I suggest you try that as a shielder, because it is completely unrealistic. Both having to run towards a kiting archer and following what he does to make sure not to be shot on the sides of the shield, while simultaneously watching your back to make sure you are covering your teammate, that's not easy. Furthemore, since our archers are faster than the shielders, especially when the shielder is forced to block, nothing prevents any of the archers to sidestep slightly and fire into the other shielder. Even more problematic : how are the shielders supposed to reach that line between the archers in the first place ? The archers can both kite backwards and make this impossible. On average, the shielders are doomed.
Teamwork is a lot more intuitive among archers than melees, because the game engine is like that. Arrows don't travel sideways, and there is no risk for your archer teammates, no matter how skilled you are. The triangle thing is also very natural for everyone, melee do that all the time when outnumbering, trying to get in the back of the enemy. Hell, even me as a totally noobish archer I do that when I team up with other ranged. Thing is, it is a lot harder to do when you are up close and have to block and time everything you do correctly to avoid hitting teammates. Archers don't have to worry about their teammates at all because the risk of shooting them is usually negligible, except when firing into melee. That's not outplaying, that's relying on your speed and range advantages to get an easy victory.
Most decent archers pull off horse/rider headshots to those that try to kill them with ease. I guess they have a secret. Or is it just awareness ?
Running away doesn't solve anything. The archer just follows you at a safe distance until you die. I guess sometimes it works because an ally ninja'ed the archer. But then to be fair there should be two archers. And this starts to look like what I've explained in my first paragraph. As a shielder, it is arguably my role to chase archers. However, I can't force him to stop and fight me since he's faster. I'm merely locking both of us in a less defendable stance, but I can't do anything else. Furthermore, this little jogging will more than likely end up in the enemy team for me, with the archer unscathed.
The problem for me isn't the strength of ranged against shieldless infantry. It's how shielders and cav are poorly equipped to counter archers. Shielders being too slow, and cav lacking arrow protection and being too easily dodged.
It's difficult but it's doable. We've done similar things with our hoplite builds, but on TS admittedly. Especially with a decent shield. If you want good protection, pay more and get more shield skill. Aka it's pretty bloody easy with a huscarl for 2 shielders to just stand there and soak up ALL of those archers arrows and not take a single hit. Then pretty much game over for the archers. The only reason the shielders would be doomed are either:
1. Their shields suck and break from arrows.
2. They stop covering eachother.
3. The archers are far better players.
Usually when this situation happens the archers aren't all that close. So sidestepping doesn't happen so frequently. All the shielders have to do is hold their shields high and their feet will be protected by forcefield and their team mates back/head are protected. Yeah it's a pain having to stand there waiting. And trying to move will probably be pretty useless. But eventually the archers will have to stop, other team mates will come to help ect ect. Even if it's the end of the round the shielders can win the waiting game.
I'll agree that for completely random pubbys, the instinct to work together for ranged is more prevalent than for melee for some of the reasons you described as well as others. But then that's where inf need to display some awareness and ability to learn. It's all very well saying archers now have to adapt for headshots because damage is nerfed. But that's not going to stop the shielder situation from happening as described if the shielders don't work together. Inf needs to be a little more aware to.
It's the same reason cav has such an easy time. Because the usual anti-cav/general inf with pointy sticks just don't pay attention. For some reason even though your carrying a big arse pike, or some other pointy stick, it doesn't seem to scream to players 'look out for horses and help your team!!!'. Instead it screams 'poke that guy from a distance that my team mate is attacking in the hope i'll get a kill and end up poking my teammate instead'. With a little more awareness from certain classes inf could cut the losses from cav/archers 10 fold. But that's never going to happen
Most of the time the archer won't bother following. Seeing as we have so many village maps and stuff it's easy to disengage an archer and get away. It would only be an issue on the really open maps. Even if you attempt to chase one down and then give up, they'll often still keep running just to find a new position and they won't even bother with you, seeing as the shield protects you. But the fact you kept that archer from doing anything for a significant time helps the team.
I still think cav is perfectly well equipped for it unless there's a horde of archers. Yes there are some archers who can shoot you off your horse or get a perfect headshot on the nose. But they are rare. Most chicken out, miss horribly and panic as soon as they see a horse coming their way. Even if they do get a shot on the horse, the likelihood of it hitting the buggy head hitbox out of random chance (due to panic shot) is minimal and it's far more likely to hit the body, in which case with the damage nerfs it's hardly a scratch. Whilst infantry does have a harder time against archers, the fact that they are now all forced to the ground allows for them to be caught out quite easily. Even if they start running, it's easy for a team to force them onto more of your team, or out into the open for cav to kill.
So for you "locking" someone is effectively countering it ? Then I wonder why archers aren't just repelling 2h instead of killing them. Actually, the 1v1 hypothesis helps you, since if there were two archers and two shielders, it would be worse, and so on.
Totally wonderful, except this isn't a "charge". Anybody can kill unaware players of any class, what you said doesn't prove anything. Decent archers either follow their melee teammates or have good awareness. Sneaking on people isn't a valid tactic, simply because you can't do that on a large scale, and you are completely dependant of your luck since if somebody spots you you'll soon have the whole team attacking you. Imagine a whole team of archers against a whole team of ninjas. That isn't going to work. No matter how you approach the issue, other classes on average deal with archers by outnumbering them.
I think the point is that archers aren't so much of a counter that armour, skill ect doesn't come into play. As it should be. On paper, a good archer should own a good 2h any day. But things rarely work on paper. So there could be plenty of situations with a whole number of variables where the 2h comes out on top instead of the archer pumping him full of arrows. Most 2h are probably willing to take that chance, but seeing as lots of them will die (as they should) they start whining about it. I can understand previous frustration of ranged due to the roofcamping and not being able to reach them. But now there's not really an excuse for any melee whine.
You do realise (this goes for everyone) all of what each of you and me are describing is entirely situational. It's all very well writing paragraphs and paragraphs describing this situation and that. But there are any 1000000000's combination of what could happen in any given situation due to maps, builds, skill levels ect ect and after writing all that I have decided it was a little pointless.
So I guess I'll just finish now by saying I still think the nerf was to harsh. If it stays the same, accuracy should increase by a bit. And now, unless it's for lobbying for HA to be fixed, I'm done with the ranged thing.
