Looking for Merit advice

[Raka]

Just recently got Corsair up, was wondering what currently benefits Corsair the best with the current selection of Meritable Job Abilities, Job Traits, and Job Ability Recast/Durations.

Any suggestions?

[Greatguardian]

I used 5 QD Acc, 5 QD Recast, 5 Snake Eye, 4 Fold, 1 Loaded Deck back at 75.

These days though, with the XI buff, I've swapped to:

5 QD Recast
5 Phantom Roll Recast
5 Winning Streak
1 Loaded Deck
1 Fold
3 Snake Eye

Having Snake Eye/Fold up all the time just isn't that important any more. You really only need them to hit that first XI in a series. Once you have an XI up, you are free to roll and roll and roll as much as necessary in order to keep the XI chain going. Winning Streak just eases your overall Rolling burden, and PR Recast merits stack with the -30s Recast from having an XI up so you get a total 20 second recast on PR, which is great for spamming rolls.

[noodles355]

Having Snake Eye/Fold up all the time just isn't that important any more. You really only need them to hit that first XI in a series. Once you have an XI up, you are free to roll and roll and roll as much as necessary in order to keep the XI chain going.

Sure you are, if you're happy with doing nothing but rolling for 90% of the time to keep the chain going. Personally I prefer Shooting shit. I would never drop 5/5 Snake Eye.

[Greatguardian]

Most of the time if I'm dicking around, I'll only have 2 rolls up total, which really isn't that bad at all. There's really no reason not to keep an XI chain up, and I have plenty of downtime to shoot as much as I want. Keeping up 4-6 rolls? That becomes trickier, but I can still lop off QDs and Wildfires between rolls without much issue.

If I'm fighting something where I really need to pay attention and give people their 4-6 different rolls, then shooting normal bullets would be an epic waste for me anyways and I'm best off using QD/WF which can't miss. If I can shoot/melee things and actually hit them, I really only need Wizard's/Tacticians and the rest of the party can dillwithit.jpg

[noodles355]

I don't just save snake eye for hitting 11s. I also use it to hit lucky numbers or get off unlucky numbers. Maybe that's why i end up riding the timer so much.

[Greatguardian]

I rarely hit anything except XIs, so that's never really been an issue for me. Once an XI is up, there's really no reason to stop at anything short of more XIs.

[noodles355]

I rarely hit anything except XIs, so that's never really been an issue for me. Once an XI is up, there's really no reason to stop at anything short of more XIs.

This is only true if only you either
1) Get lucky and get a 2nd XI on your 2nd or 3rd roll
2) Are happy to do nothing but roll constantly for the duration of the current XI roll in order to achieve the XI chain.

I mean sure, if you don't give a shit about the DD side of the job and you care nothing less than trying to keep up an 11 constantly then feel free to do nothing but roll to only get an 11. That's cool. No one will hold you against it after rolling an 11 on Chaos/Rogue's/Fighter's and then spending 4 minutes trying to get an 11 on Tactitians, even though you would have had a higher regain effect on the party over time from sticking with that 5/9/10 first or 2nd roll than you would have from busting 5 times in order to get an 11.

11 is a bonus. Ifyou got a zerg coming up then yeah, get an 11 up then bust through till you got a perfect 11 pair. For normal situations, this is a bad tactic. 11 is a bonus, if you get it then maybe you can afford to take a gambe on the next 1 or 2 rolls. However, after those first few rolls, the downtime without any buff at all that you caused by trying to get another 11 starts to outweigh the benefit you could have gotten from sticking to that lucky or high (but not 11) number.

[Afania]

This is only true if only you either
1) Get lucky and get a 2nd XI on your 2nd or 3rd roll
2) Are happy to do nothing but roll constantly for the duration of the current XI roll in order to achieve the XI chain.

I mean sure, if you don't give a shit about the DD side of the job and you care nothing less than trying to keep up an 11 constantly then feel free to do nothing but roll to only get an 11. That's cool. No one will hold you against it after rolling an 11 on Chaos/Rogue's/Fighter's and then spending 4 minutes trying to get an 11 on Tactitians, even though you would have had a higher regain effect on the party over time from sticking with that 5/9/10 first or 2nd roll than you would have from busting 5 times in order to get an 11.

11 is a bonus. Ifyou got a zerg coming up then yeah, get an 11 up then bust through till you got a perfect 11 pair. For normal situations, this is a bad tactic. 11 is a bonus, if you get it then maybe you can afford to take a gambe on the next 1 or 2 rolls. However, after those first few rolls, the downtime without any buff at all that you caused by trying to get another 11 starts to outweigh the benefit you could have gotten from sticking to that lucky or high (but not 11) number.

It really depend on the situations....there are plenty of situations that rolling will benefit the entire pt way more than shooting.

I can understand if someone really insist to DD and not wanting to keep rolling, but if we be realistic, you're losing your greatest value of the job and may as well just just come DD job, since most of the time shooting doesn't have that much strategic value.

If you're doing VWNM, most of the time ppl will want to cap light and try proc, and you're not supposed to DD it or else after it's HP goes below 50% it got ass hard to proc. So you're not supposed to shoot, so what should you while you watch ppl proc? Rolls(or cast spells from /mage). You got plenty of time to roll.

If you're doing higher tier VWNM, their high eva will make a B rank combat skill job having hard time to land bullets. You will need to equip full racc gears, pop sushi, and possibly use hunters and racc still at horribad 40%~60%. That's just a big waste of money for very little dmg increase. May as well just put regain on and keep aiming for a NO.11(or cast spells), then rely on QD/WF for dmg. I don't know about other ppl, but personally I don't like to spend money on bullets on NMs like Hahava when I know most of them won't even land, and I'm not going to bring 5 more inv- racc gears and use gimp hunters just to raise it to 50%, for maybe 50 dmg per shot every 8 sec, that's not really contributing to the pt. I can contribute to the pt way more by aiming for No.11 and give everyone else better buffs, or cast spells from /WHM /SCH. And still able to deal dmg with regain+QD+WF.

Basically anything you do as long as you have lots of down time aiming for No.11 will benefit the pt more, unless it's in a situation that you DD a lot and rolls doesn't matter too much(Abyssea/Nyzul/Einherjar etc) . But there isn't much point to play this job in such events anyways.

[Afania]

I used 5 QD Acc, 5 QD Recast, 5 Snake Eye, 4 Fold, 1 Loaded Deck back at 75.

These days though, with the XI buff, I've swapped to:

5 QD Recast
5 Phantom Roll Recast
5 Winning Streak
1 Loaded Deck
1 Fold
3 Snake Eye

Having Snake Eye/Fold up all the time just isn't that important any more. You really only need them to hit that first XI in a series. Once you have an XI up, you are free to roll and roll and roll as much as necessary in order to keep the XI chain going. Winning Streak just eases your overall Rolling burden, and PR Recast merits stack with the -30s Recast from having an XI up so you get a total 20 second recast on PR, which is great for spamming rolls.

IMO snake eye is still more important than winning streak....since you need that a lot to hit No.11 to begin with. I do Sneak eye 5/5 winning streak 3/5 others are 1/5 only.

[Greatguardian]

This is only true if only you either
1) Get lucky and get a 2nd XI on your 2nd or 3rd roll
2) Are happy to do nothing but roll constantly for the duration of the current XI roll in order to achieve the XI chain.

I mean sure, if you don't give a shit about the DD side of the job and you care nothing less than trying to keep up an 11 constantly then feel free to do nothing but roll to only get an 11. That's cool. No one will hold you against it after rolling an 11 on Chaos/Rogue's/Fighter's and then spending 4 minutes trying to get an 11 on Tactitians, even though you would have had a higher regain effect on the party over time from sticking with that 5/9/10 first or 2nd roll than you would have from busting 5 times in order to get an 11.

11 is a bonus. Ifyou got a zerg coming up then yeah, get an 11 up then bust through till you got a perfect 11 pair. For normal situations, this is a bad tactic. 11 is a bonus, if you get it then maybe you can afford to take a gambe on the next 1 or 2 rolls. However, after those first few rolls, the downtime without any buff at all that you caused by trying to get another 11 starts to outweigh the benefit you could have gotten from sticking to that lucky or high (but not 11) number.

I'm really not sure I'm following you, or that you're following me.

Once you have an XI, you don't have to roll again immediately to keep that XI bonus. You have that XI up for 5 minutes 40 seconds without merits (AF3+2 hands). I often find it best, if I'm only rolling Tact+Wizard's, to just wait a couple minutes between rolling again anyways. Once an XI is up, it's incredibly easy to spam up another XI, and you can still QD/WF while rolling whenever the timers/TP allow (especially important since overflow TP on WF is useless).

Maintaining an XI chain does not require nearly as much time or effort as you seem to think it does. And, as I said earlier, if it's actually important that I give legit and specialized buffs to the whole party (4-6+ rolls), where I may actually be rolling almost fulltime, then shooting steels/oberon's would just be a waste of time and gil anyways. Nothing about rolling prevents you from shooting QDs and Wildfires every time the timer is up though, no matter how intense it is.