Combat Master – Effective Melee Combat Build (Go Fast and Stab)

This is a guide to an effective melee combat build and play style in Combat Master. It is not a recipe for dominating competent players with guns, just a fun alternative.

Introduction

All credit goes to Miskatonic Water !

This is a guide to effective melee play in Combat Master. It may not be immediately obvious that a melee-focused style could be effective in a shooting game, but you can have lots of fun this way and even top the leaderboard sometimes. Much of this advice is also useful for non-melee play.

The general principle is to build the fastest possible gun, equip a secondary melee weapon, run right up to enemies, and get one-hit kills with ‘weapon bash’.

Primary Weapon

For a pure melee build, choose your primary weapon attachments for the highest sprint speed, up to the speed cap of 11.3 m/s.

Currently the only weapon capable of reaching the cap (as far as I know) is the M4 assault rifle. This is my favoured build for pure melee play. It delivers a 74% boost, theoretically increasing sprint speed to 12 m/s. This is beyond the 11.3 m/s cap in the shooting range, but I feel (without evidence) that it is slightly faster in actual games.

You can change out the suppressor and ammunition for something more effective for ranged play with little or no effect on the shooting range test track. Substituting Dragonfire ammunition in this build makes it hilariously overpowered, to the point where I found it quickly became boring.

Unfortunately for newer players, the unmodified M4 has one of the lowest sprint speeds at only 6.9 m/s, and this build requires level 79 to fully implement. But you can reach a very respectable 10.6 m/s at lower levels by substituting the Falcon Atlas barrel, Edge Hexon Buffer Tube stock, standard receiver, and Railscales RSB Vertical underbarrel.

Decently fast builds are available with the right attachments on most other weapons. I have tested these: SIG MCX 10.9 m/s, AK 10.0 m/s (not max level), M3 9.5 m/s.

Calculated but not tested: AK 10.5 m/s at level 73, MPV 10.9 m/s at level 80, P90 10.3 m/s at level 71, VKTR 10.0 m/s, Dual MAC 10 8.4 m/s (terrible, might as well just slide around on your butt instead.)

Note that the descriptions on some attachments are wrong. For example, the Edge Hexon Buffer Tube stock is described as giving a 7% sprint boost, but actually gives 17% on the M4. (And only on the M4, not on other weapons.) The Gunslinger Quick+ actually yields 28%, not 18%. I have not tested every attachment on every weapon and there are certainly more of them that over- or under-perform their descriptions. Use the racetrack on the Shooting Range to test your build and verify that you are making a real improvement.

Melee Weapon

Katanas or swords should be your weapon of choice. All melee weapons do the same amount of damage, same attack speed, and same sprint speed. The only difference is that the katanas and swords have more range than all the other melee weapons. The axe has slightly more range than the knives but less than the katanas and swords.

Lethal Weapon

Grenades and thrown weapons are both good choices for dealing with enemies you cannot easily reach for a melee attack. They do not stop you from sprinting, unlike firing your primary weapon, so they are a great ranged attack option if you can land the shot.

Beyond about 9.5 m/s you can throw an M69 grenade straight ahead of you, run past it, and be outside its explosion radius before it goes off. That can be situationally useful, e.g. if you and an enemy are chasing each other around a building. More generally, you can throw a grenade downwards without losing any speed, and it will go off at a greater distance behind you. If there is a group of enemies close together, you can often jump over their heads, throw a grenade straight down, and be gone before it goes off.

Gameplay

This is a ‘glass cannon’ build. You can kill with one hit, but you are vulnerable. Go fast, stay out of sight, dodge, and don’t attack head-on. Think ‘ninja.’

Keep your primary weapon active for the sprint speed bonus, but use ‘weapon bash’ to attack with your secondary melee weapon. Avoid firing your gun unless you are certain to make the kill and are not under attack.

Speed does several things for you.

• You can reach an enemy more quickly, reducing the chance that they will spot you and giving them less time to react if they do spot you.
• It makes you harder to hit.
• It allows you to overtake enemies from behind and kill them before they see you.
• It allows you to cover more horizontal distance in a jump.
• Longer jumps open up paths that are not available to slower players, to escape danger or to set up attacks from unexpected places.
• When you attack from above, longer jumps allow you to reach enemies that are further away from your starting point.

Speed is your defence. The faster you move, the harder you are to hit. Firing slows you down. Reloading slows you down. Sliding slows you down. Switching to your secondary melee weapons slows you down.

Jump as much as possible. This makes you harder to hit. Less obviously, when you are off the ground there is no sound from your footsteps, so you can hear enemies’ footsteps more easily.

Many players have very bad situational awareness. Especially snipers. Approach an enemy from the sides or the back, or jump on them from above. Avoid head-on attacks.

Your situational awareness needs to be good. Don’t just stare at wherever you are going. Look around. Look up. Look down. Look behind you. Listen. This game has fairly good directional audio, so you can tell by the sound approximately which direction and how far away an enemy is.

Do not get hit. Jump. Zig-zag. Jump from side to side. Change direction often. Do not cross wide-open spaces with no cover. If seen, use buildings and other objects to break line of sight until you can close with the enemy. Circle strafe if spotted when close. If you miss your first attack, circle strafing and jumping will make it very hard for the enemy to hit you.

If you spot an enemy that you cannot easily approach (e.g. on top of a building or in an open space), you may lob a grenade or a throwing knife at them, but don’t get hung up on trying to reach them. Break line of sight and move on.

There is a bug that sometimes prevents melee hits from registering. It will play the hit sound and the blood animation, but just not do any damage. The only solution is to keep attacking.

Mechanics of Speed

Currently sprint speed is capped at 11.3 m/s according to testing on the track in the Shooting Range. I am not sure this cap is always applied in actual matches; some games it feels like you move faster than others. If anyone knows a way to measure speed inside a match, I would like to hear it.

Sprint speed bonuses are additive, not multiplicative. For example, if there were two attachments, each with a +10% sprint bonus, using them together will yield a total bonus of 1.1 + 1.1 = 1.20 times the original speed, NOT 1.1 * 1.1 = 1.21.

Attachments that increase movement speed (such as the Liberator stock for the M3 shotgun) only increase walking speed, not sprint speed, and are therefore not useful.

You have probably seen players spamming slide, skidding around on their butts. That yields a speed of 7.9 m/s regardless of your sprint speed. If your speed is higher than 7.9 m/s, sliding will slow you down.

Skills

Skill 1 / Blue

My choice here is E.O.D.

• E.O.D. is useful to mitigate explosive damage that might otherwise instantly kill you.
• Quick Heal isn’t very useful. Once under attack, we tend to die too quickly to make healing an issue.
• Predator has the same issue as Quick Heal. You may want it anyway if playing a hybrid ranged/melee style or in Demon Slayer.
• Soft Landing isn’t very useful because there are very few places from which you can fall far enough to take significant damage.

Skill 2 / Red

My choice is Sonar.

• Tempered is not great. The minigun just gets you killed and atomic finishes are fun but too rare to plan around.
• Extra Lethal is fun to power up your grenades, but not as good as Sonar.
• Sonar helps you locate nearby enemies out of line of sight and informs both your attack and defence. Note that it has a limited range and will not warn you of distant snipers.
• Overcharge is not terribly useful.

Skill 3 / Yellow

In the third group, suit yourself. Nothing here is a must have.

• Agile’s effect on crouch speed doesn’t extend to sliding, so that’s not useful. The zipline speed boost is good, but only when there are ziplines. Longer sprint time in Premiere might be useful, but I haven’t played Premiere enough to have an opinion. Longer sprint time as a melee player in Hardcore is the difference between instant death and nearly instant death.
• Quick Swap, Hunter, and Sprint Reload are all good choices for a fast ranged play style.
• Power Throw is great if you use thrown weapons a lot. This is usually my choice.

Recommended Settings

• Options > Sound > Huh Jump Sounds > 0%
  • Disables the jump sound so you don’t go insane.
• Options > Controls > Additional > Sprint / Tactical Sprint Behaviour > Toggle
  • So you don’t have to hold down the sprint button all the time.
• Options > Controls > Additional > Always use Melee weapon for Close-Up Hit > On
  • So bash uses your melee weapon instead of your gun, ensuring a one-hit kill.