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.
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