I think you still don't unerstand the mentality of hybrids. It's not supposed to be a "awesome at range, awesome in melee". You will be able to get high/top tier melee weapon while having mid tier ranged weapon, or the other way around.
Also, the wpf argument - I suppose you know very well that it doesn't mean shit. You are perfectly capable of melee with 1 wpf. There is simply not big enough difference between 1 and 150 to say that 1 wpf is useless. That's simply not true.
I've never once stated that we should get the best of both worlds but let's be realistic here, a mid tier weapon such as a"standard crossbow or bow is going to take multiple shots to kill an enemy, don't even get me started on strength builds.
Are you trying to tell me that good player with 50 wpf has as good a chance of beating another player with 150 wpf in an a melee fight? Not even including the average difference in power strike, ironflesh and so on? While certainly
not completely unbalanced, it definitely isn't a very tough guess to find out whos going to win most often in a melee confrontation like that. Now, with crossbow hybrids, I agree, It literally is a best of both worlds kind of thing atm, and that's why i've been one of the biggest proponent(too my limited knowledge) of getting them put more in a place like bows. This certainly wasn't what I thought would come about, though. This more than anything seems like a sort of blanket fix for pocket pikes, over stacked throwing items, boken hybrids builds, and so on.
The scales favors them, due to their ability to spit arrows on their foes. Making them unable to use the best melee weapons would even the scales.
Them having the ability to spit out arrows does not change the fact that they are at a disadvantage as far as melee is concerned. I mean, unless we are talking about throwing, it's not like they are going to switch from melee to get in a quick shot of range once they get a few feet of distance, then go back into melee. They certainly won't hit as hard , and they certainly won't hit as fast.