Bash, how powerful is it?

Hi,

I never played melee yet and accidentally I bashed a jericho assault with my heavy’s sniper rifle and it totally destroyed it. Why is bash so powerful, does the DMG change based on the weapon you are bashing with and is melee attack more powerful than bash?

Bash is the attack my most successful and reliable soldier build is using.
One day, I was trying to find out how to make the heavy useful. After a jetjump, there’s not much he can do: pistol or bash (later PDW). So I tried bash and did the math about how its damage is calculated.

  • Bash damage = weapon weight x soldier strength
  • Brawler perk (first heavy perk): +50%
  • Reckless perk: +30%
  • Close combat specialist: +20%

So a heavy weapon’s weight is 5 (sniper is 4). I brought my heavies (my only recruits) at 30 strength. That means 225 damage per bash. With luck and the two custom perks, you climb at 300 damage.
That’s enough to kill Arthrons and Tritons in one blow until late game where they get dazed most of the time.
If in danger, use war cry and all enemies around are incapable of doing lots of stuff.
Use Anvil armor to protect your 300 HP soldier and you’re pretty unkillable.

Now, melee damage is 140 (10 less than bash without perks) and uses 2AP.

I’d suggest this build to anyone frustrated about the game’s difficulty. It makes the game really easy. The devs are going to rebalance melee so wait and see. War cry should probably use 1 AP or be less powerful. Imagine it used against you… horrible.

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Yes, bash is very good, especially for fully armored heavy.

I was wondering about whether CCS +20% applied to bash (the description only mentions shotguns and melee), but I see from your post that it does.

In my current game I will try to avoid using high mobility builds with RC, as I found them very OP.

Well, I assume it’s broken since it does not damage then melee while using less AP.

One thing I noted is that your weapon can take damage while bashing. He’ll Cannon took DMG when I hit a Scylla. Not sure if it was because of its armour or large health pool (high strength).

Did anyone try multi-classing heavy with assault for the dash/bash combo? Will it benefit multi-classing it with berserker?

Also, does bash or melee trigger return fire?

Yes it does trigger return fire (RF).

Bash triggers return fire … unless the target is dazed (which happens all the time until very late - then it’s only most of the time).

If you want a powerful bash, you need strength, so you cannot have high speed and dual class to assault is not interesting.
Dual class to berserker is interesting for immunity to mind control, broken limbs (mostly head because of sniper shot), or panic.

Really weird that hitting an enemy with the butt of your rifle does more damage than shooting them in the head with the same rifle. Who knew that a club is deadlier than a burst of bullets?

It should at least require a proper melee weapon like the Anu warhammer…

That’s why I think it’s broken and they’ll eventually fix it. I think, as the name implies, that it was supposed to be a quick resort action in CCQ to either finish off a wounded enemy or just spend the remaining 1AP. I don’t think they looked at the formula that generates its DMG.

I assume they’ll eventually fix it.

They said that they were reviewing melee for next patch, so I guess bash will also be changed.
Hitting melee could remove WP from an enemy. No-one is really comfortable getting invaded in his personal space.
War cry should probably get a nerf.

That is why melee (including Bash) shouldn’t do so much damage.