Melee

Melee is combat while unarmed or using a melee weapon such as a Bat'leth or Lirpa (as opposed to a ranged weapon).

Overview
Melee Combat damage bypasses 80% of a target's shields allowing direct damage to their Hit points, making melee ideal for engaging heavily shielded targets. Additionally the majority of melee attacks have a 10% chance to Expose the target, while the finishers are Exploit attacks. This allows the melee oriented player the opportunity to do a surprising amount of damage as well as set up their traditional weapon based teammates for exploit attacks.

These advantages do come with their own corresponding disadvantages however; in both PvP and PvE, melee oriented players are strongly susceptible to roots, holds, stuns, knockbacks and leave themselves vulnerable to flanking. Care must be taken to avoid the pitfalls of melee play or you risk becoming a detriment to your team.

Combos
Melee combat is based off of a 3 strike 'combo' system; Your first strike is the weakest, this is followed by a stronger secondary attack, which is in turn followed by a Finisher. The type of attack as well as the animation are based off of the combination you choose. The attacks are default bound to the 1 and 2 keys, this gives you combo's such as 112, 122, 221, 212 etc.

In addition to the combo attacks you may also use 'Palm Strike' or 'Bat'leth Cross Strike' to knockback the target, decrease your threat, and potentially stun them. These secondary attacks are by default bound to the 3 key.

See the pages for each weapon for details on their combos.

Traits
The following traits aid melee combat (not exhaustive).

In addition to these, some species have innate traits that provide an advantage in melee combat, including;

Duty officers
The following duty officers provide melee bonuses when slotted.

Unarmed
It is possible to engage in combat without a weapon. Without a weapon slotted, a player can use basic jabs and punches. Damage however, is limited. In addition there are abilities such as the Vulcan nerve pinch or a Gorn bite. It is also possible to use the stock of your ranged weapon to attack enemies who come into close range, or strike with unarmed attacks like palm strikes while equipped with a pistol.

The first style of melee combat is Martial Arts (Unarmed). This is activated by using a weapon slot with no weapon in it giving you access to your Martial Arts attacks. Martial Arts attacks are typically faster and harder to interrupt then their Bat'leth counterparts as well as having additional debuff affects but do less damage per strike. Note: Combo information is incomplete due to testing limitations.