1.0 Blades of eclipse review. Perka, pros, cons, recommendations

Blades of eclipse. The basic melee class you will see.

Lemme say to new players: if you wanna run melee: don't. Melee builds lose to ranged builds, and frankly? If you are new you don't have the knowledge to use enemy ai to your advantage and how to abuse corners and funnel enemies. Which is okay, dont get me wrong. But seriously, just dont run melee as a new player. 

You may have luck in first few missions, but once enemies begin using actual ballistic weapons and not fists and glass shivs, you are gonna struggle. Die, even. 

Pros:

 

- relatively cheap. Don't need ammo or heavy armour with you. Just a strong melee and knowledge of the game

- high melee accuracy lets you use stronger melee weapons with low accuracy without risk of missing

- great potential vs strong single targets.

 

Cons:

- almost zero dodge. Combat reflexes at max gives 22%, when compared to cyber compatibility or combat focus, this is rather low and only good in early game, when you physically can't be a tank because of lack of heavy armour

- almost zero tanking. Berserkgang lets you have some heal and pain reduction but it sucks. Seriously sucks. More on that later

- carnage makes you locked into blades rather than axes. Not the worst thing except knifes when compared to axes, lose in dmg hard. Also no axe rage synergy :(

-damage low when compared to terror pack with fear and hunger perk.

 

Perks:

Berserkgang - C tier: meh for tanking, provides regeneration and pain reduction for a few turns upon getting hit. Early on can be viable but if i am being honest? Entirely replaced by slotting in red medkit in your loadout. Seriously you are wasting an entire perk slot for a worse medkit that doesnt even fix your wounds. 

You want real tanking? Slot in duty shift, wear heavy armour and use sorbents. Berkgang is worthless. 

Knife fight - B tier. Extra accuracy to melee. Always welcome, as, some harder hitting melee weapons (axes or swords) have absolutely ass accuracy. Obviously you can modify your clone's melee accuracy directly but, this is good crutch early on. Putting it on your ranged merc also allows you to be a hybrid and cycle between ranged and melee. Especially on Percy, which gets dmg buff from his carrying capacity. 

Atheltics: B tier. Accuracy reduction decrease while sprinting. In case you don't know, sprinting and attacking gives you an accuracy penalty. This circumvents the issue with 80% reduction to that debuff. Combined with magnetic stablizer, you can hit 110% lesser penalty, meaning, sprinting potentially makes you more accurate, lol. Then why is it only B tier i hear you ask? Because it is not a direct accuracy modifier,  accuracy as a stat is easly modifiable and you don't always wanna be on sprint to shoot. Good on melee classes though, at least until you modify your melee accuracy directly, at which point the debuff is negligible. 

Combat reflexes - A tier. 22 % base dodge chance increase.  good early game, but not good enough to make a difference later. Don't get me wrong, any Dodge chance is good, and early on its a decent pick, but it gets outclassed later by cyber compatibility. Still, this could keep you alive early on

Cannbalism - B tier. Strong dmg buff that you can trigger on demand by eating any meat that is labeled appropriately as cannibalism. The dmg buff is good, only downside is by eating human meat, you are also raising your q-meter, which for early game, is an issue, unless you are on mars, earth or Saturn. Still, good pick for terror pack, as you don't particularly care about q-meter while playing it. But terror pack already has fear and hunger,so...no need for this one. Unfortunately outclassed by cyber psychosis, if you run either gavakh stomache or one of the two spider head implants. 

Carnage - B tier. Landing a wound on an enemy from melee refunds you the ap. That means as long as you deliver a wound on an enemy he is pretty much dead if you can keep attacking. Only downside is you need to hit an enemy and for the hit to actually create a wound. Which is up to a bit of rng. Also it only works with blade weapons, which, severely limits your melee experience to knifes and razor blade katana which needs to be reacharged. Once again, limiting the use

And to be absolutely honest? What kind of shitty ass melee build are you running that can't even 1-2 hit an enemy? I think in late game you need a lot of dmg to survive, because keeping an enemy next to you alive will hurt you a lot. Relying on extra ap to kill enemies which may not even work is an odd choice. Early on though, could potentially kill a baron, as long as you get in range without dying

Personal recommendations: swap berserkgang for combat focus, combat reflexes for cyber compatibility when you can, and carnage for fear and hunger. Maybe swap cannibalism for assault reflex or death over chains for extra ap from either dodging or wounds.