I use the ranged and melee with cooldown on crit for Waystalker. It gets me down to roughly 28 seconds before I can Bloodshot-Loaded Bow-ult. I just focus on getting my ult to recharge as quickly as possible while tossing a few javelins with cooldown on crit or using dual swords to clear out hordes with cooldown on crit. Again, that’s + the 20% cooldown Asrai Focus and + the Spirit Arrows for the Amaranthe passive, and + trinket 10%. At that point, any extra ult cooldown just becomes even more valuable.
And heck no, I’ll take a GK and a WP for the passive bonus stacking and the ability to handle specials embedded in a horde of elites via melee stagger power. FK and Merc are nothing to sneeze at but at that point, we’re just talking about our preferences and I don’t think that one choice is necessarily inferior to the other. Besides Slayer, the other two melee-only classes are a huge asset to the team.
Bounty Hunter and Waystalker have the potential to take down a lone fire rat much quicker than melee classes, but in a horde of enemies, if they can’t free up space to shoot them (which happens fairly often in my experience) then they will be at a disadvantage when they can’t stagger them or reach them. They have no shield to advance on them and stagger the horde with the embedded specials. WP can use his ult on firerats, and GK can use his shield. When I play Waystalker or BH, and I’m crowded, I usually have to use the ult anyway if I’m stuck with a firerat nearby. Whether you’re melee or not, if nobody can shoot the gunner, you’re going to have to break contact enough to shoot it, or let it come to you by waiting around a corner or below a ledge. I don’t see any special as being much more difficult for melee than ranged except when there are so many that are just out of reach long enough to get embedded in crowds, which is why a full melee team is a risk, but one or two is a great help to passive bonuses, as well as the tanking, control crowds, monster aggro, and deal with a lot of elites; all the things that are weaknesses for certain ranged careers.
This is all besides the point though since the only reason I brought up Waystalker or melee classes was in reference to how much more poorly balanced some classes are compared to others and just to let ya’ll know, I don’t think GK is OP at all. We’re going back and forth on nothing directly related to the topic. The point relevant to the topic that matters to me is that things are getting tweaked that seem like they should be much less of a priority than other things that are not getting tweaked. This thread is an example of ad nauseum subjective discussion. It’s just a waste of time unless those involved care enough to present empirical evidence or find some common ground. @Adelion may be one of the only users to present supportive facts and have enough special interest to do so. Discussing subjective points to support more subjective points is just going to go off in tangents to the point of extreme tedium.