Claws a viable weapon type?Follow

I was thinking of making a BE hunter, and wanted to know if using fist type weapons were truly viable. From a roleplay perspective, they are the only weapon I can see a BeastMaster using. Should you need to fight in melee, you'll fight the same as your pet does, with your "claws".

From what I've seen when researching fist type weapons, not only do they start getting decent /very/ late, there are very very few of them. Sort of suffer from the same affliction of polearms. How much will I lose in the upper game should I want to use fists as the weapons we almost never use?