I do agree with Paul that the constant nerf cries for archers are getting out of hand. Although I disagree with buffing them, as it would increase the problems again.
What many players don't seem to be aware of, is the fact that not the effectivity of one archer is the problem, it's rather their amount. In difference to infantry archers gain strength the more of them you have. Every additional infantryman increases the strength of a team by a single infantryman (surprise, surprise!). But every additional archer increases the effectivity of every other archer in his team. Which means the effectivity growth is exponential.
Now why do we have so many archers? I guess there is a multitude of reasons, but one reason we can exclude: it's not their effectivity. Archers went through so many nerfs, and still we have that old problem of growing numbers whenever some time after the last patch (including the newest archery nerf) passed.
I think reasons for the unexplainable popularity of that class are the average melee skill level of the community, some of the newly implemented melee mechanics and tweaks, and last but not least the pleasure the higher flexibility concerning the gameplay of archers brings. (And just to beat my favourite dead horse once again: this flexiblity origins from the Battle Mode objectives. I guess there's only a puddle of blood left from that horse...)
I don't know how to really fix this (apart from my dead horse solution), but I do know for sure that archers should stop the "get a shield"-crap (yes, 11 shielders could still have problems dealing with those 11 archers, and 22 shielder would have much bigger problems dealing with 22 archers, whereas 88 archers would be unreachable, even for 176 shielders), and melee players should stop the "nerf archers" crap. I agree a little bit could be done about the horse crossbowman, but that's already everything. You guys know I think only the implementation of conquest mode could help something, but to bridge the time until a working solution is found you could try to "hotfix" the problems by yourself and actually try to coordinate with your teammates. It's the best thing you can do. Archers can't do a lot more than standing next to each other to protect themselves, and that's what they do already, so basically they are at the peak of their possible performance.
But you could improve your performance by looking what your team is doing, and perhaps even coordinating yourself with the other classes, e.g. your archers and cavalry. They can help you dealing with the enemy ranged players, and then you can help them dealing with the rest. Trust me, you won't fight less (if anything, you'll survive longer and fight more!), and you will have fun actually playing in a team, instead of only playing "along" each other.
I know, I partially agree with CrazyCracka and Berserkadin on this matter, but in difference to them I think it's only a measure which helps, but in no way it's the final solution. Just remember the golden infantry rule of cRPG: run where your teammates are, not where the enemy is.
