I'll obviously defend archery, but hear me out on this one. I was on EU1 against XyNox, 20 players were playing around that time, and I won most of the fights against he and other archers, or got him/them killed at the very least. Why ? Because even if I was playing a patheticly bad lvl 32 shielder with 3 shield only, my body armor was high enough that his arrows just took around 15-20% per shot, and I wasn't using a plate or anything, just a norman mail and scale gauntlets +3. He basically had to be protected by an entire team, or he'd get wiped in a 1v1 even against mediocre players considering how low his melee ability was.
I'll say it here, I don't think archers should be better than infantrymen, but consider the following : if archers can't move fast (apart from stupid 10 athl builds), don't deal damages unless they're hitting the head (won't ever kill in 1 hit, and will miss most of the time thanks to hit-reg, ping, and MLG dancing), can't get more than 50 body armor (+3 looms) without becoming inaccurate, and can't fight in melee, what are they made for ?
No, archers (and crossbowmen) shouldn't have insane mobility like in the past, where bullshit builds like 18/30 were dominating, no they shouldn't be able to wear plates without consequences, yet they should be able to do two things : shooting accurately, and fighting back. Make shooting longer to do, yet much more damaging (3 bolts to kill a melee player is bullshit, lets be honest), and make them able to hold their ground a bit against mediocre players, I just can't bear those memories when I was getting killed by 2h scrubs in plate since I was barely able to even damage them (with 10PD), or even worse, to be able to do any damage with my melee weapon (30 STR, 5PS + MW grosses messer).
How to do it then ? How to make archery require skill, and make them somewhat better at melee so they fight back instead of running away/kiting, even from fights they should be able to win if they were playing a normal melee character ?
-> Make PD have no penalties at all (on accuracy and damage) above a certain threshold (it'd depend of the max level), and make the PD penalties decrease the more you put PD.
-> Make PD like the horse archery skill : 1 point per 6 STR, and compensate for it by putting the damage bonus/ accuracy penalty to 28% and 28 WPF (at 1PD). This should allow people to go for more power strike and IF, and could make horse archers able to carry a melee weapon instead of relying on lame tactics.
-> Remove entirely the effect of WPF on damage (this should also be done for melee builds), so it depends only on the speed multiplier and PS/PT/PD and weapon damage
-> Implement PD requirements on crossbows, slow their reload time and make them extremely damaging, no one should take more than two bolts to kill.
-> Make the accuracy for bows decent rather early, so that you are accurate, yet slow if you don't have 150+ archery WPF. This means hybridization is possible by putting some melee wpf, I dare to say that shielder archers would be do able, as long as you stick with 1 slot bows.
-> Make ATHL bonus scale down if you hold any ranged weapon in your hands. IIRC, each ATHL point gives a flat 3% increase. I say that above 5, it should go down by 0.75 per point to limit the speed archers can run at while their bow is equipped. (EX : at 6 ATHL, while holding a sword, you have a 18% increase, while you'd have only a 17.25% with a bow. The difference would go up the more agi focused the build is and negate kiting abusers).
This is only do able if the average level is reduced, and if the player counts go back up as before, or this will put archery back in its OP state like at the beginning. Pls Dupre. I want to play cRPG again, I'm like a drug addict waiting desperately some kind of fix.