I'm not far enough to really judge, but a Werewolf Stormseeker (priest) of Stratos seems to be shaping up into a pretty good melee character. Chain lightning melee attacks and decent health regen and charged bolts is a glorious thing
Haven't even found a weapon yet. I've got a slight idea that it won't really keep up damage-wise, but still, Lightning Wolf.
Since the added spell casting delay of 17.01 onwards, you really want you spells to count. If they happen to be free bumping spells while you're casting something else, all the better.
Don't worry about the tiny damage numbers appearing everywhere. That's the bonus damage from your god. It's still casting chain lightning at your character's level. Now I just need some auras on this puppy, and a decent weapon, and I'm good to go. I'm not actually sure if it's scaling the lightning off my melee damage or my character level, but I'm guessing the latter.
Edit: seems to work. Bought a bec-de-corbin and I'm running through the ruins pretty easily. I'm actually hitting with my melee right-click pretty well too. Bumping or right-click procs the chain lightning, and while it isn't heaps of damage, combined with a charged bolt wind-up that's levelling alongside my character level, it all does a fair bit of close ranged AoE electrical damage on top of about 25-30 whatever melee for the weapon swings. Still really early, but it has potential. The cyclone blasts attached to my charged bolts don't seem to cause too many problems either.
Even though Nymphs are most definitely not my go-to race for melee characters, I'm going to try one of them, just to stack auras and summons and stuff. Autocasting Fire Halo, Tendrils of Darkness and being able to replenish low level summons and healing might be far more cost and damage effective than it sounds when backed with basic Stormseeker stuff. Free spell regen is great. Empowered spells are awesome, but when going melee, I think a certain amount of sustain will be better.
Edit 2: Some spell casting delays seem WAY too high. What were at least marginally useful spells have turned into barely fireable ones. And so in comparison, made stuff like chain lightning even better. Everything is worse, but the good stuff is now so much better compared to lots of previously "OK'ish" spells. Hopefully Wouter goes through and lowers the delay of heaps of stuff at lower levels next version, so there's more viable variety in classes.