Hey, I've roughly just recently started chapter 4 in my first blind playthrough (chaos route from the terminology I'm seeing - I've just recruited Olyvia if that gives an idea of where I'm at.

One of my generics is a LV28 Valkyrie named Cecilia (and was one of my first recruits in the game) - I outfitted my Rune Fencer to be the more melee oriented of the two, gave her a bow, and gave her the bow weapon skill (She usually uses a Baldur bow) of which she has rank 23 in. I read that the ranged weapon damage skill is Dex but I'm not sure how accurate that is. Her stats are...

- STR 119

- VIT 132

- DEX 124

- AGI 119

- AVD 109

- INT 145

- MND 121

- RES 124

The idea behind her was for her to be a bit of a counter to mage units - bows to kill them (since its usually better than magic), healing and buffs for support. As you can probably tell though, her INT is pretty high and more often than not she gets better results just being another spell slinger.

The main problem I'm encountering is that even when the bow is used in a favorable match up against unarmored squishies (such as clerics and mages, again) it does around 30-50 damage max, usually less - where Arycelle is doing well over 150. I know Arycelle is probably a bad comparison, but my other dedicated generic archer is doing just a little under Arycelle's average. My generic archer is LV25 but her stats aren't even all that different from my Valkyrie - (STR 116, VIT 109, DEX 128, AGI 122, AVD119, INT 108, MND 105, RES 103)

So I'm not sure where all the missing damage is, if it comes mostly from stats like I've read. Keep in mind, she's been leveling and wielding a bow like this for most of the game.

I'm fine with it being sub-optimal, but concerned I'm trying to force something that just isn't going to work.