Do yourself a favour and don't ever make your main hero an archer ;D

[ShakeNBakeUK]

Holy moly this is some next level of badness.

Attack move doesn't work at all, I guess he is programmed to melee everything, but mostly just runs past everything (which is not good when you have low health/armor).
You have to manually issue every single attack command (if enemy dies he just stops attacking).
Bow damage does not seem to scale with, well anything, so you are hitting for like 10 dmg when a normal 1h weapon hits for like 50 with strength scaling.

Save yourself the pain and make a warrior or spellcaster instead ;D

[janthailand]

yes, its about as useless as it gets, i have read of 2 players that made their first avatar an archer and uninstalled the game after a few maps never to return.
but anyway, when you begin to get skilled at the game, in BoW you can make an archer and combine with mind magic, it will become a very powerful avatar from lv 31
with skills MM def 12 enchant 13, archer lv 10 crossbow 10, LC 1 WM boon 1

[load]

True, I've probably leveled about 20 characters to 30 and not one of them was an archer. I dont know what the devs were thinkng not giving your avatar the opton to auto attack expect when he gets attacked first.

[Eternal Pilgrim]

I don't really know what's the point of playing this class because every other champion got his strong and weak points, sorcerrer AOE, Stuns, DPS, my also heals other's, Warior is strong as ♥♥♥♥ he can just walk into enemy base and clear everything he is probably the most powerful class also tanky and unkillable with cleric, but archer? He got just nothing ranged attack's but 0 dmg and very slow+easily canceled just by hit...

[ShakeNBakeUK]

Originally posted by Przyjeb:

I don't really know what's the point of playing this class because every other champion got his strong and weak points, sorcerrer AOE, Stuns, DPS, my also heals other's, Warior is strong as ♥♥♥♥ he can just walk into enemy base and clear everything he is probably the most powerful class also tanky and unkillable with cleric, but archer? He got just nothing ranged attack's but 0 dmg and very slow+easily canceled just by hit...

i think its designed to give casters a ranged physical damage option with minimum investment in non-caster stats.

but yea it's pretty lame that its SOOOOO weak compared to heavy melee. but then again i guess everything in this game is weak compared to heavy melee cos it's busted as hell. highest protection + highest dmg = ???

[Eternal Pilgrim]

Originally posted by ShakeNBakeUK:

Originally posted by Przyjeb:

I don't really know what's the point of playing this class because every other champion got his strong and weak points, sorcerrer AOE, Stuns, DPS, my also heals other's, Warior is strong as ♥♥♥♥ he can just walk into enemy base and clear everything he is probably the most powerful class also tanky and unkillable with cleric, but archer? He got just nothing ranged attack's but 0 dmg and very slow+easily canceled just by hit...

i think its designed to give casters a ranged physical damage option with minimum investment in non-caster stats.

but yea it's pretty lame that its SOOOOO weak compared to heavy melee. but then again i guess everything in this game is weak compared to heavy melee cos it's busted as hell. highest protection + highest dmg = ???

I think the warrior is designed to kill debuffed or stunned enemie's by mage's but they are tanky and got dmg at the same time and idk why

[janthailand]

Originally posted by Przyjeb:

Originally posted by ShakeNBakeUK:

i think its designed to give casters a ranged physical damage option with minimum investment in non-caster stats.

but yea it's pretty lame that its SOOOOO weak compared to heavy melee. but then again i guess everything in this game is weak compared to heavy melee cos it's busted as hell. highest protection + highest dmg = ???

I think the warrior is designed to kill debuffed or stunned enemie's by mage's but they are tanky and got dmg at the same time and idk why

i think sotp is the masterpiece because they managed to turn the mages into demigods
instead of heavy warriors that was in lv 1-30.
the shock i got in sotp as HC base nearly caused a depression,
and i had to re-think my builds altogether

[LichMaster12]

Originally posted by ShakeNBakeUK:

Holy moly this is some next level of badness.

Attack move doesn't work at all, I guess he is programmed to melee everything, but mostly just runs past everything (which is not good when you have low health/armor).
You have to manually issue every single attack command (if enemy dies he just stops attacking).
Bow damage does not seem to scale with, well anything, so you are hitting for like 10 dmg when a normal 1h weapon hits for like 50 with strength scaling.

Save yourself the pain and make a warrior or spellcaster instead ;D

[LichMaster12]

My first game I went for archer /necromancer combo. I had no trouble whatsoever, bow damage is quite low but you can summon skeletons or undead goblins or wraiths to keep your enemies busy while you pincushion them. You could do the same thing with wolves and bears or elementals if you wanted different magic skills. Trueshot increases your damage vastly and you also get blessing from the start which is a lifesaver. Later in the game I added black magic death which allowed me to inflict huge damage, the death spell has a long cooldown so my bow was still in use between spells.

[janthailand]

Originally posted by LichMaster12:

My first game I went for archer /necromancer combo. I had no trouble whatsoever, bow damage is quite low but you can summon skeletons or undead goblins or wraiths to keep your enemies busy while you pincushion them. You could do the same thing with wolves and bears or elementals if you wanted different magic skills. Trueshot increases your damage vastly and you also get blessing from the start which is a lifesaver. Later in the game I added black magic death which allowed me to inflict huge damage, the death spell has a long cooldown so my bow was still in use between spells.

its still a horrible combo, you are better off mixing the archer with mind magic,
especially from lv 31, and necro is better paired with, well, many things,
like mm defensive 12 + ice, with earth, with only defensive 12, or def 12 + high mm offensive,
and in lv 1-30, with hc, tho this combo is bad in sotp lest you go modded gamedata

[VTitanV]

wow I used to play this as a warrior but I was thinking of going archer or wizard this time around as it's been over 10 years since I last played. My wife plays every game as an archer so I'm glad it's not her playing.

[Alpha003]

Bow/Crossbow damage is really good if you build your character accordingly. Since ranged combat needs only agility and dexerty for leveling one easily skips on strength, which is most likely the reason why you deal so less damage with bows. Even though the tooltip says strength increases melee damage only it increases all weapon damage (including bow and crossbow). With the right investment in strength ranged weapons hit as hard as melee weapons. My first character was an archer (bow with dagger offhand and light armor) and i had great success with him.
Having to click on the enemies for every attack is an other story though. Its annoying but one can grew custom to it.

[janthailand]

Originally posted by Alpha003:

Bow/Crossbow damage is really good if you build your character accordingly. Since ranged combat needs only agility and dexerty for leveling one easily skips on strength, which is most likely the reason why you deal so less damage with bows. Even though the tooltip says strength increases melee damage only it increases all weapon damage (including bow and crossbow). With the right investment in strength ranged weapons hit as hard as melee weapons. My first character was an archer (bow with dagger offhand and light armor) and i had great success with him.
Having to click on the enemies for every attack is an other story though. Its annoying but one can grew custom to it.

nah...it takes too long, its not automatic, 2 shots tops and you are stuck in melee
with a dull knife. If you want the archer, combine it with mind magic so you can spam mirrors
from lv 31. invest a single skill in light combat for the magnificent berserk spell,
the rest goes into MM 13 & RC 10, do not waste any points in anything but MM defensive & enchantment, and RC i suggest crossbow, i dont ever use a ranged weapon as the ranger until lv 31, i use it as a fighter and mentalist
until lv 31, and after that xeroxing mirrors armed with crossbow that will do all the work.
also you can afford WM boon lv 1 at game start,
it gives up to a whopping 140 fight speed combined with this amount of charisma, which helps a lot in lv 1-30

[Holy Fool Sehrael]

Get the ice crossbow from BoW + MM Mirage army(normal illusions work too until then) - profit. Thats really all what Archery is good for in any way.

[talemore]

People don't understand that you need to filtrate archery proper before use by adding lots of low magic spells
Ice, illusion. Heal, berserk, true shot, concervate, skeleton and centrifuged to make sure the bad things stay at the bottom

[Gim]

Originally posted by talemore:

People don't understand that you need to filtrate archery proper before use by adding lots of low magic spells
Ice, illusion. Heal, berserk, true shot, concervate, skeleton and centrifuged to make sure the bad things stay at the bottom

Which is exactly his point. You can make independent builds like elemental mages ( ice), mental mages (illusion, mirage, hypnosis), white mages (heal, boons) dark mages (skeletons and all other kinds of summoned minions) or light and heavy fighters without dependance on any other skilltree, but you can't do that with archers, because archery SUCKS.

Why would I use low lvl ice skills to freeze enemies as an archer, when an actual elemental mage does more damage? Why use archery, when both light and heavy combat do more damage, with the available weapons? Any combat/mage hybrid would be stronger if one choses one of the melee trees over the ranged tree.