Hello,

Archer sucks. Kill stealing in large scale shouldn't be a classes entire identity. I love AoS, it's basically all I play, so I should be stoked for ranked, right? No. Because I know the second I load in, I'll hear a deep sigh and some random guy asking why I brought an archer into ranked AoS. Getting told I'm giving the enemy a handicap doesn't feel great. The best archer players in the world are only hitting 1700-1800 elo during ranked. Majority can't even achieve Red rank. Class after class releases where they instantly have more AoS relevance after two weeks of someone playing it.

I like this class and I like this mode. I have achieved 700gs off just playing AoS. That's not crazy gear by any means, but it's a fair bit of time invested considering how crappy current AoS rewards are. I want to be rewarded for my time by feeling like I can make an impact in pvp. I do not want to be a hinderance to my team. Listen, I want to suggest specific things, but I know the moment anyone reads them, they'll latch onto the one they dislike most and disregard the post, so I will try to keep it reasonable:

1) Increase the distance our skills push us. This was increased awhile back and needs to be done again with the speed creep in the game. Mtn breeze, zephyr leap, gaping darkness, meteor dive, etc...

2) Increase our attack speed. This also got a little buff, but it needs to be higher and more things need to be able to be canceled, getting stuck in animations on a class that gets ran at so hard is frustrating.

3) Reduce the CD on our tac strike iframe. It's too long for a iframe that lasts such a short time. Maybe increase the iframe itself and keep the CD at what it is. With the games desync and whatnot it isn't really designed for skills like this that take absolutely perfect timing. We don't have many iframes to avoid grabs in the first place, so it feels really bad getting knocked out of the few iframes we do have on such a regular basis.

4) Patch the gaps on our skills wind-up. I feel like adding more attack speed would help this, but I frequently get knocked out of SA/FG skills on start up and iframes as well. Gaping darkness in particular seems especially bad. The wind-up where it's possible to get knocked out, paired with the extremely short duration of the fg makes the protection feel useless. If possible, just make the skill SA and extend the duration to last the entire stab motion.

5) Remove bsr zephyr. Just make that the standard version. Another iframe, plus repositioning tool would help our smallscale greatly. Also, it looks super cool, but using 25% bsr just to have a decent iframe is too much. Mtn breeze and bsr zephyr are currently our only good iframes. Although, I get knocked out of the mtn breeze wind-up fairly often. Still, beats steady breath, or tac strike.

6) Give earth shatter an FG. This would help our small scale a lot.

7) Remove core uproot. Make the sa part of the regular skill. We do not have very many sa movement options outside of meteor dive and piercing cry to gain distance. This would help us skirmish a bit more and also do the extended version and utilize other options such as the radiant bound to alter combos, or fg options on the other core skills.

8) Rework our skill enhancements and abyssal. Earths judgement is the only one that feels mildly useful, but it feels so janky to use, maybe make it so it can be used to cancel skills, because otherwise it doesn't combo very smoothly with much and just gets negelected. Skill enhancements and abyssal skills feel so cool and impactful on other classes, but they are complete throwaways on archer. 

9) Give lights trail sa or fg. This gap feels dated in design. A new class would never have such a blatent gap in a flow. Maybe make that the replacement core if uproot core is removed and just made to perform like the core version.

10) Shadebound beam. This skills damage was gutted, which I do not personally mind, but it's slow start up is annoying and the movement speed is a little lackluster. This is a great scouting tool in small scale, so you can't get full rushed at the start of a fight. Let's you see what spec of classes you'll be fighting, but entry into this skill is so slow, some classes can run out of spawn and within radar range to see your dot disappear and then because you are so slow, come hit an aoe skill and knock you out of the unprotected skill. Just speed up entry into the skill and make it move a little faster.

I'll stop there. I don't want to break the class fantasy/identity and I don't want to create another problem class. We have enough of those. These changes might still not let us hit 2k elo in aos, but it could help it feel a little more playable in small scale and maybe make it so people don't actively complain when they see an archer on their team. This class is designed to be smooth, but it has some jank that needs ironing out. I think these changes would help it feel like a more complete class. Thanks for reading.

- Kelkoh

I like what you wrote there, totally correct. I would also add Iframe instead of DownSmash from F > (Low Sweep) it's really good for canceling animation and links a lot of skills.  Anyway, we no longer have damage in classes with high DR. We can't go for high DR either because we won't have any damage anyway. We don't have infinite protection or multiple iframe skills like Striker and Dosa Succ ( Meta Class).

I-frame on glide because I'm totally not peeved that gunslinger got it when we asked for it >_> (sssshhhhh)

One other thing, I feel like the collision and height on certain skills is quite janky. Zephyr leap or meteor dive for example is great for disengage but easily screwed up by tiny obstacles like a random rock or the stairs in Jade forest in the lower spawn point but other times it sends you falling like with the bridges in Ruins of Tzol. It doesn't have to clear mountains like rangers but either increase the height of the skill or remove collision on those skills for terrain obstacles so we have at least some consistency and not random falls or blocks when least expected.