You never said quick dodge interacted with archery!
https://streamable.com/qwy09I know i'm an archery shill but I want to at least bring up the idea of balancing archery with the new changes.
Especially with the two new moves, archery is actually pretty easy to smooth into this system! Right now though (especially after the various nerfs to smash it into the ground..), it's pretty much useless.
Simply put, bows aim too slowly. A 100q bow with 100 marksmanship aims
ridiculously slowly, and with the huge new focus on running around in combat and having ways to close your distance on a target, there's no real way to use archery in pvp combat (and if animals have attacks like that..). I think primarily the cause of this is the change that was added in this world
The aim speed of ranged weapons now scales with the ratio of the geometric mean of your Marksmanship and Perception values to the bow's quality. You, thus, need higher values of perception and marksmanship to use higher quality bows.
Lowered base damages of ranged weapons, but increased their armor penetration.
This, combined with the geometric formula of the aim meter (You will never hit 100%. You will be lucky if you hit above 95%.), means that effective archery is a bit... well, nearly impossible to attain.
Now, it's been a long time since I did my tests, so some of my information might be out of date. Damage of bows used to be the percentage multiplied with itself. For example, a bow at 90% meter would deal (.9*.9 =) 81% damage, and while that seems "good", it also means aiming to 50% deals 25% damage, and aiming to 50%/70% takes a
long time on a quality-equivalent bow. Not to mention with the new combat system, players are MUCH more likely to miss, or be forced to attack faster as their pursuer gains ground.
So, I suggest removing the quality/stat speed dependency, raising aim speed overall and increasing bow range overall (I noticed this like... NEVER got fixed. Bow maximum range was supposed to be based off of essence, but was always static at 17 tiles, and this world isn't any different), and splitting the three (four?) archery tools into distinct categories
Slings: Early game, very short range, aims super fast; doesn't do much damage, but high armor pen.
Bows: 'Shortbows'. Aims fast, decent range, meant to be the type of 'bow' you move and shoot constantly with in combat. Low armor pen.
Ranger's Bow: 'Longbow'. Aims slow, but deals incredible (way higher than current bows) damage, and has incredibly high armor pen, but also extremely high range. The type of bow someone sits at the edge of combat with, trying to pick people off with ranged support/archery support from a nearby boat.
As a side note, I think shields should more or less be a very 'hard' counter to bows; possibly greatly reducing the damage any ranged weapon deals (before armor reduction), or having special combat moves/stances that allow the bearer to negate archery attacks and reduce opening gained from melee attacks for a long duration, while still being able to move slowly.
Also! Bows should have a tiny delay before shooting (with an animation, of course. Something like holding the bow 'down' when aiming, and lifting/shooting it after clicking), but 'track' a little better, in order to encourage timing quick dodge/moving away from the aiming direction at the last moment. More interplay, yay!
Queen of a cold, dead land. Caretaker of the sprucecaps.