I think ranged should do a shit ton of damage to cav to be honest, makes sense as a counter
True, archers should be strong in the damage, and not only against cav, infantry too. Arrows should hurt, quite badly. Problem is that they get the great kiting abilities on the side of the already good damage.
so what you jarheads are suggesting is for someone who wears just a tunic and a bow with arrows is supposed to run as fast as someone with medium armor and a big sword?
No, we don't.
We suggest that one shouldn't be able to have your cake and eat it too.
Either good kiting ability
or good damage, not both like you get with 18/21 or 18/24 loomed rus + bod. Vanilla archery is quite piss, but considering the amount of looms in cRPG at the moment, you need to balance after looms too. I guess one could buff bow/arrow damage overall while removing damage gain from arrow and bow heirlooming (accuracy, draw speed and good ammo count increase instead to make it good still)
2-3 shot fest while still being able to kite almost everyone but cav is quite ridiculous, just saying. Either increase arrow/bow weight or buff accuracy and draw speed while nerfing damage, I.E. making 8 PD builds dishing out the same damage as those 18/21 & 18/24 builds does now while still keeping or even increasing the accuracy, but making the amount of athletics generally lower. Yes, one could still make the kiting builds, but they would be weaker than they are now. There would actually be a choice, not just the regular min-max 18/21 & 18/24 that gives enough damage and enough speed to kite everything but cav and extreme ninja builds.
Also, I'm no strength build. 20/18 with 9.6 weight body armor is not what you call a slow tank. I still die mostly to archers (and rightly so being a piker, I'm not complaining about that fact but don't give me the 'get a shield' argument, since I can't because of the cRPG changes
), but I still think it's quite a bit overpowered that those loomed archers rarely have to use more than 2-3 arrows on me with my lordly set when I often have to use 2 poleaxe swings/pike stabs to kill an archer.
If there were no bow looms around, archers would be without a doubt underpowered. With all those lvl >31 with fully loomed archery set archery is overpowered if anything. The gain from heirlooming archery gear is quite a lot better than what you get with melee weapons.
But the damage is bearable, just nerf the running speed somewhat.