Bard gearing question

[Seddrinth]

In terms of stat allocation, I personally think the developers just dump gear into an algorithm that arbitrarily assigns stats to it. It's unlikely that they intended for for the i385 and i395 bow to be inherent better than the i390 and i400 bow.

That's very unfortunate. It would literally take one person (who understands bard) 5 minutes to check the substats to make sure gear/weapon upgrades are tied to ilevels. SE certainly has more than enough resources to do that.

[Judas_Ramirez]

That's very unfortunate. It would literally take one person (who understands bard) 5 minutes to check the substats to make sure gear/weapon upgrades are tied to ilevels. SE certainly has more than enough resources to do that.

This is Square Enix & Yoshi's development group at there best.
They don't check, They don't test. They don't care unless it means money
Think i'm wrong log into the mogstation & compare costs to other games, Log into Amazon.co.jp & check merchandise that come with codes for in game, check your subscription costs that are for 8 chars instead of 1 which is utilized by RMT's (the majority of the FFXIV playerbase to date) & makes the average 1 char player overpay for his subscription! Once again Mogstation check it, Its correct, Legit & True.

The games in a sorry state behind the scenes, Fan Boi's will argue otherwise but it really is. They rince repeat everything (including bad stuff), add "End Game" to gathering (scripts) which already has/Had a bad end game to begin with (timers on gathering) which isnt what players asked for at the time. Crafting basicly the same since SE didn't do stat controller. ARR>HW>SB now have mixed markers that mean the same or different things which is confusing.
Actually i'll give some specific examples on this to ruin some of those Fan Boi's fantasys & have reason to report Forum CM's if they try to ban me for speaking the truth!
Bardam's mettle - Rush = move away
Amdapor Keep HM- Valfodr = Run to boss
Same marker (one small exception if you are far enough for "Rush" [Stormblood] Arrows appear, Very important you need to have decent distance for them to appear, to show its a distance lowering damage mechanic as first appeared in Heavensward - Alexander if memory is correct), same mechanic (more or less) different actions for same markers.

Purple Single Marker - Five-headed Dragon (World of darkness) = Stack
Same marker as Scylla lighting ball one from Sycrus tower which is a run orb to pillar, but also looks like single damage/AOE attack on player marker.
(4) Arrows pointing inwards - Most content mainly SB - Stack

I was originally going to point out on bard rotation is also as important as gear, theres 3 you can do, all do around 5-7k dps. all lose around 1k DPS if you don't keep DOT's up 100%
Actually to add to above Bard would be in line with the other classes if they tested it & added the Straight Shot Additional Effect: Increases critical hit rate by 10% to apply on Refulgent Arrow use so you can refresh DOT's in every fight at 0-3 seconds (some people wont understand this). Testing is key, shame they never do it! then again if they had a better combat designer they could of removed iron jaws & made the double dot refresh on Windbite/Stormbite. while adding another skill/dot/Self buff.....
As i said Square Enix for ya expect what you currently see because they live in hindsight while players have Foresight & the Fan Boi's are Submissive!

[HyoMinPark]

Bardam's mettle - Rush = move away
Amdapor Keep HM- Valfodr = Run to boss
Same marker (one small exception if you are far enough for "Rush" [Stormblood] Arrows appear, Very important you need to have decent distance for them to appear, to show its a distance lowering damage mechanic as first appeared in Heavensward - Alexander if memory is correct), same mechanic (more or less) different actions for same markers.

Unrelated, but small correction here: while the rest of your examples are correct, the Amdapor HM indicator for the first boss is actually a solid line (like for a line AOE). The same marker is used in Gubal NM during the second boss. The Arrow “Rush” indicator wasn’t used until A10, if I remember correctly, but its meaning has remained consistent since it was implemented.

That being said, it doesn’t give much indication that one should run to the boss—technically, you don’t take any less damage by being at a distance or running towards them; however, it’s common courtesy for the tanks and melee to run towards the boss if you’re targeted so that they don’t go zipping around the arena for no reason.