Tree of Savior Forum

Archer really isn't so bad

Class and Rank
#1

Early leveling is only a hassle if you don’t prioritize a bit of SPR first. By the time you hit 30~40, you can focus entirely on DEX and STR and you’ll not run into SP issues too often as long as you know what you’re doing.

Currently running a C3 Archer, and bosses get absolutely murdered by Multishot. Using the right skills on the right mobs also helps a lot. Don’t just mindlessly spam Oblique, if a monster has Plate armor, use Heavy Shot instead. Learn to line up your Full Draws for skewing, it’s actually much easier than it initially seems, and with the attribute causes a very sizeable defense drop. You can even skew mobs a boss summons to the bosses for the defense drop bonus.

Also, SP Potions. Use them. They’re not THAT expensive if you just buy the lower tier ones, which is all you should ever need.
Likewise, weapon upgrading. +3 is cheap as hell and mitigates quite a bit of the damage reduction bosses have regarding bows. So just do it! /meme

No, don’t go full SPR. You’re wasting stat points that way. Learn to manage your SP better if you still run out all the time. You need that DEX anyway if you take C2 archer, or the critical rate attributes for kneeling and swift won’t do a thing, being based of of your existing critical rate.

Are they “weak” compared to say, swordsman? Sure, in a way, they indeed are. Are they a bad class if you even slightly know what your doing (believe me, I struggled too at first)? No, not at all.

That high difficulty rating might just be there for a reason…

3 Likes
Archery on ToS. Thoughts?
#2

Personally, i had the most fun in early game with ranger - killing those hordes of enemies acumulating near the red kepa farmers in one fell swoop feels so wrong, yet so right.

#3

I’ll link your thread to mine (Archery on ToS - Thoughts?). Can you give us feedback there?
Thanks.

#4

I was testing C3 Archer on Swift Step 15.
The problem was my autoattack damage is negligible, with no spr on my builds. I had to use skills and the mana problem kicked in.

But sure, make sure of upgrading your bow. It reduces the reduced-damage (ok, confusing words) as long as you keep overing it.

#5

Archers are amazing. Especially if you go c2 / c3. The only attribute you need to spend your money on is oblique shot. After you get a decent bow, it should be one-shotting any non-plate mobs you encounter.

I went sapper to get some AoE damage, and it was really powerful. Generally 2 hits with stakes killed anything, or 1 hit with claymore. Once you get broom trap, it just destroys anything.

#6

That’s the thing with Archer right now, you DONT use auto attack. Ever. It’s just plain bad to do so, even on high STR builds, it just deals too little damage, fires too slow, and doesnt hit more than one target.
Only with Kneeling Shot should you ever touch that Z button, but I don’t consider that the auto-attack due to its different damage formula.

And there’s absolutely no reason to take Swift Step 15. Level 8 is enough to keep it active permanently (with a down time of 2 seconds only, insignificant enough to make level 9 a bonus rather than a necessity)

As for your thread, while yes, full STR/DEX/SPR builds are the most popular, it doesn’t mean they’re good. Not at all.

Full STR is going to suffer from low critical rate and just overall poor skill damage due to STR really not scaling too well as far as skills are concerned. These guys would be auto-attacking all day after they waste their tiny SP pool on skills that would only deal good damage on the off chance that they crit (thanks to this build having a sky-high Critical Attack), bar the few subclasses that deal their damage more from DoTs, like Wugushi. Pretty much the only class I can see making a full STR build work.

Full DEX is going to suffer from no damage on auto-attacks and doesn’t have the SP to keep the skill spam going. Their skills will at least crit more, but if you can’t use them, what good will that do?

Full SPR can spam all the skills in the world, but they’ll never crit and they wont do any damage as a result. A thousand toothpicks, if you will, wont hurt a giant monster.

That’s why you balance things based on what your class needs.
Early on, before you even get to your third rank, you focus on SPR, hands down. Mob defenses are low, skill damage is relatively good on its own, and attack increases dont really do much yet.
Then, once you have a good SP pool that will at least last you trough a long boss-fight, you focus on what you need most. STR or DEX?

Pure stat builds just wont do in a game like this.

#7

I was testing the movement speed bonus actually, to see if that made any difference. But as you said, auto attacks are toothpicks, damage-wise.

And sure, I’m trying to understand some formulas and try a good combination of stats. Problem is, Archer is feeling like we need to focus on 3 Stats to get things running, so it takes more time than it should. Or maybe that’s exactly what IMC wanted, but other classes are just outputing bigger numbers than they should.
I’m not on full anything builds, but we should study it.

#8

well, mages also need 3: INT, SPR, CON