I've been trying to create a nice 2 bladed character now for the past 3 builds. Something about the idea of it excites me and makes me want to play. Add that to the fact that most of my rangers are a little light on hit points when it comes to boss battles.

I have built a fairly balanced set of range character and found myself needing to do more damage before the mobs killed me (even with regen/PFF.) This was usually only in big battles where it seems like everyone runs for help and brings back half the zone. So I did AOE builds.... these are all fun, but a little on the glass cannon side of things.

So anyway, I decided I might try something a little more face to face. A build made for getting in and killing... and I find myself in the same situation. The endurance isn't there. If you allow the battle to go on for more than a minute, you'll find yourself wishing you had more health, or stronger powers. Quite possibly the most annoying part of Melee however is that amount of skills that move or push mobs around.

I group with friends and we were doing an instance today. I was playing my energy based character and doing my typical AE attacks to dwindle down the zombies in the instance. One of my friends was doing the same. My other friend was playing his Ego Melee build and literally throwing a fit because the mobs were flying all over the place. So I switched to a more direct damage Lighting Arc and got back to the old situation where we couldn't hold anymore. The health wasn't there and the mobs weren't dropping fast enough. So it was back to frustrating the melee character by forcing them to chase mobs.

I don't think chasing things is the root of the problem though. I think it has to do with the fact that all the melee skills need excessive energy or spam-fests (which eat energy) to do any decent amount of damage. You feel sub par when fighting one mob while your friends are taking down 5-6 each. If you miss a mob with one of your attacks because it gets tossed, it's back to the energy builder to do it all again.

I think what might help melee become more team oriented would be to either flag mobs hit by the melee character as "untossable" or simply give melee characters unlimited power (or GREATLY reduced power cost with a boost to damage for the really cheap ones already) so that their skills don't go to waste or have to be spammed. I think it's silly that the Dual blade skills that are cheap need to be spammed to be effective.

So do all the melee characters solo (because with my Dual Blade, I find soloing is the only way I can have fun) or is there a trick that I'm not getting?

I pretty much shelved mine until something changes. Lightning Reflexes just isn't cutting it.

Edit: I was referring to my dual blades character. I guess I should have taken Regen, but I really wanted to stay within the character's concept. My Might character, however, is amazingly powerful and resilient.

I'm not going to explain alot but for my Dual Blades I use energy shield, Invul, and masterful dodge at lvl 21 I'm doing just fine.I also have a Might lvl30 with regen, laser knight, and in pve I can't be killed. Hope that helps.

I've tried lightning reflexes, regen, PFF, and Invulnerability and what bothers me most about the skills is that they require such dedication to keep useful. You have to cater your build to a specific branch and you can't variate the build hardly at all. I tend to make "dual class" builds, like Darkness/Lightning and Telekinetic/Force because I want to be able to use the skills together, but I find that unless you concentrate on specific skills you'll find yourself stuck in a build that just doesn't work.

They may as well have classes with the way the game is designed now. None of the skills work together unless they are in the same tree (like Negative Ions is only for Electricity skills... so you are stupid if you want to maximize output and you chose something other than Electricity for your next attack.) Accelerated metabolism never seems to work like it should (IMHO, to be able to maintain the skill... it just isn't strong enough or fire off enough) for melee to even consider it. It feels like it was reduced because of the AOE builds (which it seems to be decent with.)

I play a Might character and I like it alot, more then ranged actually. Im 25 now and just started taking some of the force powers, Force Eruption, and cascade next. But I do agree on the feeling sub-par thing. I can last a good amount of time and henchmen die fast, but everthing else take me forever!! even villians, i just have to spam Beatdown so I dont knock them back and agro other stuff...

Well, the definition of the melee approach is to stand next to your targets, so if your EB taunt isn't working for you, there's a few skills you can use to keep close: thunderbolt lunge, the advantage on shuriken throw, etc

I haven't had any problems with energy on my single blade character, and I do pretty insane damage once I get a bleed off. Are you using momentum?

I do feel a bit squishy, but my highest main has LR so I'm used to it. The DPS makes up for it.

I've shelved the main in my signature for a single-blade character that I'm loving.

Dex + Str superstats (str chosen when the melee damage modifier wasnt capped, but I enjoy picking up and throwing trucks at the enemy)

Every few levels I find myself running low on energy during fights, so I pick up recovery and endurance rewards for a while, until it's not a problem, then go back to dex and str again.

I can solo packs of 6 henchmen my level, and super-villains a level above me.

I have to say I love the melee characters I've had so far. Their survivability is better than any ranged characters I've been able to come up with. They pay for it rather dearly in DPS, but I prefer the nigh-invincibility to the fast fights.

If you like fast fights and damage-oriented characters, then ranged is probably better for a number of reasons. But that's the norm when it comes to MMORPGs.

I have two melee builds, a dual blader, and a might-based one. The Might is str/con specced.. invul, etc, and he's a monster, can tank his way through most anything. He was respecced at the last free respec into invul, and hasn't had a problem since.

The Dual Blader has a harder time, he's got LR, with Dex.. He's more work, but just as effective, if I'm careful... I'm waiting for the high levels, when the LR will start to pay off with the higher dex.

I have a Dual blade build and I have Reaper's from the Single Blade... it's one of my primary attacks, and that skill seems well balance to me, but my dual blade attacks are somewhat lacking. Storm's Harvest is a spamfest... low power, with medium/low damage (compared to the Ego Blade skills) and Blade Tempest (the cone damage dual blade) eats up half of my energy bar in three shots. That's usually enough to get a group of three mobs down to almost death and it usually requires me to finish them off with Storm's Harvest spam (if I have the energy left) The build I'm working with now is a level 16 Str(63)/Dex(65) using wrist bolter for energy builder, Invulnerability, dual blade main skills and a Single Blade (Reaper's) for tough bosses. I find myself resting after every pack of 3-4 mobs to get my health back up. I should have picked Regen, but I really wanted to make Invulnerable work (which is the main reason for choosing the PA energy builder.)

Momentum works for my cone damage skill and I can sometimes take them out, but I find myself doing the above and spamming Storm's harvest or switching off that and the Single blade attack to keep it from being spammy. The problem with this is when I'm in a group... with tossing casters... my cone damage skill is pretty much pointless.