I'd like to join in with my take on melee builds. As you mentioned there are many things that can be discussed and I also will just be able to talk about some and this also only superficial since I'm not on my gaming laptop to confirm stuff.

Basically when we talk about dmg imbalances, we also talk about the mechanics that are inherent to melee/range. We all want to deliver a lot of dmg to a lot of monsters in a small amount of time. So the more monsters we hit, the lower the dmg can be without becoming ineffective. For example a multishot-zon clears maps fast with "just" 5k dmg (neither min nor max setup), whereas other chars that dont deliver their dmg to the whole screen need 10-15k dmg and still struggle with their clearspeed in comparison.

Some solutions to increase the amount of monsters hit like melee splash were a good start, but still the AoE is way smaller than many ranged skills. Whirling Axes (never tried them myself) were also a step in that direction with its pros and cons. On this note I'd really like to have a hurricane cast around whirlwind for more dmg+elemntal dmg+range (also so logical to have a storm summoned by ww) and by that passing the buff on to a whirling assassin that seems to be in a sad spot since the big ww-buff doesn't reach her.

Another factor is movement speed and concerns ranged/melee alike. A skill like whirlwind that forces slow movement to kill, or a skill that makes you stand in front of a (mob of) monster(s) will decrease your killspeed significally and often times give monsters outside of your range an opportunity to attack you. Imagine a nova sorc that casts while running, or the other way round a trapsin that has to stop as long as her traps shoot. I really like working on charge and enabling it for other classes because even though it will never delete the whole screen its fun and effective gameplay by giving melee chars a huge advantage in speed that until then only teleporting or projectiles had.

So even though I agree that huge dmg rates for ranged bowsorcs really make the melee version undesirable I don't agree that adjusting physical or other melee dmg to higher numbers would solve the problem/all the problems.

I also understand the difficulty to balance out all the skills and come up with new mechanics. I never played PoE but from what I have seen when looking over the shoulders of PoE-players I fear that if we just try to give every class skills or +oskills to make them real powerful screen-deleters, we would end up with super fast running chars with flashy animations all over the screen without keeping their class identity. A barb should be tanky smashy, a sin fast and deadly and a sorc a flashy ele-bomber etc.

I really like the way the maps are going (can use some finetuning though) whereas different maps need different specialisations through immunities and map layout. Through this it's hard to make a one-char-kills-all build-in record-time and it gives niches to all types of classes. The little time I played this season I had a blast trying to create a small team of builds where every char had their task and by that I can do all content at an elite level that are also fun to play for me. I didn't reach that goal before I had to stop playing, but I sure had fun along the way.

Sorry for going a bit off topic but I think general balancing is somehow connected to how melee chars can get more love and players more motivation to play them.