Melee
Melee (spelt mêlée in original French form) refers to hand-to-hand combat. It is usually with a weapon, though players can choose to kick or punch an opponent if they prefer. It does not include long-range attacks using Ranged or Magic. A character's ability in melee combat is chiefly determined by two combat skills, namely Attack and Strength. The combat skill Defence, which plays a role in all combat, is also a large part of melee combat.
Players inflict damage on an opponent either by hitting them with a blunt weapon (such as a warhammer) or slashing or stabbing them with a bladed weapon (such as a sword). Other melee weapons include daggers, spears, claws, battleaxes, swords, longswords, scimitars, maces, and halberds. Players can also equip some tools as melee weapons, including hatchets and pickaxes. There are also "novelty" items you can attack with, such as Flowers.
Popularity of melee combat
Melee is more than 2x as popular than magic and ranged combat combined, with 59% of users votes in January 2007<ref>Poll of 2007-01-29: "Which of the three combat styles do you favour?"</ref>.
The most common reason why is the fact that players do not need to keep buying arrows or bolts (required for Ranged) or runes (required for Magic) in order to fight, with 56% of respondents citing this reason<ref name="poll20070312">Poll of 2007-03-12: "Why do you feel melee is the most popular combat choice?"</ref>. The second most voted choice was that Melee has a better choice of weapons and armour, and accounted for 13% of respondents<ref name="poll20070312" />.
Typical equipment
Most players will find that their melee equipment includes most (if not all) of the following items:
- A helmet
- Chainbody or platebody armour
- Platelegs or a plateskirt
- A shield or defender (unless wielding a two-handed weapon)
- A weapon
- An enchanted amulet
- Gloves
- Boots
- Enchanted Ring
- And a cape
You may find it difficult deciding which weapons and armour to carry, especially if you want Defence bonuses.
Fighting players
As the combat triangle suggests, melee players have an advantage over rangers, and are weaker against mages.
This is because the heavy plate armour (and chain armour to a lesser extent) typically worn by melee players is good at stopping ranged attacks, but provides very poor defence from magical attacks (and actually increases the accuracy of a magical attack, because of the negative bonus).
The most common defence of a melee player under attack by a mage is therefore to unequip the plate armour. Magical spells allowing mages to stop a player from moving are a problem for the melee player, who must be next to the mage in order to fight back. Prayer also offers some protection against the mage.
Melee Capes of Accomplishment
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Trivia
- There is a glitch with melee weapons, when used for the first hit against a monster, may look like causing damage from up to two squares away. If the monster is killed by this, the drops will appear next to you in the direction that you attacked, this sometimes can occur next to you.
- Although melee isn't an actual skill, it's a type of combat made up of 3 different skills: Attack, Strength, and Defence. (Defence is also used for Ranged & Magic.)
See also
- Free-to-play Melee training
- Pay-to-play Melee training
- Pure Melee training
- Magical melee
- Grand Exchange Market Watch/Melee armour
- Grand Exchange Market Watch/Melee weapons