I hate archers in UO.

I've never really liked them, I'm of the crowd who think Legolas is about as gay as it gets. Archery is just lame in principle, shoot from a distance and if anything gets close, run like the little wuss you are.

With the recent changes to Doom I absolutely loathe the gangs of archers that seem to have moved from Magincia to Doom now, hot in pursuit of the next big ticket items they can get by sitting around auto-firing.

Ever tried playing something OTHER than an archer? Ever heard of teamwork? Archers are absolutely useless in Doom, if anything, they're more of a hazard than helpful. They take a free ride on whatever boss is being killed (pinned by tamers or melee folks no doubt), and in addition all they do is cause havoc with the DF! Spurting all over the place and spawning tons of crap just 'cause these morons can't fathom the thought of playing something other than their greedy me me me easily sitting back -character.

Lazy greedy !!!!!!!! making life more difficult for everyone else.

PS: NERF ARCHERY!!!!!!!!!1111111one

Agree.. 100%

Isn't so much the archers, it's the players behind the characters.
When I DID go to doom, I used to res other players when they died and heal them and their pets.

Sure, there's decent folk behind some archer chars too. Naturally. (Hell, I do have an archer myself, just rarely play her since I see little reason to - she's useless and boring).

But in the case of Doom it doesn't really matter how nice the player is, there's just no good reason to bring an archer in there. For the room bosses you just wait for someone else to attack the boss, then fire away - can do the same with a melee char, except a melee char can also tank when needed. Not to mention a melee char doesn't attack the DF with ranged attacks, making it spurt all over the place and spit bones wider, making it hell for everyone else. Especially the tamers.

Melee, tamers and bards/mages all have their uses in Doom. Archery? Pointless. The only advantage I can see is the selfish sit-back-and-fire-while-afk deal which obviously is the reason there's so many of them. Add in the fact that archery does ridiculously high damage, and hey, there's your arti-farmer.

LOLOL not....You talk about an archer standing back and firing from a distance. What do you think a bard does? I think that is a waste of skill points. You stand back and tell 1 thing to attack another thing. What kinda skill does that take? And a tamer. You press your little marco key that says and all kill and then you invis yourself or stand there and heal them heal them heal them heal them....that takes a lot of skill.

The point I am making is this, we can back and forth on this. Adam said it correct. It is all about the person behind the character to know how to play his character and to help his team mates and guild members. When I take my archery to do the DF I use him as support. I heal, rez, and or attack the creatures that the DF spawns. So yes Adam is correct it is about the person behind the character.

Errm, I wasn't talking about the whole "who's got teh mad skillz" -debacle, I was talking about usefulness and efficiency. I couldn't care less what takes more keyboard mashing skills, that's for the PvPers to fight over.

Everyone loves a bard in Doom, keeps the spawn occupied and helps pin down the DF.

Melee fighters always help pin things down, so do tamers. They're meat shields. Always nice when someone has the cojones to take the damage while others get to attack (hopefully also helping keep said meat shield alive).

Archers? Sure, they can heal others and res too. But so can everyone else, while also doing more beneficial things. Especially with the DF, ranged attacks just tend to f* everything up. Shooting up the spawn helps of course, so in that respect it is up to the person behind the keyboard. But from what I'm seeing that ain't happening, everyone runs away from spawn hoping it tags onto someone else so they can keep shooting the DFs.

Just to be clear: I'm not trying to say everyone who plays an archer is an ass, what I'm saying is archery is poo in Doom and in general the least team-oriented combat skill.

Ok.. let me see if I understand what you are saying here, if there were no archers in Doom the DF would not "spurt all over the place and spawn tons of crap" I am not a Doom expert so if this is the fact I agree why would any group want an archer present.

I know that I take my archer there when my guild goes down and for every hit of my arrow I get damage back by the bones being thrown at me. I choose to bring my archer as I am able to do damage without the assistance that the "meat sheilds" need. I may be mistaken but I thought the point was to kill the DF as quickly as possible, therefore having a few archers around being able to constantly due damage was a good thing.

However if what you are saying about the DF not "spurting out and spawning" is true with melee fighters only I guess I will bring out the ol' "meat sheild" as it would be better for the group.

Hitting the DF with a ranged attack makes it do the giant beetle -type speedhacking burst towards the attacker. This is thankfully often avoided if a lot of people are attacking the DF in close quarters, since it gets hit so often it won't have time to spurt before someone else "re-targets" it.

Now, when the spurt does happen, it means all pets follow the DF, so all tamers have to follow suit, and all melee fighters have to run around chasing the DF. Also all provoked spawn will slowly chase the DF, but being so slow, often end up re-targeting a player instead. So to put it in a nutshell, ranged attacks = recipe for chaos.

Yes, killing the DF quickly is nice of course. But personally I rather have it take a bit more time if it means folks don't die and undead spawn isn't everywhere. When you attack the DF, it spews bones at you. So, when people attack from a range, those bones get scattered around. Whereas when people are in close quarters, everything stays relatively contained. There's still spawn of course, but it's easier to handle when it's not popping up all over the place.

To be fair, ranged attacks from mages have the same effect - but most mages are content to send in summons, thankfully.

With a guild the greed-aspect is moot of course, archers doing constant damage is prolly a good thing. With just random people, the archers seem to be having a free ride while others do the dirty work up close, archers do lots of damage, thus get more artifact points for less trouble.

Pft I'm a meat shield, and need no assistance! It just irritates when I'm doing perfectly fine by myself.. and some archer comes over and messes things up.

As you sure about this because the times that I have been there and attacked the DF with my archer I when I hit it, I get hit. Not, I hit it and everyone else gets hit. I thought is was hit for hit. Even with the event going on now, when fireball and flame strike the DF from a range, only I get hit and not everyone standing around me.

I think you are saying is that the problem is that when archers attack the DF you do not have have any "meat shields" standing between you and the DF and that the archers are I guess using you as "meat shields" now.

The problem I have is when you said ....

"Lazy greedy bastards making life more difficult for everyone else.

PS: NERF ARCHERY!!!!!!!!!1111111one"

Because I believe that the lazy greedy bastards are the tamers not the archers. I don;t understand how tamers are able to get the rewards because they are not doing anything but standing around healing or the invis themself when that are attacked by more then one creatures and you have no way to defend youself. My archer has kept lots and lots of tamers alive long enough so that they can hope on the pet and run away.