Ah, thank you for putting it into words. I noticed that if I did the melee dance the same way as in VT2, I got pretty mediocre results in comparison. Melee is, in fact, not as safe as people make it out to be even without ranged units nearby. I think that the frequency at which you get attacked in melee is much higher than in Vermintide 2, because the aforementioned slide attacks can occur at anytime. Yet another problem fixed in VT2 they chose not to include here for obscure reasons…
It’s not a skill issue. It’s an acknowledged bug. It was not like this in the CBT, as far as I know.