Corsair role: a reflection

Hello fellow Corsairs!
I joined the ranks of the Corsairs long time ago, before it became quite in fashion as it is in these days. Then I took a long pause and Voidwatch and Abyssea happened and I re-joined gladly and I found the wonders we all love to play with.

But yet again my ongoing issue - what's a Corsair aim? what makes a good Corsair? - is still in deep unclean waters. Having, sadly, levelled up a Bard as first job, I'm asked all the time to come as Bard and I obey silently having therefore no possibility in playing this job seriously.

In this forum I saw quite a lot of interesting discussions and feedback so I thought to try to promote and healthy discussion about our lovely job role and the necessary state of the job with constructive feedback.

How's the job seen in the community? Is the job filling quite well its purpose or improvement are much needed?
What makes a good Corsair and why?
And so on.
We have now quite a higher number of Corsair and probably different opinions, but still I would like to understand what the community thinks about this wonderful job and pros and cons.
I noticed that quite often the emphasis on this forum is put on the DD side of the job, supposedly coming to shine only after obtaining Leaden Salute or Wildfire.
How comes so? Are we still so WS dependent that that a mythic is mandatory to be called a good Corsair? Will there be any hope for poor non-hardcore Corsairs?

My guns are a bit rusty, I must admit, but my heart is still a pirate's one.
:cool:

I still think the job is DD and support combined. A lot of JP players still see it as a BRD with guns. I believe if that was the case SE would have designed our gear entirely differently. Nothing about our best gear screams, "sub WHM and use MP". But that's my personal opinion and not representative of the COR population.

In Abyssea, a COR is most valuable with Wildfire for sure. The atma we can use their make this one of the top WS in Abyssea. Given COR can't natively proc anything other than a few blue procs, having a good WS is about the only thing that makes COR shine.

Outside of Aby, WF and LS aren't nearly as good and therefore, having these WS is not "necessary" to play the job. In voidwatch, your ability to roll Miser's and Tacticians on the melee makes COR a very valuable peice to the group even before damage output is considered. Having Wildfire is still nice due to its skillchain properties, but probably not necessary for every fight. With the new Last Stand WS, that may be more of a go to physical WS outside of Abyssea as test server results suggest its pretty strong. Better than Slugshot and likely more accurate.

My personal playstyle is to go COR/RDM to Aby, COR/DNC to older events like limbus, einherjar, Nyzul, etc., and COR/SAM to VW. I do finally have Wildfire and it is a darn fine WS that every hardcore COR should try to obtain as a goal. You can still be a useful COR without it, but it ups the fun of the job immensely.

As to what makes a good COR.
1) Knows what rolls will make the fight go smoother and applies them consistently
2) Has the ability to add useful damage to the fight while not ignoring 1)
3) Has subjob utility so they can offer different level of support and DD to different fights as appropriate: RDM, SAM, DNC, WHM, RNG, WAR, SCH all have certain utility at various stages and should be available

I think if you can do those things you will be a good COR.

The job is in a much better place than it was a few years ago.

Miser's Roll and Tactician's Roll gave Corsair viable melee rolls that could compete with and have a place next to Marches without infringing on Bard's territory. Wildfire addressed the job's biggest Endgame failing which was a lack of physical WS potency compared to Ranger (which was a subpar DD itself without a Relic). Magical WS never miss and are independent of Ranged Attack, which plays to Corsair's strengths.

No, Death Penalty is not anywhere near required any more. A good COR will have at least an 85, if not a 90 Armageddon though. It's the easiest Empyrean in the game to make at all stages, and comes in handy for both Wildfire and Last Stand.

A good Corsair is a player who can keep up with his melee DD peers while still giving them epic buffs and making everyone in the party stronger for it. I consistently place top 3 in all Voidwatch parses on my Corsair, and I always win parses on Pil. This is all while maintaining XI Miser's and XI Tacticians on all of my melees fulltime. With the new XI chain feature, there's really very little reason to settle for less than an XI for all of your rolls. Corsair's damage comes almost entirely from WS potency, frequency, and consistency. A Vereth may supercrit and hit a 3.2k Smite every once in a while, but I know that every time my TP hits 100 I'll be able to pull the trigger and launch a 2k Wildfire with a 65 TP return and 12/tic regain.

Cons of Corsair?

No defensive options whatsoever. Corsairs have no native defense, no defensive skills, and translate subjob defensive buffs poorly. This is nullified in Voidwatch due to your ability to spam Invincibility drinks and potions, but in other areas it's a serious problem. More often than not, even in merit parties at 75, I'd find that getting hate on Cor/War was almost always a death sentence - and it happened a lot. Cor/Sam is now a vastly superior subjob for general DD with Wildfire, since Berserk is moot and Sekkanoki allows us to self-Darkness, so we do have Seigan, but that's still very minor.

Pros of Corsair?

Ability to deal severe, consistent damage at a range. Extremely powerful party buffs. Instant, jump-like TP and damage at a range. Ability to nullify the effects of low Accuracy and/or Attack on a physically resistant target without being a silly robe-wearer. And being a god damn Pirate.

Corsair is still heavily WS-dependent, but the scope of the WS's have changed. Leaden Salute is passable in Abyssea but suffers horrendously outside of it. Wildfire is about on par with other Empyrean WS inside Abyssea, but Corsair lacks the white damage (TP phase) to keep up with a real Abyssea DD. Wildfire, however, still shines quite a bit outside Abyssea where many other WS drop off.

Last Stand is also a powerful Marksmanship WS, but it requires a lot of merits and gil to be used well. I have the WS at 5/5, but my set is still a work in progress. I feel like I'm lacking a good deal of Ranged Attack, as it's underperforming compared to Wildfire, so it needs some tweaking. This is what I'm currently using for Last Stand: http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/241091

In general, Corsair is really not a job that's friendly for extremely-casual players. I'm pretty casual tbh, only logging in on weekends mostly, but that didn't stop me from getting an Armageddon. It's extremely easy/quick to run through, and it's pretty much a requirement to even start being effective on COR. While the buffs are nice on their own, Corsair shines because it's able to DD as well as a melee while giving them. Take that away, and you've basically got a crappy Bard.

I think like Mirabelle (and like her i play cor since Toau release), light DD and support (was very fun in colibri party long time ago).
I didn't use my cor for quite a while since the release of abyssea, but since VWNM, the lead asked me to come as cor/rng for marksmanship proc, cor ability and tactician's roll), and it's really fun.

Cor is loved in Voidwatch and thus very much relevant to the newest content. Its DD aspect is very strong, it's not subpar at all as people called it once. Last Stand is a very good ws, but Wildfire was basically designed for us, you should get it. It's like Leaden, but much better. However having Armageddon on cor isn't really necessary. Due to our insane tp generation, shooting is rarely to never needed and thus the aftermath becomes useless 90% of the time(however Arma still has lots of agi and a high coolness factor which you can't ignore!), so you could settle with a Bedlam...but meh, honestly Arma takes less time lol.

Pretty much, yeah. Arma is easier to make than Bedlam and adds WSC to both Wildfire and Last Stand by virtue of having AGI+15 on it.

Corsair fares a lot better in the Age of Voidwatch than the Age of Abyssea. Actually, Corsair fares better in Voidwatch than it has in any other event. The event is almost tailor-made for the job. Ranged damage is great, magic damage is great, the unique properties of Quickdraw are great, the unique buffs provided by Miser's Roll and Tactician's roll are great.

It's not so hot for duo/trio stuff like Neo-Dynamis, but Corsair never performed well for that sort of content so that's no surprise.

If you're serious about the job, I'd strongly recommend getting an Armageddon up to level 85-90 as soon as you can. It's actually easier to make than a Bedlam. It's probably even easier to make than a fire-path Elemental trial weapon, depending on how broful your bromance with your bros happens to be.

If you're serious but not that serious, then Last Stand is still a huge improvement over Slugshot. Under neutral conditions, Last Stand and Wildfire should do similar damage. Being able to use excellent physical and magical weaponskills without the need to change weapons is a huge boon for the job, though.

I'd say Corsair is in the best place it has been since ever.

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Originally Posted by Seha

However having Armageddon on cor isn't really necessary. Due to our insane tp generation, shooting is rarely to never needed and thus the aftermath becomes useless 90% of the time(however Arma still has lots of agi and a high coolness factor which you can't ignore!), so you could settle with a Bedlam...but meh, honestly Arma takes less time lol.

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To expand though, you pretty much need either Bedlam or Armageddon (or Death Penalty) to be a good Cor. Wildfire is just that much better than Leaden Salute. In fact, unless you pump in some decent attack from buffs/food, it tends to equal or out-do Slugshot on anything EM or higher.

Luckilly, there's still the illusion of "high cost" about the job, what with ammo/card expendables and 100k+ gil Dice. That keeps most bad players away from it.

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Luckilly, there's still the illusion of "high cost" about the job, what with ammo/card expendables and 100k+ gil Dice. That keeps most bad players away from it.

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I think the illusion became reality with the introduction of the orichalcum bullet. Currently the best COR bullet for TP, Last Stand and Wildfire and running anywhere from 50k-150k/stack. Of course most people will stick with bronze/steel bullets and only use O.bullets for QD if they don't have Omphalos (or have shot it away). But in an ideal world this should be the fulltime bullet for COR.

It's hardly an imperative upgrade though. The only significant upgrade from them is TP phase/slug shot DMG, a very small part of our total damage, losing 12DMG over Oberon's which are much cheaper now pouches drop from GoV. For wildfire, it's a loss of 2MAB over a bronze bullet, hardly worth the cost. I wouldn't call Cor high-cost just because of orichalcum bullets, the same as at 75 I wouldn't call WAR high cost because of Cerb Mantle +1. It's the best, sure. But a minimal upgrade.

Last Stand, bruddah.

If you have either attack buffs or are fighting something where your ranged pDif is high/capped, Last Stand can handily out-do Wildfire. It was easily doing better for me the other day on some Voidwatch NMs where I had Minuet 5 from the Daurab/Gjallar bard.

Most upgrades are minimal in this game yet people spend hours of time and oodles of gil fussing about them. Reaver Grip vs Reaver +1. 1 million gil to 10k for 1 AGI. Novio vs Moldavite... free vs 3 million gil for 2 MAB. Game is full of this type of "minimal" upgrade for high cost.
And you could even be considered "gimp" if you somehow didn't have these items and did 50 less damage on your WS because of it. That's been FFXI for a long time.

So I'm sure at some point it will be O Bullet or GTFO for COR's just because of the epeen nature of the job. RNG forums were that way for ages with arrows even though they offered minimal damage upgrades compared to the Damage rating of the Bow.

Fortunately most players view COR as BRD 2.0 and don't care what gear you rock as long as you roll Tacticians and Miser rolls.

I don't think anyone I know at all would be happy with a Corsair pretending to be a Bard. It's pretty common knowledge how strong of a DD it is.

Is last stand really that good? I can't imagine anywhere where my ranged pdif would be close to capped as I'm never /War. But I guess I could try /War and RCBs on trash mobs. But I can't see that being worthwhile on anything "challenging" (read: not trash dyna mobs etc). Hell on Pil at 95 I was eyeballingly far off capped racc with over 110 Racc in gear, capped/merited skill and sushi. I can't imagine the new highest tier mobs being any different at 99.
I was never overly concerned with my damage on trash mobs. They're just that - trash. They always die long before repops anyway. I'm not fussed with jumping through hoops to make Last Stand better than Wildfire if it doesn't actually increase the overall efficiency of the event. I got over boosting my ego with big damage/parse numbers long ago. I'm much more interested in boosting my damage output on tough content that actually matters. And on most of that content you'll be very hard pressed to have a high pdif effectively.
And on most of those events the damage increase from Orichalcum Bullets will be minimal. The best yes, but expensive and minimal - hence my earlier Cerb+1 comparison.

Last Stand is our best physical WS with Wildfire as the best Magical WS. There will be high MDB mobs where Last Stand will be your best WS over Wildfire. It makes sense to have a build for it and abandon Slugshot finally (or lol Detonator).

And I agree that I will not fuss over still shooting steel bullets (or maybe Oberon's) for Last Stand rather than Orichalcum. I'd just rather be able to shoot Orichalcum without feeling as if I'm pissing away gil with every shot. That's fine for certain folks that play alot and make oodles of gil. For some of us that only log onto FFXI for events and make our gil largely through logs and ores and NPC'd gear that drops in those events, these prices are ludicrous.

If you're serious about cor, merit Last Stand. Wildfire is amazing and all, but it's not reliable on everything you fight. Say you're fighting Ildebrann...you're awesome WF just goes down the sink. Last Stand is a very strong physical ws to make up for it in those circumstances, better than Slug(I don't know why people still talk about Detonator, as if making a Light skillchain matters)very close to WF(and sometimes better). Do it, it's good(and neat as hell).

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Originally Posted by noodles355

Is last stand really that good? I can't imagine anywhere where my ranged pdif would be close to capped as I'm never /War. But I guess I could try /War and RCBs on trash mobs. But I can't see that being worthwhile on anything "challenging" (read: not trash dyna mobs etc). Hell on Pil at 95 I was eyeballingly far off capped racc with over 110 Racc in gear, capped/merited skill and sushi. I can't imagine the new highest tier mobs being any different at 99.
I was never overly concerned with my damage on trash mobs. They're just that - trash. They always die long before repops anyway. I'm not fussed with jumping through hoops to make Last Stand better than Wildfire if it doesn't actually increase the overall efficiency of the event. I got over boosting my ego with big damage/parse numbers long ago. I'm much more interested in boosting my damage output on tough content that actually matters. And on most of that content you'll be very hard pressed to have a high pdif effectively.
And on most of those events the damage increase from Orichalcum Bullets will be minimal. The best yes, but expensive and minimal - hence my earlier Cerb+1 comparison.

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I wouldn't use it on Pil unless you were rocking some fairly hefty Racc buffs, but I was using it to great effect on a lot of the Tier 4 and Tier 5 Jeuno NMs (which are about the same level as Tier 1 Jeuno really). Throwing on Pot-Au-Feu+1, Stalwart's, and getting Gjallar Minuet 5 brought Last Stand up to about 2k damage where Wildfire was sitting around 1.5k or less on the more magical resistant NMs.

I was literally pissing through Oberons doing that, though, so I highly recommend double checking your Ammo count before you go too crazy with it.

Edit: Was also /Sam, it's a more versatile sub in general unless you know you wont' be using Wildfire at all.

I see, so it can still put up decent numbers with just some minuets and pot-au-feu? That's good to know. How is Racc on the T6 Jeuno VW at 99? As sketchy as @95 vs Jeuno/Zilart T3? Also I guess with it being much easier to proc and lights capping faster that you can keep stalwarts/aescetics up closer to fulltime now.

Note: My comments were never about the worth of meriting the WS. They were about Orichalcum Bullets, and the effectiveness of purposely building for Last Stand with food/SJ/buff choices. I didn't mention mobs with high MDB as I felt no need to state the obvious.

Ranged Acc on T6 was a crapshoot, I missed a decent number of Last Stands entirely and just chose to stick to Wildfire. A lot of the T6 are total assholes about PDT anyways, so Wildfire would win out regardless. It's still the go-to WS for anything strong.

Ig-Alima is about as strong defensively as Pil, though he's less annoying about AoEs since most of his shit is Conic and he doesn't cast offensive magic. Botulus Rex is pretty much a matter of throwing Allllllllllllllllllll the Wildfires at it until it dies. I haven't done much of the others yet.

thank you very much for this constructive and interesting feedback.

I gathered maybe the wrong impression from different thread and I am now more aware of the actual situation.
Leaden Salute is not a massive problem to make, even for a casual player so I will put my effort in doing it and find out if I like or not - still I like a pragmatic approach and I like to try out stuff by myself but some advice is always precious.

I did have the impression that COR is somehow still perceived to be a sort of Bard with regain and that wasn't a problem. I am not a massive epeen player honestly, I want to do my job correctly and nicely and I want to be useful in a party or ls events because that's most of the time what I do online.

For example I had the impression that COR is seen as very expensive, which for me is not a massive problem as I can make money somehow fairly well and really COR is my only other job but BRD which is notoriously quite cheap :p also the feeling that this job is expensive might somehow be nice as it makes the job a bit exclusive and keeps the not-so-nice people at bay...

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Originally Posted by SpankWustler

It's not so hot for duo/trio stuff like Neo-Dynamis, but Corsair never performed well for that sort of content so that's no surprise.

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I've been trioing dyna DC mobs on COR/DNC a lot recently with COR THF DD(like MNK SAM DRK DRG WAR) setup for relic+2 augments and gil, I don't think it's that bad tbh. Of course if you want max profit, BST solo is unbeatable. But if you're duo/trioing, it's really not that as bad as many ppl think, in fact I'd rate it one of the better dyna lowman jobs.

TP rolls can give more dmg/TP for 2 other players in the pt and increase everyone's dmg greatly, QD can proc red so that's some extra proc chances, and it's also a good crowd control JA when linked(and you may proc when you sleep the links) Movement speed roll is good when moving from camp to camp. Wildfire can hit about 1.7k~2.2k every WS which is decent on DC mobs IMO, save TP/regain roll is kinda broken outside of VW as well, if 2 QD charges are up, WF fire shot fire shot WF can self-darkness and pretty much solo a DC mob. Macro in evasion set(COR has access to very good evasion gears being a light armor job) for oh shit moments like slepted mobs awake, got hate, or have multipe mobs hitting you and such, get an evasion dagger from Dominion Ops for extra surviveability and Oynos knife from AH if you don't have a mage mule to haste you.

Depending on how well geared your other pt member is, and how bad the competitons are, you can pretty much kill mobs in dyna in merit pt style just because they die so fast with rolls after proc. I lowman dyna with many different setup/jobs like THF BST MNK DRG DRK WAR SAM BLU DNC RDM and so on, personally I don't think it's any inferior than other jobs.

Is it better than BST solo in dyna? No. But if you're doing with 3 ppl, it's not bad at all.