So, just how did the class system work? From the responses, it looks like everyone has a primary and secondary power source (which can be the same), and a role. But it’s hard to see how those interact. How, for instance, does one Defend using bows (and also bows)? Was there a set of skills for every possible combination?
The classes were the Archetypes–originally Blaster, Tanker, Defender, Controller, Scrapper. (Others, including a whole set of villain archetypes, were added later.) Archetype determined which powersets a character had access to and applied global modifiers to damage, defense, health, and so on. They also broadly set your role, but there was some flexibility to it–some archetypes could substitute for other roles. They also eventually got some inherent powers to help them fulfill their roles, like the Tankers’ Gauntlet power, which added an extra aggro generating effect to all their normal attacks, or Blasters’ Defiance, which…helped them die a lot. (Sorry, Blaster faceplants were a running joke.)
Each character had primary and secondary powersets, as you gathered. On the whole, the powersets were offensive, control, or defense/support sets, and many sets were shared between archetypes, with the archetype’s role determining whether the set was primary or secondary. Blaster primaries were ranged attack sets. Defenders got those as secondaries. Controllers got Defender primary support sets for their secondaries. Tankers and Scrappers, the melee archetypes, shared most of their sets–they just swapped priorities. The secondary versions of the sets had reduced effectiveness. (I believe the aim was to make them roughly 66% as strong at base.)
Defenders primaries were focused on support, but not necessarily via healing. Their real strength was in buffs and debuffs, which were much stronger effects in CoH than in most games; Defenders were force multipliers. To your specific question about bow users–the Defender bow primary was Trick Arrows. A TA defender protected the team by firing Green-Arrow-like gimmick arrows to hinder and weaken enemies: glue arrows to slow them down, smoke arrows to interfere with their aim or keep them from seeing the team, and various other tricks.
Like Balance said, Trick Arrow was a collection of things like a single-target “root” effect, an AoE slow effect, an AoE defense debuff (acid arrow), an AoE attack debuff (flash arrow), etc. It had a cool ability of an Oil Slick arrow which caused the predictable effect of targets being slowed/immobilized (from falling over) plus could be hit with the fire arrow from the attack set and torch everyone in its area.
The attack side of archery was a bag of single or mass shots plus a few special arrows (fire, stun, explosive).
Defenders were really de-buff specialists but most of them had at least some sort of healing ability including one set (Empathy) that had pretty traditional heals for an MMORPG. As a result, a number of people never left the mindset that Defenders must be the equivalent of priests or healers. Arrow defenders had no such abilities but that wouldn’t stop you from making a “Let me shoot you with my healing arrow” joke when people would insist that you do something about their health bars.
Absolutely no one cares but Pachamama was an Earth/Storm Controller, not Defender. It’s been too long. Very fun power set, I almost liked soloing with her more because it was very chaotic to use in a group: mooks flying back from the hurricane winds surrounding me as a small tornado rips through the room damaging guys encased in stalagmites or choking from sulfuric gas, while an earth elemental runs around punching things. Good times.
Oh, as for the class system, it was very broadly:
Tanker - Tanking, naturally (gaining aggro, taking punches)
Scrapper - Melee DPS, off-tanking
Blaster - Ranged DPS, ‘Glass Cannon’
Defender - Debuffs, heals
Controller - Crowd control
To further complicate things, City of Villains had rough counterparts but different archetypes:
Brute - High HP/Defense
Corrupter - Ranged DPS, Debuffs
Stalker - Melee burst DPS
Dominator - Debuffs, Ranged DPS
Mastermind - Pet class
To further-further complicate things, later in the game’s lifetime you could switch sides and be a good Stalker or an evil Tanker. To further-further-further complicate things, there were also four ‘special’ unlockable archetypes (two evil soldier guys, two good alien beings) I won’t get into.
There was also an equipment system that offered further flexibility. You didn’t get stuff like ‘+2 shoes’ but you could get things that could be slotted into your skills to help enhance them. As its most basic, it was stuff like +Damage that you’d put into your attack. But better ones would have additional stats like +Defense, +Endurance, +Skill Recharge, etc that you could exploit to get a sturdy Controller with 45% defense. That took more spreadsheet tinkering than some people were willing to get into but the game played just fine at its more basic “Put +Defense into Defense skills” level.
So, is it possible to be, say, a bow blaster? Would a bow blaster have access to more-or-less the same abilities as a bow defender? And would bow tanker be a simply unavailable combination?
She was my original character, a robotic angel. A Kinetics/Electric Defender way before Kinetic was cool (one tiny heal, lots of buffs and debuffs).
I had characters on every server and filled up three. (Chronic, incurable altitus… I already have seven character designs on hold, waiting for City of Titans.) Some of my other favorites…
Kitsune-hime: Claws/Regeneration Scrapper. A humanoid, tailless fox. I was once on a Circle of Thorns mission (I think it might have been with you, but some Doper at least) with one of those gates that spawned demons non-stop. There were a few green crystals that boosted health regeneration nearby. I stationed myself to be within their areas. I literally could not die. I think each tick was giving me more than half of my health back. The spawns didn’t give xp, but it was so much fun. I always got Scrapper-lock: love it, live it, face plant with it. Except there was no face-planting that day. 
Eye of Maya: Illusion/Kinetic Controller. A blue-skinned three-eyed goddess. Lots of fun being invisible and making the bad guys fight each other.
Immaculate Concussion: Invulnerability/Mace Tanker. Looked like an angel with a big mace.
Chthonic Sappho: Necro/Poison Mastermind. Pulled Greek heroes from Hades to do her evil bidding.
Chronos,
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page
is still an excellent resource for the game. I can barely tolerate going there, because of the intense nostalgia.
Armoury was a Bow/Gadgets Blaster.
His primary power set had: (From memory)
[ul]
[li]A quick shot, (Fast recharge/low damage)[/li][li]An aimed shot (Less fast recharge/slightly higher damage)[/li][li]A Fire Arrow (Longer recharge/Much higher damage)[/li][li]A concentration power that would improve your aim (I think that was its name), but only lasted for a minute, and had a ten minute recharge - Good for bass fights, and not much else.[/li][li]Fistful of arrows - a short cone attack. Imagine Green Arrow putting three arrows on his bow, and somehow actually hitting something.[/li][li]A snipe - Very long range, very high damage, but a long, disturbable animation time, ans a long recharge time. A good opening shot.[/li][li]Rain of Arrows - A “Mini-nuke” AoE attack.[/li][/ul]
This secondary powerset had a lot of debuffs. Caltrops , smoke grenades, and the like.
My main man was Shenanigunner, a fire/superstrength tank. So much fun to play but the AOE blasters hated it when I foot-stomped crowds before they could do their thing. 
Only alt I got to 50.
Sgt Glory B was my electric/electric blaster. G’damn, she could level a mob. Maybe 40s?
The Legendary Death-Defying Shenanigunner
Sgt Glory B
Mr Cellophane - scrapper, Rorschach clone, had fun getting genned repeatedly**
R A Heinlein** - grav/mind controller**
BrotherJustin** - ?/mind controller (had both priest-y and tree-man costumes)**
Sir Richard F Burton** - scrapper, sword/MA or agility**
Mean Mr Mustard** - tank, huge, yellow.**
Ice.Nine - ice/ice tank
Grav Bent Diebstall** - grav controller**
Count Q** - sword stalker**
Jha’dur** - mind/manipulation something on villain side. GREAT clone of character.
Doctor Gigglez - half-Rikti healer**
Sioux Sheff** - can’t remember. Blaster, i think.**
Vond** - grav/mind controller (warlock)
Damn, this makes me miss it all so much.
“Gunner” wrote a massive bind/macro/emote guide that’s still out there, for no good reason. So much work.
Gunner lives! (But you die.)
For the most part but the modifiers would be different (blasters would have boosted damage for example). Also some Archetypes had access to powers in the set other Archetypes didn’t have. It also mattered if the power set was primary in your Archetype vs. Secondary. It effected what level the powers became available for example.
Shadow Stranger, Eternal Ninja, White Russian, Sup R-HRO, Doc Salvage, Angst Overdrive…
Sigh.
I love that name.
Bows were Defender-only when they were first introduced. Blasters eventually got the offensive set (Archery), but not the support set (Trick Arrow). Instead, they combined it with the Blaster-specific secondaries, like Maus Magill’s Archery/Gadgets Blaster.
And no, Bow Tankers were not an option. Tanks and Scrappers were very melee-oriented. They did not get any ranged powersets, although a few ranged powers were mixed into some of the sets, IIRC. Conversely, the other archetypes operated almost exclusively at range (though a few melee attacks appeared in the Blaster secondaries). The ranged archetypes were much, much squishier than the melee ones and did not fare well up close. (Unfortunately, staying at range was never as much of a defense as the devs apparently believed, especially once every mob in the game got a ranged attack.)
Quick question: Who else drives by electrical substations and thinks, “That’s a good place to find clockworks?”
Actually, because I’ve played a lot of Just Cause more recently, I think about shooting them for the chaos points.
It wasn’t that bad. Most ranged attacks were pretty weak compared to the melee attacks and, assuming you used Hover instead of Fly, you got a defense bonus for it.
Just to be clear, you (probably) meant most of the mobs ranged attacks were pretty weak (at least for the primarily melee mobs). Blasters had some nice ranged attacks.
Jim Beam (Natural Martial Arts/Super Reflexes Scrapper)
E.R.G. Mk I (Science Energy/Energy Blaster)
E.R.G. Mk IV (Science Radiation/Radiation Defender)
Blue Genesis (Technology Energy Melee/Invulnerability Tanker)
Can-Utility (Magic Fire / Kinetic Controller)
and a bunch I can’t even remember anymore.
So do I. I just made an engineer in Guild Wars 2 and named him that.
Thanks CandidGamera!
I don’t mean it made ranged unplayable or anything–most of my characters were squishies, in fact. I just always felt that they counted it for too much in balancing defenses between ranged and melee archetypes. Let’s not forget that the devs actually joked about Blasters faceplanting in their own promo videos. (Poor Synapse. :D)
Oh, yeah. Enemy factions usually had one decent ranged type in their pool but most of them were melee punchers so staying out of range was still useful. And Hover gave a +DEF to help avoid any bullets, fireballs or tossed boulders.
I found a bunch of character screenshots (pretty much all from the character creation screen). Makes me miss how much flexibility we had.
You’re welcome!
He was a robotic Defender - Healing/Electricity, with a red and white costume and a green visor. Fun to play, but Healing required more attention than Force Fields, so my other Defender was easier to use. 