I don't have much opinion on the equipment changes, but for the mechanics:------------------General Mechanics------------------
1. Decrease bow sheathe time.
2. Quicker maximum accuracy for : Longbows, Arbalest.
3. Hugely decrease or remove flickshots and following aim penalty.
4. Crouch while reload crossbow with crouching and standing up speed reduced while reloading.
5. Shield equipping time should be faster if it is being switched to only a shield ( Similar to Warband).
6. Faster bow perk should be exactly the same as default bow but just a little faster.
7. Faster bow and faster release perks should be 1 perk and should be actually useful.
8. Superior bow needs to become useful.
9. For heavy archer units default stack of arrows should contain 30 instead of 25.
1: Disagree, as with any weapon switch, this should encourage decision making as to what you need equipped.
2: Kind of agree: it should be a more linear curve imo, where it starts off inaccurate and gradually becomes more accurate. Right now the heavier bows feel like they are just inaccurate, then suddenly very accurate, which is too binary.
3: Don't agree, it could maybe be tweaked but in general it is not difficult to adjust to this.
4: Don't really agree, the slow and vulnerable reload of an xbow is part of their balance. If xbows are underpowered rn then buff them elsewhere.
5: 100% agree, and this should apply to all classes.
Don't care much about the rest but in general it does feel like only 1 perk combination is actually useful, maybe 2 if you're doing a drop. But this is the same across many classes.
Some things you didn't touch on:
- When getting "bumped" with bow out, the game should still register your decision to change weapon. Right now you need to completely stop being bumped in order for the game to register input which feels awful.
- The low movement speed feels terrible.