Guide The Archer Main's Bible

Hello! As an archer main, it makes me so sad whenever I see someone pick up archer, play it for 15 levels, and then never touch it again because they didn't like it. It can be such a fun class if you just get used to the playstyle. To that end, this guide will tell you everything you need to know to play archer effectively. I hope this inspires some people to branch out and give it a try!

Contents

I. Playstyle
II. Spells

A. Arrow Storm (L-R-L)

i. Hawkeye​

B. Escape (L-L-L)
C. Bomb Arrow (L-R-R)
D. Arrow Shield (L-L-R)​

III. Melee & Hybrid
IV. Defense vs. Agility
V. Different Enemies

A. Melee
B. Ranged
C. Tips for The Eye​

VI. Arrow Storm Comboing
VII. TL;DR​

I. Playstyle
The single most important thing to remember when playing archer: Archer is a glass cannon. Tank archer exists, but you still can't afford to play it the same way you would warrior or assassin. The people I see having the most trouble with this class are the ones that are used to charging into the fray and expecting to face-tank everything. You can't do that with archer.

Playing archer is all about making good use of 2 things: your superior range and your good mobility. At a moment's notice, you can go from lobbing bomb arrows from a safe distance to being up in a boss' face and melting them with arrow storm. Speed III lets you circle strafe ranged enemies and kite melee enemies with ease (more on that in section V).

Essentially, archer's solid attacking spells bring out its high base damage, while its high range, mobility, and arrow shield counter its low base defense. This is why a lot of people considered archer the best class in the game pre-shaman.

II. Spells
Archer has an extremely diverse toolkit. While shaman's power may be concentrated almost entirely in aura, every spell archer has plays an important role.

A. Arrow Storm (L-R-L)
Arrow storm has carved out its place in the meta as the single most damaging spell in the game. It fires 3 streams of arrows in different directions, dealing massive damage at close range or low damage at a distance.

Each arrow can only hit 1 target, so arrow storm is mostly used against bosses. There are a lot of strange things that can count as this 1 target and block it though, so just be aware of that (most commonly players, totems, pets, and ice snake). It provides a bit of risk-reward by allowing you to sacrifice your range—often the main thing keeping you alive—for huge amounts of damage.

There's a sweet spot for landing the spell, and it'll just take a little messing around to find it. If you're too far away, it'll barely deal any damage, but if you're too close it'll go right through your enemy.

Arrow storm also deals a decent amount of knockback. This has its uses, but usually it's just annoying.—when you hit an enemy with the first few arrows they can be knocked out of range of the rest. There are a few ways to deal with this:

• If your enemy takes little to no knockback, just cast arrow storm as usual
• If your enemy takes average to high knockback, walk or run towards them after you cast the spell
  • You can also pin them against a wall to spam to your heart's content, just beware of making them phase inside the wall
• If your enemy takes reverse knockback, walk backwards after casting the spell
• A fun option for all of these is arrow storm comboing, I'll go over that in section VI

Another thing worth noting about arrow storm is that when you look straight up or straight down, the 3 streams of arrows fire as 1 stream. This can have some niche uses when you're camping in a high place or fighting enemies like a Golden Avia (although a bomb arrow can usually one-shot them anyway).

i. Hawkeye
If you aren't familiar with it, the Hawkeye major ID changes arrow storm from firing 60 arrows in 3 directions to firing 5 arrows in a single direction. What this effectively does is make arrow storm useable at long range, eliminating the risk of needing to get close to your enemy. To compound this, pre-1.20 Hawkeye also doubles the range of each arrow. The change from 60 arrows to 5 arrows also means the spell finishes a lot faster, becoming more spammable.



Sounds like an auto-pick for pretty much any archer, right? At one point it was, but it's been getting relentlessly nerfed since its release. The latest of these in 1.20 will take away a third of its damage and half of its range, making it a tougher decision. It'll still be safer to use than default arrow storm, but it raises the question: is it worth sacrificing some of the sheer damage of arrow storm for a niche that's already filled rather effectively by bomb arrow?

It's your decision, but as someone who's used pre-nerf Nighthawk quite a bit there's still nothing more satisfying than landing a clean, default arrow storm.
​

B. Escape (L-L-L)
As far as movement spells go, escape is a little strange. All other movement spells except for haul move you in the direction you're facing, but escape rockets you backwards. This highlights its main purpose in combat: getting out of a risky situation. If you find yourself close to death, your best option is often using escape to get as far as possible from the danger and healing up. Still, traveling with escape is pretty fast, and you can outrun most horses by spamming it.

If you press shift while falling during escape, you'll hit the ground much, much faster and temporarily blind any mobs nearby (provided you have escape grade III). Personally I don't find much use for this in combat, as the blindness only lasts 1 second, but the faster falling is good in most situations.

An interesting quirk with escape is that if you take any knockback while in the air, your vertical momentum will be reset. This means it's very difficult to use escape while in a horde of mobs or being bombarded with projectiles. If you find yourself wanting to use escape in a situation like that, either cast arrow shield first or just run instead.

Some tips for traveling with escape:

• If you're spamming escape to travel horizontally, you can cast bomb arrow or arrow storm while you're in the air to reset your escape cost without wasting time.
• Escape is more consistent if you cast it at the peak of a jump.
• If you cast it with a block over your head, you'll gain some of the horizontal momentum without the vertical momentum, letting you spam it a lot faster. Especially noticeable in forests.
• If you switch off of your bow near the peak of your escape you'll keep your horizontal momentum and go further. You'll take fall damage when you land though, so I don't use this unless I'm over water.
• When traveling up steep slopes, try jumping forwards (away from the slope) right before you cast escape.
• Using escape while looking up works the same as while looking down.
• Supposedly it's possible to get a double escape and go twice as high with the right combination of click speed and lag. In the 600+ hours I have on archer I don't think I've ever done this.

C. Bomb Arrow (L-R-R)
Bomb arrow is arguably one of the best spells in the game. High damage, good AOE, low travel time, longest range of any spell. And it bounces, because why the fuck not. Bomb arrow should be your go-to spell when fighting groups of enemies, and your main form of offense when you don't think you can survive getting up close.

Bomb arrow also deals pretty high knockback, which doesn't hurt it as much as arrow storm. I've also noticed that enemies seem to take more knockback when you hit them with the arrow directly, rather than just with the AOE. Use that how you will.

Given bomb arrow's bounce, you may be wondering if it's possible to hit an enemy multiple times by ricocheting the arrow off the ground at their feet. If this worked, it would double or even triple your bomb arrow's damage, buuuut it doesn't. I'm not entirely sure what goes on behind the scenes here, as enemies can still take damage from other sources in rapid succession, but it's balanced so I won't complain.

D. Arrow Shield (L-L-R)
Arrow shield is an exceedingly useful spell in the hands of archer. As long as arrow shield is up, you are effectively immune to melee mobs without spells. Another useful feature of arrow shield is that while it's up, arrow storm and bomb arrow will be cast from the edge of the shield, not from you. The little bit of extra range on arrow storm can be very useful.

Arrow shield has 3 charges, and 1 is expended every time an enemy touches the shield. However, no matter how many charges you have left, the shield will disappear if you take damage. The things that count as "damage" are a little weird, though.

Things that do dispel arrow shield:

• Enemy projectiles
• Archer projectiles (your own or otherwise)
  • Melee arrows
  • Bomb arrows
  • Arrow storm arrows
  • Arrow rain from arrow shield itself
• Enemy Melee
• Dodged attacks (agi)
• Falling
  • Even if you don't actually take damage, if it would damage you in vanilla Minecraft it dispels arrow shield

Things that don't dispel arrow shield:

• Negative health regen
• Negative life steal
• PVP
  • Non-archer melee
  • Non-archer spells (haven't tested all of them)
  • Poison

​

III. Melee & Hybrid
There are a few things that make archer's melee attack fundamentally different (and arguably worse) than any other class' melee, but the main thing is its AOE. This is a bit difficult for me to put into words, but I'll do my best.

When you shoot an arrow, if it passes in the general vicinity of a mob it'll register as a hit on that mob and immediately disappear, meaning it can't hit any other enemies. However, it will then produce a small AOE hitbox centered on the mob you just hit (NOT where your arrow actually disappeared). Like I said though, it's a small hitbox—the enemies have to be practically stacked on top of each other to be hit by it.

Compare this to mage's melee, which hits every single enemy along its several-block length. To add onto this issue, archer will likely be firing off melee attacks from a distance, meaning you have a smaller window to actually hit your enemy. This isn't too bad while you're standing still, but bring strafing and multiple enemies into the mix and it becomes downright painful. This is why I've always avoided melee archer at all costs, but who knows! Maybe you have some skills I never did.

On the other hand, hybrid isn't so bad. This is for one reason: if you cast bomb arrow by left clicking once and then holding down right click, you'll automatically perform a melee attack right after bomb arrow casts. This makes archer's spell cycles easier than any other class' to incorporate melee into. You can also use this on pure spell builds to charge powder specials, as long as you don't have negative mana- or life-steal.

IV. Defense vs. Agility
Once upon a time, defense was factored in additively. Fire archer was a joke, while air archer reigned supreme. Nowadays the playing field is a little more level, but there are still a few differences between the 2.

Remember how I mentioned that it's pretty much impossible to use escape in a horde of enemies? With some luck, high agility lets you ignore that. High agility will NOT let you ignore the fact that getting hit dispels arrow shield, that happens even if agility procs.

On the other hand, the case for defense revolves around archer's low base defense. Agility is inconsistent, and if it fails to negate incoming damage then archer is more prone to being one-shot than other classes. At the very least, it's always possible to get bad luck with agility and suddenly find yourself missing 2 soul points. Defense, however, is consistent. You won't get 80% of the way through a fight only to be 2-shot by bad RNG.

Of course, they're both good and it's up to you to decide which to focus on. You could even go all in and do both! Just a disclaimer though: the more points you put into one of them, the more effect it has on your EHP. If you have 100 defense, 100 agility, and 60 spare skill points, make sure you max one of them out at 150 before you put points into the other one.

V. Different Enemies

A. Melee
Basic melee enemies are absurdly easy for archer to deal with. It's when you start adding in minions and spells like Cybel's charge that it becomes more difficult. The things that hold true for most melee foes:

• Keep arrow shield up whenever possible.
• Kite them. You have range and they don't, take advantage of that.
• Arrow storm comboing can completely neutralize them. (I'm just gonna keep building up section VI until we get there and it's thoroughly underwhelming)
• If you pin them against a wall with arrow storm, the extra range that arrow shield gives you can be enough to keep you out of danger
• The knockback from bomb arrow is usually enough to keep them from reaching you without spells.

B. Ranged
Ranged enemies are a more serious threat. When archer can't rely on its range to stay out of danger, it has to turn to its mobility. In general, fighting ranged enemies on archer is the same as on any other class:

• Circle strafing is often enough to avoid the majority of projectiles. Speed III lets you strafe more efficiently.
• If they don't use burst attacks or arrow storm themselves, you have nothing to lose by going up close and using arrow storm.
• Enemies like Corkus Accipientis 2 that spam teleport or charge are extremely annoying for other classes to fight. However, bomb arrow has enough range and speed to make short work of them.
• Arrow storm comboing (section VI oh boy) is still an option, but is slightly more difficult as you will need to circle strafe in order to do it safely.

C. Tips for The Eye
This section exists mostly because I've done a good few EO carries on my archer so I've picked up some tricks. I'll try to keep this section short and sweet, if you want more general tips for the Eye I recommend checking out one of the many wonderful guides other people have made.

• Killing the wretches should be no problem with arrow storm. If you have trouble killing them, it's probably time for a new build.
• If you have a good sense of timing, you can dodge the lasers by escaping straight up. This lets you avoid them without wasting time running away, waiting for them to activate, then running back.
• When the arteries spawn, it's a good idea to focus them instead of the eye. Unless your build is extremely tanky, the extra damage can be deadly.
• If you're getting comboed by a wave spell, escape straight upwards to dodge it. Requires a little bit of timing or just good luck.
• For the final phase, don't even bother trying to get close to use arrow storm. Wave and teleport spam won't make it easy on you. This phase has a small enough health pool that bomb arrow is enough instead.

​

VI. Arrow Storm Comboing
Whew, we've made it. The last section of the guide. In this section I'll go over a slightly more advanced technique for spell comboing with archer. It allows you to suspend an enemy in midair, which can completely neutralize melee foes and makes it a lot less annoying to deal with enemies that take lots of knockback. Plus it's just really, really satisfying.

The basic idea:

1. Knock the enemy into the air
2. Hit them with an arrow storm midair
3. Keep cycling arrow storms and bombs until they die or you mess up

Here's a visual of what I mean:



EDIT: having trouble getting the gifs to work, if anyone has any advice I'd love to hear it
The hardest part of this is definitely landing that initial arrow storm. Knockback can change a lot depending on your situation, so you have to react fast enough to hit the arrow storm while they're still in the air. The easiest way of getting them in the air in the first place is using arrow shield, but you can also use bomb arrow or someone else's multihit/uppercut.




How does this work? Well, I'd like to draw your attention back to the fact that escape will fail if you get hit during the launch. Essentially, [/SIZE]taking knockback while in the air resets all of your momentum. This applies to enemies too. Arrow storm deals knockback 60 times in a very short span of time, basically making it impossible for anything being hit by it to fall.

If you're planning on using this against ranged enemies I suggest practicing how to circle strafe while doing it. You'll notice in the image I was doing this on the tourotos outside Cinfras. Arrow storm does a lot of damage and the tourotos are convenient because they're nearly impossible to kill (they're also good practice for smaller targets). Have fun making some cows fly!

VII. TL;DR

• Archer is a glass cannon
• Use your range
• Use your speed
• Arrow storm = very high damage, high risk
• Bomb arrow = medium damage, low risk
• Archer melee is ew
• Use arrow shield against melee enemies
• Circle strafe against ranged enemies

Oh man, that ended up way longer than I expected. If you actually read through this entire thing, I salute you. I hope this helped some people and happy archer-ing!

Thank you to @Flareix for helping me with some arrow shield testing!

 

Overall a fairly nice guide, though I think a few things need to be mentioned;

"Archer is a glass cannon" isn't really that true, at least not in the late game once you have arrow shield maxed. Obviously it depends on your build, but if you have the mana to always have a shield on you basically can't take damage since strafing to dodge ranged enemies should be trivial, even in challenges like LI. If you're playing archer and are having a hard time dodging ranged attacks odds are you're too close to the target.

Next, arrowstorm combing is a thing, but I think generally the main play for spell archers is to shoot off a storm followed by a couple bombs. Getting the timing down in order to balance out mana usage can be a bit tough at first but it's super important to be able to do since a lot of the best (at least best non mythic) archer builds (mainly variants of OLily) basically require you to do that to actually output good damage.

I think you mentioned this a little when talking about escape, but I think you should detail the horizontal escape a little more, it's a super handy trick for traveling fast and you don't always need a block, you can also do it by casting escape multiple times but you would need to ask somebody else about that cause I'm not totally sure how it works, I just know you can sometimes get a lot more horizontal momentum then you should.

If you're going to talk about gear (nighthawk), I think you should also mention that morph archer is really really good, it can solo everything in the game fairly easily while giving you a nice balance of MR, health/defence and damage. If you're just entering the endgame as an archer and want a big power boost at level 100 morph is for sure the way to go. Archer probably also has some the most interesting weapon choices, there are some really great mythics and of course Olily is one of the best weapons in the game, so it might be worth talking about a few of those too, especially Olily since not too many new players know about it.

To go along with talking about gear, archers also have a huge amount of range in builds since they can go extremely tanky as -WS doesn't really apply to them (up to a point) which opens the doors for a whole lot more builds which I wouldn't really recommend as any other class. I don't really know any of these builds, but I do know Grandmother can be busted in the right build and I imagine pairing it with tanky armor with high enough regen could be really strong.

Finally, for the eye standing next to it is good, but you're also fine to stand in the arena, in fact it's probably one of the only classes which benefits from being able to use the huge arena since you can hit it from literally anywhere and can land a full arrowstorm from just shy of the halfway line without nighthawk. I've seen archers hug the eye, but I honestly find it easier to use the space given to move around since unless you have some crazy DPS build you're probably going to need to go through quite a few cycles of the eye laser and moving can be a bit of a pain. That's just me though.

Again, a lot of good content here, I don't mean to be negative at all, just thought I would share some of my thoughts. I'm sure quite a lot of players will find this helpful <3

 

Jesus Christ please use spoilers
Also a quick tip: Escape is always your best friend in a dire situation. If you're low on Hp, cast a quick escape to get onto a ledge or away from your enemy and book it. That spell has saved my ass several times.

 

I get your point, but notice what I said right after "Archer is a glass cannon": you can't afford to play it the same way as you would other classes. Like you said, you can avoid damage by using arrow shield and circle strafing, but your playstyle always needs to take into account your 60% base defense. Fundamentally archer is still a glass cannon, it's just that if you play it right it doesn't have to feel like it.

Not sure I know what you're talking about, if you have any more details I'd love to hear them.

The only reason I mentioned Hawkeye was because it completely changes one of archer's spells and I felt like I should mention it while I was on the topic of arrow storm. I was kind of hesitant to add a gear section because I feel like that's straying away from being an archer guide and towards being a build guide. If I decide to add one I'll definitely include Orange Lily and Morph though, thanks!

I guess it's just a difference in personal preference, but your point is taken. I'll get rid of that bit.

escaping straight up go brrr

Don't worry about it, constructive criticism is good. Thanks for the feedback!

no :)

You're right, I should put a little more emphasis on using it to get out of trouble. It is called escape, after all.

 

Totally fair on your points, I guess I only play mage and archer for the most part so I play them basically the same, but if you're playing anything else I guess you're right that it is a different playstyle since you're only a tank if you actively work on keeping your defenses up.

As for the gear, I completely understand where you're coming from, though I still think it's really helpful to talk about at least Olily since it's quite possibly the best pairing with it and is the best way to show how different nighthawk really is.

As for the movement, I just logged in to play around with it a bit and I'm not totally sure how to do it consistently buy when chaining escapes you can sometimes get a really shallow arc which shoots you insanely far. I've never gotten it to happen when I cast it once, but after casting esacpe and shifting down really quick I've gotten it work. It's almost as if you're hitting a block but it can happen in open fields, might have something to do with casting it in the air, sorry I can't record video of it, but I'm sure if you spam escape while looking straight and walking backwards you'll eventually get it.

Going along with that, here's a guide you might want to co-opt to add a little more detail to the escape section; https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/movement-spells-tips-tricks.245406/

I've installed recording software, working on rendering a video now.

 

Please do, idk how to use Orange Lily and it's my strongest weapon rn. The fact that arrow shield costs at least half your mana changes your play style a lot.

 

i do need to lvl up my archer, still at 45

 

tysm this is pog i know how to archer now i will main archer till the end of time

 

Leveling up is really important to being able to play archer since a lot of the most fun playstyles require really high level gear, though the leveling grind for archer to get there is fun so take your time. Good luck!

 

Morph anything is really really good

MorphGang

 

Here's the video;

It's short but shows that you can get a lot of horizontal speed without head bumping. I didn't record it, but I managed to get a couple of these to chain and traveled something like 60 blocks in a couple seconds across the road going from the forest to Detlas. It's really inconsistent but I managed to get it to work every couple tries.

 

Ooh, looks neat, thanks! When I have time I'll do some testing and then add it to the guide. I love how even after almost 1500 hours in this game I'm still learning new things like this, goes to show how much depth the game has.

 

i just got my mage to 105 recently so ill prob either grind my archer or get to 106

 

im an archer main too so here's my dollar on this

wrong

i maintain sg's opinion. facetanking helps group enemies up for efficient ls so with enough defense it's very doable

importantly, pets block it too. also your own body blocks bomb arrow if you're moving quickly in the same direction (escape's sneak attack while shooting down).

pinning is bad practice bc it's far more likely to phase them into the wall instead

don't attempt this without grade III, it's 99% going to get you killed

it's free damage even if negligible. moving faster also helps maintain evasiveness since ranged mobs can land hits against you while you're slow-falling.

being immune to melee mobs without spells is literally useless

you can cast storm at yourself, then spam shield for multiple volleys of arrow rain, useful against large groups of low-threat mobs

your escape can be reset by damage instances that are postponed due to lag. this means that the melee mob doesn't have to hit you midair to stop your escape.

it makes sense but it's also unrelated to archer

also works if the enemy themself uses charge

 

because the arrow rain at the end of arrow shield can proc a new arrow shield to proc arrow rain,
if you have low mana cost on arrow shield you can cast arrow shield fast after the last one ended to let the arrow rain spam in an open area.
works great when the terrain you're fighting on isn't flat and there are a lot of enemies all around you.

 

its not a bad thread but ngl im just triggered that you call it a bible

 

wtf you can hold spring, freedom, ignis and strati all with that build

 

not strati, the agi is illusory since it's from freedom

 

Wow, that's a really cool idea

 

Mythics be like

Yeah, and compare that to a warrior or an assassin with the same amount of defense. It's a whole lot safer to group up enemies by kiting them in circles until they're stacked on top of each other, most archer builds have way more to lose than they have to gain from facetanking.

Added, thanks.

Depends on where you are, but I'll add that.

This was mainly intended to be an end-game guide (notice how I was talking about bomb arrow's bounce and arrow storm firing 60 arrows) but I'll clarify that.

Yeah, free damage that takes you out of combat for a second and can prevent you from landing a clean bomb arrow or arrow storm. I don't think I've ever seen someone use escape as a part of their main spell cycle, because it's not meant to be an attacking spell. Also

??????????????????

Bomb arrow comes out faster, requires you to cast less spells, and is usually cheaper. It's a cool trick, but I don't see any reason to actually use it.

I felt like it was important to mention while I was talking about defense and agility. A lot of people assume that they have diminishing returns when the exact opposite is true. Sorry you had to waste your time reading a sentence not specifically about archer. (that came out more confrontational than I intended)