Melee metal and progression

TLDR: The progression of metals for melee builds is very disappointing since it lags behind both ranged and magick progression, both for mined and looted metals. The progression of metals should make each higher tier better than the last, but that is not the case with melee metals (Cobalt/Silver for magick, too; they're the same tier but Cobalt should be in the tier below to make progression smoother and Cobalt...useful...). Automaton and Bound metals are weaker than mined metals for other the other two builds by a full tier.

The damage of melee tools does not keep pace with the health pools of creatures, except for the knife vs weak points + backstab, which is unreliable in Ascended realms.

Suggestions at the end...

Boring long-form stuff:

Metal attribute value progression follows a generally consistent path with ranged and magick attributes. Since the only mined T1 metal is Tin, that is the baseline of 4% (critical). The progression of materials generally follows that T2/3/4/5 bonuses have 6/8/10/12% respectively.

Ranged materials provide the basis for this pattern, with copper (T2) being 6% ranged damage, Magnesium (T3) 8%, and Einaidia (T5) 12%. For metals that have only one attribute that is a reasonable progression.

This (partial) list is focused on mined resources, but also includes a few cases of Automaton and Bound metals. This is to demonstrate what players have to work with at each tier, but not represented is when things get unlocked within a given tier...

T1:

Tin (Sn) - 4% Critical

Automaton Knight (?) - 2% melee, 10 durability

T2:

Zinc - 4% melee

Copper - 6% ranged

Shimmering - 6% critical, 4% magick

Immured - 4% melee, 40 durability, 10% env resist

Lacunus - 4% melee, 5% mal resist

Adv Lacunus - 6% melee, 5% mal resist

Pellucidic Etched from trade - 2% melee, 5% injury resist

Tier 3:

Brass (Cu/Zn) - 4% melee, 6% ranged, 20 durability

Bronze (Cu/Sn) - 6% melee/critical, 30 durability

• The combination of 4% critical and 6% ranged to be 6% melee/critical makes no sense. Bronze should be ranged/critical, a precursor to Pursuit.

• A different alloy or metal should be used to replace Bronze for melee/critical

Ayrium - 8% melee

Iron - 4% melee, 30 durability

Lacunus - 6% melee, 7.5% mal resist

Adv Lacunus - 8% melee, 7.5% mal resist

Automaton Knight - 6% melee, 30 durability

Lesser Hollow - 6% critical, 30% stealth

Hollow - 8% critical, 40% stealth

Steel - 6% melee, 7.5% injury resist, 30 durability

T4:

Titanium - 8% melee, 2 STA regen, 40 durability

Bound Sentinel - 6% melee, 7.5% injury/mal resist

Lacunus - 8% melee, 10% mal resist

Adv Lacunus - 10% melee, 10% mal resist

T5:

Noble Bismaltus - 12% melee, 20 STA, 7.5% fire resist, 50 durability

Pellucidic Etched - 12% melee, 15% injury resist

Comparing metal values from the full list (not displayed here), bound and automaton metals fall far short regarding their usefulness, making harvesting them more incidental than intentional. In their current balance most metals are flavor rather than valuable. Even relative to when they are made available, mined vs looted resources only loosely follow a reasonable progression.

Bronze as a T3 is unlocked with Sylvan's Cradle, but is the primary metal used until The Watch because no other metal combines melee and critical damage, and the metals made available after Bronze are either slight damage upgrades or even downgrades.

Iron is attained after Bronze but has lower melee damage and some other attributes that don't make up the difference of lost melee or critical damage. Steel is unlocked with Iron and is on par with Bronze only regarding its melee damage, but still doesn't make up the loss of critical damage with its other attributes.

Bound Sentinel as a T4 metal is almost identical to Steel, a T3 metal, making it likewise less valuable than Bronze. A single T3 material should not be more valuable than all other metals up until T5; even Advanced Lacunus with its 10% melee damage and 10% malificium resist does not compete well with Bronze because of its lack of critical damage, though it is obviously better for mauls because they don't have the critical damage attribute at all.

Conclusion:

In general, materials should follow some sort of progression that allows for diverse builds rather than forcing players into a single most viable path. Using a maul should not be a niche build, because that undermines the existence of the maul, just as giving knives (and longbows) such high critical damage vs weakpoints makes them the most reasonable tools for combat so that it doesn't drag on. The difference between weapons should be mostly what resistances they overcome rather than which is the most powerful overall, and to support that the materials should be designed to allow for mauls to compete with knife weakpoint criticals.

A reasonable progression could include combinations of main (melee, range, magick) + critical damage where:

• main damage is lower while critical is higher so that critical-based builds don't become too powerful

• main damage is higher while critical is lower so that builds with lower critical but higher damage can compete with full critical gear

• main damage is high without any critical modifier so that builds for straight damage can compete with those that are heavy critical.

These combinations will require some balancing of soft-and-hard caps, base main/critical damage values for gear, and the health pools of creatures/enemies to ensure that no build becomes overpowered relative to the others, and that the potential of gear does not outpace their health pools (and damage vs player) on Nightmare difficulties.

This balancing should be done with all realms in mind, including/especially Nightmare Ascended. Nightmare Ascended realms are ludicrously unbalanced, with health pools that are too high for melee builds to keep up; even with the weakpoint criticals of knives, where I've had >250k hits, they are unreasonable, both because only the knife is capable of that kind of damage and because players will not be able to consistently get those hits on all creature types, including/especially those that are resistant to knife/physical damage, or whose weakpoints are especially hard to hit, especially versus creatures whose attack patterns and speeds keep players on the defensive for most of the fight (scorpion weakpoints are very hard to hit with a knife compared to other creatures, and their attack patterns/speed make largely prevent attempts. Bound snipers likewise have weakpoints that are difficult to hit even while they are stationary; theirs seem to be above their heads arther than their heads, which I've found with both ranged and melee attacks to be the case).

Where magick is concerned, the lack of critical damage from enchantments needs to be addressed when balancing materials, as they only produce "down-damage" (increased damage when enemies are stunned/prone, which is not based on the critical damage of the tool used to cast). This lack negates the concept of magick + critical builds for the time being (materials like Titan's Fingernail and Star Ruby are not useful except for their critical attribute OR their magick attribute), but if the intent is to give them that critical multiplier then the same balancing pattern outlined above should be followed.