melee needs help

Soo, I normally play melee in games, and did so here too, so played monk first, and are mapping a bit with it now, and it's been a struggle, doable, but a struggle.
Decided to try a witch, and I don't know how best to say this, but, it's 10 times easier to deal with everything as a range character, there doesn't seem to be any downside to be honest, you take waaaaaay less damage because you don't get hit by most things, and you can get the same amount of defense if you want to, so there is no apparent downside of being a ranged character, doesn't even feel like there is a lower dps... Just sharing my feeling on it, games been super fun though, looking forward to seeing more weapons coming in and seeing if that might help a little in some of the problems I have with making melee work