[2021] Are rogues the only class that can make use of bows?

Currently only Rogues can use bows and they're the only class planned to have a bow focused mastery, the Marksman. However we do hope to add bow support for other classes in future. This may not come soon because of two major blockers.

1. Adding another weapon type to a class requires a large number of animations, of course there's the animation of firing the bow, then there are the various spell cast animations which all need a bow variant, there are idle animations, movement animations, a stunned animation, and a death animation. This would all have to be done for four classes and is a big undertaking when we're also working on animations for new skills, adding new enemies, and refining old skill animations.

2. If a class can use a bow, but the only bow ability they can use is a basic attack, there wouldn't be any point to them actually using a bow. There wouldn't be any viable bow builds. So we've got to look at their various melee attacks assess which ones could work with a bow variant, then create bow variants of those skills, adjust those skills' trees to work with the bow variant and then make sure that the passive trees support builds that use those attacks with a bow.

This isn't an insurmountable amount of work, but it is a significant amount. We're satisfied that the classes currently support a wide variety of archetypes and builds, even if that doesn't include bow builds in most cases, so for now we're prioritising making those feel higher quality by reworking old skills, adding new ones, and improving balance.

Skill trees are definitely not set in stone, and we frequently add new nodes or change existing ones. We try to avoid the total number of nodes going over 30 where possible, so we're unlikely to add lots of new nodes to a tree that's already fairly large, unless we're reworking all or part of that tree. In 0.8.3 in particular several sentinel and necromancer skill trees are receiving full or partial reworks.