Tera Guide PvE Archer Best Rotation Build Skills/Glyphs

Tera Guide PvE Archer Best Rotation Build Skills/Glyphs.

The Archer is a lightly armored class which specializes in a bow with long ranged offensive damage-dealing capabilities.

While attacking from the distance, their bow allows them to shoot a devastating blow toward the enemy from where the enemy can’t reach them.

As they also have high speeds, they can dodge and move quickly across the battlefield whilst still maintaining distance to shoot.

When necessary, they can also lure enemies into fatal traps in order to change the outcome of the battle.

Tera PvE Archer – The Role of Archer

What does Archer do?

Archer is a ranged class with both consistent and burst dps. With recent changes to the class, it has become more than what is used to be, and is currently nearing towards the top of the dps food chain.

Survivability on Archer

This class falls into the Leather Armor category. This means that you’re able to take a couple hits fore death. However, archers have amazing survivability with skills like Backstep and Breakaway Bolt which will be covered later in this guide.

DPSing on an Archer

Archers have a unique playstyle. It is a class that relies on making the most optimal and efficient rotations with some things that I will be calling “Priority Skills”. These are a tier list of skills that you want to focus on using off cooldown.

Tera PvE Archer – Skills

Archers are capable of launching multiple long ranged attacks using their bow to create deadly shots. Archer doesn’t have fixed combos or clear rotation, but high damage skills should be prioritized and used always when off cooldown.

This is the auto attack. It does little to no damage, but it gives the user a great amount of MP on hit.

• Slowing Arrow (5% chance to decrease opponent’s Movement Speed by 50% for 3 seconds) – A very bad glyph, 5% chance to slow on a skill you never use.
• Sapping Arrow (5% chance to stun opponent) – Another bad glyph, 5% chance to stun on a skill you never use
• Piercing Arrow (10% chance to deal double damage) – Again a bad glyph, 10% chance to deal 2x damage on a skill you never use.

Arrow Volley is a lock on skill that deals a moderate amount of damage. This skill can lock up to 5 players and can potentially be a decent filler.

• Multiplicative Arrow Volley (Increases number of lock-on targets by 1) – This is ok if you’re clearing mobs and you want it to go by a little bit faster. If you’re ever using this when fighting a boss though you’re losing out on valuable glyph points.
• Influential Arrow Volley (Reduces MP cost of Incendiary Trap by 75 for a few seconds) – This is a terrible glyph, if you’re ever going to use incendiary trap after arrow volley you’re doing it completely wrong.
• Blazing Arrow Volley (Speeds casting of Penetrating Arrow by 40% for a few seconds) – This is good if you’re trying to do mob clearing and stuff like that.
• Blazing Arrow Volley (Speeds casting of Stunning Trap by 50% for a few seconds) – This is glyph is terrible, you should never be using stun trap anyways, especially after arrow volley.
• Persistent Arrow Volley (60% chance to eliminate cooldown) – This is an decent glyph if you’re leveling.

One of the best skills in your kit. Deals lots of damage, allows you to move while casting, and has a very very high crit chance.

• Slick Radiant Arrow (Eliminates slowed movement restrictions) – This is a crucial glyph, as it allows you to move easily to the back of the boss allowing you to keep dpsing from the back with your RA.
• Sanative Radiant Arrow (Decreases HP consumption by 40%) – Terrible glyph, don’t ever think of putting it on. Even when overcharging the damage taken from it is pitiful.
• Longshot Radiant Arrow (Increases range by 5 meters) – Terrible glyph, don’t ever think of putting it on. You should never be far from the boss anyways.
• Carving Radiant Arrow (Triples the chance to crit) – A great glyph. When you have the proper total crit this skill is has 100% crit rate.

Penetrating Arrow is radiant arrow’s slow twin that was never good enough.

• Empowered Penetrating Arrow (Increases skill damage by 25%) – More damage better dps. It’s not the greatest skill but nothing else to take with as much value as this.
• Slick Penetrating Arrow (Eliminates slowed movement restrictions) – We covered this in the section below RA.
• Longshot Penetrating Arrow (Increases range by 5 meters) –  This glyph is terrible glyph, don’t ever think of putting it on. Never be that far away from the boss.

The recent changes to Archer have caused Rain of Arrows to work differently. When casted, the first hit whether it is a front, side, or back crit will cause all other hits to be the same (no matter where the boss is facing). You have to be patient when casting it, if the boss is about to turn around cancel the skill by walking in any direction.

• Energetic Rain of Arrows (Decreases cooldown by 25%) – This glyph is a must have glyph, one of your top priority skills being up more is amazing.
• Hastened Rain of Arrows (Speeds casting by 40%) – This glyph is great since Rain of Arrows has a very slow startup speed. If this glyph isn’t on then Rain of Arrows will hinder your rotation speeds due to how slow it takes to cast.
• Empowered Rain of Arrows (Increases skill damage by 25%) – This glyph is an insane glyph, every tick dealing 25% more damage causes for so much more damage.

This is one of the 2 iframes in the archer skill set. The skill can be used to reposition yourself as well as to dodge attacks/mechanics from the boss. Backstep is an extremely useful skill with very low cooldown.

• Energetic Backstep (Decreases cooldown by 29%) – Of course you need to take this. Being able to iframe and chase the back more is a must have.

One of the coolest archer skills in my opinion. At first when you look at it, it seems terrible, but oddly enough it has some really awesome uses. If you use feign death, you immediately lose all aggro and become out of combat in the middle of the fight. This results in switching out gear mid fight, which I will cover more later in the guide.

• Energetic Feign Death (Decreases cooldown by 20%) – You’re not going to be using this skill off cooldown anyway, so don’t use this glyph.
• Regenerating Feign Death (Heals 3% of total HP every 1 second for 10 seconds) – This glyph is only useful when you cannot trust your healer. This regenerates a great amount of health, 30% of your total health within 10 seconds is great.

PEW PEW PEW. Rapid fire does the most damage on the first and last hit, with moderate damage on the other 5. This is one of your best skills. Although, the biggest downside is that ping is a very big issue here. If you have above 100 ping this skill is just unusable.

• Persistent Rapid Fire (15% to eliminate cooldown) -This glyph is great. Rapid fire recieved damage buffs and a buff to this glyph. It’s awesome to be able to do back to back rapid fires.
• Spirited Rapid Fire (Increases MP replenishment by 20% per successful hit) – This glyph gives great mp replenishment and if you’re already using it a lot you will not have many problems with keeping your mana up, there are better places to put points into.
• Empowered Rapid Fire (Increase skill damage by 20%) – This glyph is a must if you’re able to use the skill. The more damage your priority skills do, the more overall dps you will have. If you have high ping, you can just tap the first hit, it’s still a great filler skill because it does decent damage.

This is a terrible skill, it does no damage, takes forever to cast, and it barely even slows bosses. Its only use is when you need to need to keep the mobs crowd controlled and your stuns are down.

• Lingering Slow Trap (Increases effect duration by 50%) – Don’t glyph skills that you are never going to use.

This skill is great for keeping mobs stunned, and it’s also a go to skill when you need to stun a boss for mechanics such as dragon in TSHM. It has the same problem that slow trap does where it does no damage and takes too long to cast.

• Blazing Stunning Trap (Speeds casting of Penetrating Arrow by 30% for a few seconds.) – This is just a gimmicky glyph for a mediocre skill.
• Lingering Stun Trap (Increases effect duration by 25%) – This glyph is just like the slow trap glyph, no point in ever having it on. It may have its own uses in PvP, however.

This skill just gives you more damage. Aim to have 100% uptime on this skill.

• Influential Velik’s Mark (Reduces MP cost of Poison Arrow by 31 for a few seconds) – This gylph reduces the cost of a skill we never use, it is not good.
• Lingering Velik’s Mark (Increases effect duration by 25%) – I love this glyph. No one likes having to use velik’s mark in the middle of a fight. That one second of just sitting there marking is annoying, so we can just add more time before reapplying mark.
• Blazing Velik’s Mark (Speeds casting of Poison Arrow by 25% for a few seconds) – This glyph is bad for the same reason as Influential Velik’s Mark. Buffing a skill that is never used makes for a waste in glyph points.

This is skill kind of blows. It’s really hard to ever find the team to use it and the animation to place it down is horrible.

• Empowered Incendiary Trap (Increases skill damage by 25%) – Not worth the glyph points for a skill you’re never going to use.
• Powerlinked Incendiary Trap (Increases skill damage of Arrow Volley by 25% for a few seconds.) – This glyph tends to look okay, but arrow volley already does medium to low damage and there are much better places to spend your glyph points than here.

This is similar to Stunning Trap, but it instead shoots it in front of you. It can be great for stunning bosses when needed if you’re far away, but besides that it should never be touched.

• Energetic Stunning Trap Arrow (Decreases cooldown by 30%) – This glyph is not good in any way. It has the same purpose as Stunning Trap, except you can shoot it.

Rip debuff glyph. Back to useless skill

• Energetic Snare (Decreases cooldown by 20%) – NO.

Incendiary Trap Arrow is surprisingly useful. It may seem like just another trap, but the quick casting of this along with the damage it provides is insane.

• Empowered Incendiary Trap Arrow (Increases skill damage by 35%) – This glyph is one of the greatest things that could be offered to this skill. Nothing can really make this glyph better besides pure damage increase.

The only time you want to be using Tenacity is when you have nothing up and you need to be able to get ready to embrace some sort of crowd control or debuff. Since Archers have no mana issues there should never be a situation where you have to use this skill for mana.

• Balancing Tenacity (Doubles balance for 15 seconds) – This glyph is terrible since you’re never going to be really using Tenacity in the first place, let alone wanting to put any skills into such a situational glyph.
• Spirited Tenacity (50% chance to replenish 6% of your total MP every second) – This glyph actually gives tons of MP back, but since Archers don’t have any mana problems there is no place for this glyph.
• Energetic Tenacity (Decreases cooldown by 20%) – This glyph is not too great due to the fact that Tenacity is something never to be used off cooldown. Thus making this glyph irrelevant.

This is a very cool skill, but it’s very situational. The animation cast makes it really hard to use.

The only time you want to be using Tenacity is when you have nothing up and you need to be able to get ready to embrace some sort of crowd control or debuff. Since Archers have no mana issues there should never be a situation where you have to use this skill for mana.

• Energetic Chase (Decreases cooldown by 20%) – Useless

There is a lot of controversy around this skill and whether it is a viable skill or not. To determine whether you should use it or not depends solely on ping. If your ping is so high (250+) to the point where Arrow Volley and Rapid Fire both become unusable then you want to use Poison Arrow. Otherwise I would not bother touching the skill. I will cover more about Poison Arrow later in the guide. The stacks are not worth it because of the damage not being fixed. Damage modifiers to not apply to Poison Arrow.

• Lingering Poison Arrow (Increases effect duration by 40%) – This glyph is bad, and if you’re forced into using Poison Arrow that does not mean you want to stack it. You’re only going to be using it for the damage it deals on it. The damage over time on the skill is pitiful.
• Blazing Poison Arrow (Speeds casting of Radiant Arrow by 30% for a few seconds) – This glyph is actually great if you’re using Poison Arrow as a filler. Speeding the cast up for a skill you’re going to use off cooldown is great.

By far in my opinion one of the worst skills that this class has to offer. From the minute you receive the skill it is quite obvious how garbage it is. It deals little to no damage and takes almost 1 second to fully cast for extremely low damage.

• Lingering Web Arrow (Increases effect duration by 40%) – Increasing the effect duration on a skill you will never use accomplishes nothing. Although maybe in PVP this may be worth taking.
• Fleetfooted Web Arrow (60% chance to increase Combat Movement Speed by 10 for 12 seconds after a successful hit.) – No

Not too much to say about this skill. It is an amazing skill and without it Archers would be much weaker in fights. Think of this as equivalent to Assault Stance on Warrior.

• Influential Sniper’s Eye (Reduces MP cost of Web Arrow by 13 for a few seconds) – Uh

Tera PvE Archer – Glyphs

Glyphs for both Low and High Ping

This is the only glyph page I would use on archer. The only thing I’d reconsider is getting rid of is Sequential Fire reset for Velik’s Mark duration.

If you have high ping, you might also consider getting Powerlinked Breakaway Bolt instead of Rapid Fire reset.

Tera PvE Archer – Tips

Tricks

Recoil Repositioning

Thunderbolt, radiant arrow and penetrating arrow all have recoil after being casted. This is usually canceled by sequential fire. If you’re needing to reposition quickly you can hold off a second before using sequential fire. I would only do this if you’re really min maxing since this scenario rarely happens.

Overcharging

• Penetrating arrow should NEVER be overcharged
• If radiant arrow has focus buff, overcharge 4 ticks (max)
• If radiant arrow has no focus buff, overcharge 2 ticks

Focus

(Stack Focus 10 times to reduce charging speed of Penetrating Arrow and Radiant Arrow)

A new, broken passive with the archer revamp. Focus increases the charging shot’s casting speed by 40%. You can use both charge shots in the duration of this buff. It is gained by using sequential fire and rapid fire. Each hit of rapid fire gives 1 stack (7 total), while sequential fire gives 3 stacks.

You can manage your focus through the use of priority skills. Make sure to look for when its going to run out so you can efficiently add more after the buff goes away.

Tera PvE Archer – Rotations

This section is going to be a lot different than most rotations you will see on other classes. This is because archer does not have a set rotation, and it all comes down to what I mentioned at the beginning of the guide called priority skills.

Priority Skills

These are the skills that you are going to want to put emphasis on. There are the best skillson the class, and the only ones you want to be using.

 Thunderbolt

This is now your best skill. It has very high crit, lots of damage, and fast casting speed. Drop everything to use this.

 Rain of Arrows

Good for when the boss is about to move or turn soon. Only use when thunderbolt, radiant, and rapid fire or down. Or, use over rapid fire if the boss is going to turn/move.

 Rapid Fire

Every hit of the skill usually crits, and it’s really fast to come out. Use this skill if thunderbolt and radiant can’t come up.

 Radiant Arrow

Better than penetrating arrow,. Faster, moredamage, and similar cooldown. Use whenever you don’t have to thunderbolt.

Good Skills

 Penetrating Arrow

Radiant arrow but doesn’t crit so just pray.

 Incendiary Trap Arrow

This skill is quick and comes out pretty fast so always try to use this if you can’t cast a full penetrating arrow.

Skill Priority List

Archer cannot just do single rotations, it just doesn’t fit their kit. So instead, it goes based off of priority. This means that we don’t have a set rotation, and we go based off the skills that are available in the current situation.

There are basic starting rotations, but once you’ve started there is nothing that comes to a clean rotation every x amount of time.

Sample Starting Rotations

If starting from the back

If running to the back

Check below for other useful guides:

Guide PvE Lancer

PvE Warrior DPS Build

PvE Mystic Guide

PvE Reaper High Damage

Ninja Class Melee and Ranged Attacks

PvE Slayer Build

PvE Berserker DPS Build

PvE Brawler Best Tank Class

Gunner PvE Build

Priest Guide after Godsfall Patch