Glorious Melee Combat

[DarthVicious]

Astronomically thrilled about the new Discovery ground gear. More damage buffs AND a free lunge that replaces the attack I never use? Sign me UP.

[robonixon]

I missed this thread originally but I love everything about it as I've always enjoyed melee in this game. Will have to build some of this on a Sci and test it out for myself.

[DarthVicious]

I tried compiling as much information as I could in here so that it's half ground build ideas, half melee guide for whoever might come across it. Should help some people, just hoping enough people stick with it. I still dream of a team of 5 melees running around, all of which have Hive Mind and Miracle primary Command secondary.

A Sith can dream, can't he?

By the way, feel free to add anything I might've missed that you've found are important for melee. I know the biggest ones are combos and expose/exploit mechanics, but it's always good to pick up any tips. Not to mention having them written down somewhere, for everyone's reference.

[CaptUntouchable]

Thanks so much for all this information! Started a new Reman/Sci the other day to give some of your melee advice a try... looks like I lucked out with these Discovery additions.

Any advice for away teams, while I'm getting myself up to the level cap? Do I want an all-melee team, in the hopes that they'll stay close to me, or is that just going to make them run off in different directions and spread themselves across the map? Maybe it's just me, but sometimes my away missions feel like I'm trying to herd cats. Or should I just get myself to level cap by any means necessary, and respec into melee once everything is properly set up?

[DarthVicious]

Herding cats does sound accurate when speaking about boff AI... learning to use waypoints helps though (very intuitive via the boff interface on ground maps). I'd just focus on leveling to cap first, regardless which weapons you use on your way there. All my boffs have leftover rep ground sets I used to use, or mission reward sets. But I've been at cap since the cap was 50 and there was only three borg STFs to run... and I only have one toon, so my boffs & spare ships become extra 'bank space' for that stuff. Now that I think about it, if you're planning on melee for cap, I'd go melee all the way up also, if only to get used to the enemy AI and how it reacts to melee, using combos, expose/exploit, not to mention how tough your character has to be most of the time. Energy resists on your armor are a must, and your shields are going to be down most of the time.

One good thing to make certain of is your ground sci boffs all at least have medical tricorder, and give every one of them (especially the non-sci boffs) the white common tribble that restores hp, its cheap and reusable and they'll spam it if they need to (they LOVE devices for some reason). I'd also give them ranged weapons, I'd never trust them to melee properly (no combos, ever... ugh).

[DarthVicious]

The new Mind Meld Device from Discovery rep broke my haymaker record and isn't even upgraded. New record so far is 9k. I really like this weapon even though it polarizes melee even more by focusing the majority of the damage into the finisher. They will take practice for those that aren't skilled in the martial arts.

Also very nice that they are the first rep gear that can be reengineered (an update changed all rep gear weapons to allow reengineering at some point). I switched the MMD to have all [Dmg], as the base damage on non-finishers is pitifully low so far, but will increase after upgrades. Haven't bothered with any of the space gear yet, as I've only hit tier 3 Discovery and I want the core and shield.

Another great little thing I've noticed is Maquis Guile enhances the crowd control from melee attacks. Not the Engage from the MMD, but melee attacks that root/stun/etc will all have increased durations. Ambush Fighter works with melee weapons also, making it a must have. Five seconds of guaranteed crits whenever you flank something is huge for any build, but especially for melee as you can get flanking damage bonuses even against something that's attacking you just by running behind them. The 20sec cd is insignificant.

[DarthVicious]

My Haymaker record is now 19k.

[Belgevain]

My Haymaker record is now 19k.

I need this build info!

[DarthVicious]

Been quite a while since I updated, and some things changed. My record is now well enough above 20k that I stopped keeping track. Everything except final bosses (Leeta, Borg Queen, etc) dies in one combo, including captains. The MMD lunge is good enough that I don't even bother with crowd control kit modules anymore, I just punch everything to death faster than everyone else that isn't melee. Melee builds are also becoming more and more common to the point where I've seen upwards of 3 in a team, including myself. That was a wicked fun TFO run by the way.

I'm presently testing one of the fleet research lab kits that has Motion Accelerator on it, and I may replace Metaphasic Rejuvenation with Adrenal Hypo just for the fun of running like the Flash.

Medical Tricorder - huge HP heal on a 4sec cd
Dylovene - large HP & dmg buff, cures debuffs, lasts 30sec
Chain Conduit Capacitor - force lightning on a 6sec cd is fun, even if it's yellow with no cc
Adapt - this may be strong enough for me to finally drop Rejuvenation, teamwide damage immunity can break games
Metaphasic Rejuvenation - best rez in the game, may not be necessary with Adapt

Traits are only slightly different. Creative & Field Technician are kit related, Pack Leader and Lucky are expose related. Brawler is the only melee related trait, believe it or not. Ambush Fighter is strong on any build and forced me to re-engineer dmg mods into crtd mods. Maquis Guile is strong also, buffing your run speed and every bit of melee-related cc. The other two are Expedient Care and Medical Vanguard. EC is mostly for using heals on other people to reduce Dylovene cd (it only takes two or three heals to get the remaining cd lower than the duration), with the added bonus of applying tons of buffs to whoever the target is, including Medical Vanguard. Adapt and Motion Accelerator also apply Medical Vanguard. For some reason the Field Researcher trait doesn't work for melee weapons, nor kit abilities. It only seems to apply to my shotgun.
Rep traits are Deadly Aim, Lethality, Omega Weapon Proficiency, Close Quarters Combatant, Physical Conditioning. Nothing unexpected here. I also have Defiance on a keybind, but with my heals it almost never gets activated.

Doffs still include three purple melee security officers. They're basically never getting a vacation from active duty. The other three are up in the air at the moment, I've been looking for some that buff Motion Accelerator but can't seem to find any. None are listed on the wiki... but who knows how often the wiki is updated.

Miracle Worker is, and always will be, my primary spec, followed by Command secondary. My only wish for Miracle Worker is that Punch It be triggered by the MMD lunge, but I guess I can't have everything.

Gear is the same, full Disco set plus Cochrane shutgun, with research lab Motion Accelerator kit. Gambling Device, Fractal Remodulator, Pahvan Healing Crystal. Of these I only really use the healing crystal, as that applies both MV & EC. Mods on the weapons is as much CrtD as I can get, followed by Dmg. I reengineered the shields to have 4 regen mods with the epic being cap2, as the shield drops a slow & expose when it breaks, so having it passively heal itself will send out automatic cc. It's pretty awesome to see happening. The armor has a CrtH & CrtD that can't be changed (why would you want to), but you can get another CrtH for 10% CrtH, 40% CrtD. The other mods on mine are Phys and RegenHP/HP as I believe they provide the most benefit compared to what else is available in those slots.

The 'fighting style' I use most often includes haymakers on bosses & captains for its insane single target damage, and roundhouses & combined fists for their AoE on everything else. Combined fists (Kirk smash) being a bit better as they're an AoE exploit with the MMD, as opposed to roundhouses (spin kick) being the AoE exploit with the Tsunkatse gloves.

[DarthVicious]

Replaced Medical Vanguard with Overcharging - it's the only thing that reduces the cooldown of those adapted fleet kits, and MV is the lowest hanging fruit. Adapt is great but not good enough to replace Metaphasic Rejuvenation. I did test Adrenal Hypo for a bit but it's not really worth it for how I do ground things. As a buff it's redundant with MA, as a rez it's only really useful for dedicated healers that stare at their teammates health bars... which isn't really necessary in this game, considering what a dedicated healer could be capable of.