Arc/Brd gear thread

[Churchill]

Because the BLM burn strategy is a really poor method of killing Garuda and is no where near as 100% as killing a set of sisters and moving on. We can get Garuda to the same HP level as 4xBLM with only 3xBLM and we still kill sisters because it's more consistent and has less of Murphy's Law.

And, you don't do 20-25k on Garuda. Archer doesn't have the combo's available to push damage like a real DD would - even a DRG who does half plumes/half Garuda would have a hard time breaking 25k without a Gae Bolg. (22k Garuda, 4.5k Superna, 9-15k Plumes is pretty normal)

Crab Bow and AF doesn't one shot plumes, so you're just throwing what you feel out there and not basing it on reality.

[Darkillumina]

Because the BLM burn strategy is a really poor method of killing Garuda and is no where near as 100% as killing a set of sisters and moving on. We can get Garuda to the same HP level as 4xBLM with only 3xBLM and we still kill sisters because it's more consistent and has less of Murphy's Law.

And, you don't do 20-25k on Garuda. Archer doesn't have the combo's available to push damage like a real DD would - even a DRG who does half plumes/half Garuda would have a hard time breaking 25k without a Gae Bolg. (22k Garuda, 4.5k Superna, 9-15k Plumes is pretty normal)

Crab Bow and AF doesn't one shot plumes, so you're just throwing what you feel out there and not basing it on reality.

I don't agree with this. If you got a good group who is well-versed in the burn you can pretty much spam the fight without dying. If you have two bards who are on the same page and communicating you can pretty much deal with any of the plumage quite easily. If you have decent black mages and a tank who can pull the add's and hallowed ground everything on top of this you can pretty much spam the fight non-stop with no deaths.

At first, I questioned the validity of this method and preferred normal, sister killing methods as well, but after mastering it, I can absolutely say it is much more efficient and easier than a killing the sister's run. All our runs are clean as well. Hell, we're bringing in people who aren't very good players putting them on white mage and getting them their first win. As a bonus we do this so fast that all our food carries over for a full second run.

So basically for this method I use the Storm Lieutenant's bow with bonus active, double attack iv gauntlets and some other things. After food I'm at about 650 attack. I've done this with garuda's spine but since Garuda dies so fast the higher attack speed on Garuda's doesn't kick in and you actually LOSE damage due to the weak light shots.

On this method if a bard and his partner are good at taking care of plumes they can add to the DPS on Garuda itself making the fight go even faster. The only issue with this method is you need to have two bards who can listen and communicate well with each other. We're killing Garuda in less than 5:45 seconds like this.

[Onisake]

Because the BLM burn strategy is a really poor method of killing Garuda and is no where near as 100% as killing a set of sisters and moving on. We can get Garuda to the same HP level as 4xBLM with only 3xBLM and we still kill sisters because it's more consistent and has less of Murphy's Law.

Fair enough. we're doing blm burn. considering we're getting some success; strategy doesn't matter as much as results. we're seeing people use the more accepted strategy and getting about the same success rate. we can argue semantics but i honestly don't think it matters how you kill her as long as it gets done.

We're not really here to discuss garuda strategies. we're here to discuss gear. the whole point of gear is for DPS.

How you choose to calculate that is up to you. Because not all fights are like Garuda, and i'm ultimately gearing up for To Kill a Raven (Hard) i'm more concerned with single target, non-trash damage. IE: what i'm doing to Garuda.

And, you don't do 20-25k on Garuda. Archer doesn't have the combo's available to push damage like a real DD would - even a DRG who does half plumes/half Garuda would have a hard time breaking 25k without a Gae Bolg. (22k Garuda, 4.5k Superna, 9-15k Plumes is pretty normal)

i said me AND the other bard. that's combined damage.

If you read my other post i said i'm averaging around 17k damage on Garuda. If you add in ~15 plumes at ~640 damage each that's another ~9k damage. so total damage is in the 25k neighborhood.

breaking 20k on BRD should not be hard. I'm not dumping TP as efficiently as i could be for fear of missing an RoD. but honestly worst case scenario if i dumped 1k TP with a heavy shot as plumes spawned i could build it up fast enough to RoD before they do enough damage to the pillar to matter. I could probably push out another 3k damage if i dumped TP in a more risky fashion.

We're getting to the final phase consistently. so w/e we're doing while plumes are spawning is working. no need to change any of that. I could artificially bump my numbers higher by killing plumes i don't need to. but what's the point? i don't need to stroke my e-peen that much. I'd rather put DPS where it matters.

Crab Bow and AF doesn't one shot plumes, so you're just throwing what you feel out there and not basing it on reality.

i also said you probably don't need to one shot plumes. >.>;;

if brd is only killing plumes gear does not matter. period. end of story. killing the plumes is not hard. if you can build 3ktp in 30 seconds and then pick off a number of plumes with either light shot or wide volley you'll be fine.

I've had some other bards come in with AF only and NQ accessories and SGT bows. they do roughly half my DPS. they are killing plumes fine. Most of the time they are killing more plumes than I am. but i'm also not killing plumes that aren't on my pillar, unless the other brd is in dire need of backup.

but we still lose these more than we win with the sub-par bards. So i'm gonna stand by that the damage brd outputs on Garuda does in fact matter. even more so when she has ~1% HP when we wipe and the other BRD is doing 7k damage to Garuda compared to my 15k