Best bow for ARC/BRD

[Enfarious]

Just a thought here, don't kill me for it, but unless I've missed it ...
I haven't seen anyone assume that possibly the reason Bow dmg seems to all scale by DPS is because LS is in fact a skill and not an AA which is to say that like all the other abilities have dmg modifiers built in so does LS, it's not your standard AA pure base dmg.

End result, everyone has been testing a "free" WS as a base for everything. I know LS recast is tied to weapon delay, that doesn't mean anything more than LS has a base dps of EXACTLY the dps value for the weapon. If you could find a perfect 1:1 attk/def mob.

What Spider is saying is spot on, it's why this whole thing is so counter-intuitive, make a bow w/ a delay of 1 and dmg of 60+arrow_dmg, for any other weapon to match it they have to have 2x the base dmg at just 2 delay, a 4.5 delay would mean for equal DPS a base dmg of 270. It's an extreme example yes but it illustrates the point.

I know the rest of the argument here is towards arc/brd don't use AA so LS is it's replacement and it's the only job that works this way so everything is different than other jobs. I find it really hard to believe that SE went and wrote 2 completely different equations for regular melee and ranged though.

Gods I need to finish this job.

That's been rattling around in my head for hours while I was @work.

[NoctisUmbra]

Just a thought here, don't kill me for it, but unless I've missed it ...
I haven't seen anyone assume that possibly the reason Bow dmg seems to all scale by DPS is because LS is in fact a skill and not an AA which is to say that like all the other abilities have dmg modifiers built in so does LS, it's not your standard AA pure base dmg.

End result, everyone has been testing a "free" WS as a base for everything. I know LS recast is tied to weapon delay, that doesn't mean anything more than LS has a base dps of EXACTLY the dps value for the weapon. If you could find a perfect 1:1 attk/def mob.

What Spider is saying is spot on, it's why this whole thing is so counter-intuitive, make a bow w/ a delay of 1 and dmg of 60+arrow_dmg, for any other weapon to match it they have to have 2x the base dmg at just 2 delay, a 4.5 delay would mean for equal DPS a base dmg of 270. It's an extreme example yes but it illustrates the point.

I know the rest of the argument here is towards arc/brd don't use AA so LS is it's replacement and it's the only job that works this way so everything is different than other jobs. I find it really hard to believe that SE went and wrote 2 completely different equations for regular melee and ranged though.

Gods I need to finish this job.

That's been rattling around in my head for hours while I was @work.

Actually ARC/BRD's Light Shot functions the same way AA for other classes does. The amount each LS hits for is based on Damage, not DPS. The only difference is it's manual input instead of auto.

[Dzian]

Ifrit's Bow:- 102 damage 4.3 delay
Garuda's Spine:- 71 damage 3.1 delay

Going on my earlier mentioned parses and maths ifrits bows 4.3 delay = 13.95 light shots a minute so we'll say 14.

Garuda's Spine 3.1 delay = 19.35 lightshots a minute. mathmatically I should drop that to 19

Here's where the problems start.

Based on old parses and a few current ones while trying to go full dps for the short order moogle achieve (missed by seconds) with my ifrits bow in a ~10 minute fight I put out 226 shots. that equates to 22.6 shots a minute so I'll round it up to 23 hits a minute. Based on weapon delay and the maximum number of light shots in that time frame being 14 that means I put out 9 skills per minute over the course of a 10 minute fight.

Now if you assume a bard with garuda's spine has the exact same tp over time they should also put out 9 skills a minute over the course of a 10 minute fight which if added to there light shots should indicate a bard to be able to put out 28 shots a minute. Thus at the end of that fight resulting in about ~280 shots in total.

From what I've gathered from bards using the spine it just doesnt add up this way. There just isn't enough time to put out all these shots. If you're putting out those extra light shots then your skills are being used slower.

What it equates to is in that 5 or 6 second window you get between combos do you either ls > ls >ls or do you ls > gloom arrow > ls. There isnt time to do 3 ls and a gloom arrow before your combos start coming up. which basically means your doing a trade off.

What it boils down to is at the end of these 10 minute fights where brds using ifrits bow are putting out 22-23 shots a minute. bards using garudas bow are typically only putting out 22-24 shots a minute also and thus end up doing less damage. becuase 4-6 of there shots a minute never happen. If they try and maximise there light shots they sacrifice the number of skills so it seems to be a case of one or the other but you cant have both. Which is why I think alot of bards are sticking with the ifrits bow.

If you try and squeeze 2 ls between skills you end up slowing your combos down which ultimately means you do less of them and thus the only real time you have to put out those extra lightshots is between combos where alot of bards currently tend to burn there excess tp spamming gloom arrows, heavy shot or even rain of death if tp hits 3000. A quelling striked barrage will soon get your combo tp back up after emptying it on rain of death.

with my damage output/DPS increasing ever since obtaining and properly using Garuda's Spine.

I will say however, being that it is a lower delay bow, it requires more on-hands management and may have a bit of a learning curve. Like I said before, I made a Light Shot Macro to hit between weaponskills to keep the CD on LS without having to move across my action bar from LS to WS to LS... (gamepad).

Interesting point it could simply be a very different play style to optimise garuda's bow. but like you i have a light shot macro which i hit between every skill. one thing i notice is that you only refer to keeping ls on cd. are all your skills kept on cd to? inc gloom & heavy?

[NoctisUmbra]

Ifrit's Bow:- 102 damage 4.3 delay
Garuda's Spine:- 71 damage 3.1 delay

Going on my earlier mentioned parses and maths ifrits bows 4.3 delay = 13.95 light shots a minute so we'll say 14.

Garuda's Spine 3.1 delay = 19.35 lightshots a minute. mathmatically I should drop that to 19

Here's where the problems start.

Based on old parses and a few current ones while trying to go full dps for the short order moogle achieve (missed by seconds) with my ifrits bow in a ~10 minute fight I put out 226 shots. that equates to 22.6 shots a minute so I'll round it up to 23 hits a minute. Based on weapon delay and the maximum number of light shots in that time frame being 14 that means I put out 9 skills per minute over the course of a 10 minute fight.

Now if you assume a bard with garuda's spine has the exact same tp over time they should also put out 9 skills a minute over the course of a 10 minute fight which if added to there light shots should indicate a bard to be able to put out 28 shots a minute. Thus at the end of that fight resulting in about ~280 shots in total.

From what I've gathered from bards using the spine it just doesnt add up this way. There just isn't enough time to put out all these shots. If you're putting out those extra light shots then your skills are being used slower.

What it equates to is in that 5 or 6 second window you get between combos do you either ls > ls >ls or do you ls > gloom arrow > ls. There isnt time to do 3 ls and a gloom arrow before your combos start coming up. which basically means your doing a trade off.

What it boils down to is at the end of these 10 minute fights where brds using ifrits bow are putting out 22-23 shots a minute. bards using garudas bow are typically only putting out 22-24 shots a minute also and thus end up doing less damage. becuase 4-6 of there shots a minute never happen. If they try and maximise there light shots they sacrifice the number of skills so it seems to be a case of one or the other but you cant have both. Which is why I think alot of bards are sticking with the ifrits bow.

If you try and squeeze 2 ls between skills you end up slowing your combos down which ultimately means you do less of them and thus the only real time you have to put out those extra lightshots is between combos where alot of bards currently tend to burn there excess tp spamming gloom arrows, heavy shot or even rain of death if tp hits 3000. A quelling striked barrage will soon get your combo tp back up after emptying it on rain of death.


Interesting point it could simply be a very different play style to optimise garuda's bow. but like you i have a light shot macro which i hit between every skill. one thing i notice is that you only refer to keeping ls on cd. are all your skills kept on cd to? inc gloom & heavy?

A nice assessment. First to answer your question, yes I keep my WS on cooldown. In fact I find the more constant use of LS between skills via macro to help me on that end. While the TP gain may ultimately be the same, with a higher delay weapon one gains TP in chunks, whereas a lower delay weapon one gradually gains TP. This can help during those times when you're just 100 TP short of a WS, but have to wait 4.2s versus 3.1.

That all being said, this is where I feel an understanding of the game's mechanics as well as faults, particularly with server lag, come into play. Knowing you timed your LS macro between weapon skills with the confidence that it will fire off and go into cooldown while you move onto hit your next WS I find is the key. It can get tricky since you typically will not see the LS animation between WS if done correctly, and to add to that the LS icon goes into cooldown visually a bit after one hits it. This is with action queue on.

Although it is tougher to maintain DPS on a lower delay bow, even a higher delay one such as Ifrit's can have LS cooldowns missed or delayed for WS CDs and vice versa. Ultimately it boils down to the player's preference and skill.

I did the Garuda burn repeatedly - many of them as BRD using Ifrit's Bow. The Spine was my first drop, and that gave me ample time to sort of test it in the same fight environment and compare to my numbers with Ifrit's. I knew from the get-go I'd need a LS macro, being a pad user, to keep the CD on LS between weapon skills and so I went into my first fight using the Spine prepared. My DPS was not all that different though I had expected an increase due to what was found out about weapon DPS values. I had definitely missed some CDs and mistimed my LS and WSs though. After each fight I got consistently better and to this day still prefer the Spine.

I will say though, ultimately, a player who does not like to or cannot effectively deal with the high maintenance of the Spine will indeed put out more damage with Ifrit's Bow.

[Geo]

Who cares? All you do is sing (cast) songs...poop DD

[StianGold]

Maybe Ifrit bow and garuda spine. In 1.21 was ifrit bow best now it is sarga for archers and garuda spine for bards

[StianGold]

Sarga are a wery good bow. a think a will use Sarga bow to kill Ifrit >) I think Garuda bow and ifrit bow are best. Moogle bow are good but not better ifrit and garuda bow/spine.

[Geo]

wtf lol....

[Dzian]

Please explain why it's "perfectly fine" for higher DPS weapons to be clearly superior, but bad and wrong for higher DMG weapons to be clearly superior.

A few points you seem to miss.
It is perfectly possible for the highest base damage weapon and highest dps weapon to be the very same weapon. which kind of invalidates your point a little bit. while at present it tends not to be the case with the present selection but it is totally possible for them to be the very same. as for a clearly superior weapon i disagree.

With experience between my friends and what ive read of noctis's posts the better weapon between ifrits . garudas seems to be heavily impacted on play style. in the parses and things i refer to in my earlier post i with my ifrits bow consistently would deal 7-8k more damage at the end of the fight than people using garudas. those same ppl using ifrits would close that gap substantially.as for my parses for the most part i never bothered saving them because although a parse does tell you how much dmage you do it doesnt tell you who was using what weapon.

Where noctis states his performance increases using a garudas bow leads me to believe his style of playing bard is different to others and in this style his spine may be superior. this i find truly interesting. though i have ever parsed against noctis to compare results it truly seems to suggest there are in fact multiple ways in which to play a job effectively and in this case there really is no clearly superior weapon and that in my opinion is exactly how it should be. it suggest a true choice in weapons where there is no clearly superior option.

In XI, lower delay hits generate less TP and higher delay hits generate more TP. The curve is not as linear as XIV, but as I just explained, even though a 499TP/hit weapon and a 500TP/hit weapon are superficially identical in TP/time, the 500TP/hit weapon has a huge advantage in WS/time. This is still true, regardless of the flatness of the TP/time curve..

one other point here is that tp in this game is cumulative and a very different system than it was in xi. in xi for example if you earnt 18tp a hit then it took you 6 hits to get 100% the trouble here is that 6x 18 = 108tp and thus when you pop your ws the 8 tp was lost. in xiv however its less impactfull because tp is cumulative and carries. if i earn 450 tp per shot for example then sure it takes 3 shots to break 1000 but when i pop a ws the extra 350 tp stays and thus in 2 shots i again have 1250 tp so can again ws. so whether or not your bow generats 450 tp a shot or 500 doesnt have quite the impact over time that you seem to think it does.

[NoctisUmbra]

A few points you seem to miss.
It is perfectly possible for the highest base damage weapon and highest dps weapon to be the very same weapon. which kind of invalidates your point a little bit. while at present it tends not to be the case with the present selection but it is totally possible for them to be the very same. as for a clearly superior weapon i disagree.

With experience between my friends and what ive read of noctis's posts the better weapon between ifrits . garudas seems to be heavily impacted on play style. in the parses and things i refer to in my earlier post i with my ifrits bow consistently would deal 7-8k more damage at the end of the fight than people using garudas. those same ppl using ifrits would close that gap substantially.as for my parses for the most part i never bothered saving them because although a parse does tell you how much dmage you do it doesnt tell you who was using what weapon.

Where noctis states his performance increases using a garudas bow leads me to believe his style of playing bard is different to others and in this style his spine may be superior. this i find truly interesting. though i have ever parsed against noctis to compare results it truly seems to suggest there are in fact multiple ways in which to play a job effectively and in this case there really is no clearly superior weapon and that in my opinion is exactly how it should be. it suggest a true choice in weapons where there is no clearly superior option.

one other point here is that tp in this game is cumulative and a very different system than it was in xi. in xi for example if you earnt 18tp a hit then it took you 6 hits to get 100% the trouble here is that 6x 18 = 108tp and thus when you pop your ws the 8 tp was lost. in xiv however its less impactfull because tp is cumulative and carries. if i earn 450 tp per shot for example then sure it takes 3 shots to break 1000 but when i pop a ws the extra 350 tp stays and thus in 2 shots i again have 1250 tp so can again ws. so whether or not your bow generats 450 tp a shot or 500 doesnt have quite the impact over time that you seem to think it does.

Finally, someone who understands.

Spider Dan seems to be missing a lot of what I'm trying to explain, but ultimately it's a wasted effort on my end. You are more than welcome to go ahead and test your Spine versus your Ifrit's Bow and make up your own mind. I've made up mine based on my own testing and nobody in my LS, and we all parse every endgame content, has disagreed with the numbers I've been putting out since my switch.

You can wait for someone else to do your testing for you and post info, but please don't try to argue against a system while demonstrating a lack of understanding of the details and a lack of personal testing done on the matter.