Archer auto-attack (Yes, please.)

[NefGP]

Ranger was nerfed in 2003 and then finally made a comeback in WOTG and is heavily used in Abyssea w/o K.Club. That had absolutely nothing to do with auto-attack but broken items/mechanics in FFXI. Good try though.

What FFXI are you playing? RNG is still little more than a glass cannon that continues to get out shined both in damage and utility on a regular basis by just about every melee in XI, most notably WAR MNK & NIN who currently dominate Abyssea without contest (and for good reason).

Are they seriously making AA activate on it's own as soon as you're in range? I thought we were getting something along the lines of XI's system where you draw your weapon (Active Mode in XIV's case) and then attempt to swing at your target. I can see the potential for headaches this could cause with ranged AA, however as I've said a number of times in other posts:

1) It's XI's old dev team at work here. As such, I feel it's only natural to fear the worst in terms of Haste and how it may potentially throw game balance out the window once again just as it did in XI.

2) Even if Haste works to speed up ranged attacks as well, as others have pointed out, it will grossly favor AA over manual attacks due to various factors, most notably lag.

3) Even in XI you can still use ranged attacks up close (it's almost encouraged with Guns as they have the closest sweet spot). You won't be as accurate as you would be at range, but you can still do it.

Again, they are shifting leves to solo play. So I'm rather pessimistic as to what this is going to do to ARC's solo ability. Monsters don't just sit idly by within range of your projectiles. I fully expect to see a lot of ARC attempt to abuse the deaggro range in the wake of this update.