[1026] Does anyone else think the archers should be more powerful?

well if we wanted to one shot knight why not create a 5th weapon in the archer shop. an arrow that broke the guard of the knight. a more powerfull arrow, more range, more damage. for the litttle idea why not a arrow made of stone/steel.

and maybe you will not be OK with me but i think we should make some things easier. i see a lot of people playing archer just standing behind a wall an legolas-ing in the air, touching no one. but after all KAG is a complicate game making it more accessible will i think be a bad point. it's just frustrating to see this.

oh and the god damn builder x3
making shop in the middle of the base without protection and then 5mn later a flying knight come and we dont have a base anymore. i wonder why

 

Archers already have a wide variety of tools to use against the knight, you just have to be good enough to use them. An arrow like that has the possibility to completely unbalance the game, because if you buy those arrows, you can probably get enough kills to buy a new set every time you spawn. This mechanic wouldn't fun, it would just feel cheap for knights, getting shotgunned instantly all the time (although bombs do the same thing, but aren't meant specifically for killing archers. Also, knights rarely want to use bombs killing archers, whereas this item would be only for killing knights, because why would you waste it on archers?). Anyway, archers can already get 2h guaranteed damage if the use a water arrow in a legolas shot, or get a legolas shot up close.

And please don't complain about builders here, this is a thread for buffing archer.

 

i don't understand why Boea is arguing with trumbles, so far ive seen trumbles exceed every player in archer combat. he certainly knows what he is doing and it definitely is skill based what he does. he even kills me 1v1 on a flat surface half of the time...... if that isn't skill then i don't know what is boea.

 

yeah i know that's will unbalance the game, that was just an idea. and i am not talking about a set of arrow but just 1. that broke the guard of the knight but you reminded me. we already have the water arrow. so yeah that will be a little stupid. and i talked about the builder only to show that KAG is a complex game and some player are lost in it.

 

Even though I don't think there should be changes on the class, I can see Boea's point. It is to stimulate a nice archers playing, and hopefully cease the constant campers spamming archers at top of tower's. Also, I wouldn't he's arguing, it's a discussions, after all, isn't it the point of the forums?

 

(I was from b800 Archers, my average was about 1/2 survival on all terrain, and 2 archers actually meant something more than 1 archer against a knight. If you see me fight nowadays, it's probably heavily inspired from that time; fencing has pretty much inspired my risk assessment, unassisted mobility, and so on in the game.)
Fencing is necessary to allow archers to fend for themselves in the close, and moderate range.
And, everything a knight can do without special ammo can completely shut that down, and archers have to rely very heavily on unobtainable places (towers, camping, etc etc.) to hold themselves.

This is where I posit the issue, again, and again.
The next one is the notion that overcharge simply solves all of the archer's other gross weaknesses, and that an instant and unabatable hail of bomb arrows is entirely fair.

 

For every bomb a knight buys, an archer could buy 3 water arrows.

A well timed water arrow not only stops a knight from throwing a bomb at you, but also can cause them to damage/kill themselves with it.

Archers don't need a melee attack to be able to handle a close range situation, they have infinitely superior mobility, reliable(if timed correctly) stuns, their overcharge, special ammo (fire ammo is now combat viable, to a degree), stomps, and very high DPS if you know how to aim half-shots.

For every approach a knight can take at killing you, you have at least 3 times as many approaches for stopping them.

 

I think you speak too highly of the extremely skilled archers out there.

Knight also have very high dps, and (often passive) defensive capabilities, so I really don't believe your statement.
As far as combat goes, I'm going towards without special ammo because I think they are fine as they are, set aside bomb arrow hails.
Archers have no real sustainable defense.

 

Is being able to infinitely kite, stun, harass, and deny.. not sustainable enough?

I mentioned water arrows because you mentioned bombs. Counter special ammo with special ammo, y'know.. even playing fields and such.

Most of what sets "high skill" archers apart from the rest, isn't necessarily immense refining of skill. Most of the difficulty curve is based around understanding hidden mechanics, and understanding the mechanics of knights.

In a 1v1 scenario, with no special ammo or bombs involved, I can best a knight 9/10 times, regardless of their skill level. (enclosed arenas don't count, that shit is not relevant).

Archers only start to run into problems when bombs, enemy archers, or otherwise multiple enemies are thrown into the scenario. I don't see a problem with that.

An archer can do far less on his own against an enemy team compared to a knight, but I don't think that's an issue. We are meant to be a support class, after all.

I don't really know where I'm going with this discussion anymore, I just feel like you don't fully understand what you're talking about..

 

Single volley knight kill is a very nice touch. Making the enemy run wild takes any threat down a notch too. 2 hearts of damage means they're almost as dmaging as a bomb arrow now. I'm tempted to start buying fire arrows in TDM to see just how viable this is.

--- Double Post Merged, Mar 3, 2014, Original Post Date: Mar 3, 2014 ---

As for crawling, you have to be still to start a crouch, it breaks your flow. If i could go into it wile moving and grapple along the ground, it'd be perfect.

 

I dont see what all the fuss is about, archer is a support class. On their own against hordes of enemies they arent very good, but in groups they can level the playing field and help their team.
All classes are overpowered & underpowered in different areas, which i think balances this game out nicely.

 

I don't think that archers are OP. Well played there can be fast and deadly. I've seen a few archers ruling some knights

But they should have hearts instead of

 

Agree!

 

archers are a support class.

 

I recommend people watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=EitZRLt2G3w

People can argue all they want about archers and knights being balanced power-wise. However, there if very little skill balance. Until you get to very high level play, the knight is more powerful than the archer for almost any given amount of player skill. That's to say if you take a knight and an archer of equal skill, the knight will be better, this holds true until we're talking about players with 100+ hours invested into the game. I think this stems from the fact that everything an archer does takes plenty of skill and practice to execute, anything basic and intuitive as archer (like spamming a legolas shot) yields terrible results, whereas a new knight becomes reasonably effective the moment he realizes he can slash. Archer is also very punishing and allows very little room for mistakes. At 4 hearts, a knight can take a hit, and can afford to make a bad move. For archers, a single missed grapple or badly timed shot at a knight is a death sentence. This is fine for skilled players, but I suspect this is why we rarely see good archers, the imbalance at low skill levels becomes discouraging to new players. The knight works very well with its skill curve, you have simple mechanics, like shielding, slashing and jabbing that a new player can pick up and be reasonably effective with, and more advanced techniques, like bomb jumping, that a skilled player can graduate into. I feel like archer should fit into this model too, but right now, there is nothing for a new archer to do at a low to mid skill level to be competitive. I think this is why we see so many bad archers jsut impotently spamming triple shots across the map, until they can master grappling, shooting over ledges and the timing to point-blank a knight, they have nothing better to do. Sure, anyone can bomb arrow a base, but without getting kills, they wont have the gold to buy anything, they'd still be better off as knight racking up kills.

Just my opinion, but I think THIS is where the big imbalance lies.

 

First of all. archers are a support class. There is no point of comparing an archer to a knight because the archers role is not to 1v1 knights. It is also not to rack up kills - not even the point of the game anyways. It's to support their allies.

Secondly, archers are very easy to master as a support class. All they have to do is shoot the enemy from a safe distance, while their allies are fighting them at close range. They can also destroy towers, quickly cap flags and take over enemy ballistas for their team to spawn at, that knights can't reach. This is what an archer does. It is difficult to hit a moving target but with a bit of practice this can accomplished. Grappling efficiently takes a bit of time to get used to.

Finally, this is kag and people like to deviate from their specific roles. Let that be taking knights head on at close range, or rushing in a frenzy of knights. What a lot of people are complaining about, is that archers can't evenly fight a knight on its own at close range. Well why are you even trying to fight a knight at close range in the first place?
Don't use archers as a main offensive combat role and then complain about why it is so hard to pull off!
This offensive role takes a lot of time to master. You have to put the time and effort in it to get to a high enough skill level where you can easily dance around with a knight and kill them.

So when you said there aren't a lot of archers because of the difficulty it posses and defers newbs from being an archer because it intimidates them- so they give up. Well Tough. If everyone gave up so easily we wouldn't have the Skill full knights/Archers we have today now would we?

EDIT: Archers also get money from other things like capping and destroying stuff.
also for every 1 bomb a knight can buy an archer can get 3 water arrows.

 

@Vampire

The only problem with playing supportive archer, is that nothing a supportive archer does is really rewarded. It doesn't feel satisfying to support people when the game does nothing to reward supportive play (Kill assists, etc.)

Sure you get like, 5 coins per hit. But that doesn't translate to score. Things like burning down/collapsing buildings don't have any sort of coin/score incentive, either. :(

Because of this, people try to immediately take the most rewarding route (medium-close range archery), and get mad because they don't understand the mechanics that make it possible.

 

Well then shouldn't we look into how to compensate the archer for it's supportive role (Something the Devs can get into) instead of always arguing about the archers power level (Which is fine btw) .

 

It's not about the power level, it's about actually feeling useful in the field, something that has been lacking ever since beta archers got introduced in my opinion.

Mind you, the grappling hook, the triple shots have been all nice and dandy (for a while) but compared to the bow accuracy, arrow speed and arrow range of alpha archers? I'd pick those over the stupid triple shot and grappling hook almost any day.

Right now, whenever I play as an archer it feels like I'm actually playing as some well dressed monkey that's swinging from tree to tree and irritating it's foes by throwing its own clunky feces at them.

Alpha archers were dead meat when it came to staying alive, there's no denying that their survival rate was even lower than beta archers and even so I still had more fun playing with those than the current monkey class for the simple fact that archery felt accurate, fun and rewarding.