I was gonna comment, but it has pretty much been said. Bows with sneaking is deadly. Especially with enchantments such as +% bow damage. o_o
I'm more melee, but it was handy for Dark Brotherhood missions. Trying to assasinate people with a twohanded weapon with heavy armor isnt easy, lol.

The only character I play on master level difficulty is my archer thief. I still find myself one shotting giants, or just about anything else I get the jump on. In regular combat I still am slaughtering because of the slow time and zoom perks. You OP just don't know how to be an archer. Do you expect to run up to a group of bandits and shoot them at melee range and survive?

Archery+Sneak (Shadow Warrior)+Conjuration (Summon Atronach) works wonders for me, plus the perk to draw your bow faster. The DPS seems completely reasonable to me.

Yeah I agree, just when I came here I was thinking the only thing that hasn't been sooked about is Archery and here it is, its amazing! My main charachter is level 34 and a Ranger Wood Elf, at no Stage have I thaught "Gee the archery is underpowered", infact I have been thinking the opposite at times! Even with my Ebony Encharted Bow with 20 Fire Damage and Glass Arrows, I X3 Damage Sneak Attack kill most creatures except the most powerful which is the way it should be! Why should you be able to 1 shot kill something like a Draugh Deathlord? As far as I can tell it is VERY balanced if you have any clue on how to spend your Upgrade points!

If you don't spend points in Sneak and Archery then you are playing your Archer charachter wrong and its you that is unbalanced not the game.

Have you try archery in Morrowind?

i sneak all the way in caves shooting arrows in every enemy's knees 3x damage, enchanted bow with blacksmith enhanced it's even better than playing mage. (2nd character I made an archer with some sneak, enchanter, blacksmith and archer perks)

If you guys arguing about the controller could watch my son play MW3 with the PS3 controller you'd drop all your arguments about the mouse being better. He can set the turn speed on the stick to max (meaning he can turn extremely fast) and still have the finesse to instantly put the cursor on anyone and stay with them as they move as easily as I would do with my mouse. Granted I can't do that but he sure can. He grew up with the thing in his hand so it's just as natural to him as the mouse is to me. Just because you might be incapable of playing with the controller doesn't mean it's inferior in any way. I used to think it was until my son changed my thinking. He's pretty damn amazing with the controller. I fully understand now why people like it. It just works for them. I also happen to be playing Skyrim on the 360 because my computer is too old for it and I've had little problem with archery or spell casting. In fact I actually prefer it for movement because I've really come to like how you can vary your movement speed so easily. It's not just fast and slow like it is on the PC. The more you move the stick the faster you go up to the max walk speed and then you hit the button to sprint. It makes slowing to sneak very smooth and it's possible to walk along at the same speed as NPC's when you have to follow them which is much better than when using the keyboard where you constantly have to be on and off the button so you aren't either falling behind or out running the NPC. But in the end it's really all about user preference. You can argue one way or the other all day long but in the end you're both just going to use whatever is comfortable to you making the whole argument rather pointless.

Disagree.
I found that once I was consistently upgrading my bows and investing in the best arrows available at any given time... with stealth and poison... it was almost too easy.
Not that I'm complaining.
I oneshot the goons I expect to one shot and the big guys I expect to be able to take a few arrows in the face without flinching.

I recently did a sweep on a forsworn base and the only time I put away my bow and switched to melee was to deal with the briar heart.
Every single other dude was dropped in silence by a single arrow each... and I'm not running an archer.
He's a 1h melee, the bow is purely secondary.

Playing on Adept.

Archery rocks and a pure archer is capable of being a terrifyingly lethal build in this game from what I've seen.
Underpowered, no way.

I've grown up with a control in my hand, so I know what they are capable of. I've been playing FPS games for a long time, and I'm quite adept at them. Small movements are not more accurate with the mouse, I've found they're both good for small movements. However, I've played an FPS using a mouse and I find it easier with a controller. I'm sorry, but there is nothing you can say that will make any of us change our minds; it's personal experience that counts, not the method of control. If you're such a good shot with a mouse, then good for you.


So much this. Nothing else need be said

How do you know he would have been better using a mouse if he trained with them both equally? I play with both mouse and joystick, I find myself more accurate with a joystick. It depends totally on the person not the type of device he is using. Saying a mouse is better than a joystick for all people is absurd.

You're not meant to use it as your main weapon. Only use it in sneak

I would use enchanting level 100 gear with Fortify Archery. +160% Archery Damage if you have every bit, and that's without potions that you drink before. Enchanting is the easy way to make yourself powerful, but you could also dabble in stealth if you wished.

Player 1, enter your name: [scroll] click [scroll] click ... click

Player 2, enter your name: tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-enter

Guess who got a headshot while player 1 was still entering his name?

All you did was prove the keyboard is better for text input. Being a console player, I completely agree.

A level 40 an upgraded enchanted glass bow does 176 damage X3 (sneak shot) + critical chance, destabilize, +40 fire damage and 45 cold damage
It is overpowered. a mammoth is killed in one shot.

I don't even carry any melee weapon

In short, enchanting unbalances the game. Use an increase enchanting potion and create increased smithing items. then you can upgrade the weapon well beyond legendary to insane damage levels, and add 2 increased enchantments+ increase archery. Coupled with stealth it makes bows the most deadly weapon in game

New fus ro dah real life video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkDLn0Ck2VI

It's not that archery is underpowered, it's just that backstab is overpowered. Backstab doesn't require any gear to be overpowered. WIth archery you have to gear as much as possible and it's still under half as good.

And no backstab isn't balanced because you gotta get right up in someones butt to use it, stealth is so broken that doing so is easily possible. Killing enemies with backstab is far quicker and less dangerous than shooting an enemy, who will run right to the spot you fired from as if he is psychic. I've tried both and stealthed archery is boring and slow.

And then you realize how little this post matters when you know Microsoft had to cancel their project to combine PC and Xbox360 players for online gaming because the console players were hopelessly butchered time upon time again by the other side, which Microsoft themselves pinned down on the difference in input devices.

Oh, and let's not forget about the fact that majority of console FPS games have integrated aim assist (rofl)??

I mean jesus I'm not for or against either side, but learn to accept factual data and stop derailing threads that have no relevance whatsoever just so you can kick and scream and drag everyone into your denial over the platform you chose to play on?

Except that used that way it is your main weapon, since you don't need anything else as you can clear a dungeon without even being detected, let alone retaliated against, due to how badly a high-level fully-perked Sneak skill breaks the AI. In fact, the only opponents who ever see me are Dragons, because they start out alerted unless you get lucky and catch them sleeping on the word walls they guard. Well, that, and any dungeon wherein I have a 'teammate', because they do not understand how to fight from stealth and aggro everything in a 5-mile radius...

Oh look, the obligatory person who obnoxiously boasts about their uber-char instead of offering any helpful advice.

OP: Try using poisons and enchanting with your bow. You can pretty much double the damage you deal.