ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I've been attempting to go through nightmare on melee toons and so far haven't made it past master (edit: except for sun pal)

I'm attempting to open the weirdling at level 16-17 so I can get back to him at higher level but nur 3 is a dice roll. Everything is level 35 and any number of horror combinations or rare individuals could stop you if you get unlucky.

Attempts so far

1. thalore berzerker w/ exotic weapons using banked trident of tides - pretty good, made it to dreadfell probably due to twink weapon, didnt realize until too late anti magic would prevent the spell proc on trident
2. arc blade, sword and board, fire and lightning, skeleton - despite skeleton defenses arc blade is a glass cannon, and has an easier time playing as a 2 beam gimp archmage than as a melee toon
3. yeek mindstar wyrmic, mostly caster - really easy early game not enough damage output per equilibrium cost, couldn't beat weirdling healing
4. arc blade, dual wield, fire and stone, magic and cunning, cormac - didnt get leveling gear needed to unlock the str based abilities so couldn't really test build, again gimp archmage gameplay worked better than anything in melee range
5. cormac staff reaver - not technically melee but still fun, spent 2 category points in staff combat, couldn't beat weirdling due to disease immunity, whoops, will try again and come back w/ maxed epidemic - gear dependent due to not adding points to str
6. thalore cursed - cursed is very difficult start due to lack of pursuit abilities till level 8 and on-demand stun, never got to level 10 without dying twice
7. shalore berzerker - only got to run timeless + unstoppable once, died in dreadfell, game usually ends in daikara due to multiple hits from boulder throwers and thunderers
8. skeleton sun paladin - did very well, got to east and back again, lost last life in telos due to not enough damage output to overcome multiple level 55 skeletons, imo irresistible sun nerf will destroy this build since other than sun the paladin doesnt have any significant damage output to speak of

many more attempts

Has anyone gotten anywhere in nightmare w/ mostly melee toons?

I got Reaver through Dreadfell, but that's it. Melee really seem to fight uphill battle, getting out of starting zone can be achievement in itself, where mages just kite stuff around, melee have to take full brunt of attack, and some of them don't even start with heavy armor. Later on, melees have to eat every stun, disease, root, disarm and so forth coming from melee mobs, which last for 10+ turns already around Dreadfell.

The only plus side of being melee is having more armor, which is terribly overvalued, even by creator itself. It's cool that it works fine on normal, but on Nightmare, skeleton warriors with 150+ base damage are extremely common around 20 level or so, and the little armor you have from massive+training still don't stop them from making them hurt like hell. Casters mobs are as devastating for melee as they are for ranged, except melee have little more hp buffer, but also need to close distance to be able to do anything.

In short, melee extra hp + armor isn't enough to outweigh having to deal with other melee monsters damage and having to close on other ranged monster.

Yup, armor is still weak. Really think mail needs to come with %tier in resist all and massive armors with double that. The armor part needs to work against anything the armor resists against as well.