So what exactly are offhand melee attacks and what are their benefits? Plenty of characters have them (phoebe, attikus etc.) but Iāve never quite understood when to use an offhand melee attack instead of the standard basic attackā¦
Depending on the hero the attack has a different use. Galilea has her off-hand shield toss (MMB) and rath has his off hand sword toss (right click). These have larger attack range than the standard auto attack and can be used to hit an enemy running away.
Youāve probably noticed others that donāt seem like this is true. Naturally with the ranged characters the off-hand is for close range, but more importantly for itās push back effect. Characters like phoebe have a melee with a push back effect. So really as far as telling what every characterās does, you kinda have to use it and notice if it either pushes enemies back, has longer range, does something extra weird, ect.
Well there is the standard offhand melee attack everyone got that deal low amount of damage but has the capacity to knockback - a nice way to get those melee characters off your back/face.
A melee character will often ( always? ) have two attack tied to primary and secondary, attack which will have different special abilities depending entirely on the character. Kelvin have a ground pound that strikes the ground twice and damage everyone in AoE as well as pushing them back. Phoebe got True Strike, which is a directionnal dash followed by a heavy strike and can be further amped up by helix levels.
In general the offhand-melee has a push-back effect. You can use it in several occasions to cancel rival attacks, ultimates and skills.
IĀ“m not very sure which cases there are, but I hear you can cancel Deandes and Raths Ult. with offhand melee, just as example.
Phoebeās True Strikes are great for extending combos if you time them right and her Helix can add effects to them making them even stronger. Attikusās charged hook (in my personal experience) is great for leading off the attack if Pounce is on cooldown. Rathās has range so itās great if your enemy is just out of reach.
Or are we talking about the quick melee which has a knock back effect?
Hehe, I was just starting to tell about her True Strike when I realised - this is indeed about offhand melee, not secondary attack. I mix those up all day ToT
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Well I was wondering whether the OP was precisely mixing up secondary and offhand attacks, seeing how he pointed Phoebe and Attikus who have special secondary melee attacks 
For Phoebe, as it gives a small dash and some helix works with it, Itās really good to use it. And you can just hold both click.
But on Attikusā¦ it looks useless at the moment as it slow you when charging, takes some times to charge and doesnāt deal so much damage. It should maybe do something more like : more dmg on shield or when pushing a shocked enemy deal splash damage etcā¦
Orendi also looks a bit useless (or if you take the autolock helix)
Just did it 3 times on Deandeās Ult last game (poor Deande, her ult is already so hard to place and not really good, but you can simply cancel it with quick melee), but on Rath it just push him back but he is still in range to deal dmg so itās pretty useless to push him (except with some character like Marquis, Miko, Whiskey etcā¦ with a stronger and faster quick melee)
And some character does have a secial quick melee while running El Dragon (Side Kick), Melkka (Slide), Deande (work as double jump as high as benedict triple jump) and Attikus also have one special quick melee but looks like it does nothing special
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For Phoebe if you want to get good with her that attack is essential as you can upgrade it and it provides mobility and dodging.
From my experience, this attack has slightly more range. Itās also a great finisher, especially on fleeing enemies. (And especially with that helix choice. Homing death ahoy!)
You mean her seconday atack āTrue Strikeā I guess? So far I saw no mutation/augmentation for her offhand melee though.
Thanks for your help guys! I probably should have been more specific. What Iām talking about is the melee characters secondary melee (I think I confused this with the āquick meleeā available to all characters) which is bound to LT on Xbox and I assume RMB on PC.
Obviously there are some obvious ones like Deandeās ranged attack, for example. But more specifically, Iāve been playing a bit of El Dragon recently and as far as I can tell his āclapā attack is pretty useless until you get the helix to apply an air affect. Even then itās only really good for killing minions.
Iād like to get into this in a bit more depth though. Is it ever advantageous to mix these secondary attacks in with your basic attack combo when fighting another player?
air should be aoe. My phone autocorrectedā¦
Clap is crazy, and gives El Dragon some much needed range. That man terrifies me.
It varies on the character. Kevin has a stomp secondary that I tend to find it is most useful for hitting evasive enemies, since it is a small aoe and easier to land than his more damaging primary.
Attikusā charged hook is mostly useless, but alright if you can sneak up behind something.
Thatās what i thought he was talking about at first