Is It Worth Meleeing w/ Winston?

So when using primary fire as Winston, is it worth it to weave in melee attempts? Does that hurt Winston’s DPS at all? I’ve tested it in the training room and it seems to kill just as fast as simply primary firing, but it also conserves ammo. Has anyone actually truly tested this??

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If I remember correctly it is more dps if you use melee as a finisher.

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why would you not punch when jumping onto somebody the same time you slam down?

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From what I understand, it doesn’t change his DPS or his time to kill directly against most squishies. He has 60 DPS whether you just Tesla or whether you Tesla+melee. Use melee to stretch your ammo magazine and get more damage without reload.

However, against ARMORED targets melee takes less punishment than his Tesla, because of the way armor works against packets of damage. So against anything that has armor health, you are better off weaving in melee until their armor is gone.

And, obviously, melee is an instant burst of 30 dmg, as opposed to the ticks of damage from the Tesla. So anytime you want to stack burst damage (combo’d with his leap damage for example) it is preferable. Or as a finisher against low health targets, which it is wonderful for.

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Using melee while landing is crucial.

Apart from that, his damage is low against armoured characters. Melee is used against them until armour is gone and it becomes easier to get the damage done.

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Not a Winston expert, but yeah the typical strategy is to melee while landing from your jump damage to boost the initial burst damage, THEN using your primary. If you are simply holding primary on a target I think there’s no value of trying to weave in melee’s except a finisher when out of ammo.

Melee for burst, but not for longterm dmg

  • Landing on an Ana and trying to kill her instantly with nano? Jump+tesla+melee is insane dmg for that.

  • Getting cleave and sitting on cart, zapping 5 people? Don’t melee anything, you don’t need the burst cause you’re not killing anything, you’re forcing resources and building primal.

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Melee is primarily used as finisher since it’s a 30 burst damage instead of the DOT his tesla cannon is used.

Is it however, absolutely worth to melee when you land into a group of enemies since jetpack (60) + Melee (30) gives you a 90 worth of damage in an instant. It’s also Melee has splash damage (It sounds insane, but all melee by heroes has splash.), so by doing that combo on say, 2 heroes, you gained a worth of 180 damage which in turn, feeds your ult much faster.

So yes, it’s worth but only as a finisher or lander.

P.S This also only really pops up against winston vs winston since melee gives a slight edge over a long duration (Zap, melee, zap again, continue onwards.) but this kind of scenario only really matter in 1 v 1 scenarios.

Always melee as Winston if you are in melee range (and there is only ONE TARGET). It extends your weapon magazine and you don’t lose out on DPS.
Do not melee multiple targets.

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you’ve already figured it out boyo. the less you have to reload, the longer you can fire your gun, which means you’re more likely to secure kills and will deal more damage in the long run.

Generally, you dont want to be in melee range of anything, but you do want to land close enough to melee with your leap, then get back into the max tesla range.

I think it’s better against armoured targets, but I think it’s roughly the same DPS against squishies, you just save more ammo.

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Personally, I don’t melee for no reason on Winston, it doesn’t hurt your dps but it can miss a lot easier than your primary fire, you should melee when finishing someone off as it’s a little burst at the end, and just before you land from a jump as it cancels the animation. Eventually you should be good enough that you can’t even see the punch animation go off you just land and keep zappin

If you are close enough to the target you don’t lose any dps. Beam if you want to hit multiple targets, as it’s has higher range so AoE is easier with it than with quick melee. Melee is also important against armored targets

Same with Moira, if you beam and melee whenever you can, then you do more damage overall than just beam 50 dmg/s. Winston 60 dmg/s = no dps lost

Very useful against tanky targets.

DPS is about the same except the melee loses a smaller amount of damage to armour due to being above 10 damage.

Also, with it not changing his DPS, it effectively extends his magazine and makes it take longer before you have to reload.

So, yes. Weave in melees against tanky targets.

Melee finishes enemy faster than frying with primary fire. Also melee deals more damage against armor? Something like that.

ie jump → melee mid air → fry → finish with melee. Most 200hp heroes cant survive being dived by Winston on their own.

When it comes to incorporating melee attacks, you shouldn’t concern yourself with the DPS output.

With monkey, the primary use of melee attacks is for additional spike damage.

Spike damage is basically a small additional burst of immediate damage which can be helpful for surprising a target or killing them before they can react.

Seeing as Winston’s scoresheet includes Melee kills, you should try incorporating them whenever you feel it’s appropriate.

Some examples include:

  • Finishing off targets with exceptionally low hp
  • Attacking Tracer
  • Using melee attacks to chunk away armor
  • Using a melee while airborne, but before you hit the ground.
  • Destroying turrets, especially Torb turrets.
  • When you run out of ammo, just before you reload.
  • If you’re jumping at an airborne target, using Quick Melee will probably deal more damage than your Tesla Cannon against that target since you won’t be at the same elevation for very long.

Using the additional melee will give you an immediate 30 damage which is equivalent damage to holding down Primary Fire for 0.5 seconds. Quick melee lasts for 1 second.

NEVER FORGET that Quick Melee has the highest priority of any ability except for Ultimate abilities.

This means if you Quick Melee at the same time your opponent used an attack or an ability, your action will almost always be processed first. This means that you can score a kill on someone who’s trying to grab a health pack or use a defensive ability such as Fade, Blink, Swift strike, combat roll, Cryo-freeze, or bubbles.

If you don’t worry about the fact that Quick Melee is technically lower DPS (30) than Tesla Cannon (60, 48 if attacking Armor), you will be better able to experiment with it.

Realistically speaking, you can deal about 75-85 damage in a second if using Tesla cannon for most of the second and then finishing it out with a melee. This is about 1/3 of the hp of most characters in the game.

I hope this helps beyond the most likely response you’ll see of “hit melee while jumping just before you hit the ground!”

AFAIK it hurts his DPS generally. But weaving in some punches against armored targets increases your DPS.

Only punch armored targets.

This used to be true before the changes to how beams interact with armor. If I’m not mistaken, armor simply reduces beam damage by 20% now instead of calculating the damage reduction on a per-instance, frame-by-frame basis

Regardless, using Melee attacks will definitely help to conserve ammo for when the armor has been taken care of.

:woozy_face: Dont think it ever worked on frame-by-frame basis lol