Melee Attack

Melee attack, identified in-game with the  icon, is a character stat and translates to how likely a melee attack of a character or unit is to land or hit an enemy during combat.

In general terms, the bigger the melee attack a unit has, the more likely it will hit the enemy. It is strictly related to whether the attack hits or misses and entirely separate from damage reduction, which is linked with armour, and plays no part in missile attacks. Therefore, melee attack only affects the first stage of combat, before damage is calculated. Melee attack is closely associated with melee defence and weapon strength.

Melee attack can never be less than 0 so if an ability or trait causes its value to be negative, it will default to 0 instead. There is no maximum melee attack cap. Higher tier units, specialist units and characters tend to have bigger melee attack values (>50) whereas low tier units have much more modest values (<20). Therefore, average melee attack values vary between 20 and 50.

Melee attack is a dynamic stat so it can be increased or reduced through a number of unit abilities, traits and effects.

Imbued effects
Melee attack may be imbued with multiple effects granting it special properties, such as:


 * Contaminated
 * Flaming attacks
 * Magical attacks
 * Poison!

The relevant effect icons are visible next to the melee attack value.

In-game description
"This determines the chance of a successful hit on the enemy when the unit is engaged in melee.""Battle-hardened troops will gain experience through melee, improving this skill."

Technical details
At the more advanced technical level, it is composited with melee defence to calculate the accuracy of the melee attack. Therefore, it can be written mathematically with the equation below."Chance to hit (h) = 35% + (melee attack - melee defence) where 8% < h < 90%"In other words, every unit has a minimum probability of hitting (8%) and the maximum probability to land an attack is capped at 90%. The melee attack and melee defence values in this equation are the modified values after the relevant unit abilities, traits and effects have been factored in.