Borderlands Enhanced: Melee Mordecai Guide

This guide is about one of mordecai's builds; Melee.
guide showcasing:
weapons
skill trees
effectiveness
other items
why melee Mordecai?

Basics To Melee

For starters, all classes have a melee and are mostly do the same damage on any level by default,
some characters can increase melee effectiveness by skills, COMS and bladed guns,
some guns can be bladed like this suckerpunch (enhanced exclusive) .

these are the only types of guns that can have blades:

• shotguns
  
• pistol repeaters
  
• pistol revolvers

while melee is almost always out classed by guns, it can still be good, melee attacks can sometimes stun an enemy for a single second giving you an advantage and it is better to melee an enemy if out of ammo, but it is unwise to just go out running at bandits or lance with a crazed look in your eye and a small bladed pea shooter.

something to note is that all melee has infinite vertical range so this means you can hit a rakk way up in the sky if you are directly under it.

bladed pistols are slower than bladed shotguns and it is better to not spam pistol melees but to time it, shotguns may be faster but are much weaker as most purple and above pistol blades do at least 150 - 200% more melee DPS.

small chart of melee bonuses on guns

• 100% - common blades
  
• 150% - shotguns or blue blades
  
• 200% - purple or legendary blades
  
• 300% - the elusive reaper blade
  
• 500% - the ultimate champion sucker punch

think of it like sniper crit bonuses

Why Melee Mordecai?

Firstly Mordecai is alot less complicated in melee compared to classes like Brick who require elemental use to be viable, and Mordecai's Melee is more raw damage than stacking elements, etc.


also it's a lot of fun

Classes With Melee bonuses

Brick The Berzerker


Brick is the true melee specialist and has an abundance of skills linked to melee, from 2 trees basically dedicated to melee, while he is a good pick for wanting reliable melee, he gets bullied in late game with a melee build and requires more elemental use for melee, while if you can find a good skirmisher or berzerker COM you could be viable, melee is still only good in early game and gun brick becomes more dominant in late game,

Lilith The Siren


Lilith is peculiar, I have never tried a melee Lilith, but I have heard there is potential, as Lilith is the strongest class by a long shot, with phasewalk being brokenly stupid and her high dps and some skills that could turn her into an invincible god of destruction, there are some weird skills that get overlooked more towards the controller skilltree that has a bunch of skills that stun enemies with phasewalk, but the third skilltree to the right's final skill is phasestrike, phasestrike boosts the phasewalk melee attack and at the final level you will deal 800% more melee dps with this skill so it could be good with a catalyst COM,

Mordecai The Hunter

Mordecai is the last class you'd expect to be a melee specialist but he has three skills that can help him in melee, the first being the most dominant being lethal strike, the second being riotous remeody and finally deadly.

Melee weapons

Now any weapon can work, that has a blade but these are the best

The Sucker Punch (enhanced)

The Sucker Punch is one of the new gearbox guns in the enhanced, and it is enhanced exclusive,
it is a machine pistol with a blade and has decent stats for a good combat weapon, but the one thing that takes it from decent to godly is the 800% melee bonus, this will take your weak
(or already strong) melee damage to insanely strong! it is a beast and can wipe out all but even the toughest buggers on pandora, most normal enemies will die and bad*sses will be severely wounded.

The Reaper (if not on enhanced)
Slice... slice...
The reaper is a extremely rare gun to get, almost as rare as a pearl,
and you should treat it like that, farming it, is a pain and I'd farm Crawmerax. or if you aren't confident in your crawmerax farming skills, then take a look at the giftshop, any ol' monkey could farm that but Crawmerax has a higher chance of dropping it.



secondary weapons
(weapons for more utility)

The Aries
the Aries is a strong gun in it's own right, but it has an insane healing ability, shooting any bugger will spawn transfusion heal particles that will make their way over to you, it's useful for fighting Crawmerax as the shock element will take out the maggots and even heal you!
use it when health is low or just to shoot some poor bugger.

elemental weapon
You should be carrying a shock or corrosive weapon to weaken enemies or for taking out shields,
the aries can subtitute for this slot



The Unforgiven (masher variant)

your fourth slot should be reserved for FFYL second wind guns,
the Unforgiven while the normal one is okay, the masher variant can deal massive damage and even one shot most enemies, this is a good gun for second winds, but any launcher can do the trick as well.
side note if you are lucky to find a bladed unforgiven then this could be a really good melee weapon as the crit bonus of the unforgiven works with melee

The Build

This is a good melee build,
lethal strike, deadly and riotous remedy are the 3 skills you want to max, the other skills don't really matter but i suggest specing into a bloodwing build as bloodwing is good for healing and with a corrosive relic you can weaken enemies, (corrosion is basically slag) some other points can go into the pistol skills cause they can be useful if an enemy from far away is buggering you or in ffyl.


deadly is a really good skill for melee, as melee attacks can crit, and pair this with a bladed unforgiven you can dish out insane DPS,



lethal strike is the number one skill you will need, it is necessary to max it out, and with COMS with 4 + lethal strike you can become an unstoppable force to reckoned with.



riotous remedy is really good in general and is a must have in any build, but melee build relies on it a lot more than other builds, the healing is incredible and is super strong as well,

The COMS



a truxican wrestler COM like this is a valuble asset to your arsenal, this can be found from the COD: Corporal round or from the Truxican Wrestler Loot Midget that can be found in the lockers of lockdown palace.

Suitable Loot Sources





chance of COM dropping

• truxican wrestler: 15%
  
• COD: Corporal: 100%
  
• Crawmerax: 0.11% (0.21% if 4 players)
  
• Lance Chest: 0.01%

Other Things.

The Assassin COM is a good subtitute if you do not have the Truxican Wrestler COM, but it lacks riotous remedy and the melee bonus dps but it does have +4 lethal strike and deadly.
so it is a nice secondary COM.




firstly if you can't find the aries then don't worry! you can swap it out for Kyro's power, it is a guaranteed drop and is a sniper rifle that has the same effect as the aries, just without the shock element. one thing to note; Kyro's does not respawn and is a one time enemy in the mission: This Female Dog Is Payback PT1

a transfusion grenade could also work but I use a longbow grenade for grenade jumping.

strategies

These are some strategies that will help you.

your equipped items should look like:

• raw dps melee
  
• elemental weapon (shock or corrosive)
  
• healing
  
• secondwind
  
• grenade of choice
  
• Truxican Wrestler or Assassin COM
  
• shield of choice (healing one or high capacity)

Always be on the move,

know what enemies are near you,

keep bloodwing for healing or to weaken enemies,

take out the strongest enemy first,

switch to your ffyl weapon if you go down,

use your grenade for utility or healing,

Aim for the head, even melee gets a crit bonus

conclusion

I hope this guide will help you in meleeing and other stuff,

I unfortunately don't have any videos (I don't have a camera and my quality sucks >:( )

but maybe in the future I'll get one,

also tell me if you manage to beat crawmerax with full melee Lmao.