Right now bows do extremely well on unarmored targets, and Good on light armored targets like mages, But after bonetissue armor the damage starts falling off hard. In a group fight bow can still put out good DPS against bone tissues. When it comes to ironbone armor then the viability of bows starts to come into question. Against steel their is no question that bows have viability issues outside of just being chip DPS in group fights.
Bows are extremely cheap to make and arrows are pretty cheap and easy to get. So its fair that steel a armor that takes a long time to make and is much more costly is stacked against bows. It would be unfair to buff the bow against armors which are more difficult and costly to make.
The solution would be to add more time and cost to archery gear to match the cost of the gear better.
So let us craft arrows. The arrows at the vendor can be on par with arrows made of pig iron they work the same as now. You can then make arrows out of steel that are ok against steel but is good against every other tier armor underneath it. Cronite arrows would be good against steel and ok for cronite. Also a cronite arrow would not do more damage it would just negate a level of armor. So a cronite arrows damage vs a light armored player wouldn't be too far off.
Also Make different arrow types mater. Like have bodkin arrows be the arrow to use against armored players and broadhead be the arrow against light to unarmored. Instead of bodkin being the "weakspot" arrow which almost never crits. Bodkins should have a higher damage then now but below broadheads with armor negation. Broadheads should work poorer then bodkins on armor but really work well on light armor or unarmors targets. Longbow arrows should also have these tips on them as well. This will add some more gameplay to archers, as they would switch out arrows if they were targeting a mage or a melee fighter.
It would also help make the shortbow viable against higher tier armors instead of forcing everyone onto longbow.
Bows are extremely cheap to make and arrows are pretty cheap and easy to get. So its fair that steel a armor that takes a long time to make and is much more costly is stacked against bows. It would be unfair to buff the bow against armors which are more difficult and costly to make.
The solution would be to add more time and cost to archery gear to match the cost of the gear better.
So let us craft arrows. The arrows at the vendor can be on par with arrows made of pig iron they work the same as now. You can then make arrows out of steel that are ok against steel but is good against every other tier armor underneath it. Cronite arrows would be good against steel and ok for cronite. Also a cronite arrow would not do more damage it would just negate a level of armor. So a cronite arrows damage vs a light armored player wouldn't be too far off.
Also Make different arrow types mater. Like have bodkin arrows be the arrow to use against armored players and broadhead be the arrow against light to unarmored. Instead of bodkin being the "weakspot" arrow which almost never crits. Bodkins should have a higher damage then now but below broadheads with armor negation. Broadheads should work poorer then bodkins on armor but really work well on light armor or unarmors targets. Longbow arrows should also have these tips on them as well. This will add some more gameplay to archers, as they would switch out arrows if they were targeting a mage or a melee fighter.
It would also help make the shortbow viable against higher tier armors instead of forcing everyone onto longbow.