The only thing good archery has at the moment, is in fact the stun, aka support on melee encounters, which is already "complicated" by the consecutive arrow travel speed nerfs, projectiles passing through (server side problems), etc.
Other than that, you get outlast in almost every aspect from crossbow users, since the only "advantage" is the fire rate (with the backlash of needing more projectiles, 2 stacks).
You want to use a 2 slot bow (aka a decent bow, not a plastic machine gun bullshit toy bow), forget about a decent melee weapon.
If you chose a 1 slot bow, you have the chance of having a decent 1 slot side arm (aka 2h Mace of doom and beyond), but with low WPF in it, since archery below 150 WPF is terribad.
In either situation you NEED almost no gear/to be buttnaked, to avoid serious WPF penalties.
So, the slot system pretty much killed archer hybrids. I miss having a longsword as side weapon.
It made every archer have to decide in being either an hard hitter slowpoke, or a agiwhore machinegunner. Too much min maxing, no balancing in it.
Then people say "but I get almost 1 shot by those rus bows and bodkins!!1!"
Well, it's all very situational, movement speed has AN HUGE weight on damage calcs.
P.E.: today I headshot kubel_the_Grey in almost point blank (2 meters from him), he uses a klappvisier, and he survived. I even saw him taking another 2 hits from a melee player. I have 7 Power Draw, +3 Rus Bow, and +3 Bodkin Arrows. He was standing still breaking a door.
So, if tl;dr,
QQ_qQQ_qQQrufioQQ_QQqgurnissonQQQ_QQq_QQQ boromir tears makes my arrow pointy edges more polished wololo
