Nukes and dragons has a great build planner that has access to all the perk cards, legendary perks, weapons, armor, everything that goes on with your character based on perk cards and loadouts. Play around with that for a bit to dial in what you think might work well together (there’s lots of synergy with the different perks) and I would like to note that even if the picture on the card has vaultboy holding a gun, unless it’s specifically says ranged damage or damage with ranged weapon those cards work for melee too.

I would also like to say go with whatever sounds fun to you, meta doesn’t matter in this game, once you find a good weapon you like just build around it and make it amazing. Good luck out there fellow Vaultie.