About Horse Archers

[Grumbs]

The concept of mobile ranged is the stupidest thing in the game, doesn't matter if you have cav countering its still a stupid idea in a melee game.

You have huge kiting ability and easy point and click fps mechanics. That needs to be balanced by making the classes weak so they are more like support players

[San]

I'm just confused about your point. You feel weak compared to heavily armoured opponents and horses, or against everything? I doubt my 5PS level 36 character can do much against a plated charger with my cut only weapon, too. Doing little damage against it with a build not meant for high damage is expected and it'd be odd to change that (+ you have options for hitting the rider/headshot). I do think that the headshot hurtbox on the horses are quite odd, though. You think you hit the head but you don't see any increased damage compared to a body shot sometimes.

There was a period on EU where it was left with ranged armour penetration values that made HA/low damage ranged extremely weak against armour for longer than it should have been, but another change put the numbers back to how they were before. I think complaints during that time was valid, but currently, the only recent nerfs to HA are the speed bonus and the ranged stagger tweaks.

[buba]

Mount and blade was designed around the idea of having a different classes countering each other.
Paper rock scissor wise.

1/3 of the following groups, ranged, inf and cav,
with each having there cons and pro's.

Melee although being the most defining feature of Mount and blade, was not the only feature.
Many said this before, and ill say it again; its called MOUNT and blade.
Not melee and everyone else go fuck of and blade.

Not saying the balance was perfect before, far from it. But each class had its natural counter.
Yes even HA, if their enemy's where smart enough to group up and stick with their teams ranged.

Question: do we want to play a team play game? or a lone wolf i can do everything game?

     

[Tzar]

or a lone wolf i can do everything game?

   

That´s pretty much how HA´s worked before the nerf.

[Grumbs]

Mount and blade was designed around the idea of having a different classes countering each other.
Paper rock scissor wise.

1/3 of the following groups, ranged, inf and cav,
with each having there cons and pro's.

Melee although being the most defining feature of Mount and blade, was not the only feature.
Many said this before, and ill say it again; its called MOUNT and blade.
Not melee and everyone else go fuck of and blade.

Not saying the balance was perfect before, far from it. But each class had its natural counter.
Yes even HA, if their enemy's where smart enough to group up and stick with their teams ranged.

Question: do we want to play a team play game? or a lone wolf i can do everything game?

   

Its not rock, paper scissors and it shouldn't be. There is no hard counter to anything only soft counters.

If we had rock, paper scissors ranged wouldn't even have a melee weapon, instead they have 70% of the melee potential of a pure melee while still having the incredibly potent advantage of dealing damage by clicking on stuff from a safe distance. Xbowers have 99% of the potential of a pure melee in the melee area of the game

Everything can counter melee which is apparently fine, but it seems only ranged should counter ranged even when its ranged on horseback. Cav are not and have never been a HA/HX counter anyway, they will just get their horse shot

[BattalGazi]

Grumbs you are just talking nonsense and I believe you are just trolling. If you are so in love with melee, and have no idea about how the rest of the mechanics work, you are more than welcome to join the only melee servers. If they don't exist, bug the devs to make one. I think it's more fair to go that way instead of glorifying your own class over the others ...

[Grumbs]

You wouldn't even have a game to play if it wasn't for the melee side of it. Noone would give two shits about M&B without these melee mechanics. The ranged is oldschool no skill stuff we've seen in so many games before.

Saying that though I have never said I want to play melee only. I want cav, ranged and melee BUT the implementation of the ranged mechanics is so far behind melee its like having two games in one. If clicking on guys from a distance had half the depth of melee I wouldn't have a problem.

The issue I have is how damn shallow it is and on top of that how you can deal damage with zero risk vs reward. That and how entitled people seem to be, to think that simply by playing a class it should get decent damage and kills regardless of what playing the class entails

[buba]

That´s pretty much how HA´s worked before the nerf.

No,

HA worked before because we found a way to make our class work best.
And thats to pick of lone wolfs, or even groups of melee without ranged support.

If your melee and run off killing shit, not minding your own ranged.
You got shot by us.

Dont tell me HA where or are lone wolfs, we need out teams to get our kills or dmg.
We are opportunistic, by nature and need,  we need our team, always did.

tactics or sticking in a group, defend your ranged.

Ps: and believe it or not, but to be a good HA, actually takes skill.... no really, im not kidding. its kinda hard. like really hard.
 
Tzar, your quete says it all:
I've never played a server where people split up as much or as often as on EU1.  No wonder range is having a field day.

That works for HA/HX too, if people are to single minded to do the same thing over and over again, ofc ill or any other mounted ranged will abuse the fuck out of it.

[Grumbs]

Love how "tactics" only ever applies to melee. How about you HA band together and tactically kill melee/cav? Oh no you want to ride around by yourself clicking on guys that can't damage you

Get a shield and tactics adapt etc

[buba]

Completly ignoring your own quote...

You still do not understand the reason why HA works is because the lack of tactics of all the classes, not only melee.
The only reason why HA can run around getting kills is because everyone else doesn't think about tactics.

Believe me, a group of archers will make short work of even a group of HA.

There needs to be a extreem class like HA to create tactics in a game, do you understand what im saying?
Imagine a CPRG with out ranged cav, or any cav whats so ever.
What would there be left? again the game is called MOUNT and blade.

Inf and ground ranged needs to group to counter that.
Are you playing the same game I am?

[Grumbs]

No one has any respect for a HA/HX player because the mechanics are like playing a single player game. Unlimited kiting and damage by clicking stuff from a distance is the antithesis of what this game is all about

A group of archers will kill a lone HA? Woopdie-do. A single ranged character can shit on a HA/HX/melee/cav too, its not required to band together to do that as ranged. Ranged don't need to use teamwork while melee have to

The only class that is expected to use teamwork and tactics is melee, a class who cannot counter a HA/HX who has half a brain. Why the hell don't HA/HX need to use teamwork and tactics?

[buba]

' Believe me, a group of archers will make short work of even a group of HA'

Are you guys even reading what i'm writing?
I said a group of HA?!

Seriously, also this bitching and moaning about HA not needing to work together and only melee needs to is simply not true.
I started playing CRPG two or three years ago and even then melee usually decided the outcome of any battle.

Unlimited kiting ability? ha! i wish i had that. But no. aware raged can pick of my horse from miles away.... 

   

[Grumbs]

The reason melee can have such an impact on a battle is the amount of people who play melee. Its a melee game yet people like you try to turn it into a shitty FPS with shallow fps mechanics. Why spoil the only decent melee game in existence when there are so many shitty FPS games to play?

[buba]

Im not, Grumbs.

I would like to see a game thats balanced around all the classes.
All of the 1/3 like i said before. Inf, ranged and cav.

The way it is now, i and many like me feel HA is overly nerfed for the melee group playing this game.
Because the majority is melee.

And I do not agree with your sentiment of HA being point and click easy FPS.
We all want to play CPRG because of the versatile way classes are, can we please have a well balanced game thats aims to please all classes and being based on team play? and not one class can win all?

[Ronin]

In an ideal scenario:
A Horse Archer has worse accuracy, more vulnerability to projectiles (can be countered by avoiding frontal engagements to enemy archers) and less shooting power.
In exchange it gains mobility and much better protection against melee (by avoiding them).

In Eu_1, there is also:
A Horse Archer is less effected by idiotic teammates. Such as friendly infantry who doesn't give a crap about defending friendly archers or teammates getting in front of archers just when the archer is about to release an arrow, which fucks up all the shooting period etc.

Overall, Horse Archers can do better by themselves but they have less offensive power to effect the situation as well. In that sense, they are still very dependant upon their team maybe even more than most of the classes. Melee decides the outcome of the battle, because infantry tends to kill/die faster in a massed melee very quickly. I'm not saying this in the sense that melee classes are actually stronger, I mean that they tend to clash and neutralise each other the fastest. Many rounds of 30 vs 30, become quickly 10-20 vs 10-20. If it becomes 10 vs 20, there is little a Horse Archer can do to save the situation. Of course there is very little anyone can do to change the tides at this point, but Horse Archers have even lesser capabilities of doing it somehow, because of the lesser damage output. An infantry player can just contribute greatly in the first main melee and still take 5 players by itself if he is very very skilled and sufficiently equipped with looms/levels.

All in all, I believe infantry players that are claiming their class is underpowered are not very good at melee skills themselves. They simply have less effect on the outcome of battles as they are avarage players, maybe? Claiming that Archer have the 70% melee power of an infantry and Crossbowman have 99% of an infantry just proves that in this example.

This game is all about knowing where you, your teammates and your opposition can be useful, and then using this knowledge to your advantage.