guide for force archers

The Beginning
So, when you start, they’ll give you two training crystals to begin with.
There is NO NEED to buy another pair of crude crystals just for those few starting levels.
Just go quest & train until you reach the requirements for Red Crystal(However, do match your growth requirements first), then switch.
At this level there should be no problems with questing & levelling up at all.
& This should be the case all the way until lvl 50. Keep questing. If you run out of quest go grind on yellow monsters. It shouldn’t take too long to gain a level.

Also, dont be scared of yellow monsters just because they hit you for half your life.
You have range, you can run, after apprentice level you get knockback/down, and basically you’ll be getting hit less even though its short range combat.

Novice Skills
Work with what your given. There is no need to buy other arrows.
Theres no need to be thrifty with skill points, just add them into skills as you see fit, you can take them out later anyway.
Regeneration is useless, so just spend a little more money on pots, cos at the end of the day if you rely on regeneration you’re gonna die.
DO GET VITALITY MASTERY, ITS THE MOST IMPORTANT UPGRADE SKILL & UPGRADE IT EVERY RANK.

Apprentice Skills
Critical shot is the most important skill at this level. Get it, max it ASAP.
You’ll be using it alll the way up till 8x’s, maybe more.
This is the only skill I can do 1k++ crits on mobs my level.
Usefulness? Roughly 9/10.

Repulsive Armor. Get it, max it ASAP.
This buff is the only one of its kind. Get it, you’ll need all the help you can get in DR(Defence Rating, in other words, evasion).

Precision, Optional.
Pros : It can stack with Vital Force.
Cons : Rather useless.
In my opinion? I didn’t get it.

Yet again, you don’t have to get any of the elemental crap, but you CAN, because you can just delete the skill later. So if you’re lazy to spam a few skills, and want some more attack animations, you can get some elemental arrows or blasts.

Regular Skills
Explosion shot. Get it, Don’t have to max it, keep it at 9 or so.
Its a great skill to spam, but at higher levels there are replacement skills which do a lot higher dmg, so just keep it at 9 for optimal cooldown.

Eagle Eye. Get it, max it if you want, but be prepared to take it down a couple of skill ranks later.
A good buff, imo, adds range, adds AR(Attack Rating, in other words, accuracy.)
HOWEVER, it does NOT stack with Vital Force, which you’ll be getting at A.Expert. Therefore, its rendered USELESS, as Vital Force is 10x more important than Eagle Eyes.
Believe me, the more HP you have, the more successful you will be in PVP, and the less you’ll die in PVE.

Blind. I did not get it, I think its rather useless.
However I might be wrong, but at least I don’t see any other high FA’s using it.

Lances, now, you can get an elemental Lance if you want, its a good skill to keep, and you can add it up to 19/20 and add it into your combo. The dmg is reasonable, and the cooldowns better compared to a Cannon.

Expert
Poison Arrow. Get it, Max it, Its useful. Now, let me explain.
At your level, you’d be PVPing people will 500hp or so max.
Poison arrow, when maxxed, gives you a 67dmg dot(dmg over time) every 2 seconds, for 10 seconds. That gives you 335 dmg in total. If you add the poison shot dmg itself, it’d nearly be 500 dmg.
All you have to do is shoot a stunner at the beginning of the duel to pull off the long casting time of Poison Shot and RUN.
The poison will do its job for you, and all you have to deliver is the finishing blow.
However, be prepared to get it of it once you hit 8x,9x. Its becoming a little obsolete at my level, because everyone around me has 1k++ hp, the dmg it deals now is a little insignificant.
But, its still useful cos its one of the few skills that would do a lot of dmg against the LiD(lvl 75 dungeon map) boss.

Lower Defense. Optional.
For me, I didn’t get it. I didn’t have enough skill points, and I don’t think I’ll be using this skill often, so nope, didn’t get it.

Cannons. They do a decent AOE splash, combined with a higher dmg than lances, its definately worth getting for PVE. However in PVP the cooldown might be a pain cos you’re gonna be desperately spamming skills. Its up to you to choose whether you want a Lance or a Cannon in your combo, or you can get both, too.

level 50 onwards
By now you should be lvl 50 or so.
You can start by going to Port Lux and grinding on turtles or crabs. Yes, grind, don’t quest. The quests at this level are mostly a waste of time, giving 30k-60k exp, which is rather little.
Just progress down the beach as you level up. Once you find crabs a little slow, just move down the beach a little, until perytons or the bug things.
Once you’re through with them go & hit those bug guys with big axes.
Once you hit 57-58, go to stone gargoyles. This place is usually crowded will all the wizards AOEing. You can choose to AOE or not, but if you AOE you must be careful & watch your HP, if not you’ll be dying a lot.
After Stone Gargoyles go hit Ghouls for a while till your 60. (Its also a good opportunity to hunt for a EoG+4.)

Once your 60, go kill Phantom Walker/Crews. They give amazing exp, and you should be up to 64 to them. At 64 you might want to try Stone Golems or Bladers. I did SG’s cos Bladers did too much dmg to me at that time. SG’s are good for FA’s cos they move slow and hit slow, allowing us to maximize our ranged advantages.

At 65 Move on to Fort Ruina(Get the Map from a quest from the PL officer), where you kill Auto Cannon Op outside of town. Good mobs, Very good exp, a little high dmg, but worth it.
I get 1k+ per hit on them, and they die really easily.
They also drop a helluva lot of capes, I got a EoS+4 and EoF+3 from them.
(I grinded/skill trained there for a few days tho.)
Theres the Alfa-Excavator nearby too. Its hanging around the Auto Cannons Op. Don’t think that its a hard mob just because the name is Red, its actually a piece of cake, and its really very good to train your combo on.
Anyway, at this level, you can start doing quests again. This time the quests give a few 100k exp(Esp those in ruina), which is worth it.

& I don’t have to elaborate much on what you have to grind on next, Fort ruina is the last map there is for now, so just move around killing mobs which give you good exp once the current mob your training off becomes too easy.
Personally I did 68-72 at MechBuffs, 72-75 at Electric Birds, 75-onwards at Mechzards. Just for your info.

A.Expert
Shadow Shot. Get it, its a good dmg shot & even provides KD(Knockdown).
The cooldown isn’t too bad maxxed, and its worth maxxing.

Mana Condense. Get it, max it ASAP.
Its a useful Strengthen Spirit buff when your solo-ing, but trust me, if your in a party and theres a wizzy in it, Ask for their buff. Gives you extra HP and MP. Otherwise, just use your own magic buff. It adds 29 magic maxxed, which comes out to be 50~ dmg or so. Very useful.

You don’t have to get Sharpness, Unless you want to bother with buffing other people often.

Vital Force. GET IT, MAX IT, ASAP.
This buff is total usefulness. Adds a helluva lot of HP maxxed, and its daaamn useful.

Master
Greater Heal. Useful, get it. If you’re gonna do LiD with your guild, or even solo, this skill is important. Sometimes pots can’t save you, so you have to self-heal.
& also it’d be great saving your tank from oblivion once in a while.

The rest of the skills are useless for now, theres no point in getting them yet, unless you’re too rich.

A.Master
Prismatic Shot. Well, I had to get it in order to solo LiD(lvl 75 stuff), so I guess you’d better be getting it for PVE as well. I don’t recommend using this in PVP because of the long casting time, but if you wanna use it as a finisher, I guess it would work.

Thrusting arrow. No point getting this yet. Not until G.Master. So far you would only have 1 skill with knockback(Critical shot), so its not really worth getting this buff yet.
& Yes, this buff only works with skills which have KNOCKBACK, not KNOCKDOWN.

G.Master
Gravity Distortion. Get it. Really important skill. Keep it at 9 for fast cool down and use it alll the time for stunlock. Limit 3 AOE esp. useful in wars.

Art of Healing. Useful skill, get it. Increases your greater heal from 750 to 1.5k when this buff is maxxed. Definately a must get if you’re a support FA. Else if you can survive with your normal greater heal, you can skip this.

G.M Upgrade skills.
Get Magic and 1 other(Up to you, can be AR, DR, Def)
For me, I’m getting DR, but thats because I’m changing to a Light Martial FA.

Battlemodes
imo BM1 isn’t of much use until later.
Firstly, you can’t really tank a lot of mobs at lvl 30, hence rendering using bm1 for aoe-ing useless. imo BM1 is useful in guild wars where there are a mass of people in one group, and you can just fire off shots into that group and hit everyone. lol.
More or less its useful at higher levels.

BM2. Its useful & fun. Its my ‘BanKai’, haha.
Btw if you didn’t know, BM2 uses Normal Attack, instead of skills.
So don’t waste your BM2 using skills.
Useful to go on a rampage once in a while and pwn eveything in sight with it.
Not really useful in wars cos everyones massively potting and its hard to aquire a target without having to run around after him.
Quite useful in PVE tho, but not agaisnt boss mobs.
Fatal shot is useless too, imo, takes a while to cast, takes even longer to cooldown, and the dmg isn’t say very good -_-.

Grinding Sword Level
Imo you don’t have to do it too early, but if your despo for dash, go ahead.
I only levelled my sword level to Reg at 5x because I was too busy lvling my Magic.
I either Punched or use Force Change.
Its at regular for me atm, because I’m not done with levelling my Magic to max A.Master.
Once I’m done with that tho, I’ll be lvling Sword lvl.

Why we must lvl sword?
We get extra stats (str, dex, HP, MP) everytime we gain a skill lvl,
and its not like a little stats only. Its a lot, and their very useful when it comes to wearing higher lvled armor.

Upgrade Skills
For me, I got Vitality Mastery (A must)
Force Control
Defensive Stance. (I chose Def over DR and AR, but you can choose others too!)
The last slot I left blank, was for my Force Change, but I deleted it to lvl my Magic.
**Read G.M Skills for more upgrade skills!

Custom Build FA
Full Support FA - The HEAVY FA.
Basically all this char does is HEAL. Support, heal. In wars, this char would be major-ly useful. Definately a need for a guild.
This FA would be wearing Heavy armor, i.e armorsuits, for-going INT for DEF.
As a Heavy FA you’ll won’t be doing much dmg, therefore, you’ll be a support healer & buffer. (Which isn’t much of a deal, most high lvl dungeons can’t be solo-ed anyway.)
Basically what you have to do is keep your INT as low as possible, and match your stats to Heavy Armor. (Use extract pots if you have to.)

PROS -
You’ll look **** spiffy.
It’ll take 10+ hits to kill you. (Mind you, I kill most people in 5 hits.)
You’ll hardly ever die in wars & dungeons.
Armor is relatively cheap! (+ Magic Amp Armor is cheaper than the rest!)
You’ll be super useful in wars. (Imagine all you do is stun & heal.)

CONS -
Eh, cannot 1v1. (basically no showing off la.)
Cannot Solo. (Hardly anyone solos at high lvls. )
Can’t think of anything else alr. >_>

made this for my own, but since there arent any FA guides arround here, guess I'll make it public. Hope u guys find it useful.

Changes:

* Added Thrusting Arrow, Blind, Sharpness, Precision.
* Fixed Art of Healing and Mass heal. They are G.Master and Completer.
* Fixed Resist Intention. Its a Master skill, not G.Master.
* Added a 1 more stunlock combo
* Added a PvE stunlock combo
* Added comments about Eagle Eye and Resist Intention.
* Added comments about the new completer and transcender skills.
* Fixed the Upgrade Skills for Master and higher Ranks. Sixth Sense, Damage Absorb and Force Ruling are G.Master skills, not Master.
* Added comments about Eagle Eye and Vital Bless. Both can stack with Vital Force (HP Buff) so its better to not spend skill points on them til they can stack with Vital Force.


Force Archers or FA's as most ppl call them, are basicly support characters cause all the buffs and heal they got, but they can also add some serious damage cause of the low casting time skill and decent damage they can do. Like the other quick guide, I'll simply tell u what skills are worth having per rank and some tips on how to play a FA.

Novice: Get Power Shot and Fire Arrow to 9. Combo with Power Shot, Magic Arrow and Fire Arrow until u get Power Shot and Fire Arrow to 9, where u can combo with just 2 skills. Get regeneration aswell. Upgrade Skill: Vitality Mastery. Get Dash from sword skills aswell, but u can decide whether u do this early on or u wait til u got a certain magic rank. If will suggest to get to level 40+ to wear adept stuff so u dont waste too much time exping sword.

Apprentice: Get Repulsive Armor and max it to 20 ASAP, its your first final buff. Get Critical Shot and drop Power Shot. Combo with 3 skills until u get Critical Shot to 9 where u can combo with Critical Shot and Fire Arrow. If u plan to not combo much, u can get Precision to 20. Upgrade Skill: Reflex.

Regular: Get Explosion Shot, Fire Lance and Terra Lance and make them 9. Drop Magic Arrow and Fire Arrow. U can combo with Critical Shot(9) and Explosion Shot(9), or make them 12 and combo with 3 skills (use Fire/Terra Lance plus the other 2). Dont get Eagle Eye until u hit level 140 (Rank 15). Its a final buff but it cant stack with Vital Force (HP buff) so its better to leave it til u can stack both. U can also get Blind to 20 if u plan to do bosses. Upgrade Skill: Drop Reflex and get Defensive Sense.

Expert: Get Stone Cannon to 9 and Lower Defense. Lower Defense is a debuff great for PvP but u can get it to 9 if u dont have spare points. Eventually max it to 20. Lower Defense is also great for luring mobs cause it makes them agro. Some ppl like Poison Arrow cause it has Damage Over Time, but its kinda slow so its up to u. Upgrade Skill: Force Control.

A.Expert: This is where the fun starts. Get Shadow Shot, Mana Condense and Vital Force. Mana Condense and Vital Force are final buffs so u need them at 20. Drop Explosion Shot and replace it with Shadow Shot level 9 if u combo with 2 skills or level 12 if u combo with 3 skills. Get Sharpness to 20 if u plan to play more support. At lvl140, Sharpness stacks with Warrior and Bladers attack skills.

Master: Get Great Heal to 20. Dont get Vital Bless until u hit 140. Its a final buff but it cant stack with Vital Force (HP buff). Dont get Resist Intention until u hit 140 cause it cant stack with other more important buffs, besides its a PvP only skill. Upgrade Skill: Reflex or leave it blank til G.Master skills so u can buy 2 G.Master upgrades instead.

A.Master: Get Thrusting Arrow to 20.

G.Master: Get Gravity Distortion and make it 9. Get Art of Healing to 20. Upgrade Skill: U got many choices here. U can get Damage Absorb if mobs are hitting u too hard, Ruling Force if u need a damage boost, Sixth Sense if your Defense Rate is too low. I would go for Damage Absorb to make it safer. Later on u can buy them all but since u only have 5 upgrade slots, u need to choose just 1. If u left your Master slot free and got 2 free slots, u can get Damage Absorb plus Sixth Sense for safer PvE.

Completer: Get Shooting Star to 9 or 12 depending on your combo. Get Mass Heal to 20

Transcender: Get Art of Sniping to 20. Upgrade Skill: The last u didnt pick, I will go for Sixth Sense. U can also leave the slot free so u can buy Change Force skill to start skilling up sword with magic skills. Up to u.

By this time u should have these buffs and these magic attack skills:

Repulsive Armor lvl20
Eagle Eye lvl20 (only by lvl140+)
Mana Condense lvl20
Vital Force lvl20
Greater Heal lvl20
Mass Heal lvl20
Art of Healing lvl20
Art of Sniping lvl20
Thrusting Arrow lvl20
Resist Intention lvlX (only by lvl140+ and every level only adds duration is not worth having it at 20)
Vital Bless lvl9 (only by lvl140+)
Precision lvl20 (if u dont combo and u just spam skills)
Sharpness lvl20 (if u wanna play more support)
Lower Defense lvl20
Blind lvl20 (if u wanna help with bosses)

Critical Shot lvl20
Stone Cannon lvl18-20
Shadow Shot lvl20
Gravity Distortion lvl9
Shooting Star lvl9
Lightning Cannon lvl20 (if u do the stunlock combo)
Fire/Terra Lance lvl18-20 (if u use them)
Poison Arrow lvl18-20 (if u do the stunlock combo)

Upgrade Skills: Since u can only have 6, u have to pick from different upgrades. PvP wise, u want more defense and damage. PvE wise, u want more defense rate and defense.

PvE upgrades:
Vitality Mastery
Force Control or Defensive Sense (more dmg vs more defense)
Force Ruling
Damage Absorb
Reflex
Sixth Sense

PvP upgrades:
Vitality Mastery
Force Control
Force Ruling
Defensive Sense
Damage Absorb
Sixth Sense

Combos:
PvE Combo: Gravity Distortion(9) + Lightning Cannon(20) + Poison Arrow(20) + Shadow Shot(20) + Stone Cannon(20) (99% stunlock combo but breaks if G.Master has no room to cast)
PvE Combo2: Gravity Distortion(9) + Shooting Star (9 or 12) + Critical Shot (20) + Shadow Shot(20) + Lightining Cannon(20) (Stuns and doesnt break when G.Master has no room, but u get hit once)
PvP Combo: Grativy Distortion(9) + Critical Shot(20) + Shadow Shot(20) + Poison Arrow(20)

Basically I believe FA's should rely on their speed to pwn but the "pro" guides u will find everywhere will tell u to use slow ass skills to combo. Thats stupid since we are the only class who has 1.3 seconds casting time skills and instead we use 2+ seconds skills? Even if they do less damage, the more skills u use in a combo, the more chances u got to crit and do more damage in time.

Anyway, u can go with the "well known" FA combos or u can try by yourself and see which one fits more your style. For example, I dont use G.Master skill in PvP combos cause its too slow and by the time it ends, u could easily cast 2 lances. I also believe Critical Shot is the best FA skill even if its an apprentice skill.

Just keep in mind, that the lower the skill is in rank (apprentice, expert, etc.) the more it will be affected by high defense. For example Critical Shot does amazing damage, but u will find out that it does 10 damage to some high defense targets. For example Lake in Dusk final boss will receive no damage from critical shot and lances, while Cannons and other higher rank skills will hit for a lot more.

There's a breaking point were the defense makes skill damage ridiculously LOW. If that happens in PvP or PvE, switch to higher ranked skills. U can pass that breaking point by boosting your Magic or by being higher in level aswell.