Almost 2 years playing ESO and I have serious melee skills now. Something I never had before. The melee is poor. I use my sledge quite a bit but I can go nuts with a similar weapon, my berserker Orc uses a hammer exclusively, in ESO but just flail around in F4. Still I did not expect good melee.

Yes, it works and is viable. I've done melee most of my FO4 time. Here is my thoughts.

1. Real-Time melee (non Vats/Blitz) is the slowest killing in the game, bar none. The attack speeds are slow. Running to people is slow. Getting blocked/staggered is slow. Still viable, but probably the worst first person melee combat implemented in a video game I have ever experienced as far as feel goes.

2. Vats/Blitz melee (either crit or sneak oriented, or both) is one of the best builds in the game. Only drawback is very high up targets that you gotta climb towards and assaultron dominators, but they can be dealt with.

I don't do #2 so I'll just have to suffer.

Here's how I built my melee character. He used a modified pool cue as a Halberd as I roleplayed him as a Chinese General (Lu Bu) who was fond of halberds.

SPECIAL

8171155

"You're Special" goes into STR (Giving 9)

Level 1: Idiot Savant

Level 2: AGI +1

Level 3: AGI +1

Level 4: AGI +1

Level 5: AGI +1

Level 6: Moving Target

Level 7: Toughness

Level 8: Blitz

Level 9: Big Leagues

Level 10: Weapon Mod

Level 11: Idiot Savant

Level 12: Action Boy

I think you see where this is going. My usual strategy is to initiate fights with sprinting and doing the swinging hit when coming out of it on the target then using VATS for the rest of a group. I would suggest Chem Resistant as well.

Tougness Level 5: +50 Armor vs. Ballistics

Moving Target Level 2/3: +50 Armor vs. Energy and Ballistics (sprinting costs 50%)

Life Giver Level 3: +60 HP and health regen

Rooted Level 5: +50 Armor vs. Ballistics

Adamantium Skeleton Level 3: Immune to Limb Crippling

So as you can see

Sprinting you have a natural armor of +100 vs. Ballistics and +50 vs. Energy

Standing Still +100 vs. Ballistics

plus all the other benefits they all have. Now put on some nice modded armor and you will be a tank without PA

How do you make the Deathclaw fist?

You can make Melee as OP like Ranged. All you Need are the right perks and Legendary Affixes.

You loot it

melee I find to be viable and satisfying but I agree the animations, including the kilmoves, although very nice are just too slow. The block also needs to be more responsive.

I made this sneak crit build which works by abusing blitz and crits with sneak. Pikman's knife is a pretty good weapon allowing silly sneak damage (deacon's perk and sandman, blade itself comes with all the upgrades). I pretty much one shot everything and I don't have points in str (no root or maxed str or league). Bleed makes full frontal assault pretty viable even without power armor because it is basically pure dmg.

im 62 melee only. it works great when you have vats. without vats? its really slow/buggy/unplayable... just down right not fun. so if you run in to one of those invisible robot that cant be targeted by vats you are funked. really dont feel like they tested melee out.

I'd suggest very low intelligence like 1 and luck strength endurance charisma. make sure to get the idiot savant perk early on as it gives a massive xp boost. also no intelligence stops you from using gun nut and science so you either use found weapons or just stick to melee. also try and find the 2067 world series bat in jamaica plains. its perk is 'has a chance to knock opponent flying' or something very useful at the early stages of the game for a melee build.

I'm only playing on normal but melee is what I personally have the most success with. For the longest time I had a simple little serrated switchblade but still made quick work of even power armor raiders and Deathclaws thanks to the quick speed and bleed damage. For robots that dont bleed fully upgraded knuckles would kill them pretty quickly and now that I have even better weapons I could survive on the higher diffaculties if I chose to.


As far as taking damage and damage avoidance goes I'm wearing combat armor to take hits and I serpentine at enemies so most shots end up missing anyways.