What Is The Best For ARC/BRD?

What is the best end game ARC/BRD gear? Should stay in AF when BRD? What the best food for max dmg? What Materia should be melded where?

ill give you an idea with my setup, its far from the best, but works for me. haven't played much lately so i haven't upgraded it in a few months.

287 dex 325 pie 595 atk

Main: ifrits bow
Body: Rainmakers tunic doublemeld Pie +32 (darklight corselet too, but doesnt seem to work so well for me)
Legs: Felt trousers triplemeld str 17 vit 18 dex 11 (for all my dow)
Head: Paragon's crown (questionable?)
Feet: Darklight Caligae
Gloves: Raptorskin gloves of slaying doublemeld atk +54
The rest: Flame Sergeants Sash hq spinel and tourmaline ring hq tourmaline bracelets explorers earrings, and electrum gorget HQ

As for af use as macro pieces if anything for certain songs (assuming you dont have decent melds)


Food i always used jerked beef. atk/pie boost


maybe people can give me some advice too on what i can change up

Despite the Bard AF being reasonable it is far from the best end game set up.

What is the best end game gear? Most likely a combination of Darklight and Milita Gear for the most part. Double/triple melds for a few pieces if you are serious.

As for weapon if you don't have a primal/gc bow then the Giantsgall Longbow from Skirmish double meld with dex (30-40) is pretty damn powerful.

Food, as Bismark says Jerked Beef is a great choice, Smoked Raptor a cheaper alternative.

He also makes a very good point to macro some of the AF for the additional buff power when casting a song.

Bismark your stats seem to me to be kind of the wrong way round. Dex is main Brd stat and so should be 350ish with Pie the 2nd and should be about 300 (depending on what weapon you are using). The general consensus for max damage seems to be to cap these 2 stats before adding additional attack power. Bard does not seem to benefit from Str, so having it on trousers is a waste imo.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/35795-STR-DEX-PIE-ATK-Testing

Piety is brd's main stat, dex is seconday. With ifrits bow they will cap pie330 dex 295-300, if the stats are already close to cap then attack will pull ahead such as with Rellz using attack glove over getting dex gloves for 8-13 dex. Giantsgall and LT bows are both upgrades (idk about the gridania one) chosing either of these will increase your stat caps since they are based off the DPS. As far as I know there is no known formula so for myself I just estimate based off Ifrit's bow being tested to be 330/300 and the axe/lance/h2h tested being 348/310

As a guideline cap pie > Dex/attack > anything else assuming you are good on ACC

Please don't stack dex over pie, it hurts my head when I see it.

From my understanding:

PIE > Attack > STR > DEX if not capped.

Attack > STR > PIE > DEX if capped.

Hmm thankyou for the correction i will restat at once!

It comes down to how much your getting of it, attack will often win out because you can get alot more of it then dex and it doesn't cap. Since brd damage ends up split around 55/45 WS/Light shot damage unlike other jobs which end up 70/30 which ups the value of dex by a bit along with some acc thrown in. STR idk about since everything more recent I've seen hasn't even mentioned it but I'll poke around some.

Edit: the link you have is older and the stat caps were much lower and easy to hit then. That might explain the str since it gives you attack power even though it doesn't show up on your stats (I think it 3 str = 2 attack), with caps being higher you have less to work with as far as slots for attack and str.

Edit2: I've got the attack vs dex backwords sorry, since light shot damage is a high % it ups the value of attack more then other jobs since light shot/auto attack caps are low. Point for point untill cap dex should still pull ahead along with if you need some added acc but like I said you can normally get larger ammounts of attack then you can dex.

Thanks for all the info guys helps alot. Ok so going higher over the cap of PIE/DEX will have no effect and is just a waste?

It will still have the basic parts of the stat IE dex will still increase acc and pie will still increase the rate of debuffs sticking. But for the most part yes it will be a waste since it will not improve your damage beyond that cap.

Is the LT Bow for flames honestly worth getting over giant bow? It's 3 more dmg with that att bonus, over the dex/acc of the giant bow and ability to single and (dare I try personally) double meld capabilities.

You would honestly have to like, Double meld attack onto the Gigas bow in order for it to beat flame, that thing is pretty monstrous for BRD.

OK sorry one more question. Hands atm I have 29 dex double meld felt bracers (which obviously also have the 3 pie bonus as well). Yay or nay? More attack or acc or just get darklight, or am I good with my double meld dex?

I think either should work as long as your arn't going over your cap, attack has the higher potential for damage but dex has acc as a side bonus.

Can't even meld attack into bows (unless giants is special and I missed that) so yeh flame pritty much destorys everything else XD SE really favored Ul'dah there.

No, I'm not over cap. My Pie and Dex are both in the low 300's I want to say in the 310's actually. Not sure where to up that unless i trip meld pie on body and dex on hands >_<

If you are in the 310s with dex then that is capped, overcapped with ifrits and probably giants as well. If you are using one pie ring and one dex then I would suggest switching to 2 pie rings since pie is the stronger stat. With out knowing what you are wearing not sure what else to suggest.

ok here then. sorry I wasn't giving enough information.
Main (obviously a place holder atm): Crab Bow with +17 dex single meld
Ammo: Cobalt Arrows
Head: AF
Body: Explorer's Tunic (no double pie meld yet on raptor harness, blew up a few so far lol)
Hands: double dex meld felt bracers
Legs: AF
Shoes: AF
Rings: 2x Tourmaline+1
Bracelet: Tourmaline+1
Earrings: Explorer's
Neck: Electrum Gorget+1

Pie: 306
Dex: 317
Accuracy: 401 (not sure if relevant, but figured it might be)

I know Pie is the main stat, but I can't think of any slots to really up that atm. I could go with AF body? Then I'd lose quite a bit of accuracy. Double piety meld Raptor Harness might be best, but idk where else to put improvements in my set (other than darklight boots/calligae). Also I do plan on building up the seals for the flame bow, unless there is something better out there.

I would go with with AF body and grab a giantsgall and throw a piety materia in as a quick upgrade on your current set, unless you will have Flame LT soon. I assume you are flames atleast since you asked about it earlier. You are way over your dex cap as is btw, I would guess it at somewhere around 296 with crab bow. Another option could be felt kecks with pie/int or mnd melded, pie/mnd materia are super cheap here, not sure about your server.

Edit: Flame bow currently spanks everything else to the best of my knowledge (damn you SE and your Ul'dah *** during that update) so deffinetly get it if you can.

lol oh yeah I forgot waist slot. That would be the flame sash. I spent my first 25k on the Jamadhars. Those things are just... unf. I think the flames definitely got the *** when it comes to the weapons.

Testing I did as of 1.23 placed PIE>AP>DEX as far as stats go, though I didn't get into the nuts and bolts of at what point AP loses to DEX and vice versa, though for most cases you're looking at one slot (hands) to either use AP or DEX, and an easy double meld (50AP) trounces a DEX double.

Izodious's spreadsheet can be tweaked to compare the finer points of DEX vs. AP and roughly fit what I found while testing.

As far as gear, it will depend on your bow as to how far you need to push melds, but ideally you'd want to look at the following and use what suits your stat caps:

Crown :: Choral Hat

Rainmaker's :: Gryphonskin ::Corselet - PIE meld (If you are just super capped on PIE and there is nothing else to change, you can use a CritAP body here as well)

Felt Bracers AP meld

Felt Gaskins :: Militia Subligar - INT/PIE meld

Caligae :: Choral Sandals :: Explorer's Moccasins

-Emnity belt :: Flame Sergeant's Sash :: Other GC options?

Explorer's :: Militia Earrings

Electrum+1 :: Explorer's Choker

PIE :: DEX :: Crit :: GC bracelets

PIE :: DEX rings

Gridania officers cap if your not geting the crown and are with gridania and Darklight boots for 5 more pie and enmity -30 if you are finding yourself limited by your threat generation are options that can be mixed with the above. If you are using ifrit's or giantsgall it should be possible to cap your pie with out using the leg slot so in that case you could use Felt trousers with STR/DEX to pick up a bit more AP (Str still gives it, just doesn't show you it)

Now would that 50 att gloves still have as much benefit (stomping on 29 dex) even with flame bow? At what point is att+ too much? Is there such a point in 14? Just want to know before I sell my DEX gloves in lue of getting some att+50's (or darklight cuz 30 att/acc sounds better than 50 attack anyways)

There is no cap on attack power, at least no managable one, 30attack/acc is going to be behind the dex gloves baring overcaps.

Fair enough. Thanks :D. Looks like I got some raptor gloves of slaying/felt bracer's to double meld for +50 att. I saw a trip meld raptor +1 had like 80 attack on it in the wards. Was like 40M though LOL.

Try to go for felt bracers if you can since they also give you a few pie and acc which will beat out the 4 attack given by slaying gloves, only catch is the base gloves might be slightly more expensive.

True true. That lil pie and acc can help. Thanks mate :D. Always helpful

When using flame bow what are the accompanying flame pieces to use to get the accuracy bonus?

I'm 99% sure you would be sacrificing too much for it to be worth it over getting your ACC elswhere if you need it, waist peice is the only other peice that comes to mind since it has 5 dex and 10 acc. Darklight bracers are ideal for picking up more ACC since they have attack on them but dex gloves, neck and rings are other options.

Ah so the bow itself without the set bonus still tops others?

Yes, the reason is that it has high weapon skill damage with out sacrificing light shot damage like gid/LL and garuda's bows. Unlike the other jobs archer gets a much larger % of it's damage from light shot (auto attack) due to the long recast on quick nock holding us back on combos and barrage pumps up how much is being done by light shot. Having coj and thm as our subs dosn't give anything to boost up our WS damage/frequency either. The result being the dmg on a weapon and attack becomes much more important then for other jobs whos focus is on dps and capping their primary/secondary stats.

If you want to proc the ACC I'd suggest
Flame Sergent's sash
Flame Sergeant's Jackboots
Flame Sergeant's Ring
Flame Sergeant's Earrings