Changing how you approach these five things in combat might just make you an even better Ranged DPS, whether you are a Bard, Machinist or Dancer!
Video explaining GCDs: https://youtu.be/O9Sw4Xk0eRg
Short explaining GCDs: https://youtube.com/shorts/WDtPflAdQto
Short explaining weaving: https://youtube.com/shorts/1NXPYbJuh98
How Diminishing Returns work: https://youtu.be/9FwGDFewWpQ
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Music Used:
FFXIV Endwalker – Cradle of Hope
#ffxiv #endwalker
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:52 (1) “I’m probably safer far away from enemies!”
03:30 (2) Mildly Absurd Freestyle Rotations
07:23 (3) Sitting on Cooldowns
10:34 (4) “What do you mean Defensive Cooldowns?”
12:19 (5) The Pentaweave
14:58 (6) Splitting Damage Buffs
17:39 Outro
18:09 Fun Fact
source
i think its funny the bard songs are affected by silence but. battle voice isnt
BLM main who moonlights as a WHM pretty often: I will absolutely, 100% let a Narnia RPhys DPS die if they aren't in range of heals. Literally zero excuse, 95% of their kit is instant cast. They can move wherever they want, whenever they want, and they choose to be in Narnia. Unfortunately for them, Narnia has healthcare as good as the United States, and I'm not an in-network healer.
About 1. I've been cycling through all the jobs in 10 level intervals hoping to max all by Dawntrail. I have what I like to call "melee brain" and as a bard or machinist, I still feel naturally drawn to standing right on the gap of the targeting circle lol
Oh man, as a DNC main… Welp, I have absolutely at some point done nearly all of these 😂
Also a good note on BRD song rotation, I definitely was not using the right order 😢
Great video as always !
As a range player main, I have learned all of these slowly through practice and they really make the difference!
I just came back to the game after 13+ months. Thank you for reminding me why I don't like playing bard, and here I was starting the archer job on one of my characters last night to help me remember how to play the game 🤣 (edit: I do remember that I love dancer, so maybe after I refresh my memory for general game knowledge, I will pick that back up)
How long have you been editing this video? It's been almost a year since the range on Technical Finish got doubled.
Fun fact: standard step is sometimes a dps loss in dungeon. Standard step has a 75% fall off damage so it is really weak in big pulls.
The penta weave made me laugh, because I still sometimes goof my burst window on DNC. But man, properly weaving Flourish, Fan Dance I, Fan Dance III, and Fan Dance IV with dance finishes, Saber Dance, Cascade, Reverse Cascade, Fountain, and Fountainfall is one of the most fun and visually interesting aspects of the job for me.
I miss ranged with shake it off all the time. And thats with my attempts to close range.
You contradicted yourself. At the beginning you said to spread out your buffs(4:10), then at the end you said use them all at once(16:12). Which is it?
Excellent advice. I think the one about using EVERYTHING even during trash pulls is important.
Dungeons are a single duty. Not each boss. The whole dungeon. Every moment you're letting something sit on cooldown is a wasted use for that duty. The moment a pull has been completed, do your whole opener, AOE style. Not just AOE fillter, EVERYTHING. If everyone does that, then you can all do a reopener for the boss at the same time, even if it's the middle of the fight.
17:28 I split damage buff in casual content were someone else has the same job as me. For example, when I go DRG there is another one, I let them use Battle Litany for the opener, then use mine at odd minutes, for odd bursts. I used to refresh the buff as soon as a ally's was over, but by that time, almost everyone is in filler rotation so it seemed pointless.
I think one time a BRD I was doing a duty with had a stack marker on them, but we couldn't get to them in time cause they were at the other side of the arena and just stood there doing nothing before getting knocked down. So it really frustrates that range does that sometimes…
Picked up Dancer recently and I'm loving it. I definitely don't save anything for bosses, even without going into the nitty gritty of the math the fights feel a lot shorter if I use everything always.
The main struggles I still have is doing Technical Step in certain bosses (takes a bit too long to do it and sometimes I will eat an AOE) and sometimes I hoard Curing Waltz if I feel the healer is nervous or ignoring everyone besides the tank.
Sometimes I feel that anxiety of possibly annoying the healer – as in ''I'm already healing enough, don't waste my casts'' I've seen some healers say – with the heals and Shield Samba, similar to the raise anxiety when playing SMN lol But the cooldown is short enough that I'm using Curing Waltz as soon as I can (even as a preventative measure) as well!
You don't use sidewinder because its single target. I don't use sidewinder because I forget it exists. We are not the same.
(I am not good at bard :))
When ever I am going to use a line aoe, mostly DRG's aoes, I like to position on the opposite side of the pack from my target. Since the aoe targets the center of the hitbox, it makes it easier to gauge how many enemies it will actually hit, instead the aoe potentially being at a slightly weird angle and missing some enemies.
One big thing ranged (and casters too!) often overlook is your limit break in dungeons. A lvl 1 LB as soon as is available on a trash pack is much better damage than waiting to use a lvl 2 LB on the last 3% hp of the last boss of a dungeon. Specially if there is no melee dps on you dungeon run. It is you god given right, privilege and duty to use the LB on trash packs as a ranged.
The amount of times I tank dungeons with two ranged dps and the LB bar goes unused is depressing.
I hope The Pentaweave™ makes a comeback in every video. XD
Having a tank pull mobs out of a Flamethrower, even if it was to dodge AoEs, will always make me sad. I really hope they give it SOMETHING in DT.
Wait, at 4:56 shouldn't there be a C: No song at all? I must have seen it in lv90 dungeons for a few times.
All the healers thank you for telling people not to stand in Narnia. Now if Square would just stop designing bosses with hit boxes so large my heals can even hit everyone if they're in melee range…
Leveling BRD, a common issue i'm having is overlapping cooldowns. Iirc Battle voice doesn't stack, so would it be better, in the scenario that I have two bards, to save my battle voice for the 1 minute burst, or follow-up my battle voice with my other Bard?
the point about boosting is your filler being worse than boosting your burst is true, but isn't any perceived benefit from stacking damage buffs just.. not there? because damage buffs stack multiplicative and all that- if you split two +100% buffs that last for, two 100 potency attacks, across 4 total- you have four 200 potency attacks- a total of 800.
if you combine them, you have two 400 potency attacks plus two 100 potency attacks, a total of 1000. even If they stacked additively, it'd be a total of 800 either way, and that's where the burst argument would still make stacking them better
Yeah if you're in Narnia I'm going to assume you don't like healing. Usually around 15-20% hp people start moving their feet to get closer or hopping in front of the healer because they think we didnt see their low hp. It is fun watching the little rabbits hop.
Something else with the first mistake is that a physical ranged DPS's AoE attacks have much shorter range than their single target attacks (with those on Dancer even being centered on themselves).
One side note to the first point is that while you shouldn't wander around the whole arena for absolutely no reason, you should still never forget that you can. If a mechanic requires Someone in your party to move (like say in P10 when the towers show up along the far edge of the arena) it should almost always be You that's doing the moving.
Melee and Tanks need to be close to the target to do their jobs. Healers generally want to stay as centralized as possible to reach everyone with their heals and shields. Casters can technically move everywhere, but their movement is limited by cast times or other DPS related mechanics. As a ranged DPS, you're the only role able to move AND maintain full DPS uptime.. so rather than wondering why that Black Mage isn't moving to the tower over there, you should be taking it.
not using peloton in dungeons. the little bit of extra movement speed does help speed up a group.
also it is far more common to see a melee lb on the last boss but very rare to see a ranged lb the trash.
Yet another reason to stay in melee range comes in mob pulls. At least as Bard (I don't know the other ranged jobs) your primary AOE attacks are cones.
If you're stood at max range from your primary target there's a good chance you're hitting that mob but then the cone is curving away from the entire rest of the pack — meaning you're not doing AOE damage at all, and not even doing as much as you would be if you were single targeting.
Random thought, but it'd be cool to see a Corsair job that has elements of all three (a melee with a saber, a phys ranged with the gun, and a caster with gambler spells). I'd imagine the way the jobs are distributed, if Corsair is implemented, it'd most likely be a phys ranged with the melee attacks and spells playing a more minor role.
I flat out disagree with the wanderer's minuett argumentation. I always do mage's pack 1, army's pack 2 and then realign everything on the boss(depending on the speed of the grp i have to wait up to 20ish seconds or so on the boss until 2min comes up again). I would argue those 20 seconds are well worth doing more aoe damage overall. But I cant back it up with much testing but every fiber in my body tells me that starting with wanderer's first is wrong since the "sacrifice" to realign things is almost nonexistent imo. Would love to test it with you if you want to. just gimme a shout.
The main difficulty with Mechanist is resisting the urge to play DOOM and use Scattergun on single target.
I disagree with the first point. It's not that I want to be in Narnia because I want to be safe from the enemies, it's because I need to be safe from the other players! >:3