Bow: Which one?

[Darwena]

Well, after of couple of year w/o playing RNG, I'm thinking playing it again. What bow RNG prefer now?

Gandiva look nice but do a magian STR or AGI bow is better with the Apex Arrow WS?

In other word: Jishnu's Radiance or Apex arrow?

[Feliciaa]

Gandiva is better but if you are going to spend the time to farm a weapon tier wise it's Relic Gun > empty tier spot > Relic Bow > Gandiva.

There is an empty tier spot after Relic Gun because Relic Gun is just flat out much better then the others in both dmg and utility.

[Darwena]

I read stuff about Annihilator > Gandiva. But ammo are kinda pricey so why I tried to figure which bow will worth the work.
Also, I already work on a relic (Kikoku or Aegis, still dunno which one I will make 1st...) and I lost motivation every 2 weeks of farming (dynamis is still boring to do, at least it's free now and no need an ally).

On the other hand: my woodcraft is 63 so I can make my own ammo.

To finish, I always enjoyed bow in most RPG game I play so...

[Feliciaa]

That's how I felt when I made my relic bow too. lol

I still find relic bow to be better then Gandiva for sure because of the whole super low enmity Namas Arrows you can do with it while a Gandiva user will end up pulling hate much much sooner or holding back lowering their overall damage.

[saevel]

Are we asking about Pure damage? JR is a beast for damage but it'll burn a hole in your pocket using 3 expensive arrows per WS.

http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Jishnu%27s_Radiance

1.75, 1.95 with gorget / belt, and that's on each hit, three hits.
5.85 total fTP, 60% DEX may critical (if your not capping ranged attack its actually worth something)

Coronach
3.0 fTP 30% AGI 40% DEX 1 shot WS. Treat as 4.2 fTP if your using a level 99 version (for the 40% bonus).

Last Stand
2.0, 2.2 with gorget / belt per hit, two hits.
4.4 fTP total 100% AGI mod.

For pure physical damage it looks like JR / LS are the beasts. This is excluding WF as that's an entirety different animal and requires you to gear for MAB but without COR's QD or Emp +2 feet.

[Feliciaa]

Coronach Beats everything else because it's very close to being a hate free WS and the aftermath effect is also - enmity. So a relic Rng can go all out without having to hold back because of their enmity getting too high. While a non relic holder has to pace him/herself or risk getting killed and doing zero damage for a while.

[saevel]

Coronach Beats everything else because it's very close to being a hate free WS and the aftermath effect is also - enmity. So a relic Rng can go all out without having to hold back because of their enmity getting too high. While a non relic holder has to pace him/herself or risk getting killed and doing zero damage for a while.

Huh ...... what .....

Umm ... hate doesn't work that way, this isn't 2006 anymore.

Any melee worth a damn will cap hate within 30~60s. After that the NM hits the last person who did an action on it, no matter how big the RNG's numbers are they won't be out-hating a melee on a NM fight, they don't shoot fast enough. The moment the RNG is capped CE/VE, the next action will pull hate, and the next action by any melee will pull hate back, melee's hit faster then RNGs.

So unless the RNG unloads everything within the first 10s, hate is a non-issue. I don't gimp my damage on DRK / WAR / SAM / BLU, neither should any RNG.

[Feliciaa]

That's exactly why relic gun is on it's own tier. You could do 3 Coronach in a row and not even be close to capping enmity because of how the WS works and the aftermath it has . However, try doing that with JR and their is a good chance you will be spending time dead.

You can also go all out with a relic and not have to worry about pulling hate or hope that other DD can pull hate to save you.

If your fighting anything that actually needs a tank then relic gun will always win because it targets RNG's biggest issue enmity gain.

[saevel]

That's exactly why relic gun is on it's own tier. You could do 3 Coronach in a row and not even be close to capping enmity because of how the WS works and the aftermath it has . However, try doing that with JR and their is a good chance you will be spending time dead.

You can also go all out with a relic and not have to worry about pulling hate or hope that other DD can pull hate to save you.

If your fighting anything that actually needs a tank then relic gun will always win because it targets RNG's biggest issue enmity gain.

Umm what ... the .. hell...

Do you even know how enmity works in FFXI? Here is a little class,

Two types each with their own cap, Cumulative and Volatile, CE/VE respectively. CE is hate you build up via various actions with the biggest sources being damage done and HP cured. VE is also built up like CE but decays at a rate of 60 units per second. Both have a cap of 10,000 units for a total enmity cap of 20,000. The NM will always target the person with the highest hate, and if multiple targets are at 20,000 then the last target to do an action on the NM will be targeted. Dealing damage builds both CE and VE with VE being about 3x the amount of CE. CE only goes down when you take damage or when the NM does hate reset move, VE goes down with time.

Now that you know that, want to know how long it takes me to cap CE / VE out? 60s or less on DRK (usually 30s). Three WS's and you've pretty much capped out hate on any DD, once your at 20K there is nothing you can do to raise your hate higher, and it'll only go down slowly with time or when you get your face smashed in. When you have 2 DRKs 1 SAM and 1 WAR all at 20K TE, then nothing the RNG does will pull hate for longer then 1 melee's attack round, unless those four die. You can be doing 10K damage per shot and you still won't pull hate.

When you have
20K TE DRK
20K TE WAR
20K TE SAM
20K TE RNG

The NM will always target the one who hit it last, and shooting at 500+ delay that's not effected by haste vs the 430~500 delay of the melees at 65~80% haste. Their hitting four to fives times for every time you shoot, and thus you can never pull hate because you'll never be on the top of the hate list.

So yeah, do not gimp your damage trying to control hate, this isn't 2006~2007, we're not kiting it with a bunch of PLDs and there is no such thing as hate control. All melees are at 20K TE, so should you.

[Feliciaa]

Issue with that is it only works for zerg fights where enmity does not matter at all and it requires the RNG to rely on multiple DD at being capped. Also if every DD is capped including the RNG, there is a very good chance of pulling hate a moving the mob away from DD and getting ppl killed.

As for the enmity system here is how relic gun works. http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Coronach
Lowers Enmity for a certain amount of time. (Enmity -20) Regardless of the damage, Coronach hate is only 80CE / 240 VE (Enmity- effect included).

With that in mind. As I said before, I can spam WSs, not have to hope I don't pull hate or rely on other DD to control how fast I do dmg.

I have not played in 5 months did they make all VW NMs like abyssea NMs? Ie: don't bring a PLD at all and DD can just Zerg with no fear of death?