Currently, non bow weapons are at a general disadvantage (hence very few people use them). There are more legendary and fabled bows in the game, for example, than there are sheathes, slings and bandoliers. Additionally, the type of non arrow weapon you use does one type of damage- so you either need ammo and slings for all three types or you may find your ranged weapons useless. CA's currently only use bows, so arrow damage is of the type specified by the CA. No scout class currently uses non bows for their ranged combat arts as far as I know. Thrown weapons may or may not have shorter range than bows as well.
Note that this will change when the expansion goes live. Rouges for certain will be forced to use thrown weapons for their combat arts. Rangers will still use bows, and keeping with the archetypes system, one would assume assasins will use bows as well.
So essentially, you are at a disadvantage for anything other than autoattack damage as a scout if you use a thrown weapon.
Edited, Thu Sep 8 13:45:32 2005 by verawyr