There are those saying archers should need to hybridize in order to survive.
There are those saying archers just shouldn't ever be getting valor because they are playing the game on easy mode.
Firstly, I've played melee and I've played archer, and they are both hard in different ways. They are different parts of the game. Trying to say one entire class CONCEPT is not worthy and should only be in the game if they aren't allowed to be what they are, most of the time... that's rough. That IS how this patch feels, also - that archers are being told, "Don't exist. If you insist upon existing, it has been ensured that this will be very unpleasant for you, and you really will spend most of your time being a gimped melee class." I trust though that staff is not deliberately doing that, and will reconsider what's happened at some point.
Secondly, I play hybrid all the time these days. I think I have about as solid a hybrid setup as one could have. It still makes me weaker in melee than straight melee, so the tradeoff in melee prowess in order to play low-damage archer for part of the round is not a sensible one at the moment. I don't feel that this patch makes me appreciate being hybrid - it makes me think I should have gone pure, undiluted archer or pure melee.
My suggestion would have been not to make all these other archer tweaks, but to have made it impossible to carry more than one quiver. That alone would probably have taken care of the "run and kite indiscriminately without any penalty" feel. I myself only use one quiver because it always felt game-balanced to me in the results of the round and forced me to plan my strategy (yeah, I know, I was never much of a munchkin... I like to not break my games.)
