I've been looking through the guides on the wiki in my spare time (no fly day today) and it looks like the archers end up VERY powerful in the later stages of the game. Mages (like me) can dispense the justice also, but their higher level spells seem to be a little less robust than the archer. Especially all the archer spells that are able to damange more than just 1 critter at a time (aoe).

Also, it looks like the archer requires some skill and forethought as to how to play/build him. Mage, fighter and cleric are pretty standard. Nuke, tank and heal.

DEX Build is more of a time build.

It's slow at lower levels, cause of said reasons.

Then what would be a good build for an archer?

Would you suggest going for 25 spr first then adding str or end? Or would you suggest adding end or str first then the 25 spr.

Whenever I'm tanking I always try to make sure the boss is on me. Snearing Kick owns in those kinds of situations.

Usually it's 25 spr first.

Then End/Str etc.

I see. Once I feel that my fighter's good enough I'll start on an archer. Always loved those pointy arrows.

A lot of popular opinion circulates about archers being the weakest class, which is absolutely untrue.

There are, however, some facts that do work against the archer that should be taken into consideration:

Grind Party/PvE Situation:

- Archers are last on the food chain when it comes to party necessity. Clerics are obviously the staple, and are absolutely essential for any party to work. Fighters follow close behind. Of the 2 ranged classes, Mages are just simply preferred. They have the utility ability of removing curses, which can come in handy quite often. This is not to say archers are not useful: heavy damage is always handy in a party. But wheras you can have a successful party without the archer, one without the fighter or cleric will just fail.

Guild War/PvP Situation:

- The issues with Archer DPS in PvP situations is that they center around damage over time. While they eventually may be able to deal a greater raw damage than the mage, the time it takes allows for the poison/bleed to be removed, to be displaced by stones, by heals, etc. Guild Wars require the ability for burst damage, to score the kill faster than the clerics can heal. In this aspect, Archers once again get the short end of the rope. Clerics are required because of the heals once again, Fighters are needed for stuns to opposing clerics (and Axes can easily cut down mages that stray too close, being as they have very low physical defense), and Mages are your main killers in PvP.

If archers come dead last in these situations, then why are they not underpowered? There are several reasons:

- I do believe that over time, Archers do have the ability to outdamage Mages, particularly at the later levels where the skills are looking much better. Combined with being significantly more durable than mages, they likely have an easier time soloing mobs.
- Poisons/bleeds/diseases ignore defense. (correct me if i'm wrong about this, i only suspect it does because all poisons on ME do a consistent amount of damage regardless of my level or mdef.) This may not be a big deal early game, but wheras DPS fighters have an uphill struggle with increasing mob defense, archers more readily retain killing potential when moving to higher leveled mobs.
- Party durability. While mages crumble with one or two hits, archers can hold their own for short while. In crisis situations, this can make or break the party.

All of these point to archers being more of a 'unique' class. They are a good DPS option for parties to use, but don't structure their game around a party situation. Anyway, that's my two cents about the ups and downs of archers, and why they aren't underpowered, but rather just fit into a different role in the game other than the party centered roles of Clerics and Full end tanks.



One thing that hurts the archer image is the vast number of idiotic archers. Don't ask me to explain this phenomenon: but in most of the low level KQs, the biggest idiot is always either the cleric that doesnt heal, or the archer that keeps pulling things. It just happens. This must in some way contribute to the lack of high level archers, and thus an abundance of archer gear on the market. I have certainly seen archers played very well and very effectively, so its definitely not the class. Its the player.

This is basically a general truth of online gaming. Most people start a class and end up switching because of how they have seen a different class played better. If you see enough people of a certain class being complete morons (I.E. over-pullers) then they decide that it is the class that is horrible, not the player. No class is really underpowered in general, its just at which point in the game you are looking at. End-game, some characters end up weaker than in the low-levels, some stronger. I wouldn't even say that Archers are underpowered in the lower levels due to the fact that I haven't gotten past level 14 (I have ADD when it comes to sticking with a class) and I have seen some very powerful Archers KS the hell out of me.

I currently have a really bad Build,
the Str is like 19 and the dex is like 9 or soemting and everything else is either 1 or 2. But from now on im gunna strat adding to my Str until its 20, then my Dex until its 10 then my Spr until its 10