I just rana quick test using my level 87 Frenzy barb vs level 89 Cold Sorc. Both are comparably geared.
Brab has Grief and Lawbringer with Fortitude and other typical stuff.
Sorc is using full Tal Rasha’s with 2 facets and 2 SoJs. Sorc is Bliz-Orb.
Both take about 4 minutes to fully clear Chaos from the time of entering the door, P1. Not skipping anything, just killing every mob and Diablo, without teleporting or leaping.
Now sure, there are faster builds and these aren’t the best by any means. But the point is, for two typical and comparable builds, one being a Cold Sorc and the other a Barb, not using every trick to max out speed, like teleporting to each seal, their kill speeds aren’t radically different.
Yes Sorc has the advantage of teleport, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with melee vs casting damage.
Here is a compare of Javazon vs Frenzy Barb on P8: ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0n3UL0G80I&t=92s
They clear at almost the same speed, but the Jav kills Diablo faster.
So it just doesn’t seem to me that Barbs are lagging way behind and are insufferably bad.
Obviously, teleport is huge, meleers don’t have it, and they have to gimp their attack power to use Enigma. But Barbs do have Leap and Paladins do have Charge, which are decent alternatives.
I would also say that a highly geared Barb is a heck of a lot cheaper than a highly geared Javazon or Sorc. Bascially, Lo rune is the max you need along with a bunch of stuff you’ll likely find on your first pass on the way to defeat Baal.
Max Javazon and Sorc have lots of very rare and high end stuff and need multiple Ber+ runes.