can we all admit the new (last balance patch) archer paradigm is fucking terribl

[a_bear_irl]

when the archer changes happened i realized immediately that they were the worst, but i didn't realize how they'd change the archer metagame. i haven't played in a little while (skyrim, SR, space station) but i'm going to assume little has changed since there hasn't been a balance patch since i last played.  here is a short list of why arrow type determining damage type is dumb

a) it happened without much internal rebalance of the bows meaning there is little to no reason to use anything other than a horn bow. before, there was some reason to use other bows - longbow if you wanted to kill tin-cans, rus bows if you wanted to kill peasants, horn if you wanted to kill peasants/annoy tincans/play more of a support role. now, the horn bow is so much better than the others there isn't much of a reason to use anything but it. some still use loomed longbows and some use rus but overwhelmingly, it's hornbow.

b) it fucked up melee. prepatch you couldn't really get into the main melee area without getting run off or killed. because the longbow was so slow you had to stay away from the fight or you'd be ineffective because you ended up spending 95% of your time drawing, getting interrupted, redrawing, repeat. the hornbow is so fast you can stand in nearly melee range and fire into the enemy line. in melee i find myslef worrying more about archers than the guy a foot away swinging an axe at me.

your typical archer sees melee players complaining about archers and assume they're getting shot standing around or something, if an experienced melee player gets shot they're either fighting another melee or trying to get to archers after winning a melee fight.

c) it made all arrows but bodkins worthless. ideally you'd have a few viable arrow choices, instead you have one. anyone not using bodkins is either new, dumb, or poor. the response to this is "it's balanced around strat" but strat itself is so fucked up it's going to be months before anyone has enough armor to warrant pierce damage of any kind. to be honest i see little point in balancing the main mod around strat until strat is more developed. balancing around what strat is now, "A", when the finished product is going to be "B" does not make sense.

d) most importantly - archery is not fun to play against. this is a game based around sweaty men killing each other with pointy pieces of metal. the archery system is straight out of the 90's, the last game i played with a cone of fire system for anything was planetside and that system sucked in 2003. archers can kite forever and can kill you incredibly quickly from far away and you can't do anything to respond. archers want their class to be able to take on melee players 1v1 and the devs have obliged, but that is retarded. it's like their class balance completely ignores their most important trait of "from far away". you get to hurt me without me being able to hurt you back that means everything else about you is shittier. that's how that shit would work normally. instead, archers are more dangerous and influential than melee players. melee is the weakest class type in a game about melee combat.

[Cepeshi]

Hi,
it is signed,
i can only approved.

Tepes

[Digglez]

2 options to actually balance game

(1)  Revert archery dmg back to bow type, longbow being the only pierce dmg bow.

(2)  Update ranged armor penetration values to current melee armor soak/resist values

[Tears of Destiny]

I can tell you don't play an archer... Everything but bodkins are useless? Loled hard... So... Hard... Bodkins are a bit OP thpugh. I did prefere it when longbows were the only pierce, and rus and horns were best against light cavalry and light infantry and laying down hailstorms.

Point b nothing has changed... I still use my rus bow in the thick of melee prepatch and post patch, what are you even trying to say there?

In point a, the hornbow was always the best overall bow... The only time it ever dipped in popularity was when longbows were first given pierce... And even then it was still the most common bow...

Point d people have always said that, post patch or pre patch... Nothing changed. And last I checked Warband was supposed to represent a proper slice of medieval warfare, hence why there are not only two handers, but also polearsm, throwing, crossbows, horses, lances, bows and shields... This is not an anime fighting game where everyone two hands each other to death cuz it looks kewl.

Worthless QQ thread written by a melee is worthless...

Say, when did your mute wear off? Welcome back!

[Lactose_the_intolerant]

2 options to actually balance game

(1)  Revert archery dmg back to bow type, longbow being the only pierce dmg bow.

(2)  Update ranged armor penetration values to current melee armor soak/resist values

1. Devs said they wouldnt revert it back

2 Paul said it was fine and there was no reason to change it

conclusion : we're doomed to run around after fairies

[Smoothrich]

The problems are an ever increasing fast rate of fire archer population that are now so comfortable with their ability to kite, they scuttle just to the flanks or rear of melee engagements and just spam arrows into people.  Often, servers turn into horrible range fests where one team is 50 percent archers with imbalanced positioning on the map with high ground or a nice flank and just destroy the fun of the server.

What was good before the bodkins thing, even if the damage increase is more perceived then real, is that heavy hitters against melee went Long Bow, and faster types did up the Horn Bow.  Fast RoF bows helped take out light cav and the heavy archers, while the slow heavy archers took out the infantry.  It had nice internal balance, but thats gone and has been completely replaced with bows that fire at least twice as fast and with builds that allow every archer to have plenty of power strike and use OP shit like the 1 slot 2hander mace to stomp in melee.

Bows are the most expensive looms.  Archers dominate strategus.  The speed that they take out horses and infantry is silly with the high rate of fire pierce.  The ability to kite is extremely unpleasant to deal with.

Suggestions:  the missile speed nerf was a good start, but now everyone adjusted.  Recommend making the rate of fire of all bows much worse.

incentivize the Long Bow again, but not by merely straight buffing the Long Bow, because the Rus Bow is already  OP as shit.  The damage should prob be dropped a couple points on all bows or the effect of PD on damage lessed/effect on accuracy greatened.

Archer kiting:  this is probably the most frustrating shit to deal with and every cRPG player knows how it is.  You wreck your way through a melee line, woops there's 6 archers in the outskirts of the town, you have been focus fired and instantly killed.  Pursing and juking or shielding any 1 archer doesn't matter to all the rest.  So I think archers are too fast, and bow weights should be dramatically increased to remove the silly mobility foot archers have, unless they dedicate themselves to high AGI

[Tzar]

cRPG is turning into native..............

[Lactose_the_intolerant]

I love when people say be happy in crpg in native archery is far worser

i find that dumb, its like saying :

Iranians should be happy, its worse in north korea

[Elmokki]

Archery is so very broken right now. This stuff has been said already in the thread but let's go anyway!

1) Rate of fire
Long bow used to be the bow most used and since it's slow it didn't interrupt blocks and attacks or slow you down due to getting hit so often. Of course you aren't able to take that many arrows anyway, but it's frustrating when archer can shoot rather many shots at very short range when you try to approach him to kill him. As a side effect fast shooting means you can shoot very close to someone coming at you and then take the melee weapon before they are chopping you with their melee weapon. So very often in my light armor I've dodged and arrow and thought I surely can at least barely run 5 meters and whack the archer with a relatively long weapon before they get a second shot off. Well, too bad, the rate of fire is just too sick.

2) Kiting
My last gen was a shielder. It was absolutely useless against archers. Sure, I could block arrows coming from one direction fairly well, but there was no way I could ever kill an archer who wanted to run away. Sure, I only had 5 athletics, but you need something like 7 and fairly light armor to have a chance catching most archers, and for a shielder that's a rather low damage build sacrificing a lot for the speed. The steel pick builds probably have a shot at archer killing at least though!

The most ridiculous part of this kiting is just the running part. With my current character (Ath 6 at the moment, armored with kaftan and kettle helmet) I chased an archer for like 5 minutes. I had no chance of catching him. Sure, I was fast enough to not allow him shoot often, but he could get shots off once in a while.  If you can run as a footman from an another footman, you sure as hell should be unable to fight back while running for your life. At least if you aren't running from a tin can but only slightly more armored person than you.

Like Smoothrich suggested, slow down the bows. Even more than that, nerf the damage of bows other than longbow and maybe in turn buff the non-bodkin cut damage. If an archer can be a Legolas like now, at least make them sacrifice piercing damage. Bow weight increasing is also a very good idea.

[Cup1d]

The most ridiculous part of this kiting is just the running part. With my current character (Ath 6 at the moment, armored with kaftan and kettle helmet) I chased an archer for like 5 minutes. I had no chance of catching him. Sure, I was fast enough to not allow him shoot often, but he could get shots off once in a while.  If you can run as a footman from an another footman, you sure as hell should be unable to fight back while running for your life. At least if you aren't running from a tin can but only slightly more armored person than you.

If you wanna be fast and catch archers - make fast character.

something like this:

Level 30 (4 420 577 xp)
Strength: 15
Agility: 24
Hit points: 50
Skills to attributes: 8
Ironflesh: 0
Power Strike: 5
Shield: 5
Athletics: 8
Riding: 0
Horse Archery: 0
Power Draw: 0
Power Throw: 0
Weapon Master: 5
One Handed: 1
Two Handed: 146
Polearm: 1
Archery: 1
Crossbow: 1
Throwing: 1

Works good enough with longsword and fast shield. Use Boom-Zoom tactic at battlefield. You choose - will you fight this opponent or go for another.

P.S. This game not about classes (there are no one) but about good or bad builds, awareness, style of gameplay, positioning, tactics.

[Xant]

You'll hit like a bitch with that build, plus 5 shield skill and a fast(i.e small) shield means you can be shot in the legs and head.

A 15-24 build with steelpick and 8 shield and athletics is better, but like... you have a chance of catching archers, you have no HP so two or more archers = death, not much punch in melee etc

[Blondin]

Completly agree with OP, once again, the problem is the number of archer, because it's easy mod.

Even before january patch when archer could wear heavy armor it was not that pew pew madness, and we were crying at that time, now, i just don't play anymore in battles.

[a_bear_irl]

I can tell you don't play an archer... Everything but bodkins are useless? Loled hard... So... Hard... Bodkins are a bit OP thpugh. I did prefere it when longbows were the only pierce, and rus and horns were best against light cavalry and light infantry and laying down hailstorms.

Point b nothing has changed... I still use my rus bow in the thick of melee prepatch and post patch, what are you even trying to say there?

In point a, the hornbow was always the best overall bow... The only time it ever dipped in popularity was when longbows were first given pierce... And even then it was still the most common bow...

Point d people have always said that, post patch or pre patch... Nothing changed. And last I checked Warband was supposed to represent a proper slice of medieval warfare, hence why there are not only two handers, but also polearsm, throwing, crossbows, horses, lances, bows and shields... This is not an anime fighting game where everyone two hands each other to death cuz it looks kewl.

Worthless QQ thread written by a melee is worthless...

Say, when did your mute wear off? Welcome back!

if you use anything but bodkins you are dumb or have a non-bodkin arrow loom you haven't been able to turn into a bodkin loom. no not-terrible archer uses anything but bodkins. prepatch the hornbow was not the most common bow, it was longbow by far. you had some people (mostly fallen iirc) doing the kiting thing that is common now but they were much less effective because they could only do cut.

you hardly play and are bad and i don't care how you play in any case, the archer norm now is stand just behind melee with a hornbow and bodkins. your use of a non-horn bow doesn't change that.

i also don't care about realism, if we were going for realism the only thing that would pierce plate/scale armor would be a crossbow. if we were going for realism 5% of the battlefield would be in plate and 95% would be peasants. ~*~ my realism ~*~ means nothing

in short, go away you're dumb and nobody likes you

[a_bear_irl]

If you wanna be fast and catch archers - make fast character.

something like this:
terrible build

Works good enough with longsword and fast shield. Use Boom-Zoom tactic at battlefield. You choose - will you fight this opponent or go for another.

P.S. This game not about classes (there are no one) but about good or bad builds, awareness, style of gameplay, positioning, tactics.

that's the worst build i've ever seen, all of the shields weigh too much for you to have a hope of catching archers even if you somehow got up to 10 ath and some archer builds now are going to have equivalent IF/PS

[Lech]

You'll hit like a bitch with that build, plus 5 shield skill and a fast(i.e small) shield means you can be shot in the legs and head.

A 15-24 build with steelpick and 8 shield and athletics is better, but like... you have a chance of catching archers, you have no HP so two or more archers = death, not much punch in melee etc

I use ironflesh on 15-24, 2 points (instead of weapon master). 54 hit points with 60 body armor is not that bad.