Now that I've done 11 melee resets and 10 ranged (in that order), I think I can weigh in on this. Melee in a speed run is not 'a little rocky' - it's terrible, and brutality and ghoul bite don't come fast enough or easily enough to make it better. I still love my melee, and I think it's perfectly equal to range in late game. In a speedrun, however, it's utterly miserable.
The brass knuckle update might help, but you usually get a heavy pistol by the time you fight the gang boss, so it doesn't make a huge difference (you have a rather worse chance at a riot baton, but you might get one after the hideout if not before). The Midgard Mk11a is a rare sight but it can show up over the course of a speedrun (and on Day 1), unlike any melee weapon that's anywhere near as good (spider drone legs come from an enemy that usually beats the crap out of me, so I flee from them. Also, they're very late-run).
(quick note: Eddie's isn't necessary for a ranged speedrun, at least not with luxury food buffs and a mysterious pyramid. The friendly bum gets you Eclipse faster, but Carlos can give you >1 Eclipse without using energy, and will also buy from you. Pretty balanced. So long as you have explosive bullet clips or haven't defeated the gang boss yet, you're good to go)
Weapons aren't the problem, though. The problem is techniques, and since the firing range has given me a grand total of 2 single shots over 10 or 11 runs, that's not the unbalancing factor (Practiced Shot has shown up 3 or 4 times, maybe, but also isn't a phenomenal bonus)(I haven't used the gallery in a speedrun). Right at the start of the game, you have
Punch (crappy melee attack, not replaced by Crushing Punch soon enough to save you lots of resting)
Dive for Cover (damn useful evasion technique. Because you never know whether an enemy is going to chain into a second technique, you want to use this first. This makes a hybrid deck subpar, as you're going to take a lot more damage using DfC second)
Single Shot (crappy ranged attack, but can extend into Short Burst. Can also now be partially or completely replaced by Cinematic Dodge)
Short Burst (best beginning attack)
So right off the bat (or the gun) you have 3 choices:
- melee - Dive for Cover + Punch can take forever to kill something, especially when the something is a Fang ganger or an insane bum who uses dive for cover against you in the second round. After a couple rounds of absolutely no damage getting through, even one of these is going to get lucky and get some damage in.
- ranged - Dive for Cover + Single Shot + Short Burst does far more damage far more quickly than melee, and is guaranteed to deal damage to early enemies. Bad hands are rarer because you're recycling 3 techniques every round instead of 2, and they're usually escapable with a Dive for Cover that can carry you over to your next 3-technique chain.
- hybrid - Punch + Dive for Cover + Single Shot + Short Burst is essentially trading in the damage shield of Dive for Cover for a pitiful added Punch damage. You could make this deck and just choose either of the above routes depending on your hand… but we've already established the superiority of ranged, so why dilute it with fisticuffs?
Okay, a bit later in the game, but not that far, you get Explosive Shot. Cue the friendly bum committing seppuku so he can roll over in his grave. I usually change my deck from 5-5-5 to 5-5-6 just to make sure I have enough of these babies. Got a chain going? You just did 30 damage. Need to finish someone off before they kill you? Good thing you've got that opening bonus. Phenomenal technique, obtained over the course of an ordinary speedrun. I should note that even if the gang boss dropped some boxing manual or something, he's far more difficult to kill with only melee.
Melee, in the meantime, has a few crappy choices. You can stick around the park to train from the bum. This might give you techniques you already know, doesn't give you enough to warrant you spending that much time there, and doesn't give anything as good as Explosive Shot. You could try to get Brutality, but seeing as in my current run I have exactly 0 instances of that technique Outside the Slags, you can tell that's a bit out of the way. I do have 1 Ghoul Bite, which is ever so useful without any chain 2 techniques. Ghouls are risky enough with their evasion that I often flee from them anyway. To get any useful melee techniques, in other words, you have to spend time trying to get them. A 2-day run would be nigh-on impossible even if you used ranged attacks but just tried to get the melee techniques as well.
Oh, and there's no Strength equivalent of High Brow during a speed run. It's also a bit harder to get Black Metal Strength than Puzzle's Gaze. The hit points bonus probably makes up for this though.
Right, well this behemoth of a post has made it's point, hopefully. If we could once again start out with Lash Out that would go a long way towards technique equality, but it would still be outclassed without a chain 2 melee version of explosive shot obtainable somewhere in speed-run territory. Third Eye gangers (so long as they don't get the technique themselves and begin to slaughter us), the Squatter King post-reset (so long as he still gives the explosives crate), or from luring away Shard's first guard would all be at about the right place to add a technique. I like the last idea, as it forces players to figure out how to lure the guard away, and gives them a better chance of saving David, rather than just blindly charging in to save a couple energy. I suspect that ranged power would still come up on top, but so long as one isn't beating the other by an entire day or more, we should be content.
