On my 11th gen (not as huge as some but a decent amount), all of which were mostly 2h with a one time sword and board in there and one cav, the last two have been archer and honestly I have no interest in going back.
I've had like 7 or 8 gens of 2hander and I never had a problem with getting shot honestly here not even lying sure it was annoying but I would just try to dodge and get into melee as fast as possible not to mention I would always run high athletics and be able to catch most archers because I wore lighter armor, it's not the reason I ever even switched to archer I just got bored of melee over playing it for such a long time,
I just have no interest in melee anymore and archery allows me to play more of a support role. Do you ever see archers top the scoreboard? Rarely and if they do props to them or any other class that does, but I can guarantee archers are not scoreboard kings compared to other classes, we are a support class, I help out the infantry line and try to take out cavalry when I can, and when I'm not doing that it's because I'm busy dieing to the next paragraph.
I already die to other ranged and cavalry in a fight or lightly armored fast athletic infantry who I can't kite so what gives (try playing an archer, and believe me when your team starts dieing kiting does not work). Are you trying to tell me that the sword and board or heavy armored infantry are suppost to catch up to me? That I can't run faster then them and if I do I can't shoot as accurate? This is crazy and I don't post much on these forums even after 11 gens and never have I complained about archers in all my time being melee, these changes just can't sit with me I already have a ton of things that can kill me in a fight already and archers don't regularly top scoreboards and I'm not going to rage back to melee because I simply just don't feel like playing it anymore and I'm not going to let something like this force me to respec when I really want to be an archer, but playing an archer like this or anything remotely close to the system that sounds like it needs to be implemented won't work for me either because I think its ludicrous. So I guess i'll just have to be taking a long break because I have absolutely no incentive to play (sigh).
-Honest opinion from a player who played approx ~80% melee gens and ~20% archer.