Quote Originally Posted by Krixus View Post
Can I see the math for this also? In ffxi haste always trumped everything in terms of dps, why would it be different here? I've always assumed arrow was greater than balance, but I'm willing to be proved otherwise. I just don't know how that would be calculated when it all depends on the buffs the player has on at the time, their current attack speed increases.

For example in ffxi if you added 2% haste to a player with 23% gear haste, it would have a much greater effect than adding 2% when they had 20% gear haste. So maybe using arrow on a job with huton has a much greater effect as well?
Here's some quick napkin math.

In general, you can pretty much say 10% Haste increases a player's output by 11.1% for the duration of the buff (100/90 = 1.111) but that number changes based on WHO gets the Haste.

For example, Haste does nothing with the final damage of the DoTs. It decreases cast time, but the final damage output of a DoT will be same regardless of haste or not. And since most DPS in this game have at least one DoT that is part of their rotation, this already devalues that to a slight degree. This means Arrow is less useful for high DoT jobs like SMN. Unfortunately, this number isn't the easiest to calculate via napkin math, but not impossible either. For general purpose discussion, let's just say the more DoTs a DPS has, the less potent Haste will be for them.

However, Haste stacking with an Huton'd / Grease Lightning'd MNK would result in a higher DPS increase due to the nature of how Haste works. For example, Huton grants a 15% Haste. Then giving a Ninja the Arrow buff is actually a 13.3% increase for the duration of the buff (85/75 = 1.13333333). This value is slightly inflated due to the fact both NIN and MNK do have a DoT or two (I think? I don't play either) in their rotation. In the end, this means you have to be particular with who you use Arrow. Expanded Arrow could be more or less beneficial depending on the raid composition and Enhanced / Extended Arrow can be very potent for MNKs and NINs.

10% boost to damage is just that, 10%. This damage affects DoTs, auto attacks, weaponskills, magic damage, etc. and will give a flat 10% increase and thus much easier to work with, though also at a glance less potent than Arrow.