Archer Change Idea (Update)

For damage output the sword is better anyway, but besides the point... 1). has been suggested many times already. I always ask people this, but exactly what do you consider to be a "short" cooldown. Too short and nothing will happen, too long and you risk making archer too weak.
2). is more unique, I'm not a fan of the forced sword switch though. What if you wanted to headshot another player whilst 1 was attacking you? In theory you could have constant ninjas hiding near a group of archers and they'd all be auto switched to a sword. The ninja could move in an out of the 5 block range, forcing archers to keep switching to the sword every time the boundary gets crossed, virtually disabling the use of a bow without even being seen. Would mean archer is totally neutralised with 1 invisible ninja.

 

I agree with chaos. Also, archer really isn't good at sword combat because it has weak armour and a weak sword. It would be pretty much useless without its bow against all classes except ninja and assassin.

 

Archer is a ranged class, it's not intended for close range combat. The whole idea of the punch on the bow is to bow spam the **** out of people since the entire idea is range.

 

Pff why bother? We all know archer is for noobs

 

Just make it so that the bow has to be fully charged for it to fire. Would "fix" bowspam, not too long of a duration, would slightly reduce headshots. I'm sure many archers wouldn't mind.

 

What's the problem with, "Bowspam"? Have you tried Archer? How many times have you been targetted? When you get low, you keep fighting, or do you turn around to shoot to get them back further?

 

You get knocked back, your sprint gets cut and they run their ass away.

Yes.

Countably many times, although I'd have a hard time keeping track, not because I'm not capable of counting but because of the absurdly high number over the past 5 years.

I don't f-ing run, okay?

My point is, archer should be able to be easily killed close range by more classes. Right now it's pretty much mage that stands a chance but then again that's a common weakness shared by all classes without some form of extra maneuverability (a weakness isn't really a weakness if it's shared by the majority of classes). Ninja takes a few attempts.
I'm not saying archer's bow should be USELESS at close range, the punch still knocks them back if you land a fully powered shot, allowing you to run your ass but it shouldn't be spamming arrows and hoping for the best.

 

Lol thats you, and you don't main archer. I don't main it neither, but from people that do main it, they know that bowspam can save them a lot of time. Simply, hit them a few times with your sword and land the arrows. Archer is supposed to be able to protect themself's. I mean, honestly what is a stone sword going to do to you? If you die to a stone sword, and you aren't ninja or assassin, you need to rethink your pvp skills.

 

Define bowspam

 

I'm really starting to enjoy this conversation already

 

This, horrible and crazy old, video answers all the above.

1). This is the problem with bowspam
2).I have tried archer
3). I obviously get targetted a bit
4). This is what you do when you get low.

 

Cleary that is an unexperienced player, so this video doesn't mean much of anything since the only people who care are some regular players that can't dodge arrows.

 

I mained Archer/Assassin for 2 years. While it was a while back I still play archer tho not nearly as often.

If it were my choice I wouldn't even give archer a sword, slowness 1 and not allow it to spam arrows. Just my 2 cents though and will never happen. A stone sword isn't as terrible as one might think, just saying.

Firing arrows as fast as ****ing possible AKA spam tapping the right mouse button to fire arrows repeatedly and hope you can hit your target in front of you. If you can pull it halfway, release and hit me every single time, sure, I'm triggered but that takes more skill than shoot and hope for the best.

I'm not going to respond more to this post because clearly you people don't like me

 

Lol idk where you got "don't like me" from, I'm just telling you the actual truth about Archer. It's annoying to play it now, since you get targetted. And your idea for Slowness I won't happen, that would be ridiculous if that happened. You would want to take away it's mobility, it's power to protect themselves, and if you take away their sword and give them slowness that would only result in more bowspam.

 

I guess it's about time I said where I stand on the issue.

Basically: I've "tried" archer, I wouldn't say hardcore targeted but almost every player would try to kill me given the chance, and it's situational at best.

It's more efficient to deal damage with a sword than with a bow. If you have some health and don't mind risking a bit, then the sword is easily the better method of dealing damage, and you'll much more likely be able to kill the enemy. Better to kill the enemy than waste time and end up dying cause you didn't deal enough damage when you had the chance (you can read about this here). Simply, unless you've got enough arrows (and are good enough to hit 100% of the time) you're very unlikely to kill the enemy player with bowspam before they kill you.

If you're low on health, you might gain a few seconds and a bit of extra damage without risk by bowspamming, but it's limited. With persistent targeting players, you can knock them back all you want, but they'll still come for you. You've got only so many arrows, so much time and this inevitably wastes both. I'll also mention even if you do buy yourself some time, if they're targeting you and still following you you're not going to be that useful to your team, spending the majority of your time (and resources) just bowspamming back the enemy to gain another couple seconds.

Strategically, sometimes it is better to let yourself die. You can get fresh supplies, get away from the targeting opposition and be able to do something useful for your team. Unless there's no way for you to recover (for example) if you were to die (say you couldn't catch up before they capped), there's no point in bowspamming. You'd gain some time, but most of the extra you'd be spending dealing with a targeting player. You'd just be attempting to farm a kdr stat (in a way that usually doesn't work, I might add).

That would make archer more annoying than it already is. If you don't like being camped by an archer, one easy way of getting yourself camped more is to take away their ability to move. They're not mobile so they'll just have to hide, camping you more. Given archer would have no sword and be unable to spam arrows. it would literally have no means of short ranged defense. You could have 1 ninja camp the class and it would be utterly useless in any game. You'd make the class effectively so underpowered I doubt anyone would even use it, especially since it could not run away with slowness 1.

The more annoying ones are the players that take half a thought to actually aim (if you're bowspamming and miss everything then you're not going to be annoying, just look ridiculous). It's precisely why the tactic is found to be incredibly annoying. It doesn't do masses of damage efficiently, but it takes ages to kill the player and is incredibly annoying for the attacker. It also takes most of the aim out of the equation (if you can't hit an enemy 1 block in front of you, then you really need to work on your aim!). For a chemist like you, any arrow hit is going to hurt, but just remember other class mains don't have this weakness, and can take a lot more than a chemist could.

I don't hate you but ok

Being targeted is annoying, just as I expect being targeted as an engineer is annoying. Things aren't likely to change on that front even with a rework

Agreed, too underpowered and it sounds more like an idea born out of hatred for archer than the necessity for balance

Except you couldn't even do that, he said he'd prevent bowspam too. That isn't more bowspam, that's literally a sitting duck. Archer would essentially be a slightly faster dwarf.

@JayOG you said earlier that bowspam saves a lot of time. I'm here to tell you that it fundamentally doesn't. If you died, respawned and moved to a new location, that could take 30 seconds maybe. A bowspam war could easily take a lot longer than that. You could save time (say the enemy is a new player, doesn't dodge and gets headshot after a few seconds with repeated shots), but against a strafing player it's not really all that good for it. Unless you're fighting a chemist (or a highly weakened player from another class) you're probably going to be wasting time even if you do end up killing them.

@_KOkeacola_ pointed out that unless you're a ninja or assassin, archers really don't have a lot going for them short range and this is a GOOD thing. Archer is SUPPOSED to be weak short range. With that said, @0xF7 is NOT right in that the reason the punch is on there is to bowspam the hell out of any short range target. The idea is to knock the enemy back with maybe 1 or 2 arrows, allowing you to attempt to make a getaway (or you know, stand and fight in a better position, archers do that too). Remember, each arrow could do a full 10 hearts of damage. This means that every arrow you use for the purpose of bowspamming, you're becoming less and less damage efficient. @_KOkeacola_ you're NOT right in saying archer has terrible armor, the chain is relatively strong compared to other classes. Archer isn't weak short range because of armor, it's because of low damage output (that sword isn't good even if it is better than the bow). @Salty_Ivan archer CAN be killed short range with it's low damage output by the majority of classes that can strafe an arrow or two. With that said I do agree that they are too good short range. I do think your opinion is somewhat coloured by the fact you are a chemist main.

Now I've said all that, I think you guys are getting way too caught up in the subjectivities of your particular class mains. Some of you find the targeting a pain in the ass (maybe because you aren't used to that level of targeting on your main) or find bowspam to be more annoying relative to the majority (because you main chemist and it does *1.5 damage). Each player is going to have relative differences and thereby going to think different tactics are acceptable or not. Maybe instead of trying to argue for a point of view, we get some kind of opinion poll up about what the majority of the community think, whether bowspam is annoying and should be changed or not. Until that thread is made, I think we can all agree that from a recent survey, archer is clearly seen as overpowered whether that be due to bowspam or not.

 

I guess it's kinda biased considering I main Chemist...
But still, Archer literally has 0 weaknesses.

 

That's where you're wrong. Archer also counters Archer(counters itself). Ninja is also another weakness. Mage will literally cause it hell. Heavy (if the person can dodge arrows) 3-4 shots it. Soldier can climb to avoid it's arrows. Medic can cobweb it. Elf can shield it's arrows and send them back. Assassin one shots everything. Chemist is probably the weakest against it.

 

everything here is correct, aside from chemist. Dwarves are sitting ducks.