idea floated from multiple other people and felt it needed posting. Feel free to take credit cause it's not mine to take.


Edit: Crap, wrong forum. If a mod sees this thread could they move it to the suggestions forum?
 
Psi-gauntlets on a commander-hero w/ ruthless killer are *brutal*. They bypass all armor and shields, and can easily do 12-18 dmg. per hit, x3 on an agile melee overwatch, which is 100% guaranteed w/ counter strike.

It took me a while to get around to trying a melee commander, but IMHO, when equipped w/ psi-gauntlets, it is the best dmg. dealing hero I've played so far, regularly getting 3 kills in 1 turn (opening kill on weakened opponent, full reset of moves from ruthless killer, free step to enemy w/in 1, x3 melee attack w/ full bypass for another kill, & then if there's another enemy adjacent, once you have agile overwatch & counterstrike, that 3rd opponent is dead as soon as they take their action).

On top of all that, psi-gauntlets make hilariously short work of t4 tank units, some of which are otherwise incredibly difficult to take down.

I highly recommend a Syndicate run w/ Voidtech & a melee commander. Having your melee commander be able to run through obstacles is usually necessary to get the 3 kills in 1 turn.
 
Hunnuli said:
if melee overwatch could hit multiple times if the melee unit wasn't staggered somehow
Click to expand...

Syndicate heroes can take a perk that grants Agile Overwatch (it may be available elsewhere, I don't know), which means melee overwatch attacks are made as if the hero had full movement.

The Counter-Strike perk makes a hero's melee overwatch immune to loss from stagger and causes it to hit 100% of the time.

Try a melee syndicate hero/commander with voidtech, psi-guantlets, & ruthless killler from the martial tradition perk at commander customization. You will not be disappointed.
Once the hero is high enough level to have agile overwatch & counter-strike, they are an unstoppable killing machine.
 
I found a plasma sword in my last game that hits the 3 hex in front of my hero, and an advanced Jetpack. My hero is a murder machine. Celestian tech BTW, allows for some tanky stuff like stagger immunity and cursing enemies that hit me. Some spell to protect him and it's an unstoppable killing machine to send behind enemy lines.

The thing is to be warry at the beginning, but once modded it brings death and chaos in the enemy lines. I still need to find the best moment for maximum efficiency.
 
Assembly melee hero with the Void Glaive (or Edge if you can find it) is hilarious. Reassembly Module and Assimilate keep them alive pretty damn well, ignoring all armour and shields makes everything die. Ruthless Killer and Cruelty and Cybernetic Overdrive etc.

The Dindin is real neat for early Assembly melee heroes. Assimilate + that things Feast trait means you heal so much.
 
Melee heroes are fantastic at least for Van players. That's the way it is done:

1. March the hero straight up to the opposing trash mob but hug cover. Go in Defence mode. Dug in trait helps here.
2. Your troopers go into Overwatch.
3.Trash mobs go after hero but do minimal damage.
4.Owl marks an enemy while troopers have a field day.
5.Finish a badly injured toon off with your hero. If you have Ruthless Killer (you should!) then you go into Defence Mode again or even use your Concentrate Fire perk to highlight another poor toon devil.
6.Heal up your toons with Nanite mods and the Pug.
7.Rinse and repeat with every trash mob on the map. This tactic works irrespective of your chosen secret tech.
 
Melee heroes do well in early game for me. One melee can control one ranged unit with 2 staggers (1 on attack, 1 on overwatch) and there aren't too many enemies can focus fire on him/her.
They can be some kind of flankers that attack enemy unit at the side and control one of the damage dealers.

But with the game progress, there're more units on field, it become hard to get attack oppotunity for a melee hero as the opponent will have the firepower to bring anything at close range.

The other weakness of melee heroes are stagger that commonly used by all armies and easily cancel the melee overwatch. This also tied with game progress - in later game, you can easily stagger enemies with artillery or other sort of ranged weapons, so it's not nesassary to risk your hero in melee.

So I think, some buildin defense and stagger resistance on high tier melee weapons could help.

Currently, I'm running with a Dvar rocket hammer, which I think it is the best type of melee weapon - they hit only once per turn but hard. Generally, my melee will spend 2 actions on walking and hit once and the melee overwatch only hits once as well. Other weapons can hit multiple times only with help of jetpack and it has a cooldown.
 
I think once engaged in melee, both engaged units should be harder to hit with ranged attacks from other units.
 
ZhukoDim said:
I think once engaged in melee, both engaged units should be harder to hit with ranged attacks from other units.
Click to expand...
They are. If you miss, you can hit an adjacent unit, including your own.
 
Garresh said:
Something of note in this iteration of AOW is that range is significantly longer and more deadly than in previous games. This is something of a problem for melee heroes. Honestly, melee in general struggles somewhere, but its significantly worse for heroes.

Melee weapons should provide defensive bonuses of some sort. Whether that be a flat damage reduction, a bonus to shields/armor, or something along those lines, they should have a means to make heroes safer in the front lines. Because melee just doesn't scale.
Click to expand...
I think this is all about having the right Racial Skills on the Commander.
Syndicate Heroes? Yeah, they are jsut terrible at this. I have not yet found a way to give them reliably stagger resistance for starters. And if they get stagered out of all actions, they can not fire off any self-heal.
But Dvar, Kirko or Asembly Melee Heroes? Do not mess with them!

The secret Tech skills tend to be not that revelant. Celestian is the only one I found with a nice semi-defensive buff (Soulburn Damage Shield).
The only shared Skills are something like "Counter" and "more Live".
Racial skills is where the real power lies.
 
PhoenixG said:
there is even an achievement for killing your own unit in that way
Click to expand...
Friendly Fire
Kill your own unit by missing a shot

I did trigger it, but not on my own unit:
I fumbeled, missed and killed a enemy unit - it triggered.
 
I've killed 3 troopers with my own leader in a single fight to missing the melee enemies in front of them. Oops. I just gave her a squad of OWLs after that, clearly she couldn't be trusted with the lives of others.

Last nights vanguard game had a pretty effective late-game melee hero still, I found Edge and gave it to the Voidtech hero, she did just fine as cleanup.
 
Here are some random thoughts that might not be too imbalancing:

Make melee overwatch better against ranged but worse against other melee. You can get 1 melee overwatch attack against each opponent that moves past you or uses a ranged ability or skill next to you. But you no longer get overwatch against units making melee attacks against you.

Alternatively add a hero skill that does the good part mentioned above.

Add a hero skill that grants impact stagger resistance for 1 turn after making a melee attack.
 
I always auto-combat and my impression is that a melee faction leader is the best way to increase the survivability of your start units. It's definitely much better for this than the support vehicle that you can pick as option.
 
I find voidtech and celestian tech to be very good for melee. Xenoplague probably is too. And I think psynumbra can do something as well.

For races amazons make good melee heroes, as do vanguards and kir'ko. And as some people say assembly does too. I don't know about dvar but I think a rocket hammer was mentioned.
 
Melee feels like it's in a good place to me. Once you optimize and get the right skills/mods on a melee hero they turn into walking death machines. I like to try to give them a ranged sidearm as well so they have some flexibility.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back