Shattered Kingdoms

Pat covered it.

Scouts can be 3rd rank behind 2 pets (that you can buff through herbs) and shoot at cloth/light armor characters with relative safety. Heavy armor is the scouts counter. Not every class should be able to murderlol every other class.

Scouts can do fine against heavy armor also - they just need to switch from bow to siege crossbow. They also can have a small army of pets, if they join a tribunal - tamed pet, purchased pet, and a tribunal pet.

It wasn't just all about heavy armored foes. Finesse for scouts is more to counter the fact that mercs just flat out are better at range than scouts, which makes no sense. If you have an spittle of wind, your accuracy just drops to straight crap. Not to mention, skin, snare and herbalism needs looking at too, but I won't get into that here.

Chris

It makes perfect sense. A mercenary cannot tame, skin, snare, butcher, track and collect herbs that provide benefits ranging from haste to sanctuary to cure blindness. You also have to forgo heavy armor in most slots as a mercenary, if you specialize with a ranged weapon - otherwise, you end up missing way too much.

If you want to argue for changes to tame, skin, etc. - go for it, but asking for a finesse-like skill is over the top.

Scout + Swashbuckler = Ranger

No they're not. The penalty to accuracy from heavy armor is quite substantial. Wind affects the accuracy too, but you can't have everything perfectly as a mercenary despite the fact that they are the best class in the game.