How to Ignore Your Guns 2.0

If you're a returning friend, then you've already got an idea of what this guide is all about. If you're new here, then welcome! This guide will teach you to put away those actual guns and start using your metaphorical ones. In essence, by following this guide fully you'll be able to play on Normal & Hard difficulty games without having to shoot a gun at anything (except for some notable exceptions) and you'll be able to play on Nightmare as long as you're not being a complete mong.

Basic Strategy

This guide has changed a lot over the past year or so that the game has been updated and developed, so its time to rewrite this puppy from scratch. Welcome to "How to Ignore Your Guns 2.0".

Your goal is to stay as close to your enemies at all times, ensuring that you're constantly landing melee hits as often as you're allowed to do so. If you've done it properly then you'll almost never drop below half of your health, even on Nightmare difficulty.

Proper Melee Etiquette for this guide demands that you're using a scythe and charging your melee attacks. This releases a large sweeping attack that hits multiple times on each swing and combos together with the fluidity of liquid. This will also often stunlock enemies and prevent them from doing as much potential damage, effectively making you a CC god.

This will be explained later on, but if an ally is low on health, be a friend, run over, and heal them up with a Dragonheart. Take some of the burden that they can't, and you'll all be right as rain.

Essentials

Traits:
Vigor : Modifies Health

Spirit : Increases Mod Power Generation

Keeper's Blessing : Increased Elemental Resistance

Mother's Blessing : Increased Ranged Resistance

Triage : Increased Healing from all sources

Will to Live : Increased Health while wounded

Arcane Strike : Increased Mod Power generated from Melee

Bark Skin : Increased Percentile Armor

Guardian's Blessing : Increased Melee Resistance

Rapid Strike : Increased Melee Speed

*This is not the order in which they appear, or even necessarily the order in which to level them, but simply the ones that are essential to the build. You can of course benefit from other traits, but these are the ones that you NEED to make this build function to the best of its ability.*

Weapons:
Riven : Melee weapon, Scythe, Mod Power is a passive Life Stealing Buff, it also looks sick as ♥♥♥♥. The only problem is that on some armor sets it can make you look like an idiot.

Any Moddable Long Gun : Attach Corrosive Aura, and use this when there's a boss who just doesn't want to play fair. There's a couple bosses like this, so don't be afraid level this puppy up.

Any Moddable Sidearm : Attach Song of Swords, and use this baby to hip-snipe any floating adds that refuse to engage in the honorable art of melee combat. My suggested gun is the Magnum Revolver, but any moddable sidearm is fine for the purposes of this build.

**It may be counter-intuitive to a melee build, but I can forgive you for shooting here and there when you find it necessary; just know that I'm judging you for it.**

Amulet(s):
Mender's Charm : All healing you receive is increased by 50%, and using a Dragonheart heals nearby allies for 50% of a Dragonheart's normal healing. Swoop in and save the day, pal.

Ring(s):
Leech Ember : Melee Strikes Heal (even more!), this should be an obvious pick.

Root Circlet : Melee 15% faster, ensures that your stunlocking and healing is optimized.

Armor:
Scrapper Armor : This armor set's skill is Challenger, which increases all damage done to enemies within a 5 meter radius; this is wicked nice, especially since the armor itself has some decent values and is medium weight. Take this is you're feeling spicy, and wanna get in the thick of it. You'll kill most enemies you run into before you start taking damage, but just keep in mind that you're not a juggernaut.
~OR~
Void Armor : The OG armor set to take, this has some heavier defensive value but it'll make your dodging slow. The ability on it is a damage buff with five stacks, and when you take damage from enemies, one of those stacks will be consumed to add a stack to a defensive buff. It also pairs well with Riven, so you don't look like a total goon as you run from place to place. Want to play defensively and offensively? This set is probably for you then.
~OR~
Leto's Armor : Introduced in the free DLC for Leto's Lab, this armor has the highest armor value in the base game. You cannot dodge in this set, and if you try to you will instead Pratfall (dive forward and collapse on the ground) which is actually still viable; the move has a hit box for damaging enemies and gives a slight tremor effect around it. Just know that you'll often be taking a lot of damage at range, since you move as fast as a flat-wheeled bicycle. If you want to relive MW3's Juggernaut Killstreak, then this is definitely the right armor set for you.

REMEMBER : These are the bare essentials; and they don't guarantee a perfect experience either. The game is meant to be played in a mix of range and melee; so while this may feel fun to play, it is in no way at all an OPTIMAL build. Just one that allows you to ♥♥♥♥ around a bit with melee.

Closing Words

1) Yes, this works, but its not optimal. Its just here to have some fun folks.
2) This does in fact work on Nightmare. Is it EASY to play on Nightmare? NO! But I've solo-cleared a run of the story with this, so I'm sure you can do it too.
3) If you talk ♥♥♥♥, your comment is gone. I'm here for constructive criticism and critiques, not arguing.
4) If you have a drastically different build than what I've presented, then feel free to post it in the comments. I love ON-TOPIC discussion, and if I'm feeling up to it I'll even try to stop being a lazy slug and include it here, with credit given where its deserved.
5) Thanks for taking the time to read this horrible guide. I know its probably longer than it needs to be, but you stuck it out anyways, so kudos to you. I hope you enjoyed what you read within, and I also hope that you have a fun time tanking it out in Remnant!

[Deltarizon]

I mean there are definitely ways to use other melee rings for melee builds, but more often than not I feel like they take a bit too much work to want to use them. Like the brother bands, they're cool but not cool enough to warrant using them. Unclean one is meme but just that, meme. You can of course use whatever rings you want, so if you disagree or want to experiment then be my guest, but I know I sure don't want to do all that work.

[UnknownSoldier0]

Are none of the other melee rings pog? There are tons and tons of rings that have to due with melee damage speed and stuff, have u tried em out?

[Deltarizon]

Alright folks, I've finally gotten off my ass and slightly updated what you need to make this bad boy work again. If you're using an old version of this, make sure to update your weapons and mods so you don't get screwed out in the field.

[Brukel]

11/10, would decapitate the Harrow again.

[Deltarizon]

Excellent, that's the best I could hope for

[Rebann]

AS THE FILTHY CASUAL I AM
(And also only on my first playthrough..)
I probably won't be trying this build any time soon. BUT I will try it.

At the very least I got a good giggle out of it.

[Deltarizon]

Thanks for the heads up, was not aware that they had changed these items.

[Louvel Hellfire]

oh My gaWd dIs gUid so casur xdddd

Though in all fairness, this is a pretty good guide. Melee is pretty fun and does make me feel pretty powerful.

Though you do want to update the descriptions of Cleansing Jewel since that doesn't increase Healing Effectiveness. That's Mender's Charm. If it used to be Cleansing Jewel, don't yell at me.

Also the same goes with Root Circlet since it's only 15% melee speed increase.

Other than that, I will repeat what I said, this is a pretty good guide, especially for a mechanic that's more of last resort when out of ammo. Can't be a last resort when it's your main tactic, and this guide makes melee pretty reliable.

[Deltarizon]

No, I leave the armor choice up to the user. If you absolutely need a recommendation for an Armor Set for this, then go big brains and grab the Void armor for higher defense values and even less stagger. You'll roll like a sticky turd, but then again the whole point of this build is essentially ignoring the roll mechanic, so I guess whatever flies.

[A R M P I T]

you forgot the armor