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

[carraway]

Sorry for the lack of updates and attention; RL prevented me from playing in the interim between moogle and 1.21. Now that 1.21 is upon us, I will try to eventually rewrite pertinent parts of the guide to incorporate BRD.

I can say that from initial impressions, job balance as far as DPS output is concerned is pretty solid. BRD can do slightly more DPS than ARC was able to, but other jobs like MNK and DRG gained more pure DPS abilities than BRD. One BRD is definitely a huge asset to any party, regardless of composition; some encounters can benefit from two. Three is probably overkill unless multiple party members must have all three songs. If anyone was afraid that BRD would transform ARC into a pure support class, that is assuredly not the general case. In most situations, a BRD should be maintaining maximum DPS while also maintaining 100% song uptime, and perhaps covering spot Cures, using Sacred Prism buffs/Cure, etc. The proper FFXI analogue for playstyle would actually be closer to COR than BRD.

- Paeon (with leg bonus, haven't tested without) is +60 TP per tick for 3 minutes, which is huge and well worth the 1k TP cost even for a solo BRD with no other physical DPS in the party.

- I haven't tested song radii at all but I imagine that they are circular, and look to be about 10 yalms in range, which means that, like in FFXI, you can kind of venn diagram out your songs. One song per BRD, but one BRD can maintain two or more songs on different parts of the party so long as everyone isn't standing exactly on top of each other.

- Accuracy appears to have changed enough so that BRD accuracy on high-level stuff is around ~95% instead of 99% -- not sure if the cap has changed at all, or if we need more accuracy to get back to 99%; comparatively, melee physical accuracy seems lower but, again, I haven't done enough testing.

- You can Quelling Strike away your Raging Strike buff then immediately reapply Raging Strike before firing an attack.

[Kikosho]

Ballad is 20 MP a tic, 26 with Body. 40 MP a tic with Battle Voice. Didn't get to test it with body on. As for stats, you get an extra 10 PIE for being BRD.

[carraway]

Cool, thanks for the info.

Also, after discussing with a few people, I was probably wrong in saying BRD is flat-out better DPS than ARC, because you do lose Keen Flurry for Quick Nock and Blood for Blood (which is, for the record, a flat attack power increase of some kind, not a flat damage increase). However, you gain Rain of Death, which makes up most of the difference, and you trade Invigorate for Paeon. An ARC with Paeon should outperform a BRD for single-target DPS. However, in any situation with more than one mob, BRD wins due to having that additional AoE ability, I think.

[Spider-Dan]

Also, after discussing with a few people, I was probably wrong in saying BRD is flat-out better DPS than ARC, because you do lose Keen Flurry for Quick Nock and Blood for Blood (which is, for the record, a flat attack power increase of some kind, not a flat damage increase). However, you gain Rain of Death, which makes up most of the difference, and you trade Invigorate for Paeon. An ARC with Paeon should outperform a BRD for single-target DPS. However, in any situation with more than one mob, BRD wins due to having that additional AoE ability, I think.

Even against multiple mobs, ARC being able to use Keen Flurry on Wide Volley should beat BRD, should it not? QN is the "standard" choice for Keen, but that's really presuming single-target; on 2 targets, I think WV is barely better than QN, and on 3+ targets, WV dominates. So in a 3 minute cycle, it breaks down to:

ARC- WV x 4, QN
BRD- QN, RoD, WV x2

I'm not sure if BRD does more damage than ARC (straight up) on QN and WV, or if RoD outdamages WV, but offhand it looks like ARC should still win out.

[NoctisUmbra]

Even against multiple mobs, ARC being able to use Keen Flurry on Wide Volley should beat BRD, should it not? QN is the "standard" choice for Keen, but that's really presuming single-target; on 2 targets, I think WV is barely better than QN, and on 3+ targets, WV dominates. So in a 3 minute cycle, it breaks down to:

ARC- WV x 4, QN
BRD- QN, RoD, WV x2

I'm not sure if BRD does more damage than ARC (straight up) on QN and WV, or if RoD outdamages WV, but offhand it looks like ARC should still win out.

ARC's damage is irrelevant, even if it was better than BRD it would have no real use as a DD in party when everything else beats it. Why ARC DD when BLM DD?

[carraway]

BLM has higher burst DPS than BRD, but the job is limited by MP. Of course, against high-armor targets, nothing really comes close to BLM. Regardless, a question like that is incredibly pointless in a thread dedicated to min/maxing one particular class/job, not min/maxing a party composition in general. Most LSs will run into personal considerations and encounter limitations far before hitting the theoretical DPS ceiling of any class, and even then, the enmity ceiling is often lower than the DPS ceiling.

As for ARC vs BRD, you might be right, Spider-Dan. I haven't really put any serious testing or thinking into it because the difference is marginal enough that an additional song usually trumps other considerations. Perhaps after a bit more time with the patch we can get further into the nitty-gritty.

[Spider-Dan]

- Paeon (with leg bonus, haven't tested without) is +60 TP per tick for 3 minutes, which is huge and well worth the 1k TP cost even for a solo BRD with no other physical DPS in the party.

I believe BV Paeon (with legs) is 90TP/tick, as you neither gain nor lose TP out of battle with it active.

Ballad was also mentioned in another post; BV Ballad (with body) is 51MP/tick.

- You can Quelling Strike away your Raging Strike buff then immediately reapply Raging Strike before firing an attack.

If you do this, you lose (half of) the Quelling Strike effect, as reactivating Raging Strike cancels the Quelling Strike buff. To elaborate, Quelling Strike now has two distinct functions:

- When you activate Quelling Strike, it takes your current level of Raging Strike bonus (0, 1, 2, or 3) and converts that into an immediate TP gain (level x 100TP). This is new to 1.21.
- When you land an attack with the Quelling Strike buff active, that attack has reduced enmity gain and you gain 450TP (or lose 450 less TP than you would have). This is unchanged from 1.20.

So in summary, ideally you should aim to have a L3 Raging Strike buff, use Quelling Strike (which cancels Raging Strike and converts it into 300TP), fire Quelling Strike (which gives a 450TP bonus), then reactivate Raging Strike.

[carraway]

Yeah you're right Spider-Dan, thanks for the correction.

[carraway]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post607045

Great read, testing with excellent methodology by Seiken. If we extrapolate with DEX replacing STR, DEX to ~350 then going for ATK with incidental PIE sounds like the way to go. BRD benefits from not needing extraneous ACC gear as well.

[Kaeko]

The PIE cap for ARC is around 330. I'm sure Valk will drop by and say something but ARC is 330PIE/295DEX.