Hey there!
I played 26 generations till now; one of them was shielder. The rest was either crossbow or archer, so I hope I can help you a bit. The most important things to me are being accurate (headshots!) and fast. I will not cover 27/12 archery builds or the heavily armored arbalest sniper with only 130 wpf here.
The differences in playstyle posted by Vermilion are a nice thing to start with. The basic idea of archers reloading faster and crossbows standing still while reloading is correct. But there are several consequences to add:
- Archers shoot more often. If you are good, this means you kill more often, as you aim for the head and most of the headshots are instantly deadly.
- Archers are obvious! As you reload faster than crossbows and you cannot walk around with pulled bowstring since it would exhaust your char and make the next shot less accurate, there is no way to take cover, reload, come out and shoot, hide again. Anyone who calls archers snipers did not understand the concept of archery. You may be accurate and good, but you are never hidden (unless you are in a bush, maybe). This means you will be attacked more often. It's also the reason for lots of archer duels to happen; you will start shooting at each other and try to dodge, than the other starts to aim at where he expects you next and so do you, than both stop dodging, and you hit for the exact position again, and this can take quite a while. Until a melee player comes and backstabs one of you
A crossbow, however, is the perfect weapon to strike out of nowhere. To do this, use the ~ key to look around while covered, pick a target, come out and shoot, hide again. If you are good, the come out and shoot takes half a second, maximum.
- Archers are better than crossbows in the open. If there is no cover at all and no shielder around, the crossbower is the one who is desperate. Archers will focus on you and you must dodge and somehow try to reload. Or better, keep your bolt and don't shoot at all to scare the archers. But that does not solve the problem, it just delays it. Archers can dance around incoming horses and shoot them while they are next to them, while crossbowers must reload stationarily and will more likely be lanced. Remember, this situation is only applicable to open fields.
- Archers are slow! 1 stack of arrows might be enough on rus bow, long bow or yumi if you plan your shots carefully. But they are rarely sufficient for faster bows. So you need to stacks of arrows, which is 10 weight each. Bolt weight is 6 per stack and mostly, one is sufficient. Bows are 2-4 while crossbows are 2.7-4.3, so crossbowers run faster. Due to common builds, it is also easier to have more athletics as a crossbower than an archer. There are people who use the speed advantage of crossbowers for medium or heavy armor, and there are people who keep the advantage and use light armor. I am one of the latter category, cuz I enjoy to be fast. It is mostly pointless to kite with crossbows, as the reload takes long. Especially on battle when you are one of the last players, don't be a dick and delay the round by running for 2 minutes, or people will kickpoll you. But that should be common sense. *Sigh, SB crossbowers on EU1* However, being fast as a crossbower allows you to switch positions easier and you have the additional speed for nice melee footwork.
- Melee: archers usually have no or almost no points left to but in PS and melee WM. Archer hybrids are in general worse than xbow hybrids at the same level. If you want melee, go xbow. But it's not too bad not to have melee, because you can use both the bow and a crossbow like a shotgun while moving towards the target. It only works in super-close range, but with high athletics and/or good dancing, the effect is amazing. As I have no PS until I'll reach highlvl (going for endbuild atm), I do the shotgun and run thing a lot. It is like a pike you can't block unless you have a shield, and even shielders are sometimes fooled.
- While archer builds are always designed around a trade-off of damage and accuracy, the crossbow users have fixed damage and just become more accurate. Every point in power draw decreases the effective wpf of an archer by 14. Take your wpf, substract 14*(x PD) and some points if you use medium or heavy armor, and you got your actual accuracy. Archers are maybe good around lvl 35/36, but under that, I am pretty sure I prefer crossbows. No trade-off, and either extra melee, or even more athl and wm.
I like crossbows more, but that's not true for everyone. The additional rate of fire on the bows is veeeery nice. So it's up to you.
My favorite archer builds are the following:
Hybrid!
15/21
2 Skills to attibutes
5 IF
5 PS
7 ATHL
5 PD
7 WM
~155 archery
the rest in 2h
Uses Tatar or Horn Bow and Langes Messer/Mace/Military Sickle/Fighting Axe in secondary mode.
Dedicated Archer!
18/21
8 Skills to Attributes
3 IF
6 PD
7 ATHL
7 WM
All wpf in archery
Uses Long Bow, Rus Bow, Yumi, Horn Bow, Tatar Bow
My favorite xbow builds:
Hybrid!
15/24
8 Skills to Attributes
2 IF
5 PS
8 ATHL
8 WM
1h/2h: 49
xbow: 168
Hybrid!
12/27
8 Skills to Attributes
1 IF
4 PS
9 ATHL
9 WM
1h/2h: 50
xbow: the rest
Uses heavy xbow or xbow.
Dedicated xbow!
12/30
Skills to attributes: 14
ATHL 10
WM 7
Crossbow 173
Uses heavy xbow.
Note: The second and third xbow builds are not mainstream. The mainstream xbow is the arbalest, but I don't like it. It has a delay of some miliseconds between when you released the left mouse button and the bolt actually flies. It deals only a bit more dmg than heavy, but it's much slower and much more expensive. And to max out the accuracy, you need rather 180 wpf+ than the wpf you need for heavy. But most people prefer the additional damage of the arbalest, which is good and legit.
