The melee gun hybrid build problem

Borderlands 2 BL2 General Discussion
#1

In both borderlands 2 and the pre sequel, gearbox had this design thing about giving characters meele skills that weren’t enough to build around or skills that increased you meele/gun damage at the same time, trying to create a hybrid playstyle, but it never really worked the way it was intended and most characters end up skipping those skills or picking them for minor bonuses.

So I though about a skill that could help to make a real hybrid playstyle more smooth:

“Your character don’t stop reloading while you melee attack”

Also it would be nice if the character that had this skill didn’t have reload speed bonus, so you actually had to time your melee attacks right to increase your dps while you reload, and maybe get bonus effects based on the type of gun that is reloading at your other hand (Salvador can reload guns without using the other hand, so you dont need to care about it being realistic, really)

What do you guys think? Do you guys think the hybrid gun / melee playstyle is kinda bad right now? If you think so, what would you do to make it better?

#2

Its awesome on the characters that can support it.

I know plenty of people don’t like the design, but the only cases where melee hybrid builds are totally nonviable are Axton and Maya. Gagie and Sal both have OP8 functional melee builds, and Gaige can kill hyperius with hers (I don’t know if it was OP8, but it was done).

Even in BL1, 3 out of 4 had usable melee builds. It’s always been a feature of the franchise for most characters to have some capacity for melee, even if it isn’t a defining feature.

Not taking Zero and Krieg into account, that means 2/4 characters who weren’t designed with a primarily melee based play style in mind are able to perform at a high level with such builds. And that’s only for BL2. Once you start to factor in TPS, that game basically designed nothing but melee hybrids. There aren’t too many people still running pure melee Athenas or Clappys. Every class in TPS, whether through an override, damage bonuses, or other mechanics, is melee hybrid to some degree (with the exception of Jack, maybe).

As far as making hybrids perform better, I would introduce more gear into the game that could accommodate hybrid builds. In the same way the HoT is a spike, nova, and roid, and the shields BA Marauders have are amp and nova shields, I’d introduce an adaptive melee shield so that the defensive buffs would still be useful on non-melee builds. I’d tweak the numbers on melee skills by 20% or so, and have a larger variety of usable melee weapons (not the rapier, whose only use is as a pointy stick) so that there would be more incentive to use weapons with melee attachments (think BL1 Sledge’s Shotgun). Lastly, so long as they keep TPS skill trees for future games, I’d use those spots for some interesting melee overrides (like Wilhelm’s robo-fist and Aurelia’s backhand) or other effects that would benefit melee. The problem with a lot of the melee hybrid skills in BL2 is that they’re on skills that are kind of far down the tree, or their bonus is too small to make a difference. If you put them on a gamechanger, you can make the numbers bigger and give more “useful” bonuses to other skills.

Just my .02$.

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#3

Both reading the title and the above quote, I immediately thought of one skill in particualr, Athena’s Gun Kata

Due to slag in BL2 and cryo in TPS, you typically try to apply the debuffing element to an enemy before a melee attack and using a speicifc weapon is generally the mos effective method, in this sense having hybrid builds is fine with me, particularly with skills like Gun Kata and Zer0’s Be Like Water. Your suggestion, I’m not sure that it would be my first pick but I could find room for it on an Athena build.

#4

Over in TPS, Nisha is even designed as a primarily-gun character with occasional melee. Her left tree has several skills that stack melee buffs while you do other things, that then get used up when you melee - as a way to incentivize players to fit melee into her playstyle. You shoot some guys, build up those melee stacks, then whip another guy for 1700% damage or whatever, then repeat.

The only problem with Gaige’s melee skills are that With Claws is a capstone. If it was lower in the tree I would take it every time, but she has so many great skills I can’t always afford it.

#5

In some ways, at least in the context of melee hybrid builds, I kind of wish they switched Discord and With Claws. They both consume stacks and give health regen, so they serve similar purposes, but it would give a powerful incentive to go all the way down the Ordered Chaos tree.

#6

Actually Axton has a great skill that imrpoves gun and melee damage also

I will play him sometime and be sure to max out this skill. A +15% melee damage is viable for me for the character to be competent melee.

#7

There was a build somewhere that used a love thumper with an explosive build, explosive relic, max CM and battlefront to crank up the melee and explosive damage. I tried it, and it really wasn’t that great. Creative and different, but the damage and survivability were sorely lacking.

Unlike other melee characters, who have stacking mechanics or absurdly large multipliers, Axton and Maya have tiny additive buffs for a damage type that doesn’t get elemental or extra crit multipliers. Trust me when I say this, 15% ain’t ■■■■. 100% wouldn’t do anything awesome. You need at least 400-500% to have a decent melee character.

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#8

They did a good job in TPS with melee. Most of melee are override and actually complement the VH playstyle. Nisha benefits from the Order stacks she naturally build, Athena beenefits from the Bleed debuff in a lot of ways and there is the punch city, which population is everyone faces. And you dont even need Roid shields, so you can use something like the Haymaker to further boost your survivability.

BL2 kinda failed with it. Or you have a melee dedicated playstyle like ninja Zer0 or just forget about it. Especially at the OP levels.
Gaige can kinda still do some hybrid work due to Anarchy boosting both gun and melee damage but you need a lot of stacks to your melee damage start to matter, as the boost is half the gun damage.

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