Play Melee Fallout 4?

[pjedilord]

I rarely play Melee in Fallout 4 to many great guns for SS, how is melee great to
play when they have guns? when and why do people use melee weapons?
Surprized vast melee weapons in the game. What the best Melee weapon?

[therussmeister]

Melee is pretty powerful if you get the right perks, esp. Rooted and Blitz. I believe if you stand still before you Blitz then the Rooted and Blitz perks stack, which is pretty devastating.

Outside of VATS it's not great, the guy you're fighting blocks your attacks while his buddies blast away at you. Best weapon is the Rockville Slugger from the swatter guy in DC. You'll need Science perks to mod it up, I don't think I ever found any weapons that had decent mods that I could remove and add to the RS.

Have to say I prefer guns, but it was fun doing a melee build to try it out.

[MoonC A T]

Originally posted by pjedilord:

I rarely play Melee in Fallout 4 to many great guns for SS, how is melee great to
play when they have guns? when and why do people use melee weapons?
Surprized vast melee weapons in the game. What the best Melee weapon?

Not all enemies carry guns, in fact, quite a bit don't.
I am a fan of explosive weapons mainly due to how effective they are. I started getting into melee when I realized it is not a good idea to fire these in close quarters for obvious reasons.

When an enemy closes, it's good to have a melee foundation for a quick one hit melee kill. Keep in mind that if you can't kill the enemy in one hit at close quarters, you are guaranteed to take damage.

Big League perk is a good start as well as the ability to mod your weapons.

[⛥ Binli die Schreckliche ⛥]

Nope, I prefer firearms. I have over 1740 hours in Fallout 4 and never really used any melee weapons.

[pjedilord]

Interesting,what mod prefer best for melee weapons?

[MoonC A T]

Originally posted by pjedilord:

Interesting,what mod prefer best for melee weapons?

This is a hard question because every melee weapon has different mods. I carry the throat slicer and I think the only mod available for that is the blade length, but each length has separate effects.

[MortVent]

Legendary or mods you really want to consider how you use melee.

Sneak attack one hit wonder? Go for what ever gives the most upfront damage (such as a rocket assist on a bat)
Rapidly slice and dice? Go for something with bleed or other DoT bonuses (such as a serrated blade mod)

So depends on the weapon and role you want to use it in.

For overpowered there is always the barbarian CC sword..... just look up someone playing as the dovakin in fallout 4 with it on youtube the bonuses are insane for melee.

[pjedilord]

Thanks

[wtiger27]

Atom's Judgement. What a lot of fun it is to use. If perked right, melee is very powerful in the game and a lot of fun. Ether a "Stealthy" style or " In your Face. "

When and if I do another Survival run, it is going to be a melee focus one. No worries about ammo. And with the increase of damage you are capable of doing in Survival, melee has to be extremely powerful.

[Ashling]

There's a really cool progression from light-medium speed melee weapons at the beginning to slow heavy weapons mid-game and then to the ripper (fast) at the end game.
You can still use any speed, they not only make every speed feel viable, but they also showed how through introducing you to the weapon speeds at different points in the game.

That being said, the AI doesn't feel like it was designed with a melee-focused character in mind. They still hide in cover like a deranged man with half a deathclaw arm strapped to his wrist isn't charging right for them. And it's sometimes difficult to predict how much damage you'll take in a given dead sprint to your enemy as legendary enemies/difficulty/ and weapon type can change that number.

How I usually design my melee builds is have my melee weapon be a "main secondary" in that it's the weapon I use for all the easy enemies. Then I'll use a weapon that has rare/expensive ammo or something (fatman for example) for anyone who I simply no longer want to see anymore. You could technically do this with any weapon (or just use heavy weapons flat out). However, melee weapon build's singular focus, getting close to an enemy, tends to fit heavy weapons as a secondary skill tree more because, in a melee build, you only really need 1 weapon that takes no ammo while all the other play styles do require ammo management and often multiple weapons which really emphasizes the heavy in heavy weapons.
Of course you don't need to use melee weapons, ever, I just feel like there's a kind of synergy there.

Edit: It's also fun playing with the ripper and just watching ghouls run into your meat grinder. They simply can't hurt you.

[MoonC A T]

Does the Ripper stagger and prevent counterattacks?

[kaffekoppen]

I rarely play Melee in Fallout 4 to many great guns for SS, how is melee great to
play when they have guns? when and why do people use melee weapons?
Surprized vast melee weapons in the game. What the best Melee weapon?

Melee is actually incredibly powerful in Fallout 4, especially on higher difficulties. Why? Well, HP scaling on higher difficulties is pretty extreme for some enemies like super mutants, and you can boost your melee damage much more through gear and consumables than you can gun damage.

For melee, you can boost your damage for each point of strength. You can get a natural 12 strength, but on top of that you can wear all strength armor (power armor actually makes you weaker in this case, don't use it for endgame melee builds), and there are still a ton of temporary strength buffs as well.

On top of that, melee weapons are just insanely strong in general, especially after Nuka World.

Best melee weapons? Here are some top tier weapons:

- Atom's Judgement
- Instigating/VATS enhanced baseball bat or sledgehammer (with Nuka World upgrades), e.g. Rockville Slugger from Diamond City
- Instigating Disciples Blade (Throatcutter if you can't get it)
- Wounding/Staggering/Furious ripper

Overall, I view melee builds as the top tier damage dealers, but they require more investment and gear before they really shine, and you really want to use VATS too. You won't start out super powerful.

PS: For Nuka World faction perks, you really want the one from the Pack. On the other hand, the Disciples have a perk that doesn't work against all enemies, so it's actually kind of bad. Even for a melee build, I go for Pack + Operators.

Originally posted by MoonCAT:

Does the Ripper stagger and prevent counterattacks?

Not enough to be useful, but there is a version called The Harvester that has the "staggering" legendary effect. You can pretty much lock down the enemy with it.