The [Lacera] is my favorite melee. I will never use anything else. Here's how I cope.

Let's face it, everyone's favorite giant pair of scissors just doesn't keep up like it used to. Instead of trying to squeeze every last drop of crit damage out of it just to still have it underperform, this build focuses on using the fairly powerful Defiled Snapdragon stance to make it a decent primer/stripper for SP and beyond. The name of the game here is consistency and self-sufficiency. No combo. No procs. No buffs. Snip snip.

Blade and Whips have one of the best multi-hit combos in Soul of the Leviathan (Forward combo), with a huge 16 hits. Combined with Primed Reach, you can uniformly strip the armor of an entire crowd. I honestly prefer this over the single target stripping potential of gunblades. If you're looking to strip armor from a single target, bosses, for example, nothing even comes close to the [Vastilok] unfortunately.

Your primary objective with this build is to land as many hits as possible as fast as you can. The faster you proc Shattering Impact the better. (Also dps, I guess.)

Neutral Combo ragdolls and levitates enemies, this is a nice last resort if you don't have any other source of crowd control, but there are better options like Magus Lockdown.

I prefer Primed Fury over Berserker Fury for consistency, Berserker will probably give you better results at lower levels but it's really a matter of preference/availability for you.

Quickening is fine, but this is a flex slot and I strongly suggest swapping it with a Riven with at least +Attack Speed as soon as you can. If you insist on adding a crit mod, I suggest Sacrificial Steel to keep up consistency, but again, just get a Riven mod. They're like 20 platinum. C'mon.

Status is important, but as a primer, hitting as fast as it does lets the status mods take a bit of a back seat. As of 35.0 I've been running Focus Radon over Virulent Scourge but I'm still trying to notice a difference.

I tested this build pretty extensively against multiple enemy types. Grunts melt and heavies are made manageable. Crit-oriented builds are shut down hard at 180+, especially if you can't keep your combo going I don't recommend them. I don't expect you to minmax the rest of your build into melee just to make this thing viable. This guide is cope, but it's not taking the rest of your build down with it.

UPDATE FOR 35.0: I'm still trying to figure out if I like Tennokai, but Decipline's Merit seems to be working well enough, do what feels best for you. Focus Radon is also very interesting, and seems to make the DPS jump pretty noticeably. We can use it for now. Melee Influence seems made for this weapon, makes priming even easier, spreads procs like crazy. Shoots this weapon up a tier when equipped. I'm not kidding.

Fear is freedom! Subjugation is liberation! Contradiction is truth!