I felt the same, I leveled a warrior to 17, saw an archer kill 4 zombies to my 1 and was sold instantly! I now have a level 22 archer and have died 4 times! lol i have about 95 hp ( i think thats with a hp stone as well) So they are great at early levels for DPS but at higher levels we will still only have very low hp and thats where i'll end up thinking i made a mistake and will look for gale rings and go back to the warrior.
on another note, the power of my archer seems to be mainly down to Spiritshot which has bonus damage against undead - but also costs 17 mp per shot (at lvl 3), which means eating lots of mp - with my warrior i found that i would make profit when i hunt, but when it comes to the archer i have had to go and hunt cash to be able to maintain the high dps - so it definitely comes at a cost ;-)
Archers may look like great characters, but wait until you are playing one and you are in the middle of a RS

their HP drops pretty fast so you might find the best thing to do is make friends with a couple, go on hunts with them (archers love taoists for red poison{seriously and truely taoists if you want to make a archer in your group happy, whack on some red poison } and warriors for tanks) and when you level you'll be able to return the favor by slapping down the pkers that nailed them with surprised attacks
