Bard Detail

[Deader2818]

I thought heros neck was considered garabage?

[Raldo]

Stuffed Cabbage is your best bet for accuracy food. Lava Toad Legs has a higher cap, but the lower percentage actually makes it worse. HQ Lava Toad Legs is ever-so-slightly better than NQ Stuffed Cabbage by a few points of crit, but HQ Stuffed Cabbage generally beats them both.

I thought heros neck was considered garabage?

11DET vs 11Crit

The difference there is so unbelievably minimal, it may as well be non-existent.

[Deader2818]

I thought crit was always better due to river of blood?

[Raldo]

At some point, "Increasing all damage" beats "Increasing critical hit rate", the question is merely where the line is drawn. Would you sacrifice 5 crit for 20 determination? I would. Would you sacrifice 7 crit for 14 determination? I would. At what point does one beat the other? I don't know. I should think 11Det vs 11Crit is pretty close to where that line is blurred (if recent Monk tests can be applied to Bard, 11Det should be roughly equal to 2DEX).

Before someone blows this out of proportion, I did not say that Hero's was better, I merely said that the difference between the two is so small that if you're using Hero's because you don't have Allagan neck, you don't need to stress about not having it because you're probably not even going to notice the difference with a parser given the random nature of critical hits.

[Jem]

I thought crit was always better due to river of blood?

It is but it's hard to put an exact figure on River of Blood. Without River of Blood, technically Skill Speed > Crit Rate if you plug it into the calculator although obviously that relies on you being able to flawlessly make use of the lowered GCD (i.e. not accurate!)

(Disclaimer: Obviously I know Crit > Skill Speed)

[kisada]

At some point, "Increasing all damage" beats "Increasing critical hit rate", the question is merely where the line is drawn. Would you sacrifice 5 crit for 20 determination? I would. Would you sacrifice 7 crit for 14 determination? I would. At what point does one beat the other? I don't know. I should think 11Det vs 11Crit is pretty close to where that line is blurred (if recent Monk tests can be applied to Bard, 11Det should be roughly equal to 2DEX).

Before someone blows this out of proportion, I did not say that Hero's was better, I merely said that the difference between the two is so small that if you're using Hero's because you don't have Allagan neck, you don't need to stress about not having it because you're probably not even going to notice the difference with a parser given the random nature of critical hits.

well, comparing something like allagan tank pants vs war AF2 pants (34 crit vs 24 det) in the valk dancing mad dps calculator, you get an amount of damage approximately equal to each other (with det being very slightly ahead).

so assuming the calculations are accurate, straight up potency wise 11 det will always be better than 11 crit. but when you begin to factor in utility of abilities like bloodletter or even adloquium, it becomes fairly nebulous.

[Andradi]

WD 8.683
DEX 1.000
DTR 0.314
CRT 0.269
SS 0.126

Again from the Dragoon thread on the OF (these are numbers for bards, yes). Ask EasyModeX if you want methodolgy?

Determination is similar to the other classes, speed slightly less good and crit is significantly better.

[Judai]

Hero's Neck isn't "garbage" per say but no point in me wasting myth on something when I can spend it on BiS stuff for other jobs. The difference might be minimal but it's either 375 Myth spent on something I would replace, or 375 Myth spent on Fending Ring for my PLD and soon to be WAR.

My basically methodology is, unless you are trading a bunch of DET for a little Crit, Crit is always better.

11v11? Crit
24 Det for 10 Crit? Det

[Deadgye]

Those numbers seem slightly off compared to what I saw last time, which det getting a big boost. Have people actually been posting tests, and have they been accumulated somewhere?

I guess I should probably try to start doing some damage testing on top of my crit testing.

[Andradi]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Formula-Thread

Loads of testing here done a few weeks ago.

[Deadgye]

I see some raw testing which is nice, but I don't see anywhere how those, or really any weights were calculated. I personally can't see myself ever using or trusting weighted values if I can't even find out how they were weighted. Absolute values are much better to use and less likely to be screwed up. If weighted values are given, exactly how they were weighted should be mentioned so a third party can catch mistakes or recalculate them for what they personally believe is a more accurate circumstance.

A lot of people probably underestimated determination, but most of the people who are realizing that mistake keep forgetting to factor in important things like increased base action damage and etc.

[RKI]

I don't understand the point of weights that assume everything is linear. Already we know that the main stat has a non-linear effect with weapon damage (which leads to the zenith bow being not necessarily the last myth purchase you might want to do if you have enough DEX - not taking elfin or allagan bow into account).
With crit versus det, I assume that as mentioned above, there is a point where increasing your overall damage (through det) will lead to better results than increasing the frequency of river of blood procs. And this decision will depend on the fight (trash or fights with lots of adds where you will have the opportunity to have more than 2 dots applied vs boss with few adds where you will have less dots so crit will be more valuable to make use of them). That's what I feel from a theoretical point of view at least.

Unrelated note: anyone think that the rng has a tendency to cluster procs? Be it on river of blood, trick of the trade, hasty touches, I can go with many procs/success in a row followed by long stretches of non-procs/failures. Only eye-balling but it feels like there is clustering.

Unrelated note 2: I saw mentions of tp regain having been nerfed in 2.1 and it really feels like I'm draining tp faster. Any confirmation?

[Spider-Dan]

At some point, "Increasing all damage" beats "Increasing critical hit rate", the question is merely where the line is drawn. Would you sacrifice 5 crit for 20 determination? I would. Would you sacrifice 7 crit for 14 determination? I would.

Would I sacrifice 5 CRT for 5 DET? No.
Would I sacrifice 7 CRT for 7 DET? No.
Would I sacrifice 20 CRT for 20 DET? No.

It doesn't get any more straightforward and simple than a 1:1 comparison. If you're taking 11 DET over 11 CRT, then you're saying DET is better than CRT for BRD.

The alternative is the "I have more than enough crit" argument from earlier in this thread, which is as yet unfounded.

[Kincard]

Critical hit rate obviously depreciates the more you get just because of how it works from a common sense perspective, but like someone else said even if crit was always better than det the difference is so small I'm not sure it's even worth all the effort into figuring it out. The only consistent thing I think you should be doing is to avoid SS as much as you can. Just use whatever you have easier access to.

[Kalima]

So any advice on mid-tier gear? I just got done with all of my PLD mytho pieces and will start on brd, but have been making the conversion between DL and ballad. I'm currently 4/5 on ballad (missing feet and belt) with mostly DL accessories + ultima neck, toxo ring, and NQ relic, but the stats seem like I shouldnt be wearing all the pieces (has dex and acc increases while losing almost all crit from DL).

Anyway, just wondering which pieces I should be wearing for the time being.

[Kincard]

If you make use of the skill speed you gain on legs/feet, there's not a single ballad piece that I'd consider worse than DL, those two are the smallest upgrade though. The rest are just straight up better. Of the two you're missing you might elect to get the feet over the belt since it's a larger upgrade overall (the belt bumps your stats up less). I dunno if you're planning on spending any mytho on BRD though since that'd probably swap around your priorities a little.

[Classikmage]

You need 0 Acc from the looks of it. I had 418 just from my best gear, will drop to 106 now though. I also occasionally eat buttons outside Coil, if I feel like eating anything. So yea, 2 DEX> 10Acc, 3?Crit.

Do you actually have 320 Determination with out food with your gear? Just wondering because I'm Ilvl 80 and only have 272, which nets me 13/16 Determination using HQ Buttons versus 14 Critical hit I lose (531 base) swapping from HQ Deviled Eggs. I was just looking to see if HQ Buttons might be a viable option for me now or maybe in the future since they are a lot easier to make than Deviled Eggs. (One farmed item/1 fished item vs all Botany/NPC mats).

[Kalima]

If you make use of the skill speed you gain on legs/feet, there's not a single ballad piece that I'd consider worse than DL, those two are the smallest upgrade though. The rest are just straight up better. Of the two you're missing you might elect to get the feet over the belt since it's a larger upgrade overall (the belt bumps your stats up less). I dunno if you're planning on spending any mytho on BRD though since that'd probably swap around your priorities a little.

Yeah im going to start on mytho pieces next week. Thinking of getting my 900 pieces out of the way first so legs > body > +1 bow if I dont complete elfin by this time. Then work on other pieces based on the biggest gains. I probably wont be doing any coil pieces anytime soon, nor will I be using brd in coil, so BiS is not a priority. I still want to get it hitting as hard as posible though.

[Raldo]

Would I sacrifice 5 CRT for 5 DET? No.
Would I sacrifice 7 CRT for 7 DET? No.
Would I sacrifice 20 CRT for 20 DET? No.

It doesn't get any more straightforward and simple than a 1:1 comparison. If you're taking 11 DET over 11 CRT, then you're saying DET is better than CRT for BRD.

Point-for-point, on Bard I value the two stats equally. You clearly don't, which is fine. We don't have enough information to say one way or the other, which is what I was getting at.

[Diomer]

If you make use of the skill speed you gain on legs/feet, there's not a single ballad piece that I'd consider worse than DL, those two are the smallest upgrade though. The rest are just straight up better. Of the two you're missing you might elect to get the feet over the belt since it's a larger upgrade overall (the belt bumps your stats up less). I dunno if you're planning on spending any mytho on BRD though since that'd probably swap around your priorities a little.

Would the same logic hold for Ballad Sarouel vs Gryphonskin Kecks melded with 27 Crit?