how2archer

Alright, to start off, I'm horrible at keeping things short. I'll likely go off with sentences that are too long and/or unnecessary, but bear with me here.

To introduce myself if you haven't seen me around on CTF, I'm this kid in a hoodie who goes around shooting arrows at people for fun. Introduction finished.

Let's get right off to it, shall we? So archer of course has its strengths. If you care about CTF enough to even be reading this thread, you've probably been headshotted (sniped) once or twice, and you may find it very annoying. That's okay. Since archer is conveniently free to play, I'll teach you how to fight fire with fire to battle that annoyingness. (You may be wondering what weaknesses archer has. There really aren't many. I'll get to that.) The way I'll be doing this is kind of going topic by topic, with absolutely no smooth transitions in between; just dumping out some knowledge from my tired brain.

First tip: never underestimate the power of your bow. A full-charged bow will send the arrow flying out of your render entity-rendering distance (the distance past which players seem to disappear), and beyond that. A half-charged bow goes surprisingly farther than you might think. A fact that you should remember: when fire a weakly-charged arrow, the arrow may appear to land short of your target, but Minecraft registers the arrow's actual location to go farther than that. You may get accused of hacking as you get good at this, but then all pros are accused of hacks.

Second and probably what should be the first tip: don't bowspam. Meaning don't fire relentless, reckless shots until you inevitably hit your target. It really ticks people off and it's a waste of arrows, and you never gain any skill or practice that way.

Third important tip: Your bow is not your only weapon. You have a stone sword, and you're covered in chainmail. Chainmail armor is actually more durable than one may think; it's just shy of the protection of iron armor. And a stone sword does a lot of damage if you use it well. You also have four steaks; I believe that's the third most steaks out of any class, pyro having five or six steaks (I don't remember at the moment). You're fit for PvP, so go for it when necessary.

4th tip from @Gh0st__ : if you run out of arrows (which is highly unlikely) go to your flag room, occasionally there should be a medic there who will be healing everyone. That medic should restore your items if he/she knows what to do.

Hitboxes. (This is a little technical, all you need is the last sentence and the next paragraph.) This is a rather good thing to know about when you're an archer. Minecraft attaches specific boxes to every entity in the game: arrows, players, chickens, etc. These "hit boxes" are the areas that must be affected in order for the player to take damage. Arrows also have hitboxes, which must come in contact with a player's hitbox to hit them. The arrow's hitbox is much thicker than the actual arrow, so don't let the game's looks deceive you. This is useful when you're shooting at a player who's hiding behind a two-block-high shelter. Shoot directly above their head (jumping before the shot helps a lot), and if the arrow doesn't stick in a block, it'll collide with the player's head and get you a hit.

That's rather specific, though. In a much shorter explanation, hitboxes make targets slightly larger than they actually are. Larger targets, easier hits. I know, it's great. You don't have to shoot directly at your target and nail them right in the chest to hit them; like with Call of Duty logic, you only have to get within a foot of the target and you'll hit them.

Like I said, Minecraft's looks can be rather deceiving sometimes. This is especially so when shooting a moving target. By common sense, you need to give a moving target a lead; shoot where they're going to be, not where they currently are. But a certain thing about the game affects this common sense. When hitting a moving target, you must give that normal lead and a little bit extra. This is because of server-to-client response time, for both you and the other player. In shortest terms, there's a delay between when you release the arrow and when it really fires, as well as when you see the arrow hit the player and when the player sees the arrow hit them. Just trust me on this, you need to give more lead than what you brain tells you to be logical.

Still on the subject of moving targets, we come to soldiers. They're really pesky sometimes, with their unlimited wallspamming swords. They think they're so cool and can dodge your arrows by flying into the air. News flash: you can beat them. I said to give extra lead to a moving target, but that applies to running targets, not flying/falling. Say the soldier is on its way down from a leap to the skies; the trick here is to not just predict where they'll be at the time your arrow gets there, but to shoot a good four blocks below that. Usually the easiest way to do this is fire the shot right when they reach the peak of their ascent. When they're going upward, the same thing applies: shoot fairly far above them.

Now we come to ninjas. These guys can be a little tricky, but they're more vulnerable than you'd think. You can usually three-shot them with your stone sword, and a lot of the time a ninja will come at you with low health, in which case a full-charged arrow can kill them instantly; if not, it'll damage them very well. But when they go invisible, ooh, they really get pesky then.

No worries, here's how you exploit them. When a ninja is at a distance and they see you and hide behind their invisibility powers, there's something 90% of ninjas never realize: they can still get nailed by an arrow. It's likely that they were already on the move if when they saw you; if not, most of them are smart enough to move at least a few blocks after going invis. But they almost always go in a straight line, or at least in some predictable direction. I'd say you have a 25% chance of correctly predicting where they went; shooting to that place is up to you.

Perhaps they're already close when they meet you, though. Some ninjas will take you on right away; most ninjas see archers as easy to kill. That's only true for the kids who freak out and try to shoot them at point-blank range. In this case, just take them on with a sword, use your steak when necessary. But then there's those smarter ninjas who go invis when they're in close range. They're still perfectly vulnerable to arrows. Once they go invis, pretend you lost them and act like an idiot by frantically looking around; when you've made up your mind where they are, turn and shoot.

Predicting where they are: At least 30% of the time they're right behind you. If not, they're either east or west of you. For those who don't feel like moving much, they're either northeast or northwest of you. I know it seems that the odds stack up against you as I list these, and it's not guaranteed that you'll win that fight, but it sure feels good to guess it right.

Elves and mages. I'll keep this one nice and quick. Elves: keep shooting them, their block doesn't last forever. Take advantage of when they un-shift to move around. Mages: open up the fight with a full-charged bow shot if possible, use your sword a lot, and strafe. There's a darn good chance you'll die anyway. Don't lose heart.

Chemists. You may or may not know, a full-charged shot to a chemist will deal 8-9 hearts of true damage (or so I read an hour ago; I know from recently getting chemist, arrows really hurt). A single blow from your sword after you damage them will KO them, if they're too slow to heal. Otherwise, they may not have wanted to waste a health pot on just two hearts missing from their health bar, in which case you can killshot even without a headshot. Your chances of killing a skilled chemist with your sword are minimal.

Other archers. Aside from mages, they have to be an archer's greatest weakness. You're exactly as vulnerable to them as they are to you. 1v1s are fun, though, once you get the hang of it. The key is in both "dodging" arrows and recognizing patterns.

Dodging arrows. This means to move in very unpredictable fashions to mess up the opposing archer, make them incorrectly guess where to place their next shot. You can't rely on this alone, though; they'll hit you sooner or later. Try to randomize as much as possible: left, left, right, left, right, right, right, left, right, right, left, left, right, left--you get it. It really messes with pattern finding for your opponent.

In some cases, you don't always have to dodge. Always look for the trajectory of the arrow that's coming after you; if its path is destined not to hit you, then dodging is not only pointless but dangerous. It really sucks to walk straight into an arrow that wouldn't have hit you in the first place.

Firing back. 80% of archers don't really get the idea of dodging arrows. Some will just stand there for an easy kill. Others will try to dodge arrows, but they'll alternate their movements: left, right, left, right, left, right; very predictable. If you're good at hitting locations, you should get them in two or three shots. As they move around, try not to focus on their bodies, but rather on the places they'll be moving to. It makes things much easier to pick a single, unmoving location to shoot at than it is to shoot a moving target, right?

Some archers are more skilled that that, though. They'll be fairly unpredictable in their movements. If both you and your opponent are skilled with arrow dodging, sorry to tell you, it comes down to who can guess right first. This is what makes knowing your targets important. Try to recognize their Minecraft skin from a distance, learn what they look like. Then pick up on their style. For example, until recently, I had a habit of dodging to my right far more often than dodging to the left; that got me killed a lot. If you can learn the player and exploit their habits, you'll have a better chance of winning. (As Ch4os says below, though, habits don't last forever. It's only a temporary chance boost.)

It's not really a stalemate, though. Quickdraw is an important factor. I'm too lazy to dive into this, so go check out @Deplicasus 's thread on quickdrawing here. Pretty useful tips. Now that you've hopefully read that post, I'll just tell you that using quickdraw in combination with good arrow dodging and location guessing will make you a pretty unstoppable archer.

(Useful info on archer fights, take a look at LordCh4os' comment below. It's the second one and it's fairly long, so it's hard to miss.)

You may be wondering, "Why does this Pookey kid assume that I'm so dang good at shooting at things? Why does he give me tips that only a skilled bowman could use?" My tips aren't going to magically make you an amazing archer. It takes practice; personally I found a natural talent in it, but I was one crappy archer at the start compared to where I am now. It doesn't matter what it is you're getting good at--anything worthwhile takes effort, any useful skill takes practice.

I will be truly shocked if anyone tells me they read this whole thing. I hope this comes of use to all you aspiring archers out there!

 

That's a good one, I'll go add that. And I did indeed learn from your tips, each day I practice a little more with implementing quickdraw.

 

xD Come on Chims, you know I'm no better than you in 1v1s. And that's a good idea, I'll start paying attention to what I do in games for recovs and stuff.

 

-1, you used the same pic twice. xD