You complainmed about pure archer's effectiveness and I just replied to it. People are not forced to going pure archers but a lot of them still has the nerve to complain about their melee effectiveness when they do. Hybriding is very much possible and I don't understand why not more people do it.
And this the whole problem about it. You can freely choose between maximum power and maximum speed melee builds with no significant drawbacks. There is no skill that effectly gives you a disadvantage when you skill it. On archery however its different. Who thought it would be a good idea to let PD do something against your efficiency ? Of course you shouldnt be able to be fast, accurate and powerful all at once but even with a longbow, the most expensive peace of archery equipment you cant go over 6 PD without losing tons of accuracy at lvl 30. What the hell is the skill for then ?? If I would be new to the game Id think this is a bug and not balance. Is it too much to ask to be able to hit what you are aiming at considering arrows already fly quite slow, reload time are high and you cant hold your bow drawn for more than a second without it shooting yourself in the face ?
So actually YES, they ARE forced to go around 6 PD in order to play a viable build that is capable of dishing out damage consistently.
I've killed a lot of guys with 0 ps alts but it's not recommended to go for it though since one bounce is mostly enough to get one killed.
Sure ive done that too. But when you need about 12 hits for your opponent ( not counting glances ) where he needs 1 - 2 hits, hits faster, does not glance and has at least the same skill level as you, you will probably loose 95% of all duels.
However, what you're saying about fully loomed archers not being devestating at range and/or in melee is way off. Just look at cupid and bagge for example.
Well I can understand your reaction. There are archers who topscore quite often, not to mention jambi. This is a very touchy topic. I will not question the skill of these top tier archers but even they are not as OP as they seem. A good archer may be able to compute arrow flight time and distance to target better, out of a habbit so to speak and can therefore adjust elevation and leading faster. But even for these people the same rule applies, the longer the range the more luck dependent shots get. Ive played with and against Cup1d, bagge, jambi, Blackbow, Revenant, arrowblood, zerobot, robinhood and all the other famous archers at least some time now. No one of these people ever owned me in a ranged duel. Sure Ive been headshotted a few times by some of them but then again I headshotted them a few times when they were unaware but no one of these people were able to shoot me to pieces so far.
The point is archery is just as effective as your opponent lets it happen to be. No matter if Bagge or Jambi or Cup1d is shooting at me, when they do I can see where their bows are pointing and once an arrow is airborn I see it and I can dodge it, which only works if I afford enough situational awareness at that moment of course. If you are a melee trying to hunt me down and you are using the good ol zigzag approach chances are about 80% I shoot you in the face as it is a repeating movement pattern. If you are using the "lightspeed mousespin" dodging technique chances are about 90% I send a missile in your body, as many melees dont seem to know that turning at very fast speeds does not make you move at all because there still is a tiny bit of inertia. If you jump at me chances are 99% I hit your leg or your crotch. If you walk in a straight line for more than 3 second within a 40 feet radius of me chances are about 80% I put an arrow in your head. ALL of these things can be influenced by your movement, dropping the chances to be hit drasticly, yet many people just refuse to learn how to dodge (this is a good thing actually). But IF the person you are going to shoot at has played as an archer for some time himself and knows the weaknesses therefore, chances are high this person can even touch top tier archers without getting hit more than once ( which is the reason archer duels are boring, everyone just dodges ... ).
If you are one of these persons who expose their heads on siege for more than 1 second, who charge at the castle in straight line, who try to sneak up on my teammate with an overhead ready in a straight line, who take their shield down infront of me without bumping me first, who charge me with a horse without a shield, who know im shooting at you but just refuse to dodge because im far away, who use predictable and repeating dodging patterns, who are sneaking up behind me although I noticed you a long time ago due to free look, thinking I didnt, who dont look around every now and then to check for enemy ranged, AND if on this particular shot my arrow goes where I want it to go, then dont get supprised or mad when you lie on the ground dead with in arrow in your body. You wouldnt get if you didnt block an incoming blow. Not dodging arrows is the same as not blocking swings. Sure a lot of times you will succeed even with the most basic techniques but there is alway a chance that at your next try his arrow will actually go where he aimed.
Then again you see a lot of famous archers that scored 15 - 3 in the first round going 2 - 6 in the next round just because random factors kicked in which is pretty disgusting. So well, they can be devastating, yes. But when they are it could be pure skill as well as it could be pure luck. I still think the degree of devastioned you can achieve is far inferior to melee and far more capped, not really rewarding you for all that time you invest into training it. I can imagine someone having the same skill in melee combat as Jambi has in archery ( hard to compare I know ) could end up with over 40 kills a map quite often.
This is a joke, right? 6 PD is by far enough to make a very viable archer. If you got heirlooms too I would see no reason at all to go for more PD since you're gimping accuracy and kiting abilities for a too low gain in damage. I would rather just stack WM for accuracy. bagge with his loomed gear and 18/24 build was a two-shot machine. That's 6 PD for you.
I claim not deadly as missile speed is not suitible for hitting moving targets at long ranges consistently, also with 6 PD damage you deal at ... lets say 100m shots ( how long is the rageballfield for example ? ) is laughable. For shotgunning and close range headshots it works of course. The 2 shotting thing works for me at very close range on medium armor at most and I have a +2 longbow with +3 bodkins, so already dealing more damage than a +3 rus can achieve. Maybe 2 shotting machine was prenerf. On heavy armored people I still need up to 5 body shots every now and then at mid range.
For the last part, range is an important factor of course when it comes to dodging ...
Sorry for wall of text. Long story short, make archery more skill based, just as you said before.
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18/21 archer is already immensely op without looms atall, play in teamplay and you will have the real potential of your class revealed to you, lets sayif we had a 10 man squad with 1 to 3 archers with this build, andinfantry protects, archers will shoot all down eazely. ( to eazely also because archers seem to do way more damage then melee 6pd > 6ps) you might find this overexacherating, but i tell you in team ballance archery is O the fuckin P and when i spend my rounds protecting archer nests i hardly ever lose
I think no one doupts archers are OP once melee cooperate with them and vice versa. This is correct of course and therefore I take this as granted. But teamwork on a public game in this mod is just SO uncommon, especially between ranged and non ranged players, and then again between archers and melees. I think its in fact that rare its just negligible.
Also the gif is funny
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Lol. Having played both HA and foot archer, HA is a lot more challenging and skillful than foot archer.
Anyway, I have no problems with archery at the moment. Wearing heavy Yawshan it took 4 arrows from a warbow to kill me. Which is more than fair in my opinion.
No offense intended. Please dont get me wrong, I didnt mean to say that HA is a class for skillless people. I was choosing this word to better reflect Odins feelings about the situation as I could have imagined it.