You can have melee weapons and a bow equipped at the same time, with different keys/buttons to activate. There is a bit of a delay switching weapons, but especially at the beginning of the game it is handy to take a few shots at opponents as they approach, and switch to your melee weapon(s) when they get close, if needed (at least how I built my character I can do a lot more damage with melee attacks).
On the Xbox controller I have the X button set to melee attack, A ranged attack and Y as whirlwind.
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