The point is that these situations occur way more frequently, because the class has essentially zero temp health regeneration, while having the lowest health, no DR (with the build you are describing) and poor horde control.
If double shotted is nerfed at one point (which I believe most people agree upon), why would you pick BH? The very negligible upside of being able to snipe multiple units if he can get reset on trash mobs?
Ya or I could just pick BW, use my ult to make space and bolt everything down, or play RV and spam right click with mwp or just go invis whenever needed, or even just go HM and use my dash to make a bit of space to snipe whatever, without being hilariously squishy at the same time. Or just rely on my team being vaguely competent and able to hold space somewhat.
Every career gets hit, unless you’re playing incredibly passively. Having no DR and pretty terrible thp regen/no control is an issue in any high pressure situation, which is when balance actually matters.
In my experience, these bad situations happen LESS frequently precisely because many other careers can’t deal with multiple specials in a melee situation where reloading and making space either takes too long or is tied to a cooldown.
Of course a perfectly coordinated team with a flawless frontline won’t need this, but at that point the official game turns into a joke anyway and you need to head to modded realm. Which frankly isn’t Fatshark’s job to balance.
I’ve played and enjoyed all of these extensively because I like being the guy who deletes specials in any situation, and none felt as good and reliable as Xbow Bounty Hunter. All those career skills have downtimes and aiming/charging puts you at risk otherwise.
Maybe I simply don’t see his problems because I’ve spent over 1000 hours on him and just bruteforced my way around his flaws, but I can’t unlearn all that.
Each and every ranged career can easily deal with that, and a lot of the other non-ranged careers as well. Sure, there are outliers, but why should an outliers weakness, be comparable to a specialist.
How many specials are we talking about either way? Regular cata doesn’t really throw enough stuff at you for it to be a real issue, unless of course you are an outlier like GK or slayer with no option.
We are not saying BH’s special killing is weak, but does it outweigh his very apparent weaknesses (without double shotted that is)? I think not.
Off topic aside here. I’m chuffed at how the three examples you give for replacements for BH, should his OP talent be removed, are: OP BW, OP MWP, and, appropriately for the topic, what is generally seen as one of the less OP elf careers. And isn’t even her ranged career besides. 
I’ve been using MWP lately, and I really hate the delay on its primary fire. It’s very powerful but I honestly hate it. I just want it to be like Brace of Pistols with a quick-loading six round mag in place of BoP’s reload/magazine mechanic.
What would be the downside of it then?
Much lower close-range damage compared to its current form. Maybe I wasn’t clear on wanting it to basically be BoP (damage, accuracy, rate of fire, range) with a different magazine/reload mechanic.
The most outstanding thing about the sniping is how easy and quick is, compare a crossbow in his hands to a handgun and i think he usually ends up ontop…as for boltstaff, well its a bit of a different case.
I think the best way to put it is simply that it trades speed for power, meanwhile longbows by themselves lose out in all regards except possibly headshot damage if i am not mistaken.
Looking at waystalker
Well, yes, i agree to a degree but i believe his sniping power is fine where it is given how powerful his ability tends to be. However i will concede that i think he should have a better lvl 5 row as having a solid ranged schtick with a component that demolishes monsters doesnt quite justify the melee gimping.
He may be overpowered as it is in some areas but it just takes away from the fun too much.
…
And my bad on the shotgun statment, i disagree that RV is better since he brings more to the team in base cata however as there just isnt a need for that “more” there.
Having the bounty hunter just run ahead and demolish everything that doesnt have armor or isnt a chaos warrior in a matter of seconds makes any run as much of a snooze as you´d get from any other over the top things.
I love how Saltzpyres bounty hunter just derailed the elf nerf thread.
I guess the elf players got what they wanted, lol.
Joke’s on you, because sisters of thorn are lorewise, insanely powerful to the point where it’s not even funny. They are the personal bodyguards of Ariel herself, and what kind of bodyguards would they be if they didn’t fall somewhere within Ariel’s own level of power?
If you truly believed that the sister of thorns would be a weak and frail support class, then you were missing some crucial lore knowledge about what a sister of thorn is.
Eh, they’re really nothing special. In Total War, they’re decent skirmish cavalry. Nothing special. It could never beat me, cause I’m real, and Sisters of the Thorn are not.
In the lore Grail Knights are basically immortal and can kill most chaos beasts just by staring at them with their shiny bathwater blessing. This isn’t the case in game because it’s co op gameplay, not watch the elf.
Total War is a little bit different from the actual lore. You can’t use that game as an accurate depiction of power levels.
Pff if we are going to bring the lore into this, then there is always price to be paid for sisters assistance. In worst case scenarios this could mean death.
Obviously this is a game where some resemble of balance needs to be had with each career so pitfalls like this are ignored when designing a career.
Lore has nothing to do with in-game balancing considerations. Just stop.
Imagine if League of Legends was balanced around lore power of the champions. I rest the case.
Teemo with blowgun vs Dragon that literally created the universe, eats galaxies and poops stars.
YeAh BUt hE iS bLiNDeD bEcAuSE Of pOIsoN
yeah, and pyros ult should be 30 times larger, and normal humans with no magical gear have absolutely zero chance of slaughtering their way through hundreds and hundreds of skavens or chaos fanatics/warriors without ever sustaining a lasting injury.
This game is always pretty loose with lore, as it should be in these cases.