It's far too easy to just clang and/or parry either until help arrives or you kill your opponent.

Personally, though, there are times when I am not sure whether my melee opponents are actually particularly skilled or if some of them have macros for melee. I know that for some races, it is extremely obvious what attack you are using compared to others.

I'll am just going to leave this here and exit.

http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/finally-i-made-it.66935/

This is clearly much more than damage, there's way much more problem behind it. Damage are actually pretty fair, but melee is not viable without the correct situations and tactics.

While ranged vs Melee is most certainly not balanced, I'm hesitant to take the OP's approach of:

Ranged TTK was already reduced in the infamous 1.3 patch. If we lower melee TTK too, we create, quite literally, Power Creep. The situation in which everything in the game has become more powerful compared to launch. Not that power creep is automatically bad, but it's usually bad for a reason.

So, before we can say "make melee more deadly" we need to also explore "make ranged slightly less deadly" too, see if that doesn't solve the problem better

Both are issues actually. DPS of melee weapons is leagues behind ranged. Not to mention the fact the insane amount of buffing to ranged damage via:

1. Headshot damage multiplier
2. Servo skull damage multiplier
3. CQC barrel damage multiplier
4. Armour piercing rounds damage multiplier
5. Ranged damage banner

Just FYI, you can have all 5 damage multiplier's active at once. Can anyone do the math on these? How many % are headshots? If someone could do the numbers it would be quite interesting to see how much we can buff ranged damage via the 5 buffs I listed above.

Where as on a melee character you have:

1. Either +5 damage per hit mod(lol) OR +5 Armour pen(laughable).
2. Melee damage banner

We're talking VERSUS ACTIVE OPPONENTS. Not clueless opponents that are standing still being back stabbed. Almost anyone that's being unknowingly attacked from behind at point blank ranged with a melee or ranged weapon is dead regardless.

Between Dbashgunning, teamstun, ff, downed players blocking pathways, and other interference, I'm kind of left scratching my head at why melee has been left in the state it has been since the toughness update. The damage is the most obvious problem. The weapons just don't put down enemies fast enough compared to what a little footwork and a modded ranged weapon can do.

The biggest issue with a flat increase to melee damage is Eldar.

They already get destroyed in 1-2 shots from any melee weapon (okay not knives but 3 then) so making them even squishier to swords/axes/etc isn't a good solution.

If anything ranged damage should be nerfed rather than melee damage increased.

1.3 had melee damage adjusted to fit the new effective HP but ranged got a straight buff from the pen normalization.

Gun damage wasn't even looked at so I think it's time to take a look at it.

i would like to see damage go through on clangs for wins for the higher tier weapon, would make maces and axes more interesting and fix a knife magically stopping a power fist at no consequence

I'm gonna do some maths but hang on cuz I need to splain one thang.

Out of all the things you list, headshots are the only actual multiplier. CQC barrel changes the base damage of the bolter, but also modifies damage falloff amount and range. Servo skull is a 30% buff, and ap rounds dont actually effect damage at all, but penetration. They have no effect against any target with base toughness, and are really not worth taking on a cqc bolter anyway, as you're already dealing copious damage even without them.

Now, as far as maths, my calculator tells me that a headshot from a cqc bolter, assuming within 20m, will deal (42+30%+6%)*2 damage, or 115.752 per headshot (86.814 if the target is an ork)

Assuming, of course, toughness=penetration, and no applied damage mitigation buffs on the target.

The Ranged bollocks is real weather we want to admit to it or not.

The devs are aware of it and will get it done "soon" -tm found here:

Quoted from The Nathan:

Till then, If you want an easy life? just dont play Melee. Is what it is and will remain for the foreseeable future.

So that's 3 months going on 2 years+ of misery, pain and suffering on Melee till a fix is rolled out in a slow, painful procession of patches and hot fixes.