Well, is it?
When compared to damage and accuracy of other ranged played styles and the quality of build at high levels, the limitations of it might just surprise you... and remember, the whole point of horse archery is the ability of shooting off horseback "at speed".
Please note: We are looking at a class, not at good people that still use it well - melee players as skilled as the best Horse Archers will beat you on a melee fight in peasant gear, dear I say even at peasant levels - it doesn't mean peasant gear is overpowered, it just means they are goodWell, there are two main builds at attainable levels:
The damage build: 18 strength and 21 agility
--> This build lets you have PD6 and use nicer bows (great for strat if you don't like yumi), get riding 7 for the best horse, 7 weapon master and 3 Horse Archery.
The accurate build: 15 strength and 24 agility
--> 5PD, but it allows an extra point in riding, and most importantly 4 horse archery and 8 weapon master.
This is a big damage and bow limitation tradeoff.
You all know that Horse Archery damage is really low, PD6 HAs still take several shots to kill you, and PD5 HAs like myself will take an insane amount of shots to kill someone in any kind of good gear, even with loomed arrows and bow. Most of you will good armor and good memories will be aware of this fact.
Obviously, any mounted range is very annoying if you aren't ranged, and Horse archers should not be as deadly and accurate as foot archers.
Nevertheless, look at this example.
Level 32 Build
4 Horse Archery
172 archery (132 points after -40 penalty from 4HA_
5 Power Draw
Riding 8
4 Power strike
(irrelevant, but if you needed to know where the spare points were, they are here :-P)Champion courser
MW horn bow.
Please note: This is the accurate build, so you would expect some measure of accuracy from a level 32 dedicated horse archer.
Screenshots at speed.
Video: Look at reticule
Does it look really balanced to you?
I believe that as a class horse archery is severely unbalanced. A dedicated class, any class, should be able to be good at something at high levels.
Horse archers right now:
- Can only be really accurate with a high damage build if you slow down greatly before shooting
- Lack decent/balanced accuracy if opted for a more accurate build
- Pay masses of upkeep, due to the high upkeep for arrows design to balance upkeep payment for foot archers, who run very cheap overall gear.
- Have a -10WPP penalty for using the very same skill that is design to make players better at shooting on a horse (horse archery is supposed to reduce mounted penalty [-20% stats], for total reduction you need 10HA points.
- Do not receive speed bonus for arrows shot (last i checked), but are affected by speed bonus against us.
- Thanks to the HA WPP penalty, HAs load bows much slower.
Once again, I totally agree that mounted ranged are annoying, and obviously HA should not be as accurate at speed as archers on the floor. But right now the class is really underpowered.
The fix to test that I propose is the elimination of the Horse Archery -10 wpp penalty, it hurts accuracy, it sucks for siege and strat, when horses are not used, and it also goes against the very point of the HA skill.
Discuss and thanks for reading
