Silas' Teaming Guide for Melee Mans

Introduction

So for a while I was wondering what to do for my next guide project. Perhaps something on pet grooming, or Internet Sugar Daddies: the Art of Prostitution Without Getting Screwed. Maybe audiobook versions of all my guides, for the illiterate or merely lazy.

For anyone who has read uh, basically any of my other guides, I can imagine a certain amount of skepticism at me writing a melee guide.

BUT

I did a great deal of soul-searching, long walks on the beach as the sun set and generally thinking about melee.

I came to a conclusion and it is as follows:

It wasn't melee making me mad, just the people that play them!

Isn’t that great? I thought so too.

I then thought well, why do I hate them?. That answer took me a lot less time to come up with, namely “their stupid horseshit on teams”. Being a loving, tolerant sort of fellow I couldn’t care less about melee horseshit when they’re solo :3

No, in all seriousness this is actually a guide for teamy stuff for melee types. Like, for real and also for serious. If you only ever solo with your Scrapper/Stalker/Brute/Tanker, you’re free to go. Everyone else, please remain seated. Contained herein will be advicings, tips and various melee animal facts.

In my mind, playing melee effectively on a team no matter the AT boils down to two factors. One: damage and two: aggro control. Since there’s a great deal of overlap in how these factors are relevant to the 4 melee ATs (5-6 if you count Banes/NWs which I do not because COUNTING IS DIFFICULT) I’ll be talking about them in terms of general considerations rather than specifically Stalker/Brute/Scrapper/Tanker sections.

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Why Damage and Aggro Control? Before I continue into the actual substance of this guide, I should clarify the above terms. Quote: Damage: This one is simple, basically hitting things and/or killing stuff. If you’re only controlling aggro but not contributing any damage (yes, even Tanker damage) you suck at melee. Secondly, the damage you contribute has to be maximized and it has to be relevant to the team. If you’re off fighting stuff halfway across the map, well, we’re all just super duper impressed but your damage would be much better utilised where all the buffs/debuffs are and killing stuff the team is fighting. Quote: Aggro control: This one requires a little more explanation. I’m not suggesting all Tankers/Brutes be tauntbots, (quite the opposite, in fact), but that when playing melee, aggro control should be a consideration. You don’t need Taunt/Challenge/Provoke/a taunt aura to control aggro. Aggro control is also about controlling the flow of a fight, prioritizing targets and mob positioning, not just getting punched in the head so the other guys don’t. As a melee player, you’re by and large much better equipped to deal with aggro than squishies, so you should try to control aggro.

So, without further ado:

How to Not Be Bad at Melee:

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Stick with the team: While Scrappers are generally the main offenders here, I see it from all ATs. If you’re a Scrapper/Brute/Stalker, you’ve got good ST and/or AoE damage. It’ll be much better leveraged if you’re with the team so you can get all the awesome buffs and smash the debuffed mobs into bits. If the team goes one way and you go another, finish up and go catch up with them. If you want to decide the pacing and path you take, either solo or lead the team. Don’t run off and insist on doing your own thing just because you can. It’s frustrating for people with buffs and you’re not contributing anywhere near the damage you could be. Now, I’m not saying you should stick with the team always no matter what no exceptions because there are always exceptions. Think of it this way: imagine a bungee cord tied around your waist. You can zip off to other spawns, piss them off and then snap back to your team, dragging more mobs to the slaughter with you. You can run off ahead of the team to get to a room first to gather up the mobs so when the team arrives they’re in a neat little pile to be shredded. You can run off to quickly kill some objective mobs before bouncing back. What I’m saying is, exercise judgement. Never straying from the team is equally idiotic as insisting on running off and doing your own thing, if less detrimental

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Leading the Team: Another side to sticking with the team is leading them, if/where applicable. As a melee character, you’ve got a primary or secondary set dedicated almost entirely to keeping you alive. This is a luxury other ATs don’t have. This makes you one of the best people to start a fight and soak the alpha. This applies most if you’re a Tanker, but also for the other ATs. There is almost nothing worse than a cowardly Tanker. Chances are you’re the toughest person on the team by a not insignificant margin. You should be first into the spawns. Don’t be afraid to set the pace. You can still lead the team if you’re a Stalker, with all the eccentricities that entails. AS the nastiest thing in the spawn, scrap it out. Since the Stalker changes Stalkers are scrappier than ever before and since you know, you’re on a team, you’ll have other people there to help. This also has a use in smart application of damage for AS. If you AS something tough like a boss, the AS debuff will debuff the spawn and really reduce the alpha damage. Weigh up whether the best way to leverage the AS would be to take a chunk out of the boss and debuff the spawn or instantly drop a nasty minion/lt.

Which brings us nicely to…

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Target Prioritization: Knowing which mobs can do what and their respective threats is important. Maybe not to you, as a softcapped mez-protected beast with upwards of two thousand hitpoints, but it may be a concern to the squishier team members. This is about smart application of damage. Choosing what to attack is as important as attacking in the first place. Choosing what to attack is both important for damage, in dropping the biggest threat first and for aggro control, because my experience is that that things I try to gut ARE NONE TOO PLEASED ABOUT IT. Imagine a large-sized Malta spawn. Sappers are a threat, the Tac Ops dudes are a threat to squishies because of their AoE long duration stuns, Gunslinger bosses are a threat because they can do a lot of damage quickly and TP around so you want them locked down. Learn what to focus on given the makeup of your team and the situation. If you’re a Tanker, Gauntlet gives you the luxury of being able to juggle several of these tasks more easily than other melee ATs. By punching the biggest thing in the head, you’ll also get aggro on the stuff around it and have Taunt to use on stuff out of reach.

Hell, speaking of which…

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Taunt (and Taunting powers): Now, Taunt has always gotten a lot of flack. First of all because it sucked compared to Provoke, then when it got buffed because a lot of people objected to the idea of being a Tauntbot. GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! Being a Tauntbot means you’re bad at Tanking. Every time I see a Tanker using Taunt from range before they enter a spawn, I facepalm. Every time I see a Tanker running into a spawn and using Taunt on the stuff right-fracking-next to them, I facepalm. Every time I see a Tanker use Taunt on stuff that is already well pissed off at them, I facepalm. My face, you guys, my poor face. I need it to eat and breathe and stuff, have mercy. Taunt, (and to a lesser degree Challenge and Provoke), are aggro-I-Win buttons. So…rather than spamming them like an idiot, use them on stuff you want to (here’s the tricky part) win aggro on. Stuff that’s not within range of your BRUTAL FACE PUNCHINGS, taunt/damage aura or PBAoE attacks. Stuff that’s off to the side about to bifurcate a squishy. There is also the neat trick of messing with -range on Taunt, but more on that later. Not Taunting at all is bad. Taunting too much is also bad. Taunt has a 5 target cap, ranged AoEs are 16 and PBAoEs are 10. So you can aggro 2-3 times as many mans using them rather than Taunt. Please use Taunt like…smart. Here’s how I break it down: If you hop into a spawn, anything that got nicked by your aura on your way to the middle is going to be mad at you, as is anything hit by your PBAoE attack if you open with it. That leaves Taunt for anything particularly nasty/multiple dudes out of your range. Time spamming Taunt is time better spent attacking and contributing damage. Technical Aside: the way threat works is a combination of damage/debuffs applied to the mob and Taunt. Taunt acts like a multiplier for whatever threat you already have on the mob. That means if you’re Taunting stuff you’ve already Taunted instead of attacking, WHOOPS, YOU’RE AN IDIOT. The less offensive way to put this would be: using Taunt in conjunction with attacking is the best way to get and keep aggro. Edit: Aggro can be screwy sometimes, so using Taunt more often to make sure the AV is taunted to you isn't a bad idea. Still don't spam it, but you know, use it occasionally. Doesn't have to be that often at all, since even at base it has a stupidly long duration. Also try and get a feel for whether something is aggroed on you or not. It sounds dumb, but yeah. Moving round to the side of the AV has a dual purpose. It aims all the cones and AoEs at you so the team doesn't get caught by splash and you can clearly tell when the AV is swinging at you.

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Cooperative, not Competitive Aggro: If there are other melee dudes on the team, you want to be cooperating with them for aggro, not competing with them. Yes, it is hilarious and rad to wrench aggro off a Tanker by dint of kicking orders of magnitude more anus, but most of the time its not gonna help the team any more. If you guys are gathering mobs up, don't gather up the same stuff the other guy is. Work together and grab separate spawns and bring them together for massive AoEing. Often on teams melee dudes will each go off their own way, assuming leadership but not communicating well. So you've got people herding and fighting on entirely different areas of the map, because neither of them is a big enough man to go back and fight with the rest of the team. This is bad, and people who do this should feel bad. A friend raised an excellent point, namely that the deciding of who is 'leading' and who is the assist is tricky. Usually unspoken, too. But it also doesn't have to strictly be that way. Be flexible. If you see the other melee dude is doing some crazy awesome stuff, go join him in it. Don't refuse to be a team player because of ego nonsense. In the beginning of a team, try and gauge how the other melee dudes (not just the rest of the team) is playing. If they're really timid, you might want to be more aggressive in leading the charges. While having multiple melee characters on a team can mean you won't always have max Fury, this really isn't a big deal. Decently high Fury (70%ish) can be generated and maintained just by attacking, so there's no need to fight over every last scrap of aggro. To a certain extent, you've gotta be responsible for your own Fury. You can't expect others to not attack/taunt or do so less so that you have more Fury. Contributing to the team as much as possible is more important that always having max Fury. Yes, max Fury means you do more damage which is important for your contribution to a team, but with all the damage and debuffs flying around in a team the amount of extra damage you're doing* will not justify mindlessly chasing your Fury bar. Quote: *Math Example for a SS/SD Brute, courtesy of Obitus: At 80% Fury (+160% damage), with ED-capped damage slotting (+95%) in your attacks, with Rage (+80%), with fully saturated Against All Odds (+65 damage, IIRC), you're sitting at ~500% of Brute base damage. At 50% Fury (+100% damage) and all else being equal, you're sitting at ~440% of Brute base damage. So that 60% extra damage from Fury represents a whopping net gain of 500 / 440 = 13.6%. With one foe in range of AAO (+15.5% damage), the net difference jumps as high as 450.5 / 390.5 = 15.4%. Which is not a lot. At all. Basically, don't measure team performance by the same metrics as solo performance. You've basically gotta work out amongst the team how things work best. Brutes demonstrating they can take the punishment to take the brunt of things and the Tanker being willing to off-tank, so to speak. The biggest problem about aggro fights is that they're not usually done for maximizing Fury or protecting the squishies, its an ego thing. Which is bad, mmkay?

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Positioning: Where you stand while you kick heads in is important for several reasons. A lot of stuff aggroed on you will try to close to melee range, so clever positioning helps you get as many mobs as possible into your and your teammates AoEs. Bunched mobs = bigger Fulcrum Shifts, bigger Heat Losses, maximized AoE attacks, all kinds of delicious stuff. At least until some shitwizard who never turns off Hurricane hops in the middle of things but I guess THAT'S LIFE. Learn how to mess with Line of Sight. It’s really straightfoward. If the mobs can’t see you, they can’t attack you. If they’re aggroed on you, they will try to see you so they can attack you. So if you’ve got stuff aggroed on you, hop round a corner. Duck behind a crate/pillar/whatever. Stuff will bunch up around the corner to take a shot at you. They’ll bunch up delightfully to be mass debuffed and butchered. Mess with LoS to bunch mobs up. If you can just hop right in the middle of a spawn and they’ll all clump up on you, great. But sometimes mobs aren’t that cooperative, sometimes the terrain isn’t suited for it, whatever. The somewhat new –range debuff on Taunt also allows Line of Sight-esque shenanigans without actually blocking LoS. Hitting stuff with Taunt will cripple their range, forcing them to come closer to take a shot at you. If you’ve got a lot of stuff shooting at you from afar but can’t really block LoS or whatever, using Taunt even if they’re already aggroed can help bunch them up. Bear in mind there is a difference between this and full-on herding. Herding doesn’t really exist anymore, since you can only have 17 mobs aggroed on you. Anything new aggroed over that limit will bump something else off the list. This means gathering mobs up is more important than trundling off to try and grab entire rooms. Really good mob gathering comes down to two things. Speed and efficacy. If gathering up the mobs would take more time than would be saved by nuking them all down together, don’t bother. Hell, with their fondness for melee most mobs gather themselves. If trying to herd results in more stray mobs and loose aggro than otherwise, don’t do it. Clumping spawns > herding. This gives a sizeable advantage to non-damage Taunt auras because they tick more quickly and tend to have an autohit component. With something like AAO, Invincibility and to a lesser extent, RttC you can literally run past something and it’ll be taunted on you.

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Positional Awareness: Being able to maximize your damage and aggro control on a team requires that you keep your head on a swivel. When I’m playing my Scrapper I keep my camera just as zoomed out as when I’m playing any of my Corruptors so that I can keep an eye on as much of the fight as I can and react accordingly. Emphasis on being able to react accordingly. Scrapperlock is the worst absolute worst thing on a team. I’m sorry, but it is. God knows I empathize, I often feel myself slipping into it playing my Scrapper. But that singlemindedness, that tunnel vision totally, totally sucks for contributing as much as you can to a team. Going off and doing your own thing just because you can? Congratulations, you suck at teaming. If you’re good at melee you should be able to deliver just as much butchery and dead mobs as someone in the throes of Scrapperlock. If anything, you should be able to deliver much more because you’ll be attacking where you can maximize your damage. Unless you’re fighting dentists, whose extensive knowledge of topical anaesthesia means that fighting a dentist is like hitting a bag of angry meat. Moral of the Story: DO NOT FIGHT A DENTIST, YOU WILL ONLY LOSE

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How Silas Be Doin It: Tadaa! So I’ve got 2 main melee dudes. My SS/Fire Brute, who is largely an agricultural tool and my KM/SD Scrapper. Since the Brute is pretty much just for farming, we move swiftly onto the Scrapper. He was actually made from the ground-up to be my default melee dude for teams and Task Forces, for those one in a million times where we don’t already have melee and b) there is no b, stop right there, criminal scum! Going from playing support almost exclusively to playing melee on teams was a lot like walking through a mirror. Everything is familiar, but different. Many things are reversed and also I was covered in shards of glass and bleeding all over my body. I had to be right next to things to hit them, what was the deal with that? The reason I chose to make my main melee dude KM/SD is for several reasons though. I mean, I thought it was cool but I also thought the combo had a lot of potential and powerset synergy, both important things to consider for melee characters. This is the main point here, more on this in like, a minute. I swear. God, what a nag you are. Using my KM/SD as an example, the powersets complement one another in a few ways. Both sets have –damage to stack, KM is a bit lacking in AoE which Shield Charge makes up for and the sets together have a lot of +damage for you. All the damage debuffs in KM/SD also help for aggro generation because the –damage isn’t actually one debuff, its 6-8 debuffs (one for each damage type. Fun Fact: the KM attacks debuff all damage types but tox/psy, AAO debuffs all 8 kinds).

So:

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Powerset Choice: In the terrifying halls of my mind, I see powerset choice coming down to three factors. First of all, as mentioned above, if you like the character idea/sets. Don’t roll something you don’t enjoy. But then comes the delicious crunchy powergaming considerations, namely synergy and potential. The realm of brutal, crushing efficiency and power. Be aware what your powersets can do and how to achieve it. Bear in mind what their given strengths and weaknesses are. For example, DM has great utility and ST damage but is a little weak on AoE. ElM has great AoE, but yo’ mommas MRP build got mo’ ST DPS. If you’re building with IOs, which you really have no reason not to*, try and work out how to make the most of your character. Even if it’s just frankenslotting to get the most out of each power. Quote: *Being poor ain’t no excuse. Dumping your stuff on the market as you level gets you plenty of inf and if you play something at level 50, hot burning inf is pumped directly into your rectum. Also, market forums. Go there, read the guides, learn how to make stupid amounts of money then troll by saying that manipulation is ruining everything for the casual player. Or complain about inflation, bonus points if you don’t understand how it works. Everyone wins.

So uh, I guess that about wraps it up. I’ll probably be adding more stuff to this guide as I think of it. Hope this was of some use

Again as with your previous guides, all I've read, I agree. However 5 years from now if this game carries on, the way people play, will by and large be the same. People will go in all bravado, leave no time for others to finish or recover between groups and compromise others or perhaps even themselves. As it is now it won't just be scrappers with scrapper lock it could well be anyone in the entire team. Someone will run into the next group before the last group is finished; before anyone else is in the clear from faceplanting and contribute to the team by looking dead further on in the map (vengeance fodder). Someone will open up with a massive KB spreading mobs as the immob room fire controller locks them down lowering everyone elses dps. Someone will try to herd mobs past 6 herdpoints while a team waits. 5 years from now anchor killing will still be a priority to so many people.

Often the show off with the best toon, is the one creating the problems for those with lesser toons. Nothing wrong with a lesser toon, it may mean you have more of a life or a lucky one of those who through a recession has too much work.

People will play their way. I can either adapt or log off.

Silas, regarding your Stick with the Team theme, as a scrapper I will usually move on to the next group if (i) the team is melting groups so fast that I can barely get a lick in before they are all dead or (ii) somebody loves their knockback so much that I can barely get a lick in before my foe is bounced away from me.

Also, your discussion assumes that there is a single team to stick with. What rule of thumb do you employ if the team splits up into 2 or 3 subteams?

New Dawn, Aye, a fair point. Some people will never change their playstyle. For those who want to improve however, there is at least some information out there now

Void Spirit, The moving ahead of the team is always a judgement issue. Sometimes it will be more important for you to get to the next spawn first and open up on them, sometimes its gonna be more important for you to make sure the current one is cleared. That was one of the difficulties writing this guide actually, since so much of it comes down to situational judgement. There aren't really any 100% watertight rules on how to do things.

Except maybe don't play your melee dudes the exact same way teamed as you would solo, I guess

The point about split up teams is a good one. I'd say the same general principles hold true. Stick with one of the smaller teams. Ideally, the teams would be more or less balanced, so not all the melee people going off together kind of thing.

Edit: just thought of a rule of thumb. Stick with the mini team where you can provide the most benefit.

Looking forward to seeing Silas play melee hehe!

1) LOL funny as well as informative. Tough to have both but you did it. Kudos.

2) My teammates used to ask why I liked to leap OVER spawns and land on the other side. I told them it was aggro control because that way the enemy's cone powers were facing away from the team. Actually I just like combining MA with jumping because it's cool but let them think I do it for them

Deadboy, You've seen me play melee a few times now. Pretty sure we've done some TFs together with me on my KM/SD Scrapper.

Comicsluvr, Glad you liked it. I know what you mean about combining jumping with attacks, on my old Nin/Nin Stalker I used to love jumping right when I hit Golden Dragonfly so I'd come crashing down from higher

I disagree about sticking with the team. It's simply NOT the most effective way to kill as many critters as quickly as possible for a lot of high end toons. You stay with the team 90% the time stuff is dead before you can get off more than a single attack, or you get of that second attack and stuff dies from someone else before it damages anyone. I call it wasted AoE. Something a lot of people don't seem to get.

I do this all the time on my SS/fire. In fact i was on an ITF where i went to the comp after all the other gens were down. The rest of the team seems to have cleared up the hill, within that time i had almost killed req and was down 25% on the comp. And the ambush was dead as well. Still not sure what they were doing.
It is however important that you don't run ahead before people are ready and put them in danger.

Really really great point about taunt, way too many people use it when it’s not needed. Worst is when you see a tank/brute pulling an AV and they stay in range and spam taunt. >.<

But it sounds to me like a debuffer really wants to think they actually made that mob die faster. :P

You're right, sticking with the team isn't the most effective way for some characters to kill as many critters as possible.

It's the most effective way for the team to kill as many critters as fast as possible. If you're not able to get an attack off before most stuff is dead, be faster. You may feel like you're contributing more if you're soloing spawns rather than dropping 1-2 attacks per spawn, but your damage and aggro capabilities are much better leveraged fighting with the team.

For your ITF example, if the team didn't seem to know what they were doing, you should have gone back down and helped them. Gone back, helped them clear whatever they were fighting and if you wanted to move on quickly say so in chat and get the team moving with you.

Do you have any numbers that prove is more effective? (i.e. faster, right?) This has gotten me very interested. I just fail to see how it’s any faster when people stay together considering there are a lot of toons which can easily obliterate entire mobs within a matter of seconds (FS with FE up can oneshot minions with rage and fury). I'm not saying a team should split up into 8 groups of 1, buffer/debuffs especially, but that in this day and age 8 people will easily have "too much" wasted dmg against mobs, equal level at least. And there for it is better for them to split up into smaller groups.
Of course, in the lower levels this is generally not a problem and you do want to stay together.

You can either can mobs die in 5 seconds and then spend 3 second getting to the next mob. You can have 3-4 groups of people each killing mobs damn near just as fast. Guess that’s kind of how i see it.

Ultrawatt, Yes, lots of characters and builds can wipe out spawns so fast that its overkill for the entire team to stick together the whole time. For that exact reason, among others, is why I said in my guide in no uncertain terms that never straying from the team is just as stupid as never fighting alongside the team.

Fighting where the buffs and debuffs are you will always do more damage than solo. That's not debateable. Whether or not that extra damage is always neccessary is. That's why I urge judgement and doing whats best for the team. Always going off and doing your own thing is not it.

Freeing the Sybils is a good example of when to not stick with the team, because as joebartender says, they're very small spawns and having everyone involved will often make a mess of things.

Squishing spawns of minions is one thing, but on the ITF you've also got the Cysts. A bunch of AVs. The all-EB general spawn. A whole slew of EBs. Do you really believe you can drop all of those faster solo than you would with the team?

Splitting into smaller mini-teams is also something I've discussed in the guide. I've never advocated all 8 people staying together all the time. Because its stupid and wasteful. Just like always soloing on teams.

In that situation I'd say the first solution would be to ask the person to stop spamming the KB powers. Generally, stuff not KBed all over the place = stuff neatly bundled up to be slaughtered = faster exp, inf and TF completion.

It's all about judgement and communication. Not just going off and doing your own thing. If the team is being slow, go back and help them. If someone is doing something stupid and counterproductive, ask them not to. I don't subscribe to the idea that if someone else is being a bad team player that it makes it okay for me to also be a bad team player.

I find on a full team if one melee person splits up and does their own thing, the killing speed will be roughly the same as if everyone had stuck together.

If more than one breaks away or the team is less than 8, splitting up slows down progress quite a bit.

My evidence for this, if I could submit it for review, would be the large number of Cap/Sky Raider SFs I've done over the past few years. During the kill-all missions, if I run straight to the back of the top floor and fight backwards while the rest progress normally, I'll have finished the top floor just in time for the team's arrival. If I stay with them, we'll finish the other floors faster, but then when we get to the final floor it will still be full and the time it takes to clear will be about equal to the difference I made while travelling with them.

I also think you need to factor in how many buffers/debuffers are on the team. If everyone is (say) a Claws Scrapper, I think splitting up is much more efficient, since multiple AoE melee moves in a smal space are redundant, compared to everyone spreading out.

Silas: Thank you for another wonderful guide. As always, it is a joy to read.

And, can I have some hot burning influence straight into my rectum now?. Please?

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville ...[I]t would be more proper to say this game is slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly dying.

Are you sure? I'll need a doctors note and a confirmation signed by a public notary in triplicate.