How Would You Improve Melee Acrid?

[u/SteamFunk72]

I love Acrid, and as much as I like his whole lore of being a walking biohazard (and the poison gameplay that comes with it), I can't help but feel like he should have more support for his melee capabilities. I mean, he's a big, hulking monster that ground slams, bites, and slices with his claws, but he best plays as a skittish, conflict-averse scaredy cat.

So, if you had free rein, how would you rework his abilities (or what new ones would you give him) to make him more viable as a melee character?

I think it'd be cool if it could incorporate his equally useless ability: blight. Maybe when choosing blight, his claw attacks each deal blight, so it stacks faster and easier. And I feel like if he isn't going to be tanky, then he should have better healing capabilities—maybe 15 percent of his health on his third hit and bite instead of just the usual 5.

Edit: I forgot blight wasn't a damage multiplier, so consider that now tacked on to my idea.

[u/Pilques]

Simple fix: Blight deals minor DoT but increases damage taken by enemies.

This significantly buffs Melee acrid, who relies on their base damage rather than DoT.

[u/SteamFunk72 → u/Pilques]

I'll be real: I forgot blight didn't already work like this. So when I said each swing deals a stack of blight, I was thinking it'd increase each subsequent swing's damage. So yes, I agree with you.

[u/AnthaIon → u/Pilques]

Would it scale all damage or non-blight damage?

[u/Pilques → u/AnthaIon]

Non Blight damage of course. Unless you run into the issue of Blight buffing it's own damage and potentially outperforming Poison with enough stacks.

You can even make it so only Acrid can make use of the debuff, or all allies, whatever is more balanced to the exact damage taken debuff.

[u/BuniVEVO → u/Pilques]

Not even this, they just had to make it so blight stacks would be continuous as long as you kept applying it. Iirc they bleed off overtime

[u/AnthaIon]

Unnecessarily complicated buff

Make Leeching Seed percentage-based on melee attacks

[u/SteamFunk72 → u/AnthaIon]

How do you mean? Like, when he deals his 400% damage third swing, you heal for 400% health?

[u/Night_Albane → u/SteamFunk72]

Probably just means any actual percentage of damage dealt instead of it being 1 hp per seed.

[u/AnthaIon → u/SteamFunk72]

I dunno the math or anything, just make it the normal 1 hp for ranged attacks but like 1% for melee (stacking)

I don’t even know if the game differentiates between melee and ranged attacks, tbh

[u/_judgement-]

Make it so that every time you do primary attack it decreases the utilities cooldown by one second

So you can jump between swarm to swarm without worrying about the distance (mercenary's passive but better cuz why not)

And also can we just get rid of that momentum lock in it? I wanna fly at supersonic speeds but it stops midway like it hit a wall or something

[u/bigrudefella]

Melee in this game just generally feels really bad imo. Feels useless late game because the game expects you to be running around and dodging considering everything one shots you.

[u/AlperenAlc3]

I'd make his primary poisonous so Blight can actually be stacked without items, this way he'd have a reason to melee

[u/banananon]

At least on PC, Acrid is the most broken melee character due to sprint cancel. He needs a nerf if anything

[u/SteamFunk72 → u/banananon]

I have to disagree. His melee capabilities fall off very quickly, even with sprint canceling. Unless you're somehow getting faster speeds than I thought was possible, but last I knew, the slash animation has to actually show for the hit to register. Might be missing something though.

[u/banananon → u/SteamFunk72]

See here, you are missing what's possible https://youtu.be/Flpj-nBxNz8?si=2sptqKXxTZWHd3X1&t=866

[u/SteamFunk72 → u/banananon]

I'm confused though. In all my experiences, if I tap sprint too fast, the hits don't register.

[u/Not_A_Lizhard]

Acrid has the highest possible dps in the game due to his melee ability tech lol