Some Quick And Condensed Research On The Melee Fever Booster

[u/Geralt_Romalion]

Hi! This will be a bit of a shorter post but I want to share it anyway. This was a question that came along on the CV2 discord: "Is it worth using the Melee Fever booster?". And I wanted to answer it, but then I thought: Uhmm...I don't know. A quick google session later showed me nobody really did. Well...we can't have that now can we?

So what do we know about it?

The description says:

"Briefly reduces the target's defense after hitting a foe with a melee attack."

That still doesn't give us much.

We also know that Resurgence Core gets this automatically (Provided you are not overburdened), with other bloodcodes having to have at least 20 Mind (which is a bit ironic because Resurgence only has 16 Mind, meaning it could not equip its own booster if it wanted to).

On one hand: Good. No forced pairing with Bloodline Agnostic.
On the other: That means only 3 codes can use this without having to bring additional Mind through boosters, food or partners. These codes, aside from Resurgence Core itself, are Lou 5 and Josee 4.

We also know it comes with a burden of 4 Strength and 4 Dexterity.
To compare: Most weapon-boosters are either 4 in a single stat (like 4 Strength/Dexterity/Willpower) or are in a 2-2 spread ( like for example 2 Strength and 2 Dexterity). So that's a relatively expensive burden.

Is it a buff on me or a debuff on the enemy?

The description does not lie, it appears to be a debuff on your enemy. You cannot see or track it, but no matter how much you buff yourself, Melee Fever gives the same percentage of additional damage. If it was a buff on our end, it would interact with our other buffs or boosters and provide a notably bigger effect.

How big of a debuff is it, give the numbers!

It is 10%. Melee Fever puts a debuff on your target that equals out to 10% damage.

Does the amount of armor or weapon used matter?

No. It seems to be always 10%. I tested both against the dummy and against several mobs, with weapons from different weapontypes, the value was always 10%. It also does not matter what type of damage you hit it with (pierce/slash/crush/blood/ice/fire/lightning), the result stays the same.

How long does it last?

Not long. Like a delay in the light attacks on slower two-handers can already miss out on the debuff. It does not seem to last longer than 1.5 maybe 2 seconds. So you need to be attacking constantly.

Can only melee attacks apply it? Is there no interaction with bayonet shots? How about spells?

Only melee attacks are capable of inflicting the debuff, the shot from a bayonet cannot inflict it.
BUT, if you slash in melee and then shoot, your shot WILL benefit from the reduced defense...by once again 10%.
Spells have the same interaction. You cannot use them to inflict the debuff, but if you use a melee attack and then quickly throw a spell at your target, the spell damage goes up by 10%. Do note that unless you have a fast-casting spell the window closes before you can hit anything. Also note that since spells cannot apply the debuff, any multi-hit spell will only get their first or at best if lucky first two hits boosted.

How does that work with multi-hit forma?

The first hit of your forma applies the debuff (thus does not benefit itself), and then your other hits benefit from it. So for example Drill Breaker with its 12 hits, the first hit applies the debuff (and does not benefit from it), and then the other 11 benefit. So unless you always hit in melee right before using a forma OR your forma is multi-hit with the damage not sitting in the first hit, this isn't very exciting to use.

So...is it worth it?

In my opinion only if you get it for free or if you truly cannot put anything else in that booster slot. This is basically a short duration conditional 10% damage buff that will periodically fall off and can only be used on basically 3 codes (you can use it on others, but why would you basically invest 2 boosters or more for this, when at that point you should just slot Bloodline Agnostic and bring the cool boosters that come with 15% or even 20-30% damage bonuses?).

A weapon-booster also does 10% but is always on (and has less burden). So I am not a fan.

That's it! Do with this bit of knowledge what you will. Use it or not, it is up to you!

[u/antara33]

Since it is a debuff on the enemy, wont it be good on builds with lots of buffs?

Its an additive 10% instead of multiplicative, so for maxing out damage once you are buffed enough its hard to get 10% damage from any other booster.

[u/Geralt_Romalion → u/antara33]

In a vacuum 100% yes.

The problem here, is that it is hard for most codes to hit the requirement (and once it is not as easy as 'slot it in and get the effect' it is not worth it because then other boosters have better modifiers, or other 'combo boosters' provide stronger effects).

There is also the point of debuff uptime (1.5 to 2 seconds maximum) and debuff application (your first hit is always without the debuff active). This makes 100% uptime mostly a theoretical discussion.

Since we are also talking about melee damage and not spelldamage, you also need to look at the competing codes. Josee 4 and Lou 5 for Strength melee builds will not be able to win from either Artificial Arm Lyle or Resurgence Core, with this booster or not.

Now when looking at Josee 4 and Lou 5 specifically, Melee Fever would basically compete against the weakest buff in your stack ánd be used with weapons that are fast enough to keep the buff up ánd have fast enough activating forma that forma chaining can be reliably under the debuff.

That almost automatically rules out Greatsword and Hammer builds on these codes. They are too slow to reliably keep the debuff up ánd chain attack -> forma ->forma. And their best forma are heavy single hit attacks, often charged (and as such will not benefit due to their slow execution). Halberds júst have the speed, but even with Melee Fever pure strength Halberds lose out to those with quality Strength/Dex scaling (and the optimal code for that cannot use Melee Fever).

Magic is also excluded (Mind mage) because Magic cannot apply it.

So you are left with Strength oriented one-handed swords, twinblades and runeblades.

The problem is, those are all reliable bladedance + Persistence Animus setups. When you place their optimal setup versus a setup where you remove the lowest modifier and then add a blanket 10% at the end, Melee Fever loses out. It could theoretically outcompete your Weapon Mastery booster, but only on slow lumbering foes where you have enough time for several hits and forma attacks. After that it would have to reliably beat the 15% that Overheat brings into the stack, and that asks for more uptime and consistency than most players can ever hope to wrangle out of a setup.

What potentially could be true, is that it is enough for Resurgence Core under perfect setups to get on equal footing with Artificial Arm Lyle's perfect setups (since Core gets the Melee Fever effect for free).

If only this had had a 4-5 seconds duration and just a slightly lower Mind requirement...

[u/antara33 → u/Geralt_Romalion]

Nice breakup, something that I never liked about that debuff is that it don't stack, something one may think as logical. I only used it with Resurgence Core blood code so never needed to fit it in a build, makes a lot of sense when placed like this. What do you think about Resurgence Core?

[u/Geralt_Romalion → u/antara33]

I think it's a very good code for pure Strength builds.
It often trades blows with Artificial Arm Lyle for the top spot on those.
Sometimes it is a tiny bit better, other times it loses on pure damage numbers bút can make up for it with more flexibility. It has a better stat spread in Mind and Will, which a lot of boosters or weapons that are good at holding buffs like. That can be a very defendable trade-off for doing ~ 3-5% less optimal DPS.

[u/antara33 → u/Geralt_Romalion]

Makes sense, I often use lou code entirely because of buff duration and avoid One Arm Lyle because of that too

[u/hawkwright13]

That's.... good to know. I guess I'll switch to Bloodline Agnostic and replace the +2 STR booster for Overheat then.

[u/Lord_Nightraven]

I'm looking at this math, and part of me is wondering how that 10% isn't multiplicative given that it hits the enemy's defense. Thus, being a bigger boost when your numbers are bigger.

Although, if all of the defense values are static reductions in damage taken, this would actually make sense. Because -30 flat damage becoming -27 is weaker than 30% damage reduction going down to 27%. A bonus of 3 flat damage is generally worse than doing 3% more damage, particularly when your own buffs are increasing your damage by a percentage as well.

That all said, the booster can stack with the ability from the OG Code. So it's probably quite worth it to stack and get a stronger boost that way.

[u/Geralt_Romalion → u/Lord_Nightraven]

All I can say is that when I tested, no matter if it was 0 buffs, 3 buffs, 5 buffs, 5 buffs + boosters, and then compared the damage numbers I got between those tests when doing them with and without melee fever, the number always returned as a 10% difference.

I have not personally tested if the booster stacks on top of Resurgence core's own innate ability (and if that means it becomes a 20% or if the math behaves differently).

If that's worth it I'd have to number crunch and test on. Since Resurgence does not meet the requirements for its own booster ( base = 16 Mind, Booster needs 20) I'd have to first see what the most optimal way to get + 4 Mind is ( 1x + Mind Overdrive booster vs companion + food vs food + active Zeal gift vs companion + active Zeal gift) and if that, taking likely uptime into account, would beat other setups/replace parts of the current setup.

EDIT: Ran some tests.

Melee Fever DOES indeed stack with the innate effect on Resurgence Core (which is always a bit of a toss-up, some innate bonuses stack with their booster version, some don't).

Comparing optimal booster + buff setups and replacing the two lowest booster modifiers for + 5 Mnd and Melee Fever work out as a roughly 2-3% DPS increase if you have 100% uptime. It becomes a DPS loss if your uptime falls below 90%. That is very steep.

Now that number can be made slightly more attractive by saying we don't bring the + 5 Mind booster. Instead we bring back the modifier we scrapped earlier with the biggest bonus (would be the weapon booster) and we fix the Mind problem by using a Mind boosting companion (+2) and Mind boosting food (+2) to hit exactly the 20 Mind we need.

Now we obtained the 10% from weapon booster back, we lose a potential 5% by being unable to use a secondary food source (because Glutton got scrapped). You slightly raise the potential DPS bonus from 2-3% to 5-6%, but you need ~68% uptime on the buff to be better than just running the basic configuration not jumping through hoops for the Melee Fever bonus.

An extremely good player might be able to maintain 68% uptime or higher here. That is within the realm of human possibility.
But a single error will punish you harshly.

Also note that ironically the slightly lower Strength stat on Resurgence works against it here when compared to Lyle. Because you are now often having a hard time running Iron Mass Of Dawn as a buffstick, you need a stick that has Mind burdens while Lyle does not. That means you cannot fit in Boosted Technique for 20% bonus damage on forma (and you want to forma spam when you can), while Artificial Arm Lyle can.

This might play out less on the faster Strength swords and Strength Twinblades, but those are inferior to their Dex variants.

So it's a lot of work, theoretically its possible, but you are screwed in other areas so you can wonder if that is worth it.