Power Rangers: A Guide To Pewing

Gravitation => Fragmentation => Distortion => Fusion => Gravitation cycles level 2 SCs

Gravitation <=> Distortion makes lv3 darkness

lv3 darkness(or darkness property weapon) => darkness makes lv4 darkness

Fusion <=> fragmentation makes lv3 light

lv3 light(or light property weapon) => light makes lv4 light

generally, for higher target mobs you want a 3-4 step which tends to be either lv2 > lv3 > lv4 or lv2 > lv2 > lv3 > lv4

bg-wikis page has a full chart of interactions as well

when a ws has multiple properties, the highest level one that matches a skillchain takes precedence

Could anyone be so kind to answer the first questions please?

I haven't touched RNG in a long time, less so for Archery, but generally Jishnu's is the superior WS. Apex does have Frag properties so it's useful for SC purposes.

If it helps at all I refer to this skillchain chart a ton:
http://leviathan.ws/WSE_v3.1_mini_RC2.pdf

I find it extremely compact and readable once you learn how to use it you can make pretty much any skillchain you want in about 2 mins of looking at that chart. The only confusing aspect at first is how you upgrade tiers in skillchains. If there is a paired box it means it makes a higher level chain. Examples: Reverberation -> Impaction makes Impaction. Transfixtion -> Scission makes Distortion. Fusion -> Gravitation makes Fusion. Gravitation -> Distortion makes Darkness and Darkness -> Darkness makes Darkness.

As for Apex, ignores defense tends to underperform. It has a high WSmod tho, but there's definitely bigger damage WS. It is like Jean and Comeatmebro said though, very good for if you need Fragmentation.

So Gandiva has been really fun so far. A couple things I've noticed;
- Jishnu's DMG itself isnt like crazy high or anything. (That's due to Gandiva's low base DMG)
-Not having sam roll is cancer
-The delay on Gandiva itself is ridiculous. Just using a good preshot set and no flurry, it acts like normal bow WITH flurry.

That leads me to ask, Obviously this is meant for the AM3 Decoy spams, but in that exact scenario wouldnt /war be better? if youre not using tp to ws unless AM is wearing.. Fencer/Berserk to hit harder would be best yea? I've seen as high as 11k autos with AM3 up... So now I just need to optimize a tp set that pumps out the most DMG while maintaining racc when needed.

Yep, Gandiva may not do huge Jishnu's over other bows but it will be high or even slightly better at times despite it's lower delay. The aftermath is what really pushes it though, when combined with
- low delay so more shots fired in the same time to arrive to similar ws numbers and skillchains
- those more shots fired all average out to ws like damage in themselves
- if you are still three hit which is very achievable, your ws frequency is also faster and tp overflow isn't as important to jishnu's as other ws.

/war is great yes, you want to hit hard and berserk really helps that. If your pdif is already capped however from support jobs other subs can do better.

SE didn't let STP be on path for ranged path herculean augs or we'd have to rely less on SAM roll, as is however yes SAM roll is the ultimate buff for RNG it frees up so much gear slots it's not even funny.

RNG can pretty much full time aftermath as well thanks to barrage starting us off. Where gandiva is so deadly of a physical weapon is in the fact it is a short bow, I think its a very well designed weapon. Decoy shot has a cap to how much enmity it can translate iirc, but you do need to try to make full use of decoy shot ya and balance your auto damage with your tp gain rate. I tried in the spreadsheet for example using the 10% dead aim meghanada+1 head instead of the arcadian head for 50 free tp per shot 90% of the time, and the results still favored arcadian head but not by a lot. meaning if you need more accuracy and you still have 3 hit that is a very good tp piece for you now.

I'm really happy to hear you are happy with Gandiva :D

Thanks! Im gonna be testing a lot of different setups to which I like best for different content. I also had a question about your Jishnu's set.

I only use Adhemar feet NQ atm.. But i've been using herc over that. My augments are god awful but I feel like they'd still win? It's hard to eyeball it for me

Adhemar feet NQ with path C offers: 52 AGI, 23 Dex, 15 Racc, 39 Ratt, 3% Crit rate, and 1% True shot.

Vs

Herculean boots, mine atm dont have any stat enhancement so these stats include my current augments: +23 racc/ratt, 24 DEX, 43 AGI, 5% Crit DMG

I always assumed Crit DMG meant more than Crit chance. You lose AGI but gain raw racc and Crit DMG over Crit Chance. Unless that 1% Trueshot is actually makeing a huge difference?

I can spreadsheet it later for NQ but you are probably right. The set bonus gives 2% crit chance on hq and the base crit rate goes up, and 1 more true shot, and all the stats, acc and attack go up as well so if you get a good herc aug they probably win vs NQ but I'd have to make sure. Have fun testing :D

Ok, so I don't want to use lua.

How can I make a macro in my /ra to swap to snapshot gear and then into store tp/ratt/racc gear but not screw up equipping barrage pants/gloves when using barrage?

Is there a way?

Also, what's the best way to make sure snapshot gear is on at the beginning of an RA and not when the RA goes off...? Is there even a way?

/equipset

Yes, but equipset doesn't lock my gloves/pants.

I'm trying to figure out a way to do this, but it's confusing @__@

Avallon just told you.

normal shots
/equipset1(snap) > ra > equipset2(stp)

barrage
equipsetbarrage > ra > equipsetbarrage2

it's a pain in the *** but that's it, or make a lua, rng lua is really simple only takes like 5 minutes and DRASTICALLY improves dps.

I don't recommend equipment for both snapshot and mid shot set, my experience is that because you use 2 equipset in such a short time there's a high chance you'll get error msg.

That's the way to game plays, nothing you can do about it except be unoptimized. use the equipsets and sometimes it wont work, or be slow with no snap set.

That's why gearswap is so *must have*.

So I need 2 RA macros, oh, duh. I just couldn't find a non-clunky elegant way to do it. Thanks a ton!

Nah, there are ways to bypass the equipset error, which is to equip mid shot set using default macro.

People often get spoiled with lua doing all the work and exaggerated the limitation of default macro. I've heard people act as if none lua player are some of the worst player on the planet that suck so bad and yet none of the people ever say my COR suck after seeing how fast I kill some of the NM in ra mode.

It's possible to have JA up and down swaps, Magic haste cap and uncap DW swaps, or FC precast with nukes without lua. I don't use lua but I use all these swaps on tank, melee, ranged, healer and nuker role like any player with GS and I've yet to run into anyone complained about my COR not DPSing hard enough.

If I pt with another player using lua and same gears, I would probably lose parse due to more human error and occasional lag, but the difference isn't like he'll parse 50% while I parse 25%. I'm not going to deny you'd make more error without lua, but claiming you can't use snapshot set at all, or have to deal with error with no way to get around it is just exaggerating the limitation.

How? Example please.

Also lua just reduces the amount of button pressing you do. I like button pressing so I prefer not using it(I used to use spellcast).

edit: When using situational gear sets like if I have X haste it equips X and if I have x weather it equips x gear, etc. So if you have it set up for that, it's better. But it's basically hacking at that point so lol.

I can definitely tell you that lua helps so much when it comes to preshot > midshot. It's too risky otherwise. There's a very good chance that you wont swap gear fast enough, especially with today's current preshot gear. This is coming from a very "new to gearswap" player. It's definitely worth learning at least the basics.

Like I said, your mid shot set can't be equipset, it has to be equip head X equip body X equip hand X etc.

I make 2 macros for weather. 1 for weather up one for weather down. Same for JA like triple shot. I also have same JA macro for multiple pages so I don't need to flip pages for JA and lose more dps when DDing.

Basically I use at least 50 equipset for cor and utilize tons of pages with macro button placement to minimum dps lose.

How do I get more than 20 equipsets?

hit left and right. you get 100 sets.

Oh, wow! NICE

To give a specific example of what Afania is talking about, a Barrage macro would look like this:

/ra <t>
/equipset [Midshot TP]
/equip hands "Orion Bracers +1"
/wait 1 <--- (This is a variable)
/equipset [Snapshot]

There's two things to take note of here; 1. The Orion Bracers are placed directly over whatever hands you use in your Midshot TP set and do not need any /wait command to successfully change what's in the slot. This is because /equipset and /equip are independent of one another, and you can effectively customize an /equipset in the middle of a macro with no penalties or failures.

2. This macro is utilizing the idea of a "Wrap-around". That is to say, you automatically equip your Snapshot set AFTER the shot has fired so that you're already in your Snapshot set before your next /ra. It creates a loop where all your actions go back to your snapshot set, thereby eradicating the need to use /wait directly before or after the /ra command. Notice the first two lines of the example macro, and how you immediately equip your TP set after /ra; this alleviates issues that arise from the incredibly low delay that range shots can achieve (Close to 30-50 delay with capped Snapshot, ~35% Velocity Shot, and a Rapidshot/Overkill proc). This is a reliable way to ensure that all your shots hit with your TP set, regardless of how fast you're firing.

There are actually a couple other ways to do this, but the important part is understanding the logic and rules about how /equipset and /equip stack with each other. Once you play around with it, you can come up with your own macros that suit your needs, and other clever workarounds to customize situational set-ups.

Edit: Uh, I guess I should clarify this is just an example. Normally, you can just make an entire /equipset for Barrage itself, since you likely don't use your TP set (Relic Hat in particular) for Barrage. It was just a way to explain theory of how to lock certain gear for a specific ability or condition (like weather), and how to ensure those sets work for your /ra.

You can also put <wait 1> on the same line to give you more macro lines. Also, the time between shots has a forced one second wait, so being preshot ready all the time shouldn't be necessary but is a nice trick. Also, this is the 2nd time I have seen you post capped snapshot and velocity shot as if they are separate terms but I've never seen any testing to say that they are or are not (and was wanting to test something like that myself) but if that's what you're saying do you have anything to back it up with? Could save me some time which I don't always have a lot of.

Also it is possible to save different sets of macro loadouts to the server and then load them at least last I looked giving you even more equipset/macro spaces.


I spreadsheet this and max aug herc boots are better than NQ path B adhemar. You'd also have the benefit of more ranged acc. HQ path C and B both beat the herc boots max aug though.

It's peculiar, since I'm not exactly sure where people got the idea that they are one and the same in the first place. In fact, there's no where in game or in help text that addresses Velocity Shot as Snapshot; all text says "Delay Reduction".

As for proof, I didn't really test it for sake of others, but I have tested it extensively. What tipped me off was the difference in COR and RNG gifts, in that COR got Snapshot gifts and RNG only got VS gifts. It made me think there was a deliberate reason for that, and for the fact that my RNG fires a Doomsday much faster than my COR, even though they both have 70% Snapshot from gear/traits. I should also mention that Flurry/Flurry II does absolutely nothing to boost my shot speed, so the Snapshot cap shouldn't be 80% (10% would be VERY noticeable over an extended period of time).

It lead to believe either two things: Either VS breaks the Snapshot cap that SE proposed, or VS is a separate deduction that stacks multiplicative with Snapshot. I eventually settled on the latter after playing around with a lot of different Snapshot values and gear like Amini Body +1. In fact, Amini Body was pretty much the nail in the coffin for me; my macros simply wouldn't work with that body in the Snapshot /equipset, I would always wrap around to my Snapshot set before my shot went off (We'll say delay > 1, for the sake of simplicity). With a 7% Snapshot Taeon body, my macros worked every time (Delay < 1). At the very least, I took it as proof the values of VS are less than the value of Snapshot, and theorized that VS was factored AFTER Snapshot was calculated, meaning that VS gave diminishing returns with higher values of Snapshot. Unfortunately, I never tested that idea any further.

So, sorry to say, I have no physical evidence, since I often only test things for myself. Call it a failure due to not really knowing any other RNG to even share it with (Plenty of BLU and THF, though...). I do, however, invite others to try it themselves, as it's quite apparent. Especially those who play both COR and RNG, who should notice a drastic difference between the two. It's actually to the point where my RNG and COR have to use completely different /ra macros, despite both using the same 70% Snapshot set and both being 1700+ JP.

Addendum: I'm bitter about not being able to bring my RNG to anything, so really have little desire to go back and perform further investigation. If I end up with my foot in my mouth, so be it; someone else can be the hero the community deserves.

On the contrary I'm excited, thanks for sharing the info it was already something I wanted to test because there's no real test proving snapshot = velocity shot, but this makes me have to up that in my priority list by a lot thank you for the info.

No problem, and good luck with the research. Here's hoping the result is definitive and can finally help players adjust their preshot sets to the maximum advantage.

Before I disappear, I also neglected to mention that I believe SE gave us these specific numbers/gear so that RNG can match the delay reduction other jobs receive. For example, it could work similar to Dual-Wield values, where capped 69%~ Gear/Magic Haste justifies 37%~ DW to reach 80% total melee reduction. In the same way, 70% Snapshot (1 - .7 = .3 adjusted delay) multiplied by our maximum VS value (.3 adjusted delay x .35 VS = .105 further reduction) is roughly an 80.5% total delay reduction. This is in-line with the total Haste/FC values other jobs receive, although I don't believe ranged delay is affected by an 80% cap like they are. For one, Rapid Shot/Overkill seem to bypass this entirely, as their activation is quite evident even with all possible forms of Snapshot/VS. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where to take it from there, as there's no other way to further stack any more Snapshot/VS. That said, we might already be at a global cap for ranged delay reduction, but simply don't have the resources to confirm it.

Posted a test but noticed an error, correcting and reposting later ~

Ok, fixed the errors I saw:

Used Annihilator to test and this preshot set:
ItemSet 347285

Without Velocity and w/ flurry 2:
average shot: 1.254 seconds
stddev: .353 seconds
shots fired: 26
min shot:.797 seconds
max shot:1.997 seconds


With Velocity and w/ flurry 2:
average shot: 1.154 seconds
stddev: .219 seconds
shots fired: 32
min shot:.799 seconds
max shot:1.524 seconds

I did a few tests like this, it does seem even with snapshot supposedly more than capped, velocity shot helps. What really concerns me is the max shot timer for these tests and if there's any grouping on the upper end as rapid shot makes RNG delay testing really crappy so all you can really do is look at the longest delay numbers (the ones where rapid shot probably didn't proc) or the average over all (with a huge enough sample size it would average out) to know if you're attacking faster etc and by how much.

What is really weird to me here is:
1.524 / 1.997 = .7631 or 76.31% or an about 34% reduction in max shot duration.

According to my set and ranger gifts etc:

34% velocity shot and a 34% reduction in the maxed ranged shot. It could be coincidence. I'll leave it to you guys to decide if this is conclusive or not. I did a few more eyeball tests earlier today though and it does seem velocity is sort of it's own deal to me too. Note, these times don't include the 1 sec between shots it's just the aiming delay. Also I had one shot where the entire aiming delay was reported to be .034 seconds... which I threw out of the sample b/c it was so weird but I'm guessing it was a rapid shot proc where delay was reduced a ton, or a packet error of some kind, even if I included it tho the standard deviation on the set was still smaller than the first, which means it's not really affecting the average difference in shot times as much as there was differences in shot times in the first sample but I left it out anyway b/c it seemed too weird, and I wouldn't be a stats person if I didn't throw out data that didn't agree with my hypothesis now would I (sorry, math joke).

Ok, so let me know what you guys think, it's at least more than we knew before, I'd like higher sample sizes but I think it definitely does effect aiming delay speed.

Another test set:
ItemSet 347289

This should be 70 snapshot with merits and flurry 2, feel free to double check me.

Flurry 2 and no velocity shot with aiming delay in order, note these are in miliseconds so 797 is .797 seconds:
797.184082
913.6010742
922.9716797
1194.83374
1201.101318
1229.209961
1286.953125
1287.712158
1304.422363
1312.209961
1331.34668
1473.909424
1480.863525
1506.631836
1512.786865
1607.627686
1612.156006
1621.559082
1623.10791
1640.142334
1646.043701
1681.682617
1716.196045
1755.025879
1809.074219
1817.209229
1871.265381
1922.674072
2097.21167

Same test just with velocity shot on:
485.7751465
720.7851563
752.84375
762.1079102
779.3369141
784.5498047
811.513916
822.7958984
823.3833008
854.4064941
859.7602539
869.295166
889.4765625
890.5524902
896.3012695
961.2636719
1002.681641
1167.13916
1167.491943
1169.32666
1180.038574
1194.089844
1195.663574
1197.662354
1306.007324
1340.595215
1482.120361

I should probably start graphing these somehow ~_~ In any case, either 70 snapshot isn't the cap or velocity shot is multiplicative or flurry 2 isn't 30 snapshot like SE said. If we're to believe that flurry 2 is 30 snapshot and snap cap is 70 as SE said, then it would seem velocity does reduce delay also on top of that somehow.

I'm making my testing addon available for public use, though Byrth made a similar one once. I don't really have time to make a writeup on how to use it but it's basically turn it on and shoot stuff and it writes the results as insert statements for sql to a file in the windower folder. put the file in addons/testsuite/testsuite.lua and in game call //lua l testsuite and to turn it off //lua u testsuite

http://pastebin.com/UBnY4Ufr

It borrowed a lot of code from scoreboard, have fun testing.

So any thoughts on this? Testing and Zeak's macro timers seem to support velocity as it's own term, but I'd like to finish testing flurry 2 first or get a full 70 snapshot from gear set if possible to test velocity with and still need to test 70 vs 80 snapshot as real cap. Some asked if I wanted help, the addon I linked above will let you run any tests you wish and record the shot times.


Also to answer this, people just assumed as far as I can tell. There wasn't specific testing done for it and still isn't specific testing done for a lot of stuff for ranged attack speed, it's an extremely understudied part of the game. There is a ton of melee jobs so that tends to be understood very well but RNG is left out of a lot of stuff it needed testing on. There was a test byrth did that showed it was a delay reduction and also tested how much delay reduction. If I remember correctly it also didn't show there was any multiplicative delay reduction and when it was announced by SE snapshot capped at 70, velocity shot was by most considered to be the same form of delay reduction, especially from the "all forms of snapshot cap at 70 and there is no categories" statement by SE. Also, going over the JP wiki didn't seem to reveal anything either and at least when I was going back in this thread, the capped snapshot set was posted many many times and always included velocity shot. Also I just double checked the jp wiki and it does list it specifically as snapshot. But I'd be interested to see what people make of the tests I posted and for me at least, because there was never a specific test to prove it or disprove it, this was an open question to me and something that might change range sets if it revealed anything, and there's actually a lot of those open questions for ranger because there is a lack of testing for ranger and like I said I think this is because there's so many DD jobs but only a few jobs that care about ranged damage.

Edit: I can also do one better and link you to byrth's tests: https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/116145-Ranged-Delay-Snapshot-and-Stuff?p=5826122&viewfull=1#post5826122

So that's the reasons, overall, even though none would actually arrive at the conclusion that velocity shot = snapshot other than what is on the jp wiki which for all I know could've been taken from bg-wiki.