 What's up everybody I'm TheMangoose, you are awesome and in my last video I indicated that the melee weapons in Blood Hunt were trash. I was very, very wrong. After recording that video I decided to give the melee weapons a second chance and discovered that not only are they not trash, they're a little bit overpowered. Why take the time to aim at someone when you can hold W and left click your way to victory? To make up for my grievous mistake I tested the various melee weapons against NPCs to find out what kind of damage you can expect from each one, general weapon speed, and the pros and cons to using them. To begin with every weapon has a two hit combo, the Scorched Blades are a bit of an exception since the combo doesn't reset with them, you just keep swinging right to left. All four melee weapons have 50% life steal and you get that life immediately on hit. This is what makes the melee weapons to damage strong, it doesn't matter how many shots someone lands on you with a gun when you're just healing through it. Still of note the Bat and Axe always come as blue rare quality while the Katana and Scorched Blades always show up as purple epic quality. Please let me know if you've ever found any of these weapons in any other rarity. We'll go through each one now starting with the lowest damage to the highest. The Spiked Bat. The spike bat takes about 20 frames of animation from the start of the swing till it connects. When swinging you perform a horizontal swipe that leads into an overhead smash. The Bat deals 50 damage per hit, there are no special abilities with the Bat, you just club people and that's that. The Fireman's Axe. The Fireman's Axe also takes about 20 frames of animation connect, this is at 60 frames per second by the way. The combo is a horizontal slash followed by another horizontal slash in the opposite direction. The Axe deals 65 damage per hit, as with the Bat there are no special abilities with the Axe, you just chop people. The Katana. The Katana also seems to take around 20 frames of animation to hit. The combo is a diagonal slash upwards followed by a vertical slash downwards. The Katana deals 70 damage per hit. Holding right click with the Katana will allow you to reflect damage back at your opponent. So while the Katana really doesn't hit that much harder than the Axe, the potential damage from a good reflection makes this the highest possible damage melee weapon. I'm just going by base damage here though. The Scorched Blades only take 10 frames of animation to connect. The combo is a double diagonal slash to one side followed by another slash to the other side. Unlike the other melee weapons, there's no reset time between the combo so you can just slash away. The Blades deal 30 damage per hit, but with two Blades hitting that's really 60 damage per swing. The secondary right click ability of the Scorched Blades allows you to dash through opponents and deal 40 damage. So the Scorched Blades do offer the highest possible base damage output and offer you a gap closer to get to your opponent. I, however, usually prefer the Katana. The damage reflect can be invaluable and the clan or arc type abilities offer other ways the gap close. In a 1v1 between two players with the Scorched Blades and the Katana though, the Scorched Blades will win assuming all other things like health and resonance are equal. The Fireman's Axe isn't a bad alternative to the Katana dealing almost as much damage so keep that in mind as you pick up loot. Despite that is better than nothing, but you should try to upgrade it as soon as possible if you plan on beating people down. There are other factors to consider when using melee weapons. First of which is the clan you choose. The Bruja are the obvious choice for close range combat as they have a passive that gives them reduced damage taken at close range. They both have the Leap that can be used to gap close. The Brute has the Force Wall that can stop incoming bullets while you run towards someone while the Vandal can of course just leap on top of their opponent and knock them up. The Nosferatu clan are also a great choice for melee. You can use the clan ability to go invisible and run straight into melee range before people can react. The Toriador can blink into people with much the same effect and the Muse can blind and stun people. All the clans are viable melee options, but I think the Bruja are probably the best choice. The other factor you want to consider is Resonance. If you plan on slicing people to ribbons, you're going to need to be on the lookout for orange humans to feast upon. Getting max orange resonance will give you 50% more melee damage. Finally, if you want to find really good melee weapons, the spots on the map marked with a little sword I guess is what it is, those are antique swords and you will always find melee weapons inside. Nine times out of ten, one of them will either be the Katana or the Scourgeblade, so these locations are worth checking out. If you do find yourself in a fight against someone that is mindlessly swinging a melee weapon at you, try to counter them by jumping a lot. The melee weapons don't swing up, so take advantage of your gun's directional fire. Try to bait out the enemy's gap closer and put some distance between the two of you. Take your time and try to land headshots to put them down before they can get up and like steal their way to victory. I'll leave you today with a montage of melee kills, I hope you enjoy it. Shout out to channel members FullishBloodHunter, Jelly Knees, and MeowMix4Min.