Luck Of The Draw: A Corsair's Guide *NEW*

Depends on what you're using QD for. It's not worth using in your potency or MAcc sets but it is worth using if you use QD for enhancing(Empy feet), STP or Treasure Hunter sets.

I personally only use Mirke when applying Empy bonus or in STP builds. You’d probably get more mileage using ilvl gear for damage and magic accuracy.

opinions on Arma?

I don't have the aeonic gun, have the beads though, would you make arma if Cor was your third most played job? (rema brd and drg #1 and #2) ? My wife has Forma and it hits pretty hard but Arma cor is pretty unique and the dmg output is definitely higher. Curious what owners of it say.

Yes

Best weapon to use for Wildfire in Segments.
My go to for physical ranged stuff as well, but all that really is these days is Arebati.

Armageddon is a beast when you can maintain AM3 for shooting. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of mine.

Arma was my first COR REMA. I think it is definitely niche but it holds it own for sure. If you need magic damage and leaden isn't useful it's 1000x better than foma, and playing with AM3 triple shot is it's own special kind of fun. If it were my 3rd job idk if I would have made it but even after getting DP/Foma I'm glad that I have it. Seen most use during w3 dyna, Arebati, and segments when I was cor for it. YMMV.

It's useful on skeleton in segment farm(wildfire), ambu qutrubs (AM3 white dmg), dyna w3(wildfire on volte), Arebati(crit build proc). So I use it from time to time.

I also think it performs better than fomal if enmity is an issue, since Armageddon splits dmg more evenly between WS/TP dmg and our best TP set ikenga has way more enmity- than WS set.

But I wouldn't get it if cor is my 3rd job, personally. I'd get another more game changing REMA like a yagrush or something. Unless you are struggling to clear Arebati v20 it's probably not a "need", just nice to have.

Funny you guys talking about this.

I just finished Armageddon through Abyssea and bought all the heavy metal, riftdross and, riftborn. And after some soul searching, selling it all back lol.

Sure its good, and I always wanted Armageddon cause so cool, but its main Cor territory since it doesn't completely outclass other options. When I have some ridiculous amount of gil I'll finish it.

Rostram > Armageddon? Probably.

If you don't have a roll rostam, yes I would agree with Rostam > Arma. Idk if I'd go as far to say A and B rostam is worth more than Arma, when you could get a lanun knife for a fraction of the cost and have most of the benefit of the daggers with Arma.

What ambuscade cape should I prioritize first?

WS cape usually the go-to, whether its a ranged or melee WS cape will depend on what cor is being used for, would assume melee + savage blade

Since I'm sick of dying in crawler's nest pt with tanks that can't hold hate, decided make myself a tank with emergency evasion DT- set since somebody told me THF can cap evasion there.

ItemSet 385509

AGI+20, evasion +45 on back. R15 neck. 51 PDT- with 2 rolls. 1260 evasion with /DNC without any food nor buffs as ML36 COR.

Did a quick test in CN_S and crawlers has 20%-21% hit rate after 68 swings.

Ho ho ho, who would thought, a D rank evasion job can pretend to be a THF in 2022 FFXI yo! :D

Decided to work on this a bit more this weekend, here is what I have so far. Is this correct based on everyone's experience?



I'm still missing hot shot data on colibri which is on Asalith's list. Not sure what else I'm missing.

Because the result of each WS may change depending on your buffs and gears, I tried to separate the results into 3 categories. Very good > Yes > ok.

For "very good" mobs, your leaden/hot shot are very likely to beat SB because the mob either has slashing resistance (crab/pugil/undeads) or mob takes very high darkness dmg(rabbit) or has high defense (marid).

For "yes" mobs you probably need to have very strong leaden builds to see better results than super buffed naeg SB dmg. If you don't have DP and pt SV at start, your SB may beat leaden on F1 on these mobs with a perfect SB set.

For "ok" mobs like penguin or colibri, leaden works but it isn't that good even with R15 DP, and on F1 SB may be equal or better depending on your pdif. To the point that losing TP to swap weapon may not be worth it if your pt kills fast.

On the other hand, if you lose attack buffs on F4 or soloing, leaden may still work better than SB on these mobs.

So whether you should be using leaden/hot shot build for each group or not really depends on your buffs, gears and pt kill speed.

On puks both hot shot and leaden seems to works well. But each WS has it's pros and cons. Hot shot build TP faster with STP from fomalhaut, but there are less hot shot groups than leaden groups. If my last group is leaden groups and my pt kill fast, it may not be worth it to swap weapon and lose TP only to land a few more WS.

Hot shot also needs acc/attack buffs on higher floor, if you are soloing or lose buff because reasons it will have worse performance than leaden too.

In other words, I'm more likely to pick hot shot for puks if my last group is also hot shot group and I'm on F1 and vice versa. It realllly depends.

Also I've been calculating ideal hot shot TP threshold and from what I've seen on the spreadsheet, even if I WS at 2250 TP(3000 effective TP with fomalhaut and moonshade), it's still dps increase over WS at 1000 or 1250. This WS's TP scaling is insane.

That being said, WS at 1250 can one shot most bats in C with Nyame r20 x3, and hot shot dmg is always capped on qutrubs, so it's still better to WS at 1000 on qutrubs and 1250 on bats. Unless your hot shot set is way behind, in that case you may want to ws at higher TP.

One last thing, I've been yelling at whm or sch for storms in C runs recently (sorry mages <3), which also helps DPS. Yes to 80k+ hot shot on bats weeeeeeee.

Ever since I made the leaden/hot shot mob list, yell for storms and created separated DT- set for Rostam builds my dps on parse doubled v.s the same me 3 months ago when I just returned to game and spammed SB on every mob like an idiot. Even though the only gear change was 1 more wsd and 150ish attack from Nyame, my actual DPS increased way more than what a few wsd/attack can offer simply by optimizing.

I'd say cor is a job that has huge performance difference in C depending on how you play it. A cor that full time malig 5/5 on everything and spam SB on all mobs is only going to be slightly ahead of BRD. If you yell for storms, and abuse Rostam DT- and leaden/hot shot mobs then your dmg will be way higher than a BRD.

I have a pair of Schutzen Mittens from forever ago. Are they worth ever using for their Quick Draw TP Bonus, or should I be throwing these out?

I still use them in my QD Store TP set to generate TP. It would take 15 Store TP to beat it for most guns. Similar to the Mirke question earlier. If you're looking for damage or m.acc then swap in an ilvl piece.

Question about merit allocation during seg farming

Right now I am
Group 1
- Phantom Roll Recast 5
- Quick Draw Recast 5
Goup 2
- Snake Eye 1
- Fold 1
- Winning Streak 3
- Loaded Deck 5

With that, rolls last 9 minutes. However, I notice shout for segs request a 7/8 for COR

So is there an accepted meta for merits for Corsair in seg runs?

Thank you

The 7/8 is phantom roll+.

Asking for a regal necklace (+7) is not too bad since you can just tag along with omen boss shouts for a bit to get the OU pops or join an OU run, expecting a +8 roll rostam when it's not even the first Rostam a cor would/should prioritize for their gearsets on the other hand would have been them being out of their minds if they aren't ok with a +7.

The 7/8 is referring to potency from Regal Necklace / Rostam C, not duration.
For merits G1 looks good I'd never change that. G2 is semi-preferential, I'd rather have 5/5 Snake Eye for a much higher chance at 11s. 1 fold, 2 streak, 2 deck.

Which group 2 merits you need changes depending on the event since random deal resets are vital to some gaol NM fights. Rather than deal with constantly changing merits, I personally just leave them random deal focused so that I don't have to zone a bunch when a pickup doesn't tell me im going cor until i'm in rabao or my lamates do seg runs right before NMs.

I also don't bother having my duration be higher than the recast for crooked roll since if i'm maintaining a crooked roll 1, then it makes no difference to the party what my duration is unless my role was to roll and drop party.

I don’t really understand this focus on loaded deck lately. You’re not the first cor I’ve seen recommending 5/5 loaded deck. Is there some undocumented effect of multiple merits in loaded deck? AFAIK loaded deck merits just reduce the chance of not resetting anything if you’ve only got 1 ability on recast.

Edit: I guess 5/5 loaded deck with relic body is 100% even if only 1 ja is on recast

Man, I was so getting the wrong end of the stick with the yell - doh!

I do have the Regal Necklace and I also have Rostam C
So 7/8 is fine

Decided to max Winning Streak so Rolls are a nice even 10 min duration. Loaded at 5/5 for me isn't needed atm.

Can obviously switch if needed.

Thank you for your imput folks.

I personally go with:
5/5 Snake
1/5 Fold
3/5 Winning
1/5 Loaded
(3/5 Snake / 5/5 Winning if you don't have path C Rostam)

It'll give 10min rolls which syncs up with crooked and it maximises roll numbers as you'll have higher chance to get 11s from snake and snake eye resets with JSE.

It's not worth putting too many points into loaded as the only JA that I really try to reset is warcry and sometimes snake eye if I have bad luck on rolls.

Merits do change on certain bosses, I take 1 out of Snake, 3 out of Winning and dump them into Loaded to ensure Warcry/Rayke resets.

Random deal merits are for specific fights like Ongo or bumba where the strat is based on resetting a specific JA.
For ongo it's all about resetting Gambit/rayke on Run, while Bumba is a more generic zerg strat of reset warcry so that it's constantly active. Since it's more generic, the chances are that any new difficult content where you melee zerg with a war in the party is going to want those resets as well.

These days, with recapping merits taking about 15 minutes, swapping merits to match the content you're focusing on isn't that uncommong for many jobs, Corsair included.

I will typically want Snake Eye and Winning Streak as high as possible, but for Odyssey work I'm quite ok with shorter duration rolls to cap Loaded Deck and will alter as needed. I mean, let's be honest- you could alter your merits prior to an Odyssey night, be completely re-capped on 75 merits after not even a full segment run, do your NMs, and swap back after without any extra work.

I did 5/5 winning streak before Rostam C existed, since Rostam C release I switched to Snake eye 5/5.

I also burn snake eye on the more important roll aka chaos whenever I can to increase attack potency.

I don't understand why people specifically shout for +8 roll as if that means anything, lol. If somebody wants to be a real elitist, at least shout for a cor that parses 25%-30%+ or something. That would have bring more seg gain than simply having +8 roll.

I thought 5/5 Snake Eye was gonna be the ***and dramatically make me a badass Cor.

After about a year of it, it almost never fired (anecdotally but I wasn't feeling like superCor for sure).

So for a long time now I've been:

Snake Eye 3
Fold 1
Winning Streak 5
Loaded Deck 1

This has let me never need to buy a Rostam.

Fold at 1 everyone agrees with, its just a nice thing and don't need more.

I think the real argument is assuming a Rostam and going 3/5 Winning Streak, 1 Fold, and fighting between Snake Eye and Loaded Deck. Also, its a micromanaging Corsair to minmax switching merits constantly so throw that out except amongst you guys.

So we ask, which is better?

Gonna drop this in here from BG WIki:
Duration and Recast
Phantom Roll duration can be increased from 00:05:00 to 00:06:40 in 20 second increments with five upgrades to the Corsair job-specific merit category Winning Streak.
Additionally +6 more seconds per merit to Winning Streak if Commodore Tricorne +2 or any of the reforged versions are worn, bringing the duration up to 00:07:10.
Phantom Roll duration can further be increased up to 40 seconds longer by spending Capacity Points in the Job Points Phantom Roll Duration category in +2 second increments.
Max Duration as of June 2nd, 2021 is 10 minutes and 50 seconds with all gear, augments, job points and merits.
Without Divergence Weapon it's 9 minutes and 50 seconds.
Phantom Roll recast can be lowered from 00:01:00 to 00:00:50 in 2 second increments with five upgrades to the Corsair job-specific merit category Phantom Roll Recast.

I just tested my Roll, and it is indeed at 9:50.

Best then (assuming Rostam):

1 Fold
3 Winning

What is is about Loaded more merits that is good? Someone above said can get 100% reset.

Here's from BG WIki:
Random Deal strongly favors the restoration of abilities that are grouped on shared timers within a hierarchy (such as Stratagems, Quick Draw, Phantom Roll, etc.), as each ability within the hierarchy is counted separately when an ability to restore is randomly chosen. This basically means that if you're using Random Deal to reset your own Snake Eye, Crooked Cards, or whatever, you have to wait for Phantom Roll and Quick Draw to fully recover.

This is saying, never use RD if Phantom Roll or Quick Draw are on timer correct.

Finally BG Wiki says this:
Loaded Deck guarantees that Random Deal targets an ability waiting on recast if the party member receiving the effect has more than one ability waiting on recast.
The failure rate of Random Deal with only one ability waiting on recast is reduced with further merits in Loaded Deck.

Making our decision that much harder because certainly everyone is gonna have more than one timer on cooldown yeah. What makes Loaded Deck 5/5 better than 1/5 if everyone has more than one ability on cooldown?

Edit: I'm going to venture a guess. The War abilities are also grouped on shared timers, so set up to fail. So need increased chance of reseting since even if aggressor warcry and beserk are on recast, just counts as one.

War has no abilities that share a timer man.

I've always done 4 snake eye and 4 winning streak just because it's the minimum to let people see they've got "10 minute rolls" for a little while after rolling rather than the buff icon dropping from 10 to 9 immediately upon rolling 10-minute-even rolls. It's occasionally been commented on in stuff like pickup Ambu runs. Maybe it's peoples' OCD, or the desire to align buffs exactly to the 5/10 minute mark. Also when I don't feel like using Compensator or losing TP it's exactly 10 minute rolls.

That and all the same indecisiveness on all of the above in this thread, and arriving that it doesn't really matter for gameplay purposes.