Lategame upgrades for Spirit Strike and Melee Charge

[Dicerson]

It feels awful to buy these melee upgrades because they are low tier, and thus come with very low stats. Taking them is shooting yourself in the foot lategame, since melee can be tough to guarantee (and especially as people get better at using parries) so it feels like they are a bit of a noob trap. If there were Tier 3 or 4 upgrades for these (like with how Lifestrike is Tier 3) that amount to basically just the same ability but with better stats or some extra effect, they'd be much nicer to take and less suicidal.

For example, you could give Vampiric burst the +20% heavy melee damage and +40% heavy melee distance that Melee Charge has, and that would basically just be like having Melee Charge up at all times with the vampiric burst active for when you aren't punching. Mystic Strike could upgrade into Mystic Reverb, just by adding a signifiantly larger melee damage buff to Mystic reverb (losing the spirit resist debuff, but gaining the huge damage and slow that Reverb has on top of the other stats) and have reverb also work for punching as well as abilities.

 

[dudashirilious]

I agree that the melee options need late game upgrades. But I strongly disagree that these items should be integrated with other items - like Vampiric Burst - that are already good.

I would instead go for an entirely new items that are late game upgrades for these melee weapons and that provide entirely new features for melee builds.

For a 6k Melee Charge upgrade, I would provide a melee charge upgrade that either adds a stun to your charged melee attack (on a substantial cooldown), or provide a shield that blocks the first parry against you.

For Mystic Strike, I would provide a 3k upgrade item that has the user make a Spirit-based melee attack (on a cooldown) out to ~10m in front of the attacker. If you added a 6k item, I would do the same thing with the only cooldown being how fast you melee attack.

I would also add an entirely new line of Melee items to the game entirely focused on melee attack speed/ animation speed so that we could go full melee builds.


While I am sure these melee items wouldn't be "meta" in a competitive scene, they would be thematic and fun. And honestly we need more items that are thematic and fun instead of just being high stat increases for super meta builds.

 

[Dicerson]

True- I didn't know people ever actually bought vampiric burst. I honestly have a hard time having the presence of mind to even use active items, and thought that leech was sort of just better overall. But I am but a lowly scrub, xd.

In any case I worry about making new upgrades that further enhance melee itself- as people like abrams already do ridiculous amounts of punch damage and going any further on that might be a bit much. I mostly just want for the melee upgrades to be as-is but have other more generic statbuffs integrated onto them (as well as the generic buff just for having items of that tier) so that you aren't shooting yourself in the foot stats-wise for taking them.

 

[Rosgath]

Vampiric Burst is generally much stronger than the always on option of Leech. Most people I see build it if they have the money for a life steal option and have the active slot open.

As for other melee options, I have to 100% agree that Spirit Strike feels like a very bad investment long term considering that it doesn't even have the really useful that Melee charge has of reloading.

I would also go with a 3k Upgrade, but it would cause you to accelerate all of your Cooldowns by 1 second (Scaling up to 2 seconds with bonus spirit) every time you land a heavy Melee.

 

[Bepsi Max]

a good lategame upgrade for spirit strike would be one that's entirely about slot economy, giving you some useful stat gains but only being really attractive if you're behind and have no flex slots, or if you're late game on a build that's chiefly concerned with melee damage. It doesn't really need any super interesting effect IMO