What does Veeky Forums think of the elf archer trope?

What does Veeky Forums think of the elf archer trope?

1. Likely prepare yourself for scorn.
2. Put some shoes on, disgusting hippie.
3. It'd be really funny if an elf archer had the disposition of an online gamer. They're constantly praising themselves, their kill count, and their accuracy, and sometimes take steps to knee cap enemies, shoot them in the crotch, pin hands to other body parts. Basically the most immature and assholish elf archer ever.

i want her to kick me in the nuts and piss on my face

It is the same as every trope nothing new. People are tired of it but it is so old they just got used to it already.

It's incredibly stupid because firing any kind of serious bow requires a ton of upper body strength.

Needs a horse

>implying orcs aren't the best stealth archers

You know that actually sounds pretty fun.

Bonus points if she's also a blond bimbo.

in the books, Legolas is described as having massive fucking treelike arms.

I wanted something different from usual, so I prefer my elves to be bantu inspired magic knights with a thing for plants and/or fire, and good with spears or bows, or magic dances.

Everything about that picture makes me, as someone who actually practices with a bow every other day, cringe and ashamed to be a lefty.

>She looks anorexic and her arms are too thin, leading it to look like she is way too weak to draw the bow.
>The arrow is too damn long.
>The way she is holding the bow as she draws it makes me want to slap it out of her wimpy arms.
>The fact that she is using her index, middle AND ring finger to draw it.
>She has her ring finger covered, yet leaves her middle and index finger uncovered, completely defeating the point of having the protection in the first place.
>The arm guard is too bulky, she is more likely to have it catch in the bracer that shooting normally.
>Her hair on the right side of the face is obscuring the vision of her right eye.
>No visible quiver.

The artist clearly knows nothing about how archery works.

I actually liked Battleborn before Overwatch ate most of its playerbase and Gearbox went full retard.

And? Most of the time elves have the same strength as humans.

>implying it had any playerbase to begin with
It was barely 12k for the first hour, and it all went downhill from there. Also the UI is a complicated, jumbled mess.

Battleborn is shit, Paladins is the best not!Overwatch. Just look at the qt archer from the game.

Elf archers are excellent for new female gamers. Most of them don't have any fucking clue how to play the game that their (invariably) boyfriends invited them to, and most have no real interest in learning. They just want to try it to get some nerd cred and take a picture of the board and post it on Instagram. So you can give them an elf archer. High dex, high charisma, can deal out some damage and feel useful without actually having to optimize the character or even move into combat. Her turn? Roll your attack sweetheart. Roll your damage sweetheart. Okay, now on to someone who actually knows how to play the game.

Battleborn isn't even a not!Overwatch though, it's a first-person MOBA.

True, but it's always BB vs Overwatch vs Paladins so everything sort of gets lumped up the same.

It's Gearbox, do you think they care?

The fact that nobody seems to care, and a small bit of personal autism apparently, makes it impossible for me to enjoy playing bow using classes.

Makes me glad Hunter got a melee spec in WoW.

Could always use a gun instead, even though WoW firearms are just as cringy.

>elves are inherently magical
>their main weapons are bows

Who started this?

>>elves are inherently magical
Tolkien or mythology, depending on how you want to look at it.
>>their main weapons are bows
DnD, but here their main weapons are also swords.

Trope makes sense, since a long-lived race are both not likely to be cowardly and have more time to practice difficult shots.

Should have said more likely to be cowardly. Damn phone

"He was as tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgûl, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship."

The Tolkien elves were giant aryan supermen, not lithe ladyboys.

It makes sense. If you're a species with fantastic senses and co-ordination, you're going to make great archers who can pick off many foes before they can close the distance with you.

Obviously people like to do different things with elves because elf archers have been done a lot, people like to do things differently or it gets boring.

>It'd be really funny if an elf archer had the disposition of an online gamer.

>Wood Elf Ranger ambushed by bandits

>Shoots a bandit in the chest
>LOL get rekt faget

>Hits another in the head
>Boom headshot

>Pins a third to a tree
>Triple kill

>Shoots a fourth one in the crotch
>Git gud
>Proceeds to teabag the mutilated but living bandit

I mean, elves were always an offshoot of the fey, weren't they? Tolkien practically made them less magical in his books.

Only improved upon by the naked half-elf archer trope...

>Tolkien practically made them less magical in his books.
They are so magical that they don't even understand the concept of magic, because it's so natural to them.

I mean that could be true in some circles. I always assumed they weren't inherently magical like a sorcerer, but had a greater understanding of magic. Magic permeates their cultures and is much more commonplace than other peoples and societies.

As for the elven archer thing, it persists because of the cultural phenomena of D&D. Elves have proficiency in the use of bows, a hold over from the Chainmail days. This statistic has ingrained itself into the narrative of games as well, which has further inspired derivatives, thus developing a "trope"

>The Tolkien elves were giant aryan supermen, not lithe ladyboys.

the quote you posted literally calls him "lithe"

Tolkien elves were based on norse alfar myth. The fair folk were a separate interpretation he did not draw much from

I like it.

Magic as a practical weapon was not prevalent in tolkien or prior fantasy works

Why would they need shoes? If they got thick soles on their feet, it's a lot quieter to go barefooted.

>3.
This is now what I'm going to do if my character gets alignment shifted into Chaotic Evil through some magic bullshit.

Lithe

1 : easily bent or flexed
2 : characterized by easy flexibility and grace ; also : athletically slim

Legolas was an exception among the elves. He was freakish compared to the usual elf, and the movies don't do him justice.

How is Paladins? I've been tempted to give it a go as I'm looking for something a bit more casual as Blizzard seems to be pushing hard 'Yeah, we want our games to be eSports'

>Elf Archers
Funny, living in dense woodlands would make the exceptional range and arc options of a bow less utile. Elves of the woodland type would likely fare better focusing on light thrown weapons or other medium range shenanigans.
High Elves, dripping with magic, have little reason to bother with mundane tools of war, especially some gut pulling a stick back used to propel another stick with a pointy bit.
Under dark dwellers also would have little use for extreme ranges and nearly no use for arching.

All in all, a poorly conceived notion that is a legacy of Tolkien's love of the good English longbow and (ironic) desire to make elves reflective of English nobility.

Ironic in that yeoman, rather than Lords or Knights were the primary Bowman, making the archer a better concept for Hobbits.

>elves are inherently magical
>they prefer arcane magic
Why do people do this?

In my setting elves use bows for the challenge. Imagine those redneck hunters who are so skilled that the only challenge left is to bow hunt, and then mix it with the ol' timey sport of fox hunting. You then apply that to high society elves.

I have hard time telling whether you're baiting, if people around there seriously have this shitty a playerbase, or if you're genuinely that much of a cunt.

eh

there's english longbows, which are practically artillery and require you to be pretty strong
you don't even really make attack rolls with these (you could, but it shouldn't be the norm)

then there's just regular bows, which you probably aren't gonna try to make super long range shots with
they just fly straighter for longer than a spear, and fly faster
good at a range of, say, up to 300ft or so, which is about what you'd use in a forest

I made my character an Elf ranged fighter, but gave her a sling and a bag of alchemic grenades instead of arrows. Not so much with the long range, but up close, FUCK your armor.

As long as Elves get the best Dex bonus and ranged weapons use Dex, it's gonna happen.

Why elf archer trope when you can Elves with Guns?

It makes no fucking sense. Elves are physically weaker than Humans, Orcs, and Dwarves. You need to be EXCEPTIONALLY strong to use warbows that are extremely lethal, and that strength only goes up from there. Warbow archers should actually be the strongest troops you have available, as it's where their strength will count most. Elves should be skirmishers with slings.

Elves are no weaker than humans. Heck, see The iconic elf was build like a damn tree, not a twig.

Depends on the elf really. Wood elves naturally, and most likely use it in guerilla warfare in their forest. Also that would use a smaller bow for the tighter conditions.

Some good cringe right there.

I've pretty much only played bot matches while listening to podcasts and I've found It's a good way to relax and decompress; I'd recommend it.

Daily reminder that if your elves are not 2m aryan übermensch you are playing it wrong

Cool. How's the gameplay? Super duper fast or a bit more slow paced?

I'll have to look into it. The designs don't look half bad. The shinto-ish scroll elf seems pretty cool from the few images I've seen of it.

I'm talking about D&D and generic fantasy elves, not Tolkien elves who are grossly under-represented in fantasy, along with Numemenorians.

Even D&D elves are not really weak. They have the same strength score as humans.

Heck, you have Wild Elves that are +Dex -Int. They are objectively as tough and strong as humans + more dexterous. That makes them fantastic archers.

You don't use bows in a forest to hit at long range. You use them to put 20+ surprise poisoned arrows in some smug asshole's face from 90 feet away then run, leading his friends over some spike pits and into the next ambush.

D&D elves have the same STR score as D&D humans. Or dwarves, for that matter.

Or wood elves, who are +2 STR and DEX, -2 INT and CON.

Fast for a MOBA, generally less frantic and demanding than Overwatch. Bot matches are pretty short, only like 10, *maybe* 20 minutes long. The current maps have a gametype that starts with a symmetrical point capture followed by a cart push to the enemy spawn. A cap gets your team one point, a successful push gets you one point, and a successful defense gets you one point. First team to 4 points wins.

Outside of a match you can customize your loadout of cards, equipping them and setting each card's level. You have 12 levels to move around between your 5 equipped cards, and they can do things like give you more health or ways for abilities to work differently. There's some surprising variety once you start mixing and matching. I was expecting it to be a lot more dry.

Plus you can buy upgrades in each match with per-match credits that do straightforward things like more weapon damage, or health on kill, or whatever. You can't sell them, though, and you can only get one per category.

>The shinto-ish scroll elf
The one with the magic mirror, right? She's not in the beta right now. Not really sure what the deal is with that.

>Most Tolkien elf warriors are swordsmen or spearmen.
>every other elf from then on cribs off Legolas

Strangely enough, Warhammer kinda got it with the High Elves.

Yeah, the magic mirror one. She looks pretty cool.

Pity to hear she's not in the beta. How the choices so far, variety-wise?

What's there to say? They live in woods and presumedly hunt so they use bows.

>You use them to put 20+ surprise poisoned arrows in some smug asshole's face from 90 feet away then run, leading his friends over some spike pits and into the next ambush.
I did this for elves in a setting, then gave the longbows to savanna gnolls.
>7ish feet tall if they stand upright (they usually don't)
>Proportionally longer arms for that height, to the point that they can almost drop to all fours
>Usual hunter-gatherer shenanigans, plus lots of big fun shit to go after in a pack
Imagine, if you will, a longbow designed to hunt elephants with.

I had the same idea

I toyed with giving mine free proficiency with greatbows

...but the craft DC on greatbows (especially mighty ones; a +6 is like DC 28 or something)

which no gnoll is going to be able to reliably meet until like 10th level

Bows with a sufficient drawweight to be viable on the battlefield require significant upper body strength. Elves are usually depicted as lithe and slender. I can't deal with the disconnect between this. If I could design a setting from scratch, I'd makd longbows human weapons, with (wood) elves mostly preferring shortbows, slings and javelins and high elves mostly being infantry-centric with a very small native archer segment though I'd also make them the Roman Empire equivalent, meaning they'd probably have some subjugated client kingdom they could recruit archer auxiliaries from.

Either that, or elves would need to get swole. But then everyone would complain about "back in my day elves were skinny" and that muscle elves are fetish bullshit.

Roman high elves and swole wood elves could be cool though.

I watched some gameplay footage just now and I'm not even sure how the thing works.
The arrow is inserted through the middle of the bow, it's not put on the side. I can't tell how the arrowhead appears, since it clearly wouldn't fit through the hole, and there's no animation showing such a thing.

This.

Notice how in The Hobbit (specifically the chapter "Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire") Gandalf only opens up with the exploding pinecones when shit's properly fucked.

>Imagine, if you will, a longbow designed to hunt elephants with.
That's awesome.

At least 7.5/10, would use.

>which no gnoll is going to be able to reliably meet until like 10th level
And that's why you put a specialised bowyer caste into your hyena-person society.

just make them swole on the back. in fact i dont think ive ever seen a pic of a naked back of an elf that wasnt muscular

Just give them swole upper bodies and slim waists. Ottermode the shit out of them

The elf archer trope annoys me with it's ubiquity, since it's always 'wow look at my rapidfire speed and reflexes' you never see the dark souls style swole as fuck longbow archer with a gigantic longbow, who focuses on just throwing absurd amounts of kinetic energy in a single arrow, accurately, and uses his muscle rather than his agility to save himself in melee combat, even though its not really his thing.

Post as much elf archer pics as you can teeg.

Or their muscles are stronger without being larger.

Or their connection to nature allows them to use subtle magic to make the bow bend in their hands.

DnD elves have, depending on the subrace, the same or higher strength than humans. They usually have worse constitution, though (wild elves being the exception, having penalty to intelligence instead).

Is there any reason to put your finger above the arrow?

The greatbows in Dark Souls are so hilariously massive, but I can't help but love them. It's like you're firing a cavalry lance into your enemy's face and it's just as awesome as it sounds.

>Skipping leg day

Working muscle is very lean and efficient, and also comes with strong bones and ligaments. Your average ballet dancer is stronger and more durable than your average bodybuilder, and your average fat, not very impressive looking strongman can rip the arms off one.

Too bad the damage output is so low they're only good for pvp trolling near ledges.

What's that from?

It's a show about girls personifying guns. But I dont remember the exact name, google it up.

Ranged damage in general in the Dark Souls series has always been kinda whack. Magic could manage but crossbows and bows were always weirdly just... mediocre at everything.

It's pretty annoying, desu.

>Is the best sneaky-snake Virt, for sneaking back into Veeky Forums?

It's a balancing compensation for ranged ability to be less fucked by hitbox bullshittery.

I'm betting on all fucking three, user.

That's what I do already, Elves have adopted the gun whole-heartedly and are in fact the ones who invented rifling.

The show is called upotte. I never understood why the Valmet was a elf though, or why the Galil was a Cat. Beyond waifu/fapbait of course

I remembered Words and Philosophy. Nice subversion of the defenseless Elf Archer archtype. Even had my Bosmer wield a sword named after Allena

user you know your full of shit.

>The one with the magic mirror, right? She's not in the beta right now. Not really sure what the deal is with that.
Her name is Ying. She was temporarily removed from the game so she can get re-kitted as a support. She'll be back this week.