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

[Zdenka]

BFB was doing +75 damage for me today on moogles comparing 1 light shot to the next, but I am full STR I guess maybe a modifier? Was +100 on the key pop items for some reason.

Btw I clocked DPS in Phase1 with my full STR/Atk build and got to 74 DPS (slightly messing up rotation). Perfect rotation I could get to 82-84 probably but nothing higher than that. (298 STR, 268 DEX, 545 ATK)

Going to regear full DEX/PIE and note the differences.

[carraway]

No reason to make it personal; I don't even have an Ifrit's Bow or Mogbow.

But if you have more than two archers, you are going to slip on the Bloodletter cooldown (80s, staggered by 30s = fine for two archers, not fine for three archers). And if all three archers are slipping on a cooldown by 10s, I don't see how the gain from Bloodletter procs makes up for the loss in personal DPS. As far as I can tell, Bloodletter does zero damage during the debuff and still just procs the ending damage.

I acknowledged the power of BRs once you proved it. I have no issues admitting when I'm wrong. But we're all trying to maximize overall damage output.

[Murugan]

No reason to make it personal; I don't even have an Ifrit's Bow or Mogbow.

But if you have more than two archers, you are going to slip on the Bloodletter cooldown (80s, staggered by 30s = fine for two archers, not fine for three archers). And if all three archers are slipping on a cooldown by 10s, I don't see how the gain from Bloodletter procs makes up for the loss in personal DPS. As far as I can tell, Bloodletter does zero damage during the debuff and still just procs the ending damage.

I acknowledged the power of BRs once you proved it. I have no issues admitting when I'm wrong. But we're all trying to maximize overall damage output.

Why would you assume it does 0 damage just because it doesn't show up in the log? Tests on Batraal and deepvoid showed that the Bloodletter DoT did significant damage.

579 damage on WHISKERWALL is 100-200 more damage than bloodletter itself is doing, it requires no animation. Frankly I find your reasoning for stressing over cooldowns (once again) to be needless. Yes you want to keep everything on cooldown, but I can manage that for the most part just fine without overwriting an existing bloodletter buff. The damage from Bloodletter is good (especially on Whiskerwall) but it falls off on most moogles. So even skipping it on moogles like pomburner and pukna will make a negligible difference in your personal DPS while you can gain thousands of damage over the course of the encounter through bloodletter.

If you require proof fix your parser so that it shows bloodletter end damage in a line by itself, and try staggering to see the difference. There is no difference between now and 1.18 in regards to bloodletter. The end damage+DoT when it lands is still higher (for the most part, maybe not on many low defense moogles though but people can apply some logic on their own without having to rely on a static "rotation" in all situations) than the shot itself.

The free TP damage from Combos is nice yes. But I've proof positive through parses that you can parse similar numbers even neglecting the piercing lines completely (as an archer in my LS proved) if all you are concerned about is "overall DPS". The only time that combo damage really shows its full strength that would necessitate maybe disregarding everything else is against the high defense moogles because light shot damage falls off so quickly when calculating your attack versus their defense.

For the most part however, when you are giving advice to endgame archers the damage of the many outweighs the damage of you. You are under the assumption that somehow a five players playing a set blindered rotation (no matter how much min/max experience they have) gives you an advantage over if you would try actually coordinating your DD. People proved the fallacy of this line of thinking to you once, but yet you still cling to it.

You may not need it to beat fights, but this is a guide and you are quite frankly offering ill advice by once again offhandedly disregarding group mechanics because you personally in BG are already capable of trivializing fights without it.

Show me some actual evidence, not anecdotal garbage about "personal DPS" that it represents a significant loss by showing evidence that you cannot fire as many bloodletters during the encounter by simply staggering 20 seconds at the beginning. Because it would have to be 2-3 bloodletters to overcome the damage gained through the DoT and end bursts and unless you are purposely sabotaging your own parses that is impossible.

[NoctisUmbra]

Calm down, Murugan. Relax.

I'm with Carraway on this one. In the time of Batraal and Ogre it made sense, what with the damage Archer dealt coming primarily from Light Shot by a large margin Bloodletter was really the only thing to stagger and it was easy enough to do on a single target with 4-5 Archers even.

It's different now however. Setting aside the fact that you already have to be mindful of so many things, Archer's damage no longer primarily comes from Light Shots - not nearly to the extent as it used to - and with the combo system we have now DPS is increased through efficient TP use by managing combo WS cooldowns well.

The typical Moogle fight now has 4-5 Archers that converge on one moogle at a time. If you've got 2 Archers holding off on using their available Bloodletter at the end of a combo to prevent overwriting, you've already lost the amount of damage the end damage will proc.

One thing I can understand, however, is perhaps having the Archers agree upon a certain order to which they execute their 3 main combos. This way, if all 3 Archers use the Bloodletter combo on the same Moogle at the same time and move onto other combos, the last Bloodletter that procs on the target will be able to go all the way to end damage. The problem with that is, various aspects of the fight requiring you to bind certain Moogles or kite other ones at certain times will offset such synchronization, making it no longer an efficient choice.

As for the GLA or MRD Moogles, dealing with them with the use of a THM in the party is much more efficient than any amount of Bloodletter staggering you can come up with.

In conclusion, it's not that attempting to stagger Bloodletters is a bad thing, or that it will drop party DPS by a heavy amount or any such thing. Simply put, in it most efficient use throughout the Moogle fight, it essentially matches the DPS output of a band of archers freely managing their cooldowns; it does not surpass it.

[Murugan]

Calm down, Murugan. Relax.

I'm with Carraway on this one. In the time of Batraal and Ogre it made sense, what with the damage Archer dealt coming primarily from Light Shot by a large margin Bloodletter was really the only thing to stagger and it was easy enough to do on a single target with 4-5 Archers even.

It's different now however. Setting aside the fact that you already have to be mindful of so many things, Archer's damage no longer primarily comes from Light Shots - not nearly to the extent as it used to - and with the combo system we have now DPS is increased through efficient TP use by managing combo WS cooldowns well.

The typical Moogle fight now has 4-5 Archers that converge on one moogle at a time. If you've got 2 Archers holding off on using their available Bloodletter at the end of a combo to prevent overwriting, you've already lost the amount of damage the end damage will proc.

One thing I can understand, however, is perhaps having the Archers agree upon a certain order to which they execute their 3 main combos. This way, if all 3 Archers use the Bloodletter combo on the same Moogle at the same time and move onto other combos, the last Bloodletter that procs on the target will be able to go all the way to end damage. The problem with that is, various aspects of the fight requiring you to bind certain Moogles or kite other ones at certain times will offset such synchronization, making it no longer an efficient choice.

As for the GLA or MRD Moogles, dealing with them with the use of a THM in the party is much more efficient than any amount of Bloodletter staggering you can come up with.

In conclusion, it's not that attempting to stagger Bloodletters is a bad thing, or that it will drop party DPS by a heavy amount or any such thing. Simply put, in it most efficient use throughout the Moogle fight, it essentially matches the DPS output of a band of archers freely managing their cooldowns; it does not surpass it.

How do you back that up?

You have ~571 damage regardless of defense and an unknown amount of DoT damage. If it is up you simply don't overwrite it, or by staggering by 20 seconds at the start since Carraway is convinced the secret to Archer damage is strictly following a set rotation, and never missing a second (which I'm confused because you seem unable to do according to the bolded part above) you can still do that. I don't think that is quite as important to Archer damage as knowing when to do what moves, but that's my opinion that I back up with the belief that:

• 571 + DoT damage is a higher number than 200 which is honestly the most that you can "miss out on" by losing a bloodletter.
  
• Except that I really don't feel I lose any bloodletters, since my bloodletter timers doesn't generally line up with the exact start/finish of the fight anyways so the time it takes me to stagger or not use the weapon skill if a Bloodletter DoT is on the mob is in fact not affecting my overall damage at all.
  
  Maybe if in the process of looking at a mob to determine if it had bloodletter, or even /telling an archer an order for us to use bloodletter I fell out of my chair and hit my head on something I could see me totally missing a full cooldown's worth of that red hot gotta-have it bloodletter front end damage action.

But your argument is that you can't do that because you instead somehow lose over 571+ damage through some as yet unexplained way. So I'm guessing you also believe it is completely stupid not to use Bloodletter if it is available and the Moogle you are fighting is about to die (even though you have others right after it)?

And this is a guideline that you two believe all endgame archers should follow?

[NoctisUmbra]

How do you back that up?

You have ~571 damage regardless of defense and an unknown amount of DoT damage. If it is up you simply don't overwrite it, or by staggering by 20 seconds at the start since Carraway is convinced the secret to Archer damage is strictly following a set rotation, and never missing a second (which I'm confused because you seem unable to do according to the bolded part above) you can still do that. I don't think that is quite as important to Archer damage as knowing when to do what moves, but that's my opinion that I back up with the belief that:

• 571 + DoT damage is a higher number than 200 which is honestly the most that you can "miss out on" by losing a bloodletter.
  
• Except that I really don't feel I lose any bloodletters, since my bloodletter timers doesn't generally line up with the exact start/finish of the fight anyways so the time it takes me to stagger or not use the weapon skill if a Bloodletter DoT is on the mob is in fact not affecting my overall damage at all.
  
  Maybe if in the process of looking at a mob to determine if it had bloodletter, or even /telling an archer an order for us to use bloodletter I fell out of my chair and hit my head on something I could see me totally missing a full cooldown's worth of that red hot gotta-have it bloodletter front end damage action.

But your argument is that you can't do that because you instead somehow lose over 571+ damage through some as yet unexplained way. So I'm guessing you also believe it is completely stupid not to use Bloodletter if it is available and the Moogle you are fighting is about to die (even though you have others right after it)?

And this is a guideline that you two believe all endgame archers should follow?

First off, discount the DoT. Overwriting Bloodletter makes you miss out on the end damage, however the DoT is kept up. The DoT itself is of no consequence to this very debate as both sides involve having it up. This discussion pertains to the worth of the end damage.

Nowhere do I say that one should never pay any attention to the mob's debuffs and make decisions throughout the fight. There are many reasons to hold off on cooldowns - sometimes without a choice even - so if a Moogle is about to die and you have Bloodletter available it would be stupid to waste it on that Moogle.

What I am against is going well out of your way for the end damage. If you use Bloodletter on a Moogle and no other archer happens to have it available to use for the duration of it's DoT, the end damage will proc anyway. If you have Archers with all their cooldowns on their combos used up and are up to Bloodletter, them deciding not to use it because of overwriting is 200+ damage that didn't happen. This holding back, provided the Moogle isn't about to drop dead, already decreases the worth of that Bloodletter end damage by 200+. If during any given DoT duration, 2 archers held back on hitting Bloodletter for this very reason, you already basically broke even with Bloodletter.

Now, Bloodletter has an 80 second cooldown and is not the preferred WS on which to use Keen Flurry. Considering that, as well as the relatively short duration of the DoT it inflicts, you would require an ironically well-timed staggering of coincidental Bloodletter overwrites to make it so a Moogle does not get hit by that end damage. More often than not, Archers will hit their Bloodletters seconds apart, and this will allow the Moogle to suffer that end damage.

The point is, while the end damage of Bloodletter is a delicious-sounding 570~, it is only worth it if you're not reducing your DPS to allow it. Reducing DPS to increase DPS is ridiculous. If you can find a way to have all the Archers in the party manage the Bloodletter DoT on each Moogle without overwriting it, and do so without ever having to hold back on their DPS and Damage per TP, then the more power to you. To each his own.

My LS has Moogle on farm basically at this point, with our kills having become much swifter and smoother, and we do so not paying extra mind to the upkeep of Bloodletter for end damage. There may be fights where it will matter a great deal - Thornmarch isn't one of those.

[Penguin]

Just an FYI while i was testing BFB i was also using bloodletter and at no point did it do "dot" damage, the only damage bloodletter does is still the end tick after 30 seconds.

Also i can personally see Bloodletter giving a higher benefit if staggered when using 2 archers and on a fight with only 1 enemy or on extremely high defense enemies where weaponskills are doing far less damage, however on the moogle fight i think if you are bringing 4-5 archers like we do and most LS's do than organizing a rotation that wont overall lower the parties damage output would take a decent amount of practice and in most cases will barely break even with having all archers just spam cooldowns.

Most moogles in phase 1 for us die too fast for Bloodletter to take effect the main benefit would be in phase 2 where the moogles generally take longer to die due to kiting and controlling the fight, coordinating a Bloodletter rotation during this time would just be a hindrance to most peoples tactics.

I agree though that if you see Bloodletter is currently up on the target and has been for a while you are better off holding off that Bloodletter for a while, but with the hectic nature of phase 2 that can be tricky even for the most experienced archers especially when you are focusing more on winning the fight and not winning the Bloodletter dot damage award.

[Murugan]

Just an FYI while i was testing BFB i was also using bloodletter and at no point did it do "dot" damage, the only damage bloodletter does is still the end tick after 30 seconds.

Also i can personally see Bloodletter giving a higher benefit if staggered when using 2 archers and on a fight with only 1 enemy or on extremely high defense enemies where weaponskills are doing far less damage, however on the moogle fight i think if you are bringing 4-5 archers like we do and most LS's do than organizing a rotation that wont overall lower the parties damage output would take a decent amount of practice and in most cases will barely break even with having all archers just spam cooldowns.

Most moogles in phase 1 for us die too fast for Bloodletter to take effect the main benefit would be in phase 2 where the moogles generally take longer to die due to kiting and controlling the fight, coordinating a Bloodletter rotation during this time would just be a hindrance to most peoples tactics.

I agree though that if you see Bloodletter is currently up on the target and has been for a while you are better off holding off that Bloodletter for a while, but with the hectic nature of phase 2 that can be tricky even for the most experienced archers especially when you are focusing more on winning the fight and not winning the Bloodletter dot damage award.

How much damage do your Bloodletters do? I see them generally do:

on Whiskerwall:
Bloodletter does 200-300 on average though I have done as much as 400 on rare occasions.
light shot I tend do 50-80 on whiskerwall (however I will say the animation and delay for bloodletter is longer than light shot for me at least)
170-210 on Heavy Shot. (which also has a slightly faster animation)

A difference of 200-380

on Pomburner with the low(est?) defense:

Bloodletter does 600 maybe if you are real lucky, more likely it does between 250 and 400.
Light shot does as much of 325 and averages between 240-270.
Heavy shot does as much as 448 and averages between 315-360

So a difference of 360.

So by reducing your DPS by 360 you only gain 570 damage, so really you only gain ~210 damage.


Except none of that is true. How would you not fire bloodletter off in 80 seconds (bloodletter's cooldown) just because you were trying to avoid overwriting a 20 second DoT. If you all fire at once, and the Moogle is only going to live 30 seconds great. During the 2nd Phase if you are kiting Bloodletter is great as it allows you to kite while continuing to do damage (whether they removed the DoT portion and Square Enix simply lied when they wrote:

Bloodletter

Delivers a ranged attack. Chance to inflict a bleed effect.
Combo Action: Gloom Arrow
Combo Bonus: Inflicts additional damage when bleed fades.
TP: 1500 / Recast Time: 80sec. / Duration: 30sec.

in the patch notes or not) with the end damage inflicted by the combo. So it is definitely worth it. I'm not advocating people stop using Bloodletter, simply that perhaps they should consider applying some critical thought to the encounter to determine whether mindlessly spamming a combo because it is its "turn" in yout rotation overwriting someone else's DoT instead of waiting between 20-1 seconds is really worth it.


Edit: Maybe you are confused what I am talking about. When Bloodletter lands it has a chance of leaving a DoT, this looks like the bloodletter icon, when that wears off it does extra damage. Bloodletter does not always apply the debuff (it definitely seems to be a lower chance than in 1.18). If you see this icon it means there is a DoT on the mob, and you should not fire another Bloodletter until it has worn off.

[carraway]

Peng and NoctisUmbra voiced my exact thoughts and reasoning.

[Penguin]

Dot generally means "damage over time" atleast from my experience which fits with spells like how poison, dia, bio etc worked pre patch.
There is no Dot effect on Bloodletter and never has been so yes i may have been confused as to what dot you were referring to, the debuff effect of Bloodletter lasts 30 seconds and for me does exactly 570 damage no matter if you use it in the combo or outside the combo meaning either the effect is bugged or just not showing the correct damage.

Also personally although i haven't done extensive testing using fraps to time how long it exactly takes to do a full 3 step combo i am almost positive you can do a 3 step combo in the same amount of time or maybe even less than it would take to do 3 lightshots especially considering they are on a 4 second cooldown.

The rest of your post i don't really know what you are trying to get at, i already said that Bloodletter is extremely effective on high defense targets and so i agree on high defense targets a Bloodletter rotation would be optimal, however only 1 of the 8 moogles in the moogle fight has high enough defense for this to be the case and since the GLA moogle is usually killed last for us it seems pointless to discuss a Bloodletter rotation when by that time you have won the fight.

If other LS's are trying to kill the GLA moogle earlier than last than sure trying a Bloodletter rotation might be beneficial although i personally don't understand why you would kill it earlier since its the least harmful of all the moogles and more of an annoyance than a problem.