I saw this too, but I checked the values and nothing changed compared to live.
It used to be that you could not really manahe archery and melee. That has dratically changed with the new mechanics.
With archerys current state you might not have the best of both worlds, but pretty darn close.
I know people who crank stength to 41 so strength armor values can be added, but both Strength and Accuracy have demonishing returns eventually. Until the perks kick in.
I also see people justing the snipe. The heavy attack. That should be used to pull. Against tier 3 enemies in NA or even the volcano you will (with a decent bow ,arrows and Stygian Raider) knock down at least half of their life. Once they run at you light attacks get the job done while they are running.
Trick Shot works wonders allowing you to cripple. Cripple triggers salting the wound. Which applies a decent amount of damage alone. (Cripple does not seem to affect enemies the way it does players)
Crevice in the armor increases overall damahe.
Light attacks with the 3rd strength perk add to that. And its easier to trigger trick shot or cripple with light attacks.
Salting the wound + 25% Damage
Slice and dice + 10% on light attacks
Crevice in the armor 50% added to the armor pen of every weapon.
Steady Hands + 10% for ranged damage.
If you can muster 40 points in strengh add 25% added for a heavy attack (optional)
Lets look at common bows that are easy to make.
Yama bow or Khitan epic. 26 damage after mod placement for damage.
Serpentman Arrows 22 damage
Add in 40 accuracy. Reserve the rest for strength.
Overall with a naked score it shows roughly 115 naked damage.
Keeping in mind most of this works on your melee as well.
Now if you drink a potion. The Eye of Khan or huntress. You will add 50% damage on headshots.
You will still have potions available fot strength ans strength warpaint to give you the 4th perk in strength. Should you want too. (I dont bother much.)
The damage potential is there. You can use poison arrows or posion gas arrows to add guaranteed Salting the Wound. If you are not so nifty at trick shotting people.
This is pretty decent damage for all content.
2 shotting someone with a two handed sword is really no different than 2 shotting somone with a bow. Usually most base camps are one shot for me. NA is 2 shots and Volcano is 3 shots. Which is the same as a full combo.
Everything you said there isnât wrong, but not 100% relevant to some of the complaints. Youâve described PVE content in its fullest. I doubt many here would disagree with the fact Archery is pretty decent in PVE. But in PVP, its in somewhat question.
Youâre not going to be able to Two-Shot a PVP build, but the build you listed will get Two-shot by a PVP build.
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Not true at all. I have been using this build in PVP and it works fine. I dont use traditional damage mods on my bow if i am going to take out armored opponents. I go armor pen.
I can use Set arrows to add pressure. Swap to gas arrows to create avoidance areas. If the person throws on a sandstorm mask then they reduce their stats.
Keep appying pressure and it does more than a spear does but with much more utility.
Throw in some heal arrows or explosive. I can do a lot by not commiting to a combo chain.
Simply swap the bow for bleed or cartwheel away and keep firing.
With the pen mod you get near 32% armor pen with Crevice. Heavy armored opponent are easy. People with high mobility cause an issue
But with my build i can dodge, heal, damage and do respectible melee if I am forced too.
Lol, by whom and when were crossbows considered honorless? Even if true in some case, you make it sound like that was the general historical consensus, which is complete bullsh*t right there. And no, the power of arrow does not come from elevation, in fact, both bows and crossbows were usually utilized from bottom lines shooting them directly at the enemy, without the projectiles even arching to any significant extent. Sure elevation is an advantage, and not just in ranged combat, but you did not at all need elevation to make use of ranged weapons. Get up on outta here with this nonsense crap.
Well no, there is no training in the vast majority of games, because people generally don´t want to play games to train in them to then be able to âactuallyâ play, but I think it would be a very interesting and potentially rewarding and cool way to approach this issue in CE if they made bows only worth using for somewhat dedicated archers, and others with little or no ACC spec would be better off using a crossbow as a sidearm for sniping, crippling fleeing enemies etc. Could be approached the way that crossbows would have a better base damage, but would get little boost from ACC, while bows would have less base dmg, and would get more of a buff from ACC. This would not only diversify and make room for both bows and crossbows and give each one an identity and a role, but also would be fundamentally quite realistic, which is always an awesome thing to see in a fantasy videogame 
(No, I am serious though.)
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Well there is much I can´t disagree with, you do make some good point there. But I have to say, even if you are right about bows being super powerful in certain situations, how often can you actually get such situations in CE? And how? Are you going to be waiting for 2 hours at a time at a specific place to ambush someone? Because with the standard server pop (and I mean 40, not 1-5 which would be the actual official average) you can´t really expect to run into other players all that often, and camping is practically out of the question altogether. And idk, I personally stacked at least 8 poison stacks on a friend of mine who was wearing darfari epic, it took a lot of his health, but even after so many hits and so much poison, he still beat me using his melee. And I just can´t imagine bows actually being super effective as ambush weapons right now, sorry. In reality, you hit an enemy (if you are good or lucky) and take maybe 15% of his health, tops, unless they are in really crappy light armor or pure farmer build. As of now, I don´t think there is almost anything that bows ultimately do better than spears, aside from some super situational and rare things that you need like 0,5% of the time, making it absolutely not worth even carrying the 15+ weight in your inventory all the time just to maybe use it once a day to gain a slight advantage.
Yes, I mostly agree with everything you wrote 
The more I test it and think about it and debate it on here, the more it seems clear to me that the projectile speed is the most important buff archery needs right now, perhaps it is really the only one it needs. Imo there should be at least a bit more, but probably not that much.
I also want to mention (especially since you have touched on the topic already) that ALL WEAPONS with no exception need to be made able to catch and stagger a sprinting foe, which of course is a total off-topic, so it has no place here, but it is just so important. The CE PvP is fundamentally broken, and like 60% of the reasons why boil down to running away and avoiding damage being way too easy, especially against non-spear weapons. I would propose giving the block button another function - if you stand still or run, it would just do what it does now, but if you use it while sprinting with your weapon out, it would do a lunge attack which would be fast and make you lunge forward relatively far, making you hit any opponent in front of you, even if they are sprinting away from you. I might make another thread on this if I find the time (and energy tbh), but for now I want to at least voice my opinion that this is a problem and that there are some really easy solutions at hand.
RPGs have skills you can train in, one of my favorite in this is a game like Oblivion or Skyrim. You donât have to train in every weapon but as you use a group of weapons, you get more effective at using them. Then you also have stats you improve with your level, like Conan Exiles.
Well I personally do subscribe to it, because spears simply outperform all other weapons in most ways. They have the best reach, they strike quickly and with practically no telegraphing, which is a fairly big advantage actually, they have very good (albeit not the best) damage, they hit super easily and reliably, and as of now are I believe the only melee weapon to somewhat reliably be able to catch a fleeing opponent while they are sprinting. They also allow for instant dodging, which most weapons do I guess, but not all, for example katana blocks any movement with some attacks, making you super open and vulnerable at times.
Also, the spear being the apex of PvP atm is pretty objectively evidenced by how the vast majority of PvP players use it, unlike any other weapon.
Sure, but I meant something a bit more complex with more time investment and perhaps also skill requirement. They could of course give bows (and presumably all weapons) skill points you would gain over time by using the weapon, and it would be pretty interesting and cool in a way, but to make it count, they would have to give bows an obscene skill point cap, and give crossbows like 1/50 of that, not to mention they would have to give many of the game mechanics a total makeover 
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It is a little different, you can swing a sword indefinitely while you need a supply of arrows to use your bow 
Sure a sword breaks eventually, but it takes a long ass time and a bow actually breaks faster in my experience, and runs out of ammo much faster yet. And carrying resources for repairing weapons actually ultimately weighs less than carrying arrows that would accomplish the same, which is some legendary bullsh*t 
(Sure, you can also just carry repair kits, but I´m just saying you can also do this and it is still less of a hassle than just carrying extra ammo for your ranged.)
Yeah, except I am pretty sure poison does NOT grant the salting the wound bonus. And as you I believe pointed out, npcs do not get crippled like players do (although if you apply cripple on them using a melee, it probably does grant the STW bonus, not sure). But I do not believe I ever crippled any mob with arrows, do correct me if that is possible.
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Excuse me, so you have at least 5 of your action bar slots taken by different bows with different modifications and different selected ammo, and you have like 60% of your carry weight taken up by the excessive amounts of bows and ammo, or am I missing something here? It sounds nice in theory, but it is absolutely ludicrous bullcrap when you have any idea how ranged works in CE. Or you can be using scripts to change ammo I guess, but I believe that would be considered cheating, not sure actually.
Uhm, but npcs can and do use literally any and all weapon types in the game? Well, except for shields which they seem to think exist purely for their vast aesthetic value. And the specific weapons they wield depend on the faction they belong to. So I am a bit confused here.
Itâs possible, it doesnât seem to effect them that much though.
My bar setup is 1 set of daggers, 1 greatsword, water flask, serpent man arrows, poison gas arrows, food of some kind, healing item (or snake arrows depending) and either my Khitan bow with damage or my Khitan bow with Armor pen. I swap those out of inventory as needed or requires.
Poison triggers Salting the Wound or did.
I am for the ground at my enemies in PVE and PVP and bounce the arrow at their legs which causes cripple. The second perk in archery causes more severe cripple. It triggerw salting the wound.
If you drink a jhebbal sag potion and use the huntress you are well above 50 points in accuracy so you spend them in strength which still makes you valid in melee.
I may be having a different experience with archery but i have been making it work.
It is just a different playstyle
Cripple on mobs seem very broken compaired to when you are personally crippled by a hyena or such.
Im not sure why but I sometimes get the bleed proc on arrow shots. Noticed mainly on rocknoses. Not sure if intended. Its very very random.
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Huh, gotta test the STW on poison, I haven´t noticed it working (didn´t think it was supposed to, anyway), but I might be wrong.
Well I commonly apply bleed and sometimes even all 3 effects on enemies I hit during lag with any weapon or even with bare hands. Usually happens to me when there is the recent âno damageâ server lag in its transitional stage when it stops your direct damage, but for some reason also gives you the ability to apply all effects by all of your attacks. Could it be this?
That could be it. I encounter is most in the rocky area coming from Shattered Springs. The area is full of Rocknoses.
I tested the other night and with Set Arrows applying the 1 physical damage and the poison and aiming at the enemies legs that it does in fact trigger STW. Poison Gas does not seem to do it though anymore.
I noticed a noticible spike in damage. Was wondering if it came from the cripple so i tested again applying only poison and not cripple and it seemed to work.
I added poison to my two hander and only did the first light attack. Applied the poison and noticed a jump in damage after retreating and doing another light attack.