In looking at the code a bit more in-depth, I think we can do some decent refactoring and completely handle all use cases so that equals/hash-code isn't necessary any longer for non-basic types.
Given that we intend to release 5.3.1 this week, I'd rather not rush the fix too quickly so I'm going to delay this for 5.3.2.
It'll probably be Thursday or Friday before I can get a PR ready, but it's definitely going to happen.