I have played an archer from the start of cRPG.
Today I find archery futile and obsolete. Due to nerf upon nerf upon nerf.
You have made the bow inaccurate,slow and lowdmg.
And to top it off, you have very few arrows, so you can only take shots you have a good chance of hitting. (meaning not giving longrange suppression fire, forcing melee to run with their shields up, dehorsing cav, fireing distractionshots at enemy xbowsnipers.)
The bow either has to be accurate/low dmg or inaccurate-heavy dmg.
Slow/naccurate/low dmg/low supply of arrows makes it useless.
For ranged damage, the xbow is the superior choice. Low skill, hard accurate punch.
I cant even imagine how one should level up as dedicated archer, and get the masterwork items.
Insta30 is the only way, unless you want to waste your own and your teams time
If you want archery to be a part of cRPG you have to seperate the roles of xbow and bows.
Today xbows can do everything bows can .. just better,simpler and cheaper( in terms of skillpoints)
I would like archery to become more of a supportrole, so that a team of archers could shower incoming cav, densly packed melee with a rain of arrows. But this takes teamwork. cRPG plays more like a team deathmatch, where everyone just runs into battle trying to get the most kills.
All you meleeguys whining/wondering why cav is so "OP"? You made archery useless, now you must deal with cav at pointblank.
Would turning of the K:D ratio ingame induce more teamwork?
/rant
Torost