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

[Belial]

Awesome guide Carraway, I'm always slightly jealous of BG's progression. :P

But this solidifies you have very similar ideas as myself in regards to ARC though I've never parsed cause of all the extreme changes.

Though this has given me a slight inspiration to look into building a similar guide for LNC.

Great job.

[Rentahamster]

we might do some further testing with those as well, just to see how high our numbers can get.

They will go really high.

[carraway]

Yeah, we've already seen in the neighborhood of ~3k for a 3-arrow Light Shot.

It looks like the new debate for best-in-slot bow is going to be between Mythril Cavalry Bow and the Ifrit bow.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/24818

[Murugan]

Yeah, we've already seen in the neighborhood of ~3k for a 3-arrow Light Shot.

It looks like the new debate for best-in-slot bow is going to be between Mythril Cavalry Bow and the Ifrit bow.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/24818

I'm glad I didn't splurge on the crab bow +3, and I feel kind of guilty borrowing Chef's +2 for the past month and a half while I "decide if I want to buy one".

[carraway]

I wasn't reading closely enough -- there's a Cobalt Cavalry Bow made by Smithing :O

Plus, Ranger's gear (or Rainmaker's gear), Cobalt-plated Jackboots...lots of new gear coming out. It's going to take quite a while to revamp the guide for 1.19.

[Penguin]

Archer - Multishot - ・The effect of enhanced attack power granted by certain statuses will be shared across the number of arrows nocked.

Fully buffing 3 nocked arrows definitely isn't going to be the highest dps next patch.

That change also sucks hard for soloing as archer now

[carraway]

Yeah, we lost the HOLY SHIT BIG NUMBERS aspect of the rotation. I still think Light Shots will be disproportionately efficient with buffs, esp. with crits, but Barrage/Quick Nock will probably gain in value, and maybe Foeseeker as well.

[carraway]

At first glance, ARC seems to be the victim of a knee-jerk reaction and is now nerfed into the ground. Removing the power of Multishot, although perhaps a necessary balance change, leaves ARC bereft of the kind of burst skill damage that other classes can muster.

I'm not one to run screaming when things change and am leery of yelling NERF at the drop of a hat.. After doing a bit of raiding last night its clear ARC is not the same as it was before the patch.. It's definitely not business as usual..

It seems our light shots are on par with other classes basic moves but our weapon skills are severely lacking.. PunctureII/Bloodletter(minus the dot)/Foeseeker/Wide VolleyII all seem to be about the same dmg, about 170-250 on the Amal'jaa we were fighting last night.. Compare that to other classes tho and the dmg isn't so great.. MRD/GLD/LNC/Mages all see to be hitting for 5-700 on their weapon skills and spells..

I had taken Barrage out of my rotation quite a while ago but it seems to be doing decent dmg with each arrow hitting for 120-140 so that puts us kind of on par with others yet not AoE and has a lengthy cooldown..

I realize my experience in killing things post patch is limited as I really only had time to do a stronghold for a few hours.. I would imagine tho it's somewhat similar in other areas and other mobs..

Anyone find some things that are working post patch? I'm fairly confident if we compare notes we can devise a way to get back to the top of the DD again, or atleast competitive..

ARC doesn't have enough to keep up with other DPS classes post-patch. As Silverdeath notes, the strongest ARC-specific weaponskills, Barrage/Quick Nock, don't really match the damage coefficients of MRD/PGL/LNC skills. In addition, there is no ARC weaponskill that behaves similarly to Maim/Victimize/Doomspike; these weaponskills now actually become more efficient for damage/TP if you hold TP past 2000. Burst skill damage is the new order of the day for all classes, and ARC lacks the requisite tools.

That being said, preliminary testing seemed to demonstrate that spamming Barrage/Quick Nock(single target)/3-arrow Foeesekers while maintaining Bloodseeker uptime was the superior rotation.

[NoctisUmbra]

Curious, which arrows were used?

[carraway]

Mythril Arrows