What I meant was that an even 1:1 K:D ratio was very easy to attain as an Archer, compared to the poor infantry fellows out there. Nowadays even Ninja_Thomek with MW stuff has roughly 1:1 K:D ratio. Perhaps I suck, but I've played as a Ninja over a year.
For the effort required to do 1:1, archery is relatively easy. The level of skill out there is much much higher than it used to be.. Everyone can manual block, there's lots of heavy armored guys there using edgy builds, cav constantly backstabs you, melee is a very though zone. As an archer it's usually easy to find a safe spot and pew pew.
The effort required to do OK as an archer is comparatively low, therefore it should have less potential than more risky playstyles.
(And it's easier to get the hang of, so if it's made too powerful, we will have a heavy influx of archers and we're back to CS)
I've personally had better scores on melee than on archer, but then I'm weird and play the archer as 2h half of the time (I also have better k:d with heirloomed crossbow, just saying). But fair enough, I still see a couple of archers doing very well.
Speculating about who has better k:d on the whole is kind of pointless without hard data, and even then it doesn't justify a nerf or buff. F.e. my guess would be that worst k:d are among new shield users but the last thing we need is buff good shielders even more.
Anyway I think a slight nerf to archery is quite good I just say I can't agree with the nerf in this extremity.
So you say archery is safer to go 1:1 (mediocre k:d). Is this really affected by taking away long range potential? I guess outside of really good archers very few archers made many long range kills. What's more the best long range targets are archers since unlike melee who constantly change directions randomly without being aware of you ("oh look a horse") they have predictable movement patterns and often stop to aim, and wear light armor on top. So in fact you take pressure away from the archers, f.e. in the frozen lake map if you can ignore archers shooting from the house you have a much easier time shooting at the infantry that comes close to your boat.
Meanwhile your ability to support teammates, when they are ganged f.e., or shoot horses (wait, there was something about that) are lowered. This hasn't to do anything with skill except seeing in the future. You can adjust for extra arrow drop but not for longer travel time that gives your ally yet another chance to jump into the shot.
Lame archer tactics to avoid having to learn to block (jumpshot) still are fully viable.
So imo if people are encouraged to archer because it's easy to do ok this doesn't really do it. I see the same amount of archers but many good archers frustrated - which can even make it easier since competition falls away. I remember in old strategus archer used to be very stressfull for me, because you always had to compete with other archers, if you didn't make that headshot in that fraction of a second you could see him, you were dead instead (nevermind when I tried to sneak around the cover turn around and suddenly you stand there with a raised katana). I can understand how it wasn't fun for the infantry who didn't have much better armor though.
Long story short I'd rather see them make archers better at shooting other archers and horses and worse at defending vs. infantry, but I don't see that accomplished at all. Well, but I can't try archer at the moment, so maybe the whine is just overdone.
