TL;DR Slot green gems instead of Red/Yellow gems, transfer overflow points from DEX into STR.
The problem right now is the only worthwhile gem to put into your weapon and secondaries are green gems, regardless of if you want to go a DEX build or not.
If you have the A2 swift step buff, you hit a soft cap for DEX somewhere in the 157~250 DEX range depending on how good your gear is (whether you have Max Pentamion, Manamana, level6 green gems or lvl5 green gems, etc.).
Because you’ll hit the 100% crit cap with green gems and Monstrance buff fairly early on, it’s better to just invest those overflow DEX points into STR instead. That way the green gems you socket into your weapon essentially turns into a value of 150+ Strength.
a 220 Xbow + Manamana is going to be the BiS weapon for virtually every archer build, so it’s best to revolve your stats around that.
Here’s a spreadsheet of all the different BiS gear setups you can do in relation to crit rate:
Obviously gladiator’s band might make more sense than sissel if you’re going high dex, but it really depends on how you choose to itemize. But let’s say we assume that our endgame setup will be something like:
Red Veris Gloves
2x Sissel Bracelets
Manamana + Superior Kracked Shooter
lv6 green gems in your Manamana +Superior Kracked Shooter
Then you can calculate how much DEX you should invest into and then put the leftover points into STR:
Then this stat build will allow you to reach 99% crit rate with a monstrance buff on without any wasted overflow points. And I have to say, getting +150 STR from slotting 3 green gems sounds a lot better than getting 48 Max attack + 29 Physical Damage from Red Gems or just 111 Crit Attack from Yellow Gems.
I must reiterate these calculations are not set in stone and are fairly uncertain for the future. We don’t know what kind of new crit rate gear or if lvl7 gems become obtainable, or we can all start running around in lolopanther 2-piece leather. These calculations also go entirely out the window with a level cap increase, so they’ll have to be re-calibrated again. But for now, in this current patch, I think these calculations can provide a pretty good reference for where your soft cap for dex might be.
Please give some feedback on where there could be possible errors.
Things that I’ve already taken into account:
-Crit Resist does not factor into this discussion because we’re talking about a soft cap, in most cases of an optimal party setup, there will be a Krivis1 support with 200+ SPR in your party that will debuff a boss/mob to 0 crit resist.
-Optimal DPS in general is not really part of the discussion, for now we’re just talking about a cap for DEX points. I know this build doesn’t work at all for classes like Wugu’s because their DoT’s don’t crit.
-Red Gems and Yellow Gems are absolute rubbish in the bonuses they give, even if we take into account the loss of bonus stats from splitting your stat pools, it still doesn’t compare to the trash values that Yellow and Red have on your weapons.
Now, let’s have a nice and civil discussion.
Formula:
DEX Soft Cap = (533.6-TotalCritRate)/1.3
Crit Chance = (Crit Rate - Crit Reset) /(Your char level/42)
Crit Chance with buffs = (((Total Dex)*1.3)*1.25)/(Your char level/42)