The Pirates' Lair: A Guide To Corsair

RNG used to be a SJ to boost COR ranged accuracy for shooting, but nowadays sub DNC dual 2 racc weapons has higher racc than sub rng unless sharpshot is up, and sharpshot has pretty short duration.

IMO you can probably skip it.

Jaochim has na spells (poisona) and can do ballads. This is important because sometimes Ultima does marches and you need a good amount of Refresh (moogle + Koru) or you'll end up dieing to poison.

I'm aware of what Joachim does, but the situations where Ulmia will do Marches and where people will need MP are mostly mutually exclusive. There's really no reason why Apururu should be running out of MP.


Also, while completely afking certainly has its merits (and is what I did for Archery), I would actually suggest only semi-afking on COR and taking advantage of Triple Shot, Hunter's Roll, and Courser's Roll if the goal is just trying to get it done fast.

They aren't mutually exclusive. If you're skilling up anything other than archery/marksmanship, you want both for faster skill ups. Even if that wasn't the case, you don't get control over what they do. Ulmia can do marches when you might want ballads. They just do whatever they feel like doing. Apururu can also get locked up if everybody is poisoned/low HP and she runs out of MP. She'll try and run/poisona before using Nott and you end up dead. I used this method overnight with just about every combat skill WAR and NIN have (doing a different combat skill each night.) If I didn't have that set up, I would wake up in Adoulin because I died to poison. This is the most reliable trust set up I found.

Also you want to use those abilities while, you can write a windower script to use them. I had one that used skill up food/defender/hasso/etc. to optimize skill ups, but I was afk for all of it.

When you are skilling up on the Uragnites you want very few Trusts with you that can take damage. Ulmia will Pianissimo Prelude to any Ranged class (COR/RNG).

Ulmia is also a lot more reliable with songs. Most likely she will end up using ballad and prelude to keep everyones mana up and to allow you to more accurately shoot.

This argument in general is very stupid btw.

If you're only skilling marksmanship, lair reive nests are your best bet. They have no evasion so you can full time skill up gear and skill up trust.

Cool thanks...I'll take all those into consideration :D

A few other questions:

1.) What cards should I use for QD while leveling up? Does it really matter? I was thinking Dark Cards to dispel stuff if needed. Does the damage differ between the different elements?

2.) Based on what I understand, you need to stand a certain distance from enemies to maximize ranged acc/attk and its ~6.5 yalms for gun. Soooo should I not be meleeing while leveling up? It seems like standing in melee distance gives a pretty nasty penalty for gun accuracy and damage.

3.) For rolls while exping I am pretty much going Corsair's/Hunter's. Yay or nay?

1) Trump cards work for all elements. Dark Shot doesn't do any damage, so you'll want to use a good element for whatever you're fighting and use light (sleep) and dark (dispel) as needed.

2) Just melee. Don't worry about shooting.

3) Do COR/SAM and only fight DC-T's, you shouldn't have accuracy issues really.

1) Use Trump cards (work for every Shot (Fire, Ice, Dark, Light etc)) The type of shot depends on what it does the Fire, Ice, Wind, Stone, Thunder are all damage shots. Dark is Dispel and Light is Sleep.


2) Magic WS aren't effected by this range as far as I know so meleeing is still best and shooting for high damage WS works best as Wildfire and Leaden are Magic Damage and two of the best WS's CORs have.

3) If exp/cp Corsairs 100% of time and the other roll depends on what you need. You or trusts not hitting well Hunters, you or trusts hitting alot Chaos works, in Apex you could use STP for more WS/MBs or Wizards for Higher Magic Damage work these out based on your parties needs at the time.

How does Armageddon stack up nowadays? Worth building and bringing all the way or would I be better served investing time/money elsewhere?

People will all have differing opinions on a question like that. My take is that it's a great all around gun for both RNG and COR. Good white damage, and every WS mod for every WS in marksmanship other than Coronach (which is RNG only and relic only) is AGI based so it also boosts every WS significantly. You miss the 30% boost to trueflight or leaden, as well as the job based boosts on the mythic weapons, but otherwise it's pretty much all positives and in terms of accuracy, is probably COR's best option. It has lower base damage than Fomalhaut, but then again, high base damage is Aeonics thing.

Basically this.

Armageddon is probably the 2nd best gun for both LS (arguable Fomalhaut vs Arma for Leaden usage I'd guess) but leads in Wildfire and max ranged accuracy for COR. I absolutely abhor the mythic grind so I got an Arma to hold me over until I could be assed to get a DP. Fomalhaut will probably be my 3rd aeonic but that won't come anytime soon anyway.

Basically if you have dreams of shooting t4's Arma is where you'll be able to do that.

If you plan to bring it to its completed "121" form, then it's arguably the best gun available.
Or at the very least tied with DP.

The 30% damage boost to LS is nice and all, but why Armageddon can even remotely compare is that +50 AGI.
While the ignorant might say "well that only affects the mods", the Truth is is that it's an insane boost to your best WS: Leaden Salute.
This is because magical ranged WSs don't work like normal magical WSs. Normally magical WSs use ΔINT in place of the ƒSTR term. But both ranged magical WSs use a function of AGIvINT.
Meaning that +AGI on LS and WF is the same as +STR on WSs like Resolution: double the bonus.

This massive AGI will put the "121" Armageddon on par (possibly exceeding, but would seriously need to test that) with Death Penalty. (Same Mdmg, +30%LSdmg v +50AGI and almost 1.5x the base damage.)

Bullets though, DP's are BiS. But then that was never really a question...


Mind you that if you have no intention to bring it to "121" and are just gonna 119 it... None of this is relevant and there are better options elsewhere and a 119 DP should be your best option.
The above only holds true in their 121 forms.

Actually, last time I checked, if you leaden at 1000 tp the leaden dmg hierarchy is skill 269 dp > Fomalhaut > skill 242 dp > skill 269 Armageddon, not factoring bullets. Result may vary depending on gears and buffs.

Ya I'd expect DP to always be best leaden gun.

I think talking mixing bullets for a second, AM 1 DP with Arma's bullets should have the best accuracy for COR.

As for the 1k thing, Afania how does it work out when factoring in tp overage? Say, 1250 TP with 250 tp from moonshade. It's pretty doable to hit over 400 tp per shot on a gun so it wouldn't be out of the question (and if tp bonus pushing is really something you want could go war sub, 200 from fencer, get a warrior buddy to warcry you with savagery for 700 more, and a smn friend to crystal blessing for 250 more would leave you 2650 effective tp, I realize warcry lasts 1 min with 5 min recast, but then again, with revits and COR, you could extend that up to warcry 1 min -> war revit warcry 1 min -> RD warcry 1 min -> revit RD warcry 1 min -> WC warcry 1 min -> RD warcry 1 min, if two COR can extend that even longer ofc). I guess that's why ***is situational always applies, but interested in your thoughts as a prominent COR. To be honest I wanted to try a tp bonus based strat a while now but hard to find ppl etc etc.

Hmm.....that makes it a little harder to choose xD


If I am understanding that right, even if you don't take a death penalty all the way to the end it still beats a fully finished Arma.

Here is, IMHO, pros and cons of all 3 COR skill 269 legendary:

Death Penalty: Best weapon for leaden salute, best dmg for QD. This weapon generally has better synergy in mage setup in content ilv 145+ than other legendary, because all COR do in mage setup is close leaden darkness for mages to mb death, and use qd to boost nuke dmg.

Accuracy and white dmg is irrelevant in mage setup, because without acc buffs you probably aren't going to hit Ilv 150 NM regardless which gun you use. When you only rely on regain roll, qd and wings to get tp, white dmg matters a lot less.

If all 3 legendary weapon has equal difficulty when it comes to obtaining them, I would recommend this weapon the most, just because of blm setup meta.


Armageddon: Has the highest ranged accuracy, white dmg from AM 3 is insanely high, produces highest wildfire dmg, after glow effects are useful on paper(although I've yet to find a situation that it's worth taking advantage of it). This gun is great for ilv 135-140 content when accuracy actually matters, allows you to hit things more easily or drop all acc buffs and still hit.

Or if your ls do ranger setup for reisenjima T3 the accuracy could help. The thing is that ranger setup is currently dead in this game, only very few ls use rng setup that you can take advantage of white dmg or racc from Arma. Although you can probably use it for things like ruann T3 wildfire burn, that's only a few NM.

That being said, it's cheaper and faster to obtain than DP and doesn't need an endgame ls to get. If you only want 1 legendary weapon for this job it's still a solid choice that allows you to handle majority of situations.

Fomalhaut: Great when you need physical ws dmg on targets that takes good sc dmg. Fun to play with on things you can multi step SC on, although it's probably not zomg super practical on relevant content. If you do things with blu setup this weapon has good synergy with CDC because you can DPS without breaking light sc and lower pt output. I'm not sure how it stack up against arma in ranger setup when last stand is the main WS though, would need someone else to answer that question.


Overall Id still say whether arma is good or not depends on which content you do the most.

I own all 3 legendary weapon and only ever use them on situations that they perform best(you'll never see me use DP for last stand spam), personally I don't use Armageddon as much as DP because of reasons above: RNG setup is rare and people don't really use this setup, thus there only a few NM that I can use Arma on.

If you don't take dp all the way to the end, it's kinda not worth it. Skill 242 dp leaden dmg is incredibly close to skill 269 arma, but arma has better racc AND macc, can be used for other ws and such. May as well spend money on Arma if you don't have plans to 269 DP.

players can get like 350+ AGI nowadays, so 50 AGI would be like a 14.2% boost to AGI, DP is a 30% boost that is a separate term so is a multiplier with all other multipliers so it's very easy to see why a 30% boost is superior to 50 AGI. AGI does factor into the equation twice, but I'd still expect DP to always be best leaden gun it's designed for leaden salute if that's what you care most about get a DP.

If you want an all around gun for white damage, accuracy, and all WS, arma is a great choice. DP can compete there too though, AM3 is great white damage, and AM1 is great accuracy. DP also gets 35 mab bullets. Again, DP is designed to be the best Leaden gun, and you get quickdraw bonuses, aftermaths etc. Empy gun is designed to be the best empy ws gun, and it does do a lot for wildfire, and because AGI is used for every WS, it also does a lot for every other marksmanship WS COR can use. Arma is sort of the jack of all trades gun, DP specializes in leaden but comes with other features too namely quickdraw boosts and aftermaths. It doesn't take much further than looking at the era the weapons came from, and what they were designed to do, to see this. Empy was designed for empy ws, mythics were designed for mythic ws, aeonics are designed for merit ws etc. For a lot of jobs you do end up using the empy ws more than the mythic, but RNG and COR aren't one, though at one time that was reversed, since the wildfire AGI mod stayed at 60% and Trueflight / Leaden became 100% from 30% though, along with the fact TF and Leaden scale damage with TP while WF does not, mythic WS becomes the best raw damage choice.

On a side note: Armageddon is more expensive to make than DP. I'm not sure if Afania meant to say that or not.

1500 HMPs @120k a pop (100k during campaign) = 180m
60 Riftdross @1m a pop (700k during campaign) = 60m
10000 riftborn@ 10k a pop = 100m

Total cost = 340m

DP

30000 Alex @ 6000 a pop = 180m
10000 Beitetsu @10k a pop = 100m
3 Scoria @ 10m a pop = 30m
Total Cost = 310m

It will also take a huge amount of time to make just like the DP. Even given best results with 100% proc rate you are looking at 10-15 hours per step when you get to the Abyssea portion. This isn't mentioning how painful the voidwatch NM section can be.

DP is definitely a bigger and more annoying time sink though.

Tbh in FFXI 2016 there are no by all end all best weapon ever on the planet. Half of "which weapon is best" question completely depending on setup and how you want to kill things. A lot of NM can be killed multiple ways. Do you want to kill NM with physical dmg or magical? Ranged setup or melee or mage? How are you setting up SCs? Depending on how pt approach the content one weapon may be better than another.

What makes DP really shine isn't because it's mathematically better than other options in every situations, but because 90% of LS death mb things. If your ls isn't like that then DP may not be as useful.

That being said, the real answer is to get all 3 legendary. :)

Well, I paid 160m on 10k beit, only 45m for 10k Boulder and 400k for each dross, so my DP was a hell lot more expensive than my arma and it always has this "DP was so expensive" stigma curved in my brain.

Admittedly didn't check current going rate for those items XD.

Well I didn't include the Scoria to the price so they are about 30m apart.


But yea, your arma must of been really cheap.

Mine cost 250m I think, which is a bit lower than your current going rate, if you buy Boulder during campaign I believe it may drop below 10k.

It's just that my DP cost 600m total since alex was 15k each back in 2012, so by comparison 250m seems really cheap and I always got this "mythic so *** expensive" stigma even nowadays :x

The other factor is time = money. Not only in business but in ffxi too. I hate when ppl say stuff is "Free" when their "Free" thing costs 3x as much than if they had efficiently farmed gil and bought the alternative. If you factor in questing time, Mythics are still the most expensive. The only really cheap ultimate weapons are relics you don't have to afterglow (Hello Ghorn) and not all jobs have access to those, even for AG relics though, relics are a much cheaper tier.

Mythics converted cost is much higher:
* Aht Urgan Done, but you should have done that so not counting, also not counting the kill 3 generals quest though I probably should.
* Captain Rank (Do all 50 Assaults once) 12-20 hours, if you win first try every time, if you're not good at it expect to double that. Also cutscenes etc but won't count those.
* Redo all assaults with books (50 assaults again) 12-20 hours
* Einherjar 53 runs (1920, this is wing 3 method which most use), with hour lockout, 5 min clear, 5 min prep time = 9 hours
* Tokens, optimal case with 3 people and a mule at the lamp and you know how to nail lamp orders and already have someone with floor 100. Non optimal case you solo and fail a lot and lamp order is a new word to you. 14 - 30 hours
* All three ZNM items, optimal you know where to go etc, otherwise you will have a flood of info to digest and have to get your zeni too so it is very time consuming, 6 - 18 hours.
* Final quest but won't count that
* Trials omg the trials. I had arrapago salvage for mine so 3 real day lockout on that even tho it took 25 mins to clear each time, and WS trials I spent 3 mind numbing nights spamming WS, and also more ZNM yay. another 6 - 12 hours for ZNM, WS trials another 12 - 16 hours and salvage 1.5 hours.
* Going to say you bought your scoria for 15m because that's what I did.

Grand total best case assuming you did it all optimally: 72.5 hours and another 15m.

Now if I farm gil badly, I can make 1.2 mil an hour, if I farm it well with other people and not counting campaigns I can make 5 mil an hour. So I'm just gonna call it 2.2 mil for the sake of making my point. So there's another 159 mil converted cost you can add to mythics. Empyrean, at least as far as I'm told, their quest time best case is around 25 hours, so 55 mil converted cost. This makes mythic still the most expensive by a lot, using eliroo's numbers though and modifying for what I see boulder stacks go for (800k) and beit stacks go for (1.5m) would make it 504m for mythic and 315m for Empy, funnily enough the Aeonic merc price is around 400m. Converted cost doesn't apply if you don't value your time however, in which case, can I hire you? I have some data entry I need done and $0 an hour sounds like a great deal. The one nice thing about the mythic quests though at least imo and only having done it two times, you do it with others and it's fun and it's varied. Each assault is different and fun with others, token farming is fun with others, and ZNM is a nice change of pace. Screw Einherjar tho if I never make another mythic that place will be why if it didn't have the hour lockout it would be MUCH better. WS trials are also antifun, but you're at least using your new toy :)

We would have to consider how much time it takes to get the Empyrean to make a better comparison then.

Most NMs are lottery pops so the time can vary on how long you are there (Obviously won't be there an hour waiting for its window to pop up) Assuming you spend 10-15 minutes for each NM kill you are looking at: 21 Kills @ 15 Minutes = 5.25 Hours

Next up is Colorful Abyssite VwNMs

I can't find direct numbers but the rate is apparently pretty low. Assuming you get 100% conversion and you need to kill 40 NMs. assuming it takes 10 minutes to find and kill each one you are looking at least another 6 hours assuming 100% conversion. Which from my experience the conversion rate sucks. = 6 hours

Next is Carabosse - 50 Gems. At most she can drop 2 so you are looking at a minimum of 25 kills, a max of 50 kills.
You need two NMs, assuming you can red proc 100% of the time. About 10 minutes to pop each NM and get the KI. so 20 minutes per Carabosse at the very minimum. = 8 - 16 hours assuming 100% proc rate.

Next up is Cirein-coin lanterns. 10 minutes for one NM and 15 minutes for the other = 25 minutes a pop. 25-50 kills to get to 50. = 10 - 20 hrs

Lastly Isbegind - 15 minutes to pop 38-75 kills to get all the items : 9.5 - 18.75 hrs

So given you can convert 100% and you are playing WAR/NIN procing 100% reds you are looking at around 38 - 65 hours of time committed to getting your empyrean weapon.

Looking at it written out, I would say the time committed is pretty equal considering you won't get 2 drops every run, the conversion of colorfuls is moderately low and unless you are WAR/NIN w/ event weapons and several torques you will not proc 100% of the time. Also NMs like Bugbear and La Vuele can take several hours just to see one pop.

Ah ok I was told 25 hours, 40 - 65 hours sounds more right though thanks :D

If both cost roughly same amount of time and gil, personally** I would recommend DP if your goal is to do endgame or contribute a lot in endgame ls on cor. By endgame I mean things like kirin, woc, T4.

If you are more of a casual player who lowman stuff here and there with friends such as ambu, T1 to T3, then Arma isn't a bad choice. This weapon is more versatile to handle majority of situations. Don't have vex attunement? Ranged all the way! Don't have enough acc buffs? High AGI and bullets can solve all the issues.

At least that's how I use these weapons, personally. It all depends on what you do, and your ls friends tbh.

Super helpful. I didn't intend for it to become a very detailed conversation but all that insight is great!