Don't you love this class? From a distance you spot an enemy, you pull out your bow, load it and zoom down the range, and follow the enemy's walk pattern, and once you know what to expect you wait for the perfect shot, let go of the arrow and watch it go down range. Nothing bears the feeling of the arrow penetrating the guys skull, and watching him drop as other foes go into wtf mode and attempt to find you, though they don't know where you are. And 1 by 1 they go down. Life is good then. Life is good.

i just switched from being a two handed monster to a stealth archer...im thinking about restarting as an archer.

In my game the arrow fires above the reticule. Do you notice that? When I am at chest height it smashes through their face.

It goes against my BF grain.

Yes I have. I wasn't sure if it was a flaw or intentional.... I'm thinking it's intentional, bEcause at a medium/long range it's spot on. Only at very long ranges do I find my self adding angle for compensation. It also makes sense because in oblivion it went out straight which was kind of annoying because you had to add compensation angle for anything past 10 feet. Which I guess at the same time was more challenging and fun.

Yeah, Skyrim seems to have something similar to FO3's auto-aim "correcting" your aim. I look forward to finding a mod which disables this misfeature.

The arrow pretty much lands just below where you aimed at max range.

i show this in this vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ifc4n1tYfY

Yep! Add me too that list. Archery is way too easy in Skyrim. Just point and shoot!

My character is archer/one handed sword with a bit of destruction magic thrown in.

Level 16, Only using the Hunting Bow

It really is rewarding. I always loved playing archers, and have enjoyed them from Morrowind to this game.... but to me, Skyrim definitely provides the best experience in the series when it comes to archery.

Stepping into an ominous dungeon room, finding a dark spot, getting into stealth and picking off monsters one by one - even the tougher ones - and moving slowly to other dark spots without giving away your position is an absolute thrill.

I don't use magic (save for some minor healing if and when I get jumped on while out in the wilderness), I don't use companions and almost never use melee. Trying to get the job done with pure archery often necessitates re-evaluating the situation, but I find I greatly enjoy that.

One thing that is needed.

We really need to be able to smith our own arrows. I would love to be able to do something usefull with the 100+ dwarven metal ingots I have hanging around the house.

I'm a stealthy archer. Can 1-shot most bad guys, or 2-3 shot the higher level Draughr. It's hella-fun. Much better than the 8+ arrows it took me in Oblivion hehe.

I was using arrows to shoot dwemer bowls off shelves and I found I had to shoot slightly lower than I expected. It was weird.

In O, I had most fun with stealthy archers and Ithink if there is one area TES shines is this. If I ever play S, I guess it will have to be same approach. That zoom ability is just too good not to love it.

Yes my PC reticle isnt right (not even that bethesda) but i adapted and its fine.
The bow doesn t fire straight, it fires a bit upward to the shaft line.

And yes the archer class shine in skyrim, close combat is a poor choice. poor combat, bad against dragons...

Guys i to love the archer Ihave had two memrable shots the first.as I was trying to bypass 4-5 bandits by going under a narrow bridge a guard in the middle of the bridge started fireing
my 2nd arrow made him go down on one knee so i could only see part of his chest but the 3rd hit him and he fell silently into the water below, it seemed so nataral it made me think..wow and last night saw me hit a guy from 250-300yrds iam sure i aimed high cos nothing was hitting him then all os a sudden he doen a back flip off his tower. I was 80-100ft up a clife took all of them out with bow but used a summoned demo to help me do the leader..iam only lvl10 mage in mages robes, with archer guantlets that give me a bit of 20%+
along with a bow i found that makes enemy run away for 60sec..aint tried it yet.. yup Archers are cool..

...Get a new one O.O Pretty sure you can get better bows at level 16.

Ah, Flawless Elven bow +10 Fire with Grand soul gem at level 12, they might be high level compared to me after leveling smith and enchant, but they never see me. They do burn and scream a lot though.

I love archery. I always tried to use it in prior games to limited success. It is nice to finally be able to feel fairly powerful with it. It is also funny how satisfying it is since all the arrows are always sticking out of my targets. It helps that my companion is also an archer so we rain hell.

I find archery a challenge with higher level enemies, because the main advantage is the initial sneak shot. It needs better stealth bonuses, especially for headshots (which it doesn't factor in). That being said, the ability to rehide is a massive improvement.

I switched from archery to daggers and I have to say that while archery was fun, I thought it was too easy under most circumstances. If you plan ahead and pick your spots well you'll never get caught and can kill everything with almost no risk.

Stealth daggers is insane fun, high risk sneakups but huge payoffs when you one shot bosses (in some cases just after pickpocketing them!).

I don't think so, it just auto-compensates for a static medium-long distance. If the target isn't in that range you still have to compensate yourself. Plus there'll be headshot mods soon enough to make you work harder.

The only problem I have is that the arrows disappear, and therefore wont hit, past a certain long range.

I love it, specially now when stealth bonus is more leanant, so it workd even when there alert but havent spoted me, sometime I purposly wait with killing other in a group, letting them walk around confused for a few second before putting another one down.

This. The bows in Skyrim have no sight, but real bows with sights work in the same way. The sight would point somewhat downward to compensate for the curve at a specific calibrated distance.

If it was a real RPG, of course, there would be no curve at all, and hits and damage would purely depend on the character's skill number. Strikes me as a little odd that so many people here want Skyrim to be more like an action FPS.

Very much this. I'm almost positive this is causing the phantom arrow effect at long ranges; there was a similar issue with the auto-aim in FO3.