Cannot use melee attack

[Jekkies]

Product: Apex Legends
Platform:PC
Please specify your platform model. PC
AMD or Nvidia Model Number na
Enter RAM memory size in GB na
What is your gamertag/PSN ID/EA Account name? na
Please provide your squad mates' gamertag/PSN ID/EA Account name if possible. na
Are you using any software with an overlay? No
Which Legend were you playing (if applicable)? Octane
Which Legends were your squad mates using (if applicable)? na
Where did the issue occur? In a match
Which part of the map or menu were you in? If you don't remember the exact name, please describe the area or what you were trying to do in the menu. na
What were you doing when the issue occurred? E.g. respawning a squad mate at a beacon, using an ability, a squad mate left the game. Trying to melee
Did your squad mates also experience the issue? Yes
How many matches had you played in a row before the issue occurred? na
When did this happen? (dd.mm.yy hh:mm) na
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
How severe is your issue? Major impacts to gameplay
What happens when the bug occurs? When Octane's stim is almost over, an animation starts where he pulls the stim out of his face and discards it. Once this animation starts, Octane CANNOT melee for almost 3 seconds. This happens with every single stim that every single player uses. This is extremely frustrating as many situations only require one melee to finish off an enemy, however instead of the melee activating, you are a sitting duck doing nothing directly in front of your opponent.
What should be happening instead? Nothing should stop the melee action from activating.
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? -Activate Octane Stim -Wait until the "stim discard" animation starts -Mash your melee key to no avail

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When Octane's stim is almost over, an animation starts where he pulls the stim out of his face and discards it. Once this animation starts, Octane CANNOT melee for almost 3 seconds. This happens with every single stim that every single player uses. This is extremely frustrating as many situations only require one melee to finish off an enemy, however instead of the melee activating, you are a sitting duck doing nothing directly in front of your opponent.

[Jekkies]

This issue is still rampant and has not been acknowledged. 

[Jekkies]

Season 9 has launched, still no acknowledgement of this bug.

[EA_David]

Hi, this isn't a bug, it's as designed.

Animations like this (see also Mirage's deploy or Valk's flight end) have temporary no-melee periods. I'm not sure why, and for sure it's not great to get caught out by it, but for now it's intended. 

[kurozawa6]

@EA_David It's just laziness to code it that way. It's definitely unintended. I find it hard to imagine developers in a meeting room discussing, "We must make Octane unable to punch when he's pulling his stim syringe out with the left. Because reasons."

What kind of "design" is that??

[Jekkies]

@EA_David I highly doubt it was designed with that sort of melee-blocking action in mind on purpose. Your comparisons shed some light on where the problem is, and that's with trying to melee while the character's model is doing something with their (non-melee) hand, but if this were truly a purposeful design then it just doesn't make sense as to why. They can still shoot with their melee hand.

On top of this, both Valk and Mirage can choose when to start those melee blocking animations, they press a button and hit happens, there's no confusion or middle ground. Its asinine to think that Octane should have to think "Ok, I'm going to stim now, sometime during the upcoming fray I'm going to be locked out of my melee for almost three seconds, but not right as I press the tactical button..." Also, Mirage and Valk animations that block melee are for less than a second each. Octane pulls out the stim, stares at it for almost a full second, then more animation plays as he throws it away, and even then you still can't melee for almost half a second after the animation is over.

Is there anyone on the design team that you can forward this to and have them maybe at the very least shorten the uncontrollable "discard stim" animation so its in line with the other two controllable animations you compared it to?