Big bruisers are reasonably good against named opponents because they hit so hard, but they are terrible at taking down mooks because of their low combat AV. Anybody else notice that? Did you do anything about it?
To combat that, I added a new strength shtick to the starting Big Bruiser: "awesome blows" which allows to take down a mook at AV+4 instead of +5 when doing damage based on strength using an impressive weapon: a 2-handed sword, a motorcycle, a large beam... anything a normal person could not swing.
By comparison, the rifles which take down a mook at AV+4 or AV+3 never reach the damage levels (11+4=15) of a Big Bruiser with a big weapon.
there is an otional combat rule in the blood of the valiant sourcebook named MOOK BOWLING. if you hit a mook but fail to exceed his AV by 5, you knock him down instead (if shooting guns force them to duck cover. the mook must spend his next action getting up. excellent for character types that are not so good in butt kicking mooks
I honestly think this is partly a matter of 'genre'. Gun-bunnies mow down mooks like nobody's business for the first half of the flick, but when it comes time to settle the main baddie's hash, you need someone who can step up and go toe-to-toe in a slugfest.
That said, while I don't necessarily care for adding a starter Schtick, I could easily see it as a Strength-based Stat Schtick--which, of course, only the Big Bruiser would be eligible for 'out of the box'. Heck, I'd even go so far as to allow the purchase of a second Schtick to lower the KO Outcome to +3.
I would also encourage allowing melee characters to take variants on Carnival of Carnage and 10,000 Bullets that work with melee attacks (call 'em Rapid Strike to lower the shot-cost of attacking a Mook, and Knock Their Heads Together for lowering the multi-shot penalty). This is still pretty balanced, because while the gun-bunny needs Rapid Reload (x3, at least) to make full use of the combo, the thug still has to have that many people in relatively close proximity.
To be honest, I changed that AV+5 rule into doing 15 in damage instead, but I've also done some serious changes when I tried to slim down the system. All guns (with concealment rating 2-3) do 10 damage and shotguns and submachine guns do 11 (but you got to have a pretty good excuse for those weapons, like being a killer or a cop).
I've even done an extra space on the character sheet that says how much you have to roll to take out one mook (normally AV+5 for guns).
If you want to take a look at the weapon table, check out the last page in this document (pdf, 430 kb). Most of it is in Swedish, but you will understand the last page anyway.
The Bruiser is just one of a number of archetypes that isn't so hot verus Mooks. 'Mooking' is just one option, just like doing lots of damage, or going every shot, or being extremely hard to take down, are options. In a recent campaign where I was very much the 'Mookenator' with CoC and 10,000 bullets, sometimes in Mook-heavy fights the other PCs would have to try to keep me vertical, so I could be around long enough to mow down the Mooks, otherwise they knew it would take them forever (and risk lucky shots) to do the job, because none of them were any good versus Mooks. You pays your money and you takes your choice - that's my feeling anyway.