Bow Spammers....

[Dreym]

Overpowered FFA is great fun.
Bare in mind throughout this video I am mainly talking about (Wings) maps.
Except when fighting people who pick archer (and only archer).
Possibly the least balanced kit.
Power 3 bow will shred any kit as they don't have a chestplate.
It is impossible to get close as they can spam with 64 arrows.
This kit either needs fewer starting arrows, and I'm talking like 16.
Or reduced power.

 

[betty's oldies]

Overpowered FFA is great fun.
Bare in mind throughout this video I am mainly talking about (Wings) maps.
Except when fighting people who pick archer (and only archer).
Possibly the least balanced kit.
Power 3 bow will shred any kit as they don't have a chestplate.
It is impossible to get close as they can spam with 64 arrows.
This kit either needs fewer starting arrows, and I'm talking like 16.
Or reduced power.

Why do bows get so much hate? Terrans have the best siege units and they don't complain. Just kidding.

No. The 64 arrows is what makes that kit one of the best kits to practice shooting the bow. That would make it too close to standard bow kit in normal mode. It takes 4-5 fully charged shots for the bow to kill a player in wings mode. If they spam, out-strafe them and dodge erratically. Note that if you get into melee range and hit them, they can't accurately hit you due to knockback.

Remember that archers also have weaker armor and sword too - in close combat, warrior or beast kit will win. Alternatively, if it's archer vs archer, fight back by shooting faster than they do, predicting where they'll shoot and move.

 

[skps2010]

If you don't want to be shoot, just keep moving so they can't aim. Also, flying away is the best way to escape as it is very hard to shoot you in the air.

I suggest you using wizard kit, because it has speed boost so you can easily dodge arrows. Also due to it's high damage you only need 4 hits to kill an archer. If you land your first hit while flying, you only need 3 hits.

 

[Power Ranger]

I think the exact opposite :P the archer kit doesn't have nearly enough arrows to sustain itself past a few kills. I think it can start out with less arrows though as long as it gets arrows per kill

 

[betty's oldies]

Also due to it's high damage you only need 4 hits to kill an archer. If you land your first hit while flying, you only need 3 hits.

Takes 2 air-to-ground missiles to kill an archer if you use the archer kit. 2-3 on ground but this depends on the arrow's instantaneous speed when it hit the target. If you're shooting arrows from low to high ground, then it'll take at least 3, if not more.

Arrows have damage falloff, so the longer they're in the air, the slower they'll travel due to drag. Thus, the arrow deals more damage the faster it is moving. Damage can be buffed due to your increased speed while flying at the cost of accuracy.

Quote taken from MinecraftForum explaining arrow mechanics. Credit goes to TheMasterCaver for explaining arrow mechanics in detail.

Velocity does in fact affect arrow damage, as seen from these lines in the code, which also shows that there is a random factor involved with critical arrows:

var22 = MathHelper.sqrt_double(this.motionX * this.motionX + this.motionY * this.motionY + this.motionZ * this.motionZ);
int var24 = MathHelper.ceiling_double_int((double)var22 * this.damage);

if (this.getIsCritical())
{
var24 += this.rand.nextInt(var24 / 2 + 2);
}


The base damage of an arrow is calculated as 0-2 depending on charge (full charge takes 1 second), plus 0.5 times the level of Power + 0.5 if the bow has Power, for a maximum of 5; this then multiplied by the velocity, which is affected by drag so arrows do indeed lose power with distance as shown below; the multiplier of 0.99 (when in air) does not sound like it has much of an effect but it accumulates 20 times per second (0.99^20 = 0.818 - a loss of 18.2% after 1 second. For water the multiplier of 0.6 means they lose 99% of their velocity after just 9 ticks, less than half a second):
var25 = 0.99F;
var13 = 0.05F;

if (this.isInWater())
{
var25 = 0.6F;
}

this.motionX *= (double)var25;
this.motionY *= (double)var25;
this.motionZ *= (double)var25;
this.motionY -= (double)var13;


Also, I believe some of the Wiki's information is no longer accurate - see the part about "isCritical"? That can add a LOT more than just 1-2 extra damage (as the Wiki shows between fully charged and critical shots); for example, if the value of var24 were 10 a random number between 0-6 (10 / 2 + 2 = 7; nextInt(7) returns 0-6) will be added for a range of 10-16.

For example, they say that arrows travel at 53 m/s, which is 2.65 blocks per tick (maximum), which when multiplied by the maximum base damage of 5 gives 13.25 (14 rounded up), plus 0-8 for a damage range of 14-22 for a Power V bow. This supports observations of spiders (16 health) failing to be killed in one hit from near point-blank range (in 1.6.4, which has the same code as up to 1.8, suggesting that this change is quite old, possibly when they changed other enchantments back in 1.6).