How do I beat archers?

Ok I'm a little ashamed to admit that my mage char dies to archers almost 99% of the time, even when I get the first hit.

Use sutra if you think you can kill the archer in 4-5 hits. Be sure to use undine if you're 79+ and have the skill or just use the genie skill extreme poison.

If I attack them they will just drop, and I have no real way to prevent it.

Why are you attacking archers long range in the air?

Then they fly back up, stun me, and usually by then I'll be dead 1-2 seconds after the stun wears off.

Why don't you fly away? Use distance shrink and if you're still alive after the stun, immediately use FoW.

It really seems as if archers do more damage than mages, even though we have to deal with less defense and lower hp.

At low levels with arcane gear archers will always rip you like paper. Make sure you have stone barrier up to double your pdef. When dealing with archers, you want to get very close to them, which is basically going past their minimum range. Once you're close to them, archers do half damage to you. Use distance shrink and holy path to get inside.

Our force of will vs archer's stun? It takes us 2 seconds to cast, does no damage, and they can still move around and drop while under the seal.

Level up your force of will. If you're 79+, sleep also helps.

Basically until 80+ (preferably 90+), wizards aren't that great for pking archers unless you have some really nice sharded and refined gear. Hope the info helped.

The higher you get the easier it will become. At 9x... I can one shot most archers and 2 shot the really good ones (without crit). When you find an archer, you can distance shrink up, and depending on their gear and hp etc... FoW -> undine -> extreme poison (maybe add in a WotP or gush if their hp is really high) -> sleep -> BIDS. Almost always does the trick. The BIDS generally hits somewhere between 5k and 7k with poison and undine. Obviously this won't work on one that is prepared (uses absolute domain or wind shield while BIDS is coming down, or pk pots), kinda just depends on who you are fighting. Usually after the first couple times they figure it out and find some way to stop it... and you'd need to come up with something else (I'd probably drop or holy path or blink away just so I have at least enough time for FoW to cooldown). Sutra works wonders after a FoW (or before) or a sutra -> FoW -> ult works nice... you have alot of options :P Anyway, the point is, before 8x... archers would **** me, and 8x it was pretty equal, and at 9x... I do really well against archers.

Bellarius - Lost City wrote: »

For BIDS...it takes 4 seconds to channel, 1.8 seconds to cast...sleep lasts 4 seconds...so wouldn't that mean the archer has ~1 second or so to just drop and avoid half the damage?

Anyway so the gist of all this is that I shouldn't fight archers in the air? Mages just don't do well in air battles i suppose

thats a good point, although for some reason it doesn't work out like that. Probably because of lag or whatever, I've always hit people with dragon... never once have they gotten a hit off on me (or even moved for that matter) or dropped etc. Dunno exactly why that is, but thats been my experience.

RainieYang - Harshlands wrote: »

It takes about half a second due to delay in order to start dropping and even then the BID should still be in range since it's in the middle of its casting animation. Also, 1 second isn't enough for an archer to launch a stun since their skills also have channeling and casting time.

if they started dropping u'd do half dmg

Yeah I have a difficult time with archers myself. Their crit rates are insane high and practically every hit or every other hit will crit. Stack that on top of the fact that they do lots of damage with regular Pew Pew attacks and you're looking at some trouble.

Wings of Grace is their skill that prevents them from the movement debuffs (ie sleep, stun) and their skill Winged Shell is the damage absorption skill. Furthermore, Winged Blessing gives them an added 10 - 14 meter distance on their ranged attacks (depending on if they're 89+ and if they've gone sage or demon).

Just curious as to more ideas pertaining to how to **** this class xP.

Like mazzle stated using a quick skill to bust the shield is nice. One quick skill like gush aught to do it. Don't try to sleep them right away because Wings of Grace will resist it. They usually run away from you when you silence them because they want to get out of your range while keeping you in theirs.

Wings of grace has a long casting time animation... honestly if an archer uses it just blink out of range and run around till it's gone. Let them waste that spark, in my opinion there's no point in trying to kill them when they do full damage and you do 70%.


And personally, I'd say always fight on the ground when fighting archers, makes it much easier to get in their face, which is where you want to be if not out of their range. You're going to be using almost every skill you have, so... can't really tell you how.

as a wizard-
- under lvl 77 you're going to be **** on 1v1.
- under lvl 90 is difficult unless u have some +4 gear all 4 sockets with pdef/HP and some nice pdef necklace and pdef belt. A pdef + HP + refine hat and a + HP cape + refine + HP shards on soket... Basically if youre geared out well, you can stand an archer your lvl as an arcane, no problem. With above stuff I had 6k pdef in the 80s (full buffed),5k pdef with cleric buffs, never had issues with archers. I wasnt' **** them, but I wasn't **** by them. I was killed more often by BMs stun-locking me than archers.
- after 90 when u get the TT90 set refined and sharded and TT90 (or FC) weapon to a +5 +6 archers same lvl should not be a problem at all ( well, unless he has a +10 crossbow or somethin', then his hits will really hurt, but we're trying to compare equally refined chars no nonCS vs CS). Usually archers my lvl are down with SR(charm tick)-seal-undine or posion-gush-pyro.

Cholla - Harshlands wrote: »

Ok, I really have to ask: was there anything in that post worth reading?

If we ignore how silly duels are, in a wizard/archer duel, I would think you want to stand next to the archer so they get half damage with their normal attacks and some of their skills. Alternatively, you can run out of your opponent's range and end your duel in a draw, but if you do that you will not be using any additional attacks.

Or, maybe my dueling experience is woefully out-of-date and you can now get out of range of an archer's attacks (assuming level 10-ish winged blessing) without ending your duel? If so, then ... yes, I would have been spouting nonsense. But I asked if anyone had any experience with this issue and so far no one has suggested that they have had experiences which differ from mine.

Its fine that you're naive so il explain what you couldnt understand, there isnt anything in my post that said to get out of the archers range in the beginning of the duel, i simply said get range so after you seal him and take his shell off you can ds far enough to avoid his stun,getting out of oponents range when duel starts does not end it the duel, he will then chase you so you just need to avoid him until his buff (wing of grace) is off, then simply distance shrink right towards him ( since he's chasing you would most likely end up within the dmg reduction range ) after which you sleep/ mountain seize and finish him off. do i need to explain it in more details for you? and duels take a bit more strategy than normal pk to be successfull in it, thats why a lot of mages fail at it, you simply have to think.

ps i have done this several times against archers and it worked that's the only reason why i posted it.

Cholla - Harshlands wrote: »

Ok. That is interesting, to me -- that getting out of an archer's range does not end the duel.

(I wonder when that change went in?)

you need to be a certain distance from the person your dueling for it to end and there is enough range to run around out of the archers range without ending the duel in draw, especially if he's chasing you so go test it yourself.

Cholla - Harshlands wrote: »

i will take your word that duels now work like this.

however, when I fight archers, i usually try and get close to them. I have only died to archers when I was not close to them. (They have some decent close range skills, but so do I.)

or, if I do not want to fight them, i leave.

And, Hamsta, you have several ways of getting away from archers that fly faster than you: distance shrink, sutra town portal, and non-combat exit (but i think you should reserve this one for twits that massively outlevel you).

(O.o) yar I do all those and then some.
xD
if you be over a body of water you can even drop into it and swim down.
(^.^) we're faster then everyone (except barbs I guess) under water.
xD I wuv distance shrink.

(>.<) just need to get me underwater aerosword working right.

http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/large/e0e9a23b8bd631901942a621f042ec3a431d9d53.jpg