The Artemis Bow.

[Mugsan]

So as we are all aware by now, the Artemis Bow is the weakest Relic by far and even is in the running to be benched by the Crystal Tower bow if the bow has a certain stat on it.
So I want to ask you, should it be improved? The Skill speed swapped for Crit Chance and the WD to be a little more than just +1 when upgrading to the iLvl90 version.

People seem to claim Bard is an OP class and I would agree, up until Turn4/5 where it's outclassed by almost every other DPS in terms of damage and reverts into a Support class, while this isn't actually a bad thing. I'm not sure if Bard was meant to originally be a Support type class like it was in XI or some of the stats haven't been tweaked about yet.

Mind you I'm not just saying this as a biased Bard player I'm simply asking for the general census of the Bow it self.

[EasymodeX]

Bards underrate the value of Skill Speed. SS is the weakest stat by a good margin, but it still has value.

In fact, if you create a random "I-wish" Crystal Tower bow with the following stats at the "relic" level:

WD: 40
DEX: 27
ACC: 33
CRT: 23

And compare it to the R+1:

WD: 41
DEX: 31
ACC: 37
SS: 26


The CT bow has a lower total stat weight than the r+1 by 2.8%. Even if you pretend SS has 0 value at all, the R+1 bow still wins by 2%.

Edit:

So any talk of "benching" the R+1 in favor of a lower iL CT weapon is pure QQ exaggerated whinefest.

In terms of whether the Bard bow needs a buff, /shrug. IMO the lower WD compensates for the high synergy Bard mechanics re: all the OGCDs Bards get, the high degree of Bard utility overall, and the ease of maintaining their DPS.

Is it too much? Enough? Shrug.

Bards parse pretty well (and have some things that don't accurately get parsed), so I think it's far too early to call.

[Shamirah]

Well SMN weapon compared to the turn 5 weapon is so bad. So yeah, it's not a Bard-only thing.

[Mugsan]

I understand that SS is an important stat in it's own right but it needs a huge amount to actually make any noticeable difference, compared to Crit Chance where, say 26 would actually make a difference. Though I'm unfamiliar with the crit chance formula so I may be totally wrong.

Edit: I would also like to make clear I meant benching the regular iLvl80 Relic not the +1, sorry for the confusion. If both have similar stats and the CT bow has Crit Chance more people than not are going to choose the CT one.

[EasymodeX]

compared to Crit Chance where, say 26 would actually make a difference. Though I'm unfamiliar with the crit chance formula so I may be totally wrong.

26 crit rating is something like 1.8% chance to crit.

Have you actually seen that much crit make a difference? FWIW, crits in FF14 are also only +50% damage, not +100% damage.

Crits are good, but they're overrated. You even see Monks claiming that they should stack nothing but crit, even though they have 0 synergy with the stat unlike Bards with ROB.


Edit:

But back to the main discussion ... more power to you and good luck with asking for itemization adjustments. Not sure if it's worth it though -- the net DPS difference is pretty small even if they swap the SS for CRT.

Edit2:

Effort a lot better invested to get the elemental resist debuff song to apply to WB and Flaming Arrow.

[Mugsan]

The critical damage isn't the thing I'm worried about, it's how often my Bites proc Bloodletter. Also I was never asking for an item adjustment I just wondered what other people thought about the bow and IF it should be adjusted.

[Xal]

a bard crying....

[Pellegri]

You know Easymode I'd still like to see this magical max level bard you have where you can actually put all this "theorycrafting" you have to work. Anyone can make a spreadsheet or come up with random numbers trying to label something better than the next, but all the spreadsheets in the world aren't going to mean shit when numbers and theories are pulled out of your ass just because you have a thing for an extremely subpar stat for this class.

As people have told you in various other threads SS does not affect our dots in the least(the only redeeming factor SS could have for us). The other thing you need to look at is just how much stacking SS would hurt us, it takes away from more dmg(det/crit) and gives us less RoB procs because it takes away that crit and this is because on most of our ilvl 90 pieces of gear we get the choice of SS and Acc(a completely wasted stat after having it on our bis helm/gloves/chest/wep and a single accessory) or gear that has det/crit on it both of which supplement all of our damaging attacks(and then the two det/SS pieces).

What you also seem to think is that having all this SS is a-ok for us when unlike other classes(outside of the 400 tp we get through a cd) we only have a single option when that tp runs dry(which it will extremely fast with larger amounts of SS) and that is severely gimping ourselves by needing to song and keeping it up for the 30secs or so it will take for us to get a meaningful amount back to then take it off. Now the other option is to never have to even worry about the SS option (and gimping ourselves for a significant amount of the fight), and that is by taking the far better stats(crit/det) which will actually yield better results in the first place over SS but also make it so we do not have to gimp ourselves because we do not blast through our tp.

Now to be ontopic, yes they should increase the dmg output of the +1 and alagan wep by atleast another point to put us closer to what other classes are at. I've seen a lot of these spreadsheets and I've seen where bard is on them compared to other classes with equivalent gear and all with +1 weps. And you know what I've seen? all the other dps classes being higher than bard because their weapon parses out to be a bigger increase for them than what the bard weapon does. Sure movement is nice and so is utility and maybe that's what they had in mind for bards, for us to have more utility than others but be lower on dmg, and that's fine and all but since 2.0 came out bard has been labeled as nothing more than a damage dealer and if they want it to continue like that then bumping our weapons up even a slight amount to put us more inline with other classes is what needs to happen(or they need to actually make us more inline with a real support class where we have more than a single song that only helps magic dmg or a mana song that any geared healer will laugh at ever needing).

[Kalldore]

Tbh I always thought a bard would be damage/support when I first read about them and that really intrigued me. Who needs the best damage of all if you can support the entire raid and by that way earn your spot? Ok the damage needsa to be good but not the best.

Also where do you find the loot for crystal tower? :O

[Pellegri]

Tbh I always thought a bard would be damage/support when I first read about them and that really intrigued me. Who needs the best damage of all if you can support the entire raid and by that way earn your spot? Ok the damage needsa to be good but not the best.

Also where do you find the loot for crystal tower? :O

He's making it up so it looks like something that "may" drop out of CT whether those will be the stats or not. CT gear is not known yet but the fact it is meant to be a gap closer(which wasn't needed in the first place) between DL and coil guarantees the ilvl will be 80, which the stats he listed for the wep are inline with what an ilvl 80 wep may or may not have.