Talk:Archer/@comment-1779566-20190508095508/@comment-8506165-20190601174133

I disagree.

Archery is generally incredibly powerful in the entirety of BG1 - 2 APR on bows by default and powerful ammunition means that the damage on bows can often be higher than that of those in melee. Even regular fighters/rangers/paladins often make good use of archery in BG1 despite not being as specialised as the Archer. They can therefore breeze through the entirety of the first game pretty easily.

In BG2/TOB their power does start to decrease thanks to the abundance of good melee weapons and nerfs to ammunition, but they're still powerhouses because they're starting from such a high base. They can naturally reach 5APR fairly early with the Tuigan Bow, for 10 attacks under Improved Haste. With their to-hit and damage bonuses reaching considerable heights in BG2 this means they remain extremely good DPS characters. This isn't even factoring in Called Shot, which inflicts some pretty heavy debuffs especially at 10 APR. Did you know that you can kill someone through Strength drain with Called Shot?

I've played through the entire trilogy + SoD with an Archer and very rarely did I ever have to switch to melee. Even if you were to play solo Boots of Speed/Haste let you kite enemies out more or less indefinitely so you only really *have* to switch if you encounter something immune to missile damage, which isn't actually that common. Even then they're not absolutely atrocious in melee combat - they still have Ranger THAC0, bonus APR from Ranger level 7/13 and get dual-wielding for free so they're respectable if not spectacular.

"As a wielder of crossbow or bow, you cant use weapons in off hand. Which mean this two point prof is wasted."

As of the most recent EE patches you can still put something in your off-hand with a ranged or two-handed weapon equipped - it just only gets used when you switch to a single-handed melee weapon. Even if you're not playing on those, though, it's hardly a massive trial to open your inventory and briefly stash the bow so you can stick something in the off-hand.