u/xVelunax

I played previously during the era before melee got nerfed to hell and back and coming back to play again I feel like all building melee is a weakness. Just wondering if there is anything I am missing for mandatory cards for melee. There are a ton of issues with Melee I'm not sure how to address them all anymore.

1. Acid Ridden - Scar Tissue feels required because acid pools just become so common on these modifiers that it's almost impossible to avoid when in melee.
2. Face your Fears - I recall that temp HP blocked trauma creation. Bandages/Bags feels useless because Trauma always prevents you from healing up a lot of missing health. This feels mandatory.
3. Stamina - It looks like Holly at some point lost her Stamina regen on kill, so swinging fire axes no longer feels infinite and you need melee damage to kill ridden in close range. Machete/Bat feels like infinite stamina with Meth Head/Adrenaline Fueled, but I'm not sure if I need other dmg + stamina cards to actually turn the Fire axe into a special ridden killing weapon again.
4. Explosive Ridden - Honestly, between explosive ridden and how tanky special ridden are with needing damage AND stamina for swinging, I'm not sure if its even worthwhile to build for fire axes. I just can't avoid eating the explosion damage on these damn things unless using machete or bat.
5. EMT Bag - I'm not sure if this is even worth taking. At one point, I recall that EMT bag did not work with cards like Vanguard, Face your Fears, etc. and I believe it did. Though the numbers have been reduced so much I'm not even sure if it does anything worthwhile.
6. Damage Reduction - From what I recall, Holly used to have 10% dmg reduction and with all of the damage reduction cards it was super powerful, but I'm not sure if that's any good anymore. Picking up stuff like Spiky Bits, Motorcycle Helmet, Numb, etc.
7. Fire Ridden - I very much remember that fire ridden were a huge pain in the ass, so I thought perhaps Cleansing Fire would be needed like Acid Ridden.
8. Stumble - I vague recall that stumble was really powerful, but I can't recall how it functioned. Was it a build up mechanic? I see Heavy Hitter or Empowered Assault could be beneficial to special ridden, but without the stamina/damage to kill them, it seems like a wasted slot though could be excessively powerful. I don't know.
9. Bolstered Health. Looking through the characters it seems like Sharice I think would be the best melee character now that Holly's been gutted. I thought EMT Bag + Vanguard would generate a bunch of temp HP, but I feel like it does nothing. Many times can never even make use of bolstered health because players almost always end up eating through all of their trauma before they can even build up temp hp buffer. I'm not sure if Fit as a Fiddle is even any good still.
10. Trauma Resistance - I'm not even sure its worthwhile to add trauma resistance on a melee build if temp hp + dmg resistance should theoretically reduce / ignore most trauma creation. Along with Sharice adding armor plates for pick hits.

I've tried a few variations and while I personally feel often at least very tanky and sometimes able to go from like 60 hp -> 120hp in a couple of maps, the team utility out of a melee build feels almost worthless compared to picking up Admin Reload builds and just killing threats before it can reach teammates.

I'd like to finally clear Endstate Matrix and think I can, but I feel like I might not be using teams effectively. In part because a few characters are not finished. Though I'm not sure how to use teams.

• Aemeath/Denia/Mornye
• Phoebe S6 /Lynae/Shorekeeper
• Cartytheia/Cicciaona/Aero Rover
• Hiyuki/Lucilla/Chisa

I've got Rebecca, Lupa, Verina, Buling, Sanhua, and Sigrika at different stages of completion.