[larsdangly]

Re. the OP, the most important two things to understand about Melee (and combat in TFT in general) are: 1) the odds of winning and losing are about the match-up and tactical situation rather than finding a universally advantageous 'build'. The best way to discover this is by experimenting. See if you can design an unarmored combatant who you think will have a good chance of defeating an armored foe and then give it a try (making sure you understand any special rules that come into play for each combatant). 2) other than the most extreme cases, all match ups between loosely-comparable foes could go either way, depending on the luck of the dice. No 'build' has a 99% chance of success vs. another, unless something totally ridiculous is being considered.

If you want to design someone to defeat a particular armored foe, it can be helpful to figure out the combination of DX score and damage that will give you a good chance of delivering some amount of damage through armor each turn. I.e., if your DX score is too poor your exceptional damage will fail to land most turns, and if your damage is too low you won't punch through protection except with exceptional luck. The details differ with the amount of armor you are talking about, but this thinking is why people above are steering you toward the broadsword, war axe and halberd.