Objectively speaking, nothing in the game has a higher skill ceiling than ranged weapons.
That may be true, but this thread is not about the best of the best. It's about the question why so many people still choose to play an archer. And it's true, if you start playing this mod you won't get much kills in melee, while playing some ranged class you can at least try to do so without coming in combat range.
I think that's why so many people start this mod as archers, and many stick to it because they don't learn to play in melee.
To the archers defending their gaming style:
Most people here don't say the amount of archers implies that this class is unballanced, but the whole game can become pretty unballanced on maps with a lot of archers and a lot of hills or buildings. There's not much to do about, unless the devs decide to remove ladders or allow only one quiver per character or implement a maximum of ranged players per team.
And about Agincourt: You can decide yourself, either the battle was unballanced or the French were fools and the amount of archers wasn't the real cause of victory. (yeah, I love to bring in Agincourt again
)
Also I don't think that archery on a high level can bring as much kills as 2h, but it's not about kills. People rarely get killed by friendly horse bumps, but a horse bump often leads to certain death (as does the short stun after someone hits you with an arrow).
@Tzar: Your avatar is just... I want to give you more bad karma everytime I see it :/