Best melee mutation tree?

[Krisu]

In your opinion, whats the best unarmed melee mutation tree overall(upkeep, damage, survivability, speed, etc)?

Assuming no gear/weapons. Just raw mutation.

[Tazeell]

Well there’s zero question it’s Chimera, it has pretty much everything at once. Can be potentially deadly to delve into though if you get bad luck. If you want to be a walking apocalypse that’s the one to go with though. Just don’t die to the downsides.

Spider can actually be a pretty good one too. Folding fangs with Strong Venom can’t be underestimated and Furred Plating and Utricating hairs not only mean attacking you in melee is an auto stun but it’s also highly rated armor for every position making it almost invincible to most enemies. If you get lucky and mutate Quills as well you don’t even need to fight back to slaughter hoards without equipment. And hey Webs for an easy getaway or slowdown of opponents. One of the few trees equipment like armor can actually be outright detrimental to.

[Trigon]

I’ll always stand by insect. Melee rush down with stinging tail, mandibles, and serious utility to boot. If all you want is melee damage Chimera might be better but I feel like the upkeep wasn’t worth it. Plus since none of the post threshold insect mutations aren’t worth it you can go post thresh in something else for the real mixup.

[munbeam]

Limiting to one particular tree only matters on threshold, which should be looked at as taking advantage of a niche. Threshold can be nice but they don’t define effectiveness. They are compensation for other crap you have to deal with, or effectively remove other things you don’t want to deal with. The best overall is a combination of mutations from all trees. Even then its a matter of taste and tolerance. Some combat styles may depend on certain threshold more than others.

Here is a plant threshold, which don’t add much for combat, atomizing a victim. Was built for another style than snake. Note no hydraulics.

[Trigon]

I imagine the shock was to defibrillate the zombie so it could die again and truly appreciate being turned into a smear