Why does archer have the third strongest armor, when it's a ranged class?

You're going to try.

Excuse me while I out-essay your essay. There will be no TL-DR, so sit down, grab some tea, and listen the hell up.

Now, let's deal with this 'fallacy' straight away, as you use this term throughout your argument. Currently, your comparison is slightly flawed because you equate the amount of skill you require as a heavy to the amount of skill you need as an archer exactly. The problem with this comparison is that you do not take into account the sheer amount of factors against a heavy clearing a flag room, factors that archers do not deal with even a quarter as much (approximately).

A heavy who wishes to clear a flag room has to deal with 4 different instakill classes, 3 of which can only deal their damage close range. Due to the way that a heavy has to deal their damage (a diamond sword in CQC), the heavy has to be constantly aware of each possible instakill and take steps to avoid them or eliminate them. While they would have team mates helping them out, the sheer number of players in a flag room at any given time will usually guarantee the Heavy will have to fight somebody. Disregarding instakills, a heavy in CQC WILL take hits. The diamond armour might mitigate that damage quite a bit, but the heavy has to have a very considerable amount of skill to reduce the amount of damage they take in their repetitive fights. Essentially, a heavy must be constantly aware of the multitude of threats (even if it's just through numbers) that they face as they clear a flag room, and this takes considerable amounts of practice, luck, and skill.

An archer who wants to clear a flag room has almost none of these factors for more than a few seconds at a time. The only instakill they are truly threatened by are other archers, they do not need to focus on avoiding damage even half as much as a heavy would, as while they can't take as much damage as a heavy, they are not exposed to as much potential to take damage as a heavy is. Not only that, a heavy, even with a diamond sword, has to make multiple swings at somebody to kill them, while their enemy's armour can mitigate their damage and they can scarf down steaks to make the fight last longer. An archer only has to get one lucky hit to completely eliminate that player regardless of armour rating or remaining steak, and they have nearly infinite chances to get that shot every two seconds.

So, while a heavy has the potential to clear a room, and archer can do that as well, and with less threat to themselves.

Disregarding the fact that you yourself state that they have a larger health pool (disregarding armour) than heavies in melee, you vastly overestimate the weakness of an archer in CQC range. An archer, if they are firing at full speed, can shoot approximately one shot every two seconds. This means that, even though an archer has the potential to miss a critical shot on a flag carrier where they had a few seconds window to hit, an archer playing mid or defensive can very easily exercise accuracy through sheer firepower. To use a gun analogy, it's like an archer has a rapid-fire sniper rifle that has no recoil.

As well, even though an archer does have a weakness in it's melee ability, an archer does not have to fully charge their bow to use their knockback to keep people OUT of melee range. This means that, in the time it would take a melee class to close on an archer, an archer has multiple chances to knock back that attacker a considerable distance and deal damage that the attacker must then compensate for. And, while it does not happen often, an archer can knock that attacker back into headshot range, thus successfully eliminating a player, potentially without even taking any damage in the attack. This is a trait that is present in all the instakill classes, however the other three at least require the player to get within retaliation distance. AND, even if the archer does take some damage in the fight, their massive healthpool of 4 steaks means that the archer can worry less about their healthpool quickly running out.

An archer's instakill is actually the most powerful one out of all of them, if you think about it. I mean, a pyro only has so many shots on their bow, and they still have to get into the middle of a melee to even have an opportunity to damage their players. Also, they must first set the players on fire, then switch to their axe, then actually hit the player with a first hit. It may not be difficult, but there's a chance at retaliation for every instant kill they land.
A dwarf has a huge amount of power behind their hits even without an instakill, and an assassin gets hit while using their instakill ability, they die no matter how powerful the hit is. Not only that, they can land their instakill and STILL die because he got unlucky around an engie's turret or something.

All an archer has to worry about is the slight potential that somebody will make it to them, and other archers. That's it. There's no chance to block, negate, or retaliate against their instakill, for the most part.

Even though an archer might not be nailing all of their instant kills, an archer generally has many more opportunities to land their shots than you seem to think. Even a couple lucky shots into the middle of a melee can land an archer 2 or 3 kills without the archer ever having to put themselves at risk. An archer's instakill is not balanced by their opportunity to miss, as they have 128 opportunities to hit, per life.

Funnily enough, an archer has a slightly better advantage against ninjas than any other class. This is because an archer can hit a ninja with their bow, even while they're invisible. Admittedly, it takes a lot of luck and a lot of spam, but if you land the lucky shot you can significantly damage the unarmoured ninja, something that few other classes (chemists who are willing to spam pots, elves, and pyros) have. I've not played much against elves, but I can say that I will consider an elf a legitimate counter to archer.

I covered most of this above. Still, I will point out that the only thing you can really list as a defense for archer is 'don't get hit'. I find this funny because it's the same argument I used to make while I argued for archers. Still, 'don't get hit' doesn't count as a defense because every class is countered by simply not getting hit.

The classes you listed are kind funny. While a soldier can outmaneuver an archer, they only have their ability to pop into the air, which is relatively easy to learn to counter and actually just allows the archer more time to hit/flee the soldier. A chemist takes massive damage from an archer even without a headshot, so they're still quite vulnerable. I mentioned the other already.

Heavies with skilled users are powerhouses, I agree wholeheartedly. However, I mentioned above that for a heavy to be a powerhouse, they have to know their class very intimately, know their maps and tricks, and know how to effectively counter multiple classes at once. Under these crazy circumstances, and with a bit of luck, a heavy will usually manage an 8-9 killstreak on average for a basic game (based on my own experiences watching heavies and personally ending the damn streakers)
For an archer to get the same amount of kills they need to pick a good place to hide and fire randomly into a mass of players for a bit. Doing this, archers can make killstreaks of 8-9 kills and higher without ever taking a single hitpoint of damage.
And this is why the problem's so prevalent with archers more than heavies. It takes much more work to get kills as a heavy than it does to get the same amount of kills or more as an archer. I've seen a few new players pick up archer for the first time and end up getting 7 killstreaks on a regular basis, only a couple games later. How often do you see a new heavy do that? A new soldier? Ninja?
Even better is that archer is the only free instakill, which means that this problem is compounded by every new player who picks up a bow and fires wildly into a melee.

Again, you make this false comparison, which I have covered twice now in my posts above. You don't see that, for a heavy to score their kills, they have to get up close and personal with the ninjas, the chemists, the soldiers, the assassins, and so on. A heavy might have an advantage over any singular class in even combat except maybe chemist and pyro, but a heavy usually runs into multiple of these classes and thus slowly runs out of healing power before they even reach an objective. Even then, a heavy properly playing a capping objective will take non-stop damage from the very flag they carry, disregarding their armour entirely.

An archer can and does sit back and take out 5 people just by sitting back and firing randomly without facing much threat. In fact, that's exactly why we can criticize it, because it's easy to learn and wields great power. No matter how you slice it, archer can do more damage with less practice than any heavy can. You don't exactly see new players pick up heavy for the first time and end up making repetitive kill streaks, yet new archers can and have! The power/skill ratio is the most important part of any class. It's why potspam is looked down upon, it's why eggspam is looked down upon, it's why pyro flintspam is looked down upon. They can deal massive damage and/or mayhem with little skill.

Nope, covered this above. It's not that all archers are excellent or that all maps are archer-friendly.
It's that archers don't need to be excellent and the maps don't need to be friendly. I'm arguing that archer's too powerful in too many contexts for any class to have.

Covered this above, it's not that their nailing every shot, it's that they have so many shots that it's not a problem for them to hit every one. Knockback on the archer's sword would be OK because it could represent an archer fighting defensively and would require the archer to get close to use it. The knockback can be spammed a good distance, quickly, without having to pull the bow back for more than a quarter of a second. All of your arguments on this topic are focused around the idea that archers miss many more shots than they really do.

Covered above.

Covered this above too. That isn't a false analogy, either. wrong use of a fallacy. Just because one person had this ability means that everyone CAN have this ability. I had no particular aiming skill before I played archer, and it didn't take long to learn it. It may take others longer to learn their aim, it may take other less time. Either way, the amount of time required is disproportionate to the amount of damage that even a mediocre archer can deal.

COVERED THIS ABOVE. Also, graveyard is bloody fantastic for archers with a couple good games experience on it, but I digress.

The fact is, all of your comparisons above were false comparisons, disregarding the relative amount of the archer class faces compared to others, and comparing the amount of skill a heavy needs to survive a gauntlet of damage to the amount of skill an archer needs to find a spot and fire constantly. Archer class represents the most powerful class in long range that has too much ability to avoid damage at all while still dealing excessive amounts of damage on people who can't fight back at all. You argued against a nerf by pointing to a single other class and saying 'see, this is powerful too', while again disregarding the sheer amount of circumstances against a heavy being alive after a killstreak compared to an archer. You falsely assumed that I was arguing from the position that 'every archer is good' and you pointed to potential as a limiting factor, while I in fact made my arguments from the point of view of relative skill levels, and pointed out that the potential for archer's power is exercised far more often than you believe. And while archer might not be the most broken class (chemists apparently still hold that title), they cannot be denied that they can and do pose a massive threat after a relatively short amount of time.

Thanks Admiral, I needed an excuse to exercise my arguing muscles.

Now excuse me while I drop this mic.

Also, I'll be at work until 6:30.

 

that story do....

 

Maybe because they dont find it that bad? Because they know what they are doing

 

I'm not really trying. If i wanted to make an argument id make one as big as admirals.

 

Shoot. I'd love to see it.

No sarcasm here, either, I'm legitimately curious to know why you could have argued properly but instead decided to just repeat yourself over and over.

 

Because this whole conversation has been repeated over and over again. The archer needs a nerf, or class needs a nerf, blah blah blah. I've been here since 1.4.7 or before, I've seen so many nerf/buff topics and convos on forums and in game its amazing.

 

I'd love to see a legitimate argument here. If you've got a good reason for completely ignoring everyone talking on the other side of the argument I'd love to here the reason for that too

so basically what you're saying here is that you will repeat yourself over and over again because you literally can't accept the fact that people are coming up with reasons and points for the other side of the argument?! Funnily enough, not everyone will share your opinion, and they'll likely choose to voice their opinions about it, adding evidence to back up what they're saying. Just because they don't share your opinion doesn't make the conversation worthless, the only thing that does that is an unfounded one.

 

I understand where they are coming from, even if its just because they want it nerfed. I dont care what evidence they may bring, Archer is balanced, and there is no way that archer is getting its instakill or anything nerfed, doesnt matter what evidence you may bring, the developers made archer what it is now, and it will stay that way. Its been the same as it always was in mcpvp and always will be the same now in brawl. Archer getting nerfed is like saying necro will get nerfed even more. Its not gonna happen.

 

This thread has gone off topic way too often,

Locked.
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