TLDR
I literally cannot write a suggestion post about Zombie Massacre without making it a giant essay. Sorry lol. Here’s a brief summary:
- Melee weapons used to deal 3X more damage to bosses, but this was removed recently; bosses are now extra resistant to melee attacks
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- The melee damage boost was fun and added some complexity to boss fights as most classes (getting close enough to melee the boss is pretty difficult to do without dying), so it’s a shame that it’s no longer a thing.
- This was likely removed because the Survivor can become invincible with Ramming Shield and melee bosses easily, which is understandable, but still sad
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- IMO, it would’ve been much better if Ramming Shield was changed so that it can’t be used to melee bosses as easily, rather than just removing the melee damage boost for everyone.
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- I propose a couple possible changes to Ramming Shield (a small tweak and a rework) below.
- Note to developers: I will buy you a hoagie if you add the reworked Ramming Shield to the game
Proposed Changes
Melee Damage Boost
- If the damage boost is brought back, it honestly probably doesn’t need to be the same 3x boost as before. 3x would be great, but 2x or 2.5x would probably work too; as long as bosses take noticeably increased damage from melee attacks, it’s good, I think.
Ramming Shield (Minor Change; Lame)
I wrote up an elaborate rework suggestion below and only realized later that a simple tweak would probably work just as well for the goal of making bosses harder to hit with melee weapons. I still really like the rework idea though, and I’d be much happier if that happened instead.
- Allow bosses to break the Ramming Shield with their attacks, effectively ending the ability early
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- This might not 100% fix the issue with getting in a boss’s face and meleeing for free since you could probably dodge the bosses’ attacks fairly easily, but maybe bosses could be changed to be more aggressive with their melee attacks and that would make the shield harder to keep, if necessary.
Ramming Shield (Rework; Cool)
- The Ramming Shield is split into two parts: the polyhedron hologram and a new front-facing shield hologram
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- The shield hologram blocks all damage and deals the same damage as current Ramming Shield, but only from the front
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- The polyhedron hologram only provides slight damage reduction (or none at all); zombies that overlap with the polyhedron repeatedly take small amounts of damage
- Bosses should be able to break the front-facing shield with their attacks, leaving only the polyhedron active
Explanation
I think this would be like, almost as strong as the current shield outside of boss fights; if used effectively, you could still get nearly 100% protection from all damage, but you’d need to think about aiming the shield to block ghost projectiles and pumpkins.
While meleeing a boss, you’d have to worry about the zombies behind you and may have to redirect your shield to block them. Since the boss could break the shield, keeping it up would require skillful dodging.
Obligatory poorly-edited concept image
I hope this post doesn’t come across as me being like "I hate fun >:(" because I do really enjoy playing as the Survivor. Like, Ramming Shield is OP in my opinion but I still enjoy playing Survivor despite / because of that.
Obviously the minor change wouldn’t even affect anything besides boss fights, but even the alternative rework shouldn’t hugely affect the Survivor’s power level (and if anything, the extra risk would make the class more fun to play, IMO).
The hope is that these changes would just make meleeing bosses as Survivor equally as difficult as it is for other classes, such that the melee damage boost could be brought back without it feeling cheesy.