Why does everyone say teamwork feats don't help a ranged inquisitor?

[MundinIronHand]

I have been reading up on the inquisitor and i keep hearing that teamwork feats are making people play melee heavy inquisitors. This just doesnt make sense to me. I understand that outflank and precise strike are very nice melee feats but there are plenty that work for ranged. Duck and cover would be useful if your shooting your bow while standing next to the party cleric, bard, ranger (archer type, mage or sorcerer and an enemy hurls a fireball at you. Allied spellcaster helps over come spell resistance and is directed at being out of melee. coordinated defense works for ranged or melee. lookout works for ranged and melee as does shield wall ( i'd wear a buckler) . shielded caster is nice for eaither ranged or melee build too.

I guess my point is teamwork feats only favor melee if you choose the ones meant for melee. If your gonna stay at range and use bow and spells, there are enough feats to augment that. Let's not forget that monsters wont wait at range and when one does charge you, it's handy to be able to have a feats that let's you take full advantage of flanking or adjacent allies.

What's wrong with being decent at melee and ranged? I think it would be nice to be able to shoot physicaly strong enemies form a distance and to be able to walk up to a caster and beat the crap out of him with a large sword.

[Pegasos989]

Well, I haven't been around lately to listen to their arguments... But I might know what they are talking about. A vast majority of the teamwork feats seem to require you to be very close to someone. Many of them require you to be adjacent to someone, preferrably someone who has a shield. Now, if you are archer, you are very mobile and the last thing you want to do is chain yourself to another ally. Neither one that is in melee very often or another soft target (Wizard and archer next to each other? Now, that is a nice place for enemies to go to...). If the monster truly does charge at you from range and you are an archer, you want to move away and have a feats that you can use from there, too.

There are certainly some teamwork feats that benefit ranged combatants too. But they do tend to favor melee combat a lot more. Useful teamwork feats for ranged combatants have to be chosen from a lot more limited range.

[Thalin]

Reality is light armor and no BAB makes rang far preferable; even the designers acknowledged that by giving them access to all ranged weapons. The tactics feats do have a few things they can touch, but nothing directly related to ranged attacks. The few you mentioned are OK, but nothing compared to the melee ones.

Even a feat which allows them to treat their teammate like they are not in the way; or gives a bonus if they are beside someone else with a ranged weapon; or something which lets two people take a shot at once for some cool effect... would have been nice. The best feats are all melee (most importantly +4 from flank and the other person critting granting you an AOO).

[Zmar]

Well, perhaps there will be some more interesting choices for ranged combat in APH... things capitalizing from timing shots and coordination.