I find melee is underutilized and ranged is overpowered massively in relation to current mob mechanics.
FLYING MONSTERS
I was thinking a good fix for this would be to include flying monsters… flying bat-rat vermin etc. This would force the ranged to focus more on covering the skies, at least part of the time. This would allow the ground horde waves to reach the melee characters since the ranged wouldn’t be able to continually cut them down like a laser weed-wacker without ignoring the sky attackers.
This idea may have come from playing card games like mtg etc years ago - where some cards could block/attack flyers while others could not.
IMMUNITY TO NORMAL WEAPONS, IMMUNE TO FIRE, etc.
This could extend to another mechanic from dungeons and dragons and other rpgs, and fantasy stories in general … that being that some creatures are immune to normal weapons and require you to hit them commonly with SILVER weapons (or IRON weapons for some demons, etc). This also applied to some creatures being immune to fire.
Ranged would still retain the ability to switch joining their melee teammates with their silvered melee weapon for immune mobs/hordes of course.
I believe this type of idea could make melee weapons and builds more valuable with silver swords, axes, maces, etc… while still keeping ranged dps essential for the non-immune common types and the flying (if possible in the engine) types .
Further notes:
You might say “but what about the famed 'silver bullet!??”
Having silver tipped arrows/silver bullets a rare ammo spawn or a limited switchable supply at map start and not be re-supplied by talents might be appropriate. An occasional charged ranged silver shot or alt-weapon shot, and perhaps a long cooldown non-fire spell would keep the ranged ammo vs immune uncommon during runs.
Other thoughts:
I’m also reminded of the high tech “magic” personal shield field mechanic from the “Dune” series, which could only be permeated by a slow (in V2 terms, powered) melee attack. They were impermeable to quick attacks and ranged attacks entirely.