I'm sorry to derail, but I must. Do you really think throwing is OP? Have you tried throwing? Because I find my thrower to be very balanced because the higher throwing weapons are almost random in where they will go. Perhaps I am just terrible but in my experience they ( throwing spears, lances, heavy axes) lack constancy so much that you , the person throwing them more or less has to use the force to get them where you want them.
I think low tier throwing weapons are op. I've been oneshot by stone with 6PT before [several times...]. My best scores are typically when I'm a hybrid thrower. Throwing weapons ime typically fall within a small area and if you know where to aim will hit the target most of the time. With jarids, I used one as a tracer to find out where the aiming center is, and then used the following two for the kill. Lances, ime, failed to be nearly as effective as mid-tier throwing weapons as they kill in about the same amount of hits but you only have 4 as opposed to 12.
For mid and high tier throwing, I think it's "fine" if not a pain in the ass that I'd rather not deal with.
For op's questions:
1) The only time that it's acceptable for ranged to shoot me is if I do something retarded and thus deserved it. I was originally ming every ranged that hit me until I found out why they probably hit me. I do m them a lot more than melee though.
2) The only time I don't mind an archer helping is when the enemy is running, ranged himself, or if I was out numbered.
3) I don't know what you mean by less-more so...
4) In melee, I've hit people 12 times with a scottish just for them to live and kill me with one hit. I've hit people 8 times with a MW Claymore for somebody to come up and steal my kill [or I just died
]. I don't really feel sorry for archers needing a lot of hits. The most shots it took me to kill somebody was around 5 for somebody in lordly everything armor [I might've been using 8PD instead of 9], but averaged around 3.
I'll probably make an archer alt soon to see where I failed with my fail build; maybe after I make a stf 21/21 mauler.