Best bow for ARC/BRD

[Dzian]

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.

I seem to recall a similar longbow vs shortbow debate a while ago. which iirc summarized delay to be unimportant for achers (and now brds) for reasons of autoattack mechanics

and any half decent bard will put a lightshot between every skill so a reduction of light shot delay offers no real benefit.
if for example i peircing arrow > lightshot > gloom arrow> light shot > bloodletter then the light shot is always available between the skills.

considering that a bard rarely strings a sequance of lights shots together (nearly always swimming in tp tp spam your 10s skills) the reduced delay doesnt actually offer much because the timers are static. barrage is 90 seconds regardless of delay for example

[Lamentor]

Dzian, thinking about it, the delay between say, ifrit's bow with a delay of 4.3s, and say, Verdant Shortbow with a delay of 3.5 seconds (.8 seconds less) is a huge difference. accounting for lag, if you're spamming as fast as you can, you can essentially have a 2.5 second delay period between a WS and a light shot. So the fact that you are able to cut .8 seconds off of each light shot essentially cuts the time between WS's down significantly, thus causing more WS and light shot spam, and potentially more damage overall.

It really comes down to speed vs power. And of course, the fight matters a lot as well. So I might have to extend any research I do to specific fights/spiritbond parties/etc., since I might get different results depending on the situation.

[Dzian]

So the fact that you are able to cut .8 seconds off of each light shot essentially cuts the time between WS's down significantly, thus causing more WS and light shot spam, and potentially more damage overall.

my point was kinda that it wouldnt work like that. i keep every weapon skill on a timer and spam my 10 second abilities (gloom arrow, heavy shot) between combos. weapons play no impact on timers. no matter which bow i equip for example pericing arrow is always going to be 20 second recast. so more light shots doesn't mean more ws spam.

0.8 seconds is quite alot of time but its typically in that 0.8 seconds i use those 10s skills so much. but as the weapon delay doesnt affect weapon skill times it doesnt really speed up your combos any. maybe the inbetween lightshots will make the whole combo a second faster but it'd take a lot of extra light shots to compensate for the reduced damage and at present there just isnt time to get them in.

you could squeeze 2 lightshots between skills in an attempt to increase damage but at the same as your trying to increase damage one way you're also decreasing damage another by slowing down skill use effectively using less skills over time and thus less damage over time.

[Enfarious]

my point was kinda that it wouldnt work like that. i keep every weapon skill on a timer and spam my 10 second abilities (gloom arrow, heavy shot) between combos. weapons play no impact on timers. no matter which bow i equip for example pericing arrow is always going to be 20 second recast. so more light shots doesn't mean more ws spam.

0.8 seconds is quite alot of time but its typically in that 0.8 seconds i use those 10s skills so much. but as the weapon delay doesnt affect weapon skill times it doesnt really speed up your combos any. maybe the inbetween lightshots will make the whole combo a second faster but it'd take a lot of extra light shots to compensate for the reduced damage and at present there just isnt time to get them in.

you could squeeze 2 lightshots between skills in an attempt to increase damage but at the same as your trying to increase damage one way you're also decreasing damage another by slowing down skill use effectively using less skills over time and thus less damage over time.

0.8 seconds may have more impact than you think, if your keeping everything on cool down then after a full spam there's ~5 seconds of no abils available, in that 5 seconds you can get 2 light shots or 1, this happens every 10 seconds, so every 10 seconds your sacrificing 1 light shot in order to have 10 more dmg for WS modifiers. In a fight that lasts 8mins, this works out to 48 shots difference going from 2.5 to 3.3 delay.

[Lamentor]

I'm going to be testing out a low delay bow soon. And then I'm going to be working on getting my hands on a Sarnga +1, which to be honest, might win in general. I'm pretty sure DPS doesn't count ifrit's bow fire damage proc which adds quite a bit of damage on a lot of fights, so I'm trying to add that into my calculations, and also is why I'm trying to do multiple fights in the game. That and Sarnga +1 isn't something feasable for just anyone in the game to get, so having other bows, such as a second/third/fourth best might be very helpful.

[Enfarious]

I'm going to be testing out a low delay bow soon. And then I'm going to be working on getting my hands on a Sarnga +1, which to be honest, might win in general. I'm pretty sure DPS doesn't count ifrit's bow fire damage proc which adds quite a bit of damage on a lot of fights, so I'm trying to add that into my calculations, and also is why I'm trying to do multiple fights in the game. That and Sarnga +1 isn't something feasable for just anyone in the game to get, so having other bows, such as a second/third/fourth best might be very helpful.

Yeah it really would, I don't know that I'll ever bother going after every bow, but a GC(if I have nothing left to waste seals on), Ifrit and Garuda (if it drops @random) could happen, I won't spend gil on anything for the job tho as I don't really care for it. But if there were a couple decent options that didn't take too much that'd be nice to know

[NoctisUmbra]

Garuda's Spine wins for BRD. Sure, ARC/BRD damage is significantly Light Shots, and although they may hit a bit less with the Spine than with Ifrit's, you can throw them out more often. The DPS value speaks for Light Shot damage as well in the sense that doing nothing but LS on every cooldown you'd do higher DPS than with Ifrit's. Being that the DPS value is higher on the Spine, you also do greater damage on weapon skills with the Spine.

Overall I don't see the Spine being beater by any bow on BRD due to the magnitude at which DPS effects damage done compared to other stats/atributes.

It's also for this very reason, DPS, that Sarnga +1 is best for ARC.

[Lamentor]

Even if those bows are the best, it'll still be nice to compare them to other bows. And like I said, Sarnga +1 isn't something just anyone can get. Even Garuda's spine isn't something everyone can get right now. Sooooo, options! Data! Results!

And I know I keep saying this, but it's going to take at least 5 more days to get results that mean anything. And at least 2 weeks of testing to get concrete results on at least 4 weapons (my goal is to test out at least the best 8 weapons right now). There's still many fights, and at least 4 more bows to test as of right now.

[NoctisUmbra]

Oh, I agree. Testing is always nice. I'm sure there will be some bows that are easier to get that are comparable. Just wanted to explain my reasoning for why those 2 I expect would easily come out on top.

Ultimately, a Sarnga +1 multi-melded with DEX/PIE based on gear and caps would be the most amazing bow by a significant margin in game. Something like a crazy goal. Curious thought is if an ARC with that weapon and melded Gryphonskin gear set could put out DPS comparable to a DRG or MNK, to give incentive to use it over a BRD.

[Dzian]

0.8 seconds may have more impact than you think, if your keeping everything on cool down then after a full spam there's ~5 seconds of no abils available, in that 5 seconds you can get 2 light shots or 1, this happens every 10 seconds, so every 10 seconds your sacrificing 1 light shot in order to have 10 more dmg for WS modifiers. In a fight that lasts 8mins, this works out to 48 shots difference going from 2.5 to 3.3 delay.

I dunno because even if you keep your 2steps and 3steps on cool down theres still your gloom arrow and heavy shot which you can pop off cos they both have 10 second recast. so in that 5 second window its easily possible to pop 1 or both of those skills which is essentially the same as popping 1 or 2 extra lightshots in that 5 second window...

now looking at some old parses (couple on blog and ls site) on average i put out 20 shots a minute with my ifrit bow. that includes time casting buffs and songs, now a couple of friends with garudas bow have said it's pretty difficult to put out more shots than that using a garudas bow even with its reduced delay. because by taking advantage of the faster light shot means your popping abilities slower. so where in a minute you may get 2 or 3 more light shots out you end up putting out 2 or 3 less skills.

it ends up that you put out a similar number of hits over time with a bow that has about 75% of the ifrits bows damage