Please give archer a dagger.

[Amas]

Really? Did you actually say both these things?

Yes, I did.

RNG in FFXI suffered from the hit-to-attack problem. Your damage went down the less closely you paid attention, and the more you allowed time to elapse between the end of one /ra and the beginning of the next. All other DD jobs had predictable melee damage since the attack timer was fixed.

ARC in FFXIV will suffer from the same problem if auto attack turns out to be useful and a noteworthy component of damage. Since it doesn't exactly make a ton of sense for an ARC to be sitting in melee range during group activities, they won't get their auto attack damage at all, and will be entirely dependent on firing arrows as often as cooldown permits. Which means watching cooldowns like a hawk and button mashing like mad.

Alternately, if it does wind up making sense for ARC to sit in melee range, it'll completely break the conceptual point of the class.

And yes, I did say don't play with stupid people. People choose to let "nice" people who suck into their LSs. If you want to be a casual, fine. But as soon as you knowingly take in a bad player, or don't give them a mandate to shape up or ship out, you're responsible for the consequences (including broken CC). No LS is completely free of bad players, but most of the good endgame LSs tried to minimize the number, sideline them, and/or put them into the least critical roles with good players covering for their inadequacies.

There have been many bad players I've liked being around or liked spending time with. I also never pretended it WASN'T my fault when I brought them along to a situation where smart play mattered and they weren't up to task. I made a conscious choice to take a risk, sometimes that choice came back to bite me in the ass. Usually the follow-up choice was to either exclude those players from touchy situations in the future, or make an effort to work with them so they wouldn't make the same mistakes again.

[Delmontyb]

Well the nice thing about Archers not having auto attack, is that they will still be able to buff up before attacking, so they won't apply a buff then auto attack, and have the buff go away. That's one thing I've liked about the class this whole time is the ability to stack buffs before attacking for a huge amount of HP.

That being said, I'm still in the daggers camp... Or we could call it "sub weapon" camp... Archers shouldn't have to hit with their "hands"... however, I wouldn't mind seeing them kick the crap out of some random mob, that would look pretty cool.

[Capita]

I love how people have no idea what an Archer exactly is.

It's a ranged physical DPS. It fills a niche in MMO's as a class that can do physical damage from range, as opposed to magic damage (for those pesky AOE bosses who have high resistances and low defenses *cough*mage bosses*cough*).

Forcing Archers to melee is about as stupid as forcing a melee class to throw rocks at a fleeing enemy. You say Archers shouldn't be able to shoot while someone's in their face because it adds realism. Ok, cool. Do you think someone could consistently hit another person with a 20 lb broadsword while sprinting? If that's the case, melee damage should be halved while moving... you know, for realism.

Fact of the matter is that it's a fantasy game. Hell, I wouldn't even mind if Archers were forced to melee IF THEIR TARGET GETS IN MELEE RANGE. But forcing Archers to melee even if their target is being kept within shooting range by a tank? No, it doesn't make sense to me. Actually, it ruins the niche that the Archer fills.

Why not just be like every other good MMO out there and allow Archers to use their bow for AA while at range, and automatically switch to punching or whatever if their target gets into melee range? It makes perfect sense, instead of forcing one or the other.

As far as melee animation goes, I've always wanted to see my Archer use the bow as a melee weapon and using it to bash skulls in.

[Sorel]

Being honest with myself, I personally would not mind if the Development Team took daggers away from Gladiators and gave Archers access to them as a secondary weapon. Looking at the big picture, it may even open up the opportunity to add the Thief Job to the game.

Mind you, the Archers would still have to take themselves out of active mode to equip their daggers, and they probably should be pretty awful at actually using them.

[AlexiaKidd]

Just let Archers stab enemies with an arrow if they are in melee range and that would solve all of this.

[Jennestia]

Just let Archers stab enemies with an arrow if they are in melee range and that would solve all of this.

I'm going to try this on a ballistic dummy and see how effective it would be versus just shooting it.

[Kallera]

I'm going to try this on a ballistic dummy and see how effective it would be versus just shooting it.

Good call, but be sure to include a pig carcass, its the closest thing to human flesh!

[Randis]

Archers stabbing enemies with their arrows? seriously now?

Archers boxing around or using dagger?

How about designing a proper battle flow for archers instead of trying to fit in the old shit.
Let em do the auto attack by shooting arrows and adjust the other moves to fit the auto-attack or simply give em no auto-attack.

And why would you need to take away daggers from Gladiator????
Why not simply add some daggers that can only be used by archers?
All the smith jobs use hammer too.

[Delmontyb]

Archers stabbing enemies with their arrows? seriously now?

Archers boxing around or using dagger?

How about designing a proper battle flow for archers instead of trying to fit in the old shit.
Let em do the auto attack by shooting arrows and adjust the other moves to fit the auto-attack or simply give em no auto-attack.

And why would you need to take away daggers from Gladiator????
Why not simply add some daggers that can only be used by archers?
All the smith jobs use hammer too.

The whole for archers to be able to melee close range damage would only apply to solo, if the monster runs up to you. Not that archers would want to stand within range of the mob in the first place, but it seems silly to have them punch the mob all together, they aren't monks after all...

Giving them a dagger would more or less open them up to the job thief as well.

[Krausus]

give them knives in the tip of their boots and let them roundhouse kick the mobs to death =P