Quick question about The Arrow card.

Heya, just wanted to ask real quick if The Arrow card benefits non caster dps or is The Arrow only really beneficial for casters?

Arrow increases skill speed, spell speed, and auto-attack speed, so good for everyone (even healers)

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Originally Posted by Renryuu

Heya, just wanted to ask real quick if The Arrow card benefits non caster dps or is The Arrow only really beneficial for casters?

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It benefits everyone but some classes benefit from it more than others. Jobs that come to mind that The Arrow is more beneficial for would be BLM (infinite resources, go!), NIN and MNK (more attack speed, go!), and SAM at a lesser degree than NIN and MNK (probably offset with just how raw powerful they are).

I admit I don't know enough about the DPS kits to fully know how the benefits weigh, this is just mostly on my thoughts from the limited knowledge I have for 4.0 DPS kits and my knowledge from the 3.X toolkits.

Well any info is better than no info, so I thank you kindly. I had just been throwing it on the casters and RRing it when with melee, but if it's something that even melee and ranged physical can benefit from, I'll use it more often on them instead of just tossing it for something else.

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Originally Posted by Renryuu

Well any info is better than no info, so I thank you kindly. I had just been throwing it on the casters and RRing it when with melee, but if it's something that even melee and ranged physical can benefit from, I'll use it more often on them instead of just tossing it for something else.

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With the new Spear changes, Arrow & Spear will be the dps buff cards you will want to use when Balance is not available. In 8man content you generally want an expanded RR from Spire/Ewer, and in 4man you will want the 150% potency or 200% duration RR.

With the new changes to Balance, there'll be more reason to use Arrow. Arrow's 10% attack speed doesn't directly translate into 10% additional damage but it'll be comparable. Maybe 7-8% increase for the duration depending on the job. It's still better than trying to fish for Balance all day.

I'll point out that The Arrow isn't all that glorious as it seems to be on black mage. While they can empty their MP quicker while in astral fire, they're still gated by the MP recovery intervals during Umbral Ice. If anything Summoners and Red Mages would be a better target for more consistent result. Summoners only when they have their bahamut out or you know it'll be out soon.

For job specifics:
Monks can do a double bootshine rotation with the added speed
Ninja are sort of the same as Monk in this sense
Dragoons tend to get confused as their rotation is significantly more precise compared to other melees
No idea about Samurai yet, need to do some proper testing and questioning with an "expert"

And against all logic; tanks tend to be pretty good targets for The Arrow if they are the kind of players who don't tank in their appropriate tank stances. If enmity is an issue, the added speed from The Arrow allows them to stay out of tank stance longer or the DPS don't have to hold back

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

With the new changes to Balance, there'll be more reason to use Arrow. Arrow's 10% attack speed doesn't directly translate into 10% additional damage but it'll be comparable. Maybe 7-8% increase for the duration depending on the job. It's still better than trying to fish for Balance all day.

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So much this. I hated balance-or-bust. With Spear/Arrow being thrown into consideration, I think there will overall be a higher buff duration as using anything other than Balance will no longer feel wasteful

I think I'll just tack onto Lyrica's comment with an addendum - the performance of an AST's card is directly proportional to the person who receives them. A good tank with powerful DPS may get more benefit from a card than a true DPS with the same card due to skill level. Of course there's no way to gauge that to be perfectly honest but it's something to consider as you continue to delve deeper and deeper into AST optimization.