Two words: Hog and Wash.

If you don't like to use bow as a ranger, fine. I've seen plenty more rangers using knives or twin knives than bows, but I'm a bow-person for a variety of reasons.

1. The bow is more effective from long range - I can open gold chests faster with my arbalest (crossbow) than just about anyone else and I can hit and hurt from a distance. I don't usually do that b/c I'm kind of stupid in combat and dive right in.

2. I've tried a wide variety of knives and the puny little shields they let us carry (I have not ventured in releveling my STR/INT/DEX yet, so I might change to a knife/sword/whatever)

3. I can kill a lot of small critter before they ever get to me. That said, rangers are not ideal as you probably already know agaist big, heavy duty monsters. My best friend is a mage. and an angel she is.

4. I can add a counterpoint to a lot of attacks (I'm gonna post a question on ideal team composition in a bit). Would YOU include a fox on your ideal team? Running around shooting and hurting big things is a huge plus for ranger class, IMO.

5. One of the best things any bow-shooter can do is draw targets out when a room is too tough to just wade into. So, be friendly to birds and foxes carrying bows.

6. The MAIN reason I use a Roper's Elegant Arbalest (a bargain and the best bow up to lvl 65 and carefully I've looked over a LOT of weapons). Think it's an orange weapon! Offers 10 armor, 137-141 damage, 0.6 speed, 10 dex, 4% hit, 1 H/s, 1 M/s and 364 DPS. Planning on a pink when I UL 1 more but this baby has been with me thru 7 levels!

The main reason, I say, is b/c I play using a keyboard and mousepad, cuz it's what I got. With that I use my left hand for the w/a/s/d movement (plus q and e for rotation), plus amping up red/blue potions with my right hand it's awkward to move, so I tend to plant and shoot. If I had a sword, I'd have to do more dancing that is easy for me with my setup.

There ya got my not-so-humble foxy opinion.