Gorath... i'll have to agree with Ganon concerning specialization , the return you get for being crazy enough to specialize is ultra low , with that being said people dont it anymore and people are becoming hybrids... which came to another problem most became throwers hybrids :p we had peasant wars , plate wars, xbow wars , and now its officially the era of ITHROWSHITATYOU ( great char name btw 
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heck i dont even specialize anymore myself , 15 agi man nothing else rest in str , people said i used to hit hard, they will have no idea when i will have 8 ps
High tier throwing weapons might need a tweak in their damage sure but really specialized builds still do have the advantage in their chosen field strictly by mechanics. The issue I can see is that player skill comes into play. Lets look at Goretooth just as an example. Currently he's an archer right? Pretty dedicated too given his super high strength and bow choice. He also picks up a random weapon off the ground and still wrecks people when need be and the reason isn't that hybrids are that much better off mathmatically than a pure melee; stat wise the pure melee should win hands down; it's that Gore just shreds period. Give a good player only 1 tool to work with and they'll go far. Give them two tools to work with, even while less effective than the pures, and they're going to tear shit up even more because of versatility, not stats.
Of course if we want to go to a class based game (because let's be real, that's all super specialized builds are) then there's going to need to be a huge overhaul of the balance in the game as:
xbowmen, throwers and to a lesser degree archers would all be shit (since if they carry a melee weapon they're now a "hybrid")
1hers would be shit since 2hers can carry shields for advancing and then dominate melee (but what else is new)
2h/polearms would be the de-facto infantry builds with the advantage vs all non-cav given to 2hers and a slight cav advantage to polearms.
Cav would be cav (I doubt much would change).
Really what it seems like the whole thing boils down to is "TOO MUCH RANGED WEAPONRY, GAAAAAAH". And truth be told I can understand this and melee is awesome. However, if you make ranged weapon users absolutely incapable of melee combat because of some extreme specialization buff / hybrid nerf then we might as well turn ranged combat off. Better to turn it off than to punish skilled players by adding artificial limitations on their possibility to defend themselves at all. A disadvantage for being a hybrid, sure, but we have that currently. I say this because I really don't see anyone complaining about such hybrids as my 1h/shield+polearm hybrid. No rage threads saying "WTF, Sword and board pulling out a spear is OP!!!!!!! NERF"
Instead it's all about ranged being hybridized with something. So I ask, if an archer/xbowman/thrower kills you in melee then it's a problem with game mechanics? If he kills you with the ranged weapon he's just a my old friend right? So.... why don't we stop beating around the bush and just get rid of ranged altogether? If that's not what this is about then I really don't comprehend what the issue is, because on any of my characters (and I've ALWAYS played some kind of hybrid, to the point that pre-patch I was hybrid in 4 weapons remember?) the pure builds have always been faster and hit harder, including now, in their respective specialization.
