Bard Detail

[Spider-Dan]

HQ Spinel caps at DTR+5.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Spoiler: show

NQ Relic, Spinel accessories are unmelded, Imperial Operative stuff has Vit+7 (holdover from trashmob tank gear).

DL earrings and ring look good so I'll probably get those next. Neck looks lame and wrists not sure. Assuming I'm not gonna spend myth on this anytime soon, anything else I should do besides those purchases and finishing melds?

[Spider-Dan]

So about that macro vs. action bar reuse speed...

While you can "prebuffer" GCD actions (when clicking the action icon and not a macroed action) at ~75% of GCD cooldown, they don't actually execute until the GCD completes. Based on that, I took my BRD out (Skill Speed: 380) and recorded the amount of time it took me to fire 30 Heavy Shots at a training dummy. (All of the following was with a PS2 controller.)

First, I "prebuffered" the Heavy Shot action by clicking it exactly once between 75-85% of GCD recast. Total time- 1:12.23
Next, I made a macro consisting solely of /ac "Heavy Shot" <t> and used the turbo function on this controller to spam it. Total time- 1:14.05

That works out to a ~0.06sec time savings on prebuffered direct action vs. turbospamming a macro. Suffice it to say that if you believe this is significant, you should also be gearing for skill speed.

Long story short: use macros.

[Day]

Spoiler: show

NQ Relic, Spinel accessories are unmelded, Imperial Operative stuff has Vit+7 (holdover from trashmob tank gear).

DL earrings and ring look good so I'll probably get those next. Neck looks lame and wrists not sure. Assuming I'm not gonna spend myth on this anytime soon, anything else I should do besides those purchases and finishing melds?

Melds on imp op are gonna be your biggest upgrade atm. Rest looks alright to me, go ahead and grab the DL earrings and ring. Someone is going to nitpick the DL hands but if you're going into coil at all, they are fine for the acc based off rest of gear.

[shepardG]

Crit should be capped on most of those acc, so if it is, (and dex also) i'd get some more determination, should start to see some increases in dmg with around 30-40 dmg (noticeable difference anyway)

[Seravi Edalborez]

Would you believe I still don't have Tox hands?

Edit ^: Neck only gets +2 more det from melds. Probably gonna be extremely silly and meld MND on it for something I can use on SCH (crit/vit/mnd/det/awesome str for my book auto attacks). Det and finishing crit on wrists. Det and idk on leftover Spinel Ring.

[Deadgye]

So about that macro vs. action bar reuse speed...

While you can "prebuffer" GCD actions (when clicking the action icon and not a macroed action) at ~75% of GCD cooldown, they don't actually execute until the GCD completes. Based on that, I took my BRD out (Skill Speed: 380) and recorded the amount of time it took me to fire 30 Heavy Shots at a training dummy. (All of the following was with a PS2 controller.)

First, I "prebuffered" the Heavy Shot action by clicking it exactly once between 75-85% of GCD recast. Total time- 1:12.23
Next, I made a macro consisting solely of /ac "Heavy Shot" <t> and used the turbo function on this controller to spam it. Total time- 1:14.05

That works out to a ~0.06sec time savings on prebuffered direct action vs. turbospamming a macro. Suffice it to say that if you believe this is significant, you should also be gearing for skill speed.

Long story short: use macros.

I think the discrepancy between using the 3 in one macro and going manual is that you waste too much time on bloodletter so your DPS suffers. Heavy shot results in more damage per shot because of straighter shot, so you ideally should only be using bloodletter in between gcd.

[ejact]

Would you believe I still don't have Tox hands?

Edit ^: Neck only gets +2 more det from melds. Probably gonna be extremely silly and meld MND on it for something I can use on SCH (crit/vit/mnd/det/awesome str for my book auto attacks). Det and finishing crit on wrists. Det and idk on leftover Spinel Ring.

I think I ran AK well over 100 times by now I think and have yet to have seen tox hands drop. I swear those things are a myth.

[Raldo]

I think I ran AK well over 100 times by now I think and have yet to have seen tox hands drop. I swear those things are a myth.

Same here. I don't even know what chest they drop out of. I'm guessing the flayer chest?

[Day]

I got them early : x They aren't a myth.

[Spider-Dan]

I think the discrepancy between using the 3 in one macro and going manual is that you waste too much time on bloodletter so your DPS suffers. Heavy shot results in more damage per shot because of straighter shot, so you ideally should only be using bloodletter in between gcd.

Well, yes, you should only use BL between GCD, but the ultimate goal should be to use BL between every GCD.

I think I ran AK well over 100 times by now I think and have yet to have seen tox hands drop. I swear those things are a myth.

Seems like Tox hands, Demagogue pants and Demagogue shoes are all artificially rare.

or: the stuff I want never drops yo

[Majidah]

Would you believe I still don't have Tox hands?

Edit ^: Neck only gets +2 more det from melds. Probably gonna be extremely silly and meld MND on it for something I can use on SCH (crit/vit/mnd/det/awesome str for my book auto attacks). Det and finishing crit on wrists. Det and idk on leftover Spinel Ring.

Have tox hands been proven to be better than DL hands? I used to wear them instead of DL but I got peer pressured into DL hands when I started running coil and haven't really switched back.

[Day]

16 acc was too much for me to give up in coil until I got BRD AF2 I also used DL, and I have tox hands. People all hyped up on that crit around here, depending on fight, DL Hands come out on top imo. ymmv.

[Eldelphia]

Has someone got a link to a post about which bows a 50 BRD should use on their way to a relic? My friend has the Serpent Lieutenant's bow from the Grid FC and just got the Ifrit bow. He's wary of losing so much crit. Could use some help figuring which he should use...

[Seravi Edalborez]

+3 DEX, +18 Det, +1 base damage vs +25 crit. I love crit as much as anyone but Ifrit's is the winner here. Personally I used that all the way to relic 'cause I didn't feel like farming Garuda.

Moogle bow would be the ideal best pre-relic but not here yet so...

[fren.]

I got Tox hands during my story run of AK. Does that make me bad?

Also, I tried parsing through the last few pages..but holy shit that one idiot. It was probably mentioned in there, but how long do I stick with HQ spinels? They're unmelded as I've been spiritbonding and selling the materia.

[Judai]

Only reason to wear DL Hands is IF you NEED the Acc. Meaning you aren't fully geared yet(no DL Accs) or you picked up AF2 Pants and are missing Acc somewhere else, or you just have the worst luck in the world and Tox Legs/Hands don't exist.

If you don't need the acc, it's 8DET vs 11Crit. Then again, we also use Tox Ring and Neck, right? People keep saying, crit is over valued and listing the next piece of gear they didn't bother with, with crit on it. How much crit are you dropping because "DL gear is higher, therefore better" or "Tox Acces. are fine"?

What are you wearing?

Tox Ring? -10 crit
Tox Neck or DL Neck? -11 crit
Tox Ears? -12 crit
DL Hands? -11 to 14crit(AF is decent and you get 10acc back, -4Dex hurts though)
DL Legs? -24 crit

Someone has asked about all of these items at some point and people defend each one because, "crit isn't the most amazing thing ever omg".

-68 crit isn't a big deal?

If it's not your main job, or you don't do coil, or you don't really care, then there was no need to really ask about one item. If some things just never drop for you, ok, but some stuff is clearly the best piece on your way to BIS items and you should aim for it until you get the BIS.

You should look at your gear and say;

Do I have enough Acc? Yes?
Is there a major discrepancy between Dex on the items? No?
Does one have crit? Yes?
Use it.

[Day]

That's stupid. No one is saying drop every piece of gear with crit on it. People ask specific questions they get specific answers. Otherwise we may as well take your little list of questions make it a sticky and lock the thread.

Anyone really serious is going to go for BiS like you said, I don't see where DL hands vs Tox hands is worth an essay or busting a vessel over.

[Judai]

I'm not busting a vessel lol, not sure where I sounded angry. I'm saying every time someone brings up one of these pieces, someone says, the inferior item is fine don't worry. That's stupid advice. It should be, you can use that if you need it but, this is better.

As in, DL hands are only good IF you need the acc(which you somewhat stated). If you do not need the acc, Tox Hands are better. It's not about BIS, it's about best piece/set while working toward BIS. I see tons of BRDs every day wearing all the pieces I just listed, thinking it's the best/fine gear when it's clearly inferior to stuff that isn't impossible/costly to get. So unless you have terrible luck on drops, you shouldn't need certain pieces.

So if everyone keeps reading, "w/e that piece is fine, you don't have to worry about being "uberomgcrit", then you get ppl wearing all that trash I listed, all the time, which btw, probably puts you under the acc cap for coil because you would have shit acc on some of those items.

I'm sitting next to 3 relic BRDs in Toll atm;

Full DL, Tox Ring, Relic+1
Full DL, except Tox Feet/Ring, Relic+1
Full DL, except Tox Neck/Ring/Ears, Hero Wrists...

They all could have geared far better.

I forgot, sitting around bored/waiting on ppl and writing a paragraph means you are super angry though. I also didn't realize providing a simple 3 question survey to figure out if one item might be better then another was a bad thing.

[Day]

It's not exactly trash is the thing and a couple pieces of "trash" items like that aren't going to make or break anyone's AK/WP dps. I'm spirit bonding accessories in everything but coil, so wtf does it even matter really. If you're going in coil you're going to want some acc over crit anyways, so DL hands are not exactly gimp/rubbish, and most coil brds are going to have AF2 hands anyways. I could see making a big deal out of some lvl 45 shit or something, but whatever yo, get those AK crits lmao.