[MvM] Melee Heavy: The complete guide of introducing fist to face

You've done it all: You've burned Tanks with the Phlogistinator. You've blasted robots with your Rockets and played a melody of death for the metal scourge. You've built some stuff and had them shoot the tin cans for you. You've even relaxed on your self-built armchair while said stuff does all the work for you!

What's there left to do? The manliest form of battle there is: Man-to-man combat! And since your enemies aren't even men, there is no way you can lose!

What is man-to-man combat?

Back in the early days of civilization when sticks had yet to be invented, men had to settle their disputes by bringing their points across their oppositions skulls, the points being their fists. With the help of this guide, you're going to re-introduce this fine tradition by bringing down the fear of the deity of your choice upon the Robot horde.

The four choices for fisticuffs

Now that we've clarified what it means to go toe-to-toe with someone, we're going to bring out the four different methods you can use to crush your opposition.

Fists of Steel

When your opponents are cowards that bring out guns instead of the most honorable weapon, you're going to need something that evens out the playing field.

The Fists of Steel give that survivability in your early stages when you have yet to get the money you need to become the juggernaut you should be and in the later stages of a mission turn you into the second Rasputin, being able to take tons of punishment and dish as much of it out as you take.

Killing Gloves of Boxing

While the Fists of Steel give you sheer bulk, you'll notice pretty quick that you need to hit the robots quite a few times before their heads turn into mush. The KGB offers you 3 seconds of crits for every Robot you break, easily turning any close-range squabble into a swift destruction for anyone near your giant fists.

You main plan is simple: Land a killing blow on a robot that's close to death's door and escort the rest of its kind through that door with the crits you've now received. Doubled with your maximum firing speed and health on kill, once you get that elecricity on your gloves, everything is going to die around you.

Eviction Notice

Right now, you have two options: Be practically unstoppable with the Fists of Steel, or destroy everything with a pair of Killing Gloves of Boxing. But what if you just want to bring out that inner Fist of the North Star and just throw punches like nobody's business?

The Eviction Notice is your friend. Simply max out your firing speed and become the fastest fat man in the Badlands. Coupled with a maxed out movement speed, you can easily circle-strafe giants into submission while their primitive toaster-minds can't comprehend what is even hitting them.

The weaker damage output and greater vulnerability for damage will hamper your success early on, however. If you want to dish out some eviction notices during the early waves of a mission, you're either going to have to learn the arts of exploting your incredible movement speed or pick your battles carefully.

Warrior's Spirit

If you want easy access to damage and a possible +150 health on kill later on, this pair of bear hands is the best choice for your bare hands.

While the Eviction Notice makes up for its +20% damage vulnerability with its movement speed bonus, the Warrior's Spirit gives you a rather heavy +30% damage vulnerability in exchange for +30% damage and 50 health on kill. The big vulnerability makes your early fights really tricky (especially without a Medic to back you up) and will hamper your success until you start getting enough resistances to balance it out. While your first idea may be to simply drop some Uber canteens to help you survive enough to claw the bulbs out of their hollow heads, the price can easily slow down your upgrade progress too much and you'll fall off harder than the Spy's minecart in Bigrock.

Lunchtime goods: The best meal for the job

The Sandvich

Due to your battles focusing primarily in CQC, you can easily end up in a scenario where the Robots die around you to teammates, a Sentry Gun shooting them or the occasional Sentry Buster decides to help you win. These situations are really bad for you, because your entire gameplan relies on you dealing those lethal punches that in turn help you keep dealing those punches.
Bring yourself back to full health in a pinch, or give your friends a quick lunch break (Sharing is caring!) the Sandvich is the go-to snack for any Heavy Weapons worth his weight.

Buffalo Steak Sandvich

Nothing makes more sense than becoming stronger and weaker at the same time after scarfing down an entire steak.

The Buffalo Steak Sandvich gives you minicrits and more movement speed (which is good later on when you start to have full resistances and movement speed), but makes you more vulnerable to all sources of damage. Due to this fact, it's only sensible to run with the Fists of Steel. The Killing Gloves of Boxing already grant you full crits for a kill and using it with the Eviction Notice and Warrior's Spirit will make you too fragile to survive any close-range fight. If the mission is friendly enough with money or you have a nice surplus to go, you can invest in a couple of Uber canteens to ensure those pesky Robots don't just knock you around before you knock them down.

Dalokohs Bar

Only mentioned here due to being an alternative but unlike the Steak which gives you minicrits and movement speed and Sandvich which gives you full health on use, it only gives you +50 max health (which does not stack with Medic's overheal) and can't be shared with teammates. There will never be a situation where you would use this over your other choices, you might as well ignore this item alltogether.

General advice for the road of violence

Upgrading: How to not die before they do

Your first upgrades should be invested into firing speed and health on kill, with two points for both (unless the mission only starts you off with $400, in which case one point to firing speed and two for health on kill)

If your team has a Medic, you can ignore the heal on kill upgrades to max out your firing speed (you still should invest $200 into them since the Medic can't be expected to become your pocket)

After bringing out a comfortable ratio between fists swinging and fists colliding, you should max out your upgrades to help you survive even the biggest fights against the metal menace. When upgrading your resistances, you should pay attention to the Robots you're about to face in a wave and upgrade your resistances in conjuctions with their damage dealers: If the wave has a lot of explosives, invest in blast damage. The same logic goes to blast and fire damage.

However, upgrades and resistances alone are not going to keep you alive. Which brings us to our next point:

Pick your battles: Knowledge is power

Due to your range being limited to the length of your arms, you should to be very careful about the number of enemies you choose to battle with. You can fight enemies fairly well with your Fists of Steel or the KGB gives you that deadly advantage with the guaranteed crits (and random crits that help you bring the former into play) but melee robots are going to be your double-edged sword.
While melee robots fight you on equal terms, you can punish them easily for whiffing attacks and replenish your health or gain crits, you can't get resistance for their attacks and big numbers of them are going to mean trouble for you, especially if you have the Fists of Steel.

Giant combat: Giant fists versus metal giants

While Giant robots are going to sound like enemies you're not going to do well against, it depends entirely on your choice of fisticuffs from earlier. With the KGB, you can use the 3 seconds of crits to break their joints while the occasional smaller robot runs in to keep your criticals swinging until even mountains crumble before you.
Your main plan of doing battle with Giants is to get up close and personal with them and begin to circle them violently. This will confuse some Giants as they can't keep up with your movement speed (if you have Eviction Notice) and some Soldier Giants simply don't want to shoot at something directly in front of them.
But the main problem Giant robots bring are their bigger health pools, which mean you can't take them down as easily as you would with the smaller rabble. So your main plan is to act like you're Spy and wait for an opportunity that allows you to go in and rumble, usually when the Giant is busy shooting at something else or otherwise distracted.

Tanks: A big box with a bomb

Tanks are by far your easiest enemy: They don't even care about fighting back, their only goal is to reach point B from point A. Your fists deal as much damage to a Tank as they would to any other enemy on the wave and if you have the KGB, you can deal some serious damage to a Tank as long as you can keep the crits active. You are more useful as a robot smasher than Tank buster, so you should only focus on the Tank if there is nothing else to fight.

Coup de grâce: The final touch

The best way to initiate on the mindless automatons is to look them right in their eyesockets and deliver your best battlecry. This will demoralize them enough to let you put them out of their misery before they have time to recall that they don't possess any morality to speak of.

If you land the final blow on a robot of the wave, your only choice is to taunt. Send a message to the robots that are yet to come that their assault force was just beaten by a man who didn't even deem it necessary to expend a single round of ammunition.

[Diglet098]

pootis

[Horsefly]

very nice

[Girliepop who just woke up]

I approve. Star platinum will destroy the metal menace

[ʸᵃʷⁿ]

OMG XD our plan worked !!

[The One Of Wonders]

i am one punch heavy

and i approve of this