Bullets, and overall cost of the job

[Yinnyth]

It's been mentioned several times in other posts, but I felt the topic deserved its own thread to discuss. Bullets for corsair have always been just a little bit ridiculous, and I'm honestly not exactly sure why. I can understand attempting to keep COR weaker at ranged attacks than RNG, but some of th- well, just read on.

Way back in the day when the job was new, silver bullets were the god of all bullets, but COR never got access to those. There were the JSE bullets from the ENM battle, but that was a joke seeing as how you could get 99 of them once every 5 days assuming you win the battle. Then there were steel bullets which were still weaker than silver, a higher level than silver, and more expensive than silver. As of this post, dweomer(RNG) and oberon(COR) are the ultimate bullets. It should be noted that dweomer and oberon bullets are relatively equal in difficulty to obtain. However, oberon bullets are STILL weaker than silver bullets, yet heinously more expensive.

Most RNGs tend to use bows anyways since (even though they get access to stronger guns and ammo), the bows are generally stronger and cheaper to use.

As though more expensive and weaker bullets were not enough of a hinderance to COR, most equipment and abilities COR has been given lately is geared around increasing the speed at which they fire bullets, not the damage those bullets do. Hexaguns are the perfect example from back in the day. Weaker but faster, these guns required you to spam more ammo if you wanted to keep up with your RNG counterparts. What about recent times now that hexaguns are all but dead? AF3 has only one piece that enhances the DMG your ranged attacks do: the body. It's mostly centered around increasing the speed at which you can waste your money. The hat has rapid shot +10, the body enhances triple shot, the legs enhance snapshot, the feet augment courser's roll (snapshot roll).

I'm ok with COR not being as strong as RNG with ranged attacks. I'm ok with COR being designed around shooting more frequently for less damage. What I'm not ok with is the cost associated with doing less damage, and the difficulty of finding bullets. Considering the initial startup cost of buying dice, equipment, cards, and bullets, I really feel something should be done overall for the cost of playing corsair, and bullets are my primary area of concern.

Edit: Nacht is right, not sure what I was thinking when I made the post, but took out the part about gold and platinum bullets.

[Nacht]

I don't know what you're talking about with these gold and platinum bullets, since corsairs can't use those.

It's not difficult at all to get steel bullets. However, if you're shooting oberon bullets off like candy, then that's a different matter. I do agree that oberon bullets are ridiculously rare and expensive to make, though. But steel bullets is fairly reasonable, although it's more of an annoyance than a problem that they're more expensive and weaker than silver bullets. And on top of that, our best WS ignores the damage of the bullets.

[Yinnyth]

You're right, I don't know why I was thinking cor could use them- I must have had a phase when I was considering gun for my thf. The problem back in the day was mostly a lack of any bullets, then they released paktong and... tin I think. They were way too expensive and rare when I was leveling cor on a mule.

My major complaint about the steel and oberons is that they're more expensive than silver, yet they're weaker and have a higher level requirement. I can understand the higher level and weaker; COR (a support job) shouldn't outdamage RNG (a damage job). However, the fact that steel bullets cost twice as much as silver is ludicrous. Lower quality products should not cost more than higher quality products. My suggestion for fixing steel bullets is similar to what was done recently for oberons: make a synergy recipe involving 1 steel ingot + 1 firesand, NQ yield is 99 bullets, HQ1 is 198, HQ2 is 297, HQ3 is 396 (oberon recipe used to be nq 33, hq1 66, hq2 99, but they seem to have ninja fixed a while ago). As for oberons... it needs serious love in a lot of ways, or just a new ultimate bullet for COR.

And yeah, wildfire ignores bullet damage, but not every COR is lucky enough to have Armageddon. Plus, there are several enemies who are strong to magic and/or fire damage. Plus wildfire does its best damage while wielding a vulcan staff, and if you're wielding a staff, you need to shoot bullets to get your TP. Plus the aftermath is only good if you're shooting bullets.

Bullets are my #1 complaint about corsair. It's a fantastic job; both fun and useful. But equipment lately has been pushing COR towards being more of a ranger and less of a melee, which I wouldn't mind so much if our bullets were as cheap as RNG ammo.

[Nacht]

I guess it's easier for me, I have trouble with money, so I don't mind dishing out steel bullets. I'm also not on corsair -that- often, so I don't mind the bullet cost at all. And for availability, I just craft my own, so as long as I can find steel ingots, I'm OK.

Actually... I just checked the prices, and silver is 160k for a stack of pouches an steel is 195k, so it's not even that much of a difference.

[Yinnyth]

On fenrir, they're currently about 300k for steel, 150k for silver

[Nacht]

Sounds like some crafters there are making bank.
You should consider skilling up crafting yourself. It's not that hard to get alchemy and smithing high enough to make your own steel bullets though.

[Yinnyth]

I do make my own bullets. I farm djinns for their ash, buy sulfur off region vendors and turn those into massive amounts of firesand. I buy fool's gold and gold ore off the AH, and bug LS members to turn it into ingots for me, then I synergize those ingots into oberons. Back in the day, I used to make steel bullets for myself too. I could probably make a decent living off oberons if I spent enough time on it. But the money I make off crafting is a complete derail of the original topic.

Looking at the prices of steel ingots vs. silver ingots, CORs are at a price disadvantage even if you craft the stuff from scratch. Silver ingots go for 35k a stack, steel go for 60-70k a stack.

Another thing which had completely slipped my mind until now was the addition of dark adaman bullets. Mostly a moot point since the things never sell, so they're pretty much on par with oberons now I guess.

[Muse]

35k a stack is almost double what it costs if you were to craft the silver yourself. I can make a stack of ingots for roughly 17k a stack. But that's beside the point of this thread.

I do agree that COR's do need a better bullet selection, just giving us Silver Bullets alone would increase our damage output and cheapen our costs that go into bullets.

[Greatguardian]

Making Fools Gold Ore craftable with non-retarded mats would fix a whole mess of problems right now. Heck, even putting it in Mining locations or as a normal monster drop would be preferable to this "Campaign Union Only" crap.

[Kjara]

More bullet types for COR please!!

[Jar]

YARR BULLETS

[Capn]

It's the ultimate curse of the corsair. Up until recently, bullets were scarce on the AH... They still are to a certain extent. I find myself crafting steel bullets whenever I find steel ingots for sale.

With Triple Shot Arma aftermath, it's so nice to see decent numbers... but it makes me sad going through 99 steel bullets in less than an hour...

[Tokiro]

I started levelling Corsair to the dismay of my LS. No one could understand why I wanted to level such an expensive job. I enjoyed the constant action of the job: rolling the melees, rolling the mages and firing off at the mob when I wasn't rolling. It was a whole new game experience and I loved it. Then I went broke and started selling gear to pay for bullets. I levelled clothcraft to 93 and was not ready to start levelling mules in alchemy and smithing just for bullets. If I farmed stuff and earned gil as often as possible, I could get enough to keep myself stocked up on bullets. I'm on Lakshimi and the prices are as follows:
(D77) Oberon Bullets (99) : 90,000
(D70) Steel Bullets (99) : 20,000
(D77) Silver Bullets (99) : 10,000
(D105) Dark Adaman Bullets (99): 50,000

Short of getting yourself an Armageddon (I am trying...) or only using Leaden Salute (AF3 is pointless for this and requires a whole new gear set) the job has become more and more unaccessible. I love playing Corsair, but my bank balance stops me using it. And heaven forbid I push the triple shot button... three bullets at once and I just see gil flying towards the mob for damage I can do with a dagger anyway...

Please give Corsair a reasonably priced bullet that can dish out level 90-worthy damage or an expensive bullet that can flatten a mob. At least something to make getting that gun out less stressful.

[Capn]

(D77) Oberon Bullets (99) : 90,000
(D70) Steel Bullets (99) : 20,000
(D77) Silver Bullets (99) : 10,000
(D105) Dark Adaman Bullets (99): 50,000
.

Looks like prices have gone up even more since you posted this for steel at least. All the other jobs are getting some attention for their manifestos. I'm sad to hear crickets for cor from the dev team.

[noodles355]

I would have almost preferred no comment, than responding to ranger, completely ignoring the continuously mentioned ammo problems, and instead replied to a point about blast shot. Incredible.

[Ezekial]

Give COR's Silver Bullets already.

[Anza]

And heaven forbid I push the triple shot button... three bullets at once and I just see gil flying towards the mob for damage I can do with a dagger anyway...

Precisely. You can do the same damage/TP generation with dagger as you can with /ra, and it doesn't cost any money. My ranged set is mainly a Slug/Det WS set, and if I had Wildfire I would barely even use that (since WF/Leaden are largely the same gearsets as Quick Draw). Outside of very situational use, I don't think it's worthwhile to shoot for TP. The situational use would be the occasional NM with extremely nasty AoE where you're still trying to get TP from a distance as fast as you can through Triple Shot/Ranged Attacks, QD, and Regain.

Waste your money on ammo if you like, I'll use my Dagger and get the same results without paying an arm and a leg to throw gil at the mobs.

The other solution to this issue is to simply make COR more focused on buffs, which it seems may be the way of the future if we get 3 active rolls at a time, combined with the new XI bonus allowing for better buffs at the expense of taking some additional time to intentionally bust/re-roll to get those perfect rolls set up.

I'm a little sad that I feel like the ranged gear we have is sort of an afterthought though. A lot of the time I just see it as a way to clog up my inventory slots. Thankfully the Nav+1/+2 pieces with great ranged stats have other useful effects too (head/body enhancing Blitzer's/Tactician's Rolls, hands helping PR duration and melee), so they aren't complete wastes of space. I do feel like bringing my gear that's only used for ranged macros (Clearview/Volley earring, a RA neck/belt/back, Praeda shoes, a ranged ring alongside Rajas) is a sort of inventory -7 for me most of the time though.


Short of getting yourself an Armageddon (I am trying...) or only using Leaden Salute (AF3 is pointless for this and requires a whole new gear set) the job has become more and more unaccessible.

I'll disagree a bit on this. Leaden Salute really doesn't require a "whole new gear set" since it's substantially the same set you'd be using for Quick Draw anyway, Slug/Det are still useful and you're only spending money on ammo for WS if you get your TP through melee/QD/regain, and Evisceration is a legitimate option in many situations.

[Greatguardian]

While the bullet cost for Slug Shot and Detonator may be high, that's not really the case for Leaden Salute and Wildfire which ignore bullet damage in their damage calculation. It is very possible to simply shoot Steels if you actually shoot, and then WS in Bronzes. Personally, I either Melee for TP and WS with Slug/LS/WF (depending on the mob/context), or QD/Regain for TP and WS with LS/WF. I don't think I ever find myself actually pissing out Steel Bullets, as it's just not very efficient.

Honestly, if a target is viable for shooting with any semblance of accuracy, it's viable for melee'ing for TP, and you'll generally always build TP faster this way when you take Haste buffs into account. Personally I'm not a fan of Evisceration, if only because I tend to pull significantly more consistent numbers with LS/WF. If a target is not viable for melee, it's really not very viable for shooting gil at either and you're likely much better off focusing on rolls and QD'ing/Regaining TP for Wildfire/Leaden which can't miss.

Summary: I dislike ignoring my gun and using Evisceration, especially when Wildfire will always outperform it and Leaden Salute can outperform it with the right gear, but it is definitely better to melee for TP than to shoot if the target is something you'd be able to land bullets on, especially if you are able to receive any forms of outside Haste and have a decent TP set (Cor can hit 26% Haste in TP gear). If you're unable to melee, you're probably unable to properly shoot for TP as well so you're better off using Tactician's Roll and Quick Draw to build TP for Magical WS which are unable to miss.

[Yinnyth]

The advantage to shooting for TP is that you manage to stay outside of AoE, obviously. I also follow the same practices you do (either melee for TP or just rely on regain/QD, then WS with gun), but lately the majority of equipment for corsair has been pushing them towards the idea of simply spamming ammo. Which leads me to my initial complaint that we're being re-designed to spam ammo, yet the ammo we can use it retardedly expensive in comparison to ranger. We're supposed to throw bullets faster than RNG, yet our bullets are more expensive, we have fewer abilities to save ammunition (recycle), our highest tier bullets are less frequently available, and we do less damage.

As a result, corsair becomes primarily a buffing job except in situations which merit the expenditure of vast amounts of gil.

If that is SE's vision for the job, so be it, but I somehow recall their vision for corsair being something else...

[Anza]

lately the majority of equipment for corsair has been pushing them towards the idea of simply spamming ammo. Which leads me to my initial complaint that we're being re-designed to spam ammo, yet the ammo we can use it retardedly expensive in comparison to ranger.

As a result, corsair becomes primarily a buffing job except in situations which merit the expenditure of vast amounts of gil.

As a dedicated PUP since the start of ToAU, I almost see a parallel here with the early PUP equipment being mage gear and lackluster melee stuff, and gimp H2H skill. For COR we're getting irrelevant ranged gear, and gimp ammunition. The idea S-E had seemed to be that since PUP had an automaton, they feared giving it too much power to play like a normal melee and get good results PLUS have the big benefit of an automaton. For COR, it's almost like they fear giving us too much melee or ranged TP power PLUS having the big benefit of strong party buffs.

They'll give us the ranged GEAR, but it almost feels like an intentional tease that we're denied the other component needed for legit ranged damage (good and accessible/affordable ammo).

Or maybe they really did think they were going to focus on COR's gun shooting aspect, with some of this gear, Triple Shot, etc... but after further consideration they changed their tune and revisited the gambler aspect to refocus the job on buffs. I really don't mind that, and the XI changes and potential 3rd roll are actually more interesting to me than ranged attacking (there's already this other somewhat floundering job called RNG that does that same thing better). I'm kind of OK with ditching the idea of bullets altogether and using my gun as a tool for Quick Draw and the occasional WS in between my main focus on buffs.

[noodles355]

Hopefully something will be done about ammo. At leasy we recieved confirmation that the info had been passed onto the Dev team, which is better than being completely ignored.

[Symbiote]

Ok guys, really. You all need to stop complaining about the prices of bullets. 5-10k a stack is not a bad price. If you don't like it, go level Alchemy and make your own.

We get Quick Draw which burns a card instead of a bullet. This alone makes up for it in terms of damage. The TP gain is also better for those 2 shots.

You guys also cry and complain about the types of bullets we get? Let us all be honest for a moment. Yes, the bullet type will increase your Quick Draw damage but do we really need it?
I am still working on getting a few better pieces of gear (example: Novio to replace Moldavite), but I am in no way gimp. I still manage to pull off 1-1.5k damage on Quick Draw. 3k+ if I equip my +2 and the set activates (which isn't worth it since it is rare).
As for weapon skills, the bullet shouldn't matter since any self respecting COR has leaden salute and any hardcore COR has Wildfire. Bronze bullets work fine here. If you are still using Detonator or (ugh..) Slug shot, go get your Nyzul weapon.

So, basically, this entire thread was made by you guys to boast your laziness and unwillingness to level alchemy/go farm for gil in the form of crying to SE for new/cheaper bullets? There seems to be some flaw in the logic there. Go burn some cruor/dom notes and sell the gear off to npcs for 7k a pop. 1 piece of gear/weapon = 1 stack of bullets. Or use said gil to level alchemy.

Problem solved.

[Mirabelle]

Ok guys, really. You all need to stop complaining about the prices of bullets. 5-10k a stack is not a bad price. If you don't like it, go level Alchemy and make your own.

We get Quick Draw which burns a card instead of a bullet. This alone makes up for it in terms of damage. The TP gain is also better for those 2 shots.

You guys also cry and complain about the types of bullets we get? Let us all be honest for a moment. Yes, the bullet type will increase your Quick Draw damage but do we really need it?
I am still working on getting a few better pieces of gear (example: Novio to replace Moldavite), but I am in no way gimp. I still manage to pull off 1-1.5k damage on Quick Draw. 3k+ if I equip my +2 and the set activates (which isn't worth it since it is rare).
As for weapon skills, the bullet shouldn't matter since any self respecting COR has leaden salute and any hardcore COR has Wildfire. Bronze bullets work fine here. If you are still using Detonator or (ugh..) Slug shot, go get your Nyzul weapon.

So, basically, this entire thread was made by you guys to boast your laziness and unwillingness to level alchemy/go farm for gil in the form of crying to SE for new/cheaper bullets? There seems to be some flaw in the logic there. Go burn some cruor/dom notes and sell the gear off to npcs for 7k a pop. 1 piece of gear/weapon = 1 stack of bullets. Or use said gil to level alchemy.

Problem solved.

First off QD cards aren't free. 35-100 gil per shot. Second 5-10k per stack bullets only apply to Bronze which only applies to LS/WF which only applies to certain situations (inside Abyssea with WoE or Empyrean gun). Outside Abyssea or without Empyrean, slugshot is still our best WS and requires Oberon's to be maximized. Try finding those bullets for 5-10k per stack.

Yes a hardcore COR has WF. But many lifetime COR's, myself included still don't have an Empyrean due to things like scheduling conflicts, playtime, LS issues, etc. Should a non-Empyrean COR have to suffer extra costs? Of course this goes back to the whole concept of should only elitists be allowed to play FFXI? One shouldn't be required to have the best of best equipment to play the job. No job should require a relic/mythic/empyrean just to be decent.

The best bullet for COR is too expensive. QD cards are too expensive. If they are really trying to make things accessible, lower the price. Why should there be such a big cost associated with a job that's barely ever wanted?

[Symbiote]

Actually, cards are free. Craft them with alchemy (which you should do to also make bullets). If you're TPing with anything other than bronze bullets without alchemy or a ton of gil, then yeah.. I'll leave it up to you to figure out what I would say.

It is in no way hard to get Leaden Salute. You don't absolutely need Wildfire. I'm pretty sure there are a few CORs on your server that have the Runic Key. If you don't have the Quicksilver, ask them to run it once for you. 100% drop on the gun if a COR opens Nyzul for you.

Not sure what "extra costs" you are truely referring to. All I see are excuses.

[Zagen]

I don't find the cost excessive if I did I wouldn't bother playing the job. Are they high? Sure. Are they Higher than RNG? Sure. If all I cared about was Cost I'd stick to a job that doesn't use consumable items aside from food.



Actually, cards are free. Craft them with alchemy (which you should do to also make bullets). If you're TPing with anything other than bronze bullets without alchemy or a ton of gil, then yeah.. I'll leave it up to you to figure out what I would say.
Why do people still think this is true, nothing is free unless it shows up in your DB without you doing anything at all.

Farming supplies takes time, crafting takes time, bundling (assuming you're making a lot) takes time. All that time could have been spent getting gil so in the end they still cause you to lose gil. The only difference is you spent no actual gil when you craft them assuming you farmed all supplies needed.


It is in no way hard to get Leaden Salute. You don't absolutely need Wildfire. I'm pretty sure there are a few CORs on your server that have the Runic Key. If you don't have the Quicksilver, ask them to run it once for you. 100% drop on the gun if a COR opens Nyzul for you.

Leaden Salute will never beat Slugshot outside of Abyssea assuming you're using the correct bullet for Slugshot.

[Symbiote]

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. If you're going to attempt to troll a discussion, I suggest you go to the samurai or general discussion forums.

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.

[DebbieGibson]

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. If you're going to attempt to troll a discussion, I suggest you go to the samurai or general discussion forums.


Time=money, how does that make him a smartass? It irritates me to no end when people tell me empyrean weapons are free.

"Everything's free in aby you just need lots of time!!!!"

[Symbiote]

Time=money, how does that make him a smartass? It irritates me to no end when people tell me empyrean weapons are free.

"Everything's free in aby you just need lots of time!!!!"

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

[Zagen]

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.

How the hell did you get Leaden Salute to pull off 900-1.2k at 75? You did say Colibri Camp after all which favors Slugshot even more....


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

Say you spent 3 hours time farming/crafting and made 10,000 cards in that time (I'd be impressed if you could get that amount in 3 hours tbh). A value of 480,000 gil if you would have bought from an NPC.

In a 2 hour Cruor PT you should have made 150-300k Cruor (at least). I'm accounting for 1 hour spent getting NPCable items and NPCing them. So you would have made 375-750k.

How can you not see this as being a real argument? Farming and Crafting take time, time which can be used to make gil, whether you want to accept that fact or not has nothing to do with it being true.

[Symbiote]

Yes, I was often able to do approximately 1k Leaden Salute. Slug Shot could do the same, give or take a little bit. However, I was often required to use food, which would get eaten by colibri. This would tend to have me favor Leaden Salute.

This also isn't an argument about making money. This is about me telling people that they shouldn't be complaining about bullet choices. They are complaining about how Oberon's bullet is their best option. So I will explain it again.
Quick Draw: Anything higher than Oberon's, at this point, would break the job and would require SE to intervene. We don't want them to start tweaking the job just because people don't want to craft/farm for ammo.
Leaden Salute/Wildfire: Use Bronze bullets. This choice is obvious.
Slug Shot/Detonator: Sure, the choice is either Steel or Oberon's for this and maybe the prices are a little high ball. This does not mean in any way that you couldn't take the money you make and spend it leveling Alchemy/Synergy and making your own.

This is and always has been my point. If you don't like the prices, craft. If you don't feel the bullets fit the DMG ratio for QD and such, reevaluate your understanding of the games mechanics.

[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.

[Thunderlips]

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.

I mostly use elemental shots and all those clusters are 1-2k, but yeah with light and dark being closer to 5k and 3k on Odin that's not worth the time/effort to make vs buying from npc.

I still have a stack of polyflan paper and 1-2 stacks of mercury in storage so its not as annoying to me, but I get your point for most players.

[Juri_Licious]

SE needs to respond to this thread.

[Greatguardian]

SE has already responded to ammunition concerns from both ranged jobs. They don't need to do it in every single thread about them.

You also need to stop bumping everything without contributing anything meaningful to the conversation. As is, it's just spam, and it's annoying.

[Juri_Licious]

SE has already responded to ammunition concerns from both ranged jobs. They don't need to do it in every single thread about them.

You also need to stop bumping everything without contributing anything meaningful to the conversation. As is, it's just spam, and it's annoying.

Which threads are you talking about? With the namechange thread that's other people that are bumping and everything that's been needed to be said has been said.

I did bump the Bahamut one yes, but I didn't get an answer. As for this thread, i'm agreeing with it and the more people that agree the more likely change happens. But if you want ideas, I think they should add more bullets to NPCs.

Also, I don't see you saying this to other people who post a lot more than me.
Is this due to our opinions differing on a few subjects?

[noodles355]

There was a response from Camate (I think) in the general forum saying "We've passed on your ammunition concerns for the dev team btu hadn't posted anything as we hadn't heard anything back yet". They also upped the drop rate on Rusuzor Fangs which are needed for the top tier arrows. It might not affect Cor, but Cor isn't the only Rng job - it's a start and hopefully they will continue to ease up on ammunition costs in the future.

To be honest, Wildfire not using Bullet Damage (meaning you can use Bronze Bullets) is a big step in it's self as 20k can synth you like 5 stacks, and whilst that'll only be about 1/4 of your fired shots normally, it's gonna be over half during voidwatch.

[Greatguardian]

I've seen a massive influx of Oberon's Bullets at cheaper/equal price to Steels on my server, so they did something. I'm assuming that the ore now drops in WoE or something like that.

[Mirabelle]

I've seen a massive influx of Oberon's Bullets at cheaper/equal price to Steels on my server, so they did something. I'm assuming that the ore now drops in WoE or something like that.

The pouches drop in GoV brown chests so some more will be showing up on AH's. Still 40k for a pouch (compared to the higher damaging silver bullet pouches for 10k or the slightly less powered steel bullets at 25k). Still not going to be shooting them routinely.

[Greatguardian]

Aha, that would be it. Yeah. The price apparently went back up on Cerberus anyways. For a little while, they were cheaper than steels. Glad I got a decent supply while they were cheap, I guess.

[SpankWustler]

Something similar happened on Phoenix, and it's interesting to finally know why. They dropped to a half-way decent price for a bit, then rose in price but at least they continue to exist. It's not the change I hoped for, but there has been a change.

I find it pretty funny that instead of just doing the obvious thing and making materials available for the bullets to be more commonly crafted or desirable to craft, a Development Bro got the bright idea to just have the bullets drop directly from Chests of Grounds of Valor. It's like telling someone your car is out of gas and watching them use their gas can to water the car like a flower.

I'll take what I can get, though.

[Lisotte]

I've been trying to get my friend back into the game; he was a lvl 40-ish cor when he left (before book burns).
The main issue with him playing again is 1) the cost of bullets and 2) difficulty in skilling marksmanship up (which obviously requires more bullets).

For someone who's leveling his first job (with LB's thrown in), and not wanting to leech in aby the money-making options to support cor are limited.

[Llana_Virren]

SE just needs to give Rangers and Corsairs unlimited ammo so they can stop complaining about how they have to invest time, gil, or effort in being good at their job.

[Lisotte]

SE just needs to give Rangers and Corsairs unlimited ammo so they can stop complaining about how they have to invest time, gil, or effort in being good at their job.

Oh yeah that makes perfect sense. Time, gil and effort should be invested but there's a reasonable amount; why penalise someone for playing cor as their first job instead of a cheap job like mnk? The only extra effort involved in playing cor is making money to pay for bullets, and that is completely, utterly unrelated to actually playing cor.

[Llana_Virren]

The only extra effort involved in playing cor is making money to pay for bullets, and that is completely, utterly unrelated to actually playing cor.

Incorrect: Ammo is directly related to playing any ammo class. Corsairs, Rangers, Thieves and Ninjas (in previous FF's , FFXI isn't too nice to NIN throwing) all have to consider ammunition as part of the gameplay. Corsair should be no different.

Ammo is they key ingredient to ranged attack classes. Forcing CORs (or any ranged class) to buy/maintain ammo is not a penalty, but rather part of the job.

In reference to the previous remarks about Abyssea, you could always do Cruor burns (as opposed to EXP burns) to convert the Cruor into Gil to by the ammo that you use ... it's almost like the job pays itself.

Then again, most CORs and RNGs have not taken too much time to craft their own ammunition, which in turn makes ammo appear to be more of a cost than it needs to be.

Also of note, changing ammo does not reset TP. So you can always use a cheaper ammunition until you WS; an advange over melee in that regard.

[Yinnyth]

My original complaint in this thread was not that I need to pay gil in order to shoot bullets when I play corsair. The complaint was that I pay more gil per bullet than rng, yet do less damage per bullet than rng.

edit: Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention the direction cor gear/abilities was taking at the time (af3 and triple shot). It's all about shooting bullets more frequently, not about doing more damage per bullet.

[Llana_Virren]

My original complaint in this thread was not that I need to pay gil in order to shoot bullets when I play corsair. The complaint was that I pay more gil per bullet than rng, yet do less damage per bullet than rng.

While also being able to grant some exceptional buffs to party members, which RNG is not able to do.

The sacrifice of "less damage for more abiltiies" was intended since COR was introduced due to the role of a COR in a party; although the DMG output on COR has been improved since then. I do not see a problem with the current "damage per bullet per gil" issue as a result of the other, unique abilities COR is able to bring to the table.

[Yinnyth]

I'm ok with cor doing less damage than rng. I'm ok with cor not having access to stronger bullets. That's reasonable. I'm not ok with weaker bullets costing more than stronger bullets.

[Llana_Virren]

Yin,

I hear what you're saying, but if your argument is about the AH, that's a playerbase issue, not a job-related issue.

I would suggest that you can always synth your own munitions if you want to be economical about it; the only "problem" with the suggestion is, that as posters below us said, "time = money", so if they have to do -anything-, they consider it an unnecessarily expensive undertaking.

Of course, in theory, you could craft ammo and sell off some of your stock at the already unfairly high price to make some Gil... but again, crafting is undesireable by some because it takes time.

To be honest, I have no desire to level up any crafting skills, which is somewhat related to my desire to not play an ammo-based job. They're expensive over time in general regardless of the appropriateness of cost-per-shot. Not "unfairly expensive" in my opinion; but enough that I'd rather invest in gear for my primary job(s).

[Yinnyth]

I do craft my own bullets, and I do sell off my overstock because there is currently profit to be made on orichalcum bullets. However, it is not completely a player issue. Substances ingame have varying amounts of rarity. If I were to go to the extreme, let's pretend that RNGs got their ultimate bullets made out of insect wings (extremely common, extremely easy to farm), and CORs got their ultimate bullets made out of ninurta's sashes (extremely uncommon, extremely hard to farm). That was the situation back when I made my OP.

Oberon bullets were the best bullets for COR at the time. Oberon gold only came from campaign, only from certain zones, and even then it was like a 1/3 chance drop off each kill. Oberon's gold was substantially more expensive than silver, substantially harder to get a hold of, and the bullets were only a fraction of the power.

SINCE THEN, however... things have changed a bit. Adaman is the new ultimate RNG bullet, Orichalcum is the new ultimate COR bullet. Orichalcum is substantially less expensive than adaman (I think because it drops in abyssea chests). So nowadays, my original complaint is a little bit harder to argue. I'd need to find some way to compare bullet prices and power to arrow prices and damage since arrows are what rngs use anyways.

Overall, I'm just happy I don't have to worry about oberons anymore, so yeah, not really a problem for me anymore. Unless we face a world-wide orichalcum shortage...

[saevel]

COR's should be put on Silver and Adaman bullets, it's retarded that their not. Same with THF + xbow / bolt and SAM + bow / arrow, both those jobs get access to some of the newer WS natively yet both have crap selection since 75.

None of the above would hold be able to beat a properly built RNG/WAR, but at least make them viable.