Here's what I don't understand. They've gone on record as saying that they want to implement more battles that require precise positioning and movement, akin to the Ifrit fight. I'm guessing they'd like to start doing this immediately and not wait until 2.0 comes out. They've also said that animation lock is a problem that they're aware of and working on resolving. Despite that, they're still giving ARC a manual attack in place of a ranged auto attack. It's possible that I've missed some hidden post saying Light Shot will no longer cause animation lock; but that seems like something that would inspire a few threads of its own, so that seems unlikely. I don't understand why they would do this knowing that a lack of ranged attack that doesn't cause animation lock is what's keeping ARC from being invited to Ifrit.

The only way this decision can be fair to ARC is to make it unfair to melee classes by playing to ARC's strengths. That is, make another Batraal fight where melee get heavily punished while ranged sits back and DPSs from relative safety. Considering that's not what the majority of players want, though. . .