I'm a bit sad that PA thinks they have accomplished anything with these Archer changes. At first it was like "well at least we are strong in PVE," but now after 2 rounds of big nerfs we are nearing where we started, and somehow, Earth Shatter and Sunfall do less damage now than before the buffs.

Our self buffs did not get any simpler. Our weaknesses did not get any better. Our strengths were nerfed everywhere. Our movement was randomly restricted. Our defenses are still incredibly weak. Our Super Armor/Forward Guard gaps were not fixed. We lost more cc's than we gained. 

Below I have made suggestions to get us into a better baseline that can be built upon. 

Archer Suggestions

General

1. Revert camera rotation changes.

2. Make every skill without an overlap work from crossbow/greatbow. (Piercing Light, Shadebound Beam, etc)

Crossbow Skills

1. We don't need Storm of Light, remove it. No one wants to press this every 3 minutes for a terrible skill. It also bricks the Spear of Sylvia Q keybind. 

2. Remove Earth Kick and it's Flows. No one uses these, ever. 

3. Give back CC on Verdure Clout (float) and Earth Shatter (knockback).

4. Remove the +12 Ranged AP from Steady Breath. Buff damage to compensate or add it passively (to Wind of the Spirit). Maintaining this buff is annoying and prefiring a lateral movement skill before every pack of mobs is even more annoying.

5. Buff the damage and animation speed of our Skill Enhancements, these are still completely useless.

Awakening Skills

1. Combine Full Bloom and Grand Bloom into one ability. By default it should do the increased melee damage, if the melee attack hits nothing; the arrows do increased damage.

2. Make Luthraghon's Call Foward Guard during skill, change the Core skill to Super Armor on Marked Bloom.

3. Reduce the cooldown of Flow: Light's trail to at least 6 seconds to line up with a majority of skills it flows from. 

Input Changes

1. Earth Shatter to E.

2. Exhale to S + C. 

3. Remove Left/Right/Down C-Swaps. It interferes with the new bind for Steady Breath. (Still bugged after changes to need Exhale unlocked)

4. Change Righteous Smite to activate while Light's Trail is on cooldown. Without the "available while on cooldown" on Light's Trail, you can only use from Quick Slot (slow version) on demand.

5. Change Spear of Sylvia to just Q, clears the ovlerap with Double Tap. 

Keybinds after proposed changes. I know I posted this before, but this really would simplify swaps and make the class much smoother. This time with very little drastic changes.

This is a very good option.

Nothing but damage nerfs in the next patch. RIP.

+1 to this new weird camera lock thing they're just randomly throwing around on classes. It makes no sense PA. We as humans understand how to manually move our camera ourselves. Stop changing it and ruining the flow of combat.

New Glissade makes no sense at all. Wonky REALLY large but inconsistent hitbox. Just give back the old Glissade imo.

i'm scared for other classes changes after what they did to archer/ranger and i don't even play them.

If you are referring to yesterday's patch, they partly nerfed the PVE damage buff from week before.

Archer: "stop touching me!" 

Archer is the third class I made, way back in 2020.  Loved his versitility then and his mix of melee and ranged attacks.  Then they ruined him a couple years ago.  Gaping Darkness needs to be RMB again, when using the crossbow.  I haven't used it since they made this abominable change.  Ruined my style completely.  Plus they ruined Spear of Sylvia.  It should be the ground slam CC skill it used to be.  Archer is now my AFK fisher, it was such a bad change.  I'd like to have incentive to use him again.

Please PA do something. These changes were 1 step forward 2 steps back. Don't leave it like this. 

Weird class changes lately