You can be viable with any bow. I was doing just fine with "Bow" until I got enough monies to buy a Rus bow.
Maybe viable against other peasants, certainly not viable against anyone close to level 30 or wearing an ounce of armor. "Bow" does 18 cut damage, less than
throwing knives. Since when have you seen a serious and truly effective thrower build that uses throwing knives?
my stf archer was able to kill people in medium armour in 5 - 7 hits with a nomad bow... wtf were you doing?
You're talking about medium armor with a nomad bow, I'm talking about mid-high/high armor with a masterwork horn bow... we're comparing different things.
Sure with my horn bow I would 3 shot most people with medium armor, probably 2 (maaaaybe 1) shot if they were peasants. Similarly if you would use your nomad bow on mid/high - high armor it will probably be 7+ arrows, essentially uselessness. I don't see how this is supposed to support your argument
I have a MW rusbow MW bodkin's MW mail guantlets and MW light strange armor. I can pay the upkeep for it just fine, i actually make a little bit of money. Tho you need to run on x5 or x4 alot. For example today I played for about 2-2.5 hour, something like that. i made 10K gold.
You must be an exception then, because someone winning half their rounds has a 1.9 average multi, which means the majority of players who pick up archer will NOT be able to sustain bodkin arrows. Also not everyone is in an elite clan and able to tilt that in their favor in battle
.
I consider myself to be a pretty decent archer and I know my average multi was probably closer to that x3 range than the average, and as I said I kept track of my gold during the course of my gen and I lost a substantial amount of gold.
Comparing that to this gen as a 1h-shielder where I'm raking in the gold wearing a much more expensive gear loadout...
Just to reiterate to try to show that this isn't intended to be a whining rant, I am ok with archery to take some nerfs. I just think there were too many that occurred at once. Adjust the arrow upkeep changes slightly, upgrade missile speed slightly, and you can leave the cut damage as is.