Aside from striking scorpion, who's melee is ideally situational and by choice rather than be forced into it, I'm finding melee as banshee extremely difficult. To be honest, melee as any faction seems difficult for me these days. I took a hiatus from melee to get better at my reaper, and now it seems I suck at melee. I find melee isn't too hard when your group of 10 vs against s other group of 10. There's so much chaos going on you can usually get quite a few kills, and eldar mobility means you actually have a chance to get out of it in one piece. No, what I'm struggling with is mostly duels. I know it takes quick reflexes to win a duel, but sometimes it's just not even funny how one sided the fights are against me. Example... My Banshee with that awesome black sword vs standard marine with power or chain sword. These fights tend to go a bit better than usual, with a 50/50 chance to win usually. I can usually pull off a stun, but they seem to always roll out away before I can follow up with that stupid special attack after a DBash. Best I can do is roll and try to attack at a different angle. Like I said, I seem to have a 50/50 success rate. However, vs power fists, I RARELY win. I'm talking one out of 10. Seriously, doesn't matter how much I DBash, roll, change up my attacks, I still get one hit killed. I try to run now when I see them, but there's a part inside me that wants to try and get better. I see some of you guys play and get like 30 melee kills with a banshee. What's you're secret?? I've pulled off 30 melee kills once or twice, but this was mostly from the chaos of battle or my Scorpion picking off people unawares than in duels. I'm committed to getting better.
That.... is not going to get better given UAT stats Because then you'll be truly OHK by any PF attack (apart from DBash). But anyway. How to win a melee duel with people... From my experience, one of Banshee's biggest advantage is the range of their lunge. If you don't get the drop on your opponent and there is noone around to help any of you, you can get the short time to analyse your foe's fighting. Keep a safe distance, Scream at him to provoke him and see his behaviour. THEN depending on his reaction, you may pick a line of action. - He DBashed? He may be fairly skilled, take care, and go for Power Attacks > Backward Dodge > Power attack > ... - He Fast Attacked? He's likely gonna do this over and over again. DBash > Power Attack > Disengage and kill him with pistol - He Power Attacked? He's a gambler, or he has no clue. You'll have to take extra care. Keep a safe distance still to analyse his pattern. Does he power attacks en masse or not, try to find the flaw in his actions. If you can't run away. Another excellent tactic is the bait: "Hey I'm a sexy ass Banshee fragile and all, come and get me. Oh my goodness a Power Fist... Better run away." Spot the enemy with whichever key you use to and run away. The power fist then proceeds to chase you. Get behind a corner, look at your minimap and when the time is right, charge a Powerattack to unleash in his face when he'll come just by the corner. A fast attack shall be enough to end him... Those are my tactics against tough opponents. Doesn't work with 100% efficiency, but I'm confident with a sweet 80% efficiency.
As a general rule: Melee is still a RPS system. By it's very nature, the one who acts first is usually the one losing because the other can react and answer with the fitting move. This is limited by how fast melee goes in this game. The real melee game happens elsewhere (probably unknown or unconscious to most). It's where you do things to lure the opponent into an action that you can predict or your action already done limits the range of feasible reactions of the opponent. Example given: you Dbash someone... what does usually happen? They roll. You could now spam light to chase. That would be a bad choice because the first swing usually misses and the opponent can see "Ah... he's RMB spamming towards me, I better DBash". You could go for a heavy attack which bridges the distance between you and him after the roll. That's a better move because your first action is also the acting one (you intend fully to land that heavy attack). Also, if the opponent after the roll light attacks, it's more likely than not to miss because he's not in range for it just yet. If he sees you approach and instinctively DBashes, you have a heavy attack going out, he's in the early DBash animation so you break it with high probability. If the opponent is a jetpacker, you better have switched to pistol before engaging and right after your Dbash, you shoot the bastard while he hovers in the air above you, then you evade the incoming slam. Another nice thing for Eldar is luring the opponent into shooting you at too close range. When they shoot, they often become very susceptible to fast attacks if you get into quick enough. It's of course a tight call since you don't want to catch many bullets either. TL;DR: Melee is often about luring the opponent into a predictable action rather than playing a pure luck RPS game. About your PF trouble: Shoot it. Only act in melee when you are CERTAIN you can answer with a fitting move. PF is easier to evade than to answer.
Wow, lots of good advice guys. I'll definitely try this out today when I play! I find the hardest thing is actually reminding yourself to hold back. That and having reflexes quick enough to respond with the right attack. One thing though, if I DBash someone, is there anyway to not do the stupid follow up attack?? It's such a pain and leaves me open every time. I suppose I could just roll then attack?
I find it has a lot to do with latency. Like, look at some of Saeritan's videos. It's so crisp, you can clearly see what the target is going to do and he uses that to good effect to win. I can't do that. I often die from melee attacks that don't even connect on my screen. I press fast attack and my attack hasn't even hit the enemy before they get out of stun and clang with me. Ideally, it's probably as they say above here about reacting to the opponent once or twice, then you've secured the win. However, you need the latency for it. Many of us don't get that since we don't live next to the servers.
DBash is always a pretty committing thing. The goal here again is: Play the lure game. DBash when you know it's a good idea to DBash rather than thinking of ways around the Dbash downsides. I've won melee "duels" against JPAs on my DA where I never used more than one DBash. One JPA RMB spammed at me, I DBashed, rolled back and started firing. He tried to RMB spam after me but I managed to keep him at arms length for the one swing. The second never came out properly because he keeled over. Another was smarter, he didn't chase me but jetpacked up. Unlucky for him, I run my DA with a smart pistol and by the time he came down again, he was kneeling already. As you can tell, all very lag-dependent but the stuff I describe I managed at ~120ms. It's all about knowing what to expect and then gambling for it.
Well it's helped out a bit guys! It's gonna take some practice, but i actually won a couple power fist duels today! I feel sorta torn because the game favours ranged right now I find, but ranged has its own problems. If I use a reaper launcher I inevitably team kill someone. Either I charge a shot and they walk in front of it, or as its traveling to the target a team mate walks to attack my target and gets killed by a mistake. I actually got kicked today for the first time because of it. Competly unintentional and I made sure I checked for team mates before I fire. They didn't even ask me bout it or say anything, just booted me! But I understand, guy probably thought I was being careless. So it brings me a back to melee cause at least no one can accuse you of team killing with ranged! I'll keep practicing!
I just simply dbash, roll before the dbash completes, trick my enemy, maybe he does a dbash too and well then he's fucked because I'll power attack his back and break his spine. If not well I'll just clang a few times (unless it's a pf user, then I'll try dbashing, and if he tries to do the same then I'd roll away, dbash, without getting near him, because if he dbashes again he'll be too far away from you to hit you, and he knows that, which means that there's a 90% chance he'll lunge at you with a fast attack and then boom, stun to his face). and well if he dbashes he isn't gonna clang with you so the thing will stay the same. if he repeats dbash too often then let him act and finally do a power attack. though the first anti-pf procedure already tends to work for me quite regularly. coming from a banshee mainer.
Using a reaper launcher to support someone in melee is... to say the least, brave. If you feel the need to support, you should run up to the opponent and probably do heavy attacks into his back. It'll cause quite some damage and might brake his Dbash if he tries to defend against your teammate which in turn allows your mate to rip him up. If you can, use an accurate weapon without splash and always place single shots to make sure not to hit your buddy. Otherwise, you might get some results with single clicked swarm shots when the opponent does a roll away from your buddy. You need to be pretty close though.
Yeah I'm very hesitant as well. I usually only do it if there's more than one enemy. Or I know I can get a shot off. Problem is with the lag, I'll have a clear shot and 2 seconds later 3 allies are there. So I try to be careful bout that. It does less damage than the tempest so it never actually downs any allies unless it's a direct hit. But yeah, I'll never do it again after last game. Most people are pretty understanding bout team kills when I use my reaper launcher tho. If it happens I always say sorry and most people say "np man". Most people who have been playing for awhile know it's a fluke if it happens.
