Melee, other than Boneshatter, is just not viable.

Try boneshatter then.

Melee is more a high investment thing for enjyoers but definitely not the path of most efficiency or path of least resistance.
Its true most melee gems suck mechanically or by numbers or by both.
Diablo 4 fixes melee defense disadvatnage with i believe 40% damage reduction for Barbarian. In PoE you have to make up the missing 40% damage reduction with gear and skill points.

The nightblade nerfs, and the perma berserk tech really hurt melee archetypes. Most notably the berserker. I too feel your pain op, if i had my way i would play berserker always, still do in gauntlet. I tried everything to make earthshatter work this league, and if your standards are low its fine.

If you have ever played a good melee build like lightning strike you will know that all melee now, even including boneshatter is trash.

If youre the type that thinks melee should only hit 1-2 targets at a time and be a completely inefficient archetype that cant really viably play the game then you should probably just stay out of melee feedback.

That said, after using lethe shade for the first time this league, i cant see myself making another bossing character that cant get lethe shade. Which makes me a little sad since my favorite ascendancy is berserker.

Another thing, max res from the tree is nothing compared to spell suppression, especially if youre a slow attacking slam build. You just get deleted with 80 lightning res farming eater altars.

There are probably ways to build around the weaknesses of melee, but the people that are smart enough to do it arent going to waste their time because its just simply strictly worse than doing it on a ranged class. Mathil spends an astronomical time playing what i would consider painful (best you can do with it though) builds.

melee is not useless is just that this game is all about clear speed and staying away from the 1 shots, two things melee is not very good at.

Wish GGG would rebalance defences to make them far more effective with melee than ranged. then the game would make sense with ranged builds being glass cannons with high clearspeed and melee builds being slower but far more tanky.