You'll Shoot Your Eye Out! - New FFXI RNG Guide

It really isnt. Meghanada isn't even close for damage with Double shot up, so there is no reason to use it for any weapon.

Yeah I was specifcally thinking of Empyrean AM3 up with Doubleshot, I think 12% , especially coupled with a high crit rate should win over double shot activation 6% and 25DMG?

What was your reasoning on Fomal/Anni for Oshosi +1 over Arcadian?

Agreed on that particular fight, those raz hit hard.

Its not +25DMG its +25% damage.

EDIT: Its not close even with 100% crit rate.

Thanks for confirming Simon, I really didn't know it was 25% damage! Guess i'll be buying another hat now

It's 25% damage only on 2nd shot, but its still far more damage.

To make it easier to see

Worst case scenario for Oshosi against Maghanada is 100% crit rate and no other crit damage items.

Base crit damage on RNG is 53%
Double shot damage is +31% (body+back)
Double shot rate is 65% (base+body with snapshot merits, not sure if this double shot from body is additive, but it wont change much anyway)

Double shot with Meghanada:
Triple shot with Meghanada:

Double shot with Oshosi:
Triple shot with Oshosi:

Ofc in reality you wont have 100% crit rate and often you will probably use Oneiros knife too, making Oshosi wins much more than in above example.

Anyone have any warm and fuzzy feelings to share on Prime Bow or Gun?

Anybody have practical uses for Fail-Not w/ Flaming Arrow these days?

Been fiddling with my NIN SAM hybrid WS and realized it has been ages since I messed with Flaming Arrow, so was updating my long neglected set for fun. But IDK when I'd ever actually use it for anything aside from the novelty.

i was literally thinking about flaming arrow today...I too would like to know if there are any practical uses. Would RNG with a SCH healer for firestorm in dynamis be able to compete with trueflight numbers? or just suck it up and do the mythic?

You don't need mythic to do good in dynamis with trueflight. A sch or sch sub and the proper ws set is enough to do really impressive damage.

That said, I have not tried flaming arrow in dynamis. It's hybrid nature could lead to some big numbers, but it could also just suck hard.

Been playing with Pinaka stage 4 on Arebati v25's lately.

Precursor: I am in no means a capable tester. Its never been a focus of my play as a single boxer who often needs assistance to accurately check such things. Take these numbers as a one-off example of this weapon in a known environment, nothing more.

Ahem....now that that's out of the way...here's a screenie of some time while Doubleshot was up using Pinaka and Sarv. ML40 at the time of this fight.

Buffs: Honor March, Minuet x2, Agi Etude, Dirge
Crooked Chaos Roll, Samurai's Roll (+8rostam)
Indi-AGI, Geo-Fury, entrust saved for PLD healer (bolstered in this screenshot)
Velocity Shot/Hover Shot up, max stacks reached
Was standing at 14.8', so max True Shot for bow
Aura was Evasion Down, so no real effect on damage. The other damage you will see is from a very pimped out Armageddon COR to compare.




Its got pretty insane teeth behind the WS already- the example in the screenshot is with the Bayeux Arrow being used....who's biggest advantage is the -50 enmity. Damage doesn't tank using Chrono Arrows for times between Scavenge.

This thing is dangerous to use...a LOT more than Gandiva. It's a helluva lot of fun, and I think that the move when taken from Stage 4 to Stage 5 will be great for the ranged weapons (taking the aftermath from "Occ. Deals Double Damage" to "Occ. Deals Triple Damage"). TP phase damage already holds up with our typical "white damage" weapon choices of Armageddon/Gandiva, just with a WS that smokes anything else for us out there on call.

Sarv WS set is pretty on par with a Refulgent Arrow set, I am using Empy+3 body and JSE+2 neck for +PDL purposes, other slots are pretty typical ranged WS gear. Without any +Recycle in the WS set, I see about a 20% loss rate on the Bayeux Arrow- quite manageable, and as I said earlier the damage is still quite amazing with Chrono Arrows.

TP set while under aftermath I focused on +True Shot over +Crit and was quite pleased. I think long-run I'll have 2 aftermath sets for this- one still focused on +True Shot, but another +Crit-based for times I can't stand close.

wait are you saying there is a double/triple damage aftermath on pinaka? did I miss something?

All primes have ODD on auto-attacks (including ranged ones). Just like relics but higher proc rate. At stage 5 this becomes triple instead of double.

^ bingo. The stated aftermath was the +PDL, the "hidden" (no text on the weapon to indicate it) is that ODD. Just like the stated aftermath on Annihilator is "ratk+25%" and it also has that hidden ODD.

oh wow I did not know that, and I've been using stage 3 GS for a month now.

It'll only be on the 1st attack of any multi-attack round btw.

ODD gets added from stage 4, becomes ODT at stage 5

Solid crit at the top hitting for the WSD of the COR. Looks like that thing is made for murder.

Are you using the empy head during double shot to pretend that you won't pull hate?

nopes- sticking with Oshosi+1 head when doubleshot is up.

And did you pull hate on that Arrebati? At what percent did you actually equip it and start firing those off at? If you did pull hate, at what percent did it happen? How long were you actually able to fire off those sarvs before either the lion went down or he turned your way and chewed off your face? I'm genuinely interested in the bow, but the enmity that comes from such an absurdly powerful attack is a real concern.

Also not a fan of the fact it can make darkness, which as we've already encountered with the occasional misfire on coronach... can really hurt your chances of clearing that fight. How easy is it to avoid making darkness with the thing?

on multiple runs, typically entered KI #2 at 60% health remaining. A couple at 65%.

1. From entry of that KI thru 40% (2nd add pop) I rode Annihilator, exclusive Coronach usage, switching to Pinaka at that point.

2. Half of the runs I didn't pull hate- I kept two things in the back of my head during the fight to help this after an earlier run. First, to only Sarv with the Prime Arrow. Earlier attempt I used Chrono Arrow for a couple and it was definitely noticeable. And second, I only WS'd above 2200TP, and a few times rode white dmg even sitting on 3k for one or two volleys. The two times I pulled hate out of ~5 attempts were around 20% remaining, so about 20-25% dmg dealt with Pinaka.

3. Avoiding Darkness is quite workable, as you're not giving up much by letting that TP scale up to avoid self-chaining in situations where you don't want to. Again, the TP phase damage is solid and Sarv scales great. In terms of with others- honestly no more difficult than avoiding it while using Annihilator was my experience. I also was running with a COR kind enough to inform me when he was re-applying AM3 prior to actually doing it, not as he was doing it^^

Arebati is also hell on the tank, so in my opinion its not an ideal fight in terms of judging how this weapon can truly be pushed. Even with Gandiva sometimes you just have to slow damage has been my experience even prior to the Pinaka, based on how much time the tank is truly getting to use hate tools vs constant rebuffing,etc.

Enmity is a concern with Pinaka, no doubt. But its a manageable concern as long as you don't approach using it like other raanged RMEAs. My midshot sets for it currently have about 20 more -enm than my standard midshot sets, but its as much- if not more- about playstyle with it than gearing. After so long of using Arma/Gandiva and knowing that its TP dmg far outweighs the WSdmg makes hate management feel different than this weapon where even with solid TP dmg, the WSdmg is just so far ahead of other physical options. I never played in the Slugwinder days of RNG, but I'm guessing it felt a bit like this! Its kinda fun to have to hold yourself back now and then^^

This actually reminds me of something I wanted to ask. Was it ever determined if hover shot enmity is counted separately from gear enmity? Equipment enmity - caps at 50, and dirge counts toward this cap. Does hover shot reduce enmity beyond the 50% you can get from gear, and if so by how much? Is there a cap to the maximum enmity - you can get?

If only making multiple primes would not mean doing Sortie 200 times again.

I can upgrade Ikenga to R25, what is the best order of importance?

just my take-

1. Body
2. Feet
3. Hands
4. Head
5. Legs

That would be my call for a 100% RNG, no COR person RP'ing Ikenga Gear. If you play COR as well, and in similar amounts, I'd move Head above Hands. In all truth, its kinda fuzzy beyond the clear "Body 1st" decision. But I can say I see little value in the legs these days even at R30 compared to the quality of both jobs's Empyrean Legs.

Haven't seen much discussion around Flaming Arrow, but after fooling around a bit with different sets I think that Perf sword outpaces a second Mal anyday with its fire affinity up. This might be different for Wildfire as that's an elemental not a hybrid, but this is the set that got me most consistent:

ItemSet 393889

My Nyame is r20, perfect Mal augment, and cape is AGI+30/Macc/Mdmg/WSD+10%.

At some point I'd love to compare the Amini chest +3 vs Nyame, but I imagine that velocity shot doesn't apply to the elemental part of the hybrid WS.

Looking at how beastly Pinaka is I imagine it's BIS for Flaming Arrow but I don't have that one :(

Any thoughts?

I'd love to see the #'s, because I was under the impression that the Wind Elemental MAB dagger loses to Malevolence or Tauret due to its low MDamage(?) for Aeolian, so I would have presumed this would be the same case.

I can confirm that a perfectly augmented Malevolence is quite a bit better than Levante Dagger is in the offhand for aeolian edge. Multiple people had tested this, and I farmed the dagger to confirm with my own eyes what others had already reported. It's true, the second perfect malevolence wins, and by quite a lot actually. Perfervid sword is in the same boat here. I'm certain a second malevolence will outpace that sword as well. It's the exact same scenario, just with a different element. Malevolence is just that strong.

I want to touch upon this because I've been thinking about pinaka a lot over the past few days, and I have a minor concern about this weapon that goes beyond hate management. I'm actually unsure its damage potential is higher than gandiva's, and the difference in playstyle between the two bows is what really has me questioning it. I did play during the slugwinder days btw, and I want to preface that this months ambuscade is part of why I'm doubting Pinaka's power over gandiva. For anyone who has yet to do this ambuscade, it's easily accomplished with a ranged strategy. There's one main NM and 8 adds that you need to kill before engaging the main NM. My groups setup for the fight was Paladin, Ranger, Cor, Igeo, Bard, Whm. The adds have approximately 250K HP and take up the bulk of your time killing them off. I was the ranger and buffs were standard attack/agi/dirge for making the pewpews hit as hard as possible. Physical weaponskill spam until everything is dead.

I used gandiva for the add phase. With Gandiva I'd open with barrage to get aftermath 3 up and then use my aftermath midshot to build TP and fire off weaponskills right at 1K TP. And this is where I have to preface something important. Jishnu's radiance is actually NOT our most damaging archery weaponskill when we're buffed as high as I was relative to the mob I was fighting. Sidewinder is actually just as strong, or even stronger than Jishnu's is here, and I remember that even when I was fighting V25 Arrebati where the critical hit damage from jishnu's was more relevant (higher mob defense than ambu makes crit PdiF more relevant), even then sidewinder was roughly on the same level. I can add a few screenshots tonight if anyone really cares to see them, but you'll have to trust me here when I say that in this ambuscade jishnu's was in the 35-50k damage range depending on critical hits, whereas sidewinder was consistently hitting 50-55k's every single time.

This brings me to the heart of my discussion, and that's the playstyle difference between Pinaka and Gandiva. The ideal playstyle for gandiva is to get aftermath 3 up, sacrifice some store TP in the midshot phase for a massive boost to white damage via critical hits, and weaponskill as soon as you hit 1K TP. The ideal playstyle with Pinaka would be more traditional, where you forego crits and focus on store TP in the midshot (same midshot as annihalator basically), which shifts the damage from white damage to weaponskill damage. However Sarv is a TP scaling weaponskill, which basically makes it a (significantly) better refulgent arrow. How often do you use refulgent arrow when you're playing with gandiva? The reason it's lesser utilized is because it's only really good at high TP values, meaning your best bang for your buck is to use refulgent arrow right after a barrage. Based off the numbers Celeb showed us On page 28 of the weaponskill testing thread, I'm inclined to wonder how much better Sidewinder is at 1k TP than Sarv is at 1k, and at what point the two weaponskills become roughly equivalent. Is it more efficient to fire off two sidewinders each at roughly 1K TP than it is to use Sarv once at around 2k? Does a 3K sarv equate to considerably better, or worse damage than roughly 3 1k sidewinders? The difference between a scaling weaponskill and our existing non scaling weaponskills has me wondering.

Now granted what I've just thrown out is just looking at damage math without factoring in enmity issues, and I'm well aware how important it is to balance out the two. I'd really like to know the full math behind sarv here. I may just pick up pinaka when I get home tonight and run some tests to find out just what the stat mods are. If I knew not only the str and agi mod percentages, but also the TP anchor tiers I think it would be a lot easier to objectively compare it against our current options.

It's a good thought process Meliny but be careful about comparing 1 2k to 2 1ks. Because of the delay in using a WS, these two scenarios will absolutely not take the same amount of time.

A lot of the time u can get away with just using relic gun does plenty of dmg and hate issues mostly go away. I used it fulltime for v25 arebati (used a few slug shots when coro > coro would heal arebati) and we had plenty of time left at end of fight.

If you are using prime gun / bow make sure you use ikenga body the tp bonus is vital and you have the option to sub war for fencer (300 tp bonus). I still see hate being a big issue though when doing this.