It depends a bit. I wouldn't say that the bow scout is miserable, but yes, they're currently not in a great spot.
The main reason being, they have no pierce defense and while they do have crit damage increase, they have no crit passives, making it sometimes hard to actually crit much. They are planning to make the bow focus buff stackable though, so scouts will be getting some more crit chance which will hopefully help them.
The biggest advantage of a scout amongst all the ranged classes would be camouflage. When you're in a bad spot you can stealth away, or you can come in from stealth for a surprise attack. Perhaps not the greatest advantage, but a good scout can use the camouflage skill to their advantage very well.
The disadvantages would be:
1) They're squishy. Most of the dodge passives are in the raider tree, so a scout can't really get a lot of dodge unless they invest in it. And your defense and magic defense are both also low. Meaning if they're onto you, you're pretty much dead if you don't stealth away in time. However, the dealers are also all squishy, so this isn't the biggest disadvantage. The tankier ranged classes would be crossbow scout/knight and battle cleric.
2) Your damage isn't the greatest. In damage output you will almost always lose to a melee character (or a mage), which is a given since you trade some damage in for the advantage of range. However, even most dealer classes have higher damage output than you thanks to either defense pierce (the gun bourg has 45% and the battle arti has 55% def pierce), or the cannon bourg which has massive AoE damage.
I feel like I'm answering your questions a lot.