Hucaseal has the most ata out of all hunter classes. 201 (max) is hucast and hucaseal is 228 (max) ata
I would not say LK "balanced" anything. If you think about it with L&K 38 there is very little use for melee weapons such as jizai, vivienne, double cannon and several other single target weapons are obsolete compared to it. There is no point in using those weapons once you get L&K 38 because you can just sit from a far range and kill everything.
If you get your hands on a Red sword, chain sawd, Tsumikiri J-sword, or Dark flow. Then Hunters have a huge advantage over rangers in melee or any other class. Rangers are decent at melee if they get a lame de'argent or an Excalibur. Hunters can do good damage at mid range with charge mechs. But if you give hunters long range then you kinda unbalance things since hunters can then do what rangers can and almost better because of the damage from LK.