Light & heavy melee
Tap melee to chip and last-hit; HOLD it for a lunging heavy that hits ~2.3x harder — but the hold is a telegraph any enemy can parry.
Every hero has a melee on one button: a quick light tap for finishing and free damage, and a charged heavy that winds up, lunges you forward, and hits far harder. The heavy is your gap-closer and burst, but the windup is readable and parryable, so melee is a mind game, not a free button.
Light vs heavy — the numbers
Tap the melee key for a LIGHT melee: near-instant, no windup, ~50 damage on a standard hero. Hold the key for a HEAVY melee: it winds up for about 0.36s, then enters a lunge that drives you forward (peaking near 750 units/s on the ground, ~797 in the air) and finally a recovery where you stop dead. Standard heroes hit for ~116 on a heavy — roughly 2.3x a light. The whole heavy is about 1.25s start to finish, with a short cooldown after (~1.0s if it connects, ~1.3s on a whiff). The first enemy the lunge touches cuts the lunge short and snaps you into recovery, so a heavy is a single committed swing, not a sweep. Exact damage varies by hero (Apollo, Bebop, Calico and Rem carry higher base light melee and scale heavies differently), and melee damage grows with your level/boons. Note melee is its own damage type — it flashes blue, separate from orange bullet and purple spirit — and your Weapon Damage feeds melee at half value, stacking additively with any +Melee Damage.
How to play it
Use LIGHT melee constantly: it's free damage that costs no ammo, perfect for securing a last-hit, finishing a low enemy, or chipping while your gun reloads. Use HEAVY melee for two jobs — closing distance (the lunge is a real gap-closer) and for the burst when someone is already in your face. The catch is the parry: a held heavy is a clear 0.36s tell, and a parry on it stuns you and leaves you wide open (see the Parry card). So don't throw a raw heavy at a still, alert enemy who's begging to press F — bait first. Light melee can technically be parried too, but it's so fast it's a brutal read with little payoff, so against a parry-happy opponent, mixing in lights is safe pressure. Mid-lunge you're committed, so good players stun, slow or simply back-dash out of your windup to make you whiff.
Feints, cancels & melee items
Heavy Melee Cancel (HMC) is the pro trick: start the hold, then fire a cancelable active (Fleetfoot is the cheap one; Melee Charge, Colossus, Unstoppable, Vampiric Burst also work) to cut the animation. This keeps the lunge's speed burst — chain HMCs off ramps and roofs to zoom around the map — and it's the cleanest way to FEINT: bait the enemy's parry, then punish their recovery with a real hit. Build into it on melee heroes (Abrams, Shiv): Melee Charge and Crushing Fists add heavy-melee distance and damage (Crushing Fists also restores ammo and stacks a bullet-resist debuff that can stun), Lifestrike and Melee Lifesteal turn swings into sustain, Spirit Strike adds spirit damage and shreds spirit resist on any melee, Runed Gauntlets refunds your cooldowns on every heavy that lands, and Hex-Sealed Knuckles loads a big bonus onto your next heavy. Most of these trigger on a heavy at full effect and on a light at a longer cooldown, so heavy hits are what you want to land.
Raw dataidentity & API
identity
- id
- mechanic_light_and_heavy_melee
- slug
- light-and-heavy-melee
- category
- combat
- flowStage
- fighting
- aliases
- melee, punch, heavy melee, light melee, charged melee, m1 melee, melee cancel, hmc, feint, мили, ближний бой, тяжёлый удар, лёгкий удар
- sourcePath
- manual:mechanics/light-and-heavy-melee
- updatedAt
- 2026-06-06T00:00:00.000Z