Ranger Weaponskill Sets

Next installment, WS sets. I have purposely NOT posted a Coronach set- while I am an Annihilator owner, I don't feel my Coronach set is anywhere near BiS for that specific weaponskill, and would be greatly appreciative if a fellow Anni user who has truly put the time/thought into this Weaponskill posted their set.

Last Stand:
ItemSet 353509

Belenus's Cape Augments: AGI+30,racc/ratk+20,Weaponskill Damage +10%.
Herculean Gear Augments: aim for Weaponskill Damage, AGI, ranged attack in that order. Fern stones have the highest cap on WSD, Taupe for AGI, and Pellucid for racc/ratk, so prioritize where you must. Considering our insane level of ranged accuracy these days, using Fern Stones and letting the racc/ratk land where it does is often the best route.

**Moonshade Earring for all sets is assumed to have "TP Bonus +250"- secondary stat on the earring is so marginal, feel free to make it match your needs. NEVER DO A REGAIN MOONSHADE, IT MAKES FATHERS CRY AND MOTHERS DRINK.**

Trueflight
ItemSet 353510

Belenus's Cape Augments: AGI+30,macc/mdmg+20,Weaponskill Damage +10%.
Samnuha Coat is assumed capped stats.
Herculean Augments: Prioritize Weaponskill Damage and Magic Attack Bonus. No need for Ranged Accuracy as Trueflight is a magical weaponskill. Ranged attack is not going to give the returns you want, so no need to fret over getting big numbers on that either.
Malevolences- have fun with that. I've spent the better part of over 1 million Bayld farming mine, and still lack capped Malevolences. The good news is that even bare of augments, they are your Best in Slot option for BOTH Main and Sub. This is the time you bust out /NIN or /DNC.

Possible replacement for Weatherspoon Ring if you have a different reward include Regal Ring (AGI+10 being the primary reason), Acumen Ring (4 MAB), Shiva Ring+1 (3 MAB), or Arvina Ringlet +1(5AGI, 3MAB)

Another possible swap if you don't have Orion+3 head: Make a Herculean Helm with WSD and MAB, and then drop the Eschan Stone at the waist for Sveltesse Gouriz +1. You can give up the MAB from the waist slot in this case due to the extra MAB you gain the head slot with an augmented Herculean Helm, and the Sveltesse Gouriz +1 compensates for the loss of AGI. Yes, you lose some overall WSD in this setup.

Jishnu's Radiance:
ItemSet 353508

Belenus's Cape Augments: DEX+30, racc/ratk+20, Critical Hit Rate+10%.
Adhemar Bonnet(+1 of course if you have, don't judge I'm saving for it!) is Path A for the DEX and AGI. **NOTE: If you have Adhemar Bonnet+1 AND Adhemar Gamashes+1, use the Gamashes with this set instead of Thereoid Greaves.**
Part of the key of Any good JR set is the balance between Critical Hit Rate% and Critical Hit Damage+. This is where pieces like the Meghanada Cuirie+2 come into play.
Darraigner's Brais are a great piece, but depending on your target and your overall ranged accuracy, Jokushu Haidate may parse better for you- its next to impossible to find 35 DEX on the leg slot ANYWHERE, and then combine it with 4% crit hit rate...like I said if you can spare the racc, give it a try.
Begrudging Ring-cap your tonberry hate. If you have a job using Chant du Cygne or other high-popularity crit-based weaponskills, you probably already have good tonberry hate and this ring.
Oneiros Knife- this is a MUST. Yes, you give up any ranged accuracy,ranged attack, and Store TP on your main hand, which does hurt these days, but the Nusku Shield helps compensate for that loss. But to gain 10% damage to every critical hit in one slot is just too powerful not to use.

I think you mean any returns. Either way, both aren't regular magic path augments. AGI is off-path, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

For TF Carmine body +1 should beat Samnuha Coat by a little bit a 30 mab/4 wsd herc should beat it by even more.

Similar augments come close for herc hands as well and according to bg wiki looks like you can get higher but I've never higher than 25 MAB with Fern and obviously you aren't going to hit 5 wsd with pellucid so good luck beating carmine there.

Also should add wouldn't fret too much about using your last stand cape for this. 20 mdmg is only going to translate into like 100-200 dmg

Also what about Hot shot yo!?!

I'm pretty sure this is BiS for Coronach although I haven't checked in a while.

ItemSet 353514

Sometimes you might be better off with different weapons if you need Racc or Store TP.

The Herc suggestions for Trueflight to replace Samnuha Coat and Carmine Finger Gauntlets+1 are both true. Here was my reasoning for those choices versus the ones mentioned:

Carmine+1 body is the least-made Carmine piece on every server, and on the less populated places, hard to find. Shouldn't be a complete reason not to use it, but unless you have a second use for this piece, I don't see a worth in it.

But...since we use Carmine+1 hands in our preshot builds, we have those already. And since augment path doesn't matter for preshot sets, using Path D on the Finger Gauntlets for an additional 12 MAB (bringing total for the piece to 42) is a great double use for this piece.

If you're floating in Herc Bodies, and want to go for stones, its going to be your best bet once you really get some solid augments on it (In the neighborhood of 3% WSD and 15MAB should probably be more than enough to outparse, but I haven't spreadsheeted it). The sad truth is that while farming those Malevolences you'll probably get a capped Samnuha Coat for free versus the cost of stones or a Voodoo Scale Mail.

**Also Snaps, would you mind editing your post with what augments you go for on those Herc Pieces? Was wondering if you aim for STR or AGI.

STR's a bit better than AGI, which is in turn better than DEX. However, I wouldn't feel bad about using AGI herc with with good other stats (high racc/ratt/wsd). Megh+2 in the Herc slots is probably better than low-grade augments.

agility would also work for last stand or true flight

You'll need much better augments on a Herculean body to have it win out. 29 AGI, 38 macc, 35 MAB requires some work to beat. I currently have a 33 macc/MAB and 2 WSD body and it just ever-so-slightly wins out against Samnuha. Obviously it'll differ based on overall gear, but Samnuha is, unfortunately, a tough piece to beat.

As far as the hands go, though, I definitely agree. The HQ Carmine are extremely hard to beat outside of absurd DM augments.

I know this has probably been broken down before but why mab neck/waist > Fotia? In English please.

not the best way to ask a question

because fotia isn't 10% wsd

It is if you understand the meaning....
As you don't, i will expand on what i mean.

Many time when relating info on stats in this game, the people that have the knowledge and time to work it out do so in... complicated ways... like 0=4x/insert this. but if 0=3x/ then insert this.

I just want a simple explanation. I know that fotia isn't actually 10%. but i never understood why MAB>

Because a small amount of MAB out parses the folia equipment. Since you can get quite a bit of MAB on neck and waist it's easy to stack.

It hurts the mobs more. Can't get any simpler.

best case for fotia would be if you had 518 MAB before the neck slot against baetyl, 279 before the waist slot against eschan. that's best case for fotia pieces at exactly 1K tp, which is not going to happen.

Thanks for the non sarcastic answer Austar.

I have 303 currently with Eschan and Sanctity. Other WS DMG+ gear is fine though, right? Like Orion +3

I don't think there is a single pure magical ws in existence that fotia is better for outside of lots of mab buffs. Pretty good for hybrids though so great with hot shot

ok. the Fotia VS a MAB piece argument:

Let's state clearly (even though its "known" and stated on bgwiki how it works) what the Fotia Gorget/Belt do. They "Increase a Weaponskill's FTP". They also only affect the FIRST HIT of a weaponskill UNLESS FTP is transferred through all hits (its not worth listing all the weaponskills that do/don't transfer, do your own research!).

How much FTP? well 25/256, around 0.1 per Fotia piece.

So let's look at Trueflight. Its a single hit weaponskill, so no worries there about tranferring http://FTP. The FTP scales with TP, so here are the "anchor" values:

1000TP=3.890625
2000TP=6.4921875
3000TP=9.671875

So, even using BOTH Fotia items for a ~0.2FTP increase, the numbers go to

1000TP=4.090265 (5% increase in FTP)
2000TP=6.6921875 (3% increase in FTP)
3000TP=9.871875 (2% increase in FTP)

Let's compare this to a weaponskill we DO use this for, say Last Stand:

1000TP=2.0 goes to 2.2 (10% increase in FTP)
2000TP=3.0 goes to 3.2 (6.67% increase in FTP)
3000TP=4.0 goes to 4.2 (5% increase in FTP)

so...we're talking about over double the effect on Last Stand versus Trueflight. Now, if I can tell you I can get a 5% increase in damage via 10MAB(easily done with Sanctity Necklace, drop from Quetzacoatl), and that's just ONE of the two slots, what will you do with that?

You should aim for WSD + AGI. DEX is good as well. STR can be better than AGI but it can also be very bad or worthless, depending fSTR2.

OK this makes some sense to me. Thanks!

Should note exact sets as well as how much tp you got will effect some of those slots. So might be a good idea to try a few things around. Part of why I keep 2 pieces as I augment and are close but one might have more wsd and the other more mab. Oddly my herc head actually was doing better than Orion+3 with each of my close options... but everything was so close lol

Also worth noting Hot shot is actually really good if you gear for it

First of all, THIS THIS THIS in terms of mixing/matching and trying things out. Testing is SO EASY for Ranged weaponskills, and very rewarding.

I'd LOVE to have a really solid Hot Shot build, but have read that it is a hybrid WS and I just haven't messed with it. If someone out there has a working set and can really talk through the mechanics of Hybrid Weaponskills, I'd be taking notes for sure.

There's some testing done over the sam/nin threads that is partly applicable (the insane way extra hits work with it sadly does not). Sam seems mostly based on the nin one here http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/49614/blade-chi-damage-formula/

Then some testing on bg that kind of added that in https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/108199-Random-Facts-Thread-Other?p=6961532&viewfull=1#post6961532

The tl;dr the physical hit works exactly like you'd expect a base 1.0 ftp physical ranged attack to work.

That's used as base dmg for the magical part and otherwise mostly works like a normal magical otherwise. Differences being no dstat and fotia works at lower potency for some reason.

Big take aways for this and part of why they have a lot of potential you get to take advantage of pdif AND MAB/mdb. Downside is you have to care about both so kind of poor solo (also makes testing which different sets for max dmg a tad harder). Also other upside is fotia gets added in at both parts and wsd gets multiplied in at both parts making both those stats a lot more valuable than in normal magical.

My current set definitely not fully optimized as still figuring stuff out but good enough to get 49k against right outside aoudalin fodder at 3k tp with only ratt buffs and dia III (ok cheated a little since mandies weak to piercing) is basically the trueflight set above but with double fotia and full herc with wsd/mab augs. Also guns would deal a lot more because base dmg is physical

Edit: Better example of dmg. Enough def down/ratt+ should be capped pdif but no magic side related buffs and definitely need better augs and lol waterday. Also with Armageddon because I don't have Bahamut cannon :(

Fotia behaves the same way as the Elemental Belts/Gorgets used to synthesize it; the added bonus of 1% chance to not use TP is the only difference. it is just worded incredibly poorly and so someone is always asking the same question every couple times it is mentioned.

They are completely different multipliers so no not even close under most circumstances. Elemental belts don't actually add any damage per se either they just take that 33% chance to get the weather/day proc to 100%. To make this easier just show the whole TF (and most magical ws) formula

TF dmg = (dstat+mdmg+ ftp*(lvl/ilvl+wsc))*wsd *Staff bonus* Affinity * SDT * Resist*Day & Weather*MAB/MDB × DT/MDT * Potency Multipliers

ilvl is the 5 visible armor slots and main hand weapon or ranged weapon. So no it wont lower your ilvl. And lower ilvl in and of itself has no effect on your strength only things like xp/cp, /check enemies and trusts. It will result in less stats but in this case it's mostly the lost of macc and melee acc

He's talking about the elemental WS belts from Abyssea, not the elemental magic obis. Also, just a small correction, but ilvl doesn't affect exp/cp (other than raising the cap as soon as you put any ilvl on).

As a recently returning player who is main RNG I have been really confused about alot of these sets and builds, so thank you for making this! Can't wait to go try some of it out myself soon.

Perhaps worth mentioning that Wildfire is basically the same set, other than dropping the Weatherspoon ring. Not just relevant to Armageddon users, since WF can be very useful as a darkness SC option.

Regarding Trueflight/Wildfire rings:
Ilabrat (AGI+10/STP+5) should be added to the list. Arguably the best option behind Weatherspoon (Trueflight only) and Dingir. Same AGI as Regal Ring, but Store TP+5 makes it my choice over Regal's Macc from set bonus - but take your pick of which is more important to you.

Garuda+1 and even NQ Garuda Rings are also reasonable alternatives. Unbuffed I get: Ilabrat/Regal > Arvina +1 > Garuda+1 > NQ Garuda > Acumen. Really though, all of these are quite close (especially the top 3). The real difference makers are going to be Weatherspoon (BiS for Trueflight) and Dingir (one of your two BiS in any magical WS setup).


Also, Herculean Gloves can beat Carmine+1 hands for TF/WF with good but not unreasonable augments. I have a WSD+5%/MAB+12 pair that beat my CFG+1, and it's not inconceivable to get more MAB (or higher WSD with Dark Matter augments)


Hah... Your complaints might have caused FFXI to take mercy on me, thanks :) Had one capped Malevolence, and upgraded my 2nd to an allllllmost capped one (INT+10 Macc+10 MAB+8 FC+5) within like an hour of reading your post. I'll take the bump from my mid-ranged augmented dagger that was my previous 2nd best. And yes, I've been working for many many many SR runs... two perfect daggers still elude me though :P

But yeah, can't be stressed enough that for fights where magical WS are the most significant source of your damage, changing subjob so you can use an offhand dagger (and /DNC Skillchain Bonus, which I generally prefer to /NIN and Utsusemi) is by far the biggest DPS buff you can get. /WAR and Fencer/Nusku's is for Last Stand spam or bows.