Melee

Melee is a form of combat system that utilizes edged or blunt weapons and close quarter attacks. Every attack causes the player to take a single step forward. However, if the player is crouched, non-combo melee attacks will not cause a step forward. Melee weapons can be equipped in the tertiary slot of the arsenal in Warframe.

Current melee weapons consist of a number of classes, in which each class of weapons has a unique set of attack animations, including normal, jump, slide, stealth attacks, finishers, combos, and blocking.

Basic Maneuvers
Melee can be switched to at any time by pressing the melee attack key (default ), and can instantly switch back to an equipped primary or secondary weapon with the fire button (default ) or zoom (default ). Equipping the melee weapon will unlock additional melee combat features such as Channeling and Blocking.

Each melee weapon has a number of attributes, such as attack speed and damage. Each attribute can be altered by a variety of Melee Mods.

Normal Attack


The simplest form of melee attack. The action is achieved by simply pressing the melee attack key repeatedly, in which the animation pattern continues to loop until the player ceases the attack.

Common Attributes:
 * Damage: Damage done by each hit. Enhanced by damage mods such as.
 * Attack Speed: Speed of the attack animation. Enhanced by speed mods such as.
 * Max Targets: The maximum amount of targets that can be struck in a single cleaving motion (excludes jump attacks and slide attacks)
 * Cleave Radius: A rough estimation of the size of the swing. May not be accurate due to individualized cleaving animations.

Slide Attack


Air variation:

Also known as a Spin Attack, Slide Attacks propels a Warframe forward while performing a spinning slash around them, dealing greater damage and hitting multiple enemies. For sparring weapons like the  and , slide attacks perform a double kick that targets only a single enemy, but ragdolls them away instead of only dealing damage. Slide Attacks can be performed on the ground to hit low-lying enemies, or in the air to hit tall enemies, potentially landing headshots.

Slide attack damage can be increased by the Pressure Point mod and all other elemental damage the player may have equipped on their weapon.

Aerial Attack


Also known as a Jump Attack, press melee in mid-air to perform a targeted aerial slash, regardless if a jump has already been made or not. The Warframe will slash and be propelled towards the direction that the player is aiming at, making melee capable of targeting airborne enemies like Ospreys.

Slam Attack


Also known as a Leap Attack, aiming down towards the ground when performing a jump attack will perform a slam attack that forces the Warframe towards the reticle and creates a small radial damage and special effect upon impact with the ground, such as knock down or elemental damage. One can perform this move to anchor themselves to the ground, losing most if not all momentum.

There are two damages dealt by slam attacks:
 * 1) Direct contact to an enemy will deal Leap Attack damage, normally with the damage type of the weapons base attack.
 * 2) Radial damage deals a secondary damage type which diminishes with distance from the point of impact, this damage is not affected by mods, but will often have a secondary effect (knockdown, stagger, etc.).

Wall Attack


While wall running or climbing, a player may initiate a melee attack, causing the frame to launch off the wall at the angle of the direction aimed, with a special melee attack animation. The attack will change depending on what melee weapon is used; most weapons will slash the air in front of them as they launch, while heavy weapons will swing the weapon around them, and sparring weapons will launch with a forward punch. This maneuver is also useful as it may be used to leap parallel to the wall surface during a wall run; in contrast, releasing the jump key will always jump away from the wall.

Stances


Upon equipping a Stance Mod, up to three additional advanced Melee Combos will be unlocked, which are special chained attacks that enhance the melee abilities of the weapon. These combos can only be performed while wielding a melee weapon. The combination will vary depending on the melee weapon equipped and the Stance mod equipped.

Blocking


Blocking is a defensive motion that negates incoming damage and negates knockbacks in a angle in front of the Warframe. Each weapon blocks 100% of incoming damage, though only within varying angle ranges depending on the weapon type. For example, has a blocking angle of 60°, meaning any damage coming from 30° to the left or right of the reticle will be negated. Any time an attack is successfully blocked, 1 point will be added to the combo counter.
 * Can block Fire Blast and Rippling Shockwave. Doing so will push the Warframe back, but prevent the knockdown effect.
 * Will completely block Seismic Shockwave from Grineer heavy units and Eximus variants.
 * Can block continuous weapons like lasers and Scorch flamethrowers.
 * Will also block Scorpion grappling hooks to prevent getting pulled.
 * Certain enemies such as Fusion Moa require the player to either back up slightly or aim slightly upward in order to parry their attack up close.
 * Will not block Status Effects from affecting the player.

Combo Counter
Each successful consecutive melee hit against enemies within a short period of time will start a combo counter that appears above the weapon UI, which tracks how many hits have been performed. Once a certain number of consecutive hits have been made, a damage multiplier will be displayed. This multiplier does not increase normal melee attack damage, it only applies to Heavy Attacks.

The combo counter resets if no enemies are hit after 5 seconds, which is represented by a grey horizontal bar below the combo counter. The combo counter duration can be increased up to 39 seconds with, , , and (57 seconds with 4x s).

Depending on the particular stance/weapon, some hits in a combo may add more than 1 point to the combo counter. That is, while a single strike with a blade may add only 1 point per hit, a single strike with another weapon, or a different combo with the same weapon, may add 2, 3, 4, etc. points per hit to the combo counter instead. What determines how many points are added has yet to be found.

Combo Multiplier
The Bonus Damage Multiplier starts at 2.0x after 20 consecutive hits. The multiplier is increased by +1.0x every consecutive 20 hits until 220 consecutive hits have been made, at which point the bonus damage multiplier will cap at 12.0x.

The table below displays the values up to a damage multiplier of 12.0x.


 * Despite its name, the Combo Counter should not be confused with the Combos performed using Stance Mods. The Combo Counter will count all melee attacks performed while equipping Melee weapons, including stealth attacks.
 * Melee hits against objects, like Storage Containers, do not count towards the Combo Counter.
 * A negative combo counter duration prevents the combo counter from increasing beyond 0.

Heavy Attacks
Tapping the while melee is equipped will perform a Heavy Attack. Weapons have varying Wind-up times between activating a heavy attack and the actual attack being performed. For example, has a wind-up time of 0.6s, meaning the actual heavy attack will be performed 0.6s after tapping the. During this brief period the player is free to move and maneuver with the exception of performing any other melee attack. Being knocked down will cancel the charge.

Heavy attacks will completely expend the player's current combo counter anytime they are performed. While winding-up, the 5s decay of the combo counter is paused. Performing a heavy attack is possible when the combo counter is zero, and connecting with a heavy attack does not add to the combo counter. Heavy attack damage is multiplied by the current combo multiplier. For example, when at a 3.0x combo multiplier, a heavy attack that deals 600 modded damage normally will then deal $600 3.0$ damage on hit, in exchange for the combo counter being reduced back down to zero.

Enemies that are struck by a heavy attack and survive will have a guaranteed Lifted proc applied to them, which suspends them in mid-air in a ragdolled state for a short period of time. Performing a heavy slam attack will apply this status to all enemies within the slam radius. The higher the combo multiplier at the time of the heavy attack, the longer an enemy can stay suspended.

Finishers


Finisher attacks have custom animations, and deal a very high percentage of the equipped melee weapon's total damage. Players performing finishers are immune to any kind of damage for the duration of the animation.

The three types of finishers are:
 * Ground Finisher, on knockdowned targets
 * Stealth Attack, on unalerted enemies
 * Front- / Back-Finisher, under specific effects

Tips

 * For players wanting to specialize in melee combat, remapping the equipped melee attack key to can make performing attacks and melee combos easier and more instinctive.
 * While doing charge attacks, the moment the swing does damage, immediately pressing the melee key will execute another charge attack, this can be repeated.

Bugs

 * Successfully blocking an attack while rolling can make a player unable to attack with their melee weapon. This is usually accompanied by a slight change in camera perspective where the camera is positioned slightly down while facing upwards. This bug can be resolved by performing a roll or dodge again.
 * Tapping the melee key slightly before landing causes the player to slide across the ground with minimal friction for a brief period.
 * Activating melee mode by tapping melee, channeling, and then manually swapping weapons with the Switch Weapon key will cause channeling to last indefinitely whenever you melee until you run out of energy or swap to operator.

Patch History
Nahkampf 2.0 Cuerpo a cuerpo Mêlée_2.0