If Shiv shoots and then melees it locks him out of shooting longer then necessary.

[ethanjbeals]

Because of Shiv's slow fire rate if he shoots and then melees it leaves him unable to shoot for a longer amount of time then feels normal. As a player it was hard to figure out why my gun would not fire during a fight because it took until the melee was completely over for the gun to even start the timer for the next shot to be ready. This kind of forces him to melee more as it is faster then waiting for the next shot but that also keeps delaying the time before the next shot. If this is intentional a sound cue for when he can't shoot would be nice or something because it is frustrating as a player when my gun doesn't shoot when I expect it to shoot.

 

[poisenbery]

I just tested this and can confirm:

Using Shoot and then melee right after, the ammo counter disappears, indicating that you're unable to shoot.
But if you try to shoot when the ammo counter comes back, you are not able to instantly shoot.

 

[Dezvul]

Melee pauses the delay between 2 attacks. I'm fairly certain this is intentional, otherwise low fire rate characters would get a significant dps advantage over rapid fire rate characters. Take character's with a slower secondary attack as an example, such as Yamato, Viscous, or Shiv, mixing their slower secondary attack with melee attacks could practically mean getting the full dps of the secondary attack while also amplifying the damage tremendously with melee attacks.

As a Viscous main I can say that I've experienced how painfully slow it feels to fire after a melee that is made immediately after the secondary fire. But I would also express that if that wasn't there, Viscous secondary firing right before melee attacks would be oppressive (against people that don't parry it).