You know what, now that I've actually played on my "dedicated", 9 PT thrower (which still leaves enough for 3 ath, 3 wm, 9 ps, 5 if), I don't really think the ranged changed is a big deal for other people with similar dedication to their PT value. I can see how painful it might be for people who only go half the distance or attempt to build a hybrid homage to Native multiplayer, but I was topping the scoreboards with minimal effort on my throw-toon. I wasn't two-shotting TheSerge or anything, but I was killing low-medium armor wearers, and contributing to demise of those who wore plate or heirloomed armor by weakening them. Plus thrower is still fun as hell.
I can't directly speak for dedicated crossbowmen or archers. It does take more hits to kill me with ranged, but I did also always think it was ridiculous that I could be two shot by a bow user who could also run faster than I could reach them on my balanced 18/18 build. That IMO was one of the bigger problems with ranged before the changes: You could deal massive damage from a distance outside of melee, and when you got into shit, you could just run from 90% of the player base until you had enough room to turn, shoot, repeat.
The way I see the game, your reward should be based on your risk. (Light-medium) Cav is a high risk class, your speed bonus can work drastically against you, and you can easily be dehorsed amid a sea of enemies if you aren't cautious, and its rewards are high mobility, high melee range, and often, high amount of kills to deaths. Dedicated throwing is high risk; you risk running out of ammo quickly if you don't time your shots, you do not have the athletics to kite like an archer, but your projectiles are more effective than other range. Infantry are medium-high risk; you can basically choose your level of risk reward based on your melee specialization, but for the most part, you are risking it all in every confrontation, because your class necessitates that you be able to touch your enemy (meaning he is also able to touch you given the effort). Wearing more armor, using more IF can lower your risk. Crossbowman are medium risk with similar reward; you trade off specialization for a better shot and some melee capability- still, you have high athletics, and can run out of danger.
Archers have the lowest risk pre-change. They could get on a roof, destroy the ladder, be only vulnerable to range. Archers like Aderyn would two shot me 95% of the time, and despite all that power, I could never catch them without the coordination of one or (usually) more teammates, unless I were to invest in more athletics, which would probably mean a one shot death due to sacrifice of IF. That seemed like a very unbalanced risk to reward situation. Only being able to be caught by cavalry, high agility characters, or maybe people in cloth with moderate athletics (who have to trade off survivability just to catch an archer who will probably turn and shoot them anyhow), while still hitting like a Mack Truck is totally ridiculous.
Personally, I'm fond of not getting two shot by people I'll never be able to engage if they are aware of me, though I will admit that for Archery, and especially for Crossbows, at least, the percentage damage reduction is probably too far. At least Archery still has the benefit of being able to knock and fire a projectile faster, as well as a generally increased stack size; Crossbows not only suffer the body/foot damage changes, but the added disadvantage over archery from rain, as well as their painfully slow reload time.
Sorry for wall-o-text. Got sucked in, just my opinion, etc.
Anyhow, I voted 2. I would be for some tweaking. An overall lowering of the reduction percentage, and with less reduction for Crossbows over Archery.
Poll