The "Ideal" Archer thread

[Belial]

Thanks! I thought the DEX cap effect kinda applies to all, but it's good to know that Marauder as you mentioned make use of more DEX. I currently lowered my DEX to 80 as ARC R32, making some space for MND...etc for mages classes.

I look forward to what changes the upcoming update to classes/jobs have that might affect ARC playstyle or abilities.

Thanks again for your reply!

No problem, now the caps do indeed apply to all, but the way stats are calculated, it is an extrememly complicated and broken system. An Archer, being a bowman, naturally has good accuracy, where a lumbering Marauder with his huge axe-of-crushing-stuff is slow, and misses a lot. These are just stereotypes to the kinda class/weapon you have. But these seem to play a roll in stats as well, since like I stated before, I have used as little as 50 DEX on Rank 50 Archer with no discernable difference in how much I hit or miss. On Marauder, however, the difference between 40 - 100 actually becomes quite noticeable (it seems that with removing the race base stats that were around in FFXI, there are hidden base stats per classes, or perhaps just a strong affinity towards certain stat allocation.) Either way, the playerbase and development team have both admitted that the stat allocation system as-is, is needlessly complicated and broken.

[ShinobiHakeem]

No problem, now the caps do indeed apply to all, but the way stats are calculated, it is an extrememly complicated and broken system. An Archer, being a bowman, naturally has good accuracy, where a lumbering Marauder with his huge axe-of-crushing-stuff is slow, and misses a lot. These are just stereotypes to the kinda class/weapon you have. But these seem to play a roll in stats as well, since like I stated before, I have used as little as 50 DEX on Rank 50 Archer with no discernable difference in how much I hit or miss. On Marauder, however, the difference between 40 - 100 actually becomes quite noticeable (it seems that with removing the race base stats that were around in FFXI, there are hidden base stats per classes, or perhaps just a strong affinity towards certain stat allocation.) Either way, the playerbase and development team have both admitted that the stat allocation system as-is, is needlessly complicated and broken.

That is a very interesting observation. I did notice low accuracy with Lancer as well, which i guess compares to your case with Marauder. I will try and increase the DEX and see if it is of any help for Lancer. Otherwise, I'd keep it around 80-90 for now.

Thanks!

PS: Sorry OP for diverting a little bit into stats.

[Pes]

Mostly agree with what other people have posted here already, but something I'm an outspoken advocate of (just ask anyone in my linkshell who has been unfortunate enough to have the topic come up) for permanent status on any archer's bar is Soughspeak. I actually use Soughspeak II since Conjurer was the first class I ranked up to 50, but you get regular Soughspeak pretty early on with Conjurer.

Hate management is critical for archers, and Soughspeak works great, has a lower cooldown than Chameleon, and, in my experience, tends to work better.

That being said, I think the skill itself might actually be broken, going by the (English) description of it, anyway, but that doesn't change the fact that it works like a charm.

I also usually have Levinbolt II on my bar. It actually works pretty well situationally and can do a nice chunk of damage and leave a dot on your target, and is extra-nice if it happens to be resistant to physical, or weak against magic or lightning. Although I have to admit a lot of it just has to do with the fact that I think I look like some kind of badass Archer-mage when I do it.

Definitely a +1 for Fleet of foot, it's pretty key to my playstyle with archer when we're running around between multiple mobs grinding or on a leve or whatever. Lets me nock my arrows with multishot between mobs so all I have to do is tap raging strike before the next pull and I'm ready to go, all while I'm running to whatever it is we're killing next.

[Belial]

Mostly agree with what other people have posted here already, but something I'm an outspoken advocate of (just ask anyone in my linkshell who has been unfortunate enough to have the topic come up) for permanent status on any archer's bar is Soughspeak. I actually use Soughspeak II since Conjurer was the first class I ranked up to 50, but you get regular Soughspeak pretty early on with Conjurer.

Hate management is critical for archers, and Soughspeak works great, has a lower cooldown than Chameleon, and, in my experience, tends to work better.

That being said, I think the skill itself might actually be broken, going by the (English) description of it, anyway, but that doesn't change the fact that it works like a charm.

I also usually have Levinbolt II on my bar. It actually works pretty well situationally and can do a nice chunk of damage and leave a dot on your target, and is extra-nice if it happens to be resistant to physical, or weak against magic or lightning. Although I have to admit a lot of it just has to do with the fact that I think I look like some kind of badass Archer-mage when I do it.

Definitely a +1 for Fleet of foot, it's pretty key to my playstyle with archer when we're running around between multiple mobs grinding or on a leve or whatever. Lets me nock my arrows with multishot between mobs so all I have to do is tap raging strike before the next pull and I'm ready to go, all while I'm running to whatever it is we're killing next.

I agree that in essence this should be the case, but the way the game is in it's current state, enmity just isn't worth worrying about. Hell, go bounce around some youtube videos, ARCs can tank virtually any current content minus the ridiculous 60+ mobs that are out there. The system sucks, and hopefully once things are changed around what you say will be true and ARCs finally end up being squishy little bastards. But for now, you can almost literally just do what you want with no real penalties.

[Pes]

I agree that in essence this should be the case, but the way the game is in it's current state, enmity just isn't worth worrying about. Hell, go bounce around some youtube videos, ARCs can tank virtually any current content minus the ridiculous 60+ mobs that are out there. The system sucks, and hopefully once things are changed around what you say will be true and ARCs finally end up being squishy little bastards. But for now, you can almost literally just do what you want with no real penalties.

I'm not going to entirely disagree with you, I mean, yeah, if you're grinding random mobs or leves purely for SP, or doing any leve above like rank 40 or so, that experience for me has mostly consisted of the people in my party, and, usually, the people in 1-2 others and maybe some random people just hanging out in Ul'dah crafting or something sitting around on Vent having a big party line and goofing off, cracking jokes and having a good time while mindlessly partaking in the virtual slaughter of defenseless woodland creatures. That's just what we do to get SP and rank up, it's an MMO, that's your "job" for better or for worse right now, unfortunately. It's more fun because our LS is a bunch of really cool, fun people and we like hanging out and talking to each other. But if we want to do something that requires a little more than hitting the "1" button we'll go find some of those crazy 60+ mobs or whatever. Most of the NMs have just turned into an annoyance more than anything else, but those can still be fun sometimes too.

And I haven't actually tried tanking an NM (an actual NM, not one of those pansy mini ones, I guess I've "tanked" those if soloing them counts) as an archer, although I suppose I probably could if I really wanted to. Strictly speaking you can tank anything as just about any class if you really wanted to, all it requires is a little bit of VIT and somebody who can drop some heals on you.

Hate management while playing Archer isn't important because you can't take hits, it's important because if the mob is running after and beating up on you, then everyone else in your party has to heal you, chase the mob, or work on getting hate back, which means that other people aren't building up their TP, hitting and/or debuffing the mob, stacking things in a battle reg, keeping other linked mobs from beating the snot out of your buddy the conjurer who is now not going to be so enthusiastic the next time your HP drops, etc. But to get back, specifically, to what it means to YOU, the Archer, is that you risk focusing less on pumping whatever it is that's running at you full of arrows.

That being said, an Archer's hate-drawing prowess can come in handy in a pinch. In big, extended fights, I do occasionally intentionally do something like hit raging strike and hawk's eye to get the attention of an add that starts giving a healer next to me some trouble to draw it off of them if it looks like they're struggling, or need to focus on healing people that would be out of range if they dropped an AOE on themselves or something. If I can't take whatever it is down in one or two shots I'll just run it over to a tank, hit soughspeak and let them deal with it.