Is archery bugged atm?

[AluminumMonster]

dunno how athletics would lower wpf when you have to STOP for a clear shot anyways... but maybe i dont understand logic???

[FrugFrug]

Yep, just tested it with my STF.

Athletics reduces WPF, not sure by how much though.

I never kited with my archer for more than 5 seconds to grab a weapon, but this athletics reducing wpf really messes up my MW shortbow build because there is no reason to go above 15 strength for the max PD on the bow. 

[Pentecost]

What I heard through the grapevine about the changes to archery(you will probably want to run some tests yourself, as some of this may not be correct):
-The power draw wpf penalty was removed
-You instead suffer a wpf penalty proportional to your athletics
-The purpose of these changes is to both deal with the problem of kiting and to balance strength archers against agility archers. The former are going to be damaging and accurate but can't run away, while the latter are going to be fast but less accurate. In other words, archers will now have to consider the tradeoffs of the different possible builds more carefully than before. No longer will 18/24 be the hands-down best build of dedicated archery.
-How this affects HA is unknown, although, if I had to make an educated guess, I would assume the penalty does not apply to riding.


Ultimately, I think this is a step in the right direction, although I also think that some other changes are in order as well. The fact that, regardless of the kind of archer you are, you will be stuck with a 40ish reach 0 slot melee weapon and, depending on your build, you might also be stuck with little to no athletics on top of it means that defending yourself in melee is going to be very difficult even if you are good at melee. I would suggest either:

a.) making certain rudimentary weapons like the quarterstaff or normal maul (the English longbowmen at Agincourt apparently had mauls as part of their kit) zero slot

OR

b.) increasing the size of arrow stacks so that only taking 1 stack is a viable choice and that an archer with some melee skill can then bring a rudimentary weapon rather than a subpar one

[Everkistus]

I got a 21/21 balanced build as an archer with some PS and 1h WPF. I'll be dumbstruck if my balanced build actually got nerfed because it's... too balanced?

[Fips]

Free respecc, NOW!
I'm fine with having less athletics, but i can't just get rid of them. Respecc with 95mio xp is not an option.

[dodnet]

Working as intended! For each PD you need 9000 WPF.

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[Molly]

Loving it.

[Kafein]

Bazillions of anti-kiting suggestions made.


Dev team goes like

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And makes a new one

 

[Joker86]

I like the intention, but I dislike the solution. IMHO being faster than infantry is an important part of being an archer. If you are slower than infantry, then your gameplay will turn to "shoot as many arrows as you can until an infantry player decides to approach you", at least on the average public server matches with no teamplay.

Another negative aspect are missing tradeoffs. Archers need mainly PD, WM and ATH. They nerfed ATH in a way where the connection to the other two skills is very low. You can crutch AGI to push your WM and thus being able to increase ATH a bit, but that's it (because WM stacking is only effective to a certain, rather limited level), and we still have to find out if the possible ATH increase is worth it. Most likely we will have one or two rather balanced builds concerning PD and WM, and people will raise those few points of ATH they are allowed to without negative effect. All archers will play the same. If for example high PD would lower this ATH cap, and low PD would keep it higher, then we would have a tradeoff and probably more different builds... but I guess we need to find out more about the mechanics and the set values to be ablte to tell more...

I am really disappointed that the devs seem to be only able to balance things by reducing or raising the effectivity of something (= buffing or nerfing), and that they decide for nerfing in most cases.

Another thing are the patch note politics. chadz wrote "Patch note yet to come", but we know it's a plain lie. And I think it's really an impudence to not tell people what exactly changed, and let all the archer respecc after the patch only to let them find out that after the hotfix everything is different. If people don't get a free respecc I really don't know what to think about the understanding of fairness of the developers. 

[Grumpy_Nic]

For Str Archers it seems IF or PS is the new ATH...? Or riding...

[Macropus]

It's funny how people say "remove kiting" like it's a ... I dunno, an item or a stat.
In common sense people with higher athletics should move faster and they can use it as they like - either to run or to increase damage due to the speed bonus etc. Why do high-agi melee char with a great long bardiche can hit&run (which is basically kiting) and archer shouldn't be able to do that?

Can you "remove" the ability of high-agi melee characters to hit and run away? I don't think so, because the only way of cutting their agility and making them str-chars is a wrong way.
High agi characters should be able to use their speed advantage, as well as str-chars use their advantage of high damage. And no matter - melee or ranged.
I hope you got the point. Yes I think kiting isn't a problem, as well as backpedal fighters, as well as str-stacking killmachines or whatever. Everything is fine. 

I'm not saying this new feature about wpf is a bad thing, though I don't really get it. I'm pretty sure it's just a step to a better way to deal with kiting (like making archers move slower only when they draw their bow and removing jumpshooting or anything else),
but what I'm saying is that archers should be able to run fast without penalties to their shooting abilities.

[Kafein]

I like the intention, but I dislike the solution. IMHO being faster than infantry is an important part of being an archer. If you are slower than infantry, then your gameplay will turn to "shoot as many arrows as you can until an infantry player decides to approach you", at least on the average public server matches with no teamplay.

I think it's because we haven't seen that kind of action in months that we think archers without kiting don't work. They do, and they increase teamwork, having to stick with melee bodyguards.

Another negative aspect are missing tradeoffs. Archers need mainly PD, WM and ATH. They nerfed ATH in a way where the connection to the other two skills is very low. You can crutch AGI to push your WM and thus being able to increase ATH a bit, but that's it (because WM stacking is only effective to a certain, rather limited level), and we still have to find out if the possible ATH increase is worth it. Most likely we will have one or two rather balanced builds concerning PD and WM, and people will raise those few points of ATH they are allowed to without negative effect. All archers will play the same.

I am really disappointed that the devs seem to be only able to balance things by reducing or raising the effectivity of something (= buffing or nerfing), and that they decide for nerfing in most cases.

Another thing are the patch note politics. chadz wrote "Patch note yet to come", but we know it's a plain lie. And I think it's really an impudence to not tell people what exactly changed, and let all the archer respecc after the patch only to let them find out that after the hotfix everything is different. If people don't get a free respecc I really don't know what to think about the understanding of fairness of the developers. 

I'm not sure, but I think there are more tradeoffs now than before. Before, almost all level 30 archers were this :

Level 30 (4 420 577 xp)

    Strength: 18
    Agility: 21
    Hit points: 59

    Skills to attributes: 8

    Ironflesh: 3
    Power Strike: 0
    Shield: 0
    Athletics: 7
    Riding: 0
    Horse Archery: 0
    Power Draw: 6
    Power Throw: 0
    Weapon Master: 7

    One Handed: 1
    Two Handed: 1
    Polearm: 1
    Archery: 165
    Crossbow: 1
    Throwing: 1


With a variation on the 3 IF points.


Now you have to make a tradeoff between PD and WM, because one doesn't become useless above 6 anymore.

[Rhekimos]

For Str Archers it seems IF or PS is the new ATH...? Or riding...

Nic raises a good point as well. This change is great for pure horse archers, they have nothing reducing their wpf and they can kite quite well.

[Kafein]

Nic raises a good point as well. This change is great for pure horse archers, they have nothing reducing their wpf and they can kite quite well.

And now they also don't have to fear lances that much anymore.

[BlueKnight]

It should be that archer simply has to stop to draw his bow and shoot. Not like he can start drawing his bow while running and then just stop to shoot. Imho it would be better option and wouldn't make athletics a flaw for archers standing at 1 position most of the time.