Brutality Melee

Premise:

Main hand weapon:

Secondary weapon

Skills:

Mutations:

Tips

Overall thoughts

One of the main pillars of Brutality is close combat, so this is as pure as you can get when it comes to building with red. With this playstyle, you want to get up close and personal and eliminate enemies rather quickly, cause the best defence is a good offence, especially when you come face-to-face with the ghouls that inhabit the ever-changing island of Dead Cells.The only thing that you really need is a solid melee weapon. The best ones are generally the ones that have a fast attack-pattern and solid DPS, preferably with a consistent critical hit.You can take particular weapons depending on whether you have a secondary weapon/skills that synergies with it in some way (Oiled Sword+Flamethrower Turret, Rapier+Frontline Shield).Melee weapons that also scale with survival, like the Broadsword, are most of the time just better used for Survival because of the slow nature of these armaments, making them not the best suited for Brutality.Here is a list of my personal recommendations. I am working with limited space, so I am not able to disclose why I chose these specifically, cause then I will hit my character-limit very quickly!To add to that: it's not that because a weapon is not on the list, I think it's bad. I tried to limit this list to the gear I have had the most success with, even though there might be other items that would do just fine as well. Just use stuff you like, can't stress that enough.Oiled Sword, Assassin's Dagger, Spite Sword, Valmont's Whip, Impaler, Sadist's Stiletto, Rapier, Spiked Boots, Hayabusa Gauntlets, Torch, Shrapnel Axes, Swift Sword, Flashing FansDead Cells streamer and god-level player Veedotme made this tier list that I generally agree with, so you can have an idea of how a real pro thinks about it:When it comes to secondary weapons, the Hokuto’s Bow comes to mind as a great one, as you can increase your damage output, and it works well with Damage/Time, like Knife Dance.The Frontline Shield and the Bloodthirsty shield are also decent options to consider since they can help you deal with ranged enemies like the Inquisitors or Arbiters, while your skills are on cooldown. They also make facing the Giant and the Time Keeper a lot easier.Thanks to the new rework it received in the Legacy Update, the Frontline Shield is a lot better than it used to be and is yet another way to boost your damage.The Bloodthirsty Shield now scales with Brutality (finally!) and can also enable bleeding synergies.Any Brutality ranged weapon that has DOTs, like the Alchemic Carbine or Throwing Knives, can help you increase your damage with synergies and could be helpful for when you want to deal with enemies you’d rather stay away from, but they don’t offer the defensive attributes that the shields posses.And last but not least, an honourable mention for the Boy’s Axe, which can snare enemies in place and also help you with curse relief.Since this build is the simplest form of Brutality, pretty much all skills I will talk about here are going to be great filler for any of the brutality builds past this one.Back in the ye good ol’ days, all grenades used to scale with Brutality, but now that MT changed up their ‘colouring-philosophy’, all crowd-control grenades (Ice, Stun, Root) scale with Tactics/Survival. That leaves us only with the offensive grenades, like the Powerful, Infantry, Fire and Cluster.My favourite of the bunch in the Powerful Grenade, which has a huge area-of-effect and deals great damage. It is great for curse relief, but it does also scale with Survival, so getting two extra Brutality stats can be kind of a gamble. The Infantry grenade is weaker and has a smaller blast-radius, but it is really spammable and is pure Brutality, giving you that guaranteed +2 Brutality when it's S-qualityThe Fire- and Oil Grenade is obviously a classic, but they do take up 2 slots, and it is relatively easy to get a Flamethrower Turret that spills oil on the ground when deployed, which is a lot more spammable and allows you to run another skill.Knife Dance, Lacerating Aura, Lightspeed and Telluric Shock are great powers for dealing with enemies surrounding you at close range. These deal great damage and require you to participate directly in the action, which is ultimately what this build is about, yet can give you a safer option to take out multiple enemies.Telluric Shock also has the added benefit of granting invincibility frames when slamming down, which could even be used as a defensive tool to evade damage against bosses.Cleaver is a nice deployable item that can synergies just like the Knife Dance, but since enemies need to walk over it, it works a bit different and not as good at taking out flying enemies, but you can apply more bleed-stacks onto enemies on the groundCorrupted Power can buff up your damage like the Hokuto's Bow so can be used as a replacement if you go with a different secondary. Be aware of its drawbacks though.The Phaser and the Grappling Hook have to be mentioned as well since they can bring you in the direct vicinity of an enemy and work well with close-range weapons.Vampirism isn’t necessarily something you should run around with for the whole run but is more of an item that you can pick up for a while if you are in desperate need of some healing and you don’t want to blow a flask charge.One mutation that you might immediately think about is Killer Instinct, but it is only really useful in biomes and not really in boss fights, and you always need to have a plan for those.These Brutality-scaling mutations are great for any build that works with red:Vengeance, Soldiers Resistance, Berserker, Adrenaline, FrenzyVengeance is a great offensive and defensive mutation since it can help when dealing with enemies and bosses that tend to combo you into oblivion, and it greatly improves rallying, especially when taking it alongside Recovery.Soldier resistance is obviously good because having health is good.Berserker is not as great when you don’t need to deal with malaise, but the DR can still save you in biomes.Adrenaline is an interesting way of healing as it works on biomes and bosses, but you do need to get those perfect dodges, which can be a hassle depending on what enemy you are facing (Rampagers attack so fast that when you dodge them, they will always proc the mutation's effect)Frenzy is easier to activate, however, it does not work against bosses and you need to keep killing enemies to make the most use of it. On higher difficulty you will have a lot more enemies to kill, making it easier to proc. Whether you use Adrenaline or Frenzy is up to you.Combo, Open Wounds and Melee are also fun to toy around with, but I feel like the other mutations have a more practical use than those. A fun combo to try out though is Impaler + Melee as it is pretty solid crowd-control and enemies in biomes get mopped up with ease.Beware when in the Ossuary or the Arboretum, because you don’t want to unintentionally hit the back of a Thorny. The best bosses to face are the Concierge/Mama Tick and the Giant.The Watch and the Timekeeper can be a bit annoying to keep up with, getting in range of them to hit them with your short melee weapon can be a hassle, but with a shield and good skills, they are doable.It can be a blast to rock pure Brutality melee, and it is really customizable, but it is obviously risky to get close to baddies because nasty things can happen, like, you know, dying and all that. Curses can be especially annoying but with the right skills and secondary weapons, you shouldn't have that many issues. Be careful about Thorny’s though!