1. Using a bow or throwing weapons and having to re-learn how to play or retire every patch after major and senseless nerfs.
2. Using a bow or throwing weapons and being surprised how the devs managed to find one more way to nerf you even when you thought they had done everything.
3. The fact that the devs seem to despise realism balancing, but respond with realism explanations and links to youtube videos they're referencing when justifying ranged nerfs. Balancing nothing else according to realism.
4. Crossbows are immune to this for some reason.
5. Anyone who plays melee doesn't give a shit and just trolls game balance threads, because it doesn't effect them. "Fuck you, got mine."
i miss my old warbow sniper&machinegun archer with 7PD and 220wpf but... i think archery and throwing is fairly good now. now an effective archer must waste no arrows, if use a warbow/longbow needs protection, if use strongbow or khergit will be better for soloing but weaker.
i play primarily as a melee and i still see Jambi and other good archers topping scoreboards with warbows. Matumba uses a strongbow and yet is deadly.
about throwers, i tried a hybrid 2h/throwing 18/18 with 110 2h and 130ish throwing (PS6 PT6 ATH6 WM6) and was quite nasty and effective with jarids.
i even have a pure PT9 thrower with jarids and with some aim, is quite deadly. onehits any non-armored cav, 2hits warhorses, 1hit every build under 50 armor.
we have a good ranged percentage in every server. if archery would be like it was in 2010, would be a mess (like in native with the vaegir archers spam)