I'm sorry if this post is an annoying or stupid question.

So I have practically zero experience with MMOs and not a ton of gaming experience in general. Especially on the computer. But Saturday I fired up ffxiv for the first time and pretty much immediately fell in love.

My first character was a Ranger and despite having very little gaming experience, I found it to be extremely easy. Sometimes almost too easy. I played for a couple days on Halicarnassus. I want to say I got her to about level 28 on Ranger, at least level five on each crafting class but some much further, and my botany and mining were in the early 20s. I spent my every waking moment outside of physical therapy playing the game. When they shut down for maintenance I had no clue what to do with myself lol.

I convinced my friend to download it and she loves it too but she is in the EU which meant I needed to make a new character if we were gonna play together. Which was totally fine because I was curious about the different classes and the different starting zones anyways.

I decided that my new character would start out as an arcanist and despite immediately catching on to the Ranger, I'm really struggling with this one. Not being able to move as I cast spells has me constantly taking damage. Fates that I could have handled easily at a lower level with my Ranger I can't even handle from four levels above with my arcanist. I die or I run off cause I'm one hit away from death. I'm still enjoying the game but I'm seriously struggling. She started as a Ranger and neither of us have gotten far enough in the main story so we haven't even met up yet. It wouldn't be too hard to start a new class and just grind for a day to catch back up.

I am level 16 now and have only spent one day playing so far so it wouldn't be too bad if I had to change classes since I know I could just do it on that character. I don't know. I'm just not sure if I should change classes or not. If so, any recommendations?

Edit: Wow okay. You guys have a very active and friendly subreddit which I love btw. I expected maybe three comments at the most but quite a few people actually gave helpful advice so thank you so much!! Going off of what you guys have said I've decided to stick it out for a while longer. I'll practice slidecasting on some dummies and try to take a slower approach to fighting than I did with my Ranger. If I'm still not comfortable after I get to the Summoner I'll try out something else. I was ready to give up but all of your advice really made me determined to get this right. Thank you!

Edit 2: I didn't even realize I kept saying Ranger instead of Archer until somebody pointed it out int the comments. Oops. Sorry guys😂

Edit 3: Just a quick update for the people who still occasionally comment. All of the things you guys told me to do I did and it's going way better for me now. I'm level 33 and have no plans to change classes anymore thanks to everybody's help. So thank you!!