Manifestations, Gravity Wells and large, uninterruptible AoEs all at the same time on a small platform … 
Actually, they really did a good job with boss hitboxes, it is pretty easy to stick to them as melee, and even to actually kite the bosses (while still hitting them!) out of a ground aoe since most of them follow you very easily and quickly.
PS: also, you can just stand inside gravity wells, just eventually cleanse the snare debuff you get and you’re fine.
The big green one from the Ghoul mage, probably, the smaller, light purple ones that knock you down ? Pass.
Phoenician Stratagem gadget, Purification drone gadget and/or Unstoppable Force if you play hammer will all allow you to basically soak the circles and remove the CC. If my memory is not faulty.
Gravity Well (“the big green one”) cannot be avoided, even by ranged players, as it pulls you in. But as Szalord said, you only need to cleanse yourself and it will no longer snare you for the rest of its duration. The manifestations can be avoided even as a melee player.
1 Like
I’ve only had one issue in Dark Agartha as Melee and that was on the corrupted Gatekeeper. Malfunction (very fast point blank AoE) followed by a large ranged AoE cast that came before my dodge had recharged. That’s the one fight I would consider bringing some kind of teleport skill/gadget to be safe. Every other fight so far have seemed melee friendly to me.
I’m doing Da with the hammer and the elementalist. I tried with the assault rifle, but I found it a lot more complicated and I came back to the hammer.
Well… I always found 100% melee build quite inconvenient and not really ineffective. And it’s worse in DA because you can’t attack much while dodging things and unlike other places you have strict timer on you. But with main melee and offhand ranged weapons I personally don’t find it that hard so far in that terms. 
Big aoes all give you lot of time to avoid them, it’s only bad when there are other obstacles on way in the same time, but not too bad I’d say. Manageable, especially with some practice.
It’s not dangerous to melee, I just spend a lot of time standing around waiting for the boss to kite over to me. (today mainly the Oni, who had a few channel casts where he would just stand in fire the entire time)
the Fungikeeper I bring 2 impairs so no teleport, but it’s fine I can soak a bit of damage.
Both the point blank and the ranged AoE casts have a purple cast bar, implying they can’t be impaired. Are you suggesting the cast bars are incorrect?
I think she brings 2 impairs for Anima Drain and that other cast that shields him (he runs to the side and stands still there with a yellow shield around). In the first 2 days my gadget was back in time to impair both but today he casted them very close and I had to wait a bit so a second impair would have been usefull.
too much large aoe from boss -> run other side of the platform -> boss take his sweet time to move from aoe zone he puts on the ground-> hit boss -> another large aoe , so much fun.
my favorite is the djinn you need to follow after he teleports away, love being hit by a mob 20km away …
1 Like
Yeah on my first run he cast them back to back (impair player drain, immediately runs and does the barrier so I had to wait it out) so I brought 2 and he’s continued doing it that way. Until today’s run (my 4th attempt on him I guess, since I’ve only died once to him) I always got them back to back with no other casts between so I assumed it’s just how he goes. And even then, first cast of each was right after the other, but he did a 2nd shield without an anima drain.
I’m using the Fey Ley Line on any boss that doesn’t have “this boss pukes afflicts onto you” effects (which I use cleanse gadget for) it’s pretty handy for dealing with the bosses that have 3-4 competing aoes. Also that lots of running jinn (I did actually like that fight though, also today’s burning ring. more of that less of the ‘covered platform in all the effects’ plz)
My understanding is that anima drain drains you, and the transfusion heals based on how much you get drained. I only impair the drain and wait out the shield, and haven’t noticed any ill effects apart from losing time.
Small correction. Anima Transfusion doesn’t heal by default, but he will be incased in a 100% absorb shield for the duration of the cast. There is however a Passive mod that combines with Anima Drain … which turns Transfusion into a heal 
As for DA being Melee unfriendly … boss centered AoEs will always be worse for Melee than Ranged, you cant do anything about that … in DA they have done a lot to minimize the time that you are excluded from hitting the boss, as well as altering the boss stats where you will be spending long time away from the boss.
They even put some mechanics in there, which are primarily meant to disturb ranged DPS, like the cyclone.
All in all they did a splendid job at making it full melee doable, there is just a learning curve to get over, when it comes to dancing around the AoEs in the right way.
2 Likes
really too much AOE on gatekeeper and some aoe are larger than the visual effect, it really is an unfun fight for melee
What AoE are people talking about? I’ve yet to see one that hits you outside the effect. Is it people using their character model to decide if they’re safe? Because if so, that’s never been a meaningful indicator. Press F1 and use the green circle.
1 Like
I assume Malfunction and Deconstruction Protocol.