How should I do this?

[Seimore]

Hey...I've liked Corsair since I first obtained the job...but the cost wasn't exactly the perfect fit. I was just wondering how I should approach this. I want to level Corsair now, but how exactly should I do this? Should I CN burn my 35 Cor till 75ish and then go through the painstaking Range skill ups (and use a dagger to gain tp and such, or sword? Have to skill up sword XD) Or should I go in segments such as hit 50 go and skill up, hit 65, skill up hit 75, skill up?

Lastly, (this part just sounds lazy :S) do I need my af? Seeing as by the time I actually fight, I don't know if some pieces are just better than my af. Also, which is more efficient? Meleeing with a dagger/sword (prefer dagger, since I have it capped from dnc) and shoot every now n' then and use ws's or just shoot full time?
Thanks for helping me out, much appreciated.

[Zagen]

AF Head is the only piece that is still useful unless I'm forgetting stats on the other 4 pieces. Relic you'd want Hat, Body, and Hands all macro items.

If you're going to burn the job just burn it to 90 well I guess 75+ is all that's needed but Skilling Up gets easier at 90 due to level correction working in your favor on higher level monsters meaning you can skip a few camps.

Marksmanship Skill Ups IMO are honestly the only "needed" skill COR has that said capping Dagger as well can come in handy. Sword only matters if you have a Joyeuse, well used to I'm not sure if Joyeuse is still good at 90.

[Anza]

Marksmanship Skill Ups IMO are honestly the only "needed" skill COR has that said capping Dagger as well can come in handy. Sword only matters if you have a Joyeuse, well used to I'm not sure if Joyeuse is still good at 90.

I actually think Dagger is MORE useful than Marksmanship these days. Especially for someone who already has capped dagger on DNC (and likely has merits too). With good options like augmented Yataghans (my best has DMG+8/Crit+3% augments) and Twilight Knife and solid melee gear, COR isn't bad with a dagger. I find it better than the subpar damage and extreme cost of shooting for TP. As for WS, Leaden Salute and Wildfire are magical WS which are not affected by Marksmanship skill. And Evisceration is arguably better damage than Slug/Det both inside AND outside of Abyssea (not to mention cheaper since you're not using ammo).

So yeah, I personally either melee with dagger for TP, or simply get my TP from QD and regain from rolls/gear/atma if I'm focusing more on buffs (especially viable on Abyssea NMs, or if really focusing on hitting strong buffs thanks to the new XI roll changes).

As for AF pieces, head (and +1 head) is still the number one Quick Draw piece, so that's still a must. Body and Feet used to be must have at 75, but are now outclassed. Since the head is from the third AF quest, you'll need to quest the weapon (AF1) and legs (AF2) as well in order to get it. Can safely skip the other 3 pieces though.

[Zagen]

I actually think Dagger is MORE useful than Marksmanship these days. Especially for someone who already has capped dagger on DNC (and likely has merits too). With good options like augmented Yataghans (my best has DMG+8/Crit+3% augments) and Twilight Knife and solid melee gear, COR isn't bad with a dagger. I find it better than the subpar damage and extreme cost of shooting for TP. As for WS, Leaden Salute and Wildfire are magical WS which are not affected by Marksmanship skill. And Evisceration is arguably better damage than Slug/Det both inside AND outside of Abyssea (not to mention cheaper since you're not using ammo).

Melee DoT takes a huge hit from buffing even more so now if you strive to sit on XIs. Lower Marksmanship Skill also makes your Quick Draw essentially useless which means no helping on sleeps, dispels, or boosting elemental WS damage/dealing instant 200+ damage. Also the only event that a COR is really helpful in currently is Voidwatch and from what I've been reading COR is great because the buffs are needed and they can dish out ranged damage allowing them to stay out of AoE range, this can't be done with a dagger.

I don't know a single THF or DNC who will agree with you about evisceration being a better dagger WS outside of Abyssea, let alone better than Slugshot/Wildfire.

As to the concern of gil that should be a non-issue if it is there is a problem. Between Sea Daughter and the fact that a decent EXP group inside abyssea runs at least 100k Cruor/hr which converts to 250k gil you should be making a good profit just fro EXPing. You make even more gil if that group is doing Dominion Ops with the gil you could get from the augmented weapons(6.5-7.1k).

[Anza]

Lower Marksmanship Skill also makes your Quick Draw essentially useless which means no helping on sleeps, dispels, or boosting elemental WS damage/dealing instant 200+ damage.

Completely false. QD damage/accuracy is not in any way based on Marksmanship skill. Since the September 2010 update, you can get skillups with QD, but marksmanship doesn't change your damage or resist rate.

I don't know a single THF or DNC who will agree with you about evisceration being a better dagger outside of Abyssea, let alone better than Slugshot/Wildfire.

Wildfire is still good outside of Abyssea, even though it loses a LOT without Atma to assist in damage (and isn't reliant on Marksmanship skill anyway). But if you don't have WF...

We don't have THF and DNC's other dagger WS options. So we're just talking about what COR has access to, so Slug/Det/Leaden/Evisceration as legitimate options. And yes, Evisceration IS better than Slug outside of Abyssea in my experience. Plus, you won't ever completely miss Evisceration. I honestly prefer Leaden Salute (where Marksmanship skill is irrelevant anyway) over Slug/Det these days. I use it with a Pluto's staff when I do more of a buff focus on nasty AoE mobs I don't want to get to close to. If it's something I don't mind meleeing, I'll simply use Evisceration for better numbers than any of the other non-WF options.

As to the concern of gil that should be a non-issue if it is there is a problem. Between Sea Daughter and the fact that a decent EXP group inside abyssea runs at least 100k Cruor/hr which converts to 250k gil you should be making a good profit just fro EXPing. You make even more gil if that group is doing Dominion Ops with the gil you could get from the augmented weapons(6.5-7.1k).

Spending money on decent ammo for Abyssea exp alliances is a colossal waste. If you have WF, you can use it as your WS and use cheap bullets since it isn't affected by bullet DMG. If you don't have WF, you're better off using crit atma and Evisceration, which will EASILY outdamage Slug/Det/Leaden and doesn't cost a thing. Just because you can make money on Dom Ops parties by NPCing stuff doesn't mean it's a good idea to waste money on bullets for an alliance that's likely full of gimps, AFK-ers, and leeches. I'll keep my ammo for when it matters and make even more money. In most Abyssea EXP alliances I've ever joined as COR, I end up tanking the majority of mobs just through melee damage and Evisceration.

The point of shooting in Abyssea is on nasty NMs with bad AoE where you want to stay out of range and get TP. But really, feeding TP with /ra and Triple Shot is not that helpful. You're probably better off buffing your party, using lots of regain/MAB atma (meaning Atma that aren't helping your normal /ra at all anyway), and firing off QD and Wildfire/Leaden when you have TP.

I don't mean to discount the usefulness of keeping your skills capped, but let's not overstate the importance of Marksmanship here. It's pretty situational these days. Better to have than not, but if I was a 90COR with underleveled dagger/marksmanship skill... I'd work on dagger first.

[Mirabelle]

Excuse me but how did Evisceration get better than Slug outside of Abyssea? Admittedly I've not tried it recently but I recall most of my slugs doing about 1.5-2K damage and Eviscerations doing 800-1k damage on piercing weak mobs back in the days before Aby and level cap increases. Looking at the available gear for COR it seems we've gotten a lot of RATT/RACC gear and not so much ACC/ATT/DEX gear.

Is it simply the increase in dagger skill or a change in the damage ratings of daggers that has brought Evis up?

[Zagen]

Is it simply the increase in dagger skill or a change in the damage ratings of daggers that has brought Evis up?

I'm interested in this as well because that isn't the case for my COR. Though I'm suspecting the fact Anza favors Leaden Salute means it has to do with his marksmanship skill level, gun choice, bullet choice, or a combination of the 3.

I doubt it would be the damage ratings, the best DMG dagger for COR is Verus Knife +1 atm which has a DMG of 42, so the weapon rank would be 4 compared to Jambiya +1's (best DMG at 75) 34 DMG giving it a weapon rank of 3. So there is a slightly higher fSTR cap dagger can reach for COR. As to the Skill, or extra Attack which is what it boils down to really, is giving you 76.5 Attack. So less than the difference between using Attack food and not. Again not enough to boost Evisceration to the damage of Slugshot.

On paper and my implementation doesn't show Evisceration > Slugshot so I'd love to see what I'm missing to make that a true statement.

[Anza]

I'm interested in this as well because that isn't the case for my COR. Though I'm suspecting the fact Anza favors Leaden Salute means it has to do with his marksmanship skill level, gun choice, bullet choice, or a combination of the 3.

I have capped Marksmanship and 4 merits, an Ice Mayhem+2 (DMG:51 MAB+10), and I use Steel Bullets for Slug/Det. Yes, something like a STR or AGI Mayhem +2 would be better for Slug, but I'm more inclined to stick with the MAB gun for Quick Draw. I'm not using garbage gear and gimp skills though.

And obviously, this is a moot point if you're using a Wildfire gun, since you should just be using WF anyway.

I doubt it would be the damage ratings, the best DMG dagger for COR is Verus Knife +1 atm which has a DMG of 42

Augmented Yataghan can get up to DMG:43 with DMG+8 augment.

My Evisceration set looks like this:

Main: Yataghan (DMG:43, Crit DMG+3%)
Sub: Twilight Knife
Head: Anwig Salade (WSAcc+15/STR+4, Acc+10/Atk+5)
Neck: Shadow Gorget
Ears: Brutal/Aesir
Body: Loki's Kaftan
Hands: Navarch's Gants +2
Rings: Epona's/Rajas
Back: Atheling
Waist: Shadow Belt
Legs: Tumbler Trunks
Feet: Rager Ledelsens

Perhaps the fact that I have a pretty solid amount of DA/TA/QA (Twilight Knife, Brutal, Epona, Atheling) and crit gear (Yataghan, Loki's, Nav+2 hands) makes me more positive about Evisceration than some people, because extra hits and more crits sure does help the WS. Also, when I'm using crit atma inside Abyssea as I often will be if I'm meleeing stuff (say, RR/Apoc, and one of VV/GH/Sanguine Scythe), that's obviously a huge benefit to Evisceration.

But perhaps I do need to test things outside of Abyssea again, as several people are telling me I'm wrong. I was feeling better about Evis than Slug when eyeballing some mobs while doing magian trials with friends (and it's even possible I wasn't capped Marksmanship then, but I wasn't far off), but I can't honestly say I've really been doing a lot of COR DD either ranged or melee outside of Abyssea these past several months. I could indeed be mistaken.

At any rate, perhaps it's correct that at least outside of Abyssea Slug wins. Even so, better WS numbers or not, I would still stand by my assertion that I'd work to cap Dagger before Marksmanship in today's FFXI. I simply find more utility in more situations for being able to effectively melee for fast TP than I do for shooting for TP. When it comes time to WS, even if you're not capped on Marksmanship you have other legitimate options with Evisceration, Aeolian Edge (great for amber light), Leaden Salute, and even Detonator (since it's less likely to miss).

I think we can all agree that capping both skills is the ideal solution, but if you're prioritizing, I'd just do Marksmanship as a lower priority than Dagger.

[Greatguardian]

If someone is really worried about gimped Combat skills, I would not have them engaged in melee against anything meaningful to begin with. It would be much more prudent to simply focus on rolling and fire off Leaden Salutes or Wildfires whenever Quick Draw and Regain Roll gave them the TP to do so.

Dagger and Sword can both be 78-capped afk/overnight on Zvahl Fortalices, so the only meaningful skilling up you will actually have to do is in Marksmanship, thus I would definitely put that as the top priority when you're at the computer and actually skilling up yourself.

[Anza]

Since Dagger/Sword can both be brought near cap afk, that seems to me to be even more reason to go ahead and cap them first while you are still working on Marksmanship. They're easy/fast to cap, and Marksmanship takes considerably longer. So go ahead and cap the easy ones to give you the option to effectively melee for TP, work on the more time consuming one as you can.