@blainebrossart1 and I spent several hours testing a bunch of Mellka/Rath things in-game. On a whim, we detoured to check out a few other oddball things - including the DPS of several quick melees and alternate fires.
You know where I’m going with this!
So first, the method: I killed Blaine, then we used the “damage dealt” and “time taken” numbers from the death screen. Divide the damage by the time, and that’s our DPS. We mostly used Rath as as the test dummy, but for Kleese, because of his increased damage vs shields, we swapped in Thorn.
Here’s the data displayed in a graph, first. A blue bar is a melee attack; a yellow bar is a ranged attack; the grey bar is a hypothetical result (Mellka can’t sustain venom on anyone long enough to kill them with melee, so to get this figure, I added her +16% venom melee bonus. Basically I only added this figure to pre-empt the “But what about her venom melee bonus?” objections, haha.)
A couple of fun observations:
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Ghalt’s quick melee is disgusting wtf.
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Mellka’s alt melee does less damage than Ambra’s Scorching Strikes with zero heat. Both do less damage than a bunch of quick melees. We tested Scorching Strikes with increased heat, and it got a little better, but not that much.
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Shayne’s ranged alt attack does more damage than Mellka’s melee alt attack. This is without any of the boomerang helixes Shayne gets, mind you. (The only melee damage/speed helix Mell ever gets is an attack speed increase at level 9.)
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Caldy’s quick melee does more damage than Mell’s alt melee, while his alt melee significantly outdamages even the hypothetical Mell venom melee. His level 2 attack speed helix is worth keeping in mind. He’s still probably outdamaged by Ghalt though.
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What is the point of Mellka’s alt melee? She has the lowest health+shield pool total in the game, she has a gun, and she can even spam canisters and venom from range for better damage than this.
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F’ing Kleese, man.
The numbers:
Kleese quick melee: 83 DPS
Mellka quick melee: 89.92 DPS
Miko quick melee: 95.80 DPS
Mellka alternate melee: 96.96 DPS
Ambra alt melee with zero heat: 99 DPS
Marquis quick melee: 103.85 DPS
Shayne’s quick melee: 109.7 DPS
Caldarius quick melee: 110.31 DPS
(hypothetical) Mellka alternate melee on a venom target: 112.47 DPS - note, venom lasts only 4 seconds
Shayne’s boomerang: 116.42 DPS
Caldarius alt melee: 127.15 DPS
Whiskey quick melee: 136.60
Kleese cannon primary: 153.57 DPS
Kleese taser: 156.51 DPS
Ghalt quick melee: 157.64
@gRANT can we expect to see Mellka’s melee DPS brought more into line in the coming patch? If not, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the role of her melee in the current game!