Archer

Classes:

The Archer:	Skills •	Glyphs •	Weapons •	Armour

Archer

Role	Offense
Combat range	Very long (20 meters)
Movement speed	Normal (110%)
Weapon type	Bow
Armor type	Leather

"Death from afar."

The Archer is a lightly armored class which specializes in a bow with long ranged offensive damage-dealing capabilities.
While attacking from the distance, their bow allows them to shoot a devastating blow toward the enemy from where the enemy can't reach them. As they also have high speeds, they can dodge and move quickly across the battlefield whilst still maintaining distance to shoot. When necessary, they can also lure enemies into fatal traps in order to change the outcome of the battle.

Official description

"If you like having a tool for every job, the archer is the class for you...especially if you like tools that explode, penetrate armor, trap enemies in magical spider webs, or transform into radiant energy. Archers leave behind a trail of victims that look like pincushions—many dead before they knew what hit them. The archer rewards the use of clever tactics and thinking two steps ahead of your enemy.
Adventuring archers use remarkable bows. Instead of a string of gut and leather, their bowstrings are of arcane energy. In place of wooden arrows, they fire arrows of pure willpower. An archer's arrows effortlessly punch through enemy armor, consume foes in fiery energy, and trap them so they can't even flee! Archers deal death from afar. They excel at firing from beyond a foe's retaliation range, and using their escape moves to stay there. They can take the high ground for a better view of the overall battle, pick off foes that flee for help, and deal out damage without pulling aggro from the tanks."

^[1]

Equipment and attributes

For more details on this topic, see Leather armor and Bow.

Equipment

Although low on health, the archer is equipped with leather armor for increased defense for when the enemy does manage to catch up with the archer. Equipped with a strong and sharply crafted weapon, the bow proven to be the favored weapon of the archer for its long ranged capacity.

Attributes

Archer uses standard ranged Weapon Crystals: Spiteful, Savage, Focused and Pounding. If crit rate is low, Pounding can be switched to Carving.

Recommended weapon rolls are Damage vs. enraged monster; Damage vs. enraged monsters; +6.9% damage from behind and Flat 6% damage, and Cooldown reduction. With low gear that has only 4 enigmatic lines pick Cooldown reduction as first roll. Recommended chest line is Radiant Arrow damage.

With new level 70 patch Exodor gear slayer uses gear with physical amplification: Dauntless Azart or Annihilation gear. (Crystals, rollable weapon lines incl. double cooldown and chest line are not available on Exodor gear level 68/69 gear or on new level 65 Exodor Scout gear.)

Archer differs from other class since they have passive skill to give 5% more chance to do critical damage (nerfed from 10% with awakening patch). Therefore archer doesn't have to use all crit accessories, but part can be switched to power.

Old guides recommends crit factor 220–230 over base which should be crit cap and give Radiant Arrow and Thunderbolt 100% crit chance for level 65 content.
For post-Exodor content Essential Mana's Aluka recommended 200–220 total crit.^[2]

With patch 93 new passives some archer skills scale with physical amplification value and some with physical crit power. Both are desired stats.

Skills and racial traits

Skills

For more details on this topic, see Archer skills.

Archerpenetratingshot — A Female castanic archer charging **Penetrating Arrow**.

Archers are capable of launching multiple long ranged attacks using their bow to create deadly shots. Archer doesn't have fixed combos or clear rotation, but high damage skills should be prioritized and used always when off cooldown.

Main archer attack skill is Radiant Arrow. It is charge skill that is charged increasing damage, and shoots when button is released. Shot has significant recoil. Popori archer even falls to his back, doing back flip. This animation lock can be eliminated with skill Sequential Fire that shoots one arrow and cancels recoil. After that archer should continue with Rapid Fire that shoots maximum of 7 arrows. Each hit with these skills add Focus, which when stacked 10 times speeds up charging skills.

Other hard-hitting skill archer has is Thunderbolt. It also has triple crit change and it hits really hard. Skill also has long cooldown. Recoil from Thunderbolt can also be cancelled with Sequential Fire.

Other skill that should always be used when off cooldown is Rain of Arrows. It shoots multiple arrows 15m in front of archer that damage multiple enemies in form of AOE attack.

While waiting the Radiant Arrow to became available again archer has to use multiple skills that are more of less fillers. Main filler is Penetrating Arrow, that does less damage than Radiant Arrow, charges more slowly and has lower crit change, although 2× with apex glyph. As name implies, it penetrates enemies and can hit many with one shot.

Other useful filler are Poison Arrow, Restraining Arrow and Web Arrow. All cast very fast, although skills do minimal damage. Their main use in in PVP where they inflict poison damage or slow down enemies or their attack speed.

Archer also has number of traps that are place on ground of launched to distance. Incendiary Trap Arrow does reasonable damage even in PVE and can be launched from distance. Stunning Trap and Stunning Trap Arrow are used to stun opponents.

Although the archer's greatest weakness is enemies getting up close, the archer has a few ways to handle such situations, with the help of Close Quarters the archer can stun the enemy, giving self enough time to load a deadly shot, or escape with Breakaway Bolt or Backstep (Archer) to gain distance.

It should be noted that archer had quite big changes in class rework. Previously as fast and agile as brick, archer is now quite opposite. Chase is similar change skill like some other classes get and moves archer fast forward quite long distance. Find Weakness is other new skill from archer rework. It allows archer to get backcrits for next attack they use, even if they can reach boss back in time.

Rework also got rid of some old skills, notably infamous Velik's Mark. Previously archer had to "mark" one target for extra damage. This mark was not shared among multiple archers, and only one player could mark a target. This lead to DPS loss when there was more than one archer in one party.

Apex changes

Apex has significant changes to how archer is played.

Main new skill is Wind Walk. This is combo skill that buffs next Radiant Arrow, Penetrating Arrow and Thunderbolt by 10 %. This skill cancels all other skills, so it can replace Sequential Fire as skill cancel.

In addition, it moves archer forward or any other direction they are walking when cast. This allows fast movement across battlefield, but requires some learning. This skill consumes archer Resolve, that is used for dodges like Backstep. Also archer focus generating skills now restore Resolve.

Also archer finally gets real boost skill called Windsong. It works pretty much like skills any other classes get. Increases attack speed, resets skill cooldowns when activated and gives them reduced cooldowns.

Gust Arrow is "big attack" with 3 min cooldown.

Racial traits

For more details on this topic, see Playable races and Racial traits.

Being able to pick between one of the seven races proves to be a tough choice. Each race has their own unique racial traits that can effectively improve the gameplay of the archer, depending on race choice:

Amani have a lot of defensive capabilities coming from Last Aman Standing, Blood of Dragons and No Stranger to Pain which can increase the survivability of the archer and the archer's main weakness, defense.
Baraka have Ancient Wellspring, a healing ability that can fully recover all health, Gather No Moss for more mobility, and Indefatigable which gives them more health than any others, only when they constantly die.
Castanics have Skirmish Running which increases their running speed during combat for more distance, and Dirty Fighting which gives them a higher chance to shoot a critical hit from the back.
High Elf have Core Infusion which completely recovers their mana, and Resilience of Mind which restores an amount of mana upon revival to get back into combat quickly.
Humans have Deft Footwork and Indomitable Spirit which greatly increases their defense when facing enemy players. Aside from that, they have Resilience of Body, which restores an amount of health upon revival to get them back into combat quickly.
Poporis and Elins have nothing that could assist an Archer in combat. Instead, they get multiple abilities for non-combat situations such as swimming and movement speed outside of combat. (Not Useless)

Popori has been long time favoured race for PVP archer due their faster animation on Close Quarters, key skill in PVP.

Glyphs and crystals

Glyphs

For more details on this topic, see Archer glyphs.

Specializing in glyphs like all classes means a great deal to customization. Notable glyphs are:

Radiant Arrow: Carving Radiant Arrow: Triples the chance to crit.
Radiant Arrow: Slick Radiant Arrow: Eliminates slowed movement restriction.
Rain of Arrows: Energetic Rain of Arrows: Decreases cooldown by 25%
Rain of Arrows: Hastened Rain of Arrows: Speeds casting by 40%
Rain of Arrows: Empowered Rain of Arrows: Increases skill damage by 25%
Thunderbolt: Carving Thunderbolt: Triples the chance to crit.
Thunderbolt: Hastened Thunderbolt: Speeds casting by 30%
Thunderbolt: Empowered Thunderbolt: Increases skill damage by 20%
Rapid Fire: Persistent Rapid Fire: 15% chance to eliminate cooldown
Rapid Fire: Empowered Rapid Fire: Increases skill damage by 20%
Penetrating Arrow: Carving Penetrating Arrow: Doubles the chance to crit. (Apex superior glyph)
Penetrating Arrow: Empowered Penetrating Arrow: Increases skill damage by 25%
Sequential Fire: Blazing Sequential Fire: Speeds up charging of Penetrating Arrow by 30% for few seconds.
Sequential Fire: Energetic Sequential Fire: Decreases cooldown by 35%
Sequential Fire: Persistent Sequential Fire: 50% chance to eliminate cooldown