Duration: 1:59

864 views

37

Melee was my jam for a while back in Remnant 1, but I've been having so much fun with all these guns I've only now given melee a proper go...and boy does it smack.

At first I thought it was just the Stonebreaker with its extra shockwave damage, so I gave it another go with the Royal Broadsword - though it was a little slower, it still managed a 13 second kill to Stonebreaker's 9s, on a Thick Skin boss no less - did someone say melee was dead?

Granted, not every boss can be engaged up close, and trying out a few of the other melee weapons like the katanas, it seems not every weapon can measure up to the Greatswords' damage - but they still did very well. I'll have to give the projectile melee weapons more of a test to see how they measure up too.

Part of why melee does so well here is that Kaeula has no weakspot, which naturally favours mods and melee (and Deceit) builds more - the other is how much more generous the game is at giving you chunky melee damage and speed buffs through trinkets and skills like Juggernaut.

For our archetypes, we're taking Challenger and Alchemist for their big burst melee damage through Juggernaut and Frenzy Dust, as well as good damage passives. For our trinkets, we're piling on crit with Butcher's Fetish, Akari Warband, Burden of the Gambler (since we have no weakspot to aim for), Overdrive on our melee, and the Mythic Melee Crit fragments for a whopping total of ~95% crit chance and +160% crit damage (+180% with Probability Cord) - when our skills are active, we also get a huge +110% melee damage and +50% melee speed. Madness!

The final piece of the puzzle is Quilted Heart, which takes care of all our stamina needs, granting us 20s of unlimited stamina per relic use - crucial given the heavy stamina costs on Stonebreaker or just charge melee spam in general.

I didn't use any mods here as I was going for melee only, but more practical choices would be fire-and-forget mods like Swarm or Tremor that can run in the background while you go ham on your targets. Not like you need them...

As for survivability, even though I was going all out for damage, you can still take a hit or two - in my Broadsword run I ended up having to take a hit just to get that crucial extra hit of my own in, but I still had around half a health bar spare. Frankly, you could probably spare 2-3 equipment slots for survivability instead of damage, so feel free to find a balance you're comfortable with.
______________

00:00 Intro
00:05 Kaeula's Shadow (Stonebreaker)
00:35 Build (Stonebreaker)
00:55 Kaeula's Shadow (Royal Broadsword)
01:40 Build (Royal Broadsword)