This guide is designed and looking to do the absolute most DPS possible with the melee demon slayer, so if you have any suggestions to boost its power, you can feel free to write them to me. Discord tag is down below at the end.

Because my first guide got a lot of positive feedback I wanted to make another one for you guys out there, but this time its gonna be about the melee demonslayer since that got requested by many.

About me:
I'm currently the rank 1/2 Demon Slayer on softcore with wormhole level 567 and like to min-max builds to their limits. It should be noted though that I wasn't playing this build while climbing the leaderboard.

Pros:
-Can clear mid - high tier wormholes, Uber Damien, Uber Reaper and the new seasonal boss easily
-Amazing at farming maybe one of the best because of his movement speed, aoe clear speed and solid single target DPS
-Really fun, cool and unique because of Demon Form, Vitals and procs
-Has solid survivability due to having a lot of dodge chance and Demon Form giving 2x armor
-Has some okay budget options
-You don't need a high refresh rate monitor for the build to work like the ranged build

Cons:
-Maybe a bit worse in wormhole pushing than its ranged counterpart
-Playing around the Vitals for maximum DPS can be hard
-Very Expensive best in slot items
-Your damage output kinda relies on good RNG with Vitals and procs


In the local editor I could reach up to 1.7 billion DPS (Can probably deal even more damage with the Execute talent, Belt of Skulls' Satan's Dice being active and the Demon's Calling ability not being bugged) with this build while having all the BIS relics, every item at 115% quality, hero level 200 and all BIS items (includes Torch of Shadows, Belt of Skulls, Pendant of Eternity and Kogarasumaru).

Best in Slots:

Head: Helm of Dominator (4 Sockets max)
Armor: Slayer's Jacket (6 Sockets max)
Boots: Slayer's Boots (4 Sockets max)
Weapon: Kogarasumaru (runeword) (very expensive)
Gloves: Slayer's Mitts (4 Sockets max)
Amulet: Pendant of Eternity (4 Sockets max) (very expensive)
Charm: Torch of Shadows (5 Sockets max) (very expensive)
Ring: Demon Eye Ring (1 Socket max)
Belt: Belt of Skulls (3 Sockets max) (very expensive)
Potion: Bottle of Sake (2 Sockets max)

Budget Items you can use instead of the super expensive best in slots are:

Weapon: Ravager (physical) (runeword), Light of Dawn (6 Sockets max) , Gladiator's Skullcrusher (physical) (6 Sockets max), Ashbringer (physical) (6 Sockets max), Basically any 2 handed satanic with physical/elemental damage on it but try to look for good attack speed.

Charm: Apple of Evolution (4 Sockets max), Rainbow (runeword)

Amulet: Rift Warrior's Skull (4 Sockets max), High Demon's Necklace (phys) (6 Sockets), Raven's Claw (phys) (4 Sockets max)

Belt: Tribal Belt (3 Sockets max), Monkeyskin Belt (3 Sockets max) (to cap cdr), Commander's Sash (3 Sockets max), Warrior's Belt (3 Sockets max)

Boots: Tundra Marchers (4 Sockets max) (to cap cdr) (only use when you're using Demon Blade as your weapon for the set bonus)

Potion: Ghostly Potion (2 Sockets max), Maggot Eye Elixier (2 Sockets max), Protein Shake (2 Sockets max), Surströmming (2 Sockets max) (to cap cdr), Elixir of Death (2 Sockets max), Radbull (2 Sockets) Pick the one you like best.

As for runes, just use Von runes to cap CDR to about 62% (for perma Demon Form) and fill the rest with Dau Runes (5% attack speed).

Abilities to max are: Demon Form, Heart Attack, Vitals and then you can either choose to max Slice of Shadows or Focused Mind after that put the rest of your points into the one you didn't max out of these two. Also make sure to get 1 point into the Execute ability from the Gunslinger tree.


Put 50 hero levels into attack speed, crit damage and elemental damage then the rest into strength.


Abillity Rotation: Keep Demon Form up at all times - use Demons Calling on CD to reduce enemy's armor - maybe use Soul Leech for a small shield - only use Fast Slices for mobility (DPS loss). Don't forget to always auto attack the enemy and try to hit it from the Vital's direction since this will yield the most DPS.

These are all the relics I would personally use with running this build. If you disagree, feel free to pick some others since the boost of some of these are very small.

Here's a list of the relics:

Demon Sheep, Doom Flute, Nunchucks, Storm Dagger, Magic Mushroom, Jefre's Subscription, Whip, Ogre Club, Titan's Gladius, Basilisk Tooth, Twinblade, Hand Scythe, Light Katana, Dirge, Hellscream Axe, Commander's Sword, Golden Cube, Triforce, Damien's Amulet, Razer Blade, Tequila, Rice and Chopsticks, Witch Claw, Butterfly Knife, Lightning Ball, Holy Grail, Monkey King Bar, Horned Mask, Maryo's Pipe, Amazon Spear.

Using a mercenary is just a bonus for this build, you don't need it to make the build work and you are free to use another mercenary build if you'd like to. But it can boost your DPS by about 500 million when its fully geared.

This is the mercenary build I would use to maximize your DPS:


Head: Helm of Dominator (4 Sockets max) (physical)
Weapon: Perdition (Fanaticism Aura 20 max) (runeword)
Armor: Shroud of Elements (elemental) (Elemental Break 20 max) (runeword) (expensive)
Shield: Shelter (Mending Aura 20 max) (runeword)

Its not a must to have the perfect element on these items since your mercenary deals very small damage and is only there to boost you. But what matters here are the rolls on Perdition's Fanaticism Aura and Shroud of Elements' Elemental Break since they increase the damage you do. For the shield you could also use Shadow Buckler (for mercenary attack speed) or SUOMI FINLAND PERKELE (if you want him to have more tankyness) but I chose Shelter for the health regeneration aura.


In the mercenary skill tree you'll want to max Swiftness, Armor Boost and HP Boost. You can also put 1 point in the other things like I did.

Thanks go out to 007/Svnth and MoZzY on discord for looking at the build and giving me their thoughts and opinions on how to improve it. :)

I hope you like the build and try it out for yourself.

I've also made a build guide for the ranged Demon Slayer if you're interested in that one:
https://sp.zhabite.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2277355110

Other than that I'd also like to thank you guys for taking your time to read my guides and giving me feedback about them. You're awesome!