without VATS

Yes, but it wasn't nearly as good. I quickly went back to using VATS half the time especially vs. stunlocking creatures (deathclaw).

It is too good to pass up. Especially Blitz.

Good to know you can make one that is good in combat regardless of VATS.

but i wonder how melee in this goes against something like super mutant, deathclaw (especially legendary). and maybe behemoth. even with VATS i think they can very easy to beat u up right?

I never play melee in the fallout series.

After watching some youtube melee footage i will definitly not

I did melee in FO3 but it just isn't working for me in this game. It doesn't seem to fit or make sense in the world.

Eh...maybe after a couple times through the game I'll give it another go.

I loved unarmed in FO3 and NV, but with fist weapons being unavailable in PA and enemies that explode violently on death, this looks much less attractive.

I use melee with power armor. Well, so far I have only used my armor onece exept for the intriduction of it. When not in power armor I use auto rifle and melee when I get closer. In a fight I try to advance as quickly as possible because when I reach a ranged enemy he is screwed because of the interrupts the melee gives.

Dont put last point in melee damage, its bugged, i have lvl 45 on survival melee and 5/5 perk is bugged, i do no damage now. Disarm is op, works on every enemy with guns, but this bug is making me think about refund

It strongly depends on difficulty.

On Very Easy, Easy, Normal or Hard, you can play as a tank in real-time without VATS.

While I myself tried to use only melee weapons, grenades are good addition to this build.

Moving Target, Toughness, Iron fist/Big leagues, Armorer, Blacksmith and Rooted will help you survive almost everything.

And don't forget that there is huge amount of drugs in F4, which can help you if everything else fails.

On Very hard or Survival, I would definitely suggest using VATS and Blitz. Blitz is unbelievably OP. You will teleport from one enemy to another and deal huge damage.

Just remember, there's no level cap. You can build great melee character and on the later stages of game, add (for example) heavy weapons. You're not locked in your character development.

Being able to fight in close combat is great for each build, even sniper build can screw up and end up being attacked on short distance. And in dungeons... sorry, I mean buildings , there are many places where you simply have to fight on very short distances.

Long story short - you can make really powerful melee build, but it's kinda boring. I would strongly recommend to use combination of melee build + any type of ranged weapons that you like (I suggest heavy, It goes best together).

I feel that if you're not playing melee in VATS you're doing it wrong. You're missing out on way too many perks that actually make melee viable and fun.

Actually vats makes you take damage on survival so its not viable. But Big leagues perk is bugged so doesnt make any difference, just dont play melee

Sneyky Ninja with 40% bonus-to-robots-chinese-sword or a sledgehammer with bonus damage to full health targets and the 10x bonus dmg to stealth attacks is a viable melee-build^^

btw what about those big crazy boss like Behemoth?