Megaten Melee Guide

Expertises: (Offense)
This are melee based skills that concern your attacks.

A melee usually likes to SMASH, SMASH and SMASH again in close combat. Which skills and techniques do they have? There are three different melee skills that such a build type prefers to use: Attack, Spin and Rush

Listing each and every skill is rather reduntant, and thus I will link each expertise to its respective page on our own Wiki site for Megaten. Click on the [Wiki Link] button next to each expertise to get there and read up on more detailed information, pertaining to each expertise.

~Offense~

Attack: [Wiki Link]
Attack skills are the most basic and simple attacking form a melee has to offer. Basically it is simply put: SMASHING. You run up to your opponent and hit them with your weapon.
The neat thing about this expertise is that you have different Attack skills that each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Generally you have a series of three consequent attacks with our basic attack skill. Some attack skills offer a longer chain of attacks, but for reduced damage per attack, e.g. Combo Attack and Gatling Strike.

Other attack skills also offer more damage for a cost of additional life, e.g. Heavy Attack.

Spin: [Wiki Link]
Spin attacks pretty much describe themselves with their name: You spin around and hit everything close to you. Spin skills usually cost a certain amount of HP to use, but end up in attacking an Area of Effect (AoE). These skills are great to take down multiple enemies at once. Usually Spin skills tend to be a bit less stronger than basic attack ones, for that they offer their AoE advantages. In addition spin attacks break enemy counter stances.

Most Spin skills damage is based on the weapon’s affinity you are using (More to affinities below). These skills are great to have as with your weapon-variety, your spin variety grows as well. Here some examples of these useful Spin skills: Giant Swing and Dragon Sweep (Strong)

Other spin skills offer multiple spin attacks, which enables the melee fighter to hit enemies multiple times in an AoE field. Here some examples: Giant Swing and Three Step Crescent Moon.

Rush: [Wiki Link]
A melee dashes forward to strike the opponent in a fierce and fast attack. These are strong and effective attacks for melees. Like spin attacks, rush attacks cost HP to cast, offer however a larger range of damage than normal attacks and in addition break enemy guard stances.

Rush skills mostly have a larger amount of damage potential than normal attacks. Like spin attacks most rush skills use the weapon’s affinity for damage. Great skills to use with this effect are: Heaven’s Gate and Vulcan Hit (Strong)

There is another rather useful rush skill called Asura Charge. This one actually enables an AoE effect for rush skills, where rush skills tend to only target one enemy at a time. Asura Charge is also weapon affinity based, and thus offers great potential for AoE attacks.

Like some spin skills, two rush skills offer the ability to consequently rush attack an enemy after another. Usually you attack once, but with these you attack once and then right after that again. Here are the skills that use this feat: Tyrannical Jaw and Blade of the King Beast

That covers the active expertise skills a melee uses for offense. We still have one passive one as well. It is called Weapon Knowledge.

Weapon Knowledge: [Wiki Link]
Weapon Knowledge is an expertise that consists only of passive boosts for melees. It is gained by using melee typical skills, i.e. Spin and Rush skills. WK is useful in a couple ways and offers a great supply of passive boosts:

–Reduced durability loss on weapons. The better your WK is, the less you have to repair your weapons. Basically this means cost savings as you have to repair less, and you also have more time to use your weapon and do not have to worry about it breaking before you are finished with a dungeon.

–Increased Close-Range damage. The main passive buffs this expertise offers, each increase your close range damage. This is a useful buff and can help you maximise your damage potential.

–Decreasing Counter and Guard cast times. This is useful as it helps you prepare your defense faster when in battle. More to Guard and Counter below.

–Increases Critical Hit rate and resistance. These buffs are especially useful as one helps you land critical hits more often and the other helps you become more resistant to critical hits, i.e. they occur less often. 

Expertises: (Defense and Supportive)
How Melees protect themselves with skills as well as support themselves and others.

~Defense~

Melees tend to be rather aggressive in combat and at higher levels rarely need to defend themselves, as they slaughter everything in their paths…
There are however ways for melees to protect themselves and also ways to support their way of playing and also of other players. First off we will begin with the basic melee defensive maneuvers: Guard, Counter and Dodge

Guard: [Wiki Link]
Guard is a defensive skill that enables the melee combatant to enter a stance, in which he blocks off the first melee based attack from an opponent (not including rush skills). After blocking the first attack, the enemy’s combo of attacks is halted, this usually offering the melee to attack his enemy before the enemy tries to strike again. Guard attacks can be negated by rush attacks.

There is a large range in Guard skills and they tend to all offer various extra effects when being used. Such as Stun Guard, by having a probability of stunning an enemy after a successful guard.

Other guard skills like Whither Guard supply the melee combatant with more powerful attacks after a successful guard.

Counter: [Wiki Link]
Being able to block an enemy attack and being able to damage them while at it, is the theme of this defensive skill. Your character enters a stance in which he or she is able to counter-attack an enemy using basic melee attacks (not including spin attacks)

Counter stances can be broken by an enemy’s spin attack, leaving the defendant prone to attacks. Like Guard, this defensive skill set offers various useful extras when succeeding in countering.

Bind Counter has a chance at binding your opponent for a short moment, making them immobile, after a successful counter attack.

Other counter moves such as Vampiric Counter and Strikeback (Soul) can deplete your enemy’s MP pool.

Dodge: [Wiki Link]
This skill is used for something entirely different for close combat: ranged attacks.
Melees have the disadvantage in having to be close to their enemy to be able to attack, ranged attackers tend to be able to attack a melee from afar before he or she even comes close. Well there are ways to get around this, even for melees.

Dodge stances can be broken by any other attack, besides ranged ones, e.g. spells, gun shots, etc…

Some dodge skills, like Pyro Dodge, inflict extra damage to an enemy after a successful dodge. This can help beat down the enemy for less poundings up close.

Other dodge skills, such as Dodge (Shot Failure) not only dodge enemy ranged attacks, but also reduces the enemy’s future attack damage with ranged attacks.

That sums it up for the directly active melee defense skills. There is still another one, a passive one, that many underestimate: Survival Techniques

Survival Techniques: [Wiki Link]
Survival Techniques is simular to WK and offers a passive boost for melee combatants. It is raised by using the above mentioned defensive skills. Here is what ST can do for a melee:

–Decreases equipment durability loss. Like WK, this one reduces durability loss as well, just instead of weapons, it does so for the equipment of our melees. Melees tend to get hit often and this wears down their equipment. ST helps stal this effect and shares the same benfits in this case as WK.

–Increases resistance to critical hits. Higher leveled ST can provide a good extra resistance to withstand enemy critical hits, i.e. they do not land critical hits as often.

~Supportive~

Above I have mentioned some of the defensive expertises melees usually use. There are other expertises some melees might want to consider. Depending on your play style and just in general, what you like to play, you can add a few more exotic ones to your tablet and have a bit more to offer than just SMASH. Also these expertises are used in some of the popular Chain Expertises. Here they are: Curative Magic, Supportive Magic, Destruction Magic and Curse Magic.

Curative Magic: [Wiki Link]
Curative magic spells can be helpful to some players out there. As the name suggests, the spells gained from this expertise help heal you. There are two kinds of healing, three if you include resurrecting. Just remember, healing skills, ones that replenish your HP, are based on your Support/Intelligence stats. So if you do sway off and would like to heal, remember to get a bit of that as well.

Skills like Dia, Mediarama an Diarahan are skills that replenish your health and, as mentioned above, rely on your Inteliggence/Support stat.

Recarm and others from that line of spells, are great for resurrecting allies and your demons.

Charmdi, Patra and Petradi are skills you use to negate Sleep, Bind and other negative effects on your character. Can be useful for not only yourself but also your allies/demon.

Supportive Magic: [Wiki Link]
Support spells are rather useful skills. Self buffs, either increasing your damage, defense or even repelling attacks is a great thing a melee can have as an extra.

Tarukaja is a nifty spell that can increase your Close Range by a total of 8, when stacked! A really useful boost for any kind of melee.

Spells like Rakukaja and Samakaja increase your defense against certain attacks. Sukukaja is a nice buff that increases your resistance against critical hits.

Tetraja is a really useful skill, which negates damage made by one Death- or Excel-Affinity based attack.

Curse Magic: [Wiki Link]
Curse spells usually debuff your enemy or offer a way to cause negative effects on your opponents, e.g. charm. This is a rather untypical extra for melees, but it is up to you, whether to use it, or not.

Spells like Tarunda and Makanda reduce your enemy’s attack, and Rakunda and Samanda reduce their defense.

Shibaboo and Pulinpa are examples of skill sthat cause negative effects on enemies, e.g. bind and panic.

Destruction Magic: [Wiki Link]
This skillset is mostly used by mages, but who says a melee cannot add a little firepower, literally, to their repetoir? The nice thing about these skills is, if you are having a hard time as a melee, you can resort to blasting them away to continue smashing your way through mobs.
Magic spells are based on your Magic/Spell stats. So a melee wishing to use these skills should consider increasing those.

Destruction Magic covers 4 affinities mostly, Fire (Agi), Ice (Bufu), Electricity (Zio) and Force (Zan). In addition at higher levels you get the really strong Megiddo skills as well.

Chain Expertises:
Retaliation and OthersBuild enhancing expertises, combined out of your main ones! Awesome.

~Retaliation~

Retaliation: [Wiki Link]
Retaliation could be called a melee’s main chain expertise. This chain expertise basically strengthens and imrpoves your fighting skills while using a specific kind of weapon.
This chain expertise unlocks so called ‘Toggle Skills’. These are inactive skills, which you activate to receive a passive bonus, as long as they are active. You can easily combine and use more than one toggle at once to increase effects and produce even more potential while fighting with your weapons.

To unlock Retaliation you need:

Class 2 Attack (Multiplier: 0.2)
Class 1 Weapon Knowledge (Multiplier: 0.4)
Class 1 Survival Techniques (Multiplier: 0.4)

Those three expertises are the base foundation for unlocking Retaliation. In addition the higher these expertises are the more stronger and higher classed your Retaliation will become.

Here an example:

Base
Class 2 Attack, 1 Weapon Knowledge and 1 Survival Techniques = Class 1.2 Retaliation

Advanced
Class 2 Attack, 3 Weapon Knowledge and 4 Survival Techniques = Class 3.2 Retaliation

That pretty much sums up the basics on Retaliation. If you wish to read up on more details of this chain expertise’s toggle skills, check out Watusa’s Retaliation Guide for more information.

~Other Chain Expertises~

Enhancement: [Wiki Link]
This is an often used chain expertise by some melees. It builds on buffing your party and yourself as well as being able to heal in need. Generally speaking an enhanced (pun intended) version of Curative and Supportive Magic expertises.

Here is what you need to unlock Enhancement:

Class 2 Supportive Magic (Multiplier: 0.4)
Class 2 Curative Magic (Multiplier: 0.3)
Class 1 Bless (Multiplier: 0.3)

Enhancement has great team buffs to offer that can immensely increase a party’s defense and attack power in battle. In addition it also offers a great supportive skill for melees:
Pulse of Armor.
This skill disables knockback for a short period of time, enabling you to get hit as a melee, but to not get pushed back after a series of attacks.

Curse of the Wretched: [Wiki Link]
This chain expertise builds on heavily cursing your opponents with negative effects, be it slowing them down or increasing their vulnerability to damage.

Here is what you need:

Class 2 Curse Magic (Multiplier: 0.5)
Class 1 Destruction Magic (Multiplier: 0.1)
Class 1 Magic Control (Multiplier: 0.2)
Class 1 Bless (Multiplier: 0.2)

Curse of the Wretched is more or less an exotic yet not unpracticed chain expertise for melees. The requirements make it hard to pull off in most melee builds, yet it is not impossible.

Weapons
A melee’s best friend. Even more so than dogs. :D

A weapon is literally the most important piece of equipment to a melee. Knowing how your weapon works, how to exploit your weapon to do more damage and how to alter it and change it to become even more powerful is what will be listed in this part of the guide.

Here are the contents:

1. Weapon Interface
2. Affinities
3. Modifications
4. Synthesis

~1. Weapon Interface~

Knowing the specifics about your weapon is the first step to learning how to use it. To open a weapon interface, right click on any weapon icon to view its interface.

01. Weapon Name
The name of the weapon.

02. Weapon Type
A weapon type is can be one like Spear or Primitive Weapon.

03. Close-Range Stat
This is the stat your damage relies on. The higher this is the better.

04. Support Stat
This stat increases your heals. Only interesting if you actually heal as well.

05. Durability
This is an important stat. After being used often and often, weapons wear down ad become
useless if not repaired. This is an important stat to consider when engaging long combat sessions. Repair your weapons!

06. Affinity
One of the most important stats on your weapon. This is the damage type your weapon deals. So if it says Slash, it deals slash based damage, if it says Fire, it deals fire based damage and so forth. More to affinities later.

07. Spell Stat
This stat increases magic based damage, such as attack spells. It is only important to those who also use magic attacks.

08. Critical Stat
This stat adds to your critical hit rates and the respective damage of such an attack.

09. Tarot and Soul Fusion
These two fields display whether soul or tarot fusion is possible and later shows which fusions have been used on the item.

10. Modification Slots
These slots show the modifications done to your weapon as well as list the possible amount of slots you can use to modify. More to this further below.

11. Item Text + Extra Effects
This field displays a little extra info on your item, such as background info etc…, and also lists the weapons extra effects, in this case ‘Increases Fire-Based Damage’ as one example.

~Affinities~

Affinities are vital to a melee’s performance in battle. Exploiting enemy weaknesses not only means you are capable in dealing more damage against them, should you have the correct affinity, but also mean you have better chances at surviving.

Melee’s unfortunately are not able to just switch through skills with different affinities like mages or some gunners. They need to rely on a variety of weapons in their own set of weapons to manage the different battle situations out there.

Some weapons come naturally with a specific affinity. It is however possible to alter a weapon’s base affinity with synthesis. This means you could for instance change a weapon’s affinity from Charge to Fire. A list of the affinity changing soul stones for synthing will be listed below.

Close Combat based affinities:
-Slash (Example: Swords)
-Charge (Example: Spears)
-Blunt (Example: Axes/Clubs)

Elemental based affinities:
-Fire
-Ice
-Force
-Electricity

Other affinities:
-Death
-Expel
-Nerve
-Mind