Bullets, and overall cost of the job

[DebbieGibson]

Are you blind? Seriously. Read the first sentence of my previous post.

Sorry don't care that much.

time=money

[Zagen]

The topic is about the cost of job (bullets/cards/dice) and the lower damage bullet selection, if making gil wasn't a factor then the cost wouldn't be either... I mean if you don't have trouble making gil you don't complain about the cost of items.

I dropped 180k on Silver Bullets to Skill up Marksmanship on my RNG the other day without a second thought about how it would be cheaper to use an X-bow with bolts (40k) at the time. I could have spent the time to farm the silver ore and fire crystals to make the silver ingots, I could have also spent the time to farm sulfur, bomb ash, and fire crystals to make firesand. Then crafted them together after getting extra fire crystals but I didn't do that because I knew in the time it would take to do all of that I would have made more gil than it costs to buy them.

Either way I would have gotten my bullets I wanted the difference is having spent the time making gil I came out making a profit so much so that dropping 180k didn't bother me.

You suggest farm/craft as an alternative to spending the gil which realistically will likely end up costing you more gil than buying the finished product because you could have spent that time doing something that makes more gil than you'd save.

The reality is it boils down to this: People are lazy and refuse to figure out how to make enough gil to sustain a job they care about.

As to higher damage bullets making Quick Draw game breaking. No they wouldn't...

O. Bullet: 2 * 151 * 1.71 * 1.15 * 1 = 593
Dark Adaman Bullet: 2 * 179 * 1.71 * 1.15 * 1 = 704

A difference of 111 damage isn't anything to brag about when other jobs are pulling off ridiculous damage from meleeing/WSing in comparison.

The thing is most aren't even asking for the top bullet DMG RNG has available most are asking for silver bullet damage.

Silver Bullet Damage: 2 * 155 * 1.71 * 1.15 * 1 = 609

An amazing difference of 16 damage...

[noodles355]

The problem is more the availability of the bullets, rather than the cost.
As mentioned, if you're low on gil for ammo, you can get a cruor party for a few hours and NPC stuff for a few hundred k. That's all well and good but if there's no bullets available on the AH then you're still boned.

And leveling alchemy for bronze bullets is a terrible idea. Using Bronze bullets fulltime is a terrible idea. Using them for WF/LS is fine, but TPing or QDing with them? Quit the job.

[Symbiote]

And leveling alchemy for bronze bullets is a terrible idea. Using Bronze bullets fulltime is a terrible idea. Using them for WF/LS is fine, but TPing or QDing with them? Quit the job.

You guys are the ones crying and complaining about not having bullets/can't afford them/can't find them. I suggested leveling alchemy to make your own bullets. You guys shot that down real quick. I suggested that you could always Tp with bronze if you cant find anything else/are too cheap to use higher up stuff, that obviously is getting shot down. I've said more than my piece, so I will leave it at that. And for the record, I TP with steel. Enjoy.

[Mirabelle]

QD cards will never be more economical to craft than to buy from NPC. The cost of clusters usually precludes that. And don't bring up farming them. Its still an opportunity cost. If you can sell 3 clusters for 6k on AH rather than turning them into 5k of QD cards, you've lost money and time by crafting.

But really the cost of the job isn't the only thing holding it back. The lack of native red procs and yellow procs, the relative worthlessness of buffs compared to atma superpowers and the requirement of an Empyrean/WoE WF gun to be decent in damage situations are probably the biggest issues.
But no job should have their best ammo be largely unavailable and prohibitively expensive. That's totally unacceptable especially for a job that is relatively weak in general from a DD perspective.

[Afania]

As for Leaden Salute not doing more than Slug Shot outside of Abyssea. I had no problem at 75 doing more with it at Colibri camps, back in the ToAU/WotG days. I see no reason that Slug Shot would immediately jump to the front of the pack without any major mechanics changes. Hell, even Detonator does more than Slug Shot outside abyssea. Granted that you are properly geared and not full timing that pink trash gear.

You're doing it wrong if slug isn't hitting higher than Leaden Salute/Detonators.
At 75 I had no problem hitting 1.4k~1.8k without /WAR, and anyone can hit 2k+ with /WAR.

Nowadays in Nyzul or assault it's easily 3k~3.6k on weak against piercing mob, and 2k~2.5k in limbus on none pierce weakness mobs with a melee weapon, which was nearly on par with a Torcleaver user in same pt. I don't see how magical WS like Wildfire can hit that high with a melee weapon, let alone Leaden Salute.

It's extremly hard to boost magical WS outside of Abyssea unless the situation favors magical WS dmg. You need a staff, need QD before WS, need /RDM, need wizards roll which is useless if you're not ine BLM pt. Unless you're fighting flan, or mobs that has high eva/def(some VWNM like Hahava for example), or uses perfect dodge/invincible, slug is better and way easier to boost it's dmg on weaker mobs.

[Thunderlips]

QD cards will never be more economical to craft than to buy from NPC. The cost of clusters usually precludes that. And don't bring up farming them. Its still an opportunity cost. If you can sell 3 clusters for 6k on AH rather than turning them into 5k of QD cards, you've lost money and time by crafting.

I disagree with this partially, as the synths for cards are only level 17. If you have level 50+ you will have a good HQ rate on the cards and really can make a ton of them for a small amount of gil. Since a lot of people XP on dolls out in abyssea, the mercury can come free/cheap for a lot of the synths as well. It probably is a lot better overall to just be able to synth your own cards than running out to Nash to buy cards; unless you just want trump cards.

If you have a warp out to nash (the synergy earring) or don't have high enough alchemy to get a decent HQ rate, then you are correct that you are much better off to buy the cards from npc.

[Yinnyth]

Actually, cards are free. Craft them with alchemy (which you should do to also make bullets).

I (the person who started this topic) leveled alchemy wayyyyyyy back in the day when my corsair hit level 75. I make my own bullets, and I even make my friend's bullets, who like me, is an armageddon corsair. I can safely say that crafting cards with alchemy is not only NOT FREE, but it is actually MORE EXPENSIVE than simply buying cards from Nashmau.

When I say "free", I speak of not costing any gil to create the item. Do not act like a smart ass with pulling the "you spend your time" card.

Are you blind? Seriously. Read the first sentence of my previous post.

First of all, you mean second sentence, second of all, you cannot simply dismiss a well-established fact by pre-empting it with "And don't be a smart ass". Time is currency, currency is money, therefore time is money. Unless you have a really compelling argument against that, you have no right to publicly dispute it.

And even if we follow your logic, everything in the game is free because anyone can farm the necessary items for anything. There are many reasons we attach costs to goods and services instead of simply calling them "free, aside from the time, money, or other form of currency you will lose in the process of obtaining this good or service".

This is and always has been my point. If you don't like the prices, craft.

I craft, and I still don't like the prices. In fact, if you read post #7, you'll see that (when I made the post), a stack of steel ingots costs as much as double what a stack of silver ingots costs. So I started crafting my own steel ingots, and it's STILL MORE EXPENSIVE THAN SILVER BULLETS WOULD BE FOR ME TO MAKE. <<capitalized for your convenience.

This has been my underlying complaint; from the time I first made the thread to the time I'm making this response: Ammo for corsair costs more (whether your cost be time, or whether your cost be gil), yet does less damage than ranger choices. This is backwards. If it does less damage, it should cost less. This is my reasoning behind why the availability of materials should be re-evaluated.

I would respond to your other posts too, but they basically just (over)simplify down to "crafting fixes all the problems", so my overall response is: "No. No, it actually doesn't."

[Yinnyth]

I disagree with this partially, as the synths for cards are only level 17. If you have level 50+ you will have a good HQ rate on the cards and really can make a ton of them for a small amount of gil. Since a lot of people XP on dolls out in abyssea, the mercury can come free/cheap for a lot of the synths as well. It probably is a lot better overall to just be able to synth your own cards than running out to Nash to buy cards; unless you just want trump cards.

If you have a warp out to nash (the synergy earring) or don't have high enough alchemy to get a decent HQ rate, then you are correct that you are much better off to buy the cards from npc.

4752 gil to buy a stack of cards from Jajaroon.

On our server, light and dark clusters both cost 5k each, so even if you had a 100% HQ2 rate, you'd be losing money crafting those. Before I got armageddon, light and dark shot were my 2 most common quickdraws anyways. Factor in the annoyance of gathering the ingredients and everything else, crafting cards just seems like a poor option to me.

I look forward to craftable trump cards though. Perhaps they'll fix up all the recipes so they just use a crystal instead of a cluster, and the trumps will use something only slightly more exotic.

[SpankWustler]

The problem is more the availability of the bullets, rather than the cost.
As mentioned, if you're low on gil for ammo, you can get a cruor party for a few hours and NPC stuff for a few hundred k. That's all well and good but if there's no bullets available on the AH then you're still boned.

Pretty much this, and it goes a step further for Oberon's Bullets. Even if you hate yourself enough to set out on a quest to obtain materials and craft them, obtaining the materials might well involve four hours of Campaign for one Fool's Gold Ore.

I think it's very telling that everyone is discussing Steel Bullets in this topic, but new munitions like Antlion Arrows are being discussed in the Ranger forum. Oberon's Bullets are closer to being an urban legend than a viable form of ammunition at this point. I thought I saw a stack on the auction house once, but it was just a smudge on my monitor.

This occurrence is the dumbest thing I've been witness to, and I once saw two mentally challenged men engage in fisticuffs over a cup of Jell-o Pudding.