Back 4 Blood IDBEHOLDS (fists-only decks)

Fists-only "challenge"

IDBEHOLDS is the cheat code for Berserk in Doom which made your fists infinitely better, causing enemies to explode.

It's fitting because we're literally cheating with some broken cards here.

Brazen and Slugger are currently bugged and give infinite melee stamina if you melee long enough with Meth Head. I dislike abusing bugs but since we aren't using weapons, and Turtle Rock apparently think it's fine and abandoned further content updates...

I recently completed Act 3 Nightmare with some friends using a less optimal build and it was a lot of fun. We used normal bashes.

After trying out Heavy Attack, I can say this is a game changer for fists-only runs.

Team Composition

Ideal CleanersSharice - free armor spawns, +25% team bolstered health, and 25% trauma resistance

Doc - 20% team trauma resistance and 15% healing efficiency

These two are the most important. The other 2 can be whoever.

Tala - to get Jeff for Ogres and Slashers (her bashes causes bleed too)

Heng - more cereal to improve melee attack speed

Holly - 5% team damage resistance

Hoffman - chance to find offensive accessories on kills

How This Works

This may seem like an unviable meme build if you're not too familiar with the game.

A typical melee build uses damage resistance and generates heals and trauma heals.

Then they either focus on:

generating vast amounts of temporary health to prevent and mask over trauma damage

maximizing trauma resistance so they don't need to rely on temporary healthBut here we're using several card and Cleaner synergies and a hybrid approach.

With 4 melee players, the typical melee cards synergize even better. And we're abusing the broken infinite melee stamina efficiency with Heavy Attack.

Meth Head is an essential melee card that increases your attack speed and stamina efficiency with each swing. Brazen and Slugger are bugged. So these 3 cards will give you unlimited melee stamina efficiency if you bash long enough.

Faster attack rate = more DPS = more heals generated

To unlock Heavy Attack for bash ("heavy bash"), you need to drop all your weapons and be fists-only.

If you swap to an accessory, you will not be able to heavy bash until you either use all of those accessories or drop them.

With unlimited melee stamina, you get unlimited Heavy Attacks. A heavy bash is dramatically better than the regular bash. You can just hold W and RMB and explode multiple trash, festering, and military ridden.

A "heavy bash" cleaves or attacks multiple targets at once.

Heavy Attack doesn't say it cleaves but it does. Mean Drunk says it cleaves but it doesn't seem to do anything.

Using Knowledge is Power:

A bash with no other damage cards does 1.1 damage, and 2.4 damage to weakspots

A bash with Spiky Bits does 16.1 damage, and 17.7 damage to weakspots

A heavy bash does at least 27.6 damage , and 60.8 damage to weakspots.

So Heavy Attack does not merely add "100% damage" to bash

A heavy bash with Spiky Bits does 42.6 damage, and up to 81.3 damage to weakspots

with Ignore the Pain, it does at least 53 damage to mutations, and 88.7 to 94.6 damage to their weakspots

This may not seem like a huge damage increase from Spiky Bits alone, but it helps you kill and heal off of festering commons and military ridden much faster. It would usually take forever just to bash off helmets. But heavy bash always knocks off their helmets in 1 hit. You can kill festering and military ridden with 1 or 2 heavy bashes with this build.

Spiky Bits adds a flat 15 damage to your punches which is huge.

Spiky Bits and Motorcycle Helmet give +35% damage resistance. This'll make you tanky and help protect you from getting downed in 1 shot.

With Wooden Armor, Body Armor, and Durable, everyone has +65% trauma resistance. Then Doc gives +20% to all. Fanny Pack can be used instead of Body Armor (less trauma resistance but no need to buy a team support slot upgrade). Or you can use all four cards to maximize trauma resistance.

Trauma will accumulate much slower. You'll go down less often since you have more HP to work with.

Healing efficiency is crucial for melee builds. It'll affect:

trauma heals you get from Battle Lust

heals you get from Battle Lust, Vanguard and Ignore the Pain

4 x Vanguard helps everyone quickly fill up each other's temp health during hordes if you're fighting within 10m It'll synergize with Well Rested and make it easier to generate temp health from overheal

EMT Bag is an essential card for all melee players.

But 4 x Medical Expert gives more healing efficiency than if everyone ran their own EMT Bag. The revive speed is a bonus.

Having 1 or more Well Rested also increases healing efficiency.

You can also play around and have multiple copies of Medical Expert and EMT Bag to generate heals/trauma heals/temp health even faster and to counter Pure Chaos.

Pure Chaos halves healing efficiency and is usually a bane for melee players. But if you stack Medical Expert and EMT Bag, the team will have more healing efficiency than melee players usually would without Pure Chaos.

Well Rested helps everyone generate even more temporary health. Its overheal effect converts a portion of excess healing into temporary health. Have at least 1 copy so all that healing efficiency and team bolstered health provided by Sharice doesn't go to waste.

Fit as a Fiddle increases temporary health capacity (bolstered health), so even if you have no trauma, you can have temporary health. You might want one copy or just skip it.

I chose not to use Face Your Fears since we can generate temp health with Well Rested and abundant healing effiiciency.

Berserker is fun but not necessary. There are other cards that could be more useful. eg. you could stack Bomb Squad for team explosive resistance against exploders/lobbers and improves grenade damage for those pesky Ogres and Slashers.

Team Builds

There are many options you can try.

This example uses Berserker. You can either focus on maximizing trauma resistance or healing efficiency.

Sharice can run Well Rested since she has innate trauma resistance.

Everyone has a minimum of:

+35% damage resistance

+85% trauma resistance (+100% with Fanny Pack), before clawbacks from whatever difficulty you're playing on and the 90% cap on resistance.

+55% healing efficiency (+100% with Medical Expert)

+25% bolstered health

+20% overheal

Here, Bomb Squad is used in lieu of Berserker. And went with Medical Expert, Well Rested, and Fit as a Fiddle.

You'll get 80% explosive resistance, 85% healing efficiency, 45% bolstered health, and 60% overheal. Less trauma resistance but lots of temp health potential which can help you survive big hits.

Other Stuff

Charge up Meth Head faster using regular bash since it has a faster attack rate.

Likewise, fill up your health bar quicker against mutations/bosses (Ignore the Pain) with regular bashes and then switch to heavy bashes.

Trash ridden hordes are your friends and life blood. Feed off them to get free healing/trauma healing and to build up a pool of temp hp to fight mutations and bosses. If someone has a lot more trauma, let them mop up everything to heal trauma faster.

Bashing doesn't deal friendly fire so everyone can just run around like headless chickens, but preferably within Vanguard's range.

Copper isn't too important here since most of the card shrines you'll find won't benefit you. First aid cabinets and med kits shouldn't be needed since everyone is tanky and can generate trauma heals. And there's always burn cards to give copper, team upgrades, etc. Don't buy armor for most levels since there's free armor spawns. Don't need to buy stun guns. Just use Slippery When Wet.

Pills should be your healing item of choice. You can get a large amount of temporary health instantly to fight tanky stuff. You can bandages if there are slashers.

Summon Jeff with Tala's whistle to fight ogres, slashers, and tallboys.

Main threatsBreak Time - 60 HP is not good. The life regen and trauma resist won't benefit you. You'll have to play carefully

Pure Chaos - Healing efficiency is halved so can't be as cocky (unless you're stacking EMT Bag with Medical Expert)

Ogres - run past him if you can. Bait jars can be useful. If you need to fight, use upgraded grenades. They'll be tough to kill with heavy bashes only especially if they're Ferocious or Monstrous. They'll ♥♥♥♥ you up just by being too close. In Inner Hives, use Skull Totems if you must.

Slashers - their bleed damage is no joke, even if you had tons of health. Gang up on them from behind. Use grenades if you need to

Tallboys, Bruisers, Crushers - Circle strafe (going to your right) and attack

Lobbers - they cause explosions and fire

Fire - you have negative fire resist from Wooden Armor

Useful burn cardsSlippery When Wet

Windfall

Team Offensive Upgrade - for grenading ogres and slashers

Solo / Quick Play

Sharice is ideal.

Trauma resist is more reliable than trying to maximize temporary health.

Especially in offline mode - bots will kill many commons before you can heal off them.

Some other cards you can run instead of Berserker:

Mean Drunk - a more consistent DPS increase

Scar Tissue - acid resistance

Well Rested - if Sharice, to get temp health

Padded Suit - for more damage resistance, since stamina efficiency won't affect you

Bomb Squad - for teamwide explosive resistance

Antibiotic Ointment / Medical Expert - for more healing efficiency

Experimental Stun Gun

Heavy Hitter / Empowered Assault - for more stumble, though you'll have a lot of stumbling power with Heavy Attack

Copper Scavenger

Gg

Thanks for reading - stay tuned for my guide on cards and builds.

Check out my other guides:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2670543389

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2828098664

No permission was given for anyone to copy, or publish this guide on another platform.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929276667

IDBEHOLDS (fists-only decks)