My stats say I'm a pure archer but that's only because I don't mind swinging a sword around with 1 wpf. Against equally skilled opponents who are melee oriented I think I stand a decent chance against them everytime because I tend to shoot and then run toward the melee, then shoot again until I'm close enough to stab things. This gives me lots of melee practice. Am I a brave archer for stepping into the fight? No, I consider myself a coward.
Archers with balls are pure and play without melee weapons. If someone sneaks up to them, they're fucked and they know it. They do weak damage and can probably do more if they just grabbed something off the ground but it's a dedicated playstyle. The best example I can think of is Goretooth. He wears no armor, isn't particularly fast (maybe 5 athletics at the most) and still manages to top the leaderboards playing like this.
Sure they run, but if they intend to fight back I see nothing wrong with what they're doing. If they're the last one left they're probably going to lose due to a glaringly obvious weakness, and it's not like they're wasting any more time than watching the last two shielders slowly high fiving each other to death. As someone has mentioned, if you want them to slow down throw something on their back. With the thrower spammage people complain about these days there should be a snowflake somewhere on the ground or something.
Now archers who camp in unreachable locations are indeed annoying but you don't really need to be an archer to do that.
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