On a build with 68 body armour and 66 hp, single arrows taking 40% each is somewhat excessive. I even got a shield and ranged still pisses me off. Sometimes I think back to the 2010 days, where most rounds of battle consisted of 2 huge shieldwalls skirmishing for a minute. Everyone wearing plate and everyone having a shield or a ranged weapon. Then these huge shieldwalls would clash and most of the ranged would join the melee fight.
Now those times had a ton of flaws, but having an area based xp/gold system created a much more interesting and focused battle and reduced the problems of kiting ranged or spread out ranged players. There were rarely any lone archers, because it did not pay off. Now I do advocate the return of atleast some area based rewards, because battle nowadays just consists of people fighting eachother like headless chicken, instead of an intense teambased fight like strat field battles. Don't think that will happen though.
Alternatively, I think pure ranged should be impossible and having a melee weapon and some armour should be a no brainer for ranged. They can be a good hybrid now, but they don't, because ranged bundle of stickss gonna range bundle of sticks. Force them to have an actual weapon, reduce run speed with a bow even further, but allow them to wear more armour and get a lot more wpf without losing that much ranged capabilities. Fucking peasant archers are stupid.
Ah what the hell, cRPG is not getting any major changes anymore I guess.