> I’ll explain halo 4 first. Compared to other halo games, the sword lunge is terrible, so you have to make sure the reticule turns red before lunging. Pressing the melee button just swings the sword without lunging. In halo 4, lunges and melees swing equally fast, so you should just use the lunge.
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> In older halo games though, the lunge range is longer while also having a longer animation. Melees have a faster swing to compensate for the shorter range.
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> Finally, in halo reach and halo 4, clashing a certain amount of times will kill both players, so no infinite sword duels like in halo 3.
Actually, the melee is still faster than the lunge animation in Halo 4, albeit by a smaller margin than past games.
Also, due to the game being almost entirely hitscan, it gets confused in OHK melee situations depending on lag, current health, and timing of the melees. Let me give an example that I’ve noticed with the Sword:
-Both me and the enemy have full health.
-Both me and the enemy have Energy Swords equipped.
-The enemy’s connection is slightly suffering (200ms ping)
Situation:
-I lunge at my enemy who is completely aware of my presence. I connect with my sword and the enemy has yet to make any indication of fighting back. We both die. This could be any number of reasons, but I have come up with a reasonable explanation for why we both died instead of just him or even clashing at all.
The game uses hitscan detection to determine if a player is hit with any damaging equipment (weapons, melee, vehicles). This means that instead of relying entirely on the host’s connection, whatever happens on a player v player basis is independently taken into account. On my screen I sworded the enemy without him even looking like he was retaliating. However, his connection is 200ms behind (2/10ths of a second). In this period between me killing him and his connection registering that, he could’ve swung his sword from his point of view. Since the game knows he is technically dead, and his sword started swinging on his screen, it attempts to clash our swords and fails. Why? Because the enemy’s swing is SO LATE for him that it’s outside of the “clash” timing window, so we both die.
Basically, if you encounter someone lagging, chances of clashing are slim to none and killing each other on the first contact is much much higher. 2 people that are in good connection with each other can typically clash repeatedly until someone interferes or one of you dies.