Melee Abilities

Melee Abilities are usually close range attacks that can be performed by using your melee button (R1 for PS3/4). If your melee ability is on cooldown you will perform a normal melee attack. Each subclass has its own unique melee ability. Each melee ability has 3 different upgrades. Your Melee Ability has a default cooldown of 69 seconds. It can be lowered to 31 seconds with Strength stat. If your melee ability is on cooldown, you will perform a normal melee attack, which deals 100 damage in The Crucible.

Base Melee

• Range: 5.2m
• Damage: 122hp
• Speed: 0.4s
• Recovery: 0.66s,0.46s with gauntlet perk
• Total time: 1.06s, 0.86s with gauntlet perk

Storm Fist

• Range: 5.5m
• Damage: 158hp and + 13 with Discharge

Sunstrike

• Range: 5.5m
• Damage: 104hp + 7x8 (56) damage over time and +13 with Thermal Vent

Disintegrate

• Range: 5.5m
• Damage: 134hp

Disintegrate will only activate if the enemy has 134 health or lower.

Base Melee

• Range: 4.9m
• Damage: 122hp
• Speed: 0.4s
• Recovery: 0.66s, 0.46s with gauntlet perk
• Total time: 1.06s, 0.86s with gauntlet perk

Blink Strike

• Range: 6.0m
• Damage: 122hp, 364 for Backstab

Smoke – Throwing Grenade:

• Impact damage = 20hp
• Explosion Damage = 53hp max.
• Envenomed = 15hp per hit
• Linger effect (activates on all hit by explosion and deactivates if player is hit by envenomed) = 8hp, stays active when in smoke and once out of smoke it then hits up to 6 more times.

Throwing Knife

• Damage: 110hp
• Critical Damage: 142hp
• Incendiary Blade: 7x5(35)

Base Melee

• Range: 6.6m
• Damage: 122hp
• Speed: 0.4s
• Recovery: 0.83s, 0.6s with gauntlet perk
• Total time: 1.23s, 1.0s with gauntlet perk

Thunderstrike

• Range of 6.6m, 8.3m with Amplitude
• Damage of 122hp, 182hp when Feedback is active.

Energy Drain

• Range: 6.6m
• Damage: 134hp

Scorch

• Range: 6.6m
• Damage: 122hp + 7x5(35)

Titans are some of the best when it comes to melees. They have the best melee speed decent range and the best damage. As well their movement makes them optimal for getting close to enemies to melee them.

Storm Fist offers huge damage in a single hit and you can get even more with discharge. With overload you can have melees ready constantly, and with transfusion they will immediately start your health regen. With this melee and shoulder charge strikers can net themselves significant kills without any weapon needed.

Sunstrike has the lowest impact damage of all melees while a very high damage when you include the damage over time affect. This causes you to get tons of post-mortem kills but can be used very tactically. Overall this melee will still kill with 2 hits but if you want to combo things with it you will either have to get away while they burn out or get a post-mortem. Thermal vent can be very powerful for fighting multiple enemies as it will activate the DoT affect on all enemies hit by its explosion and even create a sunspot on the ground if you kill your target with the melee.

Disintegrate is one of the worst and best melees in the game. In a 1v1 melee fight it gives little to no advantages although if you do win the fight you will be rewarded with a powerful shield and a passive buff of your choice. The shield alone will give you a huge advantage in any fight you move onto next and the buffs include making orbs, a stronger shield, or faster handling and reload. Overall this melee adds to the Defenders powerful kit of high skill and tactical abilities.

The Hunters base melee is the worst of all the classes having the worst range and their movement tending to be much more linearly slow. Although they have this disadvantage they make up for it with their powerful melee abilities.

The Bladedancer and its Blink Strike are the exception to this statement. With almost as much range as a warlock as well as faster melee recovery and the ability to blink, these hunters can definitely hold their own in a melee fight. Their melee options are also very powerful offering the option of either stealth or super fast melee recharge. The back stab ability will allow you to kill any opponent with a single hit as long as you hit their back, which matches well with stealth and can even be super useful in unexpected situations. The finale part that makes the melee one of the best is hungering blade which will return a portion of your health on a kill preparing you for the next engagement.

The Smoke grenade is a powerful and versatile ranged ability. It creates a cloud of smoke which blinds, slows and damages targets. You can throw them at targets for bonus damage on impact, lie them to go off when an enemy passes or use them to gain invisibility. I don’t recommend using envenomed as it does not do much more damage than the regular grenade and does not leave a DoT on your target, which means targets hit by it will recover quicker from the grenade. Overall this ability is a hugely powerful tool for the hunter offering extra damage on a target from a range, the ability to close off entrances and exits, as well as many other creative uses.

The Throwing Knife is an effective ranged precision weapon and can achieve very quick kills but requires a quite skilled hand. The knife does have a large hit box on enemies but its travel time precision and arc can make landing them on targets difficult. An experienced hunter can use these knifes in combination with a hand cannon for extreme effectiveness. I would recommend trying these out but simply know it will take practice to make them a reliable part of your kit.

Warlocks have a longer than average melee which make them the best for doing shotgun melee combos but their melee cool-down is slower. In regular crucible the range is a huge advantage and easily makes up for the slower melee recovery speed. Using purely melee titans will still likely be better in many scenarios due to their faster melee speed, higher damage, and the ability to titan skate.

Thunderstrike without amplitude is now the weakest melee in the game giving no advantage what so ever. Most melees have an inherent ability (higher damage, damage over time, etc.) but thanks to the recent update thunder strike does not have any. With Amplitude the melee has the best range in the game able to match the kill distance of a max range shotgun. You can also have the melee chain to another enemy or give you super energy but in comparison with amplitude or other melee these options really are not too extremely great. Overall apart from using Amplitude the Thunderstrike is likely one of the worst melee abilities.

Energy Drain is the melee for those who like to throw tons of grenades. The Voidwalker has a variety of great grenades and their Energy Drain ability allows them to throw them constantly as long as they can activate it. This melee comes with several powerful options on top of the Energy Drain ability including; faster weapon and character movement, immediate health regen, and more super energy. As well it comes with a little additional damage making it a great option for using in combination with a close range weapon like a shotgun or sidearm.

Scorch is quite similar to the Sunstrike, leaving damage over time on its target but also quite different. Rather than dealing lower damage it deals the regular base damage on impact while having a shorter lasting DoT effect. Sadly, there is only really one good option to run for PvP with this melee, which is Flame Shield. Flame shield offers a short shield upon hitting a melee, although not as strong as the Disintegrates shield it is quite powerful since you only have to land a hit rather than a kill. The other two options include; pushing enemies, and creating an explosion on a kill, while also both offering quicker melee charge which is great for PvE.

Players can increase their strength stat to reduce the cooldown of their Melee Abilities.

When you have no strength and thus 0% cooldown reduction bonus to your melee abilities, your melee ability recharges in 1 minute and 9 seconds.

When you have enough strength to have 100% cooldown reduction bonus to your melee abilities, your melee ability recharges in 31 seconds (45% of original recharge).