I was hoping this update would improve the melee side of things, but it seems to be exactly the same. Very often will three or more enemies attack you at once, all with different timings that make parrying impossible, and blocking useless. As if that weren't enough, they also like to attack through their comrades, meaning that you could be hit by an enemy mostly or entirely obscured by another. I'd just play as a mystic or thief, but holding left click and spamming dodge to stay out of range just doesn't do anything for me. I'm not posting this just to shit talk. I like the aesthetic, and I want to see this game improve. But please, make the melee a bit less shitty.

I’d just play as a mystic or thief, but holding left click and spamming dodge to stay out of range just doesn’t do anything for me.

LOL That was basically my time playing Bandit (with invisibility to occasionally take a break from dodging). Although, bows currently have this neat thing where you could get an extra shot if you dodged at the right time, which made it a little more interesting.

Everything you said about melee is correct though, and it was the same situation with the last version. As a fighter, I find unless I’m fighting 2 mobs max, it’s much easier to do burst damage and dash away then to attempt parrying.

What you can try to do is parry one enemy and focus on the other ones

I just want a more mobile agile melee fighter.

Standing around and pressing rmb every time you see the windup isn't that much fun.

fresh player who just finished the content in the recent update as Fighter so ill chime in, and i gotta say its not that bad. sometimes you do get multiple enemies who attack in just such a rhythm that parrying and blocking are useless, but unless your also cornered you can use Dash to reposition and get their attacks to synch better with the rate at which you can respond to the enemy wind ups, which for the most part, are telegraphed pretty well (the skulls in particular tend to get obscured very often by both their own particles and larger enemies).
melee players have it ROUGH before their job advancement and like someone here said, the best strat is to hit & run/kite enemies in an utterly miserable fashion until most are dead. post Fighter advancement once you've got your stats and skills in order (and some good luck with decent gear), melee does legitimately become the tanky powerhouse its supposed to be but it takes a while to get there.
as for the weapon classes, Sword & Shield and Heavy Melee feel great, but Polearms need more love. the middleground niche they occupy with having better dps but less AoE than Heavy often mean id rather use S&S for its more extreme tradeoff of range for damage while also getting the damage mitigation from shields and the Shield Bash skill. polearms might need a special skill just for them to make them feel more worth it?