As an archer main I have to agree with you on a few points. While im a hipster and I really like playing underdog classes, after reseting my rank 8 archer and trying a few class combinations, I feel we don’t have much to choose aside Archer 2, Falconer at some point and rogue if you wanna critical.
Rank 2 - Archer 2- Just feels like a mandatory class to all archer builds. Can’t pass this 150 free critical rate.
Rank 3 - We have now the option to choose from sapper 1, which is terrible and forces you to take his second rank, ranger (which is ok and the buff is decent, but still unlocks its full potential with rogue), and hunter 1 but OMG its actually worse than pre patch. Seriously. AI is bugged, you need a lot of patience to play with and you must gear up your pet. Quarrel isnt even worth mentioning. C3 or nothing.
Rank 4- Wugushi Meh, Scout 1 goes welll with some builds. But not with you mount a pet. If you hide, your pet still remains visible so wtf. Flare is ok.
Rank 5- Appraiser is decent for all builds but not amazing for any of them. Rogue 1 is good for critical builds only for sneaky hit. Vendetta suck hard and Faint has a very little niche. Fletcher is good and versatile.
Rank 6- If you’re not SR youre pretty much forced to take Falconer. If you dont take falconer none of the upper rank classes will have enough AoE. Cannoners without falconer suck for some objectives, mergen needs it if he wants to aoe, hackapell -maybe-.
Rank 7- Musketer and cannoneer are locked behind an exclusive weapon. So, if you’re not willing to invest a lot only to later dislike the class and spend sometime later to sell the weapon, pass. Theyre both good now, tho. (considering you have falconer). Their C2s both have a good buff.
Rank 8- Hackapell and Mergen both have the highest burst dmg skills of the entire game, but (imho) hackapell lacks a decent aoe. And melee classes feels wierd sometimes trying to hit at close range. You spend time getting closer to your opponent to use your skills and after using, you realize youre hitting the air instead and losing your charges.
Im not even talking about the weapons specificity. Some have crossbow + gun, some a rifle, others a bow, other a cannon, others a crossbow + dagger, others a crossbow + sword. You have to match your classes accordingly.
Some classes dont work together at all, like ranger + cannoneer. The idea mind sound good, because of ranger’s missile buff, but you spend 2-3 seconds changing to bazooka instance and cannot buff yourself during, so you need to buff before, lose 3 seconds and burst all your skills, them leave the instance, buff again… rinse and repeat.
Archers are pretty strong now even considering how little combinations we can make to be successful, but I dunno how I am gonna perform on some harder boss fights, like guild raids. When the boss has 5 billion hp and I cant stack layers of dmg like an miko-plague cleric or an elementalist.
