An archery balance post from a shielder

[LordLargos]

For all the archer brethren out there, the new changes are pretty bad. As someone who plays 1hand shield, I dislike archers but can tell you that you fucked some of them over while buffing others. Balancing based off ammo for a primary weapon is ill-advised. It does nothing for the first few people they shoot and simply limits their potential. Strength archers were a bit out of hand but it seems to have been reworked poorly and now we just have a bunch of annoying rapid-fire archers that don't get many kills but interrupt your block in melee and give other's the kill. Also as claimed by Frumpty the rework was an indirect buff to HA and as that is the class that can clear a server for being impossible to counter and a constant annoyance, it should not be nerfed into oblivion rather than buffed. iK_Bullet was able to top the board on numerous occasions tonight with HA. At the end of the day, 1hand cav was the best counter to archers and it was nerfed into the ground many moons ago. It also doesn't help that low pop is rather unfavorable for 1hand cav. Making archers extremely slow and unable to kite is a far better alternative. If they want to succeed they will have to work with their team but they will still be a viable class. Perhaps having power draw inversely effect athletics would be a solution. Simply making arrows weigh more isn't effective because they can just drop them and run off while you're gunned down by other archers.

[bensai]

my suggestion is just to put archers back to where they were just before these changes and make 0 difficulty shields with 0 shield skill actually provide some proper coverage to the head and legs. If i (who has 0 shield) pushes an archer with my 0 difficulty shield, I have to look up so I don't get headshot and end up getting shot in the legs a couple times, leave shield skill for people who want to use shield in melee to get extra shield HP honestly.

[Yeldur]

For all the archer brethren out there, the new changes are pretty bad. As someone who plays 1hand shield, I dislike archers but can tell you that you fucked some of them over while buffing others. Balancing based off ammo for a primary weapon is ill-advised. It does nothing for the first few people they shoot and simply limits their potential. Strength archers were a bit out of hand but it seems to have been reworked poorly and now we just have a bunch of annoying rapid-fire archers that don't get many kills but interrupt your block in melee and give other's the kill. Also as claimed by Frumpty the rework was an indirect buff to HA and as that is the class that can clear a server for being impossible to counter and a constant annoyance, it should not be nerfed into oblivion rather than buffed. iK_Bullet was able to top the board on numerous occasions tonight with HA. At the end of the day, 1hand cav was the best counter to archers and it was nerfed into the ground many moons ago. It also doesn't help that low pop is rather unfavorable for 1hand cav. Making archers extremely slow and unable to kite is a far better alternative. If they want to succeed they will have to work with their team but they will still be a viable class. Perhaps having power draw inversely effect athletics would be a solution. Simply making arrows weigh more isn't effective because they can just drop them and run off while you're gunned down by other archers.

At the moment I'm trying to avoid changing anything about archers unless absolutely necessary due to an ongoing bug, no idea how long it's been going on for however shit is bugged, so the damage is all screwed up. It's a tough issue to fix, but until then archers are just going to continue to be overpowered/underpowered dependant on scenario

[Gurgumul]

8 arrows in a quiver is retarded imo
archers need at least 20 arrows in a single slot to not feel like some medieval revolver
8 arrows makes archers even more hateable because they stay back and not contribute because too scared to miss
as for kiting, make flag appear earlier and take less time to cap
HA will go from uncounterable to useless alone

ye, revert those archery changes

and if you really want to nerf HA, do it in some other way, like making horse unsteerable when drawing bow
so if you press left click with bow, you cannot turn horse or speed up or speed down, maybe only thing you can do is horse just stands and does ihohohoho

[Little Lord Lollipop]

Just a few points:

-The idea to have PD affect wpf was an ok idea but the implementation is garbage. Right now a 10 PD archer has a -85wpf penalty, so a 10 PD skip the fun now has an effective wpf of 36.  The penalties to high PD archers should be halved to at least make them playable while still limiting accuracy and draw speed. 6 PD is a good break even point.

-The ammo reductions are pretty ridiculous.  If the idea was to prevent delay some arrows should just be designated can't be used on horseback while having 15-20ish per quiver with cavalry arrows being in the 10-12 per quiver range.

-Bullet is the best horse archer around so the class shouldn't be purely balanced based on him. A good way to prevent delay would be to make the end of round flags raise faster.

PS: I may have been pulling an Arys when I said HA was effectively buffed. HA was nerfed but nerfed less than foot archers due to the PD affecting wpf changes.

[Tristan_of_Erzoth]

Just a few points:

-The idea to have PD affect wpf was an ok idea but the implementation is garbage. Right now a 10 PD archer has a -85wpf penalty, so a 10 PD skip the fun now has an effective wpf of 36.  The penalties to high PD archers should be halved to at least make them playable while still limiting accuracy and draw speed. 6 PD is a good break even point.

There haven't been any new changes to this, its been in the mod for a long time and it might even be a native thing. You can just see how it effects your WPF now

[San]

Haven't been too active lately. I personally think a few of the non-horseback arrows can be increased by like 2 ammo, maybe 3. Leave the others low so that HA are forced to have limited max damage per round. They were likely made low since melee wpf is now provided for free to all builds based on WM. With 10v10 to 15v15, 20-28 ammo seems reasonable. It's pretty sad, but limited ammo really stops a lot of cheese tactics from forming.

Gotta clear up some misinformation:
-You pretty much get like 20 wpf worth of accuracy per PD. It used to just be -14 wpf per PD and was actually reduced for high PD as time went on.

-1h cav was rebuffed a bit. The nerfed period is when bumpslashes dealt 50% damage. Now it should be 75%. Combined with increased cut on the best 1h cav weapons and buffs to horses, it should be manageable now. You're right that 1h cav should destroy kiting ranged.

-Archers have been made to be much slower with the bow out, and faster with it sheathed. Good acceleration, but poor max speed due to adding weapon lengths to bows. To increase the effect, the weapon length can be increased. PD hurting athletics will mostly affect acceleration, not max speed. Max speed is based more on armor weight and weapon weight & length.

-You can equip board shields and the viking round table without shield skill.

[DaveUKR]

^

On top of what San said:

Archery changes were not made to buff HA. They were exactly the opposite. Just a few examples how recent archery changed HA, it's you to decide if it's a buff:

1. Composite bow became impossible to use on horseback, so the most powerful HA bow is gone.
2. Arrows received a new item flag so that balancers have a bigger room when changing/adding new arrows: Can't use on horseback. There are no pierce arrows that can be used on horseback and there are no big quivers that can be used on horseback either.

Also. 8 arrows (9 on MW) per quiver is only a thing for pierce damage arrows or HA arrow tier. You are free to get Barbed Arrows that are only 1 less damage than Tatar Arrows, those arrows are 14 per quiver on MW.

[agweber]

I wonder how much effort it would take to make it so that if you're not carrying a bow, you have the option to 'break' arrows rather than pickup. Basically, pick them up and if they don't have a bow/quiver, just remove them. The problem with horse archers to me is that they just kite around picking up loose arrows when they run out, particularly when they're the type that won't get down from their horse when the flags are up and fight.

Also, were tatar arrows always HA arrows? I feel like my foot archer got unnecessarily nerfed when my mw tatars capacity went to shit.

[DaveUKR]

I wonder how much effort it would take to make it so that if you're not carrying a bow, you have the option to 'break' arrows rather than pickup. Basically, pick them up and if they don't have a bow/quiver, just remove them. The problem with horse archers to me is that they just kite around picking up loose arrows when they run out, particularly when they're the type that won't get down from their horse when the flags are up and fight.

Also, were tatar arrows always HA arrows? I feel like my foot archer got unnecessarily nerfed when my mw tatars capacity went to shit.

There were no HA arrows in the past. And apparently Tatar arrows is the candidate #1 to become HA. Anyway you can always exchange it, free reforges are still a thing

[Little Lord Lollipop]

Based on the stats of bows ingame it looks like there are some missing change logs. To put archery in a good spot revert the accuracy nerf to bows that cannot be used on horseback and increase bodkins per quiver. Thanks.

According to the item changelogs Rus, Long and Yew were straight nerfed. HA bows received the same accuracy nerf but had missile speed, damage and draw speed buffed...

[DaveUKR]

Based on the stats of bows ingame it looks like there are some missing change logs. To put archery in a good spot revert the accuracy nerf to bows that cannot be used on horseback and increase bodkins per quiver. Thanks.

According to the item changelogs Rus, Long and Yew were straight nerfed. HA bows received the same accuracy nerf but had missile speed, damage and draw speed buffed...

Bows had completely broken accuracy and damage stats, bows are still insanely accurate. Even super high PD builds are still very accurate. I'm up for discussions and if there is a solid background of suggestion to do something - I listen to it. Otherwise it just looks like "do this just because it's my class". Keep in mind that bodkins can also penetrate shields now.

[Gurgumul]

make big bows (those that can't be used on horse) only shootable when standing still
other bows, buff accuracy, damage and arrow speed when standing still, nerf when moving
more ammo