Impressions on melee for people interested in building:
Beginner laser sword - very good weapon that remains relevant in both pvp and campaign. AOE charge attack is great vs AI and in PVP you can assault boost in while charging this. Won’t always hit against live players, but still good if you sniff out they don’t have the EN to avoid it.
Whip - Secretly pretty good. Unlike most of the melees in this game, this has no tracking, but makes up for it in length. Even has a second chainable hit you can use to whack them or some rescue buddy in TDM. Unfortunately the charge is too damn slow, although the whip swing is sexy. Mandatory for Gouf impersonations.
Plasma sword- has more stagger damage than laser sword and even more aggressive tracking hit. Great weapon, though the AOE is nerfed to a little sweep. This is my favored secondary with the laser dagger.
Laser dagger - mandatory weapon if you want a “melee” mech. This has almost no cooldown and you can cancel each and every of it’s 3 hits into a QB to cancel recovery into whatever the hell you want. Full three hits on staggered pvp usually kills.
Pilebunker - campaign rape basher, mediocre pvp weapon. Nuff said
Laser lance - ridiculous tracking on this and incredibly commital. Honestly pretty ridiculous anywhere, probably mandatory on a heavyweight wanting a melee
Moonlight - annoying laser sword spam
Chainsaw: haven’t unlocked
Stun baton: uhhh maybe good with stun launcher?
Laser slicer: seems good but probably requires heavy weight + investment into that stat that speeds up melee (you can see this in the booster stat page). More heavyweight options I guess.
Parts: basho arms has max melee damage, so it’s a must on medium + heavy weight builds.
There’s some light arms under VP or VD something that has both firearm and melee stats rather high that is perfect for lightweights, who probably want to abuse their move speed to keep up pressure with guns rather than chaining tracking melee attacks (easier to disengage safely in pvp for one, or if you want to bait out an assault armor burst or you want to wait out terminal armor)