Melee seriously needs a rework.

[Dusty]

The game is essentially a DPS race since you are dealing with waves after waves of enemies. The quicker you can put them down the better. So your best bet would be investing heavily into damage and never let enemies close. Hence the Range and Magic meta at the moment.

Melee CAN dish out damage (although not as efficiently since positioning and movement) but they also need other stats such as movement speed and either dodge or block. Now here's the problem. If you go block, the bulkie will stun you and you lose an entire turn. If you go dodge there's also a high damaging enemy in the game that ignores dodge, one hit and you lose the Confidence buff. And most of the time it's impossible to avoid fighting these enemies since your melee hero is close to the mist in the frontline. So most of the time you are ♥♥♥♥♥♥ if a said enemy spawns near you.

Melee either needs something that negates stun or add another support weapon that can cure any debuff. E.g., a priest scepter and make bulkies act after other enemies.

Ranged playstyle is so strong because you never get hit from the top of your watch tower. So you get to reap the full benefit of Confidence perk.

Speaking of the Confidence perk, can you guys fix the thing where if you equip an item that gives you +health, your current health doesn't actually go up along with the max health? You actually hinder yourself by equipping new items. I'm sure this is an oversight.

Edit: Since a lot of people are discussing in this post. I'd like to summarize some points people are making.
1. Melee carries extra risks of getting hit, getting stunned, etc. In late game getting stunned is pretty much a death sentence.
2. Melee's damage output is fine, not as powerful as some ridiculously strong ranged weapons like Shortbow or Tome of course.
3. Melee needs other stats like movement, armor, dodge, resistance, block, etc. While ranged or magic weapons can just dump all the stats into damage.
4. Based on how the game is currently paced, you wanna kill the enemies outright most of the time rather than CC them. That means weapons like Hammer or Scepter (yes it's a melee weapon) kind falls off compared to weapons like Dagger or Greatsword. If you don't kill enemies, they hit your walls, they run all over the place and it's hard for melee to catch up. That means more of then not it's hard for melee to solo a side. While most ranged weapons can do pretty comfortably (not 2H Crossbow of course...)
5. The weapon is also directly tied to economy. You need to invest a lot of stuff into melee build. Your wall get hit more often, means you spend extra materials repairing walls, laying down traps, installing ballista or trebuchet, etc. You also need to invest in a blacksmith while it's easier just ignoring melee and invest all your resources into magic or range.
6. Game could use some mechanic tweaks like pickups or melee-oriented enemies to indirectly encourages a melee playstyle, or at least, a balanced playstyle. Right now range or magic are just the most optimal route to go for and it's way more efficient and powerful than melee.

[JuX]

Melee is more of a secondary weapon with daggers being the exception, when you get multi-target skills.

Underline issue with melee how often they end their turns in high risk areas to become seriously debuffed by ranged enemies. While in comparison ranged characters can always end their turns in safe zones and stack nothing but damage, crits and multi-targets.

[licker34]

There are clear balance issues with various weapons, but melee isn't as bad as it is being made out to be.

Certainly some melee weapons are probably weaker than the alternatives in the other schools (or maybe not, but rifles and pistols are just complete garbage in my opinion), but you can build some great characters based off of hammers and spears. Yes you need movement, but maybe just use a teleport crystal or 2nd set sword if you can't pack it on through items or levels.

If you are often ending your turn in bad places then that's more a failure of you to plan correctly (or sometimes just RNG hosing you with where the monsters are coming from) than it is anything about melee generally. Also you can rely on stuns to build a wall you can hide behind...

[Cyborg009]

try dagger and stack multi hit a couple times. ;)

[MajesticIX]

I look at the kills per action point and you can't really compete with propagation and multi-hit weapons. Things like the 1-hand sword simply can't kill enough enemies late game. The spear is quite viable with accuracy on Apoc 4 and the dagger with multi-hit is obviously the best melee weapon in the game.

One thing I noticed as I play with more melee/trash weapons is you get penalized for taking damage as a character in your rating--which is fine except if you play with Vampire. So by the end of night, my character has full health but took a ton of damage because I focused damage on him vs my defenses. You should only get penalized for the damage you can't recover from things like potions and perks.

That said, I'm still having fun laying waste to monsters and trying to make odd weapon combos work.

The pistol is actually pretty decent if you use it correctly. I seem to be able to 1-shot runners with the claw (with little dodge chance) from great distances which builds momentum, then I fire off a 1-shot momentum kill on virtually anything else and repeat. Toss in a grapeshot if there is a crowd nearby. The claw is much less effective on everything else but the runners. We'll see how that keeps up as I make my way into the late game.

[Waschbär42]

Originally posted by MajesticIX:

One thing I noticed as I play with more melee/trash weapons is you get penalized for taking damage as a character in your rating--which is fine except if you play with Vampire. So by the end of night, my character has full health but took a ton of damage because I focused damage on him vs my defenses. You should only get penalized for the damage you can't recover from things like potions and perks.

Yeah, noticed that too but I'm not really sure if you get really penalized or if that specific rating actually is relevant for anything. Therefore wondering if it is/what's the point

About melee being underpowered: I think it is perfectly viable, especially if you are short on mana and/or get +skill range. But it is underpowered compared to range in general and especially the top dogs (multi hit and propagation skills).
So maybe nerf those (like limit # of multi hits to 4 or something, decrease prop % damage)

[Dusty]

Originally posted by MajesticIX:

I look at the kills per action point and you can't really compete with propagation and multi-hit weapons. Things like the 1-hand sword simply can't kill enough enemies late game. The spear is quite viable with accuracy on Apoc 4 and the dagger with multi-hit is obviously the best melee weapon in the game.

One thing I noticed as I play with more melee/trash weapons is you get penalized for taking damage as a character in your rating--which is fine except if you play with Vampire. So by the end of night, my character has full health but took a ton of damage because I focused damage on him vs my defenses. You should only get penalized for the damage you can't recover from things like potions and perks.

That said, I'm still having fun laying waste to monsters and trying to make odd weapon combos work.

The pistol is actually pretty decent if you use it correctly. I seem to be able to 1-shot runners with the claw (with little dodge chance) from great distances which builds momentum, then I fire off a 1-shot momentum kill on virtually anything else and repeat. Toss in a grapeshot if there is a crowd nearby. The claw is much less effective on everything else but the runners. We'll see how that keeps up as I make my way into the late game.

Indeed, Dagger might be the best melee weapon there is, maybe contested by a really good Greatsword build. But Dagger still wins in terms of survivalability since you don't actually have to tank damage. Dagger is a melee weapon that functions like a mobile ranged weapon.
Speaking of the rating penalties, does the Damage-Taken penalty affect the rewards in any way?

[moosc]

Melee is not viable in the current context of the game.

Most you-tubers playing the game usually form their Heroes into Bow/magic users heavy groups. They do this as the AOE of bow armed Heroes far surpasses that of the Melee armed Heroes.
In my heroes even Melee characters has a bow/pistol of some sort to help when Mist Creatures are distant. None the less, Spear, Hammer or sword armed Heroes can play a part in the game to a lessor extent than what should be seen as desireable at least in my opinion.

[Khnemu]

The problem is melee has too many negatives.
The first one being the positionning. Ranged weapons allow you to fire from up a tower (with a few +range, you can hit nearly the whole map, too). So you just stay put, comfortably behind walls and kill enemies from there.
Melee on the other hand has to go from one side to another and even with teleporters, it's much harder because you'll lose turns moving.
Melee can also get stunned, melee has a lot of repositionning attacks (sword for instance moves your hero on most attacks) and requires a different path for heroes often more focused on defense, dodge or block which means less attack focused level ups.

I feel that ranged is a bit too strong and melee a bit too weak for it to compensate all those disavantages. If it was much stronger than ranged then it would be worth the risk to use it.

[MajesticIX]

Yeah ranged is no doubt the better option in the game as is. At this point I'm trying out other build options, both in weapons and building/defense. I still manage to find my way back to the tried and true weapons--short/long bow/druid staff. Doing a no seer run on Apoc 4 with just slow traps right now. Got through night 10 so the rest is gravy.

The vampire/rating thing doesn't impact anything other than not getting an S rating :) -- I normally never bother with Vampire but I was wielding dual daggers and felt like "Dracula Untold"

[Waschbär42]

Still not saying that melee isn't relatively underpowered but here is a yt vid of a guy doing melee only on apo4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8f8k8It128

He seems to have all essence rewards unlocked already but still proof of melee being somewhat viable on higher diff.

[MajesticIX]

That's before the patch FYI. The patch made things quite a bit harder, but melee is still doable I'm sure. I'll probably try a go at it after I wrap up my no seer run. Probably won't even bother with the seer on melee either.

[Leisen]

I don't think melee needs rework. Instead, new monsters or new mechanism must be introduced to penalize glass cannon range heroes stay behind the wall and reward melee heroes tanking damage in the frontline. For example:

1. Zombie grenadier

If it fire upon a range hero in a watch tower it will dismantle the tower and nearby building in one shot or two. However a melee hero can decide to stay in the middle of the horde and transfer the damage to nearby zombies.

2. Things from below

It will spawn next to any hero. The wall cannot protect your hero every time. Sometimes you would rather stay outside of city to make sure they won't spawn in the wall and damage valuable buildings.

3. Trebuchet

It will be deployed at some distance away. Heroes must leave the city to destroy the siege engine or it will destroy buildings in the city. However, the zombies will be prepared to ambush them enroute.

[Vambran]

Only good melee right now is the dagger. Can hit up to 8 targets at range for a single action point. You can do this 3 times per turn. Thats up to 24 targets with no restrictions except for line of sight. And anything that lives will be crippled and die from the poison. After you spam your daggers you can decide if you want to go in close and poke a guy but i prefer to end my turn out of range.

[hilfazer]

Originally posted by Vambran:

Only good melee right now is the dagger. Can hit up to 8 targets at range for a single action point. You can do this 3 times per turn. Thats up to 24 targets with no restrictions except for line of sight. And anything that lives will be crippled and die from the poison. After you spam your daggers you can decide if you want to go in close and poke a guy but i prefer to end my turn out of range.

Dagger throw costs 2 actions points. 1 is its mana cost.

[Waschbär42]

Originally posted by Vambran:

Only good melee right now is the dagger. Can hit up to 8 targets at range for a single action point. You can do this 3 times per turn. Thats up to 24 targets with no restrictions except for line of sight. And anything that lives will be crippled and die from the poison. After you spam your daggers you can decide if you want to go in close and poke a guy but i prefer to end my turn out of range.

Wow, none of the numbers you stated are correct - none! Quite an achievement!^^

Like hilfazer said, the throwing skill costs 2 ap and 1 mp. Also, the skill can only be used 2 times a turn, not 3. Also also, the skill starts with 3 multi hits, not 8 ...
I could also point out the default limited range and pretty low poison dmg but in the end I have to agree that the dagger probably is "the best melee" weapon even without the number hyperbole oO