Cloaking in pve is convenient for:
Dungeon Rushing
Searching for World Boss spawns
Completing Dailies faster
Getting to GvG skirmishers quicker
It’s a 90%+ uptime buff of +5 movement speed. How is that not useful for general gameplay?
And if we’re saying that flareshot does the same damage a Spiral Arrow, which is rank3 elite skill in the Ranger line, that I have to say that’s absolutely worth justifying it as “good”.
Hold on no other class cosumes 2 character slots at that rank, the only other time you can get that is falconer. lol
Damn you got me there.
Wanna give Hunter a D ranking across the board?
Added a disclaimer to the top what I want is people to give constructive criticism to mature the list.
I’m fine with a D on C2 8)~
What’s up with the ‘apply yourself’? Also, you seem to also have the rating list duplicated.
I’m juggling multiple versions of this list across sites so there’s some copy pasta errors.
fixed.
Which is why I said the misleading is real. The truth is, with a Psychokino C3 around, Snatching is just broken. It also just shreds any flying boss’ HP even at just Lv5 making Hunter C1 an actual “real” 1-rank-wonder class. Coursing’s damage was also boosted significantly as it does the damage listed with 100% modifier per tick at .5s intervals.
Convenient? You can literally do those things you listed w/o being a Scout C1. It gets narrowed down to being useful on GvG but STILL situational making it’s actual usefulness STILL questionable.
Going by your logic, as long as it’s being compared to a C3 exclusive skill, it can become better? Oh, good news, TONS of other skills beats Spiral Arrow’s DPS. Should we all list them now as S?
I just want to say that every single class subforum should have topic like this as this is good way to guide new players. I also believe that threads like this could help developers to balance their game better.
I just hope that from this agressive discussion will come great knowledge about the archer tree 
Looks better.
Imo scout c1 and ranger c3 are both incorrect, as I said, still, nice work.
Please provide what you think is a suitable rank for Scout1 then.
For now I’ve modified it to Scout1 - A : (S for PvP or with A2R1 Fletcher3).
If there are any other exceptions for classes like hunter, please let me know.
I can’t see those grades matching up with the Ranger we have here in iTOS. Ranger 1 is more of a B+ than an A. Yes, Barrage is great early game, but it does not scale well late game and begins to fall in usefulness. Once mobs start getting bulkier in both HP and damage, Barrage becomes a risky liability when you are forced to head in point blank to get the most damage from Barrage. Level 5 steady aim does not change your damage much early game…or mid. Maybe late game. But even then, it only last 10 seconds which is just a waste of SP. Also, the attribute sucks.
Ranger 2 is either an F or a D. So it’s about right.
Ranger 3’s score is way to generous. I would give it a C or a C+ at most. You upgrade Barrage and Steady aim to level 15, which still face the same problems it has in C1. They also don’t gain any noteworthy attributes to make them any better. But you do get two new skills, Spiral Arrow and Bounce Shot. Unfortunately both are underwhelming at best. Spiral arrow has a terrible damage:cooldown ratio. It just doesn’t deal enough damage to warrant it’s long cool down. And it’s not really doing anything else. Bounce shot is just a glorified oblique shot with a cooldown. It’s incredibly weak and it’s only purpose is to pull in mobs. And let’s not even get started on the weird mechanics this skill has. You can have a 6 enemy mob cluster together, but that doesn’t guarantee that Bounce Shot will hit all 6. In fact, it might only hit two mobs. It’s just a wonky skill in general and usually I find myself just wasting SP trying to get this skill to hit more than 3 mobs.
The only reason to go Ranger is if you’re planning to utilize Feint+Barrage. But even then at Rank 5 (the minimum requirement to achieve this combo), Ranger+Rouge have terrible skill rotation. I find myself not doing much of anything when Feint and Barrage are on cool down because their other skills are just so bad. Otherwise that combo, it’s not a good class when you have god tier Quarrel Shooter (Rank 4) demolishing everything in sight.
I…I really don’t understand this rating. Scout C1 is only good for PvP. Period. Cloaking has very limited usability in a PvE setting. Camouflage has its uses in boss fights, but it’s gimmicky at best. Flare Shot is a joke. It has a tremendously long cool down period for a skill that’s just a poor man’s magic arrow. If you want Flare Shot to deal decent damage you’ll have to drain your inventory of all your silver to just make it decent. And yes, I’ve seen that double Flare Shot video, but that requires you snag your own flare shot (cutting off it’s duration), then using Capture (3 minute cooldown) to make use of this combo. Scout has a cool costume, but other than that, it’s overrated.
Archer C2 is great for an improved Multishot. Swift Step’s critical buff attribute is overrated. You’ll only reap the benefits of the attribute if you’re going full or high dex. The difference is hardly noticeable early game and requires you to have a large pool of existing critical rate to see the difference. If a person is going Archer C2 just for the critical attribute they’re better off going full strength and snagging Rouge for Sneaky Hit.
C because both it’s PVP and PVE capabilities are both questionable and situational.
Honestly, I understand where everyone is coming from. But just take this for example, it somehow became a general knowledge that a Scout C1 + Rogue C2 is a PVP build yet on KR, it’s nothing but some puny random invisible archer that can be killed even by just stepping a few sec on a randomly placed AOE like Frost Cloud or some Cata C3 was running amok with Rush accidentally revealing the Rogue and killing it in a few sec.
This is pretty much the same case with Scout C1. Once we face hard real facts, everything changes.
I would like to point out that PvE consists of various activities, not all of which may interest a player. Earth Tower being one of these activities which a character may or may not be built for it or the player may not desire to do it ever.
This game caters to a wide variety of players with a variety of interests. Your opinion on the value that these classes bring to the table for you will vary based on the activities you intend to partake in.
I think I have said quite enough here. I wish everyone here all the best in the discussions and hope this thread is of value to newer archers.
Feint with Barrage holds in up end game, it comes out to about a 75-100k burst with no attributes and strong equipment and only scales more with attributes (for PvE, no idea what the burst is in PvP)
Scout1 has been downgraded to A, but its rated high because it’s only a 1rank investment at a relatively low rank, and it is great at multiple aspects of PvE and PvP. Flare shot is a “good” skill and +5 movement speed is just nice for everything. If Scout had a higher rank requirement, or required more ranks to be decent, then I wouldn’t consider it past C. But because of it’s availability in most builds and general effectiveness for general content, it deserves an A.
Archer C2 may less effective if you’re not going a lot of points into DEX, but the Crit rate buff is good regardless of whether you’re a strength build or not. Essentially gives a +25% crit rate boost to all of your green gems and equipment, so your lvl5 gems effectively become level 6 gems, your level 6 gems effectively become level 7 gems, the bonus crit rate you get form sissel bracelets and mana-mana is like having a free equipment slot that just gives even more crit rate. You can also fit it into virtually every archer build in the game and get a dps increase over any alternative. The only time where it doesn’t apply is with ranks in Rogue1, so a note was added there.
You need to consider that for the damage Feint+Barrage does, including the other useful skills it comes with like, Steady Aim to maximize your Feint+Barrage burst, Sneak Hit that gives you a buff that makes it possible to invest on high STR w/o having to worry too much on crit chance and finally Capture which might be situational BUT it’s clearly one of the most powerful skills in the game due to it’s almost unlimited potential.
If you have bad skill rotation on your overall build even though you only used 2 rank slots for Ranger and Rogue, your build has major problems.
I can only say this is naievity. Well, everyone who went QS C3 will see how lacklustre Running Shot actually is later on anyways especially once every other archer builds has gotten like Lv90 Attributes meanwhile Running Shot is still stuck with either Lv5 or Lv7 damage output.
I should start noting how many QS C3 felt super useless upon reaching Alemeth grind and more higher level content. Numbers kept increasing that I’m starting to forget.
You don’t capture your own Flare Shot in the battle itself, you prepare it beforehand. You don’t even know how to properly play the class yet you talk like you know everything.
I’m aware that Rogue has some insane damage potential with Capture shenanigans, I can put in a ranking there for SS tier if you’re willing to invest the time to properly setup Capture for certain things like Cure 15 for dullahan bossing or something.
I don’t really want to bother. Like I said, the grading is subjective. Giving them general grades will just mislead new players instead of getting them properly informed.
Most new players won’t have either the resources or constituion to do meta changing builds, so this is more or less a general guide for newer players to reference.
Veteran players who do have a dedicated static or support from the Guild to do crazy meta-shifting party compositions won’t generally find a use for any guide period. They’ll be crunching their own numbers or even writing their own guides. Still, it’s better to have a general reference for all these new players who keep asking “Should I go X in X” hundreds of times a week just to remove the clutter from more higher-level discussions.
That just promotes players to go for cookie-cutter builds that everyone and their moms uses like Ranger3>Fletcher3 or Wiz3>Ele3. Is it not bad enough yet?
IMO what’s needed is a proper list of how each classes perform normally. Their possible good synergy with x y z class and it’s overall disadvantages. THAT will actually help.
I personally wouldn’t want to recommend an extremely niche or meta-changing build to a new player, most serious players will start off with a general character and then start theory-crafting from then on out.
There’s never been a video game where I played where my first character was some super elite end-game monster, it always requires a first char to get your feet wet before you can become an Olympic swimmer.