Help with Archer and Arcanist

[Elysaine]

My Bard is running around with 30 points into DEX.

For my Arcanist I have both Summoner and Scholar. I barely play Summoner, but I play lot of Scholar. It's starting to become my main job of choice when playing the game. So after leveling up where I basically split my points between INT and MND, I've respecced and went all MND. You can buy a tome to do so from your Grand Companies Quartermaster. It's only 250 seals so not that expensive.

Scholar has the option to cross class skills from the Conjurer and Thaumaturge classes. So you can pick up Cleric Stance from the Conjurer for example. Changes the INT and MND stats so it improves your DPS. Next to that it adds a 10% extra bonus on top of it. So if you're soloing that's very useful to have. Keep in mind though, your healing will be far less effective. For me when soloing I use it all the time, in groups I tend not to use it. I like to have my full healing power available Other skills you really wish to have from other classes are the Conjurer's Protect and Stoneskin. And from Thaumaturge Swiftcast. That will leave you with 1 open skill slot for Scholar. I went for Surecast, but if you wish to throw another DOT spell, you can pick up Aero instead as well.

When it comes to the Bard, next to all the Archers skills and traits you can also use abilities from the Pugilist and Lancer classes. Each of these classes has some very useful skills for your Bard to use. Second Wind for example is a self heal. Invigorate will restore 400 tp (yellow bar) which you use for your skills. Internal Release and Blood for Blood increase your DPS (one improves damage output, the other your crit chance). And I'm using Featherfoot as well. Which can be a life saver since it increases your chance to dodge incoming attacks with a lot

I've described a lot of skills. Hope you don't find them too confusing You'll be getting several of them along the way anyways to be able to get the Jobs associated to the Classes you're playing.

Archer has 1 job attached to it. That's the Bard. To become a Bard you need to level the Archer to level 30, and you also need to level the Pugilist class to level 15. Several of the skills I have mentioned above will become available to you when you level your Pugilist side.

Arcanist has 2 jobs. Scholar and Summoner.
Scholar = 30 Arcanist + 15 Conjurer
Summoner = 30 Arcanist + 15 Thaumaturge

Which means that you'll be leveling several other Classes as well to unlock the jobs of both Archer and Arcanist.

I know it's a big wall of text. And it's bigger then I first intended it to be. But I hope it will answer some questions you might have later on when it comes to how to get the Jobs. And what cross-class skills are

Good luck and most importantly have fun