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

General Double Shot:

Armageddon or Gandiva only AM3 Up:

Armageddon or Gandiva AM3+Doubleshout [+Camo]

This is the deadly combination. Even if Camo is not up AM3 + Double shot from Arma/Gandiva is superb.
Combine it with Camo you get Spetsnaz status. Camo reduces the enmity generated by ranged attacks. Also you get +20% crit rate while Camouflaged (Job Points 20/20). Now with Hover Shot enmity gets reduced as well while stacking damage boost.
So the rotation goes:

Velocity Shot (starting)
HoverShot
3k TP -->AM3 (this can be obtained with Barrage extremely fast as an opener or when AM3 is down and you need to get it up quick and not lose DPS)
DoubleShot
Camo
-->---->-----> Shoot away while maintaining HoverShot. Breaking Camo with WS only when you are close to losing it. So yes, you need to pay attention to your Camo timer and keep up with Hover Shots.
Sometimes you have to break Camo to WS for many reasons. Ideally you would like to keep it as long as you can, because that is the biggest white dmg sequence you are going to have.

I keep hearing a lot of people talk about how easy and straightforward playing RNG is. It is absolutely not. Not only you are physically pulling triggers, using right combination of job abilities & tracking timers, WS, pacing yourself and watching for enmity spikes & keeping up with hover shot on top of it takes a lot of concentration.

BRAVO. The "simplicity" with RNG is that a ranger in a party is either a monster or garbage, depending on play style, gear, and buff array. I've called it my "Princess" job for years now, referring specifically to the princess from "The Princess and the Pea". One little thing is off, and my sweetie just ain't gonna perform. ^^

I run 3 tiers of midshot sets that vary based upon weaponry- LowACC, HighACC, Aftermath are the modes I build, then variants for Doubleshot, Camouflage layer over them.

LowACC sets for almost all situations are sets built primarily around STP. Goal being to get to Aftermath TP levels asap.

HighACC is built around the same concept, just sits at around 70 more racc.

Aftermath sets are where we start seeing specialty and variance based upon weaponry. Annihilator is built around +crit rate/+PDL. Armageddon/Gandiva is more +crit rate/+crit dmg, with more -enmity in Gandiva sets. Fomalhaut remains a STP set designed for fast TP overflow. Gastraphetes is MASSIVELY a +STP build first, foremost, and finally.

Doubleshot is Oshosi based, but definitely not a 5/5. Relic Body of course is a better option than Oshosi+1 body, and I like keeping the Ikenga Hands in my Doubleshot sets for a skosh of -enmity, some +PDL, and some +Subtle Blow. Since I play both RNG and COR, the hands just don't have any crossover for need on COR and I have made use without them on RNG. The only variation to this methodology happens in accessories, where I focus on +crit rate except for with Fomalhaut and Gastraphetes, which remains +STP.

As Dehmar says above this- these variances are the difference between players who build multiple RMEAs for Ranger and love it, and the players who never understand all the fuss about Armageddon and just ride Fomalhaut 100%. If you don't build sets to exploit each weapons' uniqueness, they don't feel or act that differently and never get a chance to shine.

Just wanted to share our experience with Arebati since I was debating myself whether to use Annihilator or Armageddon for Arebati v20.

I will say for v15 - Annihilator all the way. About 2.2m HP so a fast fight, and using Coronach is a very stress free experience since you will not pull hate so you can spam to your heart's content (be mindful of Darkness, more on this later). Not a serious DPS check so other party members or COR should not pull hate since it is a shorter fight, so we even did it with WHM healer and no SCH 2 hour.

v20 changed things a lot for us. My parse showed the HP at around 3.0-3.1m (including damage reapplied due to regen) and it becomes a lot more of a DPS check. Also, having to use 2 Minnes for backline at the expense of AGI etudes also stunts damage somewhat.

Initially, I used relic to not pull hate, and I did not, however, our COR was consistently pulling hate on Aeonic at around 35% because of how the fight drags out. Because of his propensity for dispel or spamming fetters on the backline, this is often an instant fail. We needed to use SCH for Caper Emissarius no matter what.

So comparing Annihilator and Armageddon:

Damage - Armageddon wins - last stands of 40-50k (aimed for 1800tp or so) - highest was 52k, and AM3 crits of up to 30k. Whereas Coronach was sitting around 38k or so.

WS frequency - This does actually favour Annihilator on paper since you can spam Coronach at 1k tp and it doesn't scale, unlike Last Stand. However, Coronach's darkness property is a huge downside in this fight. Under double shot, if you spam Coronach, you will make darkness and heal Arebati for 99 999 (can't expect COR to interrupt your chain everytime). Edit: Buuki did correctly point out this is only under the effect of his aura, which we could not predictably remove, however. You need to be extremely mindful of skillchain windows. You could use Last Stand in between to be safe, but it will deal less damage than Coronach in my experience.

Hate Management - Caper Emissarius at 60% actually carried Armageddon all the way to the end without hate issues, and this was with bad Wild Cards. If you got it reset again, you're really laughing. Part of it was that I would go and Shadowbind 3x or so in a fight which allowed for DPS holiday too. What is normally a huge boon for Annihilator turns out to not be relevant with SCH set up for us.

So ultimately, the biggest benefits of Anni - hate management and WS spam frequency became somewhat muted due to the the protracted fight requiring SCH anyways, and Darkness curing Arebati. I have no doubt that Annihilator could do it (we had a wipe at 1% at 2:45, so there is some wiggle room there), but found most efforts went to the end and we only cleared it with 45 seconds left. A few less AM3 crits, or a single absent minded Darkess would have cost that run.

Anyways, just my experience on the fight, although I understand others may have a different perspective.

This only applies during the aura.

True, but removing that aura is far from a guarantee. I will amend that post to reflect that.

Just my 2 cents since I've never seen our group having an issue with 2 auras(V15 experience your mileage may vary but I don't see it causing a problem on 20 other than unbinding add), first aura comes off pretty easily with cor and rng using a crit midshot build (empy am3) and second aura kinda melts to overkill camouflage, with the same midshot. During overkill (with capped hover) you can actually forego weaponskilling and maintain the +20 crit rate from camouflage the entire duration, which with the right build you're at or near 90% crit and guaranteed double/triple shot this is depending on whether or not you're using rogues roll.

To be really honest, we've stopped using a WHM in Arebati a long time ago to gain Flurry2 by bringing a RDM, and that DPS increase was one of the biggest gains we toyed with. RUN is really sturdy in this fight IF they have adjusted sets so they can't get encumbered in a "risky set" (ie a casting set) and RDM just freed up a lot for us. Enfeebles do land, you gain Dia3 vs Dia2, and Flurry2 is a monster as mentioned. Now with v20, a RDM is such a great gift for add handling (far from necessary for all situations, but I'd never turn it down if it fits).

Your parse info definitely confuses me as most reports I've seen so far all mention A3s have a much weaker +regen than prior atonement mobs. But considering my group is starting our A3 v20s on Monday, I'll definitely take the info you have into consideration with what others are saying because I'm still personally just gathering info vs providing any^^

I never understand why you think Flurry2 is that big? It's only more Rapid Shot, which isn't that much of a boost?

Lets say it lets you get 30%+ Rapid shot. Thats overall like maybe 11% faster aiming delay? The problem is aiming delay with hover shot is really insignificant part of delay between shots. Aiming delay is like 30% of delay between shots probably, so your shooting speed maybe goes up by 4%. Still something, but nothing I would call "monster".

Ofc if you use JA0Wait and hack Hover shot to move during shooting animation then it's getting more significant, because then aiming delay is closer to 50% of total delay.

1. That's a lot more maybes than I've come to expect from the king of spreadsheets^^ ;)

2. There's more than just the RNG shooting. Including someone not hovering who needs more tools to boost DPS than RNG needs, and with your assumptions, should gain more benefit than the RNG will.

3. Flurry2 results in being able to use a preshot set with Annihilator that doesn't need Perun+1 yet still allows usage of the Empyrean+1 body. Making the benefit larger than just the benefit from "only more Rapid Shot". And some may question "why would I use an Annihilator with anything but a Perun+1 anyways?" Well, that allows dropping the Gleti's Knife in the mainhand (the only hand for this fight), giving +15 to both DEX and AGI for larger WSC on Coronach, along with 6% crit rate, which when using Arma or Anni means a lot more than just easier procs.

Lastly- RDM in the situation I describe replaces the WHM, meaning you already have the BRD, COR, and GEO present. So, outside of Flurry2 and all the other toys a RDM brings, would you suggest replacing the WHM with for both a source of cures and more damage? Because I'm very confident that Dia3 and Flurry2(and the associated benefits listed above that aren't directly related to Flurry2, but can be derived from its presence) ends up being a lot more DPS than Boost-AGI.

"Maybe" is there because I can't really reliably assume the delay from moving and waiting before shooting again to keep Hover stacks. Especially that depends on lags, you sometimes need to wait slightly longer to start shooting and doesn't get interrupted msg.


I think the only other person shooting on V20 will be COR, who also caps Snapshot without any help from Flurry. RDM will be too busy with add. Tank wont shoot. BRD and healer or GEO wont shoot either.


I don't quite get this. Perun isn't need for 60% Snapshot in gear, which caps Snapshot for RNG. So on RNG only thing you are getting from changing equip with Flurry I or II is Rapid Shot.

No Flurry preshot:

I agree with you rdm > whm for V15 it just seems like a huge gain. Our group has been discussing v20 Arebati a bunch lately and the need of scholar is definitely the biggest point of contention right now. Yes the rng can use annihilator and that removes the need for sch for the entire fight but eventually the cor will need caper. So that brings the question is anyone replaceable for rdm to control add while still keeping dps high for the fight?

Every V15 Arebati between 50 and 60% I had to drop Arma for Anni which wouldn't be that huge of a problem if it weren't for the cor continuing to gain enmity. We've seen both of our A3 A3 wins so far become 1.5x to 2x as long to get through the boss, is this because of modifying kill comps or the add regen for the boss, idk probably both, but the question remains if you were bringing sch for heal/caper what would you do to try and fit rdm into the comp of RNG/COR/BRD/GEO/RUN/SCH?

Instead of GEO. You dont need GEO. Dia III and Shell Crasher should be enough.

In the runs I've done the GEO uses one buff for barrier, which in conjunction with minne/regen/embrava you can mostly ignore the add. It's not just buffing the cor/rng. If said GEO is an alt, it's a lot more manageable than playing 1v1 on the side with the add :).

Have people been seeing the Defense Down effect wearing off at any point? I have used Shell Crusher on multiple V20s, and haven't seen that message in the log once. Also, in that setup, I wonder which job will be designated to apply Shell Crusher. Armor Break probably makes more sense since RUN can do it with Gaxe instead of risking a mage run in.

Saw it wear off Mboze today.
Wind Threnody should help it land.

This my Armor break set for reference

Sakpata is R20+

Mboze is earth element, so he's fairly easy to land defense down on. It's the others that it's up in the air for.

Something overlooked, and untested (I dont know how to test it, packets?)

Embrava provides flurry.

Ok napkin mathed it (kinda)

turned on showswaps to give me a timestamp with relic gun (999 delay) on

was getting 8 seconds over and over

Embrava up; 6 seconds over and over

seems to match the haste values of 25.9% haste maximum 266/1024

So its just below a Flurry 2

Just added this to my lua, even though technically I'll be 5 snapshot under the cap, I'll still be 20% faster using my Flurry 2 sets over my no flurry sets.

Doesn’t the aura wipe debuffs now? Or is it aura wiping debuffs on the add

Idk I heard bad stories about that Raaz add. I don't plan to use mules in V20 too. -23% def from light shooted Dia III is also a lot and probably not much worse if any, than Fury from Geo. It also let you sing more minuets instead of minnes.


I'm not sure if you risk that much if you run in with TP just to WS (you can ask Cor and RNG to stop shooting for literally a 2 sec so they won't feed tp). Doing it on SCH probably have the benefit of having more macc than RUN. Also having RDM there and doing Frazzle should help too.

Frazzle doesn't really land on any of the T3s unless you spend Stymie on it.

Good to know.

I guess if def down on both Armor break and Shell crusher are wind based, then it might really be a problem to apply them on Arabati.

Oh well we will see how it goes for us and adjust.

Can burst frazzle on Ongo, did it on v20, other than that I've yet to land frazzle on any other bosses.

Gotenn, Flurry 1 and Flurry 2 have the same buff ID. That second one is where all geo buffs are in the buffs.lua. I'd assume that is for some kind of geo buff that we never got.

In Buffs.lua of windower, there are two flurry IDs
and indeed there is a 265 and a 581, and they are distinguishable, my lua does in fact put on different gear from flurry 1 vs flurry2, and the location in the buffs.lua only corresponds to when SE implemented the spell, not type of spell.

Actually no, both Flurry and Flurry 2(RDM Spells) are buff 581. Edit: If you don't believe me just add some print statements in your check above and you'll see they both report in 581.

If you want to track which Flurry you have you have to parse the action packet i 0x028 to see which spell was cast on you and make sure it landed on you was it 845(Flurry) or 846(Flurry2).

iirc the other Flurry is from a temp item but I could be miss remembering that.

Edit: both RDMs spells were added the same update also...
same thing for tracking which haste, brd songs, etc you got but becomes more complex since there are more sources of it.

You could just do a different set for embrava and extend it further to check for perun/gastraphetes.

preshot to final shot macro help.

/equipset pre
/equipset mid
/equipset final

is there a wait needed or would that work?