This is going to be a wall of text, so be prepared.
In my opinion, archer is the worst class for solo hunting.
His skills have really small area of effect:
- Rain of Arrows is 3x3, it is hard to aim at mobs rushing at you trying to kill you. Of course, you can use Grasping shot (which is also 3x3) to slow your opponent but it is not always enough. I would like to see Rain as a 5x5 or like a 5x5 diamond shape in which the archer shoots arrows above his head and they fall doing damage and slowing opponents
- Piercing Shot is a wave that have 3x5 area but it starts one frame in front of the archer, so it has like 1x1 plus 3x5 after which is not intuitive and should be changed to 3x6 or 3x5 from the start
- Falcon Feather requires the cast of Call of the Hawk first and because of that can be used twice for a lower cost of mana but takes more time to cast and can be difficult. Call of the Hawk should be removed or the use of the Feather should automatically use the Call. Also, we should be able to choose were the Hawk lands
I will not mention any damage ranges because it requires some testing. I assume that the Bloodstone Team wanted the archer to be more of a single target DPS, I base that on the strongest archer's spell being Aniquilation. By going into single target DPS, archer is useless in teamhunts, everybody prefers AOE damage like mage and shaman have. Even right now, there are memes in the community that archer's main role is picking up loot. If you want the archer to be a single target DPS, then create some spots on which he can easily hunt solo by killing monsters one after another.
Another way of improving archer can be adding AOE arrows, dependent on the element (fire, air, poison etc.). This will help in killing group of monsters faster, even with single target build.
I will not touch the PVP context of the game because I'm not a good PVP player.
Another class that I want to mention is shaman. He seems to be the strongest solo hunt machine right now with all the AOE, healing and sustain his kit provides. He is more tanky then mage, due to his totems, and is dishing out a lot of damage with having the ability to self-heal. I thought that this class was supposed to be a healer in the team but then he would be useless solo, so his damage was buffed? He seems kinda strong now, especially with Nyog Idol. Also, why doesn't he have an AOE heal? It would be really useful in teamhunts. I know that one of his AOEs heals but I would prefer changing that skill directly into a healing one.
Knight seems okay, he does what he does best, he is tanky.
Barbarian seems a little bit off, his damage is not scaling properly and also he needs a better version of Vampirism and some armor penetration. He should be a glass cannon melee character, so maybe some more crit scaling will help him as well.
I'm not gonna touch mage because I heard various opinions on this class.
Going into items, why do Nyog Idol and Nyog Grimoire are so strong and other Nyog weapons are not? Right now, recipes for these two weapons are worth something because all other weapons are only "trophies" that you should leave in your house. These two weapons combine all other weapons used by shaman and mage and if you upgrade them, you have pretty much end game weapons. That's why I think other Nyog items should receive a buff in a similar way. They should have all the strenghts of three weapons for each class.
Another question, why do we have only certain sets that drop out equipment bags and only a few "extraordinary" items such as Chaal Cloak, Kuromancer Armor or Dragonete Bracelet? I think that there should be more items dropping like that, even weapons or recipes. This could improve the value of hunting certain monsters.
How does evasion work? It is only a value in statistics that is not mentioned anywhere else. It should be changed, so we can see what is the percantage chance of a dodge happening.
TL;DR: Buff archer's AOE skills, create more spots for single target DPS', adjust shaman, change some items.
Have a nice day everybody!