I play on the higher difficulties and I'm only a few hours in, but It seems I'm switching to a ranged weapon and kiting almost every other fight, more so than the start of other FO games. I have maxed End/Str....

When I try to stick to melee I just end up having to spam stimpacks every second and still get rekt. If the enemy has a shotgun or minigun it's usually instant game over. Don't get me started on DeathClaw lol. And ughh Turrets.

Does anyone have any tips? Any nice location for a very good melee/unarmed weapon or some OP armor (other than PA) around the starting corner?

Also anyone notice the attack speed on regular melee attacks is insanely low? Their DPS must be worse than any ranged weapon in the game. It almost feels bugged its so bad.

I looked this up when theory crafting for my next melee build, but it seems you can find two unique weapons, the cavalry combat knife and the big jim wrench, fairly early (I looked those up on youtube). Also I found a unique bat with good stats at a vendor in diamond city!

So I got Power Fist and it's not as terrible anymore, but still well behind guns so far because the insane damage I take. Sadly it turns out you can't use Unarmed while in Power Armor, WHAT!? And sprinting drains the Fusion Core like crazy even with that Nuclear Physicist. There goes the perma-PA unarmed/melee build idea.

I'm not sure what to try now, selecting a mostly any gun in my inventory so far is always > any melee/unarmed invested build I try. But I have yet to try a vats heavy build, with clover/sprint and action boy, not a fan of VATS but if its the only thing to make unarmed half-way decent I may as well.

Any melee/unarmed-player here at higher levels, does it even out eventually? Is a full VATS oriented melee build the savior of melee in this game at high difficulties?

Well against some enemies it just makes sense that you're going to do worse with melee than guns. Deathclaws for example.....

But, melee can actually be stronger against other melee-using enemies such as ghouls, whose attacks can be blocked you're holding a melee weapon. If you get good at using the block mechanic you can definitely beat these types of enemies down while taking less damage than if you had used a gun, since kiting is no longer anywhere near as effective in avoiding melee attacks as it was in previous games.

I'm currently going to switch to a VATS oriented build and see how it turns out.

BTW, Someone has to mod Unarmed into Power Armor, it's so stupid that Power Fist doesn't work with Power Armor.

Hmm seems even with a pure Vats build PA is near mandatory for reliable melee combat on Survival. I've been killed during the VATS animation by tough mobs/turrets/shotguns when not wearing it.

This makes Unarmed basically useless as you can't use it with PA. Ugh Bethesda.

On Very Hard it is viable. Hit strafe hit strafe. Use cover and sprint into position. The player character can leap about and sprint-heavy hit in a bit of acrobatics.

I'm surprised they reduced so many kill cam moves. I loved those. Makes it not nearly as satisfying as Skyrim.

Be advised I've been shooting and meleeing this playthrough. If not wanting to shoot then taking pure melee perks will no doubt help

I've pretty much solved this issue by being extremely PA reliant, which is actually kinda fun once you get cool upgrades (SCIENCE) and maximize Fusion Cores (Scrounger/Nuclear).

Reminds me of New Vegas hardcoe mode in a way, since I live and breath with PA