Here’s what I’ll say. Starting off after level 60 when the game throws you into pvp with highly experienced players. It’s rough, definitely when you don’t have good units, or the Meta seasonal units (paladins ran me down, then beserkers.) archers were my only real damage source, and Rattan Vipers were my money makers with the poison damage that would weaken units.. It was the only time I felt impactful until I started actually getting seasonal units or getting honor to afford the better units.

My hot take: Archers are force multipliers, whereas frontline "Heavy" infantry are your primary power. The trade off for melee units, even when used properly, is that they get damaged, scuffed up or weakened over time as they lose models. Archers, Javelins, Gunners all trade that primary pushing power for the _Opportunity_ to get damage on enemies without expending models, and they highly discourage enemy heroes from engaging in prolonged brawls in their firing lines. While I can understand that Evo feels like he's unable to get "stuck in", or that he's spending too much time microing the archer position, he's destroying heroes and tier 4 and 5 units with a blue Namkan, contributing 70+ model kills and several hero kills. The "Tax" for that kind of damage output is micro and map awareness rather than charging in and brawling. It's a different play style, and it's not for everyone, but I wouldn't call it "passive" either. The enemy is run low on units by the end of the video, and if this is what 2 or 3 people on Evo's team are doing, they still have a reserve of fresh heavy infantry beaters to trash the enemy on the final point. Another consideration that I feel isn't discussed is that other enemy heroes want to get "stuck in" as well, because everyone has big AOE slams and crowd control and damage to dish out to units in a great big ball on the point, but archers deny that to the enemy. They are "one less thing" that the big sweeping strikes of enemy heroes can rip hitpoints out of while performing their primary goal of contesting a point. They are instead a separate problem that has to be solved or the enemy heroes will risk getting too injure to contest the point or their units will get dinged up and lose the brawl. I mean, how many times have we seen giant piles of infantry on a point on both sides and 5 or 6 heroes just spinning like a blender chaining big AOE knocdowns and staggers to break the pikes and shield blocks as their own infantry cut into the blob. Its a very common tactic that right as units charge in one or two heroes run up and lay down big staggers to disrupt the defender formation and land their charge. At a certain point "more melee" just becomes a contest of which team can coordinate their disruptions better, and whoever loses the initial engagement has no recourse to try again. Generally speaking, the game is about picking your fights and taking advantage of situations where you or your units can win engagements without taking much damage or losses. It can be very hard for anything but high tier, well doctrine'd and well played infantry to contribute 70+ kills, in particular in a meta where we see combined charges from heavy infantry, cav and pike advances at the same time. I feel like in this particular case, being down on archers, especially using phrasing that implies they might not even be worth having, is a bit of a loaded and unwarranted position. Without ranged units to soften things up, weaken enemies engaged in brawls, and threaten hero health pools to prevent wild aggression, the game would turn into a turtling war of fortibraccios, imperial spears, and reapers huddling in corners awaiting the winged hussars as "the only option" to break up stalemates.

I wish more people played archers like you, you actually moving them forward with the push, alot of people try and be as far back as possible.

You can get lots of kills with archers but you become 100 percent dependant on your teamates to hold down points or to break thru and capture points. I remember a video you did a while back playing all archers that covered the topic quite well. Archers can be a "relaxing" unit to play, but unfortunately are not a great unit to help you or the friends/teamates your playing with to improve win rates.

I think for competetive playing like ranked, archers have sadly been pretty useless for many, many seasons and I often ended up loosing because 5 guys defended with archers and nobody stepped on the end point. I think they could maybe bring them back into the game by increasing damage against heroes drastically and make it impossible to just jump them as a single maul or shortsword or spear or pike etc. Nice video as usual evo, keep it up!

Archers' role in battle are damage dealer/ harasser but they can shoot from behind cover, I think that would be a valid role if a single musket bomb or 1 charging hero didn't one shot them every time. Most archer units are outdated so they can't do fancy things like new seasonal units

I've gotten 100 kills withing 1 minute with the prefecture archers, i've also gotten 60 kills in the same timeframe with longbows. But neither felt really impactfull. I feel that archers need some QoL updates so they might finally be viable. - Firing arc indicator like Shenji's grenade throw does, changing so it helps you hit your target. - Bit of autoaim on your 1 ability, like longbow 1 skill. Archers should be used with indirect fire so the enemy doesn't actually see the archers but the direct fire ability is so limiting that you barely ever hit anything so you are forced to bring your unit up. Making them vulnerable to trebs and counterfire or making them useless by having them on castle walls and firing into it. - some more AP damage and maybe some block break, especially for longbows. As i said i've gotten plenty of kills with them but 99% of the time i use my archers to target enemy archers because they can't kill armoured or shielded enemies. Them being mainly viable against other archers just makes it a archer paradox, why bring them if they are just going to shoot at one another?

Ive taken my houndsmen to the last two TWs. They're Absolutely amazing with hobbling shot, and their bleed, and the debuff from the hounds.

I’ve actually taken the tech of always using formation to move your soldiers it help a lot with defense and offense. Thank you for teaching me that

In my opinion, archers should never be abble to single shoot heavily armored units, BUT should apply a slow debuff or something that decrease their armor or even, their damage. Archer, even in real life war, were meant to harrass enemies and maybe kill something, but their purpose were to slow the enemy off. Thats how archers should be played in CB. They should apply more debuffs so they can FILL a role. Damage is NOT trheir primary role because we already have muskets for that.

My 2 cents is it also depends on what weapon you wield as a hero. Some weapons better suit to the micro management playstyle while behind melee's then others. For example longbowmen and shortbowmen can contribute a lot while still able to manage archers.

I only use namkhan archer as my range because the bleed is too good. I also use arrow rain doctrine on them it doesn't effect the bleed damage so you deal more bleed damage. Bleed is the only thing worth for namkhan I usually get 4-5 random hero kill from bleed

3:55 YEETED lmao

Maybe archers need a boost in the shape of armour-piercing arrow ability or something, so they're worth bring to a battle

I sometimes use namkhan to shoot into enemy supply point from distance.. Always feels good when enemy unit dies in their own supply point

Get Arrow Rain on these Namkhans, it's absolute insanity how much work this single doctrine can do for them. Not only does it help applying more stacks in shorter time, it also gives you so much more control over where they shoot. Often the Area Attack command is ignored, or enemy units reposition all the time - with Arrow Rain the unit just picks their own targets with a priority to enemies closer to where you set the Arrow Rain. So you can still put it directly on a unit, but if that unit moves away the Nakhans will adjust and follow them with their shots. It's amazing.

you forget... if you play a hero like long bow, there is nothing you can do in the middle of chaotic melee fight but to sit back and shoot with your archers from far away.... I agree that if you play any melee heroes, it's the best to play with other melee units cause your skills can daze half of the enemy's unit and help yours. But with long bow, nah, we just like to sit back and chill

I feel like the only playable range unit is namkhan as they have that bleed debuff that can stack, the bleed can stack as much as dealing like 50- 1k damage each tick and that can kill heros easily or still able to wipe out heavy armored units

I find myself asking this same question for all ranged units other than Shenji Grenadiers lately. I have found that in any situation or battle that your team does NOT have a clear advantage ranged units are quite useless.

i would say yes but others on my team use them so i use melee infantry to protect their archers

So, here's my take: Archers, and ranged units, in general, are OK as "fill" units for your stack. Start by building your stack with 2 good units, usually melee units (unless you're bringing Tercios, Falcos, or Shenjis). Once you have 2 good melee units, it's fine to bring A (ONE) ranged unit. Whether you bring archers or guns depends on the map and whether you're attacking or defending. My preferred unit stack is generally: axe raiders, palace guards or gray hairs, and then either namkhans or janissaries dependent upon the map and where I expect to use them. The introduction of axe raiders in the game, with their ability to bypass shield units greatly reduced the value and effectiveness of ranged units.

Both Imperial Archers and Namkhans are awesome and if used in the correct way can be very useful , Evo did a video a while back on imperial archers and i thought i would put the epic doctrines to good use and now they rock , killing heros is so fast when in close range giving time to move my archers back and helping my team polish off the unassisted units :)

I still remember that time that you really like to play prefecture archers

They have their place. But to be somewhat efficient you need to move them a lot and know maps, ranges and angles. I've seen people doing incredible stuff with archers, but I've seen more people using them as an "automatic damage dealing device" which is lazily parked somewhere emptying their quivers uselessly on a shieldwall before getting bombed and burned by a single musket in a drive-by.

Yea archers are fine. But horrible if there are too many on attack or defense. Can't hold a point or push one with all archers. Unless they are all in communication focused. Tho I have seen 10 ppl with archers working together win an attack and also loose. More often the defeat happens. Great video and perfectly said

That one flying bloke at 3:54 :D

Range goods: dps, draw trebs away from infantry, counter range, draw heros from fight Range bad: treb fear, keep hero away from front line fight to babysit, cant hold point or cap pt. Ax raider nerf has helped range a ton. Pre-nerf, everyone had raiders and they made range pointless to bring.

I use Archers, but I tend to use specific Archer units in particular. The ones I use more than any others are the ones I have the most success with: Longbows, Imp Archers, Fire Archers, and Pavises. I will probably end up using Houndsmen a lot as well, but at the moment I find their dogs are REALLY squishy, and the archers themselves run out of ammo REALLY fast. But I don't feel that Archers are useless like some other players do. They have their place, but you have to use them right or they'll be easily picked off and slaughtered (something I'm still honestly trying to learn how to do properly).

Archers are a punishing unit. Enemy won't push into your allied pike wall? chipped away. Enemy pushes? shoot their backline and kill their gunners/archers/bagpipers. Hero out of position? bursted down. Enemy units unattended? dead. To effectively use archers you NEED to only be a commander. You can't really multitask when you're strategizing with them, or they're kind of useless.

archers are REALLY GOOD but 3 things neeedd 1:be defended by your teammates 2:actually move them and try getting positions where you can deal the maximum dmg 3:do stuff with your hero too and defend your archers (also dont just press v use your abilities to shoot at specific places)

I often go full ranged (with some farmers as canon fodder). I know where chokepoints are and where I can position my archers/muskets to be out of trebuchet/cav charge range whilst still being usefull. I only play fully levelled nahmkhans and imperial archers though, all other archer units are relatively poot dps whise. On hailung fortress (or whatever it's called) I usually only contest A/B and the final point. where you were fighting I would only ever play a ranged unit if it had survived the A/B phase, otherwise I would put them on top of the stairs where they are far less likely to get flanked

When i did play i was primarily a long bow so ranged used worked well though i would only bring 1 with my set up. I did prefer muskets over archers most of the time though. Too many people keep their archers too far back. I liked playing them much closer.

Typically I run 1 ranged unit per game but rarely archers. Usually muskets or pavise crossbows. Pikes, and swords are the way to go, sometimes mix in a calvary unit.

I main ranged units and I can tell you that with proper positioning and care you get 100+ kills per battle with ease, top 5 and a ton of rewards. Playing tactically is the way to go, having a good overwatch over the battlefield and focusing on large battle groups. The muskets can be devastating on choke points and all of them can do massive damage on point defense. On offense they can soften up the enemy forcing it to reposition and lose the tactical advantage. They can also counter fire, making the enemy support players relocate or even send their archers back to supply for heal. They do worst in Field Battles, but that is to be expected. With enough care you can even get 200 kills (especially among lower ranks), but that is quite rare.

Like and subscribe! I bring Namkhans in my warband for one reason only: Damage Per Second Ok hear me out, I like to use cavalry, so in my lineup I almost always use Armigers and a golden cav, but the fun with cavalry lasts usually about 6min, and you need to know when and where to use them. The rest of the time I need another unit to do something with, even if micro intensive, and Namkhans are literal DPS that get better the longer you can have them out, sometimes even the majority of the match on long battles.

rattan marksmen are good at some maps and namhkans at some too other than them I dont use any rn

Imperials come in useful on some maps. I rarely use them though as always a better option to take.

The EU servers are a meme because of the amount of full archer armies NA players encounter when cross server hits. Personally, I like Vassal Longbows for sniping other ranged units from across the map. About 10 matches ago, I got 94 kills with longbows including falconettis, Iron reapers, Shenji grenadiers, Keshigs, etc. Prefecture Archers and Vassal Longbowmen are arguably the best archers for sniping, in my opinion. What I mean by that is they are great for throwing arrows from covered positions at extremely long range because both feature an auto-target mechanic where they won't focus fire on the location you designate, rather they target any enemies near the designated area, even ones out of Line of sight. So just because you can't see the enemy's forces on the other side of the wall, your archers can, and will often arc their shots over the walls and hit enemies you didn't even know were there. Imperial archers, Namakhans, etc. those are more support archers, where you want to run them closer with your melee so they can free fire.

Short answer: archers suck. They need a big buff, and they need it now.

The only archer unit that worth and its my favourite unit is the prefecture archers.

IMO, archers all need a buff. Whether that be in terms of fire rate, accuracy or damage, it doesn’t matter. Right now, the only archer unit that can cope with mid to high tier melee units are imperial archers, and they can’t really compete with musket damage at a closer distance and archer damage at range (which is the whole point of archers) is totally negligible. However, I think that the devs can also lean into a more support oriented role for some archers, with debuffs like poison swaying battles in their teams favour

During 10minutes of microing in combat you got 43 unit kills with them and 365 worth of leadership, so the answer is no, they are not worth playing and they havent been since the infantry health and armour buffs in season 6 or 7. Also in this scenario you also had players who played frontline well, so if you didnt have that they would not get even 100 leadership worth of unit kills in 2mins before they would die to more mobile and higher dmg units. Just an opnion, great topic and good video as always :)

No. Archers are hell to play. I always get ganked. Only time I use archers is when I have to take out archers for quests. Muskets however are my style. They contribute plenty. They do the same thing ipgs do. Even if I get ganked with muskets I've averaged at least 70 kills with em. Very effective. Whereas archers i have averaged around 20. Also i have a question about paladins. I just unlocked paladins and I was wondering if the honor nodes for men at arms counts for paladins and armiger lancers

In my opinion, archers can be good when enough of your team has melee units, which is why I usually don't use them because people end up bringing only ranged or mostly ranged which makes your team lose because you can't hold a point

for archers, just use prefecture archers with arrow rain skill, this unit is great, just use their skill only, not auto damage.

Even if u use them less, whenever u do, the gameplay is so op

Depends. I'm also a main poleaxe and in a normal siege is just bad to play archers. BUT the end game in my mind are TW, so i just treat normal sieges like friendly matches. In a organized group with 15 people all the units can be good. In TW all the units change their value, expect kheshig that are op everywhere. In normal sieges flameboys are bad, but in TW they are like gods. So for me flameboys are super good, but for people that don't care about TW, they are just a waste of leadership.

Im not sure evo, it seemed like you were doing very very well with the namkhans in that match. I unfortunately only find that exact archer unit to be worth taking unfortunately. Minus perhaps longbows i think CB really needs to make other archer units worth taking over nams.

A group of outriders would have done much more with this amount of microing.

There is a real problem on this game with every players taking ranged units in their warband, so you ends up having 15 ranged units during the match. Also most of the player plays them terrible, posting them behind the flags staying static with no micro gestion shooting at sheild unit doing no damage and not bringing any weight to the frontline. There are so many match where 60% of your team uses their ranged units at the same time and you end up getting crushed by the enemy infantry train

Full archer stack new meta

I enjoy using archers, I usually bring my Imps (got a ton of purple doctrines and maxed out line after unlocking them) and 2 shield units and I do very well with my imps. They bust alot of dmg and help clear masses or wear down shield units.

Archers are only worth it when the player uses them correctly, otherwise they are simply a hinderance. Rarely used in TW atm guns are just more useful. Unless it's raining. Only time we see them is at the start of a Season since on Frontier purple & gold units are locked so archers, especially fire ones shine A LOT more.

Another KZfaqr called 'TheMightyMyrmidon' has a video on how underappreciated and great the Rattan Vipers are. Not sure I buy it though.

i will say this the paid black dragon pikemen has to be the best paid unit even though they are not tanky and almost cant sustain in a melee fight but there charge is devastating it will shred alot of heros

I prefer musket units, they have really good high dmg and can mow down enemy heros

I like ranged units but well like I wouldn't even consider nannkhans good. Who cares about bleed stacks when units got 13k hp and 800+ armor and a ranged resist + block. Just like with muskets only the tier 2k damage a hit is still 6 shots for 1 single unit to kill while they come on stacks of 18-32 you will go damage im sure barely but its there you take forever to kill 1 unit and they tsje 5 seconds to kill yours while not tanking damage at all

I was an archer user most of the time, but after lvl 1000 they became so difficult to use. Because players keep diving them and such.

My problem with archers is that i have to constantly be managing them and the ammo wastes really fast, wich forces me to constantly be talking them to a suply point

Sorry bro when shield meta is around. You can only counter with other shield or melee. Or have good cav charge

archer can be good if know how, where to position it , not just stick in one places and forget about it

First! Daily dose of Evo :D

I find archers to be good. But i am also a longbow player so i got that time to micro them and people prefer to treb me over my unit

congrats to 2100

Just now my enemy bled to death because of my namkhan archers lol

PLEASE, STOP USING LONGBOWMEN. THEIR RANGE IS NOT GOOD NOR IS THEIR DMG. I've ranted about this on steam discussion already, people don't know how to use archers. They use their archers on attack and put them near the siege tower while they they don't do much dmg at that angle, or they put their LONGBOWMEN at the very back and they at most kill 10-20 units each game. Archers can be very effective on some map, if u push with the team, but compared to coordinated infantry push archers can't do much, exception is shenjis, but they are muskets. If its not raining and the terrain is mostly flat, then muskets are so much better units, they do pretty well shooting down too. Not to say the best archer is only purple, while gold muskets can do AOE or much more pure dmg. Due to the current meta, archers are still good but there are always better unit to use than them. Also when u use archers u are out of the fight trying to protect them. I'm a maul user so its biased but I can get unit kills and help the push/defend just by myself and leave my archers behind. But even if you do push with the team, archers can die in one treb, or one maul swing.

There is nothing worse than starting to defend the home point and realizing that everyone brought ranged. Sure sign to lose that one.

all of you archer players unistall plz so you dont ruin my game

Archers are DOT units and the game keeps getting more burst damage.

Sorry but the issue here is that youre not efficient with your actions with the archers here. Maybe its just not your play style and that is OK, and still you got good amount of kills anyway

dude - you are moving way to often. When they move - they dont shoot.

lol "They're hardly exactly doing that much damage" as he's 3rd on the leaderboard in unit kills.

RATTAN VIPERS ARE THE ONLY ARCHER WORTH USING (65% dmg reduction on enemies hit!). MAYBE ALSO THE DOGS BUT DON'T KNOW YET. AHHH

no lol

Imagine making a whol 16 minute vid where u talk about how bad archers are all the while never using their abilities. ffs

Ok Evo here is where I am going to drop my OPINION. I think you put entirely to much faith in crappy units like Namkhans and call Longbowmen (my best unit) trash when I use almost exclusively ranged units (mind you I have almost every unit unlocked). I think the game would be MUCH more fair if it tallied unit assists and not just "kills". If a unit has 10k hp and my archers do 9K damage to a unit but another unit hits it for the kill my unit gets almost no credit. Mind you I average over 150 kills/1.5 million damage dealt a game and RARELY ever need to swap units. Trust me when I say if I had better PvE options in THIS game I would probably exclusively play PvE. I love the gameplay this game offers so I grin and bare the PvP.