Archer/Strategy

## Strategy

### Low-level / Basics

* Archers are the only Common-rarity unit that deal damage at range. It is **highly recommended** that you level your archers to at least level 10 as soon as possible, as they should be a core part of the army composition in most battles.
* Archers are ideally placed several ranks behind the front lines of the army. Try to avoid placing archers in the first rank, as they will block support units placed behind them from moving forward, and it's better for your archers to have higher-HP units in front of them.
	+ On maps with enemy Buster units, it can be good to place some archers in the second rank of the army to snipe these enemies before they reach the front-line.
* Avoid spending your epic potions on archer units. They gain very little attack, and even with the extra HP die quickly to most enemy units. You're always better off epic-ing a tank or warrior unit in front of your archers to act as a buffer.
* Except on maps with large numbers of enemy tanks / armored units, generally the more archers placed on the battlefield the better. Try and place them next to each other rather than behind each other so they all attack sooner, rather than archers farther back having to wait for an enemy to move closer to get within their range.
* Archers can be placed behind walls and other movement-blocking terrain to protect them from enemy melee units.

### Mid-to-High-level / Advanced

* Once your archer starts dealing enough damage to kill most enemies in one or two hits, make sure to spread your archers out more from each other / allied ranged units, to avoid you and your allies wasting too much damage over-killing the same target.
* Remember that ranged units prioritize targeting armored units -- they will always target the closest armored unit within their range, even if it's not the closest unit overall. The game has to do this to make tanks an effective counter to ranged units.
	+ Use the range indicator circle when placing your unit to better position it to attack melee and other enemy units within its range, while avoiding enemy armored units, even if you need to place your archer farther away.
	+ If there's a specific target you want to prioritize your archer attacking, place your unit so that the target is the only enemy unit within their range.

### Strong Against

* Melee-class units (e.g. Orc Warrior)
* Flying Enemies
* Giant Troll
* Skeleton Buster

### Weak Against

* Tanks and similar armored units with a defense bonus vs ranged attacks
* Goblin Rogues and similar assassin units that evade most ranged attack damage
* Death Knight

### Specialization

* **Deadeye Archer:** Because this specialization increases damage against enemy ranged units, its effect is both hardly used nor needed. An archer would not typically attack other ranged units, and most enemy ranged units do not have much HP to warrant the need for bonus damage against it. The bonus damage is not significant enough to tip the scales in nearly any situation. mostly useful for not having any of the other two effects.
* **Longshot Archer:** Additional range allows more reach, and especially helpful in a large group where heavy front lines are needed. Generally helpful to attack enemies before anyone else can reach them, and helps players score more kills in normal campaign maps. note: only useful in difficult terrain, other specializations shoot from shorter distance, so they hit before longshot archer. Disadvantage can be "getting stuck" more often shooting armored units instead of melee units thanks to its wider target range compared to the other two specializations.
* **Pinning Archer:** Slowing enemy frontlines with a pinning archer can cause enemy hordes to bottleneck for your team's favor, and is a situation often seen in PvP battles. A pinning archer may also have higher survival chances by slowing units chasing it down. epic archer and normal effects stack, so you can reduce enemy speed to zero with this combination. Can be disadvantage, when you need to kill the first unit of enemy stack. with slowing down the first unit, others can get infront of it denying the kill.

## Trivia

* Archers are one of the three units unlocked at the start of your account (the other two being Tank and Warrior).
* Was the first unit to receive skins from the first battle pass, known as the Undead Archer set. The Undead Archer set was based on the Gravetide event.