Marksman Building?

It's kind of stupid, really. If you're not a NL, you stand to gain just about nothing from having SE, and if you are, you still get 2/3 the benefit for 1/3 the points. But then again, it's also stupid that 1 point of attack can cost millions, and I doubt that'll stop any time soon.

RE 30 Boost vs 30 SE in numbers
Since they multiply each other, it's probably actually more beneficial to have something in between the two scenarios presented above, assuming you don't mind being thrown out of parties by stupid people (i.e. everyone).
Ex. simplified example:
10*30 = 300
20*20 = 400

So yeah, I hope us Corsairs start filling up attacker slots in squad runs. We don't care what level SE you have <3

@ Cyanne

What you could do is find out what's the 'best' arrangement for each level. So for example if at a certain level you had 20 SPs total split between Boost and SE, graph x against the damage of x Boost and 20-x SE. And just do that 60 times.

There's probably a more efficient way, though.

@ Stereo
Make best and worst case scenarios. At best, you have low ATK (say 100) and no secondary stat, and Mastery gets you (1.81/1.54)*1.1 = 1.29x damage. At worst, you have high ATK (say 150) and stats are in a 4:1 ratio, so Mastery gets you (2.06/1.79)*16/15 = 1.23x. Realistically it'll be somewhere in between.

Whenever I get to 120, I plan on brute-focing an answer via a program for my specific stats that would find the best skill distribution to get the highest average damage each level.

@Sap, SE only boosts your damage by 1.65 (9.28/5.6) at level 30 and 1.42 at level 10
The best combo would most likely be 10-15 SE, max Boost, then more SE. Seeing how from level 10-30 SE only increases by 1.16, adding in boost there would add more then adding SE (although its 10 more points, I'm sure level 20/21 boost would provide more then 1.16x damage).

Of course the MOST efficent is probably 1 SE then boost xD

Question: Are crimson guardians effective at 120, assuming enough hp to take a hit from anything other than the mace attack? Compare it to typhons, newties (solo or party, but not with an ultimate-spammer), or anything else that might have a chance to compete in terms of experience rate.

I couldn't start that early, so I'm taking somewhat of a guess that it would depend on your equips.

typhons: I never trained at them.
newties: solo sucks by the time you're 4th job. At 128 when I moved to guardians, I started getting more exp than in a 3 attacker party. unless the other 2 members of the party were 14x+ but that doesn't happen very often.
if you have the hp to take a hit at 120, then give them a try and time your exp. it should at least be comparable to a party at newties and you don't have to go through the trouble of finding 3 other people.

you probably want to start trying guardians while you have no exp to loose. I died about 5 times in 6% getting the training method down.

Okay, I just ran numbers using my projected stats at a fixed level 130 (30 SP to split between SE and boost, accounting for the three 1-pointer skills), and now I'm even more confused about the SE vs. boost thing. I fixed by str at 100, dex at 731, and attack at 160 (accounting for cider), and used the following builds: 29 SE + 1 Boost, 24 SE + 6 Boost, 14 SE + 16 Boost, 9 SE + 21 Boost, and 3 SE + 27 Boost (not very practical for the timer, but I'm just using this for more data). I used both arrow eruption arrows (160% base) and strafe arrows (100% base) for these calculations, and here is what I came up with. This is organized in average in damage range/average strafe arrow damage/average eruption arrow damage (I have no idea how to use tables).

29/1:.. 3496.9, 8112.8, 10191.7
24/6:.. 3636.5, 8061.4, 10243.3
14/16: 3899.2, 8004.3, 10343.8
9/21:.. 4045.4, 8032.1, 10459.4
3/27:.. 4193.9, 7945.8, 10462.1

This shows that SE benefits strafe more, while boost benefits arrow eruption more (no surprise there, actually). With the exception of 14 SE + 16 Boost strafe, getting more boost in the place of SE gradually increases eruption damage while decreasing strafe damage, but replacing boost with SE gradually increases strafe damage while decreasing eruption damage. Considering that I'll probably be training solo at crimson guardians or a future soloable area because I can't count on finding people to party in leafre/time temple/whatever, I'm really looking forward to a stronger eruption for slightly faster, but at the same time, higher level SE brings partying benefits, especially at bosses where I can SE party members and deal more damage with strafe myself. Then again, boost brings more consistency, and delaying SE would allow be to get pierce earlier because pierce isn't all that much benefited by SE. Based on the numbers, I think I'll either cap SE at 9 until I get 21/27 boost or cap boost at 6 until I get 29 SE. Grrr I can't decide =/

You don't really need to do a plot to see what's best in excel.

Just set it up so one direction is total points (1, 2, .. 60), and the other direction is number of points in Boost (0, 1, ... 30)
At any given point (x,y) on the grid, y = boost, (x-y) = se. Obviously there are 2 triangular areas which can't happen (#boost > #points, #points > #se+#boost).

The main thing throwing off a general solution is the fact that Boost depends on your base stats, SE does not. If you have crappy w.atk Boost is more useful (100+10 = 10%, 150+10 = 7%)

And of course since Boost goes on a 5 point improvement (level 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26 I think), you'd have to compare big jumps to decide which is a better route.

Anyway, comparing the values in each column would tell you the optimal # of points in SE/Boost if you have that number of points available.

I have no idea how the method you described works, so I just set level to constant and fiddled around with a calculator, pencil, and paper xD

@ Cyanne

What you could do is find out what's the 'best' arrangement for each level. So for example if at a certain level you had 20 SPs total split between Boost and SE, graph x against the damage of x Boost and 20-x SE. And just do that 60 times.

There's probably a more efficient way, though.

@ Stereo
Make best and worst case scenarios. At best, you have low ATK (say 100) and no secondary stat, and Mastery gets you (1.81/1.54)*1.1 = 1.29x damage. At worst, you have high ATK (say 150) and stats are in a 4:1 ratio, so Mastery gets you (2.06/1.79)*16/15 = 1.23x. Realistically it'll be somewhere in between.

Problem is, boost's benefit isn't static and varies from person to person, and sharp eyes benefits some skills more than others >_<

I couldn't start that early, so I'm taking somewhat of a guess that it would depend on your equips.

typhons: I never trained at them.
newties: solo sucks by the time you're 4th job. At 128 when I moved to guardians, I started getting more exp than in a 3 attacker party. unless the other 2 members of the party were 14x+ but that doesn't happen very often.
if you have the hp to take a hit at 120, then give them a try and time your exp. it should at least be comparable to a party at newties and you don't have to go through the trouble of finding 3 other people.

you probably want to start trying guardians while you have no exp to loose. I died about 5 times in 6% getting the training method down.

I couldn't start that early, so I'm taking somewhat of a guess that it would depend on your equips.

typhons: I never trained at them.
newties: solo sucks by the time you're 4th job. At 128 when I moved to guardians, I started getting more exp than in a 3 attacker party. unless the other 2 members of the party were 14x+ but that doesn't happen very often.
if you have the hp to take a hit at 120, then give them a try and time your exp. it should at least be comparable to a party at newties and you don't have to go through the trouble of finding 3 other people.

you probably want to start trying guardians while you have no exp to loose. I died about 5 times in 6% getting the training method down.

Alright, thanks! I'll try giving it a go at level 120 anyways. Crimson guardians appeal to me because a party isn't really needed to get decent exp there, and it's quite easy to find a map when the box event isn't going on (I think?).

Or you could just leech it to lv140 with your Mage and then have 63 points to put wherever you wanted...

Yeah, go with the flow and do this...

Or you could just leech it to lv140 with your Mage and then have 63 points to put wherever you wanted...

it's all the rage nowadays

I don't agree with Pierce before Snipe. Once we get the updates you'll be doing 200k damage every 5 seconds along with strafing bringing your DPS up to and over Bowmasters. Unless you plan to get to 16x+ I'd go Snipe first.

I highly doubt that we'll get 200k cap + FOUR-second Snipe. We'll get one or the other, but not both. My speculation is that JMS increased the cap to 200k to balance Marksman before the KMS update. Since it's already "balanced" JMS would not be getting the four second update. If they do, then they'll lower the cap back down to 100k. Same with KMS; they won't be increasing the Snipe cap to 200k. Again, this is my speculation, so I support raising Pierce before Snipe before Dragon's Breath.

I have no idea how the method you described works, so I just set level to constant and fiddled around with a calculator, pencil, and paper xD

Looks like this, except since I don't know the Marksman formula I used the Bowmaster one (3.4*dex). I don't think that should change it much.


Green is the highest value in a row (as each row is the total number of SP available for the 2 skills), as you level up you go down the table.
Each column is the number of points in Boost (from 0 at the left to 30 on the right)

The main things I noticed are that pretty uniformly 26-27 Boost is the most you should do until SE is maxed.
Since 6 and 21 Boost are the levels where it gains both atk and mastery, they're also the best spots to leave it.
The difference is never more than about 3-4% in the example I gave, so it doesn't really matter which you do first.

As you can see at the top I have spots to put in skill/dex/str/atk so I can adjust it to fit any skill/player.

 With Eruption (160% base)

 Surface plot for Eruption

 Overall relative strength with Strafe demonstrates how little it matters which you choose first

WOW, i really liked those sheets! Pretty awesome work there. You should make a thread for that and make the sheet available to download =D

EDIT: Dex multiplier for marksman is 3,6

It's in xlsx form so some people won't be able to read it.
Sheet 1 is individual rows coloured, Sheet 2 is the thing as a whole.

I can post the code for it though.

Code:

cell B5
=IF($A5-B$1>=0,IF(10+$A5-B$1>40,"x",(($D$4*$J$4*(1+B$2/100*0.9)/2+$F$4)/100*($H$4+B$3))*($B$4/100+(41+FLOOR(($A5-B$1)/2,1))/100*(100+IF($A5-B$1>0,110+$A5-B$1,0))/100)),"x")

If you enter the top 3 rows and first column to match like that (atk/mastery of Boost, and point counts) then that's pretty much all you need to reproduce the whole thing.
Just stick the above code into B5 and then copy it across and down to make the 30x60 grid.
I added a multiplier column so if people know what that is for Marksmen they can change it.

The colouring is just conditional formatting (I made a macro for it to speed up the process)

That's... pretty insane xD Let me see if I can get it to work.

I highly doubt that we'll get 200k cap + FOUR-second Snipe. We'll get one or the other, but not both. My speculation is that JMS increased the cap to 200k to balance Marksman before the KMS update. Since it's already "balanced" JMS would not be getting the four second update. If they do, then they'll lower the cap back down to 100k. Same with KMS; they won't be increasing the Snipe cap to 200k. Again, this is my speculation, so I support raising Pierce before Snipe before Dragon's Breath.

Ummm... kMS has had a 200k damage cap for a very, very long time now, and just recently got the 4-second snipe update.

200k damage cap does not apply only to Snipe. It's for all skills and is pretty much a necessity in any version where mobs have much over 100k HP.

Better balance is to throw out the damage cap thing and just make it deal 3000% damage with a 4 second cooldown.

200k damage cap does not apply only to Snipe. It's for all skills and is pretty much a necessity in any version where mobs have much over 100k HP.

Better balance is to throw out the damage cap thing and just make it deal 3000% damage with a 4 second cooldown.

Yeah, but from an archer standpoint, 200k damage cap realistically only affects snipe (pierce when appled, etc., but appled situations are usually bosses, where a 99k+ damage pierce really isn't necessary, if at all).

I also agree with that 3000% damage thing because as of right now, snipe gains no benefit from apples and such.

New alternate build:
120: 3 Sharp Eyes
121: 5 Sharp Eyes, 1 Marksman Boost
122: 7 Sharp Eyes, 1 Frostprey
123: 9 Sharp Eyes, 1 Dragon’s Breath
124: 3 Marksman Boost, 1 Snipe
125: 6 Marksman Boost
126: 9 Marksman Boost
127: 12 Marksman Boost
128: 15 Marksman Boost
129: 18 Marksman Boost
130: 21 Marksman Boost
131: 12 Sharp Eyes
132: 15 Sharp Eyes
133: 18 Sharp Eyes
134: 21 Sharp Eyes
135: 24 Sharp Eyes
136: 27 Sharp Eyes
137: 30 Sharp Eyes
138: 24 Marksman Boost
139: 27 Marksman Boost
140: 3 Piercing Arrow
141: 6 Piercing Arrow
142: 9 Piercing Arrow
143: 12 Piercing Arrow
144: 15 Piercing Arrow
145: 18 Piercing Arrow
146: 21 Piercing Arrow
147: 4 Snipe
148: 7 Snipe
149: 10 Snipe
150: 13 Snipe
151: 16 Snipe
152: 19 Snipe
153: 22 Snipe
154: 25 Snipe
155: 28 Snipe
156: 30 Snipe, 22 Piercing Arrow
157: 25 Piercing Arrow
158: 28 Piercing Arrow
159: 30 Marksman Boost
160: 30 Piercing Arrow, 1 Blind

That's... pretty insane xD Let me see if I can get it to work.



Ummm... kMS has had a 200k damage cap for a very, very long time now, and just recently got the 4-second snipe update.

Sorry, looks like I'm behind the times.

By the way, I was talking about non-horntail bosses because you'll have maxed SE after you reach a high enough level to have enough hp and overcome the level difference cut anyways.

Hello, I'm Nobody and Zhelmless.

As shown above, getting 27 MMB and 29 SE is pretty much the same thing, however 29 SE will be much more appreciated at bosses and in parties than boost. Like you and a lot of earlier archers I thought SE was pretty much 'for the timer' after level 1 and so I sometimes felt a bit retarded when I soloed during my 2x instead of looking for parties, but it turns out that it didn't make much of a difference in dps.

Maybe you have a bunch of great friends that don't know any 4th job archers and would love to have you / have level 9 SE, but with more points into SE, you'll actually be taking down these bosses a bit faster.

*Did this crunching with 90 STR, 585 DEX, and 126 ATTACK with a realistic monster. (JR. Newtie)*
Here is the strafe numbers;
1. 2 SE 1 Boost- 18877
2. 5 SE 1 Boost- 19435
3. 3 SE 6 Boost- 20150
4. 1 SE 11 Boost- 20664
5. 3 SE 12 Boost- 21188
6. 2 SE 16 Boost- 21748
7. 5 SE 16 Boost- 22391
8. 3 SE 21 Boost- 23116
9. 1 SE 26 Boost- 23623
10. 9 SE 21 Boost- 24225

The right number is the avaerage damage hike, and the number to the left is the amount of levels putting points in these skills without one pointers.

Gotta love resetting SE all the time

Gotta love resetting SE all the time

Sure do. Level 121 Marksman with TWO SE!!!