Whoever mapped the melee and action button needs to get shot

Yeah. Just remap it. Even on console you can.

I wonder if thats what is causing me to sometimes be unable to melee?  Be standing there out of ammo hitting my melee button and nothing happening

Nope. That is input lag, and has jack to do with anything other than bad interrupts in code, also wraiths cause this from behind when they're trying to pounce you and you move just out of range: say goodbye to your melee.

I hate that direction overrides melee, not distance. so if someone dies on the other side of the map you can't melee in their general direction because your character attempts a revive that is not possible. but if you are standing on your dead team mate you can't revive unless you look in the right direction, otherwise you melee.

It wouldn't have been an issue if they had a context senstive cover system. You know, like pretty much every other cover based shooter that automatically switches the camera based on which direction you're facing in cover. It shouldn't require manual input. Then the right stick would have been freed up for melee.

I personally have a bigger issue when I'm trying to melee something and it won't let me because it priorities reviving or disabling first.

You monster!

So you people now finally realise the elegant and simplistic design of omni button?

Is that really why? Because they half assed it? This happens to me all the time and its getting very annoying.