Bullets, and overall cost of the job

[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.