The intent, as I see it, is for Mellka to be a character driven by 2 different states. Depending upon which state her opponent is in (“envenomated” or “not”) determines what tactics she is going to use.
Against an enemy that isn’t affected by her debuff (I’m going to stop calling it a DoT since it’s barely one atm and, in design terms, if it does too much damage, it won’t encourage changing states), her tactics revolve around applying the debuff. Ideally, this is a ranged centric tactic that, in my mind, should be the primary function of her pistol. Both the bullets and the canisters should apply the debuff, though the canister’s debuff should be stronger (slightly higher DoT) and/or longer (8 instead of 4 seconds). Access to other methods for applying the debuff should be limited to helix choices and come at the cost of being able to more effectively capitalize on it (e.g. Spike either deals double damage to debuffed targets or applies venom to them).
Against an enemy that is affected by her debuff, her tactics revolve around actually dealing damage in significant quantities. The primary methods for doing this should be melee; by default something like doubling damage against a debuffed target (and getting Deande grade melee DPS in the process) would be most appropriate.
Because her offensive tactics and goals revolve around applying a debuff at range and then capitalizing on the debuff in melee, she definitely needs extreme mobility and survivability that exists in the moderate (especially if ranged DPS is so low as to not be considered a viable kill strategy) to make melee a non-suicidal endeavor. Since extreme mobility + ranged == annoyingly difficult to kill, this means that she needs some kind of melee driven survivability mechanism by default (or, at the very least, extremely early). The simplest solution would be lifesteal with melee against debuffed targets (though I’m not sure how faction appropriate that is). Conversely, it could be something like “once every 10 seconds, when you hit a target affected by your debuff with a melee attack, you gain an overshield that lasts 10 seconds”. Either way, the intent is to reward melee with increased survivability and increased damage such that ranged-only playstyle isn’t viable from a kill perspective.
I’m not intimately familiar with Mellka (her playstyle never really grokked with me and @EdenSophia is an active giver of advice and analysis so there was never much need or motivation for it) so I won’t provide specific recommendations, though I will say that, in general, her performance in melee (survivability and damage) against a debuffed target should be equal to that of the other assassins; at range, her damage should be decidedly sub-par (consider the difference between Deande and Phoebe’s damage dealing capabilities at range and in melee) since killing things at range should not be the intent.
The most important thing is to ensure that melee performance is safe enough to not be suicidal while being rewarding enough to actually encourage going in.
I’m currently imaging a rebuilt Mellka acting as a kind of “jouster” character: her play tactic emphasizes safe but mediocre ranged play with short, extremely rewarding bouts of melee combat.
I’m not sure how current Mellka players feel about that, but that’s what I’m imagining her as, right now, at least.
