Power Rangers: A Guide To Pewing

Verda- How does the new AF compare to your old sets?

Orion Jerkin +3: 17 more effective ranged acc then my near perfect aug herc (15 more than perfect), 5 more STP, -3 more enmity. So basically a huge upgrade in every way.

Orion Bracers +3: better barrage by a huge margin, the old hands had basically no ranged acc at all and you get what was mostly a mythic only barrage accuracy bonus for free, letting you gear more STP or crit rate/dmg into your barrage sets by a large margin. They also have more effective ranged acc by about 2 ranged accuracy than Adhemar +1 path C hands, however for tping you'll still want Adhemar +1 on your wish list (they are on mine) for the 7 STP. The huge enmity down and shadowbind are just pure bonus. Before the next best RACC hands were kobe kote, and they had about 12 less ranged acc than adhemar +1 so the ranged acc on these should not be underplayed.

Orion Braccae +3: 2 more effective ranged acc than Adhemar +1 path C again, with a crazy amount of STR to boot for a RNG piece. The snapshot values are very high and will be great for no flurry builds, but for a TP piece you'll be missing STP which Adhemar again has. Generous amounts of enmity- tho and their really high ranged acc mean they are still very valuable to TP in for high acc situations. They also have a boost to sharpshot so you of course want them :)

Orion Socks +3: the prior best ranged acc piece (perfect aug herc feet) just got blown out of the water by 11 effective ranged accuracy and Adhemar +1 has very little ranged acc on this slot (tho they are still worth it for the trueshot 2% for some situations). We know how rare perfect aug anything is, you can basically assume you'll get 80% of what you want, and since there's not ranged acc + stp feet unless you get extremely lucky with dark matter then these are amazing any way you look at them. Movement and scavenge are just bonuses, these will be most people's default TP feet unless you are standing trueshot distance with ODT or mythic am3 and want to up your auto dps. The addition of movement speed to 18% along with being the standard TP piece might make these your most often equipped piece of the set.

Orion Beret +3 - Basically every physical weaponskill but Jishnu's and Last Stand just got way stronger, but even they might both greatly benefit from this. WSD only affects the first hit, and those are the only multihit WS rng really uses. Pretty much god mode for coronach, especially when you consider the enmity down on it and the fact it has so much accuracy and is high in dex, agi and str. The closest competitor to this for ranged accuracy is Meghanada Visor +1, even perfect herc doesn't beat that, and this beats Meghanada Visor +1 by 13.25 ranged accuracy. Most ranger will still want to TP in Arcadian for the 50 TP per shot 90% of the time but this is the best high acc option, which the visor remains interesting for ODT and AM3 setups. The Rapidshot +18 might find it's way into some sets as well for flurry II.

basically the entire set is solid, RNG made out very well. RNG was already a high accuracy job but this pushed it even further. For a just high acc set this adds 43.25 ranged accuracy over the best options available before (though head, hands and legs will cost you tp gain to use, it's still an irreplaceable set for all pieces). The set also has -33 enmity, so with -5 from merits and -10 from pax you'd have -48 enmity which is 2 from cap.

Can we just take a moment to bask in the glory of Nusku Shield pls? I've been using Legion Scutum for almost a decade. LETS GOOOOO

Ya that is crazy how long we've had to use Legion Scutum or novelty shields with small amounts of +hp. /WAR definitely improved!

Rng made out like a bandit this patch everything is so juicy !!!

What are the necessary AF1/2/3 these days? Outside of the new stuff, trying to regear my RNG for the master trial.

Relic Hat,Empy Body, AF Hands,AF Feet(Free Movement Speed) are the only ones I can think off the top of my head that are must haves.

I'd add relic legs for EES damage, and sharpshot is a powerful JA so I'd add AF legs to that too. Empy hands and legs have the most STP ranger can wear too and that's useful for the Alexander stage of the fight, the hands also have 2 bounty shot letting you start out at TH 4 on other content (it won't matter for the master trial though) and the legs have 2 trueshot (which also won't matter for the master trial).

The arcadian body can also double shot 5% of the time regardless of if you used the double shot ability or not so it is useful for fodder/the alexander part of the fight. I made all 15 pieces but in the end it's up to you, I use all the ones topace posted and the ones I listed here some are definitely more important than others though. I use Jute Boots +1 for movement at the moment but it's nice to use the AF feet with scavenge then you don't have to carry around as much ammo and eat up less inventory.

af hat, relic body for preshot

relic head for tp

af hands for shadowbind/barrage

rest doesn't matter for master trial

I'm pretty sure you want to use amini body for preshot now, but I haven't got the testing done to back it up. My JP friend said too though that you don't want to count velocity shot as snapshot and I have my own ancedotal reasons to believe that, hope I can get solid data soon. And ya you can go minimalist on reforges but in a fight where people time out with 1% hp left I think it's wise to min max what you can (happened to me more than once). Sometimes with the aeonic gun on Alexander for example with crooked sam and all the STP gear you can muster you don't even need double shot procs to get to 1k tp again (just post ws tp and one ranged attack).

Anyway, if there's room for opinions people will have them. Mine is do everything you can b/c the more you do the less the fight depends on luck. I've won three times now, and the more you can juice out of ranger the more consistent the runs.

How's Armageddon for RNG these days?

I've been wanting to afterglow my currently lv90 gun - somewhat more because of COR, but one of the things that definitely appeals to me about Arma is that it will give me a very high end weapon for two different jobs, even if not the best of the best in the majority of situations for either. But are there RNG situations where Arma is the ideal choice? If I was gonna do it solely for COR, I'd prob get a Death Penalty (assuming I got over the additional Mythic hassle and extra ~65mil costs given my server's current upgrade item prices). I also have one afterglow mythic (PUP) and one relic (NIN), and would kinda like one each of R/M/E afterglow just to say I did one of all 3...

I'm a little out of the loop on RNG as far as recent use and currently lacking in JPs, but otherwise set up pretty well with all of the relevant pre-Omen gear aside from HQ abjuration. 100% AF/Relic/Empy lv119, 100% NQ abjuration, Meghanada+1/Mummu+1 sets (well, will be done with Mummu in a few more days at least), some spare Herculean pieces, relevant accessories.

Almost decided to fully commit to pulling the trigger (no pun intended...), but tell me if I'm crazy and you think Arma isn't worth the effort. If nothing else, my timing to get back into RNG&COR seems good if the December update is something to go by, ranged jobs kinda look to be coming back with a vengeance!

Hi Capuchin :D


Ranged autos and it is a top tier dps choice. I'll explain, I'm going by the spreadsheets and info available but have seen an AG Arma in action and have many other endgame ranger weapons. The basic math for a ranged attack looks like this:

(fSTR2 + Weapon Damage + Ammo Damage) x (hit multiplier) x pDIF x Trueshot

and for a crit like this:

(fSTR2 + Weapon Damage + Ammo Damage) x (hit multiplier) x pDIF x Trueshot x 1.25 x (dead aim + crit damage)

the hit multiplier is 3x for empy weapons, up to 50% of the time so I want to show you what a pdif capped crit can look like on Arma with all of rangers 53% native dead aim. The capped contribution of fSTR2 is determined by weapon rank so and using a chrono bullet:

( (143/9) + 143 + 300 ) x 3 x 3.5 x 1.19 x 1.25 x 1.53 =

( 458 ) x 23.8966 = 10,944

So you could see your critical ODT hits for as much as 10.9k, more if you put on say, Meghanada Visor +1, or critical hit damage pieces. Ranger gets a ton of dead aim so it's really good for this. In Addition, camoflauge will add 20% crit chance. So you could ideally make a ranged attack only build for Arma and it would be pretty devastating. The spreadsheet shows an average shot for 6941 damage with actual gear on. Gandiva also shares this trait but the combined total of it's damages is smaller (though the weapon rank of bows is higher).

Now that's out of the way, the other things Arma is really good at is just being the do everything well gun. Want a good Trueflight gun? It's not far behind foma at 1k tp, and the top end near 3k (which is what you are more worried about for closing fusion chains) beats foma. It's also great at last stand, and of course is the best wildfire gun. And since almost every marksmanship WS is AGI based, it's good at almost all of them by default. You also get a ton of accuracy. If you combine those features with the ranged hit potential of Arma it's actually a top dps choice for physical for ranger, Gandiva does better if you spam Jishnu's of course, but it is a lower accuracy weapon and the DEX is only amazing for Jishnu's. That's why I sort of think of Arma as the jack of trades gun for ranger. Foma is good too of course and is a lot stronger for Last Stand not just because of the TP bonus but because of the higher base damage and that it will self chain light, but it won't touch Arma's accuracy. If you include the ODT from Arma tho, even losing Last Stand numbers Arma comes out on top of the dps game due to the huge contribution from ranged attacks so that's why I posted the math for that, because to understand why Arma is so strong you have to understand how much dps it gets out of ranged attacks. And while you can't self chain light with Last Stand like Foma, it is interesting to note that Last Stand and Trueflight make light.

Kollosis has a Gandiva, and I'm sure he can attest to how much damage you can get out of ranged attacks with an empy weapon all empy weapons of course have that trait, it's just on steroids for ranger due to how ranged attacks work and traits like dead aim and true shot.

So what is the best weapon if you could be handed one of them at fully unlocked potential?

Thinking of taking up Ranger and want to know what I should be working for.

Annihilator.

Is it because you can spam without hate issues which allow you to nonstop WS without dying? Or does it do overall the most damage of any REMA?

So you can spam Coronach.

It depends. Anni won't do a lot of damage compared to other options these days imo, trueflight has the most damage potential out of all of them so I'd say Gastra. But against mobs that aren't weak to magic or if you are lacking the mage buffs to make it really excel then I'd pick gandiva for raw damage.

Every RNG weapon has a purpose though so there's not really a "Best". Yoichi is supreme for accuracy and has a low enmity ws, Anni is the best low enmity weapon in the game in large part due to the relic ws but also the aftermath. I explained Arma above. Foma is great for last stand skillchains and Fail not is great for raw jishnu's numbers and skillchains.

It comes to personal choice but my top two choices would be gastra and gandiva, but if you're doing the master trial you need annihilator because that's a fight enmity control is very very important.

Honestly I've always thought about Arma's potential. ODT is disgustingly fun and with RNG's abilities and innate crit rate I'm sure you would be more than satisfied. The biggest selling point for you is the fact that you can use it for both Ranger AND Corsair. That's part of the reason why I chose Gandiva, as I only have RNG. (And I have a soft spot for badass Bows >.>)

Either way, I'm sure you'd be happy with it :)

I approve this message.

Anything but Annilhilator is impractical in pre-Adoulin zones due to different hate mechanics. It's also good for drawn out fights where you will eventually pull hate.

Why would anyone want to build an ultimate weapon because it's better in pre adoulin zones?

I don't actually agree in sayin anything pre-adoulin it's impractical because most of that stuff dies in one ws anyway. BCNM's where you get level cap status are really the only big use of Anni these days. Anni has good accuracy and excellent enmity control, but its dps is gated from specializing in a WS whose main draw is enmity control, not to say it can't achieve good dps there's simply stronger dps options. Nothing really needs said more than that about it vs the other RMEA. I've noticed just like THF with Mandau and Apoc with DRK that people have some strong attachments to Relics, and I totally understand why. However, just like those weapons there's better options for RNG, Anni is a niche weapon and it's an important and powerful niche but would it be my first choice? If I was doing BCNMs maybe, but otherwise no. I said it before but RNG is pretty weapon rich, a lot like WAR, and part of RNG's power as a job comes from having that adaptability of multiple weapon choices with different purposes. I think it's most important for RNG players from a job health standpoint to be informed of the pros and cons of each so players can make the right choice for their requirements and what they wish to achieve, while each weapon overlaps to a degree, each weapon also suits a different specialty purpose and has something over the other weapons.

Bows get more weapon rank, but get less free tp without delay penalties due to the ammo not having much of the delay. Bow WS also get some amount of WSMOD from STR on many WS making STR mean a lot for bows. Short bows have low delay while long bows have high delay. Longbows get the most range for trueshot distance so are also more safe.

Crossbows get the best ratio of free tp gain and get status bolts like the powerful abrasion bolts, but lack raw physical power but are very well suited to magical WS. They are also usually very low delay with machine crossbows being ridiculously low delay. Have the 2nd longest trueshot distance.

Guns get low weapon rank, and extremely high delay, but have a better ratio of delay in the ammo than bows and are the easiest to build X hit sets on, but that can be a disadvantage too because you can achieve x-hit builds on lower delay weapons, which means lower delay weapons damage potential is higher. This changes with some WS though, like Last Stand because extra TP means more damage directly. Guns also have the lowest Trueshot distance.



Then you have Relics, relics are low enmity and high accuracy, they also have beneficial aftermaths like attack +10% and lots of enmity down. You also get a damage multiplier on hits, but it is very rare compared to the Empy and AM3 versions.

Empy are about their respective WS, and ODT, Gandiva is wonderful for Jishnu's and Arma is great for just about everything, including Wildfire and TF.

Mythic is aftermath, which AM3 is really strong, and about mostly Trueflight tho is good for physical too due to AM3 and Abrasion Bolts. It is also very high accuracy and can compete with relic accuracy if you have AM1 on.

Aeonics have the best base damage, and best skillchain damage but lack accuracy compared to most RNG choices. Last Stand is great for self chaining light with aftermath on and doing radiance chains or spamming Jishnu's with aftermath on for skillchain bonus damage with Fail Not is also very strong. The TP Bonus means more for Last Stand than Jishnu's but both benefit from STP. Unlike every other weapon category however, they have no on hit damage multiplier.

Then you can even get down to each weapon itself. But I don't have time to post more about it right now and have already gone over all of it before in this thread in the past anyway :/

What I can say for myself personally is I use Gastra the most of all my weapons by about 3x over, but even that would change depending what kind of groups you run with.

Yeah, that's kinda what I had hoped to hear. I'm not the most dedicated RNG in the world, so I'm not going to be making multiple ultimate weapons. But I don't want to feel like I'm totally missing out by getting a weapon that's great for one purpose but really lacking for others. All-around performance is really what I'm looking for.


That's actually what originally got me thinking Arma, but the realization came to me when looking at jobs like BLU THF DNC who *offhand* an empy primarily thanks to the huge chunk of DEX (and why Blade:Hi/Kannagi being AGI based is such a disappointment for NIN... if only that one was also DEX). Even if it's not the related WS, the AGI+50 alone on Arma is so good for most anything RNG and COR does that it got my interest.

Thanks everyone, and especially Verda for the extensive info (now I'm salivating at the thought of tinkering with some really crit-focused sets that sound like they would be amazing with ODT active). Guess I should get back to grinding Ambuscade for gil to fund the last push to glowy gun... :)

After all, it always comes down to the same old "***is situational" truth. For example. I've had lots of fun with a mythic cor friend of mine, spamming namas -> leaden salute, for a very powerful, spammable darkness. Yoichi is the only ranged weapon with a distortion ws. This is to say, if you are passionate and willing to spend time figuring optimal buulds and setup, you can find whatever niche that will let you use your favourite weapon effectively. Even glanzfaust.

Master Trials, Tumult Curator?

Any latest RNG lua around ^^ ?? Barely got any free time and my SCH lua is still halfway done ( been working on it for a couple of weeks now... ) Thanks in advance!

Thanks for this, I'm using it now and liking it alot.
I'm curious about autora and auto ws though as I can't seem to get them working despite toggling them on. Autora only shoots once and autows does nothing. (Made sure to adjust which ws i want)

Also, what is "require 'actions-custom'" on line 1820? Maybe it's tied together.

you need the altered actions file from windower (it just reuses one function from there but the local keyword prevents me calling it otherwise). It's in my first post of that as a zip. I'll try to post an updated version later today.

Here you go RNG Lua

I want to make a few comments about the autora since you said you'd use it. First you should know that it will start another shot 1 second after the game tells you that your current shot finished. Unlike the old autora addon which was wait time based, this will go by the actual time the shot took, HOWEVER, no matter what I do with this it will always be less than optimal to spamming the shoot macro or timing it exactly right manually. It does however save you a lot of finger pain if you play ranger for more than an hour. Players have discussed disatisfaction before with the having to hit a shoot macro every time you wish to do damage and this was SE's response:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/27469-Auto-attack-ranged-attack?p=366657&viewfull=1#post366657

What they say the problem is there is also a problem with doing autora at all as well. You have to stop shooting, alt + d in this setup, and then ws, then start shooting again. Autows alleviates that some but I default it to off for a reason, you don't always want to ws at 1k tp and you don't always want to use that same ws at 1k tp.

Then you get down to the fact that 1 second after isn't exact for starting the next shot, it seems what the ideal value is, however sometimes it will be slightly less and sometimes slightly more. This is likely due to somethign with it being an internet based game and networks aren't exactly 100% consistent. The problem is the autora will break if that time is over 1 second. For fights that really matter like the master trial I find myself spamming the shoot macro anyway just to be sure there's no loss of DPS to either that or the slightly slower attack rate you get not doing that. I do the same with the ws too. So it is a good tool and makes playing ranger less painful on my hands, but it's not really amazing when it comes to some things so you should be aware of all the drawbacks.

What I'd really like to see is an SE sanctioned solution to ranged attacks, as well as having our ranged weapon out all the time like Semih's trust but I don't think I should hold hope out for that yet it'd be a system design change that only one job mainly uses (though there's a lot of jobs that can use ranged attacks).

Concerning Flurry sets. i raised the question to Verda via PM, but I thought I'd go ahead and bring it up here. A while ago, SE added Flurry effect to Embrava. So the question I raised was if it scales with Enhancing Magic Skill, like the Embrava haste effect, as well as what it caps at, and if it breaks any known caps.