Alright fellow archers, I wanna see how you guys play.

Now, my archer pretty much 1-shots everything in the game now, but early on, certain enemies posed huge threats when they got close enough. Sadly, I never really developed a way to deal with enemies when things got too close for comfort. I tried a little bit of magic, a little bit of dual wielding... you get the idea. I ended up just upping archery even more so they couldn't get close enough to even pose a threat in the first place, and thus got where I am now.

Problem is, gameplay got real 1-dimensional. That character was on my ps3, and now that I have my 360 back I want to make another archer. I was thinking about going with heavy armor and when the going got rough, just go dual wield and rush the fools, releasing the doves and all that. But this is only one way to do it.

1. Would that be a good idea? How would heavy armor fare on an archer?

2. How do you guys handle close combat, or what do you do along with archery period?

My pure mage recently took up archery in the form of a bound bow, and of anything gets too close I either bash it or switch back to dual cast incinerate.

I see an enemy i find a hiding spot try to sneak attack kill it if that doesnt work i just go f**k that and rip his head off

My character Soren, but the O has dots ontop of it. Is an archer. And I don't mean sneak Archer. Front line soldier archer. He either runs to gain some distance, jumps some rocks enemies can't climb or turns into his werewolf form. lol.

Well you can use slow poisons on melee NPCs so they can never reach you (see 2nd link in sig), but that requires kiting which would be a pain with a thumbstick. So I suggest taking a crowd control skill like illusion, or get some meat shields (summons and companion). Breton is a good choice because they start with the summon familiar spell.

If indoors I would retreat to a narrow tunnel, at least this way I only had to deal with one enemy at a time instead of being swamped by mêlée enemy's, if they got to close I would power bash the front man then just carry on plinking away.

I liked silent casting, sneak and fury/rage, I picked the strongest looking enemy and turned him on his mates, then just took pot shots at whoever was doing any good with my bow. When only one was left and their health was low I slipped in with a dagger to finish the job. I realize this is not a pure archer in the traditional sense but it was fun all the same.

However as you say he could just one shot everything in the end so it got a tad boring.

I don't use companions with my archer. For RP and gameplay reasons. I like being self-sufficient with my archer (he's kind of arrogant. Honestly a [censored] haha). Not to mention companions always ALWAYS f my [censored]e up. I'm too tactical for a companion to ruin it all.

And conjuration.... just no. That's [censored] [censored]. I've seen people do that and it's the same concept: I don't want someone doing the fighting for me.

Now illusion on the other hand, I have thought about. But I wonder if it would really be worth it. On lower levels when I NEED it, it will probably be too weak. I find illusion to be one of those skills you have to really invest in to make worthwhile. Maybe with some careful leveling I could make it happen, it would be interesting to test

I added illusion magic to my archer so I could calm enemies that got within melee distance. Its a great addition especially if you are playing a stealthy type character.

Don't depend too much on the summon Familiar. It dies in like 2 hits, sometimes 1. You don't get a good tank until later when the Frost Atronach comes into play. Early on you'd be better off tanking a companion that can tank. Of course they do tend to get in your way so good luck with that too. If you do have the familiar that will give them two things to take down before they get to you. Of course that won't do you a lot of good against multiple enemies. My thief/assassin got his sneak leveled up very high early on and would use the sneak/roll perk to get away quickly to hide again when things got tough. He used a lot of archery early on and that worked really well.

Calm is amazingly effective but you must level illusion to 90 and put several points into it before you can use it on undead, automatons, and daedra.

I don't mean for this thread to be aimed at "pure archers". As I stated, I want to know what you guys hybrid with archery, but having that as a main form of offense.

And the way you play sounds incredibly fun. I always liked the idea of getting in and finishing the job. Although if I did illusion, I would be very calm-oriented. Now you see me... now you don't

I had this problem too, I used as much slow poison as possible, but I wish they gave the hunter characters some traps that can be placed to kite the enemy like in World of Warcraft.

Something I really wanna know is the practicality of an archer with HA.

Will I still be sneaky? I haven't really used HA (currently trying it with my Nord), and I don't know how different it is from LA. It has some cool perks in its tree though so I'd like to make it happen.

Ideally, I want to be sneaky until--on my own prerogative--I whip out the dual swords and go to town.

My Nord uses S&S with HA and honestly, it seems a bit redundant. I feel HA is meant for dual-wielders

Any thoughts?

I thought of using runes to place traps. Mainly ice runes. MAYBE shock runes for disintegration if there are a couple weak guys close together. Anybody tried this?

Nvm. Sadly, upon some reading, I found that runes are pretty poorly implemented into this game (now that I think about it, somebody mentioned this to me). It's a shame though, that would definitely be my playstyle

I was speaking to someone at work the other day and they have a HA character who uses a shield in one hand and spell in the other, which I thought was a very strange set up, but if thats what he wants to do then fair enough. Anyway, point is in this game you can pretty much do what you want, if you want to try an archer who uses HA go for it.

Alchemy! I make fortify one-handed potions just in case I need a boost in hack-n-slash. I have some perks in light armor and use stoneflesh for melee mode. I tend to keep the bow out too long, but if I have my 25 second paralyze potions I rarely have to deal with melee opponents. My character can't one shot most things unless she's in sneak mode.

If they get to close you can slice them up and bash them with a shield.

A healthy sprint, that's what I do when they resist the kiting. Looking for boulders to jump on them.

1: It can be done, it just depends on wether you are willing for your stealth skills and overall speed to suffer.

2: I train my one handed skill along with archery as a low level archer and try and avoid enemies that will cause me the most hassle up close, like sabre cats.

When enemies get close to my archer I just bash them with my bow and run to get some more room to shoot again.
Bashing can be quite effective,in fact I just killed a troll a little bit ago with a bow bash.

But then again with the power shot perk most things never get too close to begin with.

Also alchemy is always very effective.

My ranger character (sneaky archer, but still likes to get in close) tends to take out a few enemies from the shadows, and if seen has no problem resorting to melee, and has the ability to choose what kind of melee he wants, depending on the situation. If there are a few weak enemies, he runs in with two swords and cleans up, or if faced with stronger enemies, can use his sword and shield to great effect.

For my character now (Kahjiit stealth assassin archer) I'm heavily investing in archery exclusively. Whether or not this comes back late game to bite me in the ass, I don't know (currently level 18).

I handle CQC in two ways: 1. Running away since--another aspect I'm going for with this character--is I don't wear armor. I run away, hide and wait until I'm hidden again and then I proceed to stalk whoever was chasing me; which doesn't happen that often as I can pretty much one-shot any enemy and I haven't even maxed out archery. Or 2. I have a follower with me that distracts the enemies for me allowing me to pop off shots with impunity.

So far I'm pleased with how it's going and my "strategy" is working out very well. Even coming across dragons (so far) I haven't had that much difficulty.

All my archers are patterned after Legolas -- archery with dual-wield. I used a shield with my first archer, but that was early on when I wasn't very good at combat yet. Anyway, I just start leveling up 1H skill early in the game so it keeps pace with my archery skill. I use whichever I want to level up next. I stick with light armor. Perks mainly go into archery, 1H, light armor and some sneak, plus whatever craft I decide to use (usually alchemy, but I had one who did all three for fun and profit). I've never bothered with block perks with an archer, so I don't know if power-bashing with a bow actually works like it's supposed to.

Despite all my effort put into 1H, in the heat of combat, if I've got a bow equipped, I often just keep shooting, even at point-blank range. Well, it's a good way to level up your armor skill.

A neat trick for CQC with archery is to bash immediately after firing, for some reason the bash does the damage of the bow minus the arrow dmg

With a decent bow, and powershot, you can just keep staggering them over and over...

Kind of cheap though, but meh, I'm too lazy to switch weapons xD

I let my npc slave club them to death muhahahahahaha

Something that I used for archery, was actually i started late........as in. When i started i used two-handed and one-handed weapons then around LvL 28 i started archery!!!!! sooo it is never to late to start using melee weapons!!!!! but yes the general idea for lvling up ur weapons and ur armor is basically awesome! well thats wat i do........at least!