OP has very good points. The question it boils down to on most “off-metas” that are “viable” is: You can, but why would you want to? The only case in which I think it is true is with Slayer, which I personally consider on par with IB (if not a little bit more powerful when it comes to horde controlling), but requires alot more in terms of items and effort and allows for alot less margin when it comes to making mistakes, in all other cases, picks over meta are quirky at best and ruining at worst.
I think it lies partially within the way the game is layed out. You can nerf ranged into oblivion, it will still be more viable in many a situation than melee. You don’t want a game focused on ranged dps? Then don’t spam us with unreachable hordes of specials that deal damage at range. Then don’t give bosses RIDICILOUS amounts of damage reduction against melee attacks (not to mention the increased difficulty and risk involved in attacking a boss in melee). Then don’t give us map bosses that are hair-pullingly atrocious and tedious to fight in melee because they spam you with ranged attacks that hit like a freight train, have melee DR up the burble against melee and can teleport (I’m looking at you, Bubblesoup Hailstorm).
For the record, I don’t mind the game being the way it is. And I don’t think melee is that worse off than ranged. In fact, apart from some very apparent offenders, ranged and melee have a pretty good balance.
Melee on Legend is punishing and doesn’t allow much room for error, which is rightfully so. Problem is: You can very easily run pure ranged parties. I’ve played with Pyro, BH, Huntsman and Waystalker parties and if you know what you are doing, you don’t need tanking ability. You melt through bosses and should have little problems controlling hordes. You’ll have a VERY hard time running pure melee parties because you simply don’t have the dps for bosses. You can beat them, but it takes so long that it gives the AI director enough time to throw other stuff at you like hordes or pack of disablers and other specials that increase your chance of whiping.
I am by no means saying you should “nerf” the meta. There are certain things that need tweaking (Pyro’s special needs a cooldown increase tbh, heat sink needs a look into it, BH’s passive might need some tweaking like removing the melee kill cooldown or such), but otherwise, we need buffs and reworks on other carreers to make their playstyle more competible.
You want a melee focused game? Then let us deal more damage to bosses in melee. Let us stagger them with certain weapons heavy attacks and abilities (it’s almost bizarr that ranged DPS classes have more and better staggering ability from a far than the close combatants). Give us more temp-hp when killing in melee than when killing in ranged. Give melee talents and passives more of a punch and put ranged carreers that lack DPS (basically just Ranger Bardin and in further extent WS Keri and A LITTLE BIT Huntsman… yes, he has insane dps from his ability, but cooldown is a serious hurdle on it).
I don’t think we are actually THAT far from having proper class balance. The problem with most meta carreers is that apart from the game just catering to a certain playstyle, they have defined roles. What role does Ranger Bardin have? He certainly is neither ranged nor melee dps, his abilities suggest “support” character, but the support really doesn’t come from him, but from his drops. His playstyle or setup doesn’t change one bit, no matter if you select bomb drops, potion drops or ammo drops, he doesn’t produce them, they are just there. His active is very useful, but in the end, a lesser version of IB’s taunt while having only marginally better ranged and less… well, less everything.
What is WHC’s role? He has some melee thrown into the mix, but has very low HP and is kinda squishy. He has some headshot thing going on and get more ammo, his active somehow suggests a supporting role.
Speaking of WHC, that is another thing: Many non-meta carreers have sometimes mind-bogglingly long cooldowns for what they are worth. Taking WHC again, you have to wait like what, 2 minutes to get a whopping SIX seconds of extra crits for MAYBE the whole team and an AoE knockdown/stagger. It’s not only unreliable, the game is fast paced and action oriented, you want to use your abilities often. Doesn’t mean I am advocating for everything to have just a 30 second cooldown, but look at how Shade became very viable after her ability’s cooldown got reduced. Now you can actually play with it, experiment with it and use it in other situations like killing priority, find new ways how it can be a boon.
tl;dr: We are not that very far away from having good balance. But we need more defined roles for certain carreers and ther abilities geared towards that imho. Melee needs a serious buff against bosses and overall more incentive to use apart from damage, cleave and stagger.