Archery really needs some love

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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Ok, so from what I have read, the devs said they want archery to be a support thing, and not really viable as a main career/weapon of choice. That seems stupid to me, since there is a fairly restrictive limit to how many attribute points you can allocate, meaning you cannot afford to be putting them in anything that isn´t very important. So with this mindset, for most builds (which is kinda lame imo), you will need to be putting most points in STR, VIT, and then also some GRI and ENC. ACC is pointless for a melee player, and ranged players are either noobs, masochists, or people who just love archery way too much, like me. Survival is also largely pointless, especially in late game, and so is agility, especially always, but that is not the point here. This is an archery post. By the way, I am aware that archery is supposed to get a bit of a dmg buff soon, but that is like adding a meter and hoping it will balance things out, when there is a 100-meter difference compared to spears, or even almost any other melee weapon.

I would like to ask the devs why did they even put the ACC attribute in the game if they don´t want/expect players to specc into it? For PvP, ACC specc currently makes NO sense at all, and for PvE, it is extremely obnoxious and problematic, since arrows weigh ridiculously much. I mean, you can carry around 50 cubic meters of steel-reinforced stone, but god forbid you could actually carry enough ammo on you to be able to mainly do archery in PvE and a) not run out of arrows very quickly and have to return to base and b) not get encumbered so that you will be at a disadvantage until you run out of most arrows, upon which you will be at the disadvantage of not having enough arrows in reserve.

So without further ranting, let me name the problems with archery:

  • ranged weapons do too little damage in general

  • projectiles (at least arrows) are too slow; if you are throwing an axe or a javelin, it will usually be only short distance, so lower speed is acceptable, even though throwing weapons might still benefit from being faster as well. However, hitting a running enemy who is trying to avoid being hit is borderline impossible at the moment.

  • shooting consumes too much stamina; combine that with the fact that hitting escaping players is borderline impossible once they aren´t right in front of you, the fact that having your weapon out makes you run slower, and the fact that ranged weapons deal miniscule damage, and you can surely see how using ranged weapons is just stupid currently. Particularly for killing off escaping players (which is one of the things it imo could and should be fairly good at), but also for just fighting in general. If I fight with a bow against say, a spear, I am going to have to roll a lot in order to not get immediately slaughtered. Rolling consumes most stamina, and I am left with no stamina to shoot the bow with. Seriously, the melee player can cause so much more damage so much easier (and therefore far more reliably) and faster with less stamina cost. Also noteworthy that even if you do actually defeat someone with a bow, you most likely won´t be able to kill them and get anything out of it, because they will likely be able to escape. This of course is a separate issue on another, separate level, and could be sorted under any of these, but I just put it here because.

  • when moving, aim gets super wonky and it gets very difficult to hit anything that isn´t a barn in a close proximity. This again pairs up with how crappy it is to be trying to stop escapers using a bow. If you run, you miss. If you don´t run, they will run away even if you by any chance do actually hit them.

  • you get slowed down too much when having your bow out. Sure, when you have any weapon out, you are slowed down, which I suppose is fine, but with ranged, it is a problem. I agree that it would be both stupid and OP to enable players to run with ranged weapons out impaired AND allow them to fire/throw them whilst running, also impaired, but one of these is necessary if ranged weapons are to stand any chance versus melee and actually be ever used by anyone, ever.

Hesitant to mention these, as these are intrinsical and quite necessary and actually positive issues with ranged weapons, but since it does provide more context, here it is:

  • using a ranged weapon automatically puts one at a disadvantage against anyone with melee the moment they get in close proximity. This is obvious and as I said, a positive issue, but also an extremely significant one. Do consider this when deciding whether to buff ranged or not and if so, how much. Melee will always have its (huge) advantages.

  • it is pretty much intrinsically much more difficult (and therefore, generally, unreliable) to use a ranged weapon than to use a melee weapon. In every game ever, and very much so in CE. Your chances of hitting with a melee is very good in this game even vs good players. Your chances of hitting anything that is moving and not much larger than an npc/player are vastly lower, especially if they try to avoid your shots, rush you, and you actually are on the defensive most of the time lest you get immediately slaughtered, and even when you get a shot or two in, you are likely to still be moving to maintain distance, so not only your target is moving, but now so are you, decreasing your chances of hitting them further. Also of course this is where you also simultaneously get screwed over by the wonky aim since you are moving, to make this venture just a little more impossible in case you weren´t yet decided for never using a bow again in PvP.

Hence I propose the following changes:

  • increase ranged dmg overall. This would need to be tested of course, and since it is the most obvious and most easily altered parameter of ranged combat, I would probably look at dmg itself at the very end to get it just right in context of all the other changes. But just eyeballing it, I would guess increasing weapon AND arrow dmg by 15% would be a good starting point. In fact, I think MAYBE the damage bonus might be lower or perhaps even none at all if all the changes I mention below were to be implemented. The damage would technically remain the same or only increase marginally, but the actual damage would vastly increase, since it would now be easier to hit with ranged, harder to run away from it, and also it would allow archers to spend more time on the offensive since they wouldn´t need to worry about stamina quite as much as they do now. But maybe even with these changes, the damage would need to be upped by some 30% or so to actually make it viable. Like I said though, this should be looked at lastly.

  • make shooting a bow, and perhaps even throwing (not sure on this one, I have hardly any experience using throwing weapons) cost NO stamina. Seriously, rushing someone trying to shoot you is super easy, costs hardly any stamina if you simply sprint at them unencumbered, and then they will generally have to dodge, wasting around 25% of their stamina instantly. You cannot afford to waste more stamina just trying to shoot them. It would improve the game quality in my opinion, and is actually quite realistic and sensible – as a real life archer, I can say that archery takes practically no toll on your breath or endurance in general, even if you use a relatively high-poundage bow as I like to do.

  • increase the projectile speed, if not for throwing weapons, at least for bows. I would say for the sake of both realism and playability, the increse should be around 2x the current speed. At point blank it will make no difference anyway, and It might actually make hitting escaping enemies realistically possible and maybe even worthwhile.

  • allow players to run with their bow out with no or absolutely negligible movement speed loss. The escaping players can very well just sheathe their weapon and run, while you are stuck with your weapon out If you want to get them. With ranged you are also stuck in place if you want to get them, so at least allow players the ability to not have to constantly pull out and sheathe their bows as needed, and just let them pursue at the same speed as the escaper with their bow/throwing weapon out. It will not be OP at all, since they still have to stop or at least substantially slow down (stop sprinting) to actually be able to aim, shoot and actually have a chance to hit. If they miss a few times, they will still quickly lose their opponent, still probably making melee pursuit a better and safer alternative for most players.

  • let players aim regardless of whether or not they are moving. Moving already makes aiming considerably harder, there is no need to make it virtually impossible (to aim, not to hit, just to clarify) by artificially ■■■■■■■■ with the mechanism itself. This change would not be OP, since it would rather simply make ranged not as underpowered compared to melee. In case of an archer pursuing and shooting an escaper, again, the archer would still have to stop sprinting, and would very quickly lose the escaper if missing repeatedly

  • for the love of god, decrease the weight of the ammo! It is insane, you would almost have to specc for ENC in order to be a decent archer (which is both ironic and stupid, because ENC doesn´t in any direct way benefit archery of course, so ultimately you will either go for max potential – high dmg, health, stamina etc., or max sustainability – high ENC at the expense of the other, more important things. The weight of ammo needs to be at the very least halved, very possibly made even lower than that. I mean, arrows don´t weigh much at all in real life, so this isn´t for realism´s sake I am sure, especially since you can carry around several vaults that would weight like 20 tonnes combined, and this IS a game after all, in real life, you are not expected to fight someone with your bow at close distance for 10 minutes and actually have a crapton of arrows to accommodate for that, or to go out hunting and come back after killing 200 enemies/animals/monsters. If one or two arrows killed most things, including players, this weight of arrows might be a good idea gameplay-wise, but that is absolutely not the case as I mentioned above. You need a lot of arrows, therefore you should be able to actually carry a lot of arrows.

I would be happy if as many people as possible shared their opinions on ranged fighting and debate what courses would be best taken to improve the situation and on the other hand, what can turn out to be problematic. One thing I would really like the bows to do is actually hunting. I mean, the first, most basic bow is literally called “hunting bow,” yet it can´t really be used for hunting very well (mostly due to low damage combined with the fact that animals that are not aggressive by nature run away at first hit). My problem isn´t really with bows doing THAT bad damage that they cannot be used to hunt rabbits, gazellas etc., but rather, there is simply no point, as these animals stay put and let you walk up to them and one shot them with a two handed sword. Which is absurd and boring. Hunting should be about hunting, not running from one animal to the other and clicking M2 once for each animal. Make non-aggressive animals run away from players by default, then bows will have a place in the game even if the devs get super pig headed and refuse to make bows not-garbage.

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Where did you hear archery was going to only be a support weapon? I haven’t heard this. :thinking:

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Have you tried headshots?

It already did? Unless you mean the modest bump that’s on testlive now.

I kind of disagree, late game bows do pretty good damage, especially with charged headshots.

The last update already improved on this, especially if specced right. Anymore then that would be OP, in my opion.

You are an exile, not Legolas. This feels appropriate to me.

I fail to see the downside of this. Even Legolas (previously mentioned) switches to his swords when necessary. If you are packing only a bow without a melee backup, that’s on you.

No, I’m not a PvPer and even I can see the major downsides to this.

I could be talked into this, but I think it’s already pretty good where its at.

They already did, it’s pretty balanced where it’s at now, in my opinion.

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Bows are powerful in the hands of those who invest in accuracy, if you get a high dmg bow with a high dmg arrow, the damage now is balanced, even without headshot. Bows can’t be anymore powerful because no one would go melee again, so let the ranged be an option for those who really likes it (and are good at it).

A thing that they need to tweak is making the arrows fire properly as sometimes it fails to fire when you alternate shots, this is very annoying during the fight.

Also, the ricochet shot is not that a big deal for a perk, so I think replacing it for a “bleeding effect” would be more fitting making more sense and helpful for the archer.

Making arrows fly speed a bit faster? I agree with that, arrows could used a bit more speed,but not much, to fit reality.

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Agreed on the trickshot perk modification, it is pretty underwhelming and mostly worthless, giving the dedicated archers some other buff (like bleed, but not married to the idea) would be neat for sure :slight_smile:

As for the projectile speed, I use a historical ash longbow, made entirely of wood. This means that even though it is fairly high-poundage (appx 55 pounds), the effectiveness of its energy transfer is very limited compared to modern bows (or even not necessarily modern composite bows made out of two or more layered materials) and I can tell you that my arrows fly MUCH faster than those in CE. My bow is entirely authentic in materials and in functionality, and it is no masterpiece either. Just a common, medieval-like bow. Making the arrows fly twice as fast would be much more realistic, I assure you :wink:

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Well if you are specced in ACC, you cannot be properly specced in STR, VIT, GRI and AGI as necessary (and also ENC as necessary) to be able to pull off both ranged AND melee properly. Having to switch between weapons is another issue with archery, since it is another thing that inevitably puts the archer at a disadvantage, although this of course falls under the “obvious and ok” category. But it still is important to realize and consider when drawing conclusions about what is OP and what is balanced. If you tell me archers should be specced in ACC and then only really use their ranged weapons when their foes close distance and perhaps when they try to run away (which haha, not happening as of now due to how garbage bows are at stopping people atm as I described above), then I must again ask: What is the point of having ACC in the game even? If you are still stuck in melee the vast majority of the time, then investing in ACC and being ranged-oriented inevitably damages your performance and decreases your chances of survival compared to being melee oriented with a bow as a side arm (and no ACC points spent).

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Did a bit of googling and searching of this very forum specifically, before forming an approach of this topic. I didn´t want to spout nonsense or advocate for changes that are already either in place, or scheduled to be implemented in the nearest future regardless :slight_smile: I think it was mentioned under a post about archery right here on this forum somewhere. But I didn´t fact-check, so there is a chance it was a misinterpretation of what the devs said, or even a straight-out lie. Don´t think so though, since no one seemed to be disagreeing with that claim.

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Yes, I agree that speeding up arrows will be more realistic, and if they make the hitboxes more accurate too, it will feel very real for sure, like in Skyrim.

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I personally feel like the third point makes it entirely acceptable to exile the git.

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Hello everyone, about bow damage, why not change the damage based on distance? if you try to shoot a target too far away, you will do 20% less damage, if you shoot at point blank you will do 30% more damage?that way, if a melee attacker tries to fight you, the more he will be near you, the more he will die.

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That actually is not a bad idea at all. But at the same time, I believe at least in theory, bows should be possible to be used as sniping weapons, therefore if this were to be implemented, light attacks´ base dmg probably should get nerfed and heavy attacks should probably get buffed. That way, you will do crap damage with light attacks at a distance, since you get a penalty for distance as well as the substantially lower dmg of a light attack, and yet, you will still do formidable damage with a heavy attack at a distance (alternatively, heavy attacks simply might not be affected by distance). And when in a PvP or close-distance PvE situation, you would spam light attacks and they would deal good dmg at point blank - which I feel the archer deserves and needs, since they are otherwise putting themselves at risk being in close quarters to melee-wielders, getting all the disadvantages and receiving almost no advantages - but not as much as heavy attacks would (at any distance).

So basically, this would leave to heavy (aimed) attacks being the predominantly effective choice at a distance, for more snipey situations, and light (quick) attacks the predominantly effective choice at very short distances, where it would serve as an alternative to melee combat.

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Or bring back crossbows and make them the sniping weapons of choice(but slower than bows).

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Btw, I had to test to be 100% sure, and there is no headshot mechanic in CE. Well, other than the one you access with the 5th perk of ACC of course. Without that, my arrows deal the same damage to both monsters and npcs regardless of where I hit.

This of course is not all that important, just wanted to clarify this in order to not confuse future readers. It is not important because it seems you misunderstood what I was trying to say, which is, there is no POINT in using a bow to hunt. You simply have zero reason to do so, it will mostly just make hunting harder for you. Hence I am advocating for a change in non-predatory animals AI that would make them run away from players who get closer to them, warranting the use of ranged weapons for hunting as is the case in reality. You cannot hunt a deer in reality by running up to it with a two handed sword and killing it with one blow while it ignores you and keeps chewing on grass.

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I play an archer build. My own version. But the stats are definately geared to Archery. With the right armor ad setup I can take out most things with 0 effort. My damage is on par with the 2 handed sword others work with. I’m sitting at 125 damage currently with ranged weapons and 1 or 2 shot most things.

If you add in 50% additional weapon pen on weapons you can count more damage. Adding in the strength perks and you will output solid damage.

You have utility as well.

If I am in melee I am also deadly. But I rarely ever am.

The Witch Queen minions were cake. She was cake.

Giants, Mammoths and everything in between have been easy mode.

If I run out of arrows I can still raid a camp and get bones. Even wimpy bone arrows still wipe out most pve content.

I have a special pvp bow with Armor Pen mods. I can shoot holes though most people wearing heavy armor with ease.

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That is also a decent way to go about it I suppose. But if we want to be realistic here, the only drawback of a bow is actually how hard it is to aim with it precisely without training compared to crossbows. Anyone can pick up a crossbow and aim with it quite well even at long ranges; that is not the case with bows, those require a lot of practice to master.

But in terms of range, bows are superior, in terms of damage, they are basically the same, it could be argued crossbows can be superior in that regard, since bolts are usually thicker than arrows, and would often have larger heads, resulting in larger, more severe wounds (but not necessarily the case, war arrows would also be fairly thick and arrowheads had a number of different designs for a number of different purposes, some were quite wide exactly for the purpose of making as severe a wound as possible, making the enemy - or rather, prey in this case - bleed out quickly).

Then there is the myth of “crossbows are stronger, they were better at armor penetration,” which MIGHT be true if we are talking about short range, since they can in some cases outperform warbows in terms of raw energy, but it quickly turns the other way in favor of bows the moment your enemy is further away, since bolts are lighter, they get more affected by air resistance and gravity, meaning they lose kinetic energy faster than arrows do. So while at close ranges, crossbows can potentially be better at armor piercing, at greater distances they are actually worse than bows, and of course this goes for damage as well, as much as you can put an equation mark between kinetic energy and damage caused, which you can´t quite, but there definitely would be a positive correlation to a degree.

So bottomline is, in my opinion, based on the facts I state above, if crossbows are made into sniping weapons and bows get worse at sniping (not that they are very good for it now, at least against moving targets), it should be approached by messing with the bows´ aim, making it fairly easy to hit with them at short distances, while making it quite hard and unreliable to hit your target at greater distances. And crossbows would then get a really good crosshair, there would be no aim distortion of any sort, at least while the player is stationary, and the aiming process also could be faster than with a bow, since that is simply how crossbows work - you take your time reloading, especially with crossbows too strong to be drawn by hand, but once loaded, you can just shoot it at any second, no draw time required (this MIGHT get changed with a bow, adding a little drawtime to even its light attacks).

EDIT: Actually bows also have the drawback of being harder to aim with or to just use in general in close quarters, as in, shooting them through crenellations, machicolations etc., but I don´t think that can really be applied well in CE via any game mechanic.

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So I generally play a ranger (or similar) in ever game I can. Starting out in CE, everything I read was pretty negative towards archery and I did not train it at all. However, the boost archery got (is it just testlive so far?) is pretty worth while - yet still lacking. It is great for very long distance use. I can target any PvE content at great distance and it leaves me out of agro range for an unfairly easy kill. PvP would completely eliminate the easy long distance kills naturally, which takes away a big benefit of the bow.

Things I don’t like with bows in PvE:

  1. The shots while moving are useless. Just take that ability away if you are going to make it so pointless.
  2. No close combat mode for bows. Many games give the option for close combat while still wielding the bow. Maybe blocks with a bow and using arrow in hand like a rapier? Possibly have a dagger strapped to the bow for seamless quick access?
  3. The Accuracy attribute does very little for other play styles, so it is extremely hard to justify putting points there UNLESS you are speccing bow. What if we make some perks that help with other areas, like a perk for magnifying bleeds? How about each point of accuracy gives a .3% chance of a crit?
  4. Frequently, arrows just outright miss the target, even when fired perfectly - bad GPS between server and client? I’ve had times when I fire several shots directly into the chest of advancing NPC, that is almost point blank and they all miss. I think this is similar to the bug where you try to harvest a dead critter and have to keep moving around until you hit the magic spot.
  5. Arrows are too heavy. It makes sense that they weigh a bit, but as the OP says, it is insanely far out of balance with the other things we can carry. I can carry 3 grown men just fine and not be encumbered… yeah, that seems perfectly natural. So I propose a solution to this. Let’s assume the encumbrance of arrows is simply done for their bulk. I can see where it might not be practical to carry 1000 arrows around for a day of hunting. So let us craft up bulk bundles of arrowheads and bulk bundles of 100 shafts at the appropriate craft stations. Both of those having reduced weight (think of the bearer care packages when you loot them on Testlive). Pack those with an appropriate amount of feathers and a hunting you will go. In the field, you can assemble a batch of 100 in 1 minute, but must remain standing still, so this hopefully adds an element of planning to PvP battles.

All those issues aside, I DO use archery a ton on PvE now with the Testlive code. I prefer it for hunting. It is a hoot to stand on the frozen lake in the North and “pew pew pew” down they all drop around you, without ever taking a step. It is powerful in PvE, when you get to the headshot perk. I do a noticeable damage increase over my best melee weapon with headshots and that is with strength maxed too (using mods for more levels). But, this won’t work in PvP as players aren’t stupid enough to just sit still.

Thank you for taking your time to start this thread and the work you put into it!

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I can confirm this was said in a devstream. They referred to a bow as a sort of ‘sidearm’.

However with the recent changes to Archery and the increase of damage of bows and arrows. It is not in sidearm status.

Which brings me to the point to address the OP. Archery has been through some iterations from Beta. In the Beta days Archery was rather weak, though for many encounters (anyone remember those Rhino overpopulations>) it was the only viable method outside stacking armor and heals.

Then we got the combat update on release and Archery was probably at its lowest. I took it upon myself to make a mod to fix it during this time. Eventually they raised damage a little bit on the weapons and ammo, and then fixed the combat portion of it.

And that is where we are now. The OP claims that each point of Accuracy is not equal to each point of Strength.

Based on that basic assessment. He is correct. The problem is more complex than that. I’m going to be using a few anecdotal experiences, but I’ve had alot of experience with Archery over the last 14 months. I’ve done thorough testing in the devkit, even made a mod to help fix archery (though it is mostly deprecated now since the last few updates), and I’ve used and experienced archery with and without my mod in several large scale (20v20+) fights between opposing forces using mixtures of melee and archery.

Lets go through this Tier by Tier.

A hunting bow with bone arrows or flint arrows is 12 damage per shot. A stone pike is 15 damage. 10 points in accuracy will make that bow do 14 damage while 10 in strength will make the pike do 18 damage.

Light Hyrkanian Bow with Ironhead Arrows does 18 damage while a Iron Corsque does 22 damage. With 20 STR or ACC the bow will do 25 dmg, while the spear will do 30

So far, we’re not seeing too much of a difference in damage here. 4 dmg spread followed by a 5. But there’s more too it than that. We all know that spear isn’t simply doing 30 dmg. Its doing a bit more due to heavy attacks. We also have salt the wound available.

What does Archery get? Crippling is more severe and ricocheting arrows. The cripple is nice, but only affects humans. What I would do here is to allow cripple to affect any creature. Then for Trickshot, I would get rid of the whole mechanic, and replace it with Sunder on fully charged power shots. Now we can actually retrieve arrows on missed shots.

Lets continue.

A hyrkanian bow with steel arrows does 23 dmg while we have a slight gap in tier for spears. We have a Stygian Spear at level 29, and a Steel Spear at 37. 24 and 30 dmg respectively. So I’m going to go with the Steel Spear due to material cost tier rather than level tier here. So with 30 STR/ACC the Bow will do about 37 dmg and the spear would do 48. We see the biggest jump in dmg, but lets remember this is due to a gap in tier. If it followed the same rate as before. We’d be closer to probably a 6dmg difference rather than a 11.

However the difference is still there in the material cost tier. Which is an issue. But not specifically with Archery or Bows, that level range probably needs to be cleaned up a tad for spears. Anyway not the goal of this discussion.

What do both STR and ACC get here? 10% more damage. Accuracy gets this on all attacks however. Being as Accuracy doesn’t have combos and the power shot takes away DPS for Burst damage. I’d say these two perks are equal. No change needed here. For perks or weapon/ammo to this point.

Next up is Ancient Bow with Razer Arrows doing 39 dmg, while Steel Trident does 33dmg. This got weird at this tier. And its why I had issues when doing testing a while back making my mod as I would use level 40ish weapons and test them in New Asgarath. In this tier bows do wreck a bit of face.

However. Everything is not as they seem. 40 STR/ACC is a little weird here. Bow damage will be 74 while base damage of the spear will be 59 (heavy attack will be about 68 * the heavy attack combo multiplier, I don’t know what that is off the top of my head for spears). So due to just not enough data, I can’t give a conclusion on this tier. However I believe the weapon types are balanced from personal experience. This is admittedly anecdotal, however. I don’t see it as a problem since we don’t remain level 40ish for long.

One issue I see with the perks is 50% more armor reduction. So when you see a 8% on bow and 8% on arrow, its not total 16%. Which would make the 40 perk pretty decent in PVP if it made it 24%. No archery damage and armor reduction affects the bow and arrow as if they were two weapons doing damage independent of one another (this has been proven during testing). So 8% and 8% is effectively 12% total with the perk. I would rework this perk entirely and add 15% dmg on power shots. This would make archery and excellent ambush playstyle.

We run into an issue at Hardened Steel Tier where the bow and arrow combo is 51 and the spear is 59. I probably could have chosen a different weapon, but one handers have shield, no shield, and throwing axe that murk up things and 2 handed swords and Mauls are just as weird due to their own traits. So I’m not going to cover this material tier.

I will talk about the perks. 50% more damage on headshot or when below 25% health. I’ve seen both perks work really well in various situations, including PVP. Again this is anecdotal but we could have a whole debate about the various different playstyles in just its own thread. I don’t want to get wrapped up in that. But I will say this. The Headshot has limited use in comparison in PVE. It only works on humanoids. That needs to be changed so it works on animals. That’s the only change I’d recommend here.

Finally we get to Star Metal Tier. Where the Starmetal bow and arrow does 42 dmg and Star Metal Spear does 46. Going by light attack damage this is about 88dmg on bow and 96dmg on spear. Going by tier this continues the trend of damage spread.

Obviously we pointed out earlier that we don’t really have a method of comparing damage due to combos. But so far, from stone to iron to steel to harden steel to star metal… we’re on pretty decent footing damage wise. And since Dragonbone is on par with Legendary we can use that to end the tier with 44 dmg on the bow and arrow and 51 for the spear.

The issue with the final tier is easy to fix. Dragon Bone arrows need to craft 10x arrows for every craft instead of 1. I think that is a bug and can easily be fixed.

ranged weapons do too little damage in general

Took a while, but I must say I disagree with this. Based on the item tables, bow and arrow is fine. If you have an issue with Throwing Axes, that’s another story for another day. Javelins themselves are melee weapons (and use STR to modify dmg including the throw, which is heavy attack… melee users rejoice on that one).

projectiles (at least arrows) are too slow

This I could agree with, I’d like to see about a 10% increase in speed across the board. I’d like to see this increased slightly, but also only after other fixes are in because if Archery becomes at all OP, it will dominate due to its ranged nature, archery dominating will simply get a sledgehammer nerf and we don’t exactly want that.

shooting consumes too much stamina

I’m going to disagree here. Melee users have to expend stamina in large chunks to dodge, archers do not normally. And if they do, they’re not firing a bow. Then there is the issue of trying to catch a running player. Melee have this issue too, so it is not tied to stamina usage from Archery. I’d even say if light attacks took no stamina you’d still have this problem.

when moving, aim gets super wonky

This is by design, reason for it was in initial testing for the combat update, archers could backpeddle and fire and land every hit without ever being hit. There is a skill to getting around this. You can pre fire an arrow as you come to stop and the Cone of Fire (CoF) reticle will snap and the shot will pinpoint. This is a learned skill that archers need to learn, just as melees must learn their combos and when to heavy or light attack.

you get slowed down too much when having your bow out. Sure, when you have any weapon out, you are slowed down

This isn’t true, the character takes longer steps while moving and appears to be ‘slower’ but its the same speed as walking without a weapon equipped.

My suggestion to tweak archery is already been stated. But I’ll put them in an easy list for posterity:

  • Add the ability to cripple non-humanoids somehow.
  • Change Trickshot to Sunder on full Power Shot strikes, instead of ricocheting arrows.
  • Change Crevice in the Armor to 15% damage on Power Shots.
  • Increase projectile speed by 10%

I’m hesitant to decrease the arrow weights because of my experience in using Archery in large scale sieges. Reducing arrow weight while advantageous to the archer will also be advantageous to the melee. Remember melee can use bows too. And while they do 1/3 the damage, its damage they can do in the range before they get close.

And as I stated before, the item tables seem fine. So any changes to buff Archery IMO should be done in the perks themselves or the stat itself. Also another thing to consider, NPCs will benefit from every non-state/perk benefit you give Archery. This includes attack speeds, light/heavy attack multipliers, weapon damage, and so forth. Doubling projectile speed will also apply to them. Their attacks are already pretty tough to dodge. So I only suggest a 10% increase.

So while I agree that Archery still needs a tweak, I would focus mostly on the Stat Accuracy and its Perk to bring it inline with Strength. Fixing netcode and such will also do wonders to help with Archery. Client-side hit detection if not already a thing would help on some of the more populated servers.

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In my Testlive testing, it worked on non-humans. Specifically mammoths were my primary target, as many smaller critters can be one shot at 50 accuracy and good gear.

Basically it was 5 arrows to the head vs 8, without the perk.

Edit: but the cripple never seems to take on non-humans, so we do need that fixed.

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I vaguely remember a while back in one of the streams (I think Oscar was sitting in on that one, the stream where they revealed the katana and new throwing axe animations/mechanics I think?) and they mentioned something about a bug with cripple not effecting any NPCs. I honestly have no clue with the current state of testlive whether or not it’s ever gone back to working as intended.

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Thank you for such a thorough analysis, it is nice to see others similarly invested in this topic :slight_smile: But I wasn´t at all pointing out that ACC gives you less per point than STR, or that bows do vastly less dmg than melee in theory. I was trying to point out that in reality, ranged performs significantly worse in PvP, basically. And as for PvE, it performs just fine in my opinion (although yes, they definitely should add the headshot mechanic to animals and monsters), but with the caveat that ammo weighs a ton, which is a problem in PvE in particular (although in PvP also to a large extent). My remark was meant to say that I believe ranged weapons deal too little damage considering the significant disadvantages they present to their users (and yes, they have the advantage of being RANGED, but that honestly is not much of an advantage in your typical PvP fight - your opponent will almost immediately close the distance, very likely will even surprise you from behind, etc., and your chances of hitting someone rushing you with a spear before they get right in front of you are very slim, especially if you try to snipe them rather than just spam a ton of light attacks). Your analysis is good I would say, but extremely taken out of any meaningful context. You cannot compare ranged vs melee, which are completely different in almost every aspect simply by comparing their base dmg values.

A a very good point about simultaneously buffing npc archers, I did not consider that. But I don´t imagine it would be much of a problem in any way to simply have them retain the attack speed they have now, because yes, if they had twice the attack speed, and were actually utilizing it, that could be a problem.

You might be right about the messy aiming when moving, I haven´t experienced it, so I can´t say, but it sounds like it definitely could be OP, so I am totally willing to abandon this suggestion (although I am of course open to more feedback from any side).

Absolutely disagreed however about your remark about archers usually not having to expend stamina to dodge. If you talk about PvE, that might be true - although I personally still dodge quite a bit in PvE when having my bow out, especially against some animals and monsters - but in PvP, you are instantly dead if you don´t dodge A LOT. Which expends a ton of stamina, and leaves you on the defensive for most of the time, and when you do get a chance to go on the offensive again, you might just not have enough stamina for that.