Whatsupp guys,Because you helped me so good in my last topic, i want to ask another question. I'm almost done with my first playthrough, that is really focused on gunplay and being sneaky and stuff. It worked, especially after your tips about damage increasing perks! Now for my next playthrough im planning on choosing the path of minuteman or BoS and i kinda want to explore the melee side of fallout 4. As a melee noob and never had a melee character in other fallout games, im just wondering if this would be a end-game capable kind of build for fallout 4? Any tips?

Melee seems underpowered to me.

Ranged weapons are good and can be used fine on their own.

Melee seems to be entirely dependent on having a good chem supply. Most higher tier melee weapons do similar or a lot less damage to higher and even medium tier ranged weapons. Something is wrong with that IMO.

Melee as it stands is dependent on chems to be of any real use in most firefights. Ranged always ends up being 5 times more efficient. Hell, even in close range, short range weapons like combat shotguns easily outclass every melee weapon in the game.

I have a level 67 melee char atm, have to focus on endurance and defensive perks along with melee perks. Lone wanderer really helps too. Can really take a beating and I have played on survival the entire game. Apparently there is a bug with the 5/5 melee perk though from what I understand it is a display bug only. Other than that it works just fine.

Edit: about the chems. I seldom use chems unless I'm fighting several super mutant master or higher.

Well if your melee and want to increase damage output than you can get the pipe wrench which I have heard does a lot of damage with the mods on it. I heard it does more than a fatman

Its definitely a playstyle with a steep climb as you go up in difficulty.

Currently running a BoS focused character which uses melee and a decked out power armour and Im doing fine, but thats clearly because I have the luxury of a lot of defense points.

There are basically 3 ways of effective melee builds:

- Power Armor and Pain Train

- Ninja

- Using V.A.T.S. and the "teleport"-perk in the agility-tree

Ninja with a bladed knive = onehitting nearling everything, but can be very difficult to get through lot's of stuff. Tip: Use leather armor and mod it with shadowed mods.

V.A.T.S. using meeles have to focus preatty much on their defence. So combat armor, chems and lot's of endurance and damage mitigation perks are esential.

The Power Train-PA build is less focused on defense, cause in PA your naturally very tanky. So there you can go "unarmed" and use your PA-bashes and upgraded PA-arm-armor (the mod wich increases your punch-damage).

Lot's of chems are a good thing in either build, so getting the perk to not get addicted is preatty cool!

I don't use the power armor. with legendary armor with + str and end on it you are actually weaker by a lot in power armor. I just have a super sledge and charge in swinging at people's heads. like I said above, played in survival the whole game, haven't had a problem. most stuff gets one shot.

I melee just fine without chems. It's fun. Even with guns, melee is pretty overpowered at times. (Heck, me and my companion stun-lock a Deathclaw to death!).

Though meleeing with guns is only deadly toward humans. Mostly due to the guns' melee kill move is easily triggered.

Melee seems like a very clunky animation to me compared to Skyrim I normally leave it to Strong to tare my enemies limb from limb, he is very effective with a super sledge or deathclaw fist

sounds like people have a lot of different experiences. One groups finds it pretty OP, the other group doesn't. It it a matter of being a high level or is it just a big leap to start using melee weapons?

oh you can 2 or 3 shot deathclaw with melee it just is a bad animation so it might hit (or not) and you need a back up weapon for enemies that you cannot get to like ones on top of buildings, bridges and sometimes you fight someone with a missile launcher or fat man that you just need to kill fast. Even with gouls you need to vats the ones that just fly at you or you will miss which is very bad with a big slow weapon and even when you hit they hit you for radiation damage.

Melee is completely viable.

It just depends on your luck with loot, your perks and your playstyle.

As you can see, there are plenty of people sharing there opinions and experiences.

Just go ahead and try it out the way you like!

Want to smash heads with a super sledge? Go for it!

Want to be a silent ninja-assassin with a chinese sword? Go for it!

Want to be walking Tank, punching Deathclaws in their ugly faces? Hell..go for it!

someone give me, with any and all perks available, the best melee damage they can get out of a given melee weapon.

I GUARANTEE them that I will most likely find MULTIPLE ranged weapons that can do just well, if not a. hell of a lot better with their perks.

Melee shouldnt be equal or less to ranged in damage, it should deal more by virtue of the fact that you have to stick your ass out in the open and run at people and things instead of just sniping them from afar.

Never said guns didn't do more damage, but that wasn't the point of the post from what I saw. He asked if it was viable and yes it is completely viable. with a laser gatling or gauss out damage melee of course but doesn't mean you can't do it. My super sledge does somewhere around 220 dmg btw it's not legendary. haven't gotten lucky on that yet. but it's not like it's weak by any means. As for using vats i usually only use it on legendary enemies to get the mutate out of the way. then smash face with it heh.

edit* I'm dumb
Have lots of strength , endurance and agility for the perk that let's you vats enemies further away.

How about a combination of melee and heavy gun focused on explosives for hard to reach enemy, missile and fatman.

heavy gun is in strength tree and missile and mini nuke get a damage bonus from heavy gun and explosive too.

The weapons are garbage. Weapons are supposed to be responsive. The attack should happen near immediately. NPCs are the ones that should have a slow wind-up time so you can see their attacks coming, but not PCs. Just to make clear; I am not saying that the weapons should be faster; I am saying that the first strike should be near instantaneous, not this rediculously delayed. I only ever use knives in combat and even they feel slow as all hell.

It makes me grate my teeth whenever I want to use them. The thing is; the [censored] bash option on my gun is faster and more effective than the sodding melee weapons!

They need a complete rework. New speeds, faster initiation. And the melee weapons shouldn't *** so much the reach, because the reach with these weapons is AWFUL. I can click right on a radroach and I'll still miss for absolutely no reason because it's supposedly out of reach. The reach doesn't seem to differentiate between a spear and a switchblade.

It svcks, it's really painful. I really wish that part of the combat were fixed alongside keybindings.

Understand also that melee combat comes in 2 varieties, each with their own perk trees.

Unarmed, which are all of your punchy weapons (eg, Knuckles, Deathclaw Gauntlets, and Powerfists to name a few.)

Then there are the Melee weapons, such as Lead Pipes, Sledgehammers, Knives, and Machetes, ect, ect, ect.

The best melee weapon I've found is the Sacrifice blade, which is a machete. This Legendary item can be taken off and put onto another Legendary item too (it's an upgrade that can be turned into a mod). So, for example, if I put on a machete which does 50% more damage to humans...

The Machete highest possible damage I think is around 120ish (I don't have max strength. It's like 108 for me). + bleeding damage (I think it's 3 points per second for 10 seconds) + the sacrifice poison damage + the 50% damage against humans (or any other extra damage you get). That can easily total around over 200 on the right targets.

There's also the fact that melee strikes can stagger enemies and even stun-lock certain ones (like super mutants). AND you can hit all enemies in front of you. You also get bonus damage with charge attacks and power attacks...

~Edit~

You can also block any melee attack as well, which blocks ALL damage from said attack.

PA gets the jetpack. Helps with those hard to reach guys

Melee is a bit underpowered considering the risk of having to get up close to your enemies. But built correctly it is perfectly viable, even on Survival, without power armor. The build struggles the hardest at the early levels, from about 6 to 20 or so, you'll find yourself using a lot of guns to at least soften them up before bashing them to death.

I've been using the unique swatter that Moe sells in Diamond City, it has reduced AP cost which lets you bash enemies over and over in VATS if they survive your initial sneak attack. Blitz is a must, especaily the second rank, as it gives you added damage the further away you are.

I haven't had to pop a lot of chems actually, even less than when I played my pure sniper. I do die quite a bit more as well as take some damage, but once the build goes over 20 or 25, you start to one shot things from sneak and can kill 2-3 enemies in a room in one VATS , and it's a lot of fun.

It kinda is a interesting discussion isnt it? Personally and reading your stories i think a big part of it is that you have to get used to it so much. This is obvious ofcourse but i have the feeling (i slashed some hammers around in all games, not much tho) that it was far more easy to use the melee weapons of FO3 and FONV. But seeing things like this:

http://gfycat.com/AnchoredIdealisticEthiopianwolf

Kinda makes me wanna make a stealth melee character, which will be more difficult because i dont think you can soak up enough damage to make it work. Any thoughts on how to accomplish that kind of CH multiplier and that perk? What was the name again?

I'm thinking about doing a Handgun/Stealth Silver Shroud in this form actually.

Right now, I'm just having fun with my main character who I made specifically just to screw around with crafting and general stuff. But I might make this my main because honestly, I enjoy using my .44 the most. (Sniping is fun too though).

Vanilla .45 combat rifles deal over 100 damage, easily have over 3 times the attack speed of something like a power fist, and have range.

Anything with the two shot legendary, even a freaking 10mm, can compete with just about any melee weapon.

Explosive ranged weapons knock melee out of the ballpark with massive limb damage and aoe damage from afar.

And the list continues for a bit further. a bit...

I just fail to see melee being anything other than a self limiter that people put on themselves because that's how they like to play. I'm fine with that, but I wished that there was optimization no matter what path you chose, not just optimization in one path

Just checking out a walkthrough from a pretty hilarious guy who plays melee only on survival difficulty. Maybe you can check him out too hehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvx_NEczFOA&feature=iv&src_vid=nnQruNgmu4A&annotation_id=annotation_3038548509.

Anyway i think a Blitz build could work pretty well on normal difficulty, which i play on might as well give it a try sometime, the WT made me pretty excited too

I understand what you say and weapons is definatly the way to go in this game, however i want something different after playing with guns. In the last fo's you could change your build by going from normal guns to energy weapons. That created a entirly different build and playstyle, well for me that is. Getting uniques from the other catagory etc etc. In this game its all a bit the same, ofcourse the perks are somewhat of a replacement for the stats in FO3/NV, but i think you can be alot at the same time, while in other FO's you couldn't really. With FO4 you can have like 3-4 different kind of builds max in my opinion, charisma build being one that isnt really end game material. Melee or guns is the choice, already did guns so melee can be a next consideration.