Know you want to play a melee class in TERA but need help deciding which?

Attacks

Universal:

• “Combo Attack.” The basic starter attack for every melee class. It has different animations and timings and travel depending on the class, but the basic concept is the same. It's an attack which can be chained up to four times with each progressive phase of attack becoming stronger. Unlike most other skills, it costs no MP to use and successful hits with this skill will also restore MP to the player instead of consuming MP.

Berserker, Slayer & Warrior:

• “Smash.” Basically an attack that involves jumping to a target and smashing. It will move you forward a bit, so you will want to space it appropriately. It can be an optimal follow-up to other skills which provide knock-down and the distance might already be just right. Combined with the “Smash Intensified” passive skill, you will be able to do mega damage since it modifies your attack by 5 times on knocked-down opponents.

Berserker:

• “Bash.” With a 4m range in a small cone and knock-down property, it is an essential staple of the class. It should be obvious how frequent use of this skill would be beneficial to your cause.

• “Blast Strike.” A charged skill which means it becomes stronger the longer you hold it and it can be charged to multiple levels, up to three. Higher levels of this skill allow you to move at a 50% movement speed reduction instead of having to remain stationary and the highest levels involve sacrificing HP to deal even scarier damage. Upon release, a berserker will unleash some significant burst damage. This is great to use on targets which are disabled or slowed.

• “Vortex.” Similar to Blast Strike in almost every way but spinning! How cool is that? Anyway, the differences are that this one moves you forward and spins you around multiple times. Additionally, not just power but also spin speed is increased with higher levels of this skill.

• “Force Spin.” A quick attack which not only knocks down a target for 2s, but also forces it to face the rear. This is especially nice because it allows you to proc slow effect by hitting its back afterwards.

Lancer:

• “Riposte.” This is actually a passive skill, but what it does is allow you to counter-attack out of block state using your normal attack and resulting in a special counter combo to transition smoothly between blocking and attacking.

Slayer:

• “Whirlwind.” A short range circular AoE hitting targets within 2m. It does have a longer cast time similar to many other slayer skills, so this move requires some practical spacing and positioning prior to execution.

• “Trip Attack.” This sweep is slow and thus needs to the same kind of consideration as Whirlwind. However, this one is a frontal attack which can also trigger knock-downs.

• “Decisive Slash.” A very powerful attack with an interesting property. If used after certain other attacks like the last hit of Combo Attack or Smash, Trip Attack and Whirlwind the CT decreases and makes it that much quicker, a very useful chain ender to use after confirming a hit.

• “Vicious Stance.” Not much is known about this skill but the description says “Agilely approaches to target's back, watches for a blind spot. You can use this skill on the target within 20m.” From this we can expect a particular long range skill for a melee class which performs some sort of fast movement or evasive maneuver to close in on an opponent.

Warrior:

• “Blustering Strike.” A high damage attack chain with multiple hits. While it does lock them into a long forward moving animation, remember that skills can be canceled with movement skills. See the related article about the canceling mechanic which is linked in the bottom section.

• “Elusive Strike.” This skill gives you invulnerability while evading and also attacking simultaneously. It is expected that this skill will find the greatest use in avoiding particularly dangerous attacks which are slow enough to react to, or perhaps you can even preempt a quick one with some feel of an opponent's trends and habits.

• “Venomous Blow.” Poisoning an enemy which makes it lose HP every 2s over 10s. The damage scales by skill level but this is a good way to get in and apply a Damage-over-Time (DoT) and get out to stay safe and minimize risk to yourself. Whether you want to use this to supplement your active attacks on a target or to contribute to overall pressure on an off-target is up to you.