That's totally false, and as a ranged player you should know you have other options.

1. Rolling Towards your incoming opponent, ending up behind them as they lunge towards where you were
2. Dropping a grenade/meltabomb at your feet between you and your incoming opponent, walking or rolling straight back, shooting the grenade or shooting your opponent.
3. Turning and fleeing
4. Vaulting over the nearest vault point
5. Using a Lunge attack against them before they lunge at you. The shoulder bash thing is wonky but occasionally it works. All Tac/Traitor/Avengers should have a lunge attack with the knife IMO, IF the knife is equipped in hand prior to initiating the lunge animation.
6. Sticking a krak to their face and rolling away.
7. Rolling laterally

To a point yes, but the problem is deeper than that.

What's the average swings to kill an opponent, 2 or 3?

An opening power attack requires a charge, thereby giving a ranged player time to see the threat, assess it, choose not to Dbash, and either interrupt it or get the fuck out of dodge.

An opening fast attack cannot be completely assessed, but the lack of a charge up implies a dbash will buy you a second to get your bearings in a melee fight.

An opening lunge attack has no charge up, nor can it be blocked, so unless some idiot melee player decided to charge across a 20m gap at you, you're going to get hit. Anything 15m or under (which is quite a long distance) you won't do enough damage to put them down. You're going to get hit with an attack that not only is 1/3 or more of the attacks needed to kill you, but will likely stagger/stun you enough to get another attack in either due to the stun, or while rolling away. So now you're basically 1 melee attack away from death, how easy is it for the melee player really to finish you off in melee, or hell just by shooting at you with his sidearm.

The problem is that melee attacks do a shit ton of damage, so allowing even one free hit like that is a death sentence for ranged players. Especially considering the long ass animation for Dbash.

Having a lunge in this retrospect, is like when Dbash was broken on UAT and everyone was rolling with a fist because there was no way to block it. You're basically giving all melee players a tool that can and will hit without any chance of being blocked. And even if it doesn't OHKO, all it takes is one good hit with any melee weapon to basically ensure the death of a ranged unit.

1.) Except that doesn't work with a lunge attack, if they lunge the attack does damage in a line, thereby it will either catch you before or after your iframe while you roll. So you'll get hit.
2.) Yes....the best defense for ranged units is to throw an explosive at our feet, not engage in melee. But hey, maybe melee players really are actually stupid enough to walk over a giant flashing ball of death.
3 and 4.) You'll catch an attack in the ass while vaulting, oh but hey the best option isn't to stand and fight, it's to run away. From now on maybe we should just make melee charge all the cap points themselves, the ranged guys will just flee out of the whole map.
5.) Yes, use a lunge attack against a melee opponent, because shoving your ranged character into a melee fight is always the best plan. Hopefully, we can screw ranged players even more because this will convince them not even to fire at you while you're charging at them, they'll now be stupid enough to try and just shoulder bump you instead.
6.) Again, the best defense in melee, is explosives. Why even have RPS at that rate?
7.) Yes, because all ranged players can roll...you know except devs, havocs, DR's, etc. Oh, and all ranged players have infinite rolls just like melee players have infinite lunges....wait.

Maybe as a melee player, you should know you have other options than having a free "fuck you" attack that can't be blocked.

You can't really be sitting there telling a ranged player to deal with a melee attack that can't be blocked, but somehow object to melee players being stunned by ranged fire when lunging because it is as equally bullshit mechanics wise.

C'mon man, you're better than that.

Listen, I know my post is a bit snarky, it's late, my AC is broken, and I live in Arizona. (Someone needs to fucking move this state a few inches from the surface of the damn sun.) So, I know it came off abrasive. But you specifically should know me. You've been in plenty of threads I participate in and you know I try to be as fair as I can concerning balance between melee and ranged. I don't just want ranged to stomp melee, nor do I want melee to lack the proper advantages in melee style combat.

That being said, the idea that a lunge or evade attack can break Dbash is a real problem to ranged users. I'm not just saying this because I want to take a new toy from melee, I'm saying this because I know my class, and I know this is going to be a problem. And not just a "learn to play" problem, but a "I can't fucking believe they expect me to deal with an attack that can't be stopped when I already don't have enough DPS to stop a charging melee enemy" kind of problem. I know melee needs a bit more flair to really flesh it out and make it more interesting, and so help me I will be the first one in line to come up with new ideas and see what kind of stuff we can do with it (as long as it is balanced). But this, this is a problem that can't fly. So much is it a problem that I am almost certain it's just a bug and the Devs will be fixing it soon.

We already have a melee system where ranged players have worse weapons durability wise, worse weapons damage wise (like taking 4-6 hits to kill), worse mobility (vs. jumpers), are going to be dealing with banshee screams (soon), most ranged weapons do so little damage they can't even stop a charging melee enemy, maps that are literally smothered in cover that allows pretty easy gap closing, every cap point being in a close combat area, shit like shields and MONs, and a fucking RPS system that 100% requires us to guess the enemy's attack before they use it or we'll take a monumental amount of damage and likely die.

Don't make it worse by adding an un-blockable lunge attack whose best defense is "roll away dude". Especially considering that by the time we roll away, before we even finish the animation you can be coming at us with a charged power attack.

Yes and no. It's clear we agree on the lunge and rolls. Why would anyone not choose scissors in a system where it can beat both rock and paper? Conversely, why would anyone choose rock? But I think it's a bit of an overstatement to say that one hit in melee is certain death. It depends on the weapon, for sure, but you can certainly out-play an opponent even after getting struck. This assumes a 1-on-1, naturally. 2 or more melee on 1 ranged is pretty much doom in any scenario.

Another side effect is that it will also slightly invalidate the bash for melee specialists as well. So long as you slot a power weapon (as most do right now), you would want to clang fast attacks rather than bash. Why? The best defensive option would be to clang so you either stop their lunge or interrupt a power attack (or roll/flee I suppose), and since the lunge cannot be bashed, it would make more sense for the attacker to destroy their weapon durability for the long stun. Recall that the lunge has more force than a normal light attack.

Yes we're on the same page for the lunge.

As for the rest, I'm not entirely saying that one hit is a death sentence, or if I did I don't mean it that surely. But, one hit is still an almost unmeasurable advantage in melee, and one hit (especially if unblockable) is enough to just tip the scale too much IMO.