So, I’ve taken a bit of time to get used to the Archer class(currently a lv58 Sapper), and figured I’d share my personal experience. Quite frankly, the route I chose was incredibly slow and underpowered(being Archer -> QS -> Sapper), and has only recently started to improve slightly. This is because basically QS get no good offensive skills until C2, and their C1 are outmatched by base Archer skills.
Now, that’s not to say they’re bad, they just aren’t good either. Caltrops is a decent move power-wise, but it has three flaws; It cannot hit flying enemies at all, the caltrops don’t always land in the area you specify(rather they’re just thrown around the circle) so you have try leading enemies into them to get the full damage, and lastly they’re traps that can’t be set off by Detonate Trap(well, this is pretty much just something I’d like to see happen, not really an actual flaw per say.)
For the other skills, Pavise is pretty good all around as both a shield, and a source of extra damage albeit small. Why is Stone Picking a skill at all? It could easily be replaced by something much more useful, and have an NPC(maybe the QS master) sell them, like the Sapper one sells materials for traps. Finally Stone Shot, while decent damage-wise is way too costly plus it currently lags too much, and instead I can just use Oblique 2 possibly 3 times in the same duration it takes to fire off one stone.
So…why did I go this route? Well, it seemed like an interesting choice at first, though as I got farther into QS it fell off…badly. Sure, as a Defensive class it’s not expected to deal heaps of damage, but with basically only having pavise and caltrops to help me through that entire stretch I don’t really consider it worth taking right now. My damage has improved a great deal though upon progressing into Sapper with Detonate, Stake Stockade, and Claymore(this one’s pretty costly but the damage is well worth it). Maybe it’s just me that was bad with the class, but that’s how felt the entire time in rank 2. Rank 1 was pretty enjoyable I might add, since at that point it’s still early on with enemies not having much hp yet and Multi-shot/Oblique pulverizing everything.