Bard/archer attribute allocation

[Felix Sideris]

Does anyone know what the best allocation would be for ARR?

 

I heard that Dex/Peity was good in 1.0.. But I'm not sure what I should do for ARR. I've only put anything on DEX so far.

 

But yeah.. some theory crafting by some of our 1.0 Bards would be nice  Thanks!

[FreelanceWizard]

PIE controls MP pool size. Unless bard songs burn a lot of MP, I wouldn't stick anything there.

 

DEX is your damage output stat. As a bard, you're support, but you're also ranged physical DPS -- and DPS is what wins fights. So, in absence of other information to the contrary, you can't go wrong with plowing all your points into DEX.

[Aysun]

PIE controls MP pool size. Unless bard songs burn a lot of MP, I wouldn't stick anything there.

 

That is exactly what they do. When you have a song up, it drains your MP. When you are out of MP, the song disappears. It's a spell of sorts.

 

That said, I am still undecided on where to allocate my points at the moment too! DEX for damage is desirable, but I'm not sure how much PIE will help, or if having that song up a little longer is worth the sacrifice of damage. Having a song up causes -20% DPS from the Bard, as well.

[FreelanceWizard]

Huh! Good to know. If they burn a lot of MP relative to your MP regen or MP pool size (since larger pools produce a higher regen rate, regen of MP and HP being a flat percentage), then PIE starts to make sense. I'm not familiar with the bard song effects, but if we're talking about something where it adds 10% DPS net to the entire party versus losing 20% to your damage, the song may be more effective than your own DPS.

 

Interestingly, the exact effect of PIE seems to scale with level; it looks like 1 point of PIE = level / 2 MP, but I have a limited sample size of levels for that analysis.

[Felix Sideris]

PIE controls MP pool size. Unless bard songs burn a lot of MP, I wouldn't stick anything there.

 

That is exactly what they do. When you have a song up, it drains your MP. When you are out of MP, the song disappears. It's a spell of sorts.

 

That said, I am still undecided on where to allocate my points at the moment too! DEX for damage is desirable, but I'm not sure how much PIE will help, or if having that song up a little longer is worth the sacrifice of damage. Having a song up causes -20% DPS from the Bard, as well.

 

Huh! Good to know. If they burn a lot of MP relative to your MP regen or MP pool size (since larger pools produce a higher regen rate, regen of MP and HP being a flat percentage), then PIE starts to make sense. I'm not familiar with the bard song effects, but if we're talking about something where it adds 10% DPS net to the entire party versus losing 20% to your damage, the song may be more effective than your own DPS.

 

Interestingly, the exact effect of PIE seems to scale with level; it looks like 1 point of PIE = level / 2 MP, but I have a limited sample size of levels for that analysis.

 

 

Exactly. 

 

Currently two of the songs we know Bards have regenerate. One regenerate MP, the other regenerates TP.

 

Now, Bards are not a DPS-focused class.. They are DPS/Support. Dragoons and Pugilists are your main physical damage dealers.

 

With that said, would it be more beneficial to a raid/PvE styled environment to have some points invested into PIE so you can restore the MP/TP of the other DPS/healers in your group/party/raid/etc. 

 

That is what I am wondering. More MP means longer song duration, which in turn means more MP or TP for the other group members. 

 

I'm not sure how much MP you would get for putting a point into PIE, though.. And as I am not sure if you can reset your attribute points I am not willing to risk investing them into it.

 

Currently I have 6 points in DEX and a few unspent because I don't know what the ideal build is.

 

I think it is reasonably safe to assume it will either be Full DEX, or a 70% DEX - 30% PIE kind of spread..

 

But like I said, I didn't play 1.0 and I have no idea what I am talking about really it is all just speculation.

[FreelanceWizard]

I have a bit more information on PIE. It seems to be consistently 1 PIE = 3 MP, at least through level 20.

 

So, that provides some information on how PIE would factor into Bard play. You can take the MP cost per second of the song and determine how much PIE is required to run the song for one more second. Then, consider its DPS improvement in that one second (which, if we're talking TP regen, would be the TP regenerated by the song divided by average TP cost of an attack, times the damage of that attack, since TP-based attacks are typically instant cast). You can then take the same number of attribute points and compute the effect on your DPS if you put them in, say, DEX. You can then compare the two number to see how you should go.

 

Of course, we'd need to collect a fair number of, um, numbers to do this.

[Felix Sideris]

I have a bit more information on PIE. It seems to be consistently 1 PIE = 3 MP, at least through level 20.

 

So, that provides some information on how PIE would factor into Bard play. You can take the MP cost per second of the song and determine how much PIE is required to run the song for one more second. Then, consider its DPS improvement in that one second (which, if we're talking TP regen, would be the TP regenerated by the song divided by average TP cost of an attack, times the damage of that attack, since TP-based attacks are typically instant cast). You can then take the same number of attribute points and compute the effect on your DPS if you put them in, say, DEX. You can then compare the two number to see how you should go.

 

Of course, we'd need to collect a fair number of, um, numbers to do this.

Yeahh.. It will take a while to figure out.