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

[carraway]

Right on, thanks for the info.

[Seiken]

Hey Carraway, I was going to write another testing/results thread for bard but I'll just make a note here.

PIE caps around 330-335 with a rate of roughly 0.55 dDamage/dPIE.

DEX caps around 295-300 with a rate of roughly 0.7 dDamage/dDEX.

Attack has no feasible cap and a similar rate to DRG/WAR/MNK of roughly 0.36 dDamage/dATK.

STR has no feasible cap and a rate of roughly 0.23-0.25 dDamage/dSTR.

Tested on R52 Halberdiers with Light Shot and Heavy Shot. Here is the raw data (needs to be tidied up a bit~)

Important to note though, Light Shot is one of Bard's main damaging abilities. Light Shot is capped VERY early on with DEX/PIE. I'm planning to test on higher ranked mobs later this week to see how the stats' rates change. And depending on that, I'll make a suggestion on which stat to focus on.

Hope this helps~

Seiken

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...pQ2RjWXc#gid=0

[Spider-Dan]

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.

I think the correlation is more likely to be to LNC:STR:PIE::ARC:PIE:DEX. As you recall, DEX didn't affect ARC WS damage, just as PIE did not affect LNC WS damage.

So the general theme should still be the same: high PIE, high ATK, DEX (and STR) where you can.

[TheFatHousecat]

So a decent/BiS "Rich Man's" set for BRD would be:

Head: Paragon's Crown
Weapon: Ifrit's Bow
Body: AF
Waist: Scarlet Sash
Hands: ATK x3 Fingerless Raptorskin Gloves of Slaying
Legs: AF (could meld PIE onto a pair of trousers, but Paeon boost is too good)
Feet: Darklight Boots
Accessories: HQ Spinel set (can exchange for Tourmaline if PIE is a better substitute), HQ Electrum Gorget, Explorer's Earrings

So the final stats would be STR 213, DEX 306, PIE 299, ATK 586+ (dependent on meld)

Please correct me if I'm mistaken!

[Seiken]

Yeah I'm still trying to brainstorm the best build as well, but one thing about the AF bonuses is that they last for the duration of the ability even if you unequip the AF. For example, you have Bard AF gloves for Minuet of Rigor. You cast Minuet of Rigor and get +43 Accuracy. You unequip the AF. You still have +43 accuracy for the duration of Minuet. I know people dread "gear swapping". But this would be once every 3 minutes, so it's not that bad.

[Meatdawg]

So a decent/BiS "Rich Man's" set for BRD would be:

Head: Paragon's Crown
Weapon: Ifrit's Bow
Body: AF
Waist: Scarlet Sash
Hands: ATK x3 Fingerless Raptorskin Gloves of Slaying
Legs: AF (could meld PIE onto a pair of trousers, but Paeon boost is too good)
Feet: Darklight Boots
Accessories: HQ Spinel set (can exchange for Tourmaline if PIE is a better substitute), HQ Electrum Gorget, Explorer's Earrings

So the final stats would be STR 213, DEX 306, PIE 299, ATK 586+ (dependent on meld)

Please correct me if I'm mistaken!

Well the goal then is to get dex to 300, then Pie to 330, with the rest in ATK/STR.


Head: Darklight Eye Patch, Paragon's Crown
Weapon: Ifrit's Bow
Body: Rainmakers Tunic with 2x Piety, Darklight Corselet
Waist: Flame Sergent Sash, Scarlet Sash
Hands: ATK x3 Fingerless Raptorskin Gloves of Slaying, or Felt Gloves
Legs: Felt Trousers with 2x str/dex
Feet: Darklight Caligae, Darklight Boots, Explorers Moccasins
Accessories: HQ Spinel set (can exchange for Tourmaline if PIE is a better substitute), HQ Electrum Gorget, Explorer's Earrings, 4 dex or 4 pie bracelet

This should let you interchange to have 300 dex, 330 pie and around 650 atk

[carraway]

Thanks a ton for the updates, Seiken and others. I'm still pretty busy when I'm not in-game but I will do my best to incorporate everyone's findings into a new guide sooner rather than later (I know I keep on saying this...sorry!)

edit: Seiken, do you have somewhere where all of your findings are collected in articles? You and Kaeko are really doing a service to the community. When I update my guide, I'd like to incorporate some knowledge from your findings with a link and credit to you and your shell.

[Seiken]

Kaeko has his live journal kanican.livejournal.com that has a lot of his stuff and stuff we've worked on together (Crit testing, Def/Vit etc). I haven't really consolidated all the testing I've done into one location, but I'm thinking of starting to use the Lodestone blog and just put everything I've done since 1.20 in there.

And glad my testing is being useful!

[Enjou]

Hey Carraway, I was going to write another testing/results thread for bard but I'll just make a note here.

PIE caps around 330-335 with a rate of roughly 0.55 dDamage/dPIE.

DEX caps around 295-300 with a rate of roughly 0.7 dDamage/dDEX.

Attack has no feasible cap and a similar rate to DRG/WAR/MNK of roughly 0.36 dDamage/dATK.

STR has no feasible cap and a rate of roughly 0.23-0.25 dDamage/dSTR.

Tested on R52 Halberdiers with Light Shot and Heavy Shot. Here is the raw data (needs to be tidied up a bit~)

Important to note though, Light Shot is one of Bard's main damaging abilities. Light Shot is capped VERY early on with DEX/PIE. I'm planning to test on higher ranked mobs later this week to see how the stats' rates change. And depending on that, I'll make a suggestion on which stat to focus on.

Hope this helps~

Seiken

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...pQ2RjWXc#gid=0

First I'd like to say to both you and Carraway thank you so much for posting information like this, and for all the time you've poured into testing this stuff out.. I have some questions and pardon my insolence if they are stupid questions :b

So let us take two bows, Ifrit's Bow and NQ Crab bow, please let me know if I am doing anything wrong..

Ifrit's Bow: DMG: 102, ATK Power +30
Crab Bow: DMG: 87, ATK Power +15, ACC + 10 DEX+35 (Double Melded)

dDMG = 15 dATK = 15 dACC = -10

Now, considering your findings @ DEX being 0.7dDMG/dDEX, this should put me @ (0.7*35) = +24.5 DMG on the crab bow, making bringing it's total output to +111.5DMG.. Is that correct?

Also, comparing the ATK bonus to your findings, which on Ifrit's Bow adds 10.8 dmg, compared to 5.4, which should bring us to these final values:

Ifrit's Bow DMG+112.8
Crab Bow DMG+116.4

Is this theoretically correct? Or am I completely off my horse? Is the dDmg in your findings the actual dmg done to mob or the dmg stat attached to each weapon?

Also you say Light shot is capped very early, does that mean <280 stat?

Again, thank you for all of this

[Seiken]

Sorry for the confusion; I've been using some poor terminology. When I gave a rate of 0.7dDamage/dDEX, I was implying that you do 0.7 more damage points on the mob. The actual "Damage" stat that you see on weapons is a completely different stat/term. The "Damage" stat on weapons is not the dDamage I was referring to in 0.7 dDamage/dDEX.

If I am talking about a change in the weapon "Damage" stat, I will usually use dDMG or DMG.

Hope this helps clear things up!