The idea behind this melee build is to use the combat knife for primary horde clear while using an axe to be able to kill mutations/bosses. You'll be able to use your gun a lot more than a regular melee build since you can use combat knife with your gun equipped and unless you have a hatchet or fire axe your combat knife will do higher damage than your actual melee weapon. I recommend a shotgun since this build will be disabling ADS but SMG works in a pinch. We're taking temp health and damage resist early game because the combat knife starts with a very fast attack and good stamina efficiency as well as more dps than a purple bat/machete so you're able to hold down a chokepoint against common ridden from stage 1 without additional cards. At this point you will still need to deal with mutations with the help of your gun/team. Once you find an axe and have meth head+batter up+hyper focused you will do enough damage to deal with mutations that approach doorways/chokes that your team is holding, you still need to be very careful and avoid taking damage while doing this though so try to swing through walls when possible. Berserker and Brazen are the "axe" cards once you draw these 2 you will be able to melt bosses with the fire axe. One quirk to be aware of is that the -40% movespeed while attacking from hyper-focused doesn't apply to combat knife melee attacks so you're able to keep your mobility and get the large dps bump while using axe/shotgun. If you're wondering where battle "last" (bad word filter) is I've begun leaving it out of my melee builds I prioritize temp health a lot higher since it blocks trauma and in order to generate a decent pool of temp health you need to have some "red health" in your health bar.
