Only two Angels, Shamshel (whips) and Sahaquiel (orbital drop), were destroyed by anything resembling "normal" melee action.
Angels and how they were defeated in the original:
- Research expedition
- Recruited
- Melee (berserk)
- Melee
- Ranged (positron)
- Chestbursting
- Melee (synchronized dance)
- Melee (failed capture)
- Ranged (pallet rifle)
- Melee
- Cybersecurity
- Chestbursting
- Melee (dummy plug)
- Melee (berserk)
- Ranged (lance)
- Sacrifice
- Suicide by EVA
- Anti-AT-field
You could
maybe count Israfel, but that required both EVAs to fight exactly the same way.
The thing is, that's still a lot more of the Angels that were defeated by melee weapons than by ranged weapons. Even if a lot of the Angels defeated in melee required specialized tactics or methods, or if the pilots failed to take things down in hand to hand due to skill issue, the Progressive ______ weapons seem a lot more consistently effective against Angels than any ranged weapon except the positron rifle. And the positron rifle has its own problems, because it's particularly bulky and hard to set up, and also even more power-hungry than the Evas themselves.
(Clarification: When I say 'effective,' I mean that when you hit the monster with this thing,
something happens that is likely to damage them, as opposed to nothing happening. It's a weapon that
does something, rather than nothing. Obviously, getting into melee with an Angel has its own problems and skill issues can still keep the pilot from actually taking down the enemy. But trying to take one down with ranged weapons presents the same problems,
plus the fact that AT fields are pretty solid all-or-nothing defenses for keeping ranged weapon fire out.)
You are presuming 100 energy is 100 percent, and that 10 energy per round is counted in percents.
In any case this early I doubt we'll be going 10 rounds with anything. We can always improve that later, sometimes even recharge between fighting something.
Given how often in canon an Eva is crippled by being unplugged, being able to stretch out combat an extra round or two could be
really important.
Okay, so like
I really don't get where peoples fear of the Angels comes from.
Up until the last 3 (I don't count Tabris. Especially in this quest where If Kaworu isn't recruited and tried to be assisted instead of killed, I'll eat my hat), the Angels were like, challenges, but no more than every other Kaiju of the week in a super robot show. Bardiel wasn't even a hard fight, it was the fact that it had a pilot inside it that was the problem.
The real problem was the downwards spiral of everyones mental state as their issues never got adressed, making those later fights far far harder as Shinji increasingly hated the world and Asuka couldn't maintain her fragile Ego. Rei was the only one to come out of that arguably more complete as a person... and she still handed third impact to Shinji (presumably she has no say in it herself and has to give someone the trigger), who promptly said "Fuck everything and everyone" and started the apocalypse.
We have Agency. We have, compratively, a better Base Stat Total (and thus reflection of ability) than canon shinji. And we also have a surplus of Eva points because Lunaryon messed up.
I don't think we're going to have the difficulty dealing only with the angels some people think we will.
Hopefully. On the other hand, I don't think our Shinji is by any means immune to psychological pressure or forces trying to break her down. And one thing about the Angels is that they historically have the ability to hit
really hard; they can and do frequently dismember an Eva in a few blows. Even at a fairly high Sync Rate, they're powerful enough that if you fuck up things can get ugly fast.
So while we may well be able to push forward to where we're doing well against them rather than barely hanging on by the skin of our teeth, I don't think we'll outclass them to the point where they're not a real, serious threat.
