How to make MELEE Work - Deadlock Itemization lesson

[@Deathy]

One thing I forgot to mention since the video was centered around scaling: there are two defense layers that are helpful for melee builds specifically. Reactive armor activates when you get parried, and debuff reducer reduces the amount of time you are stunned for when parried. Enjoy! Also, sidenote: I did not talk about melee cancels because I'm not sure if they're going to stay in the game. They are a cool mechanic but not fundamentally core to melee builds IMO.

[@WandererOfNight]

What about haze? She has a guaranteed melee hit with her sleep dagger and bullet resist reducer when it's maxed and its evil with echo shard

[@AdamDunebugDunas]

Yamato should get a special mention, highest base melee damage, ult that gives immunity to debuffs, 2 that brings her in range and slows her target, making it easy to stick to them, 3 that gives her immense healing on a short cooldown that works well with the huge hp from colossus. Healing booster too synergizes with the health from lifestrike and her 3.

[@Deathy]

@@WandererOfNight Melee haze can indeed work :D

[@Deathy]

@@AdamDunebugDunas Go make it work! This video is exactly to encourage these discussions, good points about Yamato

[@AdamDunebugDunas]

@@Deathy I had been doing, watched the video curious to see if you took similar or different items :D Good shit on the channel :)

[@cvf4662]

after hearing "melee mirage" in quite a calm voice on first seconds of video i already knew you're maniac

[@Deathy]

Can't deny it

[@bluepheonix1]

@@Deathy Melee Mirage goes so incredibly hard its not even funny

[@cvf4662]

with recent update on Mirage's 1-st distance scaling melee build looks better and better

[@Tienkou111]

I have had so much fun with your melee mirage build 😂 Few times I have ran away from duos for half a map, turned around and destroyed them. Every game I have been top elims even when we have lost the game in the end.

[@Dr.Trustmeonthisone]

time to start spending 2 hours a day in the sandbox gym with my eyes closed and parry over and over again, engraving the combination of a heavy melee sound and the act of parrying into the deepest parts of my psyche

[@MrPistoleroGun]

All i heard is "you've been playing abrams punch build the wrong way since the beginning of the game, and now it is time to bring it back in random lobbies to see if chaos can be unleashed again" and i'm all for it, go apologize to the new players i'm about to pin, they're not gonna be having a good day 👀 And jokes aside man i love your channel, i'm learning so much, you taught me how to improve by simply explaining items, maths, mechanics and so on, keep it up and thanks a lot for the infos [T]7

[@SoulGaleo1992]

Honorable mention: Yamato is a good candidate for melee builds because she is immune to cc while in her ult, so the negative drawback of parry doesn't matter much at all.

[@arch_imedes7108]

Her melee also deals like, slightly more base damage than everyone else's for whatever reason.

[@gregorychauvin4869]

Seriously the best deadlock creator I've encountered. Such helpful content!!

[@nisseskjegg1]

You can also counter a lot of melee builds by getting debuff reducer. For example abrams charge will be too short for him to heavy charge without you parrying, even if he has superior duration. EDIT: Nevermind about the superior duration part, he can still punch you if he buffers it during the charge according to Deathy.

[@Deathy]

While debuff reducer is good, I've tested it extensively and as long as abrams has Extended Duration, if he buffers the melee as he's charging, you can never get the parry off. Good advice otherwise!

[@nisseskjegg1]

@@Deathy Good to know, didn't think about that when testing it in demo.

[@odenircesarneto6425]

How do you actually buffer your punch while charging? Press 2 and immediately after use punch?

[@Ponpelino]

@@odenircesarneto6425want to know this too

[@SoulGaleo1992]

​You press your Siphon ability (1) immediately after you charge melee. It delays the animation long enough to outlast parry. Or at the very least, you can fake out.​@odenircesarneto6425

[@Drazer012]

On dynamo ive been buying melee items first because his stomp is just so insanely good for setting up a free hit. Most people dont expect to get dash knockuped for like 300 damage with just one item, its so much fun.

[@I-OMusic]

Theory crafting: knockdown in a 1v1, heavy Melee BEFORE it hits, meaning if you're parried the knockdown will save you, making it "safe"

[@Drathrin]

Thats how i started playing mirage as well. Except i like getting both echo shard and refresher, that way i can keep someone tornado'd forever

[@Shardel]

Literally what got me into the game this deep is the 'I'm not gonna sugarcoat it' meme with Ivy, melee damage items icons and 4-M1-3-Q(hold). Punching people is just too much fun.

[@thesenatetm1258]

i think you owe the people you scrimmed an apology for butchering them

[@MushMooon]

This build does so much damage, the enemy never expects it. Thank you for making such a fun build!

[@dumbvillage9253]

Melee Shiv is really strong(at least I found him to be). His Bloodletting and Lifesteal hijinks are great for sustain and Berserker procs. Coupled with his rage; you basically make people explode. Helps too that Melee is one of his best ways to build rage in the current patch. You can also mix and match between m2 to maybe confuse your enemies while dealing roughly as much damage as Melee. Except you can't be parried(M2 is a pretty neat combo tool). You can also do funny gimmicky stuff like kinetic dash + melee charge for x3 ammo. I also found that while bullet lifesteal, and melee don't quite give as much healing(due to there being less instances, them being a bit weaker, and melee having cooldowns). You still have pretty good survivablity! Due to items I've been building for Melee gun Shiv providing quite a bit of bullet resist. This is even with the fact that I've been using swift striker quite a lot. Which i paired with burst fire to actually make use of the funny x3 ammo. So even the Bullet resist decrease still left me with 26% bullet armor without using return fire or... Bullet armor. I am by all means a casual. My win rate is middle of the road 50/50, and my enemies don't know how to parry, yet. So take this message with a chunk of salt.

[@yall_girl_eve]

My enemies don't parry much too, i just shred through teams with melee shiv

[@adasong8743]

This makes me genuinely wonder if melee Haze is a viable anti-meta setup, now that people actually know how to deal with her (read: you click the Return Fire button on the shop screen.) Many of the melee items you mentioned also improve her atrocious laning. Sleep Dagger into heavy melee is one of her bread and butter true comboes, with no opportunity to parry even with Debuff Reducer (provided you're in close.) Her guns are already short range to benefit from Close Quarters, Hunter's Aura, and Point Blank's slow stacks with Fixation slow favorably. Fixation buffs bullet damage and applies shred for free. Melee Charge doubling your mag is amazing on a character who feels like she spends half the game reloading, and probably replaces QSR as a farm accelerator. I'll report back and see if you're cooking or if you're just setting off the fire alarms.

[@dumbvillage9253]

FYI, bullet resist nerfs melee damage. But I don't think it procs return fire.

[@adasong8743]

@@dumbvillage9253 Unfortunately Fixation doesn't buff melee at all either. The build's felt pretty clunky in gameplay so far, but it's difficult for me to tell how much of it is itemization choices. Split between a typical Veilwalker setup to survive going in for punches, or a weirder Yamato/Mo-style Torment Pulse/Mystic Slow build looking to capstone with Escalating Exposure. I'll grant it's very good at farming way earlier than conventional Haze, who needs QSR/Active Reload to even start efficiently clearing tier-2s. Going all-in on melee is probably just a worse idea than using melee charge to farm to Ricochet and the standard kit out more efficiently.

[@rosysoviet]

Return fire you still die late game and they still out heal the extra damage coming back, it feels like. Metal skin however, no bullet damage AND no melee damage - now that's gonna actually counter a haze and mirage ez. Although can still die to the spirit damage and if silenced before hand

[@Cnvvj]

Melee Charge feels BUSTED at the moment with low fire rate characters (and probably high rate chars too). It's like QSR imbued on Heavy Punch but stronger. Once it's online I never have to reload as Abrams which makes building destruction super easy, just refilling the mag by heavy punching nearby creeps.

[@dumbvillage9253]

Melee charge is a god-send on low ammo characters. Items like berserker + kinetic dash give you flat ammo boosts(so a dash jump on Shiv basically gives you 50% ammo). And them paired with melee charge basically give you triple ammo. EVEN after kinetic dash bonus ammo runs out. Because it just gets converted into the bonus ammo it gives. You basically never have to reload. And I personally LOVED to pair it with burst fire and swift striker to jump up to people, and just kill them. All that bonus ammo doesn't let you proc QSR tho. So you unfortunstely can't have an extra fire rate stack with tons of ammo to then lay down machine gun fire with.

[@khotech]

you can see outgoing damage by click Incoming Damage (will open window), and click it again on "Incoming Damage" title text it will change to Outgoing Damage :)

[@Deathy]

Yes very true I could've done that :)

[@DrDestructo64]

With respect to working around parry, it also adds a lot to the mental stack. It's easy to parry a heavy melee if it's the one thing you're 100% focused on, but it's a lot harder when you're doing everything else. If someone's lasered in on trying to parry you, they're probably paying less attention to their minimap, for example.

[@Brain.Damage.]

Thank you so much man. After this video I cooked up a wraith build where I can reliably land three heavy melees with veil walker and knockdown. The combo is veil walker stealth into heavy melee. Then the life strike slow makes it easy to land the ult. Use knockdown immediately then double jump heavy melee when your ult suspends them in the air. As they fall down they'll get knockdown stunned and this let's you land a third heavy melee. Took some practice in the sandbox but I've got the combo down now. Haven't lost a single match with this since yesterday

[@Brain.Damage.]

Weaving in left clicks and cards does ridiculous damage. I feel like I was personally targeted by the change in the patch where melee attacks card charge restoration was nerfed haha

[@Brain.Damage.]

Oh also! Melee charge has been an amazing substitute for active reload, quicksilver reload or Titanic magazine. Such a high value item.

[@pauldaulby260]

I started doing melee early as haze, putting early points into dagger and invisibility. gives her great roaming and early kill potential. then later you can transition into teamfight ults. the build is "silent fist, roaring dance" if you want to try it.

[@pauldaulby260]

its fairly early days, i'll probably take healing rite out of optional and into the main build at some point because the roaming you get from activating it then invisibility and running to another lane is fantastic.

[@pauldaulby260]

I think the best melee counter atm is reactive barrier, most melees rely on some stun to set up, and also do hybrid weapon and spirit damage.

[@glibey]

bro I been running this build all night and have been getting top damage each game, its nasty as fuck, love to see it lol

[@tricksyfroggy]

you didn't point out that pocket has a melee charge cancel tech where they can charge melee while in case and make the charge animation basically invisible!

[@khilleor2613]

Melee Ivy :3 She has a stun, bullet res shred, can toss a kudzu while close for morr shred which slows and keeps them near, and an insane amount of tankiness.

[@DevaWay]

I have tested melee mirage just 4fun a few days back and it was working surprisingly well. I thought melee was just busted in general, but then it didn't worked as well on other characters I tried. Apparently I stumbled upon melee mirage by accident

[@wildwolf3938]

I've been playing Melee Bebop lately and have been having a lot of fun with it. My pub build (work in progress) is called BeSockem Bopper.

[@anddylapechq8716]

This is hilarious since I’ve already done a McGinnis melee build and Kelvin melee build I guess kelvin doesn’t really fit your description but I think the added burst dmg and burst healing of his grenade does help to become a real threat

[@Qneetsa]

The part about conditioning only applies to people who parry on prediction and not on reaction, which is not that hard to do with heavy melee. The only real mind game is whether the first melee you do is the on you gonna damage with or a fake "pivot" melee where you turn half way through the charge and end up not connecting with the target - if they parried the fake one, they will be locked out for subsequent ones (for 5 seconds). Thats a lot of time wasted not shooting a person trying to make a melee work. Another thing - melee is one of the highest single instance of damage but NOT dps. Melee takes almost a second of doing nothing (charging a heavy melee) before you deal damage, so the number you see IS your dps = damage per second. Which is really hard to get over 600, 700 damage. Actual gun damage quit easily goes over thousands of dps In late game because it scales fully with weapon damage (not 50% like punched), and resist shred AND fire rate. Not to mention other hero specific mechanics. The only limitation is clip size but with Vampiruc burst, Lucky Shot and Quicksilver reload (and Titanic mag in some cases) a lot of characters can shoot for 10 seconds straight.

[@victorb7562]

Doesn't weapon damage only increase melee damage by 50% of the stated increase (so 12,5% instead of 25% from point blank). I think you forgot to mention that and that's also why bullet resist shred is best for melee builds.

[@arch_imedes7108]

Afaik point blank specifically bypasses this but otherwise thats correct.

[@Doost311]

Ive been doing a melee ivy build, generally runs the same items, use ultimate and gargoyle to stun an enemy into a free heavy melee then unload the machine gun on them

[@Aburaishi]

Does Melee Damage stack multiplicatively or additively with Weapon Damage? Do we know?

[@mohammadamory7596]

I'm getting melee items on dynamo in the laning phase, it's really good with the upgraded 1 that gives 30% more bullet damage on the hit targets.

[@andreystolyarov7608]

So theoretically gun Viscous should have good synergy with melee Viscous?

[@Deathy]

To an extent, only issue is gun items usually have some focus on fire rate/headshots which don't synergize with melees at all

[@ShaunhanM]

Punch mirage was the first build I played on him, mostly as a meme but still glad to see it work

[@brokendoop]

I wish wardens cage increased melee damage to the target as well at max level but I know it would be too insane

[@maxcarter50]

Had a blast playing this build earlier today. It's nasty.

[@ososimiospub6406]

I've played melee mirage since day 1, it's really fun, not optimal, but fun.

[@MrNutz87]

Love melee infernus. The mind game of baiting parry is too fun. One thing of note with infernus ult + duration extender gives over 2sec stun. Guaranteed 2x heavy melee

[@farabashar1627]

I tried melee build on seven because of his stun, it's really fun and so strong in the early game

[@HubzXD]

been rolling with melee shiv, once u have max rage it's insane

[@Kobe005]

It's very strange and misleading to me that melee damage counts as bullet damage, yet there is also still +melee dmg, +melee lifesteal stats in the game. I think they need to separate melee dmg/res from scaling with bullet dmg/res and keep the sources of + melee dmg from items low for clarity and health of the game

[@TheKenyanKid]

Immediately trying to think of the worst characters to try this out on. Brewing up a double stun melee seven rn

[@jonathanrussell6525]

I didn't realize that just landing barrage ups all the damage you do, I thought it only upped the damage you do to the enemies you hit with barrage, like how Geist's amp works.

[@pheesh9141]

i've played mostly pocket all this time and I also thought it's only on the specific target you hit...does it really not damage amp on creeps you hit at all either? lol

[@rivetace]

I tried melee mirage because the build just makes sense. But I'm just garbage at the hero xD gotta play more to learn him.

[@Awootistic]

If debuff remover helps with parry recovery time, does unstoppable completely negates parry?

[@PvtPrivate]

It negates the stun on you iirc, the enemy still doesnt take the melee damage though

[@Awootistic]

@@PvtPrivate that's neat. Good to know. Altho maybe debuff remover might still be the better option.

[@shicako00]

wait, resistances can go in negative values from items?

[@Deathy]

yes

[@justinbasinger7728]

Between this content from you and Jonas, I SHOULD be good at this game. But I ain't. 😆

[@WeirdBoyGaming]

Surprise you didn’t talk about Yamato and there melee dmg scaling

[@COFFEEVIGOROUS]

The Purge of deadlock

[@thegloatingstorm8323]

Hear me out: Melee Wraith Wraith has lift and cards gain 50 charge per successful heavy melee (100 charge for a card)

[@Timmcd]

- Wraith: Card Trick generation via melee reduced by 50% (from today's patch) :(

[@thegloatingstorm8323]

@@Timmcd Yup...so 25 now :I

[@realalbertosmith]

How did we make it through an entire melee build video without talking about Abrams??

[@Deathy]

Everyone knows about Melee Abrams; you don't need me to tell you about that one! In all seriousness, this video wasn't meant to showcase every melee build/character, just to explain how to make one work. Now go and create your own :D

[@TailorTF]

I've been watching your deadlock videos since I found you and I only just realized that your Deathy from comp TF2 lmao small world

[@Deathy]

That's me

[@dino0o0o0o2]

Punching people in the back or round corners seems to work pretty well for me XD

[@jakelowry1714]

can people parry while they are lifted in tornado?

[@alfascav1754]

Its almost like what I've been saying about Melee charge and Lifestrike for the past 2 months was absolutely right. Was a fun experience getting flamed by deathy's chat for bringing it up as a good build on many different heroes. Wonder what they say now?

[@elijahlaferney6414]

you could hit someone with viscous goo ball and immediately cancel into heavy melee

[@Gresdak]

As a fighting game player my time is now 😏

[@ashy3340]

Wait melee Geist sounds like it could potentially work

[@gamogi7142]

Nah, I think people should keep just running melee abrams and charging into people and instantly heavy meleeing giving the worlds easiest parries

[@zoerosedunk4548]

Fighting game players rise up

[@shybandit521]

Melee mirage??? Can melee even proc Djinns Mark??

[@jaxonhall9873]

okay hear me out.....melee haze with spirit scaled echo shard on dagger......

[@joedelafro4629]

Literally melee is life and an easy way to win lane until you reach an MMR where people parry and dash parry.

[@snipufin]

I think the "you take extra damage when you get parried" only applies to melee attacks. I've seen many times people try to just shoot someone down after a successful parry and their damage is just meaningless compared to the two free heavy melees.

[@biggopittacus1876]

Time to build yamato into melee

[@arcionek]

Wait... Does yamato ult make her immune from parries? 🤔 What about unstoppable.

[@wiabuujones]

@@arcionek Yeah yamato ult means absolutely 0 CC for her, not even B-bop grab, she also has the highest base melee damage at 128 for heavy, everyone else does 116 at base

[@AdamDunebugDunas]

@@wiabuujones Yeah, I've been playing melee Yamato for ages, the extra bonus base melee damage means those melee items scale it up even harder. So many good items you can work into it for her. And you can stay in there fighting for so long by maxing your 3, it just constantly gives you huge chunks of hp back.

[@tetrotull3462]

Do you think they will nerf the bullet damage influencing melee damage?

[@Seneschaal]

Oh no

[@Lactosecow]

Heads up, pocket actually uses they/them pronouns

[@Deathy]

Oh ya true my bad, forgot

[@khorkhi7107]

thinking about that twink's they/themussy

[@Vulture8888]

it's a video game character don't worry no one is offended here 💀

[@Lactosecow]

@@Deathy dw, it's only vaguely hinted at in their bio and no one genders them right in game lol

[@paulm1237]

Nobody cares.

[@sc065]

Nice video! coughsmashisntafightinggamecough