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 ). Going into melee mode (default holding ) will unlock additional melee combat features such as manual 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 mod and all other elemental damage the player may have equipped on their weapon.

Aerial Attack


Press the melee attack button while in mid-air to perform an aerial attack, or rapidly press to perform an aerial attack combo, regardless if a jump has already been made or not. The Warframe will automatically maintain Aim Glide for the rest of the air combo if Aim Glide was initiated at the time of starting the combo. This is useful for fighting airborne targets such as Ospreys.

Slam Attack


Also known as a Leap Attack. While in mid-air, performing a melee attack while aiming downwards will force the Warframe to slam down at the point of the reticle, dealing radial damage and applying a Status Effect to surrounding enemies, such as stagger, knockdown, lift or elemental procs. Players can also utilize slam attacks to change direction or add momentum while in mid-air, effectively zip-lining themselves to the point of the reticle.

There are two damages instances 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 except for , but will often have a secondary effect (knockdown, stagger, etc.).

Wall Attack


While wall-latching a player may initiate a melee attack, causing the frame to drop off the wall facing 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 unlatch off the wall, while heavy weapons will swing the weapon around them, and sparring weapons will deal a forward punch.

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 either 39 seconds with, , , and (57 seconds with 4x s) or to 75 seconds if the used Aura Mods in addition are 1x (used on yourself) and 3x  (used from squadmates). and the family can increase this number to 88 seconds when used with  and. Further increases are only possible with Riven Mods.

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 consume the player's current combo counter anytime they are performed. Unmodded, the efficiency at which the combo counter is consumed is 100%, meaning the current combo counter will be expended completely. Mods such as offset this efficiency, leaving a portion of the combo counter after a heavy attack. For example, Focus Energy will decrease the efficiency of consumption by 40%, meaning only 60% of the combo counter will be spent after each heavy attack. This effect is capped at 90%, so even with both and  the efficiency will be 90% and 10% of the combo counter will be consumed on a heavy attack.

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 down to zero if no Melee Combo Efficiency mods are equipped.

Lifted Status
Depending on the type of melee weapon, both light attacks and especially heavy attacks can deal different effects to enemies, such as applying Knockdown, Ragdoll, Stagger, or Lifted status. Surviving enemies that are struck by heavy attacks from Heavy Blades for example, will have a guaranteed Lifted proc applied to them. However, not all melee weapons grant Lifted status on heavy attack hits.

Lifted status suspends enemies in mid-air in a ragdolled state for a short period of time, allowing players to briefly "juggle" them in a melee combo. Besides heavy attacks, Lifted status can also be applied to enemies by performing Heavy Slam Attacks with nearly any melee weapon, lifting all enemies within that weapon's ground slam radius. The higher the combo multiplier at the time of a heavy attack or heavy slam attack, the longer enemies can stay suspended.

Follow Through
Each melee weapon has a Follow Through statistic associated with it that tells what proportion of damage is dealt to successive targets in a single strike. In general, if a single strike hits multiple targets, the amount of damage each target will receive will be:



Where n is the order of when an enemy is hit, and FT is the amount of follow-through for the weapon.

For example, has a follow through stat of 0.6 (FT = 0.6). If a single strike of Skana hits three targets, the first target to be hit (n = 1) will be dealt $0.6^{(1 - 1)}$ of the total damage, the second to he hit (n = 2) will be dealt $0.6^{(2 - 1)}$ of the total damage, and the third (n = 3) will be dealt $0.6^{(3 - 1)}$ of the total damage.

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 heavy attacks, the moment the swing does damage, immediately pressing the melee key will execute another heavy attack, this can be repeated. Connecting a second heavy attack immediately after the first will retain the current combo counter, only draining it after the second heavy strike has been swung.

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.

Patch History
Nahkampf 2.0 Cuerpo a cuerpo Mêlée_2.0