I think melee hunter is going to end up being very OP or Very weak in its current state it is way too rng with flanking strike and raptor strike resets. I started leveling one and maybe they need to tune down flanking strikes buff or make it more consistent or not stack cause it just adds too much variance for the build you cant balance its current state.
It’s going to end up very weak. A majority of the damage is done by your pet, and they completely gutted pet scaling. Pets don’t get any benefit from world buffs either, unless they provide ranged attack power, so hunters will continue to get worse as the phases progress. At 60 I expect melee hunter to just barely be above marksman at the bottom of the list.
Ranged attack power doesn’t effect your pets attack power at all. I don’t know why people think this is true.
It effects their ability damage.
Claw, bite, etc.
Yes it does. It’s the only stat that does.
Without Aspect of the Hawk my pet has 294 attack power. With Aspect of the Hawk my pet has 310 attack power.
70 ranged attack power = 16 pet attack power.
OK
People know it’s true because it’s very easy to check.
Clearly you’ve never played hunter. Check your pets stats then turn on aspect of the hawk. Check them again…
Its going to fall off with the next few phases. Same as how ranged hunters have been bottom of the barrel due to the nerfs and insufficient scaling with items. Pets will do tickle damage once we hit 60. Even pets right now scale terribly. I stand with what ive said before, they shouldve built upon melee weaving and not force going full melee down hunters throats.
Melee weaving will never be a thing and it shouldn’t be. It’s a terrible playstyle.
They should have focused on 3 playstyles
Full melee
Full ranged
And the weave
It wouldnt be hard to make all 3 viable and close.
We can use leg runes as an example
Sniper training, make it effect auto shot and its ranged 5% crit pet 8y away from the target. Standing still for 3 seconds increase ranged critical strike damage by 20% until you move.
Flanking strike leave as is
New leg rune
Tactical strikes
Scoring a critical strike with your ranged attacks marks the target with vulnerabilities stacking up to 3 times, using raptor strike on a target with vulnerabilities causes them to bleed for 100% of the raptor strikes damage per stack for 6 seconds (300% over 6 seconds at max sracks). If the target had 3 stacks if vulnerabilities on them when raptor strike was used the hunter gains 60% move speed for 2 seconds
Wow i just used the leg runes to essentially enforce all 3 playstyles.
The devs only expand on specs they play. 
Thinking about it they could make flank 2 charge ability and give it a strong uptime so like a maitanence buff ie slice and dice. That would make it really easy to balance and more inline with retail survival which is what i think they were going for anyways.