The Artemis Bow.

[Kalldore]

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.

Ok just read it quickly and got a bit surprised. Then i'm on track.

[EasymodeX]

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.

Don't be mad I can play a Bard better than most players who have a level 50 Bard :\.

Anyone can make a spreadsheet or come up with random numbers trying to label something better than the next,

But most people can't do it as well as I can.

you have a thing for an extremely subpar stat for this class.

I laugh when people claim it has 0 value because they're ignorant tools.

As people have told you in various other threads SS does not affect our dots in the least

Amazing new revelation!

(the only redeeming factor SS could have for us)

1. Roughly 30% of Bard damage is from DOTs. Another 11% are OGCDs. The rest of Bard damage is enhanced by Skill Speed.
2. You get better DOT uptime with some skill speed. Fantastic new revelation!

The other thing you need to look at is just how much stacking SS would hurt us,

Really? I should look at this? Why? I've already estimated the value of SS for Bards to be relatively poor compared to all other stats (the ~0.13 range compared to crit's ~0.23).

However, poor != 0.

it takes away from more dmg(det/crit)

I'd give up 10 det/crit for 10,000 skill speed. I'd even give up 10 det or crit for 20 skill speed.

Interesting that SS is itemized at roughly 1:1 with crit, and 1.5:1 with det so this choice is uncommon.

and gives us less RoB procs

Ironically, ROB procs are only ~10% of a Bard's damage output. In addition, the majority of a Bard's crit is from their base stat (341), Straight Shot (worth 144 crt), with a side of IR (worth 72 crt on average). Pretty sure your general proc rate won't change much with that 20 crit rating on a piece of gear.

most of our ilvl 90 pieces of gear we get the choice of SS and Acc

I don't really care. It's up to Bards to assess Bard gear, bro.

[Mugsan]

1. Roughly 30% of Bard damage is from DOTs. Another 11% are OGCDs. The rest of Bard damage is enhanced by Skill Speed.
2. You get better DOT uptime with some skill speed. Fantastic new revelation!

You DO understand how Bards DPS works right? It's almost entirely based on Procs. Skill Speed only really helps to apply the DoTs in the first place, not to actually make them hit critical and reset Bloodletter. For Bards Skill Speed is almost useless compared to Critical Chance.

[pandabearcat]

You DO understand how Bards DPS works right? It's almost entirely based on Procs. Skill Speed only really helps to apply the DoTs in the first place, not to actually make them hit critical and reset Bloodletter. For Bards Skill Speed is almost useless compared to Critical Chance.

Mugsan I don't think you understand how bard dps works.

At the MOST, if your bloodletters procced every single oGCD (which btw, can't happen, you'll drop off after 7 BLs), at MOST Bloodletters will be 50% of your damage, not even counting DoTs. If you count DoTs its <35% or so of your damage, even if it procced every single time.

The fact is that bloodletter isn't as good as you think it is.

It scales...almost (almost being key here) linearly with crit rate. There is no exponential scaling here, or anything to that effect. In fact if anything, it scales (RoB procs that is) logarithmically while total BLs scales linearly with crit.

Crit is...OKAY, it is bolstered by RoB procs certainly, but besides that it is only "okay". Bards do value crit more than some classes, but because of Bard's extremely low base weapon damage, determination tends to be a bit better because it is a flat increase to all your damage, independent of WD and Dex.

So as you get more Dex, WD, and Det, crit becomes more valuable.

But even then, you vastly overestimate BL's contribution to your damage.

Look here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...d-Crit-and-RoB

1% crit increases the number of BL procs you get by slightly more than 1, in six minutes. That is a MINISCULE difference in dps for 1% crit.

EDIT: With all that being said, crit is nice, but not the greatest thing ever.

Det is nice too, about even with crit.

SS is still bad, but its not going to somehow lower your dps.

And people forget the best thing about the artemis bow: it looks awesome, has an awesome animation, and does very satisfying click click click as it unfolds.

[Mugsan]

I completely understand what you're saying and I know 1% crit wont make a whole world of difference but it's a damn lot better than the 26 SS we get from the weapon and yes I do overestimate my BL's damage but it's also pretty fun to consistently be in the firing animation when you get several procs in a row.

Would also like to say while it doesn't make the that much DPS higher, having BL off CD a lot makes this class feel a lot more fun to play as I don't have to sit around and wait for the GCD to finish on my Heavy Shot. Cycling through BL-HS-BL-HS feels strangely satisfying.

very satisfying click click click as it unfolds.

and yes god damn yes, spent a good few minutes listening to it when I first got mine.

[ExyleSoldr]

You DO understand how Bards DPS works right?

No, they don't. Because they're a Lancer; not a Bard.

Can we all just collectively agree to stop reading Easymode's troll posts? We all understand that you're some super 1337 spreadsheet 360 no-scope ladder stall master, but seriously, get Bard to 50, then come talk to us. Maybe then people will take you a little more seriously.

[EasymodeX]

You DO understand how Bards DPS works right? It's almost entirely based on Procs. Skill Speed only really helps to apply the DoTs in the first place, not to actually make them hit critical and reset Bloodletter.

Wow, and here I thought Heavy Shot and Straight Shot were doing 45% of Bard damage.

For Bards Skill Speed is almost useless compared to Critical Chance.

You mean 1.7:1 useless right? Cause I agree, a 1:1.7 valuation for SS vs. CRT is pretty weak.

[pandabearcat]

For what its worth, I agree with Easymode's math. His model matches pretty well with my simulation, and I think the difference can be attributed to the variable "worth" of RoB procs, whether they are earlier or later determines how much time you save. They are not independent of hardcasted BLs. I tried to probability it but I hate probability so it was hard for me =P

I don't think anyone is trying to bash a class or anything here, but we are all in it to try to get as much of the obfuscated information out there as possible.

That being said the reason there is argument is because it is a hard fact to hear, and that is the problem with math, it often gives us hard facts that are difficult to deal with (think of the prisoner dilemma, or the monty hall problem), where the math goes against everything we intuitively know.

The effect of additional RoB procs on the worth of Crit are low at best, miniscule at worst. It simply is not worth it to drop everything for crit.

Crit is still probably out best offstat because its easier to get crit than det, and SS is bad for essentially every class (perhaps not BLMs, but idk).

But it is not like, 10x better than SS, it does not mean SS is worthless, etc.

As long as you are not running out of TP by the end of the fight (as I demonstrated in the TP thread), SS is worth SOMETHING, and that something is supposedly about half as much as crit.

We all want to have a billion crit and have BL firing off all the time, its fun and looks awesome.

But that simply will not happen, and we shouldn't drop everything else to pump crit.

[EasymodeX]

FWIW, CRT's something like 25-35% more effective on Bards than it is for DRGs and MNKs (and SS is 15-20% worse on Bards than it is on DRGs/MNKs).

[Mugsan]

But that simply will not happen, and we shouldn't drop everything else to pump crit.

Yes I agree that dropping literally everything for Crit is bad, if what you say about the falling off of BL is true. I just meant for the weapon not for the armours or anything. As this thread was originally about people's opinions of the weapon and if it should be changed or not. I didn't mean to start a discussion about Skill Speed vs Crit Chance.