Melfi and Melfi-chan

As both are near identical, let's keep them both in the same thread.

Melfi, putting weapons aside, has no offensive capabilities in bow mode, which is a good thing, because it's probably one of the few balanced moebot ever.

Her BD is Mode Change, allowing her to use two empty AMs for two weapons or using her bow.
Her AM sub-weapon is Arrow Rain. Although this sounds great at first, it has huge INT/cooldown, meaning not spammable. It also boasts a force of 13, meaning it's not that strong. However, it can be useful for annoying enemies as it shoots over walls and lifts enemies up, forcing them to be in the air as if they jumped.
Her bow weapon sports a primary weapon, Repair Arrow, and a sub-weapon, Blow Arrow. Repair Arrow starts with 10 shots and heals 100 HP. It works like chibi kiss but has long cooldown. It, however, has a "splash" property that will heal groups when they are on top of each other.
Blow Arrow is interesting. It's almost like Hurricane Blow and will push people (it also splashes) it hits in a direction. Its aim is almost like melee, where it will automatically turn and shoot in that direction. HOWEVER, the shots are rather slow and Melfi's shooting is even slower, so people WALKING in a certain direction can easily dodge it. It's somewhat spammable though, just not that great. It also only shoots on your plane, meaning it does not curve or angle up to aim at all. The only time it angles is when you are flying and it shoots down.
It's hard to near impossible to combo Blow Arrow into Arrow Rain because of the way her palette is set-up. You will have to E into Blow Arrow, then let go to Rain Arrow, but the overall result is not well worth it.

Melfi's FLY is high, but she has no Float Dash.
She only has 6 +70 Capacity Cartridges and her starting capacity is not amazing either, so I'm led to believe she'll have some trouble with tuning and weapons. I'll have to see once calculator has her.
Her BS is changeable however.
She also sports the usual SUP-based cartridges (Wonder Bits) and (like all new moebots) Broad Radar.
In essence, she is a pretty good support bot (as per type), but she is your average bot in terms of offense (meaning not OP, and if you're not OP, you're on the weakside).

Of course, I could totally be wrong and someone could totally disprove me and completely demolish with her and get #1 with only her, but eh.

If I had to play a combat medic, it'd be her. She sounds perfect, and she's so friggin cute to boot <3

Winberrl's binds take too long to actually get set up, and Vesca's range isn't even that long. Draw guns have little ammo, and unless your target was a fat ART or something, you're better off not drawing him to you. Lest you eat melee to the face.

And let's face it. Most SUP bots in this game aren't meant to be #1 (unless you were pro/in a room of noobs). But sometimes you gotta swallow not being part of the top 10 scoreboard to make a difference on your team. Playing in my AM hours made me realize that -_-

Well, different support bots play different roles I guess (pulsardio's jamming, greinaut's disco balls, squido girl's slow poop, etc.)

Melfie/Melfie Chan seems to be the best support for healing and mob controlling.

Not berating Melfi for being balanced, rather I love that fact. (Also Squidol Girl can achieve #1 as a SUP, but anyone can use her whip, so I won't go there).

Winberrl Binds are meant to trap rushing melee, a job which they do fine. Many Lagkuns fall to Binds. Their only downfall vs. melee have been Vanguards and other long-ranged melee. Draw Guns also do a nice job of catching AIRs rather. Their stun is also enough to reel in melee safely, then go into bind. Safely.

Obviously the best point of Melfi is being able to switch between pure support and back-up offense. The only bad thing about this is you're not able to switch between on the fly (you stop in your tracks and switch).

But this isn't a topic about ranting on Melfi, even if I came off sounding like so. Meant to make it a general discussion. Such as, what movement are you tuning for, full support or hybrid offense, tactics, etc. etc.

Offtopic: I know berrl be used for that. But just as much as there are good points to it, there's just as many bad. She puts herself at a lot of risk to lose HP if you want to play aggressively (and let's face it, if you didn't want to be at least a tiny eensy little bit, you wouldn't play her). And if you're killed you're no combat medic.

Ontopic: Mobility is a must for any combat medic. I can't tell how many times I've been thrashed with my supports cuz they moved just too slow. She might not have float dash, but boosting the initial highest mobility stat in my book is the most efficient way to do things.

My medics are never full support and are often offense based.

Idea is simple. Play as a normal support: rush for trees as soon as the match starts, and keep finding them until you got no more. If your bar is near full, hang back, shoot a few arrows, wait for that meter to charge. Once repair bit is all done, see how many people have died; if only one or two did so far chances are not everyone has gotten hurt. But once 3 or 4 die, it feels like a good sign to start looking for a good place to set up a heal camp.

Heal as normal. Watch radar. Get BR ASAP cuz people here won't necessarily warn you. Tornado arrow away the melee (the heal camp spot has to be chosen so that it's a cul-de-sac as much as possible so that the melee can be pushed out/pinned against the wall) should they come and look for a better spot maybe. Rinse and repeat.

I'm gonna say Melfie is superb as a medic. You got that heal arrow, blow arrow to shove away noobs who can't dodge, and you can use conventional Support bits(MORE HEALZ FOR U). I can't say much about playing her as I don't have her myself, but it doesn't seem like her bow is made for combat.
Remember when we all said Melfi was gonna be Lily Rain EVE 2.0? Nope, not happening. Only if you give her extra good conventional weapons.
I'd like to know if the Heal Arrow does the full 100 HP at once or is a HoT(Heal over Time) weapon. If the repair is instantaneous, it could be useful for shooting people a quick health boost if they're in trouble, or need more HP to take out an enemy and live. If not, it's just another boring-ass heal like Repair bits.

I'm getting a Melfi-chan, so I'm probably gonna work her parts for WLK, then TEC. Her pathetic STR doesn't give much room for tuning TEC, though, so I'll probably go and give her at least 10-15 TEC(starts with 7, so three High Tech Alphas, and maybe a Great Tech; less Alphas and more High/Great Tech if I want longer WB durations, but I don't really), and tune her WLK to 20?

EDIT: Big advantage of Melfi-chan: All her parts are locked, so you can constantly reset broken slots by junking, yes?

Yes, so long as the broken slots are on locked parts, you can junk the bot to reset.

Just make sure you do majority of your tunes before lvl 5 to save yourself that remover.

Played a bit more with Melfi in arenas.
One of the major concerns about her is that she doesn't seem to have much to defend for herself unless you have a REALLY good weapon for her. I have a Micro Bazooka on her at the moment, but it's ehh.

Arrow Rain is a bit better than I gave it credit for. It also has a slight auto-aim property when shooting, either that or areally bigradius so I don't miss a lot. It's not spammable still, sokind of eh.

It's an instant heal, saved my ass several times. Thank you to all the Melfi players!

Played as Melfi in the new mish....

...and it's as if they designed her specifically with ME in mind! Secondary healing option, aoe crowd control, decent mobility, an 'oh crap' weapon for melee(Blow Arrow) attackers....

Maaaaaan, this is one'a those times where I am SO TEMPTED to buy Rt just for a chance on that gara....



Not bad for a 4th or 5th attempt on hard, eh?

I bought Melfi-chan from the shop as a consolation prize after rolling the new Royal Garapon twice. I'm still wanting her regular form from the gara though.

Tundra wall + arrow rain troll = ?????????????

PS Harassment

Snailbot style

Melfie can give hoppers a real fucking headache.

MASSIVE AOE.

HOW DO I HOP THROUGH IT.

*hopper nicole trolls an entire line of shitarts for half of the match in Steep Rock*

*Melfie AoEs*

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Does Melfi-chan's Internal Upgrades also boost her Arrow Rain, Heal Arrow and Blow Arrow?

NovaZero wrote:

Does Melfi-chan's Internal Upgrades also boost her Arrow Rain, Heal Arrow and Blow Arrow?

Since her BD is a modo change, I'm tempted to believe it buffs at least one of her built-ins.

Also, dat arrow rain would massacre healing parties harder than a CS going Jihad.

Iseal wrote:

It's an instant heal, saved my ass several times. Thank you to all the Melfi players!

Excellent. This makes Melfi a hell of a lot more OP than I thought.
Ability to insta-heal players for 100 HP. YES.

Arrow Rain has a very large radius, from what I saw playing her in the mission. Against the giant Delvin mobs(say 20+), a single Arrow Rain took out pretty much the entire group, except for a few stragglers and DelviSnipers who weren't with the group.
The inability to spam Arrow Rain is bad, but it's telling me at least CS is putting some forethought into this garbage. If Arrow Rain had a <2500 INT or so, Melfi would surpass EVE as the "queen of OPness".

Have you tried it while under a PS yet? Hyper Shot reduces "reload" on some weapons. I'm pretty sure the delay between the rain was less than 2.5 seconds when I was playing against one on Glacier Night.

knyx wrote:

NovaZero wrote:

Does Melfi-chan's Internal Upgrades also boost her Arrow Rain, Heal Arrow and Blow Arrow?

Since her BD is a modo change, I'm tempted to believe it buffs at least one of her built-ins.

Also, dat arrow rain would massacre healing parties harder than a CS going Jihad.

Melfi-chan doesn't have Mode Change, Melfi does.

Melfi also doesn't have internal carts, so I'm left to believe that internals on Melfi-chan are circle-only.

The Arrow Rain under Hyper Shot does not make it significantly faster, but I guess you can feel it. However, it's not enough to make it spammable enough to lock people in (thank god), so Melfi is still very much a defensive unit and offense support rather than full offense.

Also, make sure to be reading Melfi to Melfi-chan. Melfi-chan doesn't have mode change, but I don't know what her Internal Upgrade does because I don't have her.
Like Suguri said though, Melfi lacks Internal Upgrade Cartridges, very much to my surprise because more ammo and less cooldown on Repair Arrow would have been amazing boost for full-support Melfi's.

As for Repair Arrow being OP, the aiming of it feels strange, perhaps because it is single shot with long cooldown as opposed to the usual chibi kiss spamming. It's definitely not something you can freely give out and should only aim for your ace players on your team.

Suguri wrote:

knyx wrote:

NovaZero wrote:

Does Melfi-chan's Internal Upgrades also boost her Arrow Rain, Heal Arrow and Blow Arrow?

Since her BD is a modo change, I'm tempted to believe it buffs at least one of her built-ins.

Also, dat arrow rain would massacre healing parties harder than a CS going Jihad.

Melfi-chan doesn't have Mode Change, Melfi does.

Melfi also doesn't have internal carts, so I'm left to believe that internals on Melfi-chan are circle-only.

I think I missed reading "-chan" at the end of that.

Not as bad as when I misread Elisa for Melfie though xD

Melfi's lack of capacity and the need to juggle sub weapons (mode change) kinda irks me. On one hand, you need a gun, to farm if nothing else. But you also have to have the foresight to know when to change to arrow mode so you can spot heal/ suppress groups/ knock people back. In chaotic fights a chibi is a better choice, but with a more organized team she could definitely prove useful. She strikes me more as an organized PvP healer than something for the typical room.

Intet wrote:

Melfi's lack of capacity and the need to juggle sub weapons (mode change) kinda irks me. On one hand, you need a gun, to farm if nothing else. But you also have to have the foresight to know when to change to arrow mode so you can spot heal/ suppress groups/ knock people back. In chaotic fights a chibi is a better choice, but with a more organized team she could definitely prove useful. She strikes me more as an organized PvP healer than something for the typical room.

That is quite true.

What guns on Melfi are you guys using/planning to use? At the moment, I have Micro Bazooka and think about getting dual Micro, but there has to be a better weapon than that.

Drawgun for trolling with the Blow Arrow? The way I saw Melfi using Heal Arrow most effectively (IMO) was to pop a quick 100 HP heal on units coming in with low HP, so the Melfi healspot can be pushed further forwards without risking the whole group getting nuked in one shot. You pretty much guarantee everyone has 150-200+ HP as soon as they get seen! The Arrow Rain is also SOFUCKINGANNOYING to my sprinter scouts. Can't spin ART lines if I can't run! It actually works better shooting highly tuned bots, as the WLK ones will have 1 FLY and eat landing delay unless they have Quick Land. The juggling->falling->landing delay is about 2 seconds of being stuck there, and that's enough for a melee to dash out, knock off 200+ HP, and retreat if needed. I suppose it's a good combo with Elisalotte.

I personally just stuck a geso whip on her and called it good. Just keep the geso as the main sub weapon, switch mode to use some heal arrows and switch back to geso when you are healing with a bit to keep the melee bots stupefied. If the other team has few or no melee bots going at you, then spam arrow rain.