I would like to start by saying no trolls, those who think archery is OP (post or pre patch) get out since you are probably trolls who think it's OP because you don't carry a shield. Also I am unsure of whether it is worse or not, since it could be down to arrow speed changes throwing my timings off.
Now we are past logistics lets state the issues, I have noticed the longbow is way worse than it was pre patch, yeah it now has pierce damage but its damage has been reduced from 27(ish)C to 24P so on low armoured targets I am doing worse. It can now take an extra arrow (3 up from 2) to kill another archer now, I also have noticed not much increased damage on heavier armoured targets too. Another trade off to take the longbow even further back is the accuracy reduction, it's now 5 points less accurate than the warbow or strong bow. So it has similar damage to the warbow for targets archers go for as the warbow now, yet it is much slower.
The final killing blow to the longbow is the 2 slot component of it, 2 slots for bow 2 sets for arrows and none for melee. The longbow does so little damage compared to the speed there is no way of killing a target before it reaches you now, you will get 2 arrows off before they reach you, with strafing you probably will not get one on target. Once they have reached you your dead since you have no melee now. This makes archery with a longbow impossible in battles.
Thanks for reading and I encourage other peoples opinions even if they don't agree with mine, (as long as they're from people who have tried the longbow themselves in battle servers and not just saw 4 archers and gone "OMG I should totally be able to p0wn all those 4 archers because I am a two hander". ).
From my more recent post but for arguments sake I will put it here too:
Using Warband damage calculations with chadz' soak factors and reduction factors I have just shown algebreically and graphically to myself that the longbow never wins on damage, for ANY armour type. The calculations are somewhat complex but I will explain as best as I can here.
The amount of damage done follows the equation D=(d - s*a)(1-(r*a/100))*p where d is the base damage per shot, s is the soak factor, r is the reduction factor and p is some probabilistic modifier. p is probabilistic but same so it can be cancelled on either side. For the calculation of d I assumed bow base damage since power draw is not constant for all and will assist the warbow more than the longbow. Setting the different equations equal to one another for the warbow and longbow equivalents reveals complex solutions, i.e they don't intersect in the [real] plane. That was some A-level maths about intersection points so forgive me, what it basically means is that the longbow never breaks even with the warbow for ANY armour value since the damage drops to zero before the longbow can catch up. I used a graphical calculator to verify this, although most of you won't own one so you will have to take my word for it there. If my damage calculations (based on how they are calculated in native) are correct then the warbow is always better for damage. I would encourage people who can to verify this, because I am not superhuman I can make mistakes.
With this calculation, provided I have made no error, and that crpg uses this equation which was used in Warband Native, there is no dispute about whether the longbow is internally balanced with the longbow, the longbow simply loses on every stat including damage.
