Strength Archers

[Kirbies]

Are they viable? Anyone know a decent build? I know they would suck at range versus other archers but im thinking more like point blank-kiting bundle of sticksry and the such.

[Weewum]

Just for the record, never EVER go 30/12, it sucks.

[theprojectnemesis]

I would say never pass the 6 Power Draw mark

[TurmoilTom]

I would say never pass the 6 Power Draw mark

[Tears of Destiny]

Are they viable? Anyone know a decent build? I know they would suck at range versus other archers but im thinking more like point blank-kiting bundle of sticksry and the such.

Garbage useless in truth, and this is coming from someone who used to run a 24/21 post-level-30 build.

Marathon explained it the best:

I'm going to say right now, there are some good points in this thread but a whole lot of awful ones.
I hope you understand the way the player base works as min-maxing have-to-have-best-build players. Thus the best way to have people stop being kiting archers is...

THEY WAY TO FIX KITING ARCHERS IS MAKE STRENGTH BUILD ARCHERY BETTER THAN AGI KITING ARCHERY AT KILLIN' THEM DUDES.
 Currently, strength archery has 0 zero benefits over agility stacking 6 PD archery. But, what about the damage? surely strength archery does tons more currently?! It doesn't. Shik and I did some archery testing and damage comparisons between his 30/15 10 PD archer and my 18/27 Agi archer. He only does more damage than me at distances less than 20 M, and he only does barely more damage.
I'll say that again. His 10 PD longbow barely out damages my 6 PD longbow at close range, but at 20M + distance our damage is equivalent. You wouldn't know which one of us hit you if we didn't tell you.

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I do believe it is the modified air friction values making his damage drop off so quickly. Which is dumb.

Okay, so Strength archery is... equivalent damage at pretty much all ranges archers shoot from.
Except he Is slower. He is inaccurate (horribly inaccurate). His bow draws slower. He is worse at everything involving archery compared to my build.
In fact, the ONLY benefit his 10 PD build has is that he has a few more hitpoints from his strength!
Garbage. I would never do  an archer over 6 PD under any circumstance under this system. OF COURSE everyone is a kiting agility archer. Seriously guys, looking at the situation all wrong . The solution is to encourage people to not be kiting awfuls, not by heavily nerfing them, but by making something other than it viable.


I believe the solution to this is a minor nerf in damage for agility archers ( ME. I WANT TO NERF ME.) but keep the super accuracy agility archers have.
The next part is to buff the damage output of strength archers to where they should be in damage. A 10 PD longbow should be an inaccurate but high damaging cannon. Not an inaccurate same-damage-as-me.

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This could possibly be done by a decrease in base damage of the top half of the bow list (you can't nerf the base damage of anything under nomad. They already glance...), but an increase to the damage increase from power draw.

Fix.

[Templar_Steevee]

Hi str archer was good in pre patch time. Now, archery is good on max 6 pd.
IMO good archer is accurete archer, and because of tons of horses and hi agi bulits you have to be fast with your shooting and runnig, in other way you are dead preety fast

[Keshian]

This is so depressing - i come back 9 months later and find out I need to respec my level 35 archer 27-18 with 9 powerdraw because extra powerdraw and strength give no benefits but add problems.  Not sure why the change - agility-kiting archers have always been the problem for people not high strength/damage archers.  Seems a mistake was made in the calculations somewhere.

Should have more shoot speed, damage, and range but less accuracy, reload speed, kiting ability.  Not sure where developers lost that understanding of balance. 

Should I go 18-27 now with 9 athletics??

[Kirbies]

Retire and get dat epeen title! goegoegoegoegoe

[Adamar]

I say drawing speed should depend only on powerdraw, just to help ballance things out between accuracy builds and str builds.

[Mr_Oujamaflip]

I would like to see Power Draw affect bows differently than just power, since it's a strength based attribute I'd say let it make the flight on arrows faster or increase the fire rate, where WPF would increase accuracy and reduce upkeep.

[Cyclopsided]

This is so depressing - i come back 9 months later and find out I need to respec my level 35 archer 27-18 with 9 powerdraw because extra powerdraw and strength give no benefits but add problems.  Not sure why the change - agility-kiting archers have always been the problem for people not high strength/damage archers.  Seems a mistake was made in the calculations somewhere.

Should have more shoot speed, damage, and range but less accuracy, reload speed, kiting ability.  Not sure where developers lost that understanding of balance. 

Should I go 18-27 now with 9 athletics??

If you can get one of those things in the auction place to respec without losing EXP to stay at 35, Totally do it.
But don't respec at level 35 to level 34...

[Tears of Destiny]

If you can get one of those things in the auction place to respec without losing EXP to stay at 35, Totally do it.
But don't respec at level 35 to level 34...

Eh, if he can't afford or doesn't win the "retraining" then he should still respec, as it is absolutely frustrating to play a class that used to be competitive and then turned into junk and being out-shot by everyone and their mother due to the PD excess. Having a level 35 play like a level 30 is a bit discouraging, to say the least. That is what made me respec despite nearing level 34 was because my bonus levels were literally useless, so why bother keeping them? Granted, I'm now lower level but now I am having Fun which is the entire point of this game.

I never thought I would see the day when my 24/21 was considered an "unbalanced" class, but hey it apparently happened due to quite a few "tweaks" in the archery section stacking up. Being a 24/18 shielder is much more solid and I'm sorry to say every single "tweak" to the system from the day I joined to the present moment would not have effected the usefulness of my shielder build. Playing an archer always has and always will be a crapshoot for going above level 30, as it gets changed the most and in almost every single patch. Further proof of this is how massive the fluctuation is when it comes to archery looms, no other class has such a drastic change to the worth of major looms with the one exception of the Horses.

I've seen literally every single loom from Standard Arrows to the most powerful cut arrows to bodkins to Hornbows to Rus Bows to LongBows become the "This is what 80% of the population should use" which just screams out risk for post-30 archer builds. Kesh needs to buy a retraining or respec or be content that his level 35 build will be operating worse then a 30 build. He is basically using a level 30 18/18 build with less WM and more IF (Which is crap).

[TurmoilTom]

I'm now lower level but now I am having Fun which is the entire point of this game.

+1. In the end, that's all that really matters.

[Grumpy_Nic]

If infantry would make an effort in guarding archers they would not be forced to make coward-builds. When I see familiar archers ingame I'm trying to stay with them and hold off cav with my long spear. Usually works when the archer uses the teamwork (Merc_Pejlaen, Silicium, ...). Works to a limited degree also vs. inf.

[Cyclopsided]

If infantry would make an effort in guarding archers they would not be forced to make coward-builds. When I see familiar archers ingame I'm trying to stay with them and hold off cav with my long spear. Usually works when the archer uses the teamwork (Merc_Pejlaen, Silicium, ...). Works to a limited degree also vs. inf.

It has nothing to do with making 'coward' builds.
There is just no benefit to being strength archers.