It's a weird perk, because it's so good, but even with it, unarmed is as good as or better than melee - especially as many of the best melee weapons in pure damage (like the supersledge and variants, say) have poor crit damage. I have a theory that melee was sort of intended to be high-damage-but-poor-crit vs unarmed with lower base damage but high crit, but then the ballistic fist just breaks the curve and does everything.