Best Melee Damage weapons
Highest DPS at 20 Melee Damage, tier IV
Excalibur 418.2 DPS
240 damage per hit, 0.660 s per attack. It scales 200% with Melee Damage and 200% Max HP.
Assumptions
- Version: PC 1.2 with the 12 November 2026 patch. Weapon stats from the game-file tables; damage formula datamined.
- One weapon at its highest tier (IV for most), Melee Damage at 0, 20 and 50, every other stat at 0: no %Damage, Attack Speed, Crit Chance or class bonus.
- Single target; every projectile hits; crits averaged in; reload cooldowns averaged over their shot count. Pierce, bounce, explosion splash, burning and on-hit effects are excluded.
- Cooldown is the tooltip value. For the fastest guns (0.07–0.17 s) the real interval in game is a few frames longer, so their DPS here is an upper bound.
Top 12 of 58
| # | Weapon | 20 Melee Damage | 0 | 50 | Scaling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Excalibur IV | 418.2 | 348.5 | 522.7 | 200%200% Max HP |
| 2 |  Scythe IV | 243.2 | 214.6 | 286.1 | 100%100% Life Steal |
| 3 |  Flaming Brass Knuckles IV | 170.3 | 136.3 | 221.4 | 100% |
| 4 |  Power Fist IV | 170.3 | 136.3 | 221.4 | 100% |
| 5 |  Fist IV | 143.1 | 109 | 194.2 | 100% |
| 6 |  Knife IV | 134.9 | 82.2 | 213.8 | 80% |
| 7 |  War Hammer IV | 124.9 | 104.1 | 156.2 | 200%200% Engineering |
| 8 |  Drill IV | 116.7 | 38.9 | 233.3 | 100%100% Engineering |
| 9 |  Captain’s Sword IV | 113.8 | 86.7 | 154 | 125%125% Curse |
| 10 |  Cestus IV | 110.7 | 92.3 | 138.4 | 100% |
| 11 |  Plasma Sledge IV | 109.8 | 82.3 | 151 | 200%200% Elemental Damage |
| 12 |  Hammer IV | 109.1 | 81.8 | 150 | 200% |
Winners under common constraints
- No Legendary-only weapons Flaming Brass Knuckles IV
- 170.3 DPS at 20 Melee Damage (100 per attack every 0.59 s).
- Ranged only Harpoon Gun IV
- 62.5 DPS at 20 Melee Damage (40 per attack every 0.65 s).
Early game: tier I at 20 Melee Damage
Method
For each weapon tier, hit = round(trunc(base + Melee Damage × scaling)), expected hit = (1 − crit chance) × hit + crit chance × round(hit × crit multiplier), and DPS = projectiles × expected hit ÷ mean cooldown. Rules: src/rules/brotato/dps.mjs, regenerated from the data on every patch. The same numbers for any stat profile are in the DPS calculator.
Characters that multiply or convert Melee Damage
Related records
- Best Ranged Damage weapons: the same ranking for Ranged Damage.
- Best Elemental Damage weapons: the same ranking for Elemental Damage.
- Best Engineering weapons: the same ranking for Engineering.
- Weapon DPS by class: the leader in each class, for set-bonus builds.
- Best crit weapons: which weapons gain most from Crit Chance.
Reviewed .