Besides long range attacks for PvP, the Archer’s four active starting skills are all incredibly useful for PvE battles, especially if you like to farm in auto mode without having to actually look at your phone.
Not sure how to properly build your Archer? Below we show you the absolute best active and passive skills and attributes for any kind of battle.
Managing Skills In Alliance x Empire
Before getting into the specifics of which skills to upgrade for the Archer class, don’t forget that you get two skill set set slots for free (marked as A and B in the upper right corner).
You can buy extra slots for quickly switching between multiple skill sets on the fly if you want to try different combos, but you really don’t need three or more in most cases. Instead, just find two different skill sets you like – one for daily and story quests, the other for player versus player battles – and keep them updated as you level up.
There’s also an important skill strategy we outlined in the Alliance x Empire beginner’s guide that’s worth repeating here. When you hit bosses you just can’t seem to beat, don’t forget about the achievements for reaching specific attack and defense thresholds.
If you pull all your points out of active skills and pump them into the passive attack and defense buffs, you can usually hit the next achievement threshold. Grab your rewards for hitting that achievement, then put your points back into your normal skill build. That’s an easy way to get some quick upgrades that may be enough to help you squeak by the hardest story missions.
Best AxE Archer PvE Skill / Attribute Build
When building your Archer, split your points between active and passive skills, upgrading them evenly as you level. I recommend going with ATK improvement on the passive side as that tends to be more helpful for autoing dungeons over DEF improvement, but you may need to swap that depending on the quality of the armor you’ve found.
For active skills, the first four you immediately start with are actually better than the last six that unlock at levels 25 - 50. Why are the early skills better? Because they have low cool down lengths of only 15 - 30 seconds.
The more powerful active skills available to the Archer class have much longer cool downs in the 45 - 50 second range. With the exception of bosses, most PvP battles should be over in less than a minute, so their usefulness is extremely limited by how infrequently they can be activated.
Best Archer Active Skills
Your primary focus with active skill points should be upgrading Piercing Shot and Cyclone Shot first. It will take time to fully upgrade your skills while leveling, but ideally, your Archer active skill load out should eventually look like this:
Piercing Shot 10 / 10 Cyclone Shot 10 / 10 Arctic Shot 10 / 10 Volley 10 / 10
This Archer skill load out provides the most utility with the shortest cool downs. While they deal less damage, these four skills are easily the best for the Archer because they let you dodge out of harm’s way or knock back a group of enemies.
That’s particularly important if you are doing auto battles, as it means you will take less damage and evade enemy attacks more often even if you are away from your mobile device while the quest is going.
If you are primarily a manual player and prefer to position yourself in battle for the biggest advantage, I recommend swapping out Arctic Shot for Evasive Flurry or Invoke Phoenix and instead pumping that skill up to 10. While they both have a bigger cool down, if you spend time running around enemies during the cool down period you will actually get more damage output.
Best Archer Attributes
After upgrading your skills, these are the four Archer attributes you want above all others:
Long Grip Stabilize Pierce Increase Recovery
Long Grip lowers the speed of enemies – including bosses in dungeons! That’s a huge boon for surviving difficult story missions. Although it has a slightly longer cool down, Long Grip is a better choice than Short Grip as it has an increased duration that makes it far more useful.
Stabilize meanwhile is critical to staying alive in longer, more difficult battles, so make sure to upgrade to Stabilize II when you hit level 40.
Pierce and Increase Recovery are particularly important for auto players, as they give you a change to automatically increase damage and healing with each hit.
Best AxE Archer PvP Skill / Attribute Build
For PvP battles, the optimum Archer load out is almost the exact opposite of what we did before, because the knock back skills don’t have the same effects when battling other players.
In this mode, dealing more damage should be prioritized over status effects. You can ditch Piercing Shot, Cyclone Shot, and Arctic Shot entirely. Instead, here’s what your PvP build should look like for maximum damage output:
Volley 10 / 10 Power Shot II 10 / 10 Invoke Phoenix I 10 / 10 Invoke Phoenix II 10 / 10
Volley deals damage to multiple enemies at once and has a lower cool down than more damaging skills, making it very helpful in large scale battles.
You can skip Power Shot I due to its long cast time and should instead go for Power Shot II – but note it isn’t available until level 30.
Both Invoke Phoenix I and II can be equipped at the same time, which you should do so you can alternate between them while the other one is cooling down. The first version deals more damage but takes longer to cast, while the second can be fired off more quickly.
After skills, your attribute picks will be fairly similar in PvP with one major exception. While the basics like Stabilize and Pierce can still be useful, you should swap one attribute out for this nifty little option:
Survival Instincts
This attribute doesn’t become available until level 25, but once it does it will be your go-to PvP active attribute. When used in battle, your team recovers health for dealing damage and they all become immune to stun for 10 seconds.
Those are all our tips for the best Axe Archer class skills and attributes! Do you have any other Archer builds that work well for specific levels or PvP battles? Hit us up with your tips in the comments below, and check out my AxE equipment and farming guide!
