Did I miss anything? Archers are the ultra class now that dominate everyone - even shielders with "antishielder bugusing"? I remember them as squishy bottom feeders that were more an annoyance than a threat to my shieldless melee chars. They didn't even waste any energy to target my shielders. Raped by cav and other ranged alike, their low armor making them a "one mistake and you are out" class. But they are probably OP now, with all the changes over the past months.
What I refer to when I say "antishielder bugusing" is what robinhood, blackbow etc. always try to do whenever a shielder is about 50cm away from them. Draw the bow, strafe in one direction, wait until the shielder starts turning, immediately strafe in the other direction and release the shot "around" the shield. Negating any kind of law of physics since at this point. The models of the bow and arrow are already plunged into the model of the enemy but yeah you can totally release a shot with full power.
I don't think anybody has said archers dominate everyone. They just have the best survivability if we forget about mounted ranged for a moment. Cav is a mere annoyance for archers as all the maps have at least a few vantage points where they can't hurt you whatsoever. And even when there aren't, just stand in an sufficiently big open field and no cav will ever sneak on you. This is easy for anyone playing an archer. The killing power comes through skill and looms.
Archers are fine in objective-based gamemodes, because you are not forced to kill them. They are fine when there are other enemies around, since those will probably be easier targets. However, when they are the last enemies left, archers can become an horrible opponent for any class but other archers. Running from inf and dodging cav 24/7 doesn't depend on looms or even on skill, besides knowing what are the control keys.
Even though it's an obvious sarcasm, "all the changes in the past months" had the effect of making melee very weak. And by this I mean the changes that happened through patches
and naturally. People become skilled in melee as they play, and now as a result a duel between two half-decent players can go on for minutes. You got a ranged weapon ? Shoot twice, fight ends. This hasn't changed in years. I'm a 1h/throwing hybrid now and whenever I see someone and think "this is going to be a tought fight", I grab my spears and with a little bit of luck, there's no fight left. There's no such thing as "dodging skill" with projectiles like arrows and bolts, just luck. They go way too fast.
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