Well Im looking at this nerf/buff with mixed feelings. I started this game as archer right away, sticking with the rusbow in gen 1 with a 6PD 8WM build. It was balanced, didnt deal massive damage but was able to shoot very accurately at long distance. I then tried a max ath archer build in gen 2 with 2 PD just for the lulz of kiting kill hungry melees ( DontChaseMe ;D ) , but quickly respeced going max dmg with 10 PD and longbow. I was slow as hell, pulling my bow took ages and accuracy was a foreign term for me, but what I hit I hit hard.
The reason doing this is because I think there are way too many hornbow machinegunners and I usually dont wanna play in a way just everyone does, so I decided on claiming the longbow to be my weapon of choice. I tried really hard to get effective with that thing but being a lvl 31 archer not able to hit with consistency was just not acceptable. I went 8PD 6WM now in gen 3 and sadly have to acknowledge that still putting every point in archery, meaning no powerstrike, no melee wpf, and just a minimum of ath was still not enough to get this bow to work properly as it still lacks massive accuracy and attackspeed, even after the longbow buff that is.
Now the nerf kicked in I pretty much had no other choice than joining the hornbowfaction too, and I was angry because archers will be more uniformed than before now, forcing me to play with one piece of equipment only in order to be effective as the hornbow is superior an any way now compared with the larger bows. And If the damage adjustments stay this way or similar Im pretty sure ill go 5PD next build just so I can machinegun with my hornbow to get fast headshot, rendering planning your builds rather useless.
Although I want to point out that I still dont agree that a nerf is being applied ( and I am pretty sure it was intended as a nerf ) only because the majority of the most popular class whines a bit, at least that way it looks to me, I cant deny being able to oneshot people in the face even faster and more effectively now is very rewarding. Even after the nerf I still topscored once in a while and was able to get headshotsprees.
For me the problem is this:
I count myself to the rather good archers, if not even the highskilled ones. Of course I can use my skill more appropriatly now but it is INCREDIBLY tiring. Crpg is not a casual game of course but playing a game of "headshot or get shot", and being good a it for a whole map round requires levels of concentration not comparable with minute long melee duels. I literaly can lay back when an enemy gets close so I can do some relaxing melee fighting, eventually dying there but at least not being forced to calculate movement speed, vector changes, arrow drop and projectile flight time when shooting a 5x5 pixel target, computing all that data in 0.3 seconds at most. And when I say 0.3 seconds I MEAN 0.3 seconds, otherwise youll most likely not get a heashot on a dodging target, leading to a miss or a bodyshot effectivly doing ... nothing.
Basicly this means the skilled archers, so the majority of those people that pissed you off before will do even more so. The ones that are just average, working hard for every kill will even have a harder time making archery a privilege to most skilled of players. Also as mentioned before there are not many options to chose. If you want to be effective you take a hornbow or you dont play archer, not implying there are no people that can get good scores with other bows but these people would most likely do even better if they get used to hornbows.
So in conclusion I dont really know what to decide on this topic. If I would not know this community at all Id say what I think helps balance most, which is revert the nerf but keep the headshotdamage, all in all really buffing archery at least this time. This way archers would still have the opportunity to get some reward for their superior skill, which is killing an enemy way faster with less ammo and time consumption by headshotting them with a single arrow, effectivly having no effect on body shots as 4,5 consistent hits are still a lot less rewarding than a oneshot. And that way the less skilled archers would still have at least a CHANCE to kill people without hitting their heads. This is what I would suggest but I know since this is the crpg community this would summon a ragestorm of unimaginable dimensions.
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