All Things Shining: Worst "common" class in the series?

[JohnKelley23]

The archers in SFIII were a little nuts, the earlier games archers were a pain to train, but these ones could clean house.

[ehow22]

Ooof. Tough one. My first instinct is the archer, but then, something about not having range 3 attacks until my mage learns Freeze level 3 or Spark level 2 makes me... though I guess archers generally don't get range 3 until promotion, either... Hmm. I don't like that the mages have less offensive power than the archers most of the time, though. Then again, at least they don't have to worry about enemies dodging, or high Defense foes.

Heck. Guess I'll go with Archer, then.

I'd ditch the Priest, personally...

[Martin III]

I'd ditch the Priest, personally...

But then no one would be there to resurrect my characters when they die!

And with me in command they would die, believe me. Often.

[Geoffrey Duke]

Knights and paladins annoy me... For me, all of my knights except for the first one end up being a big let down. Their stats don't accelerate and they can't do much damage, while the first knight that I ever got is playin' with the big boys...

I always picked up Eric in SF2 because his stats scaled so well, otherwise, the knights end up being fillers.

SF3 doesn't count since you have fewer options.

Now Lisa, there's a real paladin, and a hot one too.

[Lucifer]

For me, it's a very tough decision between Archers and Mages. Take in mind the fact that I have never played SF3 when I say that Archers have low attack, defense, and mobility. I usually ditch them about 1/4 of the way through. Mages have even lower attack than Archers and very poor defense. They never seem to have enough MP to be of any use and rarely survive long enough to gain the levels required to learn the higher level spells. Without the usefulness of the Sorcerer class to balance it out, Mages would be the worst, hands down. The Brass Gunner class has good defense, making the Archer class somewhat useful.

My final verdict is a tie between the 2. (There were too many negatives and too few positives for me to choose one over the other.)

[ZethaPonderer]

I personally would vote for archers, but let me just start out with their pros and cons:

Pros:
2-3 range attack(similar to having a mage with infinite MP)
Decent movement
Semi-above average Attack stat
Above average agility (though agility doesn't really matter at all in the SF series)

Cons:
Their attacks can potentially miss
Horrible Defense
They cannot counterattack while enemies hit them upfront as far as my experience goes as I've never seen an archer in SF3 so far that have counterattacked an enemy from 1 tile. (they can however when an enemy is attacking them from a range of 2-3)

Archers are just too situational to be practically useful in comparison to mages and healers despite their limited MP usage and weak ATTK and DEF values overall.

And what's the hate with the birdmen class? Yeah they were not that useful in the previous installments (maybe kill an almost dead enemy when none of your units can reach them on time) unlike SF3. At least one nice thing I can say about SF3 is that it balances out all of the classes making the birdmen class absolutely vital to get all the treasures throughout the game. I like this change because it makes both the birdmen and Ninja class be useful for utility purposes.