You still have to get close to your enemy to deal any sort of damage and by that time you could get either knocked out or bursted for 500+ damage. Simple no? Gatling laser shouldn't be in game with current stats also but you don't see people whining about it.
What's wrong with gatling? It only instakills people without any protection which is totally justified. And 500 dmg is reachable only with bypass critburst or onehex. Only problem with it is that either it deals really good, good or hardly any damage depending on enemy's armor but that's another issue entirely.
The reason why unarmed and melee can never compete against ranged characters is that it's strategy is too simple and has too little options. And the ranged trooper can always just choose to run away, which turns this game into retarded hide and seek catch game, which was witnessed when we had HH trolls.