Best bow for ARC/BRD

[Lamentor]

I've been doing some research, and although as of right now, I do not have finished results (I plan on having some soon), I'm trying to determine which bow is really the best to use on ARC, or more specifically BRD. It seems generally agreed that Ifrit's bow is the best choice, at least from what I've been reading, but there are bows that could be better considering their delay/dps/other factors. I'll update this post, but right now I only have data for Ifrit's bow, and am working on data for other bows, such as garuda's/moogle's/verdant, etc.

Do any of you arc/brd's have a preference other than ifrit's bow? I would like to hear it! Especially if you have data to back up what you're saying.

[Deltara]

Sortof interested in seeing the Serpent Sergeant's Bow (or any of the three company bows), which has 26 less base damage than Ifrit but higher DPS.

I'm really curious about all those sergeant weapons.

[NoctisUmbra]

Garuda's Spine is best for BRD.

Sarnga +1 is best for ARC.

[Lamentor]

I'll hopefully be testing out every bow I can. I am with the Adder guild, so I'll be testing out that bow. There are actually quite a few bows with higher DPS than Ifrit's bow, so hopefully I will have some good data to show other than "This one is the best," because that doesn't really say much. Data! Results!

[Rofellos]

I'm not sure that Garuda's Spine is the best bow for bard because unlike other jobs, the WS damages are not your primary source of damages. For this reason i would keep the ifrit bow to boost my light shot/barrage dmg.

[Lamentor]

Well that's kind of why I'm going to be conducting research on this. Since WS damage is only addition to the light shot/barrage damage, I'm trying to figure out if a low delay low dmg bow will out parse a high dmg high delay bow such as ifrit's bow.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

This is an interesting question you pose. Since auto-attack isn't the factor, but how frequently one can weave Light Shot between their abilities.

[Enfarious]

Alot of things are going to play into those parses, misses on light shot will wreak havoc on the light shot DoT, which w/ a low dmg/delay bow would outperform on DoT in a long fight over the hi dmg/delay assuming you don't miss often.

But that becomes the other part of the puzzle, how long is each fight? In a shortish fight where you won't take many light shots and on one barrage you'll see a much better return on ttl dmg from a couple weapon skills w/ a hi dmg/delay over the low dmg/delay since light shot DoT spam won't get a chance to over come the spike dmg of a single combo.

Chances are you'll find that the "best" will come down to a matter of acc+duration of fight. In a long fight where you hit 97% your hi DPS low dmg/delay will most likely win assuming you get to really spam light shots.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

Do the faster bow Light Shots yield the same amount of TP as the slower bows?

[Enfarious]

Do the faster bow Light Shots yield the same amount of TP as the slower bows?

No TP is a function of delay so that every weapon generates the same amount of TP over time. With Quelling shot and Invigorate(on arc) of course you can increase this amount but even then the TP over time is exactly the same for every weapon.