Carraway's Guide to the New Archer: 1.18 and Beyond

Thank you very much. I'm not trying to start a fight with my LS mates, but they all act Like I'm a crazy noob when I say that I'd prefer brig over alpine.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by carraway

To clarify, what you're suggesting is only holding Light Shots for 3-arrow Multishots when buffs are available? Your delineated example misses a Multishot cooldown and slips on Raging Strike II cooldown unnecessarily (unless you're assuming its inclusion along with your mass of other buffs), so I want to make sure I'm interpreting you clearly.

---

Yes, I'd be glad to post a parse/attempt to manually calculate my DPS next time we run through.



I just forgot to add one in at the 45 second mark, but when playing I never slip on my raging strike/multishot cooldown as that is my main focus. I use Raging Strike 2-1 with the other buffs for a sole multishot most of the time, and for trifurcate when it is available (trifurcate I don't always keep on cooldown but rather wait the extra 10 seconds for raging strikes since I generally don't have time to do it 3 times in a fight anyways since fights rarely last 6:40+).

Also yes only hold multishot 6 seconds before Ferocity/Cadence/Murderous Intent/Keen Flurry (Keen Flurry is by far the better accuracy buff from my testing)/Blindside II are all available, during that 6 seconds I burn TP skills and Heavy Shot, once I start buffing I hold for the remaining 9 seconds (or more like 3-4 seconds taking into account the time to buff). When doing BR's of course I time my BR call to take all this into account so I am not waiting any longer, and no one is hopefully waiting for me (of course nothing you can do about Ogre stuns, that I know of at least).

I see the confusion you thought I was always holding multi shots like Archers did pre-1.18? No, it is just to make most use of full bursts.

Just tried it for myself on an ogre fight with very little slippage on cooldowns and I dropped by 5+ DPS. However, it could be a fluke due to being distracted or due to my unfamiliarity with this permutation. Theoretically I still fully believe that buffing 2-arrow shots is better than holding buffs and a few shots for fully buffed 3-arrow shots, but I'm willing to perform further testing to confirm/corroborate.

Mugen post a parser img with 33+ dps using this parser: http://www.fileswap.com/share/index.php?id=ho9RoeTU

I've seen consistent 30+ with carraways original rotation focusing on spreading buffs and omitting many of the useless buffs like "blindside"<-complete trash and "keen flury" etc which are more time waisters then anything. (note the rotation carraway posted mostly focus's on speed of light shot and assumes your ls is NOT doing BR's)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Murugan

since fights rarely last 6:40+

---

Wait, are you talking about all fights in general, like Batraal, or just ogre?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tachikoma

Mugen post a parser img with 33+ dps using this parser: http://www.fileswap.com/share/index.php?id=ho9RoeTU

I've seen consistent 30+ with carraways original rotation focusing on spreading buffs and omitting many of the useless buffs like "blindside"<-complete trash and "keen flury" etc which are more time waisters then anything. (note the rotation carraway posted mostly focus's on speed of light shot and assumes your ls is NOT doing BR's)

---

Is this your edited version of the Parser? What is the point of selecting mobs? Because that didn't even work for me on Batraal (which I'd love to get a real parse on not screwed up by skeleton damage). I also have to say I hate real time parsing first of all it is awkward alt tabbing before/after fight when I need to be skipping the cutscene, it is a huge pain having to back up my old logs, and multi fight parsing simply doesn't work (for me at least). When I parse I usually hunt through the logs for an encounter and parse them in a separate folder.


As a pugilist I'd like to quickly take the chance to respond to your saying that Blindside is useless with a:

[SIZE="5"]YOU'RE USELESS!!! YOU'RE USELESS TACHIKOMA!!!!![/SIZE]
(but seriously I do disagree with this unless you can't get behind the mob then yes it is useless, however during Ogre our tank angles the mob so we can hit from behind when below or on top level it is one of the better Damage buffs 10-20%).


On a more conciliatory note if you are collaborating on Irparser now great work and I look forward to the future of parsing in this game with such dedicated people behind the project! Though I noticed that crit damage isn't shown on the graph in your version which I personally like. Finally since Bloodletter can't be shown for a particular person could you setup a tracking for just bloodletter damage, so we can see what % of the fight bloodletter end damage is doing?

Also I don't know that I fully buy these DPS numbers, my first parse was all messed up giving me 26 DPS only which I don't think was right as I felt like it was my better run (that parse also got messed up because I left it running thinking I could parse batraal from the same logs... which unfortunately did not work), but toward the end of the night I tried again and managed to get 33 DPS trying so hard I worked up a sweat and probably cut my keyboard's lifespan in half with all the feverish mashing.

I realize it is not 33+, but in all fairness I only have a Crab Bow +2, don't have invigorate II and maybe you guys have less lag than me because I know I missed fractions of seconds off my light shots many times (which might be why I prefer burst/BR style).


So even though it is not technically better, I still stand by my assertion that it is the better playstyle (for most archers at least). Since I and other Archers in our LS started using it our damage has shot way up (this is the first time I've seen "accurate dps" so I can't be 100% certain, but it just doesn't seem right to me).


Real time Parse: Deepvoid Slave, No BR's, no major debuffs other than a Maim once towards the end...
http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/1...0924045740.png
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/8948/breakdown.png


Disclaimer: This fight probably took a little longer than yours. I believe fight was between 4-5 minutes I can't tell exactly but I think closer to 4.

So that I suppose could explain your difference in damage because if the fight ends right before the 1:05 mark on your buffs you are going to show significantly less damage from burst style. That doesn't mean it is less damage, I think that technically it still should be better even if ending at the worst possible time but its best damage comes from when it dies to a burst or soon after.

I encourage you guys to keep trying it (especially if you are just running darkhold to sell drops!!), as for myself I'm going back to BR's before I lose them. :(:(:(

If we do more runs w/o BR I'll give your method a try, but I'm not sure I understand it because it looks like from your breakdown you start the fight with Ferocity but no raging strike? So you don't do a burst until 1:06 in the fight? Also did you just not include your other buffs when you say 3 arrow shot, or do you not use them? (muderous/cadence/ferocity/keen flurry (I think you use hawk's eye instead)\

I think you should try keen flurry though it is better in my experience (hawk's eye seems pretty worthless to me I don't notice a difference in accuracy with or without it, but Keen Flurry rarely ever misses).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by carraway

Wait, are you talking about all fights in general, like Batraal, or just ogre?

---

Batraal too, you probably fight batraal from the circle but we have to move to take it down so I use that time to do a full burst multi (it lines up perfectly in fact making our archers not really waste any time at all bringing it down), and use trifurcate with raging again. If you fight it from circle maybe it isn't. But again we are usually doing BR so because of that it is the obvious choice (3-4 full BR=dead Batraal).

I'd say it is even better on Batraal because we do our Batraal's like this currently:

Circle buffing>BR
Melee>melee>melee>Mage>Mage>Archer>Archer

So my Raging Strike Trifurcate/TP spam has the phys debuff boosting it as well. When we pull this off without a hitch it is awesome. They better bring back a BR system soon or I can see myself getting bored with simple rotational combat (I'll likely switch back to pugilist or another class if that is the case).

That is impressive as i didn't really expect that rotation to do 30+ dps but a few things i want to clarify 1st.

Any chance next time you can try to note down what time the fight started and what time it ended, also when did you start the parser? because currently the dps bar on it isn't accurate so we generally calculate the dps based off of fraps or people taking note of when the fight started to when the boss died etc.

Do you start you're rotation instantly after the tank pulls or wait a little before starting?

Were you getting absorb attack? absorbing defense? using defense down debuff? even fully buffing multishots i have personally never seen a 300+ lightshot outside of a group BR i think my highest is around 280ish.

Were you running with 120 base str and 60 base dex? i generally sit at soft cap str and am doing less max than you even if i use my crab bow +2.

I still think a perfected lightshot focused rotation would beat the rotation you are using if done perfectly as it should be capable of doing 40+ dps if done perfectly with starting attacks instantly, but maybe fitting in fully buffed trifurcates may increase that number even more.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Penguin

That is impressive as i didn't really expect that rotation to do 30+ dps but a few things i want to clarify 1st.

Any chance next time you can try to note down what time the fight started and what time it ended, also when did you start the parser? because currently the dps bar on it isn't accurate so we generally calculate the dps based off of fraps or people taking note of when the fight started to when the boss died etc.

Do you start you're rotation instantly after the tank pulls or wait a little before starting?

Were you getting absorb attack? absorbing defense? using defense down debuff? even fully buffing multishots i have personally never seen a 300+ lightshot outside of a group BR i think my highest is around 280ish.

Were you running with 120 base str and 60 base dex? i generally sit at soft cap str and am doing less max than you even if i use my crab bow +2.

I still think a perfected lightshot focused rotation would beat the rotation you are using if done perfectly as it should be capable of doing 40+ dps if done perfectly with starting attacks instantly, but maybe fitting in fully buffed trifurcates may increase that number even more.

---

I began the parse as the cutscene for the Ogre began (as the screen was fading black), I ended it as soon as the Ogre died. I'm pretty fast at alt tabbing.

The fight started at 53:15 it ended at 47:45 (give or take a few seconds I'm sorry I don't generally fraps as it lags me, but I take note of the time as I have to make sure we are still on our target for a speed run). Yes it was a slow fight, but we don't generally run that encounter like this. It was also our first successful speed run, or rather our first ever attempt at a speed run, with such an unorthodox setup.

I start my rotation instantly after the tank pulls (heavy shot goes on as soon as the tank touches it, then I start buffing a quelling/raging 3x light shot etc. as I said in my approximate outline). Waiting is for tanks that need a crutch, and when I tank for my tank on his archer he *&^%s with me too so screw his aggro safety net, he has accomplice and knows how to use it (and I have chameleon). I would be more cautious if we hadn't killed this guy a hundred times already, but there is nothing left to do but push the envelope now.

We had no major debuffs going because we only had 2 mages during that fight and they were busy healing the entire time. You don't use Blindside, and you don't use Cadence that would probably be why we have a difference in max damage (maybe they are not such "trash"). I get 300+ criticals on light shots constantly (though only when I hit an accurate blindside, the 320+ on Ogre outside of a BR is rare, but that I believe must have been a blindsided crit+rear maim).

What is your Minimum Damage? My understanding of the current stat calculation is that STR affects minimum damage, while attack affects maximum damage. I focus on attack mainly (149) because my style is centered around bursting, but for your style it is probably more important to raise your minimum damage. My minimum is only 47 (130 total STR).

Lodestone profile: http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...cicuid=1595680 (haven't changed my stats in a while I'm fairly happy with them).

Gear:
Crab Bow +2 (borrowed)
Silver Arrow
Peregrine Helm
Mythril Choker
4x Brass Rings
Brigands Acton
Mitts of the Lone Knight
Tarred Leather Trousers +2
Tarred Voyager's Belt +1
Bladedancer's Jackboots

food: Shephard's Pie

My playstyle is capable of 60+ DPS fairly easily I believe with BR's. Without BR's though I plan to take it higher than this, there are many things you can do to improve bursts further (as you hinted at initiation, getting invigorate II, more debuffs). My DD philosophy (for years now) revolves around lining up your entire group's big hits for one ultimate weakened opportunity and repeating this as often as possible.

The reason that I love my playstyle so much, and honestly (no offense intended, I understand its virtues and respect its results) hate yours (as I understand it) is because mine is something that my entire group can contribute to. I find rotational combat dull, for me I like to organize our linkshell's damage (and my pick up groups) in a more coordinated effort rather than everyone off doing their own thing (though for this one fight I indulged you in doing just that, and it was one of our hardest fought speed run wins ever, a lot of the credit for that goes to our healers and tank). In the end like in most MMO's the two styles are probably a wash, your way is obviously more than good enough, I just don't like playing that way.


Right now, I'd like to try and push BR to its limits before we lose it, because I genuinely enjoy the system even in its current state and so does a majority in our linkshell.

I plan after this or after 1.19 to experiment with alternatives to Battle Regimens in accomplishing the same general goal. I have ideas, ideas we have been playing around with since launch (everything right now is just practice for the real endgame).

I look forward to the job system, alliance content, enhanced party roles, and other combat changes in the future I believe will only strengthen my playstyle and hopefully one day make solo rotational combat in this game the failed tactic it ought to be. Though I find it to already be worse, it gets the job done and that is the failing of the current encounter balance (in my opinion).

I hope none of this offends you, you guys are as hardcore as it gets. I learned to tank Ogre on my Defender II-not-having Pugilist watching your little dubstep Deepvoid video (an admittedly sometimes painful experience for our linkshell). I've gone to BG for HNM strats since Zilart, but I have a different philosophy regarding MMO endgames than I see prevailing there.

I would venture a guess that what's making the difference on a per-Light Shot basis is Maim, not Blindside II. We use Cadence at the start, but not in the middle of the fight.

edit: Thanks for posting the parse, Murugan. With you posting up 41% of a party's damage in an ogre fight, what are the numbers of your other party members, and what classes are they? I also think the mouse-over breakdown with top 5 abilities and # of uses, min, max, avg, and proportion of total damage is more helpful than the pie chart, personally.

I think we can agree to disagree for now, since both approaches are resulting in >=33ish recorded DPS (real-world DPS is slightly higher, usually, even with fast alt-tabbing). I'm really curious to see what happens in 1.19, and I look forward to the resulting discussions.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by carraway

I would venture a guess that what's making the difference on a per-Light Shot basis is Maim, not Blindside II. We use Cadence at the start, but not in the middle of the fight.

---

Maim was only one set of light shots and was what gave me 328 instead of the 300-310 range I usually get. I hit 300+ on crits always when blindside lands. You said you get 280 highest and that is what I usually get if I am not positioned correctly and mess up my blindside, so it seems like the difference is blindside.

I use cadence on all my full bursts.

Awesome guide Carraway, I'm always slightly jealous of BG's progression. :P

But this solidifies you have very similar ideas as myself in regards to ARC though I've never parsed cause of all the extreme changes.

Though this has given me a slight inspiration to look into building a similar guide for LNC.

Great job.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by carraway

we might do some further testing with those as well, just to see how high our numbers can get.

---

They will go really high.

Yeah, we've already seen in the neighborhood of ~3k for a 3-arrow Light Shot.

It looks like the new debate for best-in-slot bow is going to be between Mythril Cavalry Bow and the Ifrit bow.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/24818

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by carraway

Yeah, we've already seen in the neighborhood of ~3k for a 3-arrow Light Shot.

It looks like the new debate for best-in-slot bow is going to be between Mythril Cavalry Bow and the Ifrit bow.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/24818

---

I'm glad I didn't splurge on the crab bow +3, and I feel kind of guilty borrowing Chef's +2 for the past month and a half while I "decide if I want to buy one".

I wasn't reading closely enough -- there's a Cobalt Cavalry Bow made by Smithing :O

Plus, Ranger's gear (or Rainmaker's gear), Cobalt-plated Jackboots...lots of new gear coming out. It's going to take quite a while to revamp the guide for 1.19.

Archer - Multishot - ・The effect of enhanced attack power granted by certain statuses will be shared across the number of arrows nocked.

Fully buffing 3 nocked arrows definitely isn't going to be the highest dps next patch.

That change also sucks hard for soloing as archer now :(

Yeah, we lost the HOLY SHIT BIG NUMBERS aspect of the rotation. I still think Light Shots will be disproportionately efficient with buffs, esp. with crits, but Barrage/Quick Nock will probably gain in value, and maybe Foeseeker as well.

At first glance, ARC seems to be the victim of a knee-jerk reaction and is now nerfed into the ground. Removing the power of Multishot, although perhaps a necessary balance change, leaves ARC bereft of the kind of burst skill damage that other classes can muster.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silverdeath

I'm not one to run screaming when things change and am leery of yelling NERF at the drop of a hat.. After doing a bit of raiding last night its clear ARC is not the same as it was before the patch.. It's definitely not business as usual..

It seems our light shots are on par with other classes basic moves but our weapon skills are severely lacking.. PunctureII/Bloodletter(minus the dot)/Foeseeker/Wide VolleyII all seem to be about the same dmg, about 170-250 on the Amal'jaa we were fighting last night.. Compare that to other classes tho and the dmg isn't so great.. MRD/GLD/LNC/Mages all see to be hitting for 5-700 on their weapon skills and spells..

I had taken Barrage out of my rotation quite a while ago but it seems to be doing decent dmg with each arrow hitting for 120-140 so that puts us kind of on par with others yet not AoE and has a lengthy cooldown..

I realize my experience in killing things post patch is limited as I really only had time to do a stronghold for a few hours.. I would imagine tho it's somewhat similar in other areas and other mobs..

Anyone find some things that are working post patch? I'm fairly confident if we compare notes we can devise a way to get back to the top of the DD again, or atleast competitive..

---

ARC doesn't have enough to keep up with other DPS classes post-patch. As Silverdeath notes, the strongest ARC-specific weaponskills, Barrage/Quick Nock, don't really match the damage coefficients of MRD/PGL/LNC skills. In addition, there is no ARC weaponskill that behaves similarly to Maim/Victimize/Doomspike; these weaponskills now actually become more efficient for damage/TP if you hold TP past 2000. Burst skill damage is the new order of the day for all classes, and ARC lacks the requisite tools.

That being said, preliminary testing seemed to demonstrate that spamming Barrage/Quick Nock(single target)/3-arrow Foeesekers while maintaining Bloodseeker uptime was the superior rotation.

Curious, which arrows were used?

Mythril Arrows

Perhaps a trial with Cobalt arrows is due? If I remember correctly mythril arrows are in the lv 30s. Should be worth looking into.

In the end though it's true. Archer got the nerf it had coming, and the other DD classes are more than viable. I'm pretty much switching back to my main, PGL, even for DD.

Another unmentioned nerf in the patch notes:

Multishot returns the same amount of TP, regardless of how many arrows you land. 1 arrow returns exactly the same amount of TP as 3.

Yeah, it'd be appreciated if someone could test with Cobalt Arrows, but it might take another few days for prices to stabilize. Also, new Crab Bow (+3) is the best bow in the game.

Since the patch I've become completely lost. New gear, new stats, I don't even know where to begin.

I agree with new Crab Bow +3 being best - although wtf with new HQ bonuses. Not even worth the effort now really.
Although HQ rates seem to have increased as well. Probably due to high attribute values.

PS. Alexis, awesome sig :D

I'll update this guide when I get Ifrit's Bow and a chance to play around with it, but for now the information contained within is basically rendered null and void.

I never got an Ifrit's Bow (6/7 over 200+ kills), but I will be rewriting my guide soon to incorporate the massive overhauls in 1.20.

Most appreciated Carraway!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by carraway

I never got an Ifrit's Bow (6/7 over 200+ kills), but I will be rewriting my guide soon to incorporate the massive overhauls in 1.20.

---

<3 So much love to you <3

Quote:

---

I never got an Ifrit's Bow (6/7 over 200+ kills), but I will be rewriting my guide soon to incorporate the massive overhauls in 1.20.

---

I have used this guide since I joined XIV in patch 1.18. The update yesterday has left me a little stuck! I had a pretty decent gear set with materia melds but I am now wondering what would be the ultimate set up (including possible materia options). If you could include gear options on your updated guide that would be most appreciated.

I'm just getting used to Arc again now, the combo system is pretty sweet.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lucie

I have used this guide since I joined XIV in patch 1.18. The update yesterday has left me a little stuck! I had a pretty decent gear set with materia melds but I am now wondering what would be the ultimate set up (including possible materia options). If you could include gear options on your updated guide that would be most appreciated.

---

I'll go into it in more detail when I rewrite my guide, but for now:

Paragon's Crown
Raptorskin Harness (PIE)
Raptorskin Gloves of Slaying (DEX/ATK)
Flame Sergeant's Sash
Raptorskin Subligar (STR+DEX or VIT+DEX)
Cobalt-plated Caligae / Cobalt-plated Jackboots (HP)
Amethyst Ring x3

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by carraway

I'll go into it in more detail when I rewrite my guide, but for now:

Paragon's Crown
Raptorskin Harness (PIE)
Raptorskin Gloves of Slaying (DEX/ATK)
Flame Sergeant's Sash
Raptorskin Subligar (STR+DEX or VIT+DEX)
Cobalt-plated Caligae / Cobalt-plated Jackboots (HP)
Amethyst Ring x3

---

That's what I was thinking ^^ Thank you, though I am a member of the adder's so the belt is unobtainable, should I stick to penance or use something else? I thank you for the quick response!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by carraway

I'll go into it in more detail when I rewrite my guide, but for now:

Paragon's Crown
Raptorskin Harness (PIE)
Raptorskin Gloves of Slaying (DEX/ATK)
Flame Sergeant's Sash
Raptorskin Subligar (STR+DEX or VIT+DEX)
Cobalt-plated Caligae / Cobalt-plated Jackboots (HP)
Amethyst Ring x3

---

Wouldn't a Rainmaker's Tunic with crit dmg materia or Serpent Sergeant's Tunic be best for body? Also Flame Sergeant's Sarouel (assuming they're all dow) or Mercenary's Slops be the best in slot for legs?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lucie

That's what I was thinking ^^ Thank you, though I am a member of the adder's so the belt is unobtainable, should I stick to penance or use something else? I thank you for the quick response!

---

If you don't have that GC the second-BiS is Velveteen Longsash (red) (Dex : +1, Accuracy : +2). The Flame Sergeant's Sash is DEX +5 and ACC +10, so it's a far stretch but the closest you can get.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DyskoFox

Wouldn't a Rainmaker's Tunic with crit dmg materia or Serpent Sergeant's Tunic be best for body? Also Flame Sergeant's Sarouel (assuming they're all dow) or Mercenary's Slops be the best in slot for legs?

---

Pure stats are more effective point-for-point for damage; crit % with Blindside usage on a 20-minute moogle fight is anywhere from 7-10%, i.e. not worth taking crit atk over a pure stat; the Sarouel and Slops are unmeldable and 10 DEX with 1 materia melded is much better than 10 ATK.

Is the Woolen Sarouel of Invoking a possible substitute in the legs slot? DEX +4 and PTY +4 sounds better in a pure damage scenario than just DEX +5.

Totally missed that; yeah, that's a far better choice. Thanks for the heads-up.

edit: I think Rich told me to get those a few weeks ago and I ignored him

The thing about the Woolen Sarouel is it is a level 40 piece - meaning you cannot meld it with tier III or IV materia.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NoctisUmbra

The thing about the Woolen Sarouel is it is a level 50 piece - meaning you cannot meld it with tier III or IV materia.

---

40? You're right. So DEX+4/PIE+4 (+2 DEX from 1 II) vs. DEX+5 (+7 DEX from 1 IV) = Raptorskin Subligar wins still.