Melee



Melee (spelled mêlée in French, but pronounced "MAY-lay") refers to physical combat. It does not include long-range attacks using Ranged or Magic.

A character's ability in melee combat is made up of two combat skills: Attack and Strength.

When using the melee skills, a variety of weapons can be used. These include: daggers, swords, spears, claws, battleaxes, longswords, scimitars, axes, maces, halberds, warhammers and pickaxes, as well as using bare handed combat to attack enemies.

Popularity of Melee Combat
Melee is the most popular combat style in RuneScape. A recent poll of RuneScape members suggested that this is due to the fact that players do not need to keep buying arrows or runes (required in the Magic and Ranged skills) in order to fight. The second most voted choice was that Melee has the better choice of weapons and armour.

Typical Equipment
Most players will find that their melee armour includes most (if not all) of the following items:
 * A medium helmet or full helmet
 * Chainbody or Platebody armour
 * Platelegs or Plateskirt
 * A square shield or a kiteshield
 * A weapon
 * An enchanted amulet (optional)

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 arrows, but provides very poor defence from magical attacks (and actually increases the damage of an attack).

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 mêlée player, who must be next to the mage in order to fight back.