Any guide to melee weapons? are they worth it?

encadi

Hey guys im quite interested on melee weapons for my tactical captain but cant find any updated guide specially for swords/tsunkatse's falcions.

Any idea if theres any good place explaining these combos and are melee weapons worth it for a melee speced tactical captain?

Thank you

noroblad

They can be worth it in some content, esp solo PVE, and occasional use in groups. They bypass shields & the borg cannot adapt so those are 2 huge advantages. The disadvantage, of course, is running into the enemy where you may encounter (at higher levels) enemy mines and turrets or face the entire enemy team alone.

As a tac, I highly recommend combining it with stealth, your team will engage from range and you can backstab the most dangerous or annoying enemy.

NPC and melee do not mix. A melee away team has all sorts of AI problems, they do good damage but often get totally mixed up trying to fight that way.

I do not know the combos, but they exist. The klingon swords, for example, alternate the 2 attacks to get a spin move that does a lot of weak hits, and there is a second one to spam one of the attacks to make a big overhead chop for a big hit. I am sure there are many more, but you just have to experiment if you can't find a list.

I also do not know where the better weapons are. I know you can craft a decent one and klingons can do a mission for an epic weapon, but there seem to be a bunch more that I have never found, some guy had a red glowing one, and I have seen a variety of oddly shaped ones on other people.

edgecrysger

I dont see any advantaje on melee weapons. The only advantaje is that it bypass the shields, but thats all.

I still cant believe people uses melee weapons against the borg. I still see people in Defera wasting 5, 10 even 20 seconds to kill a group of borgs with a melee weapon (i dont even waste 3 secons using my anti borg proton beam) . Even if a melee weapons is a good choice for killing a borg, its all about time. With any other regular weapon you kill a borg group faster than with any melee weapon, thats a fact. So , y to use melee weapons?? because they look cool. More than that, i see em completely useless, in most of the cases, mostly because in the end, its all about spending the less time possible killing anything.

And forget about equiping a melee weapon to your boffs, it will work only if you are lucky..

One of the things i never undersood is, if you can equip a melee weapon, why the hell you cant make special attacks and combos?? that is one of the reasons i never liked melee weapons in this game, they are pointless.

You can make only 1 combo with a melee weapon, and it s not really a combo, just another final attack that twirls your battlech toward the enemy, thats all.

noroblad

^^^^ what he said, sorta

The character I use melee on is actually my engineer. Which plays right into what he said: kill stuffs faster. So why melee? I tend to run up to groups of slow, stoopid borg and drop mines, then I can melee shove them into the mines if they did not walk over them. I can kill 5 or 6 of them in the time it takes to kill 1 with my rifle.

My other characters only use melee now and then. It can be a handy tool, but as a primary setup, I think you will be disappointed.

Tac captains do have some help here, though. Lunge covers ground fast and is very OP (it can one-shot some mini bosses even on a crit) and sweeping is "ok". If you enjoy it, go for it -- you can always pick up a blaster later on if you need to kill faster.

krrja

Melee weapons have a variety of normal, expose, and exploit attacks. I find it odd that many veteran players have never bothered to utilize the devastating effects of these weapons and instead grind for months to do the same thing with really expensive and hard to find ranged weapons.

thegalaxy31

Generally useless.

steamwright

noroblad wrote: »

They can be worth it in some content, esp solo PVE, and occasional use in groups. They bypass shields & the borg cannot adapt so those are 2 huge advantages.

Just a note, the plasma melee weapons, like the Winter event weapons, apparently do not bypass shields. At least, its not listed in their stats. They do, however, have higher DPS, in compensation, I guess.

noroblad wrote: »

The disadvantage, of course, is running into the enemy where you may... face the entire enemy team alone.

My KDF is confused by this statement. Why would it be disadvantageous?
It. Will. Be. GLORIOUS!

(Okay, don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger)

mackermomo

@encadi I play a KDF science character and up to this point (level 32) am absolutely loving the melee weapons. I asked this same question in the form a while back and received quite a few answers. Bottom line is that some people love them while others believe melee weapons are a waste of time.

I use them in mission PVE and seem to absolutely devastate the NPCs. The trick for me is to realize that your boffss will stay close to you, therefore you must stay close to the enemy NPCs or your melee boffs will simply run back and forth never doing any damage. My science character has many relatively short ranged attacks and therefore is a good complement to my melee boffs.

Pros: excellent damage, knocks the NPCs down very often, good for missions, very little shield damage to boffs

Cons: your character must stay close to the NPCs your team is targeting, though less shield damage there is greater physical damage to your boffs--keep an eye on their health

damzelltrill

My Sci Officer uses Melee a lot, especially in the Power Plant. I find the quiet approach keeps me from getting swamped by Borg. I go in guns blazing, I end up facing at least 4 Borg; the 2 that beam in right away and then the ones drawn to the noise. If I go in quiet, I only have to deal with the two beam ins as the melee is usually over fairly quickly and quietly.


Another reason I use melee is there's just something therapeutic about whacking away at what ever is in your way with a hunk of metal.

Check the STO Wiki for the melee listings.

tardes13

I love melee, keeping in mind that it has it's strong points and weak points.

This is a guide I've been reading:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=97085

rodentmaster

There are actually several different combos you can achieve with melee weapons. The spinning batleth is just one of them. Batleth and Lirpa as a rule are dismissed as ground weapons because their animations are longer and you're locked "in" the animation until it completes. Using a falchion or sword has a little less damage but you have much faster combo animations and can keep hitting them. Less down time.

In short, stick to swords.

I, personally, have issues trying to chain the combo commands.... If there are 3 buttons, am I supposed to press all 3 in rapid succession to chain 1 combo command? Or does that mean I need to chain combo command step 1 with combo command step 2 with combo command step 3, and only THEN on the third attack do I get the combo?

I'm still fuzzy on how that works.

wraithshadow13

With My main, he was built as an augment, so melee became a huge focal point to his build. When fighting the Borg i actually use the close combat, even on elites. The purpose is two fold, 1)non-adapted damage and 2) Melee grabs aggro quite nicely, so i run in, grab the attention, then get behind them, leaving the rest of the team wide open for flanking. There are a few other bonus' with my build, but those are specifics, and this anyone can do.

Sweeping strikes is a great AOE melee ability, and my drop kick i've seen hit for almost 3k on a shielded target (non-flanking). I've been playing on elite, and can one shot smaller enemies, as well as go hand to hand with the larger gorn or Elite Tac drones. Some cases i've actually dropped the enemy before the rest of the team drops their shields. Depending on the team, i will often do more damage with my feet, than i see others doing with their weapons.


Usually i take in a Pulsewave and my sword, the pulsewave isn't as effective for me, but sweeping strikes tends to lock me down as some enemies will walk away, the sword and lunge will help close that distance as well as deal damage in the process.


If anything, Melee is just like any other weapon in the game, and the more you learn it, the better you can be with it.

tardes13

I, personally, have issues trying to chain the combo commands.... If there are 3 buttons, am I supposed to press all 3 in rapid succession to chain 1 combo command? Or does that mean I need to chain combo command step 1 with combo command step 2 with combo command step 3, and only THEN on the third attack do I get the combo?

Just tested this today. You can practice for yourself if you're in a battlezone, but not necessarily in a fight per se (press .

Shortly, you need a short delay after each stroke.

Weird thing ... seems different from case to case. For example, you need less delay between 1-2 and more for 1-1. But I haven't nailed a clear rule here.

bendalek

There are many advantages to Melee combat, just do some research on powers and kits for your particular Career ... Sci for instance has several AoE debuffs that are brilliant for Melee, Tac has many "martial Arts" attacks and also the personal cloak/stealth, and of course Eng has mines and Weapon/Armor debuffs as well as pets ...

As mentioned, Melee Attacks seem better able to use Exploit Damage and Expose effects, and I find having 2 of my BoFF's with ranged weapons (normally Sniper rifles on the the 2 Engi's) and my other two BoFF's (the Sci/Medics) with Melee weapons works really well at generating Exploits and taking out almost any group in seconds (almost feels like 'cheating' sometimes) ...

Using a 2 + 2 combination for my BoFF's works well for me because I use it to get 'Flank" attacks on enemies, because they will generally concentrate on the 'Ranged" BoFF's, giving me and my medics a chance to get behind and knife 'em in the back.

(not very "Klingon" of me i know, but ...this is WAR and beside, Honor doesn't really count when you are referring to pathetic lesser races, of course I'd never use those tactics on another Klingon Warrior)

BTW, If your not a Klink and you can't get Kahless's Weapon, their is a really nice "Melee Pack" in the C-Store, which has several universal (i.e auto leveling) Weapons ...

There is also a couple of "Ok" Lobi Store Weapons (which is where people get the whips from I think)