I am wondering if there is any possibility of making maylay more interesting? I am bored of just running into things until they die or I die. I think it could be cool to have some kind of talent tree thing where you unlock maylay abilities that would function similar to spells as your weapon experience increases. Or maybe spell schools could affect what different branded weapons can do. Like a high fire magic skill would leave a cloud of flame after you attack.
There are some gods that address the issues you bring up here, most notably the Wu Jian Council and Uskayaw. WJC allows you to attack while moving, and you unlock special movement-based attacks as you become a more devoted follower. Uskayaw rewards you for fighting large groups all at once with a unique piety-gain system.
Makhleb, Qazlal, Ru, Fedhas, Dithmenos, etc., etc. will give you lots of active abilities which you can use midfight to break up the monotony of bump-fighting.
Other than playing around with cool gods (seriously, play WJC for a fresh melee experience), the other way to make meleedudes more interesting, versatile and survivable is to train secondary killdude strategies i.e. Throwing, Ranged, Evocations, Invocations or magic. Getting a couple strong spells online on an already decent melee character is super fun. This guide is a good inspiration for doing that:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dcss/comments/s1mzj4/how_to_beat_the_game_35_runes_using_a_hybrid_build/