Hi,
I'm biased towards ranged weapons, so keep that in consideration.
First, 100 skill points is nothing much. If you pick up the "gathering" skills and one processing skill, you'll still have those other 100 points before it becomes critical to upgrade any of the trade skills.
Second, using Taunt for pulling has a few drawbacks. It costs rage, which you normally will not have at the beginning of an encounter, so that you need to use Inner Rage which has a pretty long cooldown and is a level 20 ability. Which leaves you without a useful pulling tool for ten levels. Besides all that, Taunt has a 5 yard range, barely adequate. Finally, Taunt does no damage.
On the other hand, ranged weapons overcome all those limitations. They cost no rage, they can be used as fast as the "shooting" time, they have a considerably longer range, and they do damage. They actually do enough damage that you can trade attacks with some ranged critters and kill them at range, useful when you want to take out a spell caster first but would draw a bunch of melee types before getting to it.
And, for soloing, a ranged attack is almost mandatory (well, at least extremely useful).
"So are ranged weapons really worth the huge skill point investment?" I'd say that the cost is trifling for the benefits.
--Pete
I'm biased towards ranged weapons, so keep that in consideration.
First, 100 skill points is nothing much. If you pick up the "gathering" skills and one processing skill, you'll still have those other 100 points before it becomes critical to upgrade any of the trade skills.
Second, using Taunt for pulling has a few drawbacks. It costs rage, which you normally will not have at the beginning of an encounter, so that you need to use Inner Rage which has a pretty long cooldown and is a level 20 ability. Which leaves you without a useful pulling tool for ten levels. Besides all that, Taunt has a 5 yard range, barely adequate. Finally, Taunt does no damage.
On the other hand, ranged weapons overcome all those limitations. They cost no rage, they can be used as fast as the "shooting" time, they have a considerably longer range, and they do damage. They actually do enough damage that you can trade attacks with some ranged critters and kill them at range, useful when you want to take out a spell caster first but would draw a bunch of melee types before getting to it.
And, for soloing, a ranged attack is almost mandatory (well, at least extremely useful).
"So are ranged weapons really worth the huge skill point investment?" I'd say that the cost is trifling for the benefits.
--Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?