I do that a lot, if I ever am near the top of the scoreboard it is usually either because of teamplay or because I managed to ninja around the archers and get 4-5 of them, so I disagree strongly with this. Ok, I am a shielder, but still, I disagree strongly with you
I doubt you ninja around archers when you are the last player of your team.
The number is not the important bit, but the percentage. wich has reduced significantly (to half in archers, slightly in crossbows, tripled in throwing :O ) since june. I honestly doubt that ranged play more toward the end of the month.
When I was saying "number", I was referring to percentages. Absolute numbers have no use in this discussion and that seemed evident to me.
I do think there are (relatively to the cRPG population) less ranged chars around than pre-263, though, and more or less the same decrease in ranged kills, but my point that they do have a very important power in battle mode still stands.
And are you suggesting that all archers decided that April was the month where they ignored peasants and focused only on the best players, accounting for the reduction in kills?
Is that how you are justifying this?
No. But even terrible archers that always aim for whom they think they can kill in one shot will eventually end up targetting the gamechangers.
Also you say that there is no "ranged defense" skill... um I'm sorry but that's exactly what dodging is..
That is exactly what dodging is, and dodging is utterly UP. Compare the effectiveness and reliability of blocking a melee attack and dodging a ranged attack. Blocking is reliable, if you do it right it can't end up bad for you and doesn't lose it's effectivity when you actually want to kill your opponent. Dodging is random and becomes more and more ineffective if you try to come closer to the ranged character.
oh yeah and those wooden things that you can carry in your left hand.
I have described how UP shields are as a ranged protection in my previous post so maybe you should refer to it and develop specific arguments about them. If you want more material I can add that the protection becomes hardly useful against 2 archers and definetly non-existent against more, which isn't the case when a shielder fights a melee blob.