Most of the huntards also stemmed from the "It's a hunter weapon" on every weapon regardless if it was good.

I am remembering pre BC, with hunters rolling on casting gear...

To be fair, there's a legitimate argument that a hunter's melee weapon is for when they have to melee, especially when we're talking about groups prior to max level.

There's a legitimately bad argument that a hunter's melee weapon is for when they have to melee. At least, from level 10 on... we don't melee. :p

No, there's a legitimately good argument for that, since you pretty frequently do have to melee while levelling.

If you think that anyone who has to melee isn't playing right either you're unbelievably lucky or you've been doing a lot of green questing to level.

There's also the subject of PVP because human players are not usually so kind as to remain at range.

Ummmm ... seeing as how I have more Level 80 Hunters than you have characters, I'm just going to go on record as saying that you're wrong on this. Our Range Abilities vastly our scale our melee abilities, even at low levels. And if you know how to manage your pets, your traps, and your pulls, you never have to melee. I tend to solo 3-4 levels above my character, including elites and multiples with 0 trouble and 0 reliance on kiting or melee.

If you think that anyone who has to melee isn't playing right either you're unbelievably lucky or you've been doing a lot of green questing to level.

There's also the subject of PVP because human players are not usually so kind as to remain at range.

A Hunter's Melee weapon is a stat stick. Even if PvP I can count on my left the hand the number of times Raptor Strike has mattered. Mongoose Bite and Riposte don't require melee weapons anymore.

By the by, my last two 80 Hunter Alts made it there without dying and without grinding Greens.

For most Hunter players, a melee weapon is something they have to resort to occasionally (I even remember at least one type of mob in MC where you had to stand on top of the mob).

Lava Surgers, whose minimum charge range is 9 yards, whereas a Hunter's minimum shooting distance at the time was 6 yards. So, no, we didn't have to melee Surgers. We also didn't have to melee the Anubisath's in AQ20 and AQ40 which launched meteors, because the impact range on meteor was designed to account for a Hunter's minimum range.

A Hunter's Melee Weapon is a stat stick. And if you'd been paying attention to Cataclysm, you'd know that Mongoose Bite was removed, and Wing Clip and Raptor Strike were just re-added in the latest push. Although, to be fair, Raptor Strike is just Mongoose Bite renamed in Cataclysm. Counter Attack is still on the bubble as far as Talents go. Ghostcrawler is also on record as saying, "If we do Hunter's right this time, it's my sincere hope the class has 0 abilities that make use of a melee weapon."

It's a Stat Stick, just like a Caster's melee weapon is a Stat Stick.

Having played a hunter for quite a while now, I'm gonna have to side with Khross on this debate. The ONLY time I melee, is a mistake, or to get those melee skills maxed for giggles.

In PvP, wing clip, but other than that, no.

I have no idea what game you're playing because when I've been playing my Hunter, Mongoose bite is still there, it just refreshes constantly when its cooldown is over, as does Raptor Strike. So no, they did not remove Mongoose Bite unless you're going to try to tell me my hunter has an ability no one else's does for some reason, nor is Raptor Strike a re-named version of the same ability because it does not require that I parry or dodge or whatever it was back in the day.

If Blizzard can make it so that Hunters have no melee abilities fine, although I think that would be a mistake. That isn't, however, the case right now. It is not just a stat stick. Casters are a different story, like they are from any weapon-using class because they do damage with their abilities directly, not through a weapon.

No one is saying Hunters should go out of their way to melee or not try to get back to ranged fighting ASAP when they have to, or that melee weapons should not be ones that have good stats for Hunters; there are plenty out there. What I'm pointing out is that when a Hunter wants to get one of those melee weapons, other classes should not be whining about it. It's really not any different than Rogue and Warriors constantly trying to push Rangers out of the lineup for melee weapons back in EQ1 on various grounds that basically amounted to "I"m a loot whore".

You really don't pay attention to Beta Information? I mentioned Cataclysm, and were you paying attention to it, you would know that Wing Clip and Raptor. You would also know that Raptor Strike is no longer Next Melee (Because they're removing all next melee attacks in Cataclysm), and that Mongoose Bite no still doesn't exist. So, maybe you should pay attention to someone's qualifiers before trying to tell them they're clueless.

Except, a melee weapon still constitutes the highest single contributor to their Spellpower and Casting Stats of any item in their inventory. And, amusingly enough, a Hunter's Melee Weapon is their single largest scaling attribute item as well. We are casters that deal primarily physical damage. This is what Hunters do. Our Melee Weapon is a Stat Stick.

You really need to look at itemization in end-game content then ...
Oathbinder, Charge of the Ranger General
Bloodfall
Distant Land

Do you know which of those items is properly itemized for a Hunter? Do you know which of those 3 items a Feral Druid is going to take for DPS? Better yet, do you know the only time ANYONE other than a Feral DPS is going to roll against a Hunter for ANY of those weapons? And do you know what Class and Spec that is, and which of the weapons?

Actually, I'll put it to you this way, Diamondeye ...

My Heroic Oathbinder is the highest top end 2h in the game short of Shadowmourne, and my Raptor Strike crits hit for less than normal 2h users white damage with the Heirloom Axe (Bloodied Arcanite Reaper) in greens.

Going Beast Mastery to level, there's no reason I ever had to melee as a primary damage source questing yellows-oranges the entire time. Yes, there was one-off situations where i had to wingclip and back off to keep shooting, but the melee weapon effectiveness was irrelevant.

Put it another way: if your stuck meleeing as a hunter, you've already lost. A noobie level 1 weapon won't make much difference compared to the mother of all two-handers--your damage utterly sucks with a melee weapon. A hunter melee weapon is just jewelry.

No, it's a stat melee weapon. Moreover, we are not casters that deal primarily physical damage; the damage Hunters do is based on the weapon damage of their gun, bow, or crossbow for most ranged abilities other than stings. This would be as if casters dealt spell damage based on their wand, which they don't.

The DPS Delta between Fal'inrush (Heroic) and a Fine Light Crossbown is small. It is very small. It is 3100 damage per second in perfect conditions with perfect gear, weapon not withstanding. In other words, 85% of our damage is contingent upon everything else we're wearing in perfect circumstances. Our weapons do not scale properly, and they never have. Melee weapons are stat sticks and scale our damage output more than most ranged weapon upgrades.

Diamondeye:

I've leveled 11 Hunters to 80. I have 19 other 80s of the other 9 classes. And at every level of the game, my melee weapons as a Hunter are STAT STICKS. That said, you seem to misunderstand the difference between a Fal'inrush and Fine Light Crossbow in terms of you Hunter: You probably wouldn't gain damage equal to the listed DPS difference by switching between the two.