I equip myself with balanced light lance, shield, sapphire runed bow, large bag of Noldor arrows on a Noldor Spirit Horse. Can there be a more efficient equipment build?
Sapphire runed bow with 3 large bags of noldor arrows, 104 arrows, jatu horse, 43 speed, 38 maneuver
1.5k vs 1.1k 110 kills in first battlefield, 2-300 kills overall. Battle size 500, full difficulties.
200 vs 53, 50 kills, 0 losses
30 vs 100, 70-90 kills, 5-10 losses
typically 300 vs 300, 20-40 kills, 5-15 losses
This is my experience as a late game HA, 500 days, countless battles, almost 5k renown, maxed stats. Because you can not only rack up kills, but direct enemy forces, my loses are normally under 5 for small parties and under 15 for vs 300 lord parties (13 surgery). Note this is on a battle size of 500, on 150, it would be alot easier to take out all their charging cav/two handers and reduce chance of a unlucky kill alot more.
I think comparing efficiency between HA and melee or lancers is like comparing apples to oranges. HAs are very much overpowered with the top tier bows. It comes down to DPS on the field. I take for granted that I can sit behind my decoy line and take out up to 5 charging lancer/horse and then 10-15 more in the first charge, then when their infantry gets to me, I lead them in a circle and take out all their non shielded elites and finish off by drawing their archery fire to me to let my troops take care of the rest.
From a max kill point of view, i think full archer is the most efficient. Everything else is just too slow.