Melee disadvantages vs range combat

This is notable when playing as Huntress where you can focus more on melee or range for your damage. I want to play melee because I like Primal Strike, but the more I play, the more I realize that melee combat is at a notable disadvantage compared to range combat.

Melee Problems
1. Divided attention. This is notably bad with rare modifiers like Volalite Plants and Volatile Crags. You are required to pay attention to both the monster's attack and these extra hazards. Volatile Crags are particularly bad because it is hard to distinguish whether the ball is orbiting the monster or if it is seeking the player. Look at the monster and you may not see the hazard ready to explode on you. Look at the hazards and the monster could be using a deadly attack that you want to dodge. I would either be playing a hit and run playstyle to have more control over the hazards or play a facetanking build (not possible with current defenses) where I can ignore the monster and pay attention to the hazards. Those hazards are a real threat as they also do enough damage to require a potion afterwards if you do not get oneshot.
Ranged combat has much less of a problem with this. Ranged combat usually means the player is strafing while attacking. Strafing will naturally defend against the Volatile Plants/Crags hazards since you will see them approaching and will be more out-of-range when they are set to detonate. While strafing, you also have more control over positioning, retreating in one direction so all threats are grouped together on one side of the screen.

2. Enemy attack frequency. Since you are in melee range, enemies attack much more often because you are in range, meaning you'll take more damage and be stunned more often.
Ranged combat has to contend with slightly fewer attacks because enemy ranged attacks are generally slowly and enemy melee attacks require approaching first before attacking.

3. Required positioning. Melee means you must fight in melee range to be effective. This results in standing where the monster stands. Most of the time, players will engage the monster, meeting them where they are at instead of waiting for the monster to come to them (unpredictable). Scenarios like chilled ground, blood pools, poison clouds, on-death effects, MANY ground threats will evidently force players to wait around until enemies move out of those hazards. This halts gameplay while you wait for the monster AI to decide to move.
This is very rarely a problem for ranged as they have a much larger area where they can stand and fight. Ranged characters choose where to stand and where to fight.

4. Defenses. Stat-wise, melee have the same defenses as range. Either armor, evasion, energy shield, block, or a mixture, and of course resistance. Choosing melee or range does not have any effect on these stats. Range has the added benefit of positioning which is explained in point #3.

To mitigate these problems as melee, you either need a tanky build to absorb several mistakes (which is currently not very viable) or you need hit and run tactics which requires attacks with short animations. Melee combos will never work if they are not very fast because you cannot survive to pull off the combo.

Solutions (not thoroughly thought out):
- Allow strafing while melee-ing
- Increase melee swing range (3m+) allowing for pseudo-range gameplay positioning
- Add receive reduced damage while melee attacking in melee range
- Add global defenses on melee passive nodes
- Reduce damage from non-monster sources (volatile plants/crags, blood pools, etc)
- Increase detonation times of hazards (volatile plants/crags)

One think that i was late to understand during these 4 months play, was that a ranger player should play with ranged attacks but with the benefits of Warrior's defence.

This is the most survival move during chaos that monsters one shot kill bring.

What im saying is that evade isn't a defensive element but seems more to me like an addable gamble element to maximize luck of defence.

I played almost 3 months with only Evasion defence and after 500 deaths i realized that defence is not to prevent with percentage a hit but taking a hit and mitigating it to maximum value.

So imagine a warrior that plays with ranged attacks, how powerful can become and how defence should work especially with passive skills "defend hits with 150% of armour that come from more than 6m".

After investing to warrior defence build my mercenery character stopped dying in Endgame but that needs also gameplay skills and smartness of a player.

People judge Jonathan for their failure and ignorance of how to became more powerful in the game to avoid one shot kills.

Of course Evasion is not a defensive element at all. Evasion is like parry but with more disadvantage position.

NO-ONE should invest ONLY to evasion as defence to protect himself from monster's hits. It's definitely a gamble move. A move that reveals the level and value of a player.

Profi players invest as a primary defense, elements like "ES,Parry,Armour" as secondary "Evasion, Damage taken before life, Retaliation, Block" as third "Companion's absorbsion damage from character" and as fourth and last "Life and Mana points".

So if you follow these rules in Defense, you minimize deaths to 5% per map.

So newbie players can't understand the philosophy of a Tanky character and invest only to DPS. First you need to learn surviving and then to become DPS monster killer!

Before patch 0.2.0 even a newbie player was God DPS killer couse followed broken builds from Streamers. Now that apocalypse (0.2.0) prevail has put everything in order.

I agree melee has it tougher. The way I see it is melee should be able to afford to invest in defensive nodes, and to help with that melee skill mana cost could be near negligible small, reducing the need to invest into mana.

Melee defences are not so good. Need to strengthen a little bit, that is obvious.

Evasion should has a different role. For example if someone evade a hit, should has a percentage of evade a part of a hit or not.

For mobs I agree, Melee is at a disadvantage.

However for 1 on 1's, especially bossing (and also rares), Melee is at an advantage.