I’ve played with melee Wilhelm a bit. Level 61, just goofing around mobbing, trying a change of pace after finding a nice at-level Obliterator.
Meteor Slam, for me, is the reason to run Obliterator. An Obliterator without a buff to Meteor Slam is just an uninteresting wad of health, a Brotrap with no bro. Overloaded, however, Meteor Slam makes Wilhelm’s Ozkit into a viable tool for crowd control. At level Juggernauts will kill, underleveled Arctics will stop everybody long enough for one Robot Punch City and then lots of Torgue or Tediore.
Wilhelm’s skills don’t synergize well with Maylay shields. The bottom of the Cyber Commando tree has several shield-down buffs, tempting if you work down the tree sufficiently far to reach Meteor Slam, but those buffs work either to re-raise your shields (Divert Power) or else operate only while you are firing a gun (Emergency Response, Vengeance Cannon). In the Dreadnought tree, both Heatsinks and Energize will sabotage your Roid bonus. So I’m using Nova shields instead for now. An adaptive, ideally Haymaker, would work well for stacking with all the health bonuses of Obliterator-- maybe I’ll pursue that approach once I outlevel the current Sunshine.
I put First to Fight and Shock Absorbers on the character for the approach. Also Overcharge, if I spec that far down the Dreadnought tree. Come in storming for the duration of the bonuses, freezing as many targets as possible, then play my Robot Punch City Power Fist card against the strongest frozen target. The shield probably is down now, so start shooting to get the most out of Vengeance Cannon. Eventually Vengeance Cannon will shut down, but by then Power Fist should be ready to go again-- ever notice that its cooldown is the same as the Cannon’s duration?
Zero Hour is a very useful skill for melee-ish Wilhelm. If Saint expires while Wilhelm’s still fighting, he’s probably cornered somewhere, so that healing zone is very welcome. And in terms of picking up the pieces after the fight, one point in Zero Hour takes the place of five in Energize.
All the best Nova shields come with some flavor of DOT immunity, so I’ve been skipping Hazmat Containment System. There are skills before it in the tree that will help keep the shield up.
Kinetic Armor does very little damage to those “close range attackers” (per the skill’s description). Comparing base damage to base damage, it’s roughly equivalent to a Torgue pistol shot per proc; however, even when maxed the skill only procs one time in four, and unlike the cited example Torgue pistol, the skill doesn’t benefit from gun damage buffs. Rarely, it’ll proc twice back-to-back-- once on the attacker’s approach, again on his melee strike-- showing a double-damage explosive damage number. It’s effective when you’re swarmed by Torks in an area with enough gravity that you can’t slam your problems away, I guess, or if your Oz kit is too underleveled for slam damage to mean anything. Buffing it with an Explosive Duality or Bomber (explosive feedback is splash damage) helps a little bit… but it isn’t really compelling unless I opt all-out into health bonuses, Anshin, etc. Basically this skill is Claptrap’s Pain Simulator is Painful, except it offers less overall health bonus, and isn’t overloadable by a classmod, and exchanges damage resistance for the underwhelming explosive feedback, oh yeah AND it’s tier 5 instead of 4. A hard skill to love. An easy skill to abandon. See next paragraph.
As an alternative to spec’ing that far down Dreadnought, I can go down Hunter Killer. Cold War is the obvious target, synergizing with Vengeance Cannon (in atmosphere) and Termination Protocol and even Venom Bolts. If I’m lucky, I can get a freeze out of a Meteoric Juggernaut buttslam or a nova shield detonation or even a thrown Fire Bee (and Sunshine lets me dart through the fireburst with near-impunity). One more point beyond Cold War gives Omega Strike, which is quite likely to be attacking a frozen target.
I do miss Overcharge, but as of level 61 the character is more durable with the Hunter-Killer Wolf-boosted offense.
TL;DR: my “melee” Wilhelm doesn’t do that much melee. Call him an “extremely close range” Wilhelm instead.