The basic feel of combat

I've been pew pewing for a couple of weeks now and keep wondering if I am missing something. The combat feels incredibly basic. I added a magic school, Air, to see if that helped but all its added is more buttons to click but little strategy.

Maybe it's just where archery is at the moment and the game is designed to mix and match but I feel archery is missing so much that could be implemented.

Now some of this could be in the game but if it is, it's hidden a bit too deeply for new players which in itself is an issue.

Arrow/Shot types:

Barbed Arrow/Shot (adds a DoT)
Poison Arrow/Shot (lowers stats for a short period)
Explosive arrow/Shot (A ground targeted AoE to give archery some much needed AoE)
Fire/Water etc arrows/Shots (does more damage to creatures of opposing element)
Arrows that interact with other skills (an arrow/shot doing lightning damage that does increased or AoE damage when used on mobs with a water effect on them)

Maybe these could be skills instead of arrows? At the moment only 3 archery attack skills seem worth it. The dex lowering and armour piercing seem aimed at PvP? Either way they seem to have little effect in PvE. The options are so limited.

Bows (different poundages):

Lower poundage, quicker firing, lower damage
Higher poundage, slower firing, higher damage

Anyway just some thoughts. We seem quite a way into development now and combat still seems to need a lot of fleshing out. Stacking glyths also seems not as beneficial as it should be. Fire 2 shots with 2 chances to hit for almost double damage as opposed to 1 for slightly more damage and only 1 chance to hit. Maybe its useful in a longer fight for focus saving but I still think overall DPS would be lower and it seems pointless for normal landscape mobs.

 

Well, at the moment it's just trying to have all the defense you need (if any) and then stack your deck with max dps glyphs.
It would be nice to have some more situational attacks or at least have all Ranged skills actually do something useful. It would be nice for example if Piercing Arrow had any use in PvE, but the only mobs I have encountered so far that take reduced damage from my arrows are Elementals and they seem to have some other form of damage reduction so Piercing Arrow doesn't do anything good against them.
Some new combos with other elements would be a nice start so we can build more different decks that fill a niche and more ranged weapons than just Longbows. But well, there will be combat balance changes in R35, let's see what Port is up to ^^