In contrast to other opinions I experience the melee as slower, still I think the range is a good feature since it's a lot more realistic not getting ghost hitted anymore. Chambers are a bit harder, same with blockchambers which I die from mostly atm (somehow the counting time of the Block is reduced while the animation is still there).
I personally would remove the random pokes from distance hits, just keeping the close hit-pokes while reducing the amount of them. About tanking: I never did Many one hit kills (nor kills in general ayy) but it appears that some hits damage less than they used to.