Melee



Melee (spelt mêlée in original French form, and pronounced "May-lay") refers to hand-to-hand combat. It is usually with a weapon, though players can choose to kick or punch an opponent if they prefer. It does not include long-range attacks using Ranged or Magic. A character's ability in melee combat is made up of three combat skills, namely Attack, Strength and Defence.

Players inflict damage on an opponent either by hitting them with a blunt weapon (such as a warhammer) or slashing or stabbing them with a bladed weapon (such as a sword). Other melee weapons include daggers, spears, claws, battleaxes, longswords, scimitars, maces and halberds. Players can also equip some tools as melee weapons, including axes and pickaxes. There are also "novelty" items you can attack with, such as Flowers.

Popularity of melee combat
Melee is the most popular combat style in RuneScape, with 59% of users polled in January 2007 preferring it over the other combat styles.

The most common reason why is the fact that players do not need to keep buying arrows or bolts (required for Ranged) or runes (required for Magic) in order to fight, with 56% of respondents citing this reason. The second most voted choice was that Melee has a better choice of weapons and armour, and accounted for 13% of respondents.

Typical equipment
Most players will find that their melee armour includes most (if not all) of the following items:
 * A helmet
 * Chainbody or platebody armour
 * Platelegs or a plateskirt
 * A shield or defender (unless wielding a two-handed weapon)
 * A weapon
 * An enchanted amulet (optional)
 * Gloves (optional)
 * Boots (optional)
 * Enchanted Ring (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 ranged attacks, but provides very poor defence from magical attacks (and actually increases the accuracy of an attack, by using negative bonuses).

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 melee player, who must be next to the mage in order to fight back. Prayer also offers some protection against the mage.