The deadzone is probably the main reason why hunters hate doing arena battles. Line of sight issues are another but that's another story. For those who don't know, the deadzone is the spot in between the hunter and his/her enemy wherein he/she is too close to use ranged attacks while also being too far to use melee attacks, thus making the hunter unable to do anything. It's something all hunters complain about and finally after all the complaining, the deadzone might be a thing of the past soon.
I'm guessing this will be implenented in patch 2.3 since it's the awesome patch! No sure word on when though since Kalgan didn't say anything in his post
We're planning to shrink the min range on ranged attacks to reduce or eliminate the "dead zone". The only point to the dead zone was to ensure the min range on ranged weapons was enough such that ranged weapon attacks wouldn't be used while also being melee'd (at least by mobs... players have a bit of slush built in).
I'm guessing this still doesn't mean hunters could use their ranged weapons at point blank range. That would be way unfair. But this change would mean that hunters won't need to be so far away from their target to use them. If hunters could use their ranged weapons at point bank range, the devs would have to take away some of their abilities like wing clip to even things out.
Woe is my mage who will not only get his ice barriers dispelled by a hunter's arcane shot but will not be able to take advantage of the deadzone either.