I feel like none of the melee trees of any of the current characters "Feel" fun/ideas

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

I loved playing the crazy antics of playing Brick or Krieg but none of the current trees on the available classes feel fun. Is it just me?

Like I could sink hours just stupidly entertained by just pressing melee and running after psychos and stuff while spaming my Buzzaxe and punching people in the face because both were half-crazed and fun.

There is no “Crazy” to the characters of this game I guess I can say. All of them have pretty mellow attitudes so it feels less like a borderlands to me. Hell even in the pre-sequel I had arguements with no melee but claptrap gave me chuckles with how much he could change up a fight.

I suppose I can say that Borderlands for me was about wacky…Not some of the more cringe-worthy missions (LOOKING AT YOU MISSION ABOUT FIXING LAG BY UPLOADING MEMES) but just PLAYING something fun and wacky…Not watching it.

Melee seemed to mix right with that…A world where guns shoot acid and fire but you got this dude running at you with a glorified chunk of metal who runs through hail-storms of lead just to club some dude in the face.

I saw it somewhere about having a Baseball like Vault Hunter. Baseball bat melee, fastball grenades, sliding being more heavilly implimented, faster sprint, Knockback with “Homerun”-like perks, etc…

Just like a wasted opportunity really for the game with what they have…

What you guys think?

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#2

I find Amara’s melee a bit lacking, but not due to some sort of craziness factor. It takes a lot of investment just to be kinda okay. And the associated Action Skill is unimpressive, too. The most fun I’ve had in melee in this series was with Athena.

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#3

Just to show how personal opinions can vary, I rate Amara as the best pure melee character in the series. A “Striking” build Lilith remains a favourite but that’s not pure melee. Striking Lilith and Brawler Amara definitely vie for my top spot.

The thing I love about Amara, and the way BL3’s mechanics support her, is that she can punch from L1. My Brawler Amara has pummeled her way through Normal and TVHM to L57 using melee 95%+ of the time. I love Brick and Krieg but they still have to use guns for a significant part of the game.

Can she solo the Takedown at M4? Not a snowball’s chance in Purgatory. But she handles the campaign comfortably at M2 . And all I want is the fun of charging headlong into a mob with my trusty Butt Plug in hand (that sounds wrong!) and laying waste to everything in sight. I mean, what can be more fun than punching cars? :smiley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgufOuBWCUs

#4

Yea its pretty much the action skill. Amara the melee character doesn’t have anything near as good as the other melee character s like Krieg,Brick, or Athena’s. Maybe she will get one in the future but for now melee with Amara is gonna be pretty dry.

#5

Yeah, I was really hoping to get a good melee character like Zer0/Krieg/Athena in this game. Sadly, none that I’ve tried comes anywhere close to being as effective as any of those.
I still keep all the good melee anointed gear I find on a mule though just in case they make any changes somewhere down the line.

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#6

Yeah, they dropped the ball with melee in this game. The only melee oriented VH is Amara, and by the look of her skill design looks like she was meant to be a hybrid instead of pure melee VH. She only has 2 melee damage boosting skills and she has “jab cross” skill that gives gun damage and action skill damage when you melee someone. And Blitz only resets on kill, which is sad, Athena had reset when she applied the bleed and on kill, Amara needs the same, a way to reset Blitz so she can close the gap to the enemy, damage it and then use Blitz again to execute it.
If they add that, she could be played similar to Athena and that would be really cool.
Also, they need to fix the melee damage scaling in Mayhem levels, that is crucial.

I know that pure melee Amara exists, but I think that is the result of the “unleash the dragon” artifact, stacking melee damage and watch the fire dot consume your enemy. Still, I enjoyed it while it lasted in Mayhem 3.

Ps: there’s the melee Fl4k build too, but with the shield stacking glitch we can’t use it, and if they fix Iron Bear fists damage, there’s also a possible pure melee build there, that would feel a lot more like Brick or Krieg, while Fl4k feels a lot more like Zer0 and Many must fall.

Now that I think of it, we almost have all melee characters back in Bl3 :thinking:

#7

GBX has an incredibly weird track record of not bothering to balance action skills and melee for high level end game content, and I will never understand why it isn’t more of a priority. I mean look at FL4K’s pets, there seems to be no urgency or plan to make these things viable in anything other than the campaign, despite releasing an entire brand new dlc class mod designed around the pets. Very strange.

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#8

Tbh I feel the entire borderlands franchise has only ever had one real melee character and that’s krieg the rest were just stronger melee attack animation also I loved that meme mission as that totally seems like a douchy thing Jack would do and a stupidly moronic thing the bandits would start worshipping lol

#9

Probably no coincidence that Krieg is the only one that was developed and released after the game came out, and is therefore much more balanced than all of the franchise’s other melee characters.

Melee Brick was good up until higher TVHM levels.

Melee Zer0 was fun but terribly designed. The only way to get melee Zer0 to really work is to strip your shield with tesla grenades (which was an impossible strategy when still leveling in UVHM) and rely on Moxxi weapons outside of Decepti0n - clearly none of which were GBX’s intention when designing the character. Honestly what melee Zer0 really needed was a skill to keep your shield down while in Decepti0n to get the roid damage consistently without needing to hit yourself with nades. GBX obviously took note of how the community was playing Zer0 when designing Krieg and gave such a skill to him instead.

I’ve heard Athena’s melee is good but never played much of TPS to find out.

#10

Melee Zero would like a word

#11

and Zero easily the best melee character

#12

you never used the love thumper? the shield stays down for like 3 mins LOL

#13

:smiley:

This was a personal view. I have never got on with Zer0. He just doesn’t work for me and I have tried, trust me :slight_smile:

1 Like
#14

oh thats fine well theres always Krieg xd