Welcome to my advanced PvE Archer guide outlining a methodology to further improve Archer DPS. This is not a guide for Archers who have just started playing as it requires you to have some knowledge so that you will understand what I’m referring to. If you’re an Archer who has been disappointed with your results so far this guide will absolutely help you improve your level of play. We’ll go over many topics and details including itemization, glyphs, skill prioritization, Archer mechanics, and all kinds of math. But before we get into anything I’d like to take a couple minutes to explain who I am as a gamer.
About the Author:
Above all I am min-max gamer. What this means is my satisfaction in gaming all boils down learning how to get the best results with the lowest amount of effort. I strive to play at a level that is within the top 1% of all players. My obsessive desire to be the best requires that I study as much about what I’m doing as I can. When I feel I’ve exhausted every resource I carefully analyze each action and weigh the time spent using said action against the amount of possible damage. I also check each skill, mechanic, and spell function thoroughly to make sure they not only do what they say they do but to see if I can find some hidden or unintended effect(s). I take every claim that is made by players and test them multiple times to ensure that it is true. I’ve been playing MMORPGs for over a decade now so I’ve seen my fair share of just about everything and can usually find mistakes and intricacies quickly. I don’t bandwagon and I don’t believe in biased, class favoritism. I’m only interested in finding the truth and reaching objective conclusions so that I can take what I’m doing to its absolute potential. I understand that there may be resentment for what I have to say, but I should make it clear that I am not biased in any way – I follow the facts, and in this guide I present them.
Defining and Explaining the TERA Archer
The Strengths and Weaknesses
Let’s get into what Archer is, where its strengths and weaknesses lie, and why I feel the way I do about the class both positively and negatively. Archer’s primary weakness is that it does not excel at anything. It is not durable, mobile, easy to play, possess a safe play style, a strong DPS standing (whether single target or AoE), and most importantly, it is not accepted by the community. Archer doesn’t have anything to call its own. It is an objectively inferior class when compared to other DPS classes. It started off essentially as a pure PvP class, where it dominated. However, it failed miserably in every category for PvE. They have been improved in PvE over time, though their strength in PvP diminished along with it.
Archer requires you to take full advantage of the entire kit to perform adequate DPS in comparison to other classes. It requires more practice and knowledge than almost every single class in the game in PvE, but yields the lowest reward. Since there are no chained skills, there is no skill queue – meaning you need extremely low ping to execute your full kit at an acceptable pace.
Archer is strictly for players who are truly passionate about the class and have no interest in playing anything else. If you have even a microbe of an interest in another class, I suggest you pursue that class instead. This class has a minimal sense of fairness and it may never change. The damage will be improved over time, but there is no suggestion that Archer will ever give back how much you put into it.
The Primary Archer Kit, Skill Analysis, and Breakdown
Archer’s core comes down to the following skills: Rain of Arrows (RoA), Radiant Arrow, Penetrating Arrow, Explosive Trap, and Breakaway Bolt. The damage from these skills likely amount to about 60% of your overall DPS. There are many other skills that are used often but I’m going to start with these, because getting them right is essential before moving on.
Rain of Arrows is a high-powered ground AoE. The base damage on this skill is 8,142, and when glyphed, exceeds 10,000 base damage. The skill has a fairly long cast time, and it requires that you are looking at the mob upon impact to inflict back hits. RoA isn’t nearly as good as it may initially appear. Is the damage high? Yes, but the amount of time it takes for all of the damage to roll out is incredibly long. If you stack attack speed it does speed up the cast animation but it doesn’t speed up the frequency in which the hits from RoA impact within the ground AoE. However, what makes RoA a skill that isn’t that great, is that it requires you to be looking directly at the back of the mob until the skill has finished impacting the target. It doesn’t matter what direction you aim it or how centered a mob is within the circle telegraph on the ground. The only thing that matters is that the target is somewhere within the circle and that you are directly facing the back at the time of each of the seven hits. It is imperative that you use this skill as often as possible, but it is also necessary to understand when it is better to wait a moment or quickly reposition so that your RoA is able to be hit from the back.
Radiant Arrow and Penetrating Arrow often fall victim to a common culprit: Overcharge. Overcharging happens after you have used one of these two skills and have charged past the third charge. The damage gained by nearly doubling the amount of time spent is a mere 36%. Archer has enough skills in its kit to make overcharging a DPS loss every time. The only time you should ever overcharge on an Archer is when you are repositioning, as this technically allows you deal damage as you are moving around in combat.
Explosive Trap is another core skill but there is very little say about it other than it should be used as often as possible. It’s a high powered ranged trap on a 15s cooldown that adds over 16k damage (base) per minute for less than 5 seconds in animations. One key note here is that if this skill is used while a boss is moving, there is a risk that you will miss the primary hit of this attack and only the secondary hit will deal damage. This damage is less than that of a regular arrow. Until traps have been fixed in the Arc Engineer patch to inflict one hit upon impact you must use discretion to reduce your chances of whiffing this skill. (Perimos in Sky Cruiser is the master trap whiffer.)
Breakaway Bolt is the last core skill that we need to go over. This skill is important because it has 3 functions. It’s a gap closer to improve mobility, it is a skill that deals damage, and when properly glyphed, it increases the base damage on penetrating arrow by 25% for 10 seconds. It’s important that you understand the appropriate time to use it, because it can either improve your damage output, or hurt it and worse, get you killed.
Stunning Trap is another skill that I would consider as part of the core if it was a skill used to deal damage, but regardless it is an important Archer mechanic all the same. When glyphed, this skill increases Penetrating Arrow charge speed by 30%. You don’t need to actually put the trap down. The skill can be used and cancelled with movement before it goes on cooldown. I find this to be far superior to using the arrow volley glyph of blazing or the final salvo glyph of blazing as it requires minimal animation and can be used at any point in a skill rotation. The stun trap cancel is a crucial part of playing Archer.
With all of the important things skills of the way, let’s go over all of the filler skills. We have Close
Quarters, Incendiary Trap, Restraint Arrow, Rapid Fire, and the standard Arrows. To understand the importance and power of each skill we must take into account how much damage each skill does while also examining the amount of time each action takes. There are a fair number of skills that I haven’t yet mentioned because they’re not up to par with the rest of the Archer kit.
Since Rapid Fire is the elephant in the room we’ll start with it. Rapid Fire is critically affected by what your ping (latency) is. You can check your ping by hovering your cursor over the in-game clock. Your ping greatly affects the frequency at which you can use skills requiring multiple inputs (it also affects every action you perform but we’ll get to that later.) Rapid Fire is a skill that requires seven inputs to execute. This means that if you have 200 ping you’re injecting a minimum of 1.4 seconds into the skill. If the skill takes 1.5 seconds in pure animation frames you’re almost doubling the amount of time spent. This can be the difference between a skill being useful or worthless. I wouldn’t recommend using this skill with a ping higher than 40. Given that there are such few situations where this skill is even useful, your best bet is likely to ignore this skill currently. Until this skill has been buffed to receive the +120 crit rate passive as well as the glyph for +50% damage, this skill won’t be useful in nearly any situation. It’s best to just avoid using it entirely unless you have <10 ping. **cough** (Nobody has ping like that on NA/EU) **cough**
Restraint Arrow is a skill that I’ve never seen anyone use as a filler. The animation is slightly longer than an Arrow but deals almost 2.7x as much damage (according to the true base damage.) This skill has an excellent animation time for the damage it deals. This doesn’t mean you should use it if you have Radiant Arrow, Explosive Trap, or some other high powered skill available, but it is a solid skill to throw in when your core skills are on cooldown.
Next we have Close Quarters. Ping does have an effect on this skill, as it requires multiple inputs – just like Rapid Fire. It’s a skill that requires you to be within melee range but adds solid sustain to your DPS. It’s often used in conjunction with Incendiary Trap and or Breakaway Bolt as these are all melee skills. When glyphed, the damage base exceeds 2,500 and is on a moderate cooldown. The cooldown is currently 15 seconds before using a melee nostrum but this will be reduced to 10 seconds in the coming Archer update (there’s a link to a video of me going over all of these changes at the bottom of this guide.)
#oldschoolfacts: This skill used to be on a 7 second cooldown before nostrum and the damage glyph increased damage by 100% as opposed to the current 60% increase.
Our next filler skill is Incendiary Trap. This is a melee range skill with a 2,475 base damage. The cast time is the similar to its ranged counterpart. As I said before, it’s often used in conjunction with other melee range skills – but don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to use this skill if other, more important skills, are available. It takes time after the trap has been used for it to activate and deal damage. Don’t waste time and MP if you think the mob is going to move out of the hit-box.
#oldschoolfacts: This skill used to be bugged and it would multiply the number of hits based upon how many targets were hit. If it hit 3 targets it would deal 3x damage to all targets. This also worked in PvP!
Lastly, for this section, we’ll close with the Arrow. Arrows are decent damage for the amount of time they take to shoot. For example, if I’m at 10m and I don’t have any ranged skills available, and Radiant Arrow is going to come off cooldown in a second or two, I’ll likely shoot some arrows while holding the key down for Radiant Arrow. This ensures that as soon as the skill is ready it will begin charging but I’m still dealing damage until that time. If all of my ranged skills are on cooldown for 3 seconds or longer, I’ll likely use Backstep and or Breakaway Bolt to reposition depending on what the boss is doing and where I’m currently located. While I don’t recommend you to spam Arrows all day, I do believe it’s better than walking around doing nothing while waiting on cooldowns to come up.
Rotations or Priority System?
Sorcerer is the only class is TERA that has a true rotation because the entire class revolves around the use of its skill Burst of Celerity. The concept is to put as many high powered skills within the duration as possible and while they do have down time Sorcerer for the most part has a straight and narrow rotation they follow. All other DPS classes don’t have rotations that they actively use. Each class possesses an opening rotation where you use all of your buffs and hardest hitting skills/combos in the beginning but once everything has been used all classes switch to a priority system. A priority system is where you take each individual action and you say Skill A is stronger than Skill B so I’m going to use Skill A first. This is done with every action that the class possesses. This allows you to properly judge in combat which skill to use next and provides a legitimate understanding of the weight that each skill has.
By understanding the DPS of an action (base damage of a skill divided by it’s animation time) we can begin to put each skill in line to understand which skills are truly stronger.
Here is a table showing the DPS of each action:
| Skill Name | Base Damage | Animation Frames (30FPS) | Damage per Second |
| Arrow Volley | 1,766 | ||
| Final Salvo | N/A | ||
| Poison Arrow | 1,365 | 57 | 719 |
| Web Arrow | 523 | 15 | 1,046 |
| Thunderbolt | 4,820 | 132 | 1,095 |
| Arrow | 454 | 12 | 1,135 |
| Rapid Fire | 3,052 | 77* | 1,192 |
| Thunderbolt (Glyphed) | 5,784 | 132 | 1,315 |
| Close Quarters | 564 + 1360 | 12+34 | 1410 + 1198 |
| Breakaway Bolt | 1,902 | 38 | 1,502 |
| Incendiary Trap | 2,475 | 33 | 2,250 |
| Restraint Arrow | 1,217 | 15 | 2,435 |
| RoA | 9,444 | 94 | 3,014 |
| Explosive Trap | 3190 | 35 | 3,691 |
This table tells you what the DPS of each action is by taking the true base damage and dividing by the animation time.
Why are some skills not worth using?
From what we’ve seen from the DPS of each skill we can get an accurate picture of what skills of better than others. We’ve observed that Poison Arrow, Thunderbolt, and Web Arrow fail to deal sufficient damage to justify use over other skills or even regular arrows.
Poison Arrow’s poor damage, long animation time, and non-existent poison scaling is what throws it under the bus. There isn’t a single situation in this game where Poison Arrow has a use.
Web Arrow doesn’t have sufficient base damage to be used like Restraint Arrow otherwise this skill could be another decent filler skill. The slow isn’t helpful anywhere in the current content and the DPS of the skill isn’t even stronger than an arrow so it’s not worth the time.
Thunderbolt is a skill that takes a significant amount of time currently to use, the cooldown is too high so the glyphs are a waste of points, and the damage is weak. This skill will be significantly buffed in the future to the point where it will be good but currently it’s only a skill worth using for AoE damage.
Arrow Volley would be the last skill I would throw on here simply because it requires three inputs making ping a major factor here. It requires low ping to use in a timely manner and the damage is rather low. It’s a lower damage base than Breakaway Bolt on top of the fact that it can’t be used instantly.
Mastering the Glyph System
How the glyph system actually works
The Glyph System in TERA is nothing more than an open talent tree. With talent trees, it’s much harder to get builds wrong because each talent leads down the tree to something stronger until it eventually reaches a conclusion at the bottom of the tree. In TERA, we have a similar system, but without the gates imposed by previous talents, or choices. If you’ve ever played an arcade fighting game or even something like Ninja Gaiden, you might have realized that there are only a handful of combos that are actually good but there’s a near endless list of attack skills. In games developers like to create the illusion of choice to convey the idea that you as a player have some choice or variety in how to play. To some degree, I suppose you could say they achieve that goal, but I fail to see a legitimate reason to use inferior damaging techniques when there’s likely a way to not only hit harder but faster at the same time. Developers rarely create a multitude of options where all options are equal. The glyph system is no stranger to this. Anyone who has actually read the glyphs for their class has likely realized how useless most of them are. I’ve created a .gif to show how many choices are left when all of the troll glyphs have been removed. This doesn’t mean that everything left is good but we’ll get into that shortly. My primary goal here is to shy away from all of the non-choices. I’m going to break it down into what glyphs are staple and why you shouldn’t ever remove them. I will also explain how to more accurately gauge the damage gain of a glyph.
Viable Glyph Options
In TERA you are allotted 55 points at max level to spend on glyphs. Each glyph requires a certain amount of points and each glyph has a specific function. Not all glyphs are created equal. One skill may have a +25% damage glyph for 5 points and another skill may have a +25% damage glyph for 2 points. Your goal should be to maximize DPS and mobility (if necessary) through picking glyphs for skills that deal substantial amounts of damage as well as have low cooldowns. Since you’re only given 55 points to spend I wouldn’t recommend wasting a single point. Some of the glyphs can have a significant impact on your gameplay and damage output. After removing all of the non-choices we’re left with 26 options. Of the 26 choices remaining we have 7 which don’t have any application in the current PvE content or they’re inferior choices likely because the skill itself isn’t worth using. I’m going to briefly go into which seven glyphs I’m referring to and why they aren’t worth using.
1) Thunderbolt Damage is our first suspect on this list. The first reason this glyph is useless is because using Thunderbolt is a DPS loss. Not only does the animation take too long but the damage is rather poor. The glyph grants +20% base damage which is 964 (4820*0.2) every time the skill is used. The cooldown on Thunderbolt is 50 seconds however, so the gain is very poor. For 5 glyph points you can gain more damage with other glyphs. Close Quarters damage is vastly superior to this glyph and even the +25% Incendiary Trap damage glyph is a significant improvement.
2) Thunderbolt Speed is our next target. As I’ve already mentioned before this skill isn’t worth the time spent and even when it’s glyphed for speed it decreases the cast animation by 30%. Even if you were to glyph this skill and use it you would want to waste your Backstep to animation cancel the recoil animation until the patch comes where Thunderbolt can be canceled with Final Salvo.
3) Enfeebling Ensnaring Trap is the next glyph and I’ve actually seen a fair number of people use this glyph. It decreases the target’s endurance by 3.5% for 5 seconds. This skill is originally on a 15 seconds cooldown so the uptime of this debuff as well as the effect inflicted isn’t substantial enough to warrant use of this glyph. The skill itself does very little damage so you are going out of your way to use the skill just to get the debuff if you have it glyphed. I’m aware that 3.5% isn’t just 3.5% more damage due to endurance debuffs scaling but it doesn’t change the fact that the uptime of this debuff is rather poor so the overall gain isn’t worth it even if you’re in a party with a warrior, lancer, and priest to maintain all three core endurance debuffs at all times.
4) Ensnaring Trap cooldown is a glyph that would only be used in conjunction with the previously mentioned Ensnaring Trap glyph. Since this skill is useless by itself there’s no meaning to glyph it so that it can be used more frequently. If the Ensnaring Trap is ever modified to have increased duration up to 10 seconds or more and if the effect is raised from 3.5% to 8% or something along those lines then these two glyphs could actually be useful.
5) Slow Trap duration is an excellent glyph in functionality. The problem lies in the fact that nothing can be slowed nor would it need to be with the current content. The slow trap itself is a significant movement speed slow so glyphing for increased duration could be good if the content ever existed where it had a use but this glyph currently has no place in any PvE build at any time.
6) Stun Trap duration is another glyph that has decent functionality. We again run into the issue of not having a place for stun trap to be a useful skill. The only instance I can think of where this would be useful is to further stun the priest mob in Sky Cruiser hard mode’s first room.
7) Glyph of Blazing on Poison Arrow is the our last glyph. This glyph decreases the charge speed of Radiant Arrow after using Poison Arrow. The primary issue with this glyph is that Poison Arrow is not a skill worth using. Using this glyph turns Poison Arrow into a gimmick of sorts to gain a boost for Radiant Arrow. The second issue is that Radiant Arrow is already a rather quick skill to charge up. So having to go out of your way to use not only 5 glyph points but also a skill that deals worse damage than shooting regular arrows for an insignificant bonus is a large waste of glyph points. If Poison Arrow is ever changed to deal a fair amount of damage and perhaps if the glyph cost is reduced this glyph could one day be good.
My personal builds and train of thought
Here are the glyphs that are the backbone of Archer:
While I feel some glyphs can be changed around I feel that these glyphs are absolutely crucial and should never be turned off in PvE. Explosive Trap damage is an excellent glyph but since it currently misses often in certain encounters I don’t feel that it’s crucial. When this bug is fixed in the future I would add that glyph to the list as well. When fighting Perimos it’s not uncommon for me to unglyph Explosive Trap damage (along with Restraint Arrow CD) and take Close Quarter’s damage with Breakaway Bolt cooldown reduction.
This is my standard glyph build.
I’m always trying to maximize my gains with my glyph build and I’m really looking forward to the rework in the Arc Engineer patch. It will allow for more glyphs and moreover glyphs which are really good. When the point reductions come out I will definitely be picking up Close Quarter’s damage and Rapid Fire damage. It’s important to always take into consideration what you’re gaining from a glyph, how often you receive the bonus (or use the skill), and what your other options would be if you didn’t choose it. Just because one glyph is good doesn’t mean there isn’t something better so use your best judgment.
Itemization
Any time you have a game where the player is given a list of options, there’s always going to be the problem of ambiguity regarding what choices are good. This leads to many cognitive errors such as bandwagoning, and misinformation. The math behind MMORPGs is never simple, but neither is it impossible to figure out. It’s intriguing why much of TERA’s formulas and concepts hadn’t been figured out within the first six months of release, unlike other MMORPGs. Some of it has to do with the lack of true parsing software to accurately gauge certain things, and some of it with the community, but luckily the damage in TERA is static so it’s not all that difficult to figure out either way. I could explain all the technicalities and the math behind the game, but I have a better solution. I wanted to simplify the process by incorporating a damage calculator in Excel, and I’ve done just that with a spreadsheet a close friend of mine built. We’ve tried to make it easy and intuitive – just input your stats and you can begin comparing builds. Regardless of whether or not you’re interested in looking at the spreadsheet, though, I will briefly go over what the optimal stats you should aim for and basically everything that has to do with itemization in general.
What stats on armor and weapons are favorable?
We’ll start with the armor first. It doesn’t have to be said, but dying significantly reduces your DPS, and in high pressure fights, just being alive is important. Sadly, there really aren’t any options on your pieces of armor, aside from the chest piece. The rolls on boots and gloves are the best and there’s no reason to not use them. On boots you should always roll Movement Speed, Endurance+4, and MP regen. The other choices are meaningless because they don’t provide any real gain whatsoever. The movement speed and endurance is required but if you’re being cheap you can skip the MP regen because it’s only 5 MP per second. For gloves you need to roll Attack Speed, Crit Rate, and Power. There aren’t even other options so it’s fairly difficult to get this one wrong. I wouldn’t recommend going cheap on gloves but if you do have to skip a third stat I recommend that you skip the power as Archer has more innate power than any other class in the game. The chest piece doesn’t have many options outside of the skill line. You should always roll flat damage reduction, Max HP, and Enraged Monsters. Given that you are killed in one hit by an enraged boss in Sky Cruiser Hard Mode I would value the Enraged Monsters stat line as the least important during progression. However, if you are running with a Warrior as a tank, without access to Infuriate, you should probably roll the Reduce Damage from Frontal Attacks stat instead of Enraged Monsters. The Max HP is also important as Archer has the lowest HP base in the game. Eating double lasers at Perimos without having at least 100,000 HP can be a bit sketchy.
Here is the list of options that you can choose between on chest:
| Archer Chest Class Stats |
| Gain 50 MP when Velik’s Mark hits a target |
| Reduce cooldown of Breakaway Bolt by 12% |
| Increase duration of Poison Arrow by 17% |
| Increase stun duration of Close Quarters by 5% |
| Decrease cooldown of Stunning Trap by 15% |
| Reduce cooldown of Rain of Arrows by 10% |
| Increase damage of Rain of Arrows by 10% |
| Increase damage of Arrow Volley by 15% |
| Increase damage of Penetrating Arrow by 10% |
| Increase damage of Radiant Arrow by 10% |
Here is the list of options that you can choose between on chest that are actually useful
| Archer Chest Class Stats |
| Reduce cooldown of Rain of Arrows by 10% |
| Increase damage of Rain of Arrows by 10% |
| Increase damage of Penetrating Arrow by 10% |
| Increase damage of Radiant Arrow by 10% |
Note: If Archer needs Breakaway Bolt cooldown reduction on chest to maintain a high enough back time on a boss, then it’s time to play another class because you’ve been royally screwed by the developers.
Rain of Arrows damage is always a very intuitive choice. “Rain of Arrows does the most damage, so I should go with that right?” No, not exactly. There are a number of reasons why going with Rain of Arrows damage is a bad idea. Firstly, the damage bonus is additive (like all chest bonuses) which means that you’re gaining 814 (8,142*0.1) base damage. Alone, it’s a 10% increase, but you’re going to have it glyphed – so you will only be going from 10,177 to 10,991 base damage – so it’s only an 8% increase. The second reason is that Rain of Arrows takes a very long time to use. When I say it takes a long time to use, I mean the time it takes to cast the skill as well as the 7 damage ticks over 3 seconds. No matter how fast you cast Rain of Arrows, the damage will always take a little over 3 seconds to finish. My third reason is one of the biggest reasons of all. When you use Rain of Arrows you must be looking at the back of the target upon impact to inflict back hits. You cannot cast Rain of Arrows and have your character look somewhere else. You cannot look forward-left or forward-right and you certainly cannot be looking at a 90 degree angle to the boss. The skill, despite its high base damage, is very gimmicky. So the next time you’re considering using Rain of Arrows damage, you need to consider that you’re only gaining 814.2 base damage on a skill that may only land a couple of back hits (if the mob turns around), which also has a cooldown that’s 18.8 seconds after it’s glyphed for cooldown reduction.
Rain of Arrows cooldown is another option, but this isn’t much better for all the reasons mentioned above. The only difference is that if you do use Rain of Arrows exactly off cooldown, this is technically a 10% damage increase as it is an additive cooldown reduction of 2.5 seconds, allowing you to use the skill more often. This is not a better choice and you shouldn’t use it.
Penetrating Arrow damage is another option I’ve seen players use. This was often used in PvP, and while I don’t doubt it being somewhat useful there, it’s by no means a great option in PvE. When you think of Penetrating Arrow, you have to consider that you use a +25% damage glyph as well as a +25% damage powerlink glyph (at least you should be using it for all of your Penetrating Arrows.) This is NOT 4,109*(1.5)*(1.1). As I’ve said before all chest bonuses are additive. You’re just going from 6,163 (4,109*1.5) base damage to 6,574 (4,109*1.6) base damage, which is merely a 6.7% increase. You are gaining 411 base damage per penetrating arrow and you could technically use three penetrating arrows in between each Rain of Arrows (if used on cooldown). So, even considering that it’s only an additive bonus in addition to the +50% you’re already gaining this is still a superior option to Rain of Arrows damage or cooldown reduction.
Radiant Arrow is our last real option and yes, it is what I use. Radiant Arrow is a slightly higher cooldown than Penetrating Arrow (10 seconds opposed to 6). Radiant Arrow doesn’t have any bonuses aside from its triple crit rate glyph, so the 10% damage is actually 10% more damage. Currently, you gain 510 base damage by using this on Radiant Arrow, but when Radiant Arrow is buffed again it will be a 588 base damage gain (Radiant arrow is being raised from 5,101 to 5,885). It should also be noted that Penetrating Arrow will be nerfed in the same patch that Radiant Arrow is buffed so it will slightly diminish the gain you would get over using Penetrating instead of Radiant Arrow.
What are the optimal crystals?
Armor crystals in TERA are rarely gotten wrong. Unfortunately, it’s not the same case with weapon and accessory crystals. If I haven’t listed a crystal here, there’s a good chance that you should be using anything but that crystal.
In your chest piece, you should be running 4 Hardy Niveots. Relentless Niveots are nearly useless because they were scaled horribly. At the level 60 cap, DPS classes only had about 40,000 HP so putting on a crystal (Relentless Crux) was actually a lot of health because you we’re gaining 4,808 per crystal. That doesn’t mean they were better than damage reduction, but at least back at the time, it almost made sense. Now, we all have over 100,000 health and the Niveot only gives 5,434 HP. That is a questionable design decision. The only time I use anything other than a Hardy Niveot is when I’m using a single Relentless Niveot for Perimos. This actually isn’t even necessary; I just feel more comfortable with my team using it for a little extra health for HP-specific mechanics. It’s probably worth mentioning that I’m missing a Max HP +4.5% on one of my earrings. If you’re using a Slaying Niveot you can swap out one Hardy Niveot for a Resolute Niveot, but it’s not much of a difference. Also, if you’re against permanently enraged bosses, you can use Poised Niveots for a marginal increase in damage reduction.
Weapon Crystals are often misunderstood because of the ambiguity behind how they work, or how the game’s damage formulas work. I’ll start with the Fine Focused Niveot because it’s relevant to this content’s special condition. A Fine Focused Niveot only works when the monster is enraged. So when you’re doing Sky Cruiser, and you’re fighting the 2nd and 3rd boss, you really shouldn’t be using a Fine Focused Niveot unless you have a lancer tank and he’s using Infuriate at the start of the fight. These bosses do not Enrage until they are sub 30% and sub 25% health, respectively. For example, against Perimos, it’s wise to swap a crystal out for a Fine Focused Niveot after the boss has been pushed into the final phase (by lowering his HP under 30%.) Do not use a Fine Focused crystal unless you’re going to be fighting a monster that is going to be enraged. Bosses have historically had a variety of enrage conditions. The patch before Fate of Arun, bosses were enraged after around 900,000 damage was done to them, and would last for approximately 72 seconds. After which, dealing around 900,000 damage would enrage them again. They were effectively permanently enraged. However, the current content is a world away from that, and since the previous mindset lingers, you will see a lot of misplaced emphasis on enrage stats.
The next two crystals you should be using are the Fine Savage and Fine Bitter Niveots. Both of these function exactly the same way in PvE, although Fine Bitter Niveots do not work in PvP (they work against monsters only) . They increase the damage multiplier when you score a critical hit from the back of a mob. There are no other crystals that come close to increasing your damage as much as these two do, so if you aren’t using them now, you should.
The last crystal slot is the one that is most contentious. The 4th crystal slot always goes to one of the Pounding, Carving, Forceful, or Slaying crystals. Slaying provides the highest damage increase out of the four, but it imposes the condition that you must be below 50% HP. It requires exceptional skill levels, as well as favorable dungeon conditions to be able to use this fully. The second option out of the four is the Pounding crystal. I know there are a lot of players who use Forceful but the Forceful crystal is another crystal, like the Relentless crystal, that did not scale well. It is a flat 20 power for a short duration after landing a critical hit from the back. The Forceful Crux that we used at level 60 was 19 power just to give you an idea of how pitiful the scaling was from level 60 to level 65. Towards the end of the MCHM era players stopped using Forceful because we had accumulated so much power that the damage increase was lower than using a Mutinous/Hunters Crux even if you maintained 100% uptime on the Forceful buff. This is because the more power you have, the less you’re gaining with each point of power. It is, like many things in this game, an additive bonus. Pounding crystals are also additive increases but in almost all situations it is superior to Forceful. For classes other than Archer it is recommended to use Pounding, Savage, Bitter, and Forceful when bosses aren’t going to be enraged. Archer doesn’t apply here because they have an insanely high power base on top of a +30 power buff that they always maintain. In Archer’s case it’s better to use 2 Pounding than 1 Pounding and 1 Forceful like other classes.
Vyrsks
Vyrsks are fairly simple, and I haven’t seen more than a few people using the incorrect Vyrsks. There are only two Vyrsks to consider for a DPS class. One gives +3 Power, and the other gives +6 Crit Rate. There are attack speed Vyrsks, but these are useless for DPS. In just about every scenario, gaining 2 crit per point of power is going to be superior, so use the Carving (Crit Rate) Vyrsks.
Choosing Etches, Innerwear, and a Brooch
Innerwear, Brooch, and etches are often times gotten wrong or not valued highly enough by DPS classes. This is a fairly large DPS increase so it’s crucial that you are properly geared.
For Innerwear +12 Crit rate is far superior to +6 power (on any DPS class not just Archer) because we have another situation where we’re gaining 2 crit rate per point of power.
DPS class etchings are a similar trade-offs. The only option is to sacrifice 18 crit rate for 10 power (Energetic etches aren’t viable on Archer in PvE.) The crit rate is just superior because of the mathematics behind it.
The Empowered Brooch vs the Quickcarve Brooch is the same as well. Empowered Brooch gives 3 power and Quickcarve Brooch gives 6 crit rate. As far as the actives go , I’m not sure why so many players seem to discredit the carving brooch. It is a +50 Crit rate and +12% attack speed bonus vs just +40 power. Yes, the ratio of crit rate to power is lower (it’s actually rather poor) but it wouldn’t be wise to neglect the fact that you receive an attack speed steroid in addition to your crit bonus.
Timeless Misconceptions
I would like to go over a number of misconceptions that the community seems to have concluded about Archer, and why their DPS is suffering because of it.
1) Archer is a ranged Berserker. This class is not designed to spend excessive amounts of time overcharging Radiant Arrow and Penetrating Arrow like a Berserker does with Thunder Strike and Cyclone. This class has a massive kit of skills that can be executed in quick succession that would outweigh the amount of time spent overcharging 1 charge shot to gain a marginal damage boost.
2) Archers should go with full damage weapons like Keen and Intense while ignoring Attack Speed. I am completely aware of all of the math behind the game and where Keen/Intense stand in terms of raw damage but you cannot accurately gauge what is more valuable in an actual encounter without taking into consideration the time of each animation and number of actions performed. Given that Archer is built to be a non-stop machine that unloads as many actions as fast as possible you will need the attack speed to get through the whole kit. Some of the animations on Archer are fairly long and the last thing you want to do is get caught up in some animation that could lead to you putting out less DPS or lead to timeout on the floor.
3) Poison Arrow is good because __________. Even if you’re using the Glyph of Blaze for Radiant Arrow charge speed poison arrow is still a very bad skill. The animation is significantly longer than other skills, the damage over time (DoT) is a sad joke due to its lack of gear-scaling, and the amount of glyph points that you would even need to use this glyph is not worth it. Radiant Arrow’s charge speed is sufficient as is. The faster we get away from the idea that Archer is supposed to be charging up skills 90% of the time the better.
4) Arrow Volley is good because ____________. We have a similar situation. This skill’s damage compared to how long it takes to use it just isn’t worth it. This skill has three inputs so using it with high ping is not only sketchy it’s a waste of time. It’s not only an animation lock but if you get staggered when the arrow is flying through the air it will not do any damage because the animation has technically not finished. To give you a comparison Arrow Volley is 1,766 damage base. Flaming Barrage on a sorcerer is 3,595 damage base. They function entirely the same yet after all these years (and a major Arrow Volley buff in the past) it is still a skill that is not worth using. Now like I was saying before, we have a similar situation with the Glyph of Blaze on Arrow Volley. It increases Penetrating Arrow speed by 40% but given the things mentioned before it’s not worth the effort especially when there is a superior choice available.
5) Final Salvo Glyph of Blaze is good because ___________. If you were using Arrow Volley’s glyph of blaze for penetrating arrow then you were likely considering using the Final Salvo Glyph of Blazing just now. This is actually not a great idea either. The reason being that when you use this glyph is requires that you use Radiant Arrow 6 seconds (that’s how long the Glyph of Blazing lasts) before each penetrating arrow. This greatly reduces your options while DPSing. With the reduced Breakaway Bolt cooldown you should not be using Penetrating Arrow without the Breakaway Bolt powerlink glyph. If you’re trying to get your Penetrating Arrow powerlink from Breakaway Bolt and then you’re trying to pick up the speed from Final Salvo then you’re greatly limited on what you can do to have both of these active. This glyph isn’t terrible but it limits your capabilities of what you can and can’t do at any given time. If you have ping over 200 you may be pigeonholed into using this option to gain Penetrating Arrow speed. It’s just another price you have to pay for having high latency.
6) Using Rain of Arrows (RoA) from the back of the mob are considered back hits. So wrong it makes my head hurt. Rain of Arrows is not dependent upon where it is shot from. It is dependent on A) whether the mob is actually being hit and B) where you are facing at the time of impact. I find myself occasionally using Rain of Arrows from the front and using Backstep and or Breakaway Bolt to quickly reposition to back of the mob. This allows me to still inflict back hits on some of the hits. You cannot use Rain of Arrows and have your character face left, right, or turn around unless your plan is to not inflict back hits on your skill that has the most raw damage.
7) Archer is a ranged class. As ironic as this is, it’s not even remotely true. In case you’ve never been told (or realized it yourself) that when you are beyond 12m your damage is diminished on most of your skills. The distance brackets are 0m-12m(100%), 12m-16m(85%), and 16m-23m(70%). The following skills are all affected with range penalties: Arrow, Rapid Fire, Final Salvo, Penetrating Arrow, Radiant Arrow, Poison Arrow, Restraint Arrow, and Web Arrow. These ranged penalties have long since been removed in KTERA and they will be coming to NA/EU soon but this will not change the play style of the class. Incendiary Trap, Close Quarters, and Breakaway Bolt all require that you be in melee range to land the attacks.
8) Using Arrows and Rapid Fire are useless. This is probably the most difficult thing to go over because this is heavily ping based. While Archer does require very low ping to stay in the realm of viable DPS, shooting regular Arrows and Rapid Fire and by far the most ping reliant source of damage in the game. It’s not as simple as saying “I have 100 ms ping, that means I have 0.1s delay when I use skills.” Each skill is affected by ping in a different way. Most people who play TERA don’t understand how high ping ruins the TERA Online experience. Players of NA and EU will never experience gameplay at <10 ping. Rapid Fire is the most ping reliant skill in the game because your connection has to ping in between each shot of Rapid Fire. Rapid Fire takes me approximately twice as long at 40-70 ping as it does for someone with less than 10. If Rapid Fire functioned like Traverse Cut where the game did all of the hits for you then Rapid Fire would be awesome. While this doesn’t mean that it’s a useless skill or necessarily a bad one, using Rapid Fire with 40 ping or higher is going to be a DPS loss in comparison to just about anything (unless you’re using it for AoE damage.) With my 40-60 ping I can shoot about 3 regular arrows (3 x 454) each second. If I had ping similar to KTERA, JTERA, or Taiwan TERA, I would be able to shoot 4 arrows per second or come very close. With the same attack speed I would be able to execute around 20% more actions (not just regular arrows) in the same amount of time if I only had lower ping. Since ping affects all of my actions as well as the rate at which I can use these two actions, I don’t spend an abundance of time using these skills. However, I do use them in certain situations.
Speed vs Big Number Syndrome
Tera Online is a unique experience in how it presents your damage output. Needless to say it’s a bit flashy. Any time you have six to eight digit numbers popping up in the middle of your screen, especially in quick succession, you’re going to have an epidemic of Big Number Syndrome. In games it can be easy for us as players to become blind-sighted by our damage output. In other games (or MMORPGs rather) Big Number Syndrome is usually associated with topping damage parses while ignoring mechanics. In TERA it’s much worse because players make gear choices, glyph choices, and skill choices based upon these mega critical hits that they experience. Players have minimal priority on speed and almost all priority on how big their numbers can get. Frequency more often than not can be more important than dishing out bigger numbers especially in TERA as DPS is opportunistic.
Overcharging
I stated earlier that overcharging is a waste of time but now I’d like to explain why. Overcharging is when you have charged past the third charge on skills that require channeling. When you begin taking damage you have started overcharging. What overcharging does is provide a damage boost per tick of HP that it consumes. There are four ticks that you can overcharge. Each tick grants a base damage proportionate to the skill used. For penetrating arrow you gain approximately 465 base damage per tick of overcharge. This is slightly higher than the base damage of a regular arrow. The problem is that you can shoot two arrows per tick of overcharge so imagine if you had actual skills off cooldown that you could be using instead of regular arrows. Radiant Arrow is a bit different, due to it having a +80 crit glyph as well as a higher base damage. Furthermore, both of these will be increased in the coming future. The crit glyph will increase to +120 along with a base damage increase. Using mathematical formulas, we can calculate the true base damage gained by overcharging.
There is also a damage bonus (or penalty) based upon what health % the mob is at. We refer to this mechanic as Bloodlust. This is a multiplicative damage increase. It’s not limited to charge skills (Fireblast and Thunderbolt come to mind) but has primarily been applied to them since the beginning of the game. Bloodlust brackets are separated into 100%, 99.99-90.00%, 89.99-80.00%, 79.99-70.00%, so forth and so until 9.99-0%. Here is a table showing the base damage of both the bloodlust as well as the overcharging tiers.
| Penetrating Arrow (4,109) | 3 Charge | 1 Overcharge | 2 Overcharge | 3 Overcharge | 4 Overcharge |
| 100% | 2877 | 3203 | 3529 | 3855 | 4181 |
| <100% | 3288 | 3660 | 4033 | 4406 | 4779 |
| <90% | 3431 | 3820 | 4210 | 4599 | 4988 |
| <80% | 3575 | 3981 | 4386 | 4791 | 5197 |
| <70% | 3719 | 4141 | 4562 | 4984 | 5406 |
| <60% | 3863 | 4301 | 4739 | 5177 | 5615 |
| <50% | 4007 | 4461 | 4915 | 5370 | 5824 |
| <40% | 4109 | 4575 | 5041 | 5507 | 5973 |
| <30% | 4253 | 4735 | 5218 | 5700 | 6182 |
| <20% | 4397 | 4895 | 5394 | 5893 | 6391 |
| <10% | 4541 | 5056 | 5570 | 6085 | 6600 |
| Penetrating Arrow (4,109 + 1027.13) | 3 Charge | 1 Overcharge | 2 Overcharge | 3 Overcharge | 4 Overcharge |
| 100% | 3602 | 3922 | 4248 | 4574 | 4900 |
| <100% | 4109 | 4482 | 4855 | 5228 | 5600 |
| <90% | 4289 | 4678 | 5067 | 5456 | 5845 |
| <80% | 4469 | 4874 | 5280 | 5685 | 6090 |
| <70% | 4648 | 5070 | 5492 | 5914 | 6335 |
| <60% | 4828 | 5266 | 5704 | 6142 | 6580 |
| <50% | 5008 | 5462 | 5917 | 6371 | 6825 |
| <40% | 5136 | 5602 | 6068 | 6534 | 7000 |
| <30% | 5316 | 5798 | 6281 | 6763 | 7245 |
| <20% | 5496 | 5994 | 6493 | 6992 | 7490 |
| <10% | 5676 | 6190 | 6705 | 7220 | 7735 |
| Radiant Arrow (5,101+ 510.08) | 3 Charge | 1 Overcharge | 2 Overcharge | 3 Overcharge | 4 Overcharge |
| 100% | 3928 | 4305 | 4682 | 5058 | 5435 |
| <100% | 4489 | 4920 | 5350 | 5781 | 6211 |
| <90% | 4686 | 5135 | 5584 | 6033 | 6483 |
| <80% | 4882 | 5350 | 5818 | 6286 | 6754 |
| <70% | 5078 | 5565 | 6052 | 6539 | 7026 |
| <60% | 5275 | 5781 | 6286 | 6792 | 7298 |
| <50% | 5471 | 5996 | 6520 | 7045 | 7569 |
| <40% | 5611 | 6149 | 6687 | 7225 | 7763 |
| <30% | 5808 | 6365 | 6921 | 7478 | 8035 |
| <20% | 6004 | 6580 | 7155 | 7731 | 8307 |
| <10% | 6201 | 6795 | 7390 | 7984 | 8578 |
As you can see Penetrating Arrow and Radiant Arrow don’t even deal full damage until the target mob has reached less than 40% HP. Being able to understanding how much damage is gained by overcharging and how Bloodlust is affecting the skills we can get a more accurate read on how to prioritize our skills.
On this table we can see the DPS of each skill. By taking into account the animation time for each skill (by recording a video and counting the frames, not going by the in-game tooltips) we can take the damage we’ve recorded and weigh it against the animation to get a precise understanding of powerful each skill is.
| Seconds spent charging | |||||
| Skill | 3 Charge | 1 Overcharge | 2 Overcharge | 3 Overcharge | 4 Overcharge |
| Penetrating Arrow | 3.7 | 4.27 | 4.83 | 5.40 | 5.97 |
| Radiant Arrow | 3 | 3.58 | 4.09 | 4.55 | 5.06 |
| Radiant Arrow (5,101+ 510.08) | 3 Charge | 1 Overcharge | 2 Overcharge | 3 Overcharge | 4 Overcharge |
| 100% | 1309 | 1204 | 1144 | 1113 | 1074 |
| <100% | 1496 | 1376 | 1308 | 1272 | 1227 |
| <90% | 1562 | 1436 | 1365 | 1327 | 1281 |
| <80% | 1627 | 1496 | 1422 | 1383 | 1335 |
| <70% | 1693 | 1556 | 1479 | 1439 | 1388 |
| <60% | 1758 | 1617 | 1537 | 1494 | 1442 |
| <50% | 1824 | 1677 | 1594 | 1550 | 1496 |
| <40% | 1870 | 1720 | 1635 | 1590 | 1534 |
| <30% | 1936 | 1780 | 1692 | 1645 | 1588 |
| <20% | 2001 | 1840 | 1749 | 1701 | 1641 |
| <10% | 2067 | 1900 | 1806 | 1756 | 1695 |
| Penetrating Arrow (4,109) | 3 Charge | 1 Overcharge | 2 Overcharge | 3 Overcharge | 4 Overcharge |
| 100% | 778 | 751 | 730 | 714 | 701 |
| <100% | 889 | 858 | 834 | 816 | 801 |
| <90% | 927 | 895 | 871 | 852 | 836 |
| <80% | 966 | 933 | 907 | 887 | 871 |
| <70% | 1005 | 970 | 944 | 923 | 906 |
| <60% | 1044 | 1008 | 980 | 959 | 941 |
| <50% | 1083 | 1046 | 1017 | 994 | 976 |
| <40% | 1111 | 1072 | 1043 | 1020 | 1001 |
| <30% | 1149 | 1110 | 1080 | 1056 | 1036 |
| <20% | 1188 | 1147 | 1116 | 1091 | 1071 |
| <10% | 1227 | 1185 | 1153 | 1127 | 1106 |
| Penetrating Arrow (4,109 + 1027.13) | 3 Charge | 1 Overcharge | 2 Overcharge | 3 Overcharge | 4 Overcharge |
| 100% | 974 | 919 | 879 | 847 | 821 |
| <100% | 1111 | 1050 | 1004 | 968 | 939 |
| <90% | 1159 | 1096 | 1048 | 1010 | 980 |
| <80% | 1208 | 1142 | 1092 | 1053 | 1021 |
| <70% | 1256 | 1188 | 1136 | 1095 | 1062 |
| <60% | 1305 | 1234 | 1180 | 1137 | 1103 |
| <50% | 1353 | 1280 | 1224 | 1180 | 1144 |
| <40% | 1388 | 1313 | 1256 | 1210 | 1173 |
| <30% | 1437 | 1359 | 1299 | 1252 | 1214 |
| <20% | 1485 | 1405 | 1343 | 1295 | 1255 |
| <10% | 1534 | 1451 | 1387 | 1337 | 1296 |
Why is attack speed important?
Attack speed is often neglected by players. Whether it’s because they’re only interested in seeing the highest possible number they can hit or whether it’s players who are aware of the math but have no intuition when it comes to actually gameplay, there are players everywhere neglecting attack speed and it completely alters your ability to play a class a certain way.
If your attack speed is so poor that you’re only getting 4 attacks off in 10 seconds I think it’s time to reevaluate what you’re actually doing. Even if you have a decent amount of attack speed it’s still good to have more. Why? Because even if you said 4.5% attack speed means I get 4.5% more damage then you would be neglecting the fact that not every action you do is a skill that does damage. Faster iframes means less time spent in unnecessary animations that deal damage. What I find is that the damage dealt in this game is all short term amounts of burst. Being able to get through as many attacks as possible before the mob has turned around (or before you have to dodge/block.) When a mob is turning around there is a short time frame where it is still technically facing the other damage. You may or may not have noticed some mega critical hit to the face of a mob because it hasn’t finished rotating completely. Having high attack speed would allow you to clutch a skills in at the last second before it has turned around. This means you’re not only getting to use those skills more frequently but it likely means you’re spending less time performing weaker actions. It’s a simple concept but the more time you spend doing the actions the deal the most damage the less time spent on more trivial skills. By having higher attack speed you spend less time stuck in animation locks and you have your priorities shifted. You now have time to use skills when you otherwise didn’t.
It’s not just about going fast or being safer. It’s about having more time to use skills at appropriate times, using more skills overall, and having more time to calculate what to do next.
Closing Thoughts
Why I Chose Archer
I’ve often been asked why I play Archer especially given that I give it so little credit for what it can do in comparison to other classes. I think what I enjoy about it is that it feels more unique than all of the other DPS classes. Archer is a mix of Berserker playstyle with warrior’s speed but also something unlike other classes. Most of Archer’s skills are on 10-15 second cooldown or higher making it feel a bit like a burst DPS but it has sustain similar to a warrior. There’s no particular reason why I play Archer. I just enjoy the class. It may be that I have read one too many Green Arrow comics or maybe I just like classes that use bows. I can’t say for certain. But what I can say is that I likely won’t ever enjoy another class in TERA as much as Archer.
Changes I Would Like to See
There’s a vast number of ways that Archer could have been balanced for DPS. While I don’t believe it
will ever be a class that’s fine tuned I do believe it will be where it needs to be for it to be competent nevertheless. With that being said there are some small changes that I would appreciate.
The first change is reducing the number of arrows being shot to gain the penetrating arrow speed buff. This was changed about one and a half years ago in KTERA and even translated into JTERA and Taiwan TERA. It’s was reduced from 10 arrows to 8 arrows and this was never brought to NA or EU for reasons unknown. So this actually isn’t even a change I came up with. It’s simply something that was never implemented.
My second change would be an addition to Backstep. When the level cap was raised from 60 to 65 Slayer received the ability to stack up 2 rolls. This allows them consecutive roll twice. Also, Reaper has always had Shadow Step stack up to 2 in addition to the Retribution skill. I see no reason why Archer wouldn’t be allowed to have a second iframe especially given that slayer already had 2 iframes before they gave it a second evasive roll. If it’s too much to ask for another Backstep then I’d really like to see a chain skill (or just an active buff for 3 seconds) that increases the speed of Breakaway Bolt after Backstep. This would further improve mobility and wouldn’t have any significant impact on the class balance.
The last change I would like to see are crowd control (CC) skills working on bosses in dungeons. I don’t mean allowing every class to use them either. If Archer had the ability to significantly slow bosses or stun them at times when party members find themselves in positions they can’t survive. If this happened Archer would finally have something to call its own instead of just being another DPS class among the many. If Archer couldn’t have superior single target or AoE they could have given it some form of utility (that increases overall DPS through some other means) that no other class has. Even having a skill that inflicted a debuff in which the boss’s damage was reduced by a sizable amount so that during progression tanks could survive enraged bosses more easily would be a welcome change but this would be an irrelevant change now given that the new content and been beat to death.
The Conclusion
I can’t blame the community for giving Archer such a bad rap. The class may never be viewed in the same light as other classes on NA or EU. When problems go unchecked for years they usually stay problems forever at least to some degree. To be honest with you I wouldn’t even take an archer with me to a dungeon. I know it takes someone who has genuine passion about it to do adequate DPS. I’d rather take my chances with any run of the mill spacebar-hero slayer or Thunder Strike-master berserker than have to bet on someone being some MLG level archer. When archer receives its major buff in the Arc Engineer patch I may consider changing my position but I can’t accurately gauge how strong archer will be at that time compared to now. I imagine it will be around a 20% damage increase overall and if that’s the case then uninformed players who aren’t even reaching the class’s potential now won’t perform much better. I hope you’ve learned a few things and I do wish you the best of results. Initially I didn’t plan on making such an elaborate guide but one thing lead to another and here we are. If you feel I’ve misrepresented the class in any way challenge me in the comments section on Reddit and I’d be more than happy to have any discussion concerning issues you may have.
