Wait
So how the fuck do archers work?
Like, what stats do what?
Is there a guide or something in the beginner forums?
Thanks to
TaleWorlds(how they coded the game), it's ridiculously convoluted and obnoxious(read: BULLSHIT).
Because of the above and following example, there's no
good guide available, to my knowledge. Here's a taste of the convolution I just mentioned:
Damage affects maximum reticule size, bow's Power Draw Requirement affects maximum reticule size, Accuracy affects maximum reticule size, Power Draw affects true projectile speed, Projectile Speed stat affects true projectile speed, true projectile speed affects reticule size, wpf affects reticule size reduction, effective damage and reload speed, distance affects effective damage, hit location affects effective damage, speed bonus does apply and thus affects effective damage(was recently reduced). Arrows DO NOT affect maximum reticule size(unfortunately).
Hue
With that setup using the damage calculator against "good" armor then you would be doing roughly 15 points of damage a shot (of course with reduced damage 1-2 shots do no damage at all, i.e. glance). With 27 str 9 ironflesh character you would still take 6 arrows to kill + the 1-2 glancing hits. Thats 7-8 arrows with expensive bodkins and the nd highest damage bow in the game. Think about every other bow user and people that dont use bodkins. Completely redundant damage, tons of glancing shots with very little damage on real hits. To exclude all bow users other than those using the highest damage bows with the bodkin arrows adn 9-10 powerdraw to even have a below average effective build doesn't come up right. Even with min-max the limited bodkin ammo equates to running out of ammo after 2 kills and then trying to fight melee in light armor and 0 powerstrike with 0 slot 1her. There is no reason not to do xbow instead or thrower who didnt receive these hard edge nerfs. People don't even die to difficult to make headshots (unless you use aim hacks, similar to ones used in other games that are currently allowed because too hard to enforce user-side as informed by admins - im looking at you archers talking about how easy headshots are) with the min-max build and gear setups.
many archers like using horn bows or tatar bows or arrows or tatar arrows - now if you use those you are doing 5-7 damage a hit with many glancing shots. You shouldn't have to min-max your class and be one of the best archers just to be average at best compared to all other classes.
Kesh,
Please stop focusing solely on the number of hits it takes to kill a person of your own choosing. We made changes that caused far more players to start getting IF. This means that more people are choosing to have builds with increased survivability. Just because they take a lot of hits, doesn't mean you can't still 1-3 shot other players. They're still there, they still play, AGI isn't dead. It's no surprise of course that you don't acknowledge this since you recently stated we did nothing but buff agility once again.
Don't forget they buffed agility again
People are sacrificing higher ps/wm for more IF, meaning a lot more people have increased survivability, but not everyone. There are still those that use extremely low amounts of IF, if any at all. This is a change to the meta, not a change to potential. Trying to make it so that the most tanky plate guys (those you're testing against) only require 3 shots to kill, will result in all the other guys getting 1 or 2 shot by even light bows. Don't narrow your focus to situations like that. 15-25 damage is a pretty good amount that is equally on part with lots of melee builds.
Even though melee didn't get damage nerfs across the board, a lot of them did see reductions in effective damage as well as increased number of hits required to kill the average opponent. Of course, a lot of people switched to naturally higher damage output builds, but considering those builds just changes the comparison being made into one that's now irrelevant (a meta change, not a change in potential).
Still, I recently received looms from nessaj that will allow me to test every single bow and arrow combination as I please, whenever I want. That being the case, I plan on doing another in-depth analysis of archery relatively soon.
