Kills are not representative for skill with archery. Because your target is not within an arm length of you as it is when you're melee, they can get out of your way much more easily. Still you deal a lot of damage across the entire team, not only against a handful of targets like melee.
On my archer alt I have gotten oneshot and twoshot by archers so far. As a melee I can mostly take 3-5 archery bodyshots with 60 body armour and 64 hp. I have gotten 80% of my hp shot away by a single bodyshot. Archery is very powerful at times.
Not to mention the amount of times it fucks you over in melee when you have your upblock readied for an enemy great long axe, but then just get shot before it hits you.
Yes an 'unseen' strength of archery (or ranged in general) is their ability to deal damage to multiple targets that is not recognized in the scoreboards.
However something that never seems to be said yet is still very important in practice is this damage doesn't always matter. In battle someone with 1% hp is just as dangerous as someone with 100% hp, there is no benefit from weakening people other than making them easier to kill later. If you wound 5 different people but those 5 people end up surviving and your team loses, you effectively made very little difference to the round even if you ended up doing enough 'total' damage to kill one or two people.
It's also important to note that if you hit someone and they go on to get couched by some cav dude later in the round, you again effectively did nothing to contribute, because that person would have died to the couch with or without the arrow in their chest.
Melee is susceptible to this scenario as well, but not nearly as often because typically when someone is in a melee battle someone is going to emerge the victor having killed the other.
Just something to take into account.
