Despite what you may or may not think Doomfist is NOT a melee character. Reinhardt is a melee character. He relies on a melee attack as his primary fire and main source of damage. He also has two other methods of attack on cooldown, one is a charging attack and one is a projectile. Brigitte is a melee character. She relies on a melee attack as his primary fire and main source of damage. She also has a projectile of sorts and a charging attack on cooldown.
Doomfist relies on a weak shotgun as his main source of damage, one that regenerates ammo slowly instead of reloading quickly like any normal character. As for his other abilities?
ROCKET PUNCH is a charging/dashing attack akin to Reinhardt’s charge or Genji’s swift strike. He needs to charge the attack to get any serious damage or distance off of it, if not it isn’t very strong and doesn’t go far at all. If he could use an uncharged Rocket Punch more often it would basically amount to a melee attack, but not charging it still puts it on 4 seconds of cooldown. You CANNOT rely on it as a source of damage like Reinhardt can his hammer or Brigitte her flail. Also because of it’s charge time and unreliable hitbox the best Doomfist players suggest using it for mobility for the most part, not attacking, unless it’s a sure thing or you really want to gamble.
RISING UPPERCUT is a melee attack, but you have to wait 7 seconds between uses. It can’t be relied on as a melee attack, it’s primary purpose is to combo with other abilities or for more mobility. Seeing a trend here? Another mobility attack.
SEISMIC SLAM is not a melee attack though it is a close range attack. Doomfist strikes the ground not his enemy and creates a small tremor that does anywhere from 10 to 125 damage. Unless you use it a certain way from a great height, you will likely be getting much closer to the minimum damage. It is not a melee attack you can rely on due it’s 7 second cooldown, it is used to initate combos by closing the gap between you and the enemy, or running away from the enemy. Looky there, yet another mobility tool!
If Doomfist is a melee character because he’s effective at close to mid range, so are Reaper, Symettra, Junkrat, Mei, and Roadhog. He is an ability reliant character with potentially high burst damage and potentially high burst mobility, who is a slow moving weakling after burning through his abilities. I can charge multiple enemies in an enclosed space as Reinhardt and CRUSH them with my rocket hammer. If I try the same as Doomfist I’ll be lucky as hell if I can kill ONE enemy with a Punch before I flail around awkwardly with my other abilities and they kill me.
I have two ideas that could work as a solution to this glaring problem in Doomfist’s character design:
IDEA #1: A Quick Melee Combo
Pressing quick melee twice in a row would let Akande Ogundimu do a jab & cross combo. The jab would be his current quick melee, a 30 damage jab. The right cross would be a heavy punch with his gauntlet hand, it would do 50 damage and knock enemies back like an uncharged rocket punch. If the enemy hit a wall they would take an additional 20 damage.
This would make Doomfist a threat at close range which is what he should be. However Reinhardt and Brigitte could still compete with him because they would have a range advantage.
IDEA #2: An uncharged Rocket Punch can be performed at all times
An uncharged Rocket Punch is usually never worth it unless you’ll be able to kill the enemy with the measly damage it provides. It only does 49 damage if they don’t hit a wall, 98 if they do, that isn’t enough to kill even the squishiest of squishies. Also by using an uncharged Rocket Punch you are sacrificing your strongest (albeit most unreliable) attack and your single best mobility tool for a whole 4 seconds.
If you could use an uncharged Rocket Punch at all times Talon’s big boss would actually have a melee attack he could rely on. To make it a little more fair it would not move him forward at all, and using it would reset his Rocket Punch timer to 4 seconds, meaning you would have to stop punching to regain the ability to charge your punch.
Also just for fun, a totally unrelated idea!
IDEA #3: Blocking
Holding the reload key as Doomfist (which currently does nothing) would make Doomfist raise his hand and block incoming damage. Holding it for half a second would drain 1 shot from his hand cannon ammo, which means you could hold block for 2 seconds at most. While blocking he would take 50% reduced damage and become immune to CC. This would allow him to defend himself from attacks but it would hamper his ability to fight enemies outside of close range.