I think this is the most underwhelming class in the game right now.
Its base armour value is 3, the lowest of all Vlandia classes. Even the peasant starts at 5 armors and has access to an improved armor perk which can bring its armor to 14. The arbelist has no survivabilty, it's forced to be a bad hit & run class because of its low armour value. I have two problems with this:
1. Visually. The arbelist wears a kettle helmet and padded armour, but only has 3 armour value. Compared to a peasant with improved armour (14 armour total) that's a joke since the peasant is literally wearing a leather cap and that's it. To me it doesn't make sense at all.
2. The low survivability of this class wouldn't be an issue if the class had decent ranged options. I've made this suggestion/criticism during beta already: I don't understand (from a balance point of view) why you put both the good weapons and armour on the heavy ranger classes. Yes you can take the heavy crossbow and the heavy bolts to bump up your damage, but then you have no shield. The shield perk is pretty much a must have because of the already abysmal survivabilty of the class. So you end up with a slow moving, relatively low ranged damage, low armour, low melee damage class. It's just not really an option except in competitive play where you, as an arbelist, can count on your teammates' help to stay alive. In regular skirmish I really don't see a point in taking this class.
So here's my suggestion, trying to be constructive after all:
1. Bump up their armor or give them an improved armor perk
2. Give them the heavy crossbow by default or increase the fire rate of the light crossbow so the class can actually be somewhat hit & run