Thread to discuss Archery improvements!

[Azathrim]

your asking to remove the things that make archers even slightly viable to melee spec.... against the tools that assassins have...... i seriously cant belive the utter stupidity of that comment.... i could try and explain it to you but it would be like hitting my head against a brick wall

Considering your tone, I very much doubt you have the intelligence to explain anything.

 

[Tuorin]

I've said this before, I'll say it again...

If as an archer you expect to kill a hero/warrior/arms with 50+shield and some mob then you won't. You can cry all you like, shield is in the game to block melee/range attacks. It doesnt block nukes, so a hero for example struggles against virtually every caster if the range at inc is 1000+. Hero is a VISIBLE target you can not choose your opponent...

Shield does particularly well vs archers, its just the way it is, but it doesnt actualy kill you does it...... Shield does fuck all vs ranged casters and doesn't do well vs dual wield. To take on a merc as a shield user isn't good, usually end up eating dust. For an archer your worst nemesis is a shield user.

You see what will happen is scout A will shoot you from 2k and bypass shield hit you for 600. He then might stun you going by the balloney mentioned above and then hit you for 3-400. You cant get to him before he disappears. He will then stealth and get behind you and then do same again and hit you for 600. Stealth kite you around, death to a 1000 nails etc.

So any changes to the current block rate I'll concede it dropping 10-15% for a 3k ranged uninteruptible interupt for hero. A stun would be good if I stand still for say 3 secs.

For example I as a hero only attack...

Any caster in 500 range. Once I get to them, I generally win.
Any archer I see that I can get in melee range of. That means that the twat that shoots me from 2.5k range I aint gonna fight cos I CANT.

Any visible melee. I wont beat them all.

I get attacked without choice by
Any assasin
Any archer who has decent range
Every caster 500+range away
Any warlock/sm wherever they are
All meleers in melee range

I lose to all decent casters that have 1k range on start unless I'm exceptionally lucky or have everything up and can stun them without purge being up.

I lose to some assasins
I dont lose to archers unless I play crap
I lose to some meleers

Can you see the point I'm getting to?

I have a very very very very tiny bit of sympathy for archers vs casters as I do feel that that should be the targets they should have some advantage against from range. Therefore any marginal improvements they get if they are vs casters I can live with.

 

[Phule_Gubben]

all hunter classes are fine as they are. maybe some minor changes for each class but other then that, they are all fine imo.

The suggestions about 20, 30 and so on openers is just hilarious. To me I think that the higher bow you specc the better you should hit, nothing more nothing less. As for rangers that specc low in bow and high in weapon they should have hard time using bow and making some real damage as they chose to not spec in it.

I've been playing a hunter for over 3 years and I think it's quite alright as it is. Only issue with it has been adjusted lately and it was their defence abililties.

 

[Azathrim]

To take on a merc as a shield user isn't good, usually end up eating dust.

Was that an intented pun?

 

[Phantomby]

I personally dont like the timer melee rangers, given enough RA's they outperform and outlast the assassin classes. But to sort this problem out would require a removal of something and as we all know they not gonna do that. (thinking IP, PD sommat like that, so great...they have MoS4 odd but it should be used to avoid assassins rather than track them down and RA dump ftw).

 

[Eyres]

Considering your tone, I very much doubt you have the intelligence to explain anything.

considering the way i have seen you perform, i am quite sure i was correct in the assumption that you cannot compete vs rangers and your comments are basically whine directed at this, and if you have trouble vs scouts i truely feel sorry for you

you obviously have never played an archers and fought assassins and thus have a very one sided view

Assassins melee is far superiour to archers especially down to dual weild, evade 7 and poisons

Assassin Pros
Evade 7
Debuff Poisons
dual weild
Artifact Choices
CS Styles
dotmine
remedy

Archer
IP
FZ
PD
Winged Helm

Now when an assassin hits you be it from PA or debuff you will loose 600 damage and you will have a dot on you ticking for 80-100 and a dotmine 80-100 and you will be debuffed so that any attack you do hits for a lot less, thats if it hits through evade7 with your seer weapon skill opening you upto all kinds of off evade styles.

Now the only way for an archers to fight back from this is to purge, and if the assassins has a clue he will reapply poisons. So bascially an archer is going to get ripped to peices toe to toe with an assassins so needs to use tools like IP/FZ to win with are both on a 15 minute timer, somtimes you will need to use both of these depending on the target, obviously either can use battler, and maybe malice which you cant get if your a hunter.

Ontop of that an assassin can use remedy so no procs like debuffs will work. Also you have damage absorbation from PHN/WH which Sbs can get also and damage absorbation from PD which can be bypassed by simply switching to a legendary

so basically your asking for a lot of archers defense to be taken leaving them ONLY FZ to fight back with against assassins with there arsenal of tools?

and you wonder why i take the tone that you are clueless and stupid

 

[liloe]

Well I think some of the caster arguments are void. A ranger can stealth and look for a nice position to shoot on a visible first. A mage has to take what the situation gives. A ranger can Phaseshift, sureshot by just speccing the right things.

Remember. When a mage wants to return the favour he has to MoC most of the time, "only" costing him 30RSP's. Would you want a bow MoC for 30rsp's and you deal 75% dmg only for 30s? I surely wouldn't buy that tbh, considering all the not in LoS stuff when casting into melee.

I agree that the bow line is considered weak when comparing stealth war, but it's competitive versus visible war. Rangers can deal high dmg versus visible targets, but ofc they suck more or less versus other stealthers cause once in melee, they can't do anything at all. Sucky or a tradeoff? Also the shield comment. Well, what do archers want? We can try that irl if you want. I carry around an iron door in front of me and you try to hit me with a bow from front, ok?

The huge problem with the bow line is the balance between solo RvR and other RvR. Give bow more stuff to do, like melee etc. and the other lines are virtually useless. Give bow more dmg and special range tricks and the siege situation will be totally OP'd towards bow users. Sounds like real fun when an archer+blockbot could do power shots on ppl around without getting much dmg themselves.

Imho bow rangers are the equivalent of a sniper in modern armies. They are sneaky and wait for a good opportunity to shoot and nobody knows where it came from, but just don't ask them to melee when being surprised.

What I could see for the bow line is an added Camo 2, Camo 3, Camo 4, which basically reduces the timer on using Camo.

 

[xxManiacxx]

Remedy only block envenom poisons.

Rangers have dual wield so not a assassin only thing. Scouts and rangers can both have Malice which prob is the single best artifact weapon there is.

Archers MoS is basicly better then assassin mos consider archers can see both assassins and archers better with it.

Archers have camo (although on a stupid timer)

 

[Eyres]

Remedy only block envenom poisons.

Rangers have dual wield so not a assassin only thing. Scouts and rangers can both have Malice which prob is the single best artifact weapon there is.

yes but i trust you have played an archer and you know how heavily archers rely on timers and suggesting you rip half of them away is like suggesting to remove poisons alltogether, maybe thats already been done with remedy

 

[Aiteal]

It's like someone put it on critshot.com
Archery is a mix of melee and magic dynamics, with all the disadvantages of both. You get the interupts that mages suffer from and melee DPS that is only slightly higher than 1-handed sword with all the counters/problems that melee has, shields, bladeturns, brittleguards misses and fumbles.

Some archer improvements/changes:

1) Remove PD. Having PD on a melee class is just stupid.
2) Remove IP. Assassins lost this, and so should archers.

PD is a toughie, its way more OP'ed on heretics than it is on archers.
PD effects people who do not build versatile templates that allow them to switch to elemental damage, you wanna weild malice/battler for the OP'ed debuff proc and charge its the price you pay.
Ironically archers are the only class who cannot do elemental damage with their main spec line to counter PD.

Saying that assassins lost IP so should archers is a weak arguement, does that mean I can say assassins got ABS debuff styles in critstrike so should archers in the bow line.

That line of suggestions would be a:

1) A great improvement to scout melee (being able to use bow).
2) A great improvement to hunter archery (better use of bows).
3) A nerf to ranger melee and improvement to ranger archery.

I wonder why the melee ranger thinks it's a lack of understanding of the class.

Hey, they could just nerf ranger melee and leave the rest in the gutter. Suits me fine.

Scouts have been told via the TL by mythic that they will get no melee loving, simply because they have mincers to group with, not what they wanted to hear but its what they got. The advantage that mincers give alb stealth groups is what keeps scout melee from being upped.

Hunters do deserve access to slower bows, rapid fire removed the one advantage faster bows once had.

Nerf ranger melee how?
Remove celtic dual?
Or maybe limit them to 12DPS weapons?

 

[xxManiacxx]

Oh and any archers above RR3 that gets PAd by an assassin needs to rethink what he is doing.

My RR3 hunter with effective 41 stealth and MoS2 barely gets PAd unless I screw up.

 

[Aiteal]

Archers MoS is basicly better then assassin mos consider archers can see both assassins and archers better with it.

Archers have camo (although on a stupid timer)

Camo timer is fine as it is.

Better how?
An assassins with mos2 has equal if not slightly better detection than an archer with mos3.
Or are you referring to mos assassins not detecting other assassins?

Well, like most things in DaoC the 'advantage' has a trade off
The more classes that you can see with mos, the more classes that can see you, increase your potential pool of 'prey' with mos and your pool of predators increases also.

I can't beleive that assassins are still complaining about archers, my RR2 shade is a much better consistant killer than my RR6 ranger

 

[xxManiacxx]

Who said anything about complaining? Ppl started listing pros and cons but left stuff out so I added some

 

[Aiteal]

Who said anything about complaining? Ppl started listing pros and cons but left stuff out so I added some

sorry, that wasn't directed at you, my apologies if it came across that way.
It was directed at previous posters.

 

[Elrandhir]

Shield does particularly well vs archers, its just the way it is, but it doesnt actualy kill you does it...... Shield does fuck all vs ranged casters and doesn't do well vs dual wield. To take on a merc as a shield user isn't good, usually end up eating dust. For an archer your worst nemesis is a shield user.

You see what will happen is scout A will shoot you from 2k and bypass shield hit you for 600. He then might stun you going by the balloney mentioned above and then hit you for 3-400. You cant get to him before he disappears. He will then stealth and get behind you and then do same again and hit you for 600. Stealth kite you around, death to a 1000 nails etc.

So any changes to the current block rate I'll concede it dropping 10-15% for a 3k ranged uninteruptible interupt for hero. A stun would be good if I stand still for say 3 secs.

For example I as a hero only attack...

Any caster in 500 range. Once I get to them, I generally win.
Any archer I see that I can get in melee range of. That means that the twat that shoots me from 2.5k range I aint gonna fight cos I CANT.

Any visible melee. I wont beat them all.

Well I play a hero also, and I just laugh when archers attack me, they can't do sh*t, I just face them and I could stand there laughing to myself forever tbh, sure they can get away, but if you play somewhat okay they sure as h*ll wont kill you either, you don't even have to play well tbh.

And yes, blocking everything is just silly, someone with only Bowspec can't do sh*t to anyone with a shieldspec, if the shielduser aint the n00biest noob there is.

The archer needs to be able to get a better chance to get by shield, atleast abit more then now, because atm it's just silly how much you block archers ;D

Still I myself just avoide shield users when on Ranger so well I don't care to much, but I think it's abit silly.

 

[xxManiacxx]

sorry, that wasn't directed at you, my apologies if it came across that way.
It was directed at previous posters.

ah oki hard to know sometimes (or maybe I´m just dumb)

 

[Elrandhir]

I agree that the bow line is considered weak when comparing stealth war, but it's competitive versus visible war. Rangers can deal high dmg versus visible targets, but ofc they suck more or less versus other stealthers cause once in melee, they can't do anything at all. Sucky or a tradeoff? Also the shield comment. Well, what do archers want? We can try that irl if you want. I carry around an iron door in front of me and you try to hit me with a bow from front, ok?

If you'r going to talk about RL thing and Bow versus shield, well haha then the one hitting the shield that much should change weapon of choice, or the shield user can see into the future.

The one useing the bow would insta kill the shield user tbh.
So tbh I don't think dragging it into a real life thing is a good idea, because that wont favour the shield user ;D

Rofl at carrying an Iron door though =P

Can't really do RL comparisons though, because then many things would get wierd it's a fantasy game after all.

 

[Azathrim]

considering the way i have seen you perform, i am quite sure i was correct in the assumption that you cannot compete vs rangers and your comments are basically whine directed at this, and if you have trouble vs scouts i truely feel sorry for you

And who are you?
I don't have trouble with the solo scout. The high rank, melee based scouts are usually a good fight. It's rare to find solo scouts though, but that's another story. Notice my previous suggestion was meant to help scout melee as well.

I have no trouble admitting I have an extremely tough fight against RR5+ melee based rangers. Just the mere fact I see those go toe to toe with mercs tells something about how much melee rangers needs a nerf.

you obviously have never played an archers and fought assassins and thus have a very one sided view

Yeah, I have... granted, prior to 1.82. And yeah, SB's were free RP, infils not so much, but still possible targets.

Assassins melee is far superiour to archers especially down to dual weild, evade 7 and poisons

Yeah, one would -think- assassin melee is far superior. Afterall, ain't the archer supposed to be the ranged stealther?

Assassin Pros
Evade 7
Debuff Poisons
dual weild
Artifact Choices
CS Styles
dotmine
remedy

Archer
IP
FZ
PD
Winged Helm

How is artifact choises an assassin advantage? Where is the studded for archers?

Now when an assassin hits you be it from PA or debuff you will loose 600 damage and you will have a dot on you ticking for 80-100 and a dotmine 80-100 and you will be debuffed so that any attack you do hits for a lot less, thats if it hits through evade7 with your seer weapon skill opening you upto all kinds of off evade styles.

A dot ticking for 80-100? So that's an assassin with lifebane and viper2+. And next patch RoTA will be a 20min buff, cutting that dotmine heavily.
Assassins and Archers in general have the same weapon skill. Exception is hunters that have slightly more than all of them.

Now the only way for an archers to fight back from this is to purge, and if the assassins has a clue he will reapply poisons. So bascially an archer is going to get ripped to peices toe to toe with an assassins so needs to use tools like IP/FZ to win with are both on a 15 minute timer, somtimes you will need to use both of these depending on the target, obviously either can use battler, and maybe malice which you cant get if your a hunter.

And the thing is... he -can- use IP/FZ, which lands him the win. Where is the assassin counter to this?

Ontop of that an assassin can use remedy so no procs like debuffs will work. Also you have damage absorbation from PHN/WH which Sbs can get also and damage absorbation from PD which can be bypassed by simply switching to a legendary

Remedy doesn't stop procs, so no effect for archers. SB's have PHN, no assassin got WH. In fact, it's the archers that got WH.

Please get your facts straight before starting to spout nonsense kid.

And yeah, you can use a legendary to bypass PD. But guess what? The archer can also got AoM and have buffbot resists / champion resists.

so basically your asking for a lot of archers defense to be taken leaving them ONLY FZ to fight back with against assassins with there arsenal of tools?

No, I was suggesting improving archery which this thread was about. Turning archers into ... well, archers again! And yes, the problem is most profound with melee rangers and a slightly lesser degree melee hunters.

In my opinion, the melee ranger is king of the hill for the stealther melee (ignoring mincers here).

and you wonder why i take the tone that you are clueless and stupid

Considering you lack getting basic facts straight, yeah... I do.

 

[Meradesh]

Any nerf to their melee abilities will release archers to stick on zergs/towers with no choice, that's boring on archer POV and generates an insane amount of "tower/assist/adders/leecher monkeys whines".
Lower the stealth detection check from 3 seconds to 1 second would help bow specced archers to solo, maybe lowering camo timer or do it work as a normal timer (no reset each combat).
That and elemental dmg with arrows/bows would do tho.

 

[Elrandhir]

Ohwell I can live without IP and PD tbh, don't have any of them, both are mostly needed in melee neways, PD is still nice against other archers ofc, but still I can do without it, so if Improveing Bowline, sure why not.

Both are great, but still playable without them.

Ofcourse the Archers would be greatly nerfed when comming in melee, but if the Bow improvements is good enough it will make up for the loss.

 

[Succi]

Improve archery , remove WH IP MOS and PD


fair deal

 

[Elrandhir]

Improve archery , remove WH IP MOS and PD


fair deal

Haha Succi, nerf you'r suggestion tbh, insta kill on every arrow then and Sure you have a deal.

Still I could trade it all off except for MoS as it has helped me much =P

 

[censi]

If as an archer you expect to kill a hero/warrior/arms with 50+shield and some mob then you won't. You can cry all you like, shield is in the game to block melee/range attacks. It doesnt block nukes, so a hero for example struggles against virtually every caster if the range at inc is 1000+. Hero is a VISIBLE target you can not choose your opponent...

Shield does particularly well vs archers, its just the way it is, but it doesnt actualy kill you does it...... Shield does fuck all vs ranged casters and doesn't do well vs dual wield. To take on a merc as a shield user isn't good, usually end up eating dust. For an archer your worst nemesis is a shield user.

You see what will happen is scout A will shoot you from 2k and bypass shield hit you for 600. He then might stun you going by the balloney mentioned above and then hit you for 3-400. You cant get to him before he disappears. He will then stealth and get behind you and then do same again and hit you for 600. Stealth kite you around, death to a 1000 nails etc.

So any changes to the current block rate I'll concede it dropping 10-15% for a 3k ranged uninteruptible interupt for hero. A stun would be good if I stand still for say 3 secs.

For example I as a hero only attack...

Any caster in 500 range. Once I get to them, I generally win.
Any archer I see that I can get in melee range of. That means that the twat that shoots me from 2.5k range I aint gonna fight cos I CANT.

Any visible melee. I wont beat them all.

I get attacked without choice by
Any assasin
Any archer who has decent range
Every caster 500+range away
Any warlock/sm wherever they are
All meleers in melee range

I lose to all decent casters that have 1k range on start unless I'm exceptionally lucky or have everything up and can stun them without purge being up.

I lose to some assasins
I dont lose to archers unless I play crap
I lose to some meleers

Can you see the point I'm getting to?

I have a very very very very tiny bit of sympathy for archers vs casters as I do feel that that should be the targets they should have some advantage against from range. Therefore any marginal improvements they get if they are vs casters I can live with.

its a very clueless post tbh.

like you dont really understand where this post is going because you dont have a feel for like what archery is like.

when you actually know what its like u get to a place where u can accurately comment on it. You comment is coming from such a different place, like the fact u suggest in your post u eat archers alive, and u feel slightley sorry for archer versus mage dynamics basically just confirms this.

u also say which classes u do well against and which ones kill you.

well for a bow archer they could kind of say I get killed by everything!

honestly bow is too weak for a primary offensive spec line. A huge part of the archer community are basically just stealthed tank spec, the bow is just to pull targets and let them now your there. that tells you summin is wrong.

The nightshade castable DD prolly does better average damage over 10 seconds as an average accross all the opponents. (considering how many classes have shield, or pbt, or bt and brittles)

I dont mind like peeps having an opinion is just its like pretty clear cut obvious that the archery system is nerfed to buggery. this was about discussing nice ways u could adress it, not say like "your supposed to be gimped! you have range!!!" because that arguement dont cut it.

 

[Trunks]

before bringing in improvements the archery line needs to be more equalized accross the realms...at the moment scouts can shoot people from towers on bridges with some pretty nice dmg, rangers do pretty sick dmg, and hunters to sweet fa with their low range and low dmg. i dont think adding abilities to a messed up part of the game would help, i'd like to see something done about having to wait so long to be able to shoot maybe take away the double click to release and make it just one, like how casting works..

 

[Puppet]

Improve archery , remove WH IP MOS and PD


fair deal

No MoS and no IP means guaranteed dead for any archer when some assassin is around. No way of avoiding PA, no way of finding the assassin, the assassin will be the top dog (once again).

Archery has slowly been nerfed, another 5% nerf in 1.83 (with the resist tables being changed to 5% vulnerability). Dont forget the big fat nerf of Archery-damage reduced by WS/CON-debuff poisons which hurted slam/FZ scouts ALOT.

Ofcourse archers without IP is just a stupid idea: Enervating + Viper3 Lifebane + DoT-mine alone is like 1500-1600 dmg done.

 

[censi]

scouts can shoot people from towers on bridges with some pretty nice dmg, rangers do pretty sick dmg, and hunters to sweet fa with their low range and low dmg.

what is it with all these completely clueless comments.

I mean its just such a retarded statement its unreal. sorry.

 

[Puppet]

Also, I think leaving all *FREE* defense in for assassins, but removing all *RA-COSTLY* defense for archers somehow abit weird.

I just get the feeling 'I died to an archer once, nerf!' whenever I hear assassins propose such stuff.

 

[Castus]

Ok, So we all know there is a problem with the archery system. I list what I feel are the main problem.

a) Miss rates.
b) Interupt system (and sure shots lack of effectiveness)
c) Inherant archery class defenses
d) Crit shot system is pretty poor when its should be the archers main foil.
e) Volley, quite possibly the most pathetic ability in the game.

----------------------

What I would NOT like to see is mythic addressing the issue my significantly increasing archery dps and defense pentration. I feel archers would become too much of an overpowered pest if they could consistently rip through HP from range. (and even more annoying in siege)

Generally speaking I think archery needs help versus face to face scenario with casters, where I honestly feel it can be suicide to even try and take a mage down this way. I think they need to also look at shield and block rates.

Some suggestions:

a) Remove crit shot as we know it. In the bow line there should be 4 Special Bow opening styles (20 30 40 50). These bow styles can only be done from stealth so they are opening attacks. At 20 give a Stun shot opener with reduced damage (half or summin) and short stun (3 seconds maybe). At 30 give a snare shot opener with a 4 second 35% snare (damage reduced by 25%). At 40 give Power shot (crit shot) make the draw time on this large (like 9 secs+) and when you draw you destealth (this is the compramise, this power shot you are really focusing all your attention on, standing unstealthed for this long aint gonna be pretty) but for this when you fire the crit it penetrates all forms of defense (shield, BT, PBT, evade anything), the hit bonus should be extremely high so that missing a crit is rare thing, and it isnt effected by your target moving or whatever. I think a crit system where you literally have your arse out in the wind for 10 seconds but if you manage to do this your shot is gonna "hurt" your target is a good thing. The 50 Bow opening style should be something very nice and something that really tempts people to go this high. I would perhaps suggest putting "sure shot" here but reworking sure shot so that simply it doesnt get a damage reduction penalty. IE if you have 50 bow you get auto matic sure shot. This would be very nice versus casters. I still personally wouldnt spec 50 bow to get it, but those that do I think would get some use out of this versus casters. (extreme use it would be good)

b) Volley. The dps on this is a tab comical. Raise it and increase the range. I reckon you would need about 10 archery volleying the same GT before they even noticed anything

c) interupts. The higher your bow spec the quicker you recover from an interupt. If you got bugger all bow then it should take like a loonnng time to recover (4-5 secs) If you got 50 bow then it should take you a tiny negliable amount of time to recover, almost to the point where you could whip a shot in between swing V a slow 2hand user (even though it wouldnt be practical).

d) Introduce a bow style that chains off of Ice storm or diamond back (or hunter rear stun, or slam) so that a hybrid can actually like stun, whip out the bow and fire off this style and then go back to the melee. (legolas style in LOTR). Make this style do decent damage because it will be reasonable hard to pull this off, put a bleed on it or summin.

e) positional bow shots. IE if a target is running you get a "back buster" style that could do something usefull (slow them down). Chest buster front arc shot for small damage increase. dunno.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Ok thats prolly enough or we will all be little john rambos. please quit with nerf melee rangers! this is really about solving the melee ranger "problem" give rangers a reason to spec bow and all those fotm blade rangers with like 50 cd and 13bow will be gone and you will have proper hybrids and full snipers, who feel they can no longer neglect archer in their spec template and playstyle.

just thought it would be a decent discussion, what would you like to see happen?

Finally the day has arrived when censi posts some sense!Give more ras related to bow aswell!:worthy: /repped

 

[Trunks]

what is it with all these completely clueless comments.

I mean its just such a retarded statement its unreal. sorry.

scouts DO hit you from towers on bridges, their range really needs to be decreased.

rangers DO hit for nice dmg with bows, i guess they have close to the same range as hunters?

and hunters DO have low range and low dmg due to having the quickest bows which is pointless as everyone has capped quick nowadays.

 

[Tesla Monkor]

I love threads like these. Someone posts a number of interesting changes to a class, and immediately you see people jump in:

a) The assassins who feel slighted that they're not totally king of the hill in stealtherland anymore and carry a grudge about it, so they come with 'insightful' suggestions that turn every archer into RP freemeals

b) Casters who know sod-all about archery mechanics and only see the bottomline - he shot me for 500 damage, so he has to be nerfed.

c) General clueless trolls who once wandered too close to a tower or otherwise made themselves easy rps to a lucky archer.

The problem with the archery classes is that archery isn't worth speccing in. It is pidgeonholing yourself into one possible role. Hence the reason why so many archers spec melee instead. The changes suggested are to archery and so high in the specline that the meleers will NOT benefit from it.

It's all about choices - archery dps is pretty sad. It's marginally above 1handed dps and leagues below dual-wield, two-handed and caster dps. The step where caster defenses were reduced for assassins was the first step in bringing casters back down to earth - I'm pretty sure more steps will follow.

If you're just trolling because you don't want archers to have choices, or carry a grudge because you can't play the way YOU want to.. tough cookies. There's more people playing the game than you.

I'm convinced that casters and support are to be the archer's target of choice, before other stealthers and tanks. I can live with tanks blocking a lot of arrows (eventhough the actual blockrate is silly), we can always decide not to attack them.

I don't really think that removing critshots is a good idea - don't take away options if you want to improve a class. But additional style attacks high in the bow spec line would be nice. As would slow bows for hunter be.