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

Wait what? This is dumb as *** and worse than asking for +8 roll lol. Ambu greatly favors other merit combo that isn't winning streak, because most VD ends in less than 10 min. So getting snake eye for higher average roll potency at start is way better.

On the other hand, even if you have all the roll duration gears, you aren't getting 10 min rolls with 3 WS merit or less.

This is another example of Asura PUG being dumb with silly requirements. People see BRD with 10 min songs = BRD with good gears so they assume it's the same for cor. But getting 10+ min roll needs to sacrifice average roll potency and it's totally useless for cor if CC can be reapplied before 10 min mark.

Edit: just noticed qd recast is in different categories, silly me. Still not sacrificing SE for 10 min rolls lol.

This Asura PUG roll duration requirement conversation reminded me a bumba drama posted on p97: somebody claimed they are kicked because the party assumed they roll in 0 potency with their 6 min rolls.

If you do snake eye 4/5 or 5/5, fold 1/5, loaded deck 4/5 or 5/5, winning streak 0/5, which IS the ideal merit combo for bumba.

and you have all the roll duration gears except Rostam, according to bg wiki list you get:

50 sec from gants +1
20 sec from compensator(which I wouldn't use without a Rostam)
30 sec from JSE back
20 sec from Ou neck

You get exactly 6.6 min rolls with +7 potency and not swapping out weapon for TP. Or 8 min with +8 and used compensator with Rostam, assuming you didn't swap out Camulus for gunslinger even though you could in this particular fight, and arguably should on 2nd non-CC roll to buy some time trying for double up if you rolled a 6.

But doing 6 min rolls will get you kicked on Asura so.... \ _ /

tl;Dr: spread the news. In short zergs if you see a +7 cor with 6 min rolls or +8 cor with 7.5 min - 8 min rolls, don't freak out. Their roll set or Lua is probably not broken, they may picked a better merit combo for zergs that's it.

I think the "requirements" on Asura is a bit over exaggerated (except on V20 bosses but that's expected), granted they ask for +7/+8 rolls but I think that's more in the hopes of a COR with +7/+8 is more likely to be a better player. The big problem on Asura is that a large amount of players have bought their accounts or equipment and don't know how to use it, so you need a way to try filter them out. We have the same thing with people asking for yWHM for fights that don't need Yag but in general a WHM with Yag probably knows more than one without.

I have been using 3 winning streak for years now and never had a comment, I don't think the 10min timer is a real requirement for anyone. To be honest, it makes me cringe a little when people have 10min+ timers (I wouldn't kick or comment but internal cringe).

About that guy on page 97, I have actually played with him before and it was quite clear he didn't know what he was doing, he was rolling without doubling up (even when landing on 6 SAM), was running off to roll sam/chaos on himself away from the pt (seemed intentional) and his rolls seemed to have no potency at all to us either. Unfortunately CORs like this come around more often than you'd hope on Asura, I actually remember one who rage quit in a seg farm because we asked him to roll SAM/Chaos instead of fighter/wizard.

Asura sounds like a terrible place

It might be but its only server that is still alive and kicking from what I heard, at least has a lot of ppl online still....

So just to clarify, you focus your merits on getting 10 minute rolls for content that doesn't last 10 minutes and won't require re-rolling, yet you are too concerned about losing TP during re-rolling that won't occur in your example so much you'll gimp your gearset?

I don't know about the person so I'm not going to comment on whether people should or should not play with them. I'm only commenting on specific requirement or expectation, which is roll duration has nothing to do with potency.

The only way to effectively filter out people in PUG is actually pt with them and parse(if they are DD) or observe their spell choice/priority/reaction speed if they are mage. Filter out people based on one criteria like "yagrush" "+8 rolls" "10 min rolls" is not gonna be accurate IMO. Or simply don't PUG then there is no risk.

It's also not easy to assume certain playstyle or player choice is the better one, because FFXI is complicated and everyone has different gameplay logic that is not always "meta". Not saying certain individual is playing correctly or not, but in general.

As far as not doubling up on 6 for Sam roll, I do that sometimes too. That's because I often burn SE on CC chaos which is the more important roll. Then there is a chance(27.74% exactly, since you get 16.66% to roll a 6 and 2.77% to roll 5,1/4,2/1,5/3,3 each) that my 2nd roll which is Sam roll landed on 6 without SE/RD/WC available, which may bust if I double up on that number.

On the other hand, in short fights when everything ends in 1 min or 2, having the entire pt wait 45 sec(aka more than 1/3 of fight time) to reroll if you bust seems like a waste of time. Since the worst +8 Sam roll number(no.6) is still 46 STP with job bonus but the best one is 82 STP which is only 36 STP better. Most of the time you aren't even getting 36 more STP from double up/rerolling, more like 12-20 or something. Or in the worst case, you land on 6 AGAIN after a bust and gain nothing.

I'm pretty sure having 36 more STP or less aren't going to save 45 sec fight time in 1-2 min fights. That's one scenerio that I feel double up on 6 isn't worth it, even for Sam roll. Unless I am in a situation that RD is available so I can reroll quickly after a bust, then I'm more willing to double up on 6 in that case.

If I'm in seg farm and don't have any JA available, I'm also not sure if it's worth it to wasting 1 sec engage time to double up with a 16.66% chance to bust, lose 1 sec and 200 TP AGAIN to to reroll which still has a good 27.74% chance to land a No.6 again. I'd rather wait until the group clear the current mob and moving again to fold and reroll, than double up mid fight and lose huge amount of TP/DPS for mostly small amount of STP gain.

If attack is not capped, It's generally better to use SE with CC chaos even if you didn't land on 3, 8 or 10. But that means the chance of getting a No.6 on Sam is quite high(27.74%) if you use SE early. Which doesn't matter nearly as much as you may think, due to majority of STP bonus came from roll potency gears and job bonus but not numbers.

See my roll distribution math below, it's long so I have to spoiler it.

Minor nitpick, but chance to bust from a 6 is going to be ~13.3%. Not 16.66%, due to the bust evasion jp category.

This snowballed into a pretty ridiculous conversation. I'm not on Asura, but I think the point of most shouts asking for a PR+7 or 8 COR are more intended to filter out people like the guy who made a mule/roll COR with a Barataria Ring and think that's good enough. Those CORs have a higher likelihood of being the same people who don't have great melee/ranged/WS sets, didn't make an ambu cape, whatever. It's shorthand by necessity, because people shouting in-game don't have 2 pages of forum discussion to analyze WHAT IT MEANS. You're all overthinking the hell out of this by going off onto tangents like nitty gritty discussions about optimizing merit choices.

1) Most likely, a COR in 2022 who cares about their job, maintains appropriate DD sets, and understands how to play in a group is going to have at least one of Regal Necklace or Rostam C (which is less common for the CORs who really don't know what they're doing). So, this really shouldn't impact good CORs.

2) If you really do have an understanding of the job, but for some reason you're still fishing for that Regal drop and haven't made a C Rostam... well, just tell the leader you know what you're doing and you do have appropriate gearsets, but you're just missing 2 tiers of Phantom Roll potency. Either they'll let you in because they understand some nuance, or they'll refuse to invite you (and good riddance, don't play with those people anyway). Best case scenario, maybe you make a new friend who invites you to an Ou run and gets you that necklace!

3) This doesn't account for all situations. Some players are going to have a COR mule with a Regal Necklace because all of the "real CORs" in their LS already had it and one dropped in Omen, but they still do not know what they're doing. Some party leaders are fools and don't understand anything but requiring max gear for every activity. But I think the far more likely scenario is that party leaders want to put some sort of reasonable filter to keep out the dregs of Asura, but they have to communicate that in a 2 line /shout. PR+7 or more isn't that unreasonable as a quick way to filter out some of the not-so-desirable CORs.

This hurts my soul. Sure Rostam for duration to match CC is nice, but also potency. So you're gimping your rolls and your merits because you can't be bothered to spend gil on your COR? I guess everyone has different levels of commitment to jobs, but saying you don't need a Rostam because you picked worse merits and you anecdotally don't see SE proc very often doesn't really seem like a good way to play the job. Maybe that's just me though.

Also as others have posted, in fights which are shorter than 10 minutes your merits are 100% terrible.

Like I said above though, if you don't feel very strongly about your COR and don't want to invest in making it the best you can, whatever, but acting like merits replace a Rostam is kind of missing the point, I think. If anything it makes the case for Rostam because not only do you get more potent rolls, but you also get better merits because you aren't locked into this trash.

Oh come on, you're being overly dramatic here.

The difference between 3/5 and 5/5 Snake Eye is 12% or 20% chance of Snake eye upgrading a 5-9 roll to 11. Which is something, but it's hardly OMG YOU'RE SO GIMP territory.

Loaded Deck might be a consideration in some fights, like a Gaol NM where it's important to reset a specific ability(e.g., Ongo). But it's not even that important for something like short Ambu fights - because how often does Ambu require you to reset an specific key JA mid-fight? (answer: not very often)

And let's not forget, longer rolls do matter a lot of the time. For events longer than 10 minutes, it's awfully nice to keep a Crooked lucky/XI roll up for as long as possible. Not only for the buff itself, but that's considerably less time the COR spends re-rolling that could be used for stuff like contributing damage (quite relevant in content like Segment farms, Dynamis, CP parties, etc). If you aren't frequently doing specific Gaol NMs with COR and needing the gimmick of RD to reset key JAs, it's not that unreasonable to just leave Winning Streak merits up for the many situations where they're useful, even if just to avoid forgetting to change them back.

Now, I'm 100% all in on Rostam C being worth it (I actually made my C before I made my A!). I want all the potency I can get, and longer rolls is great too. But this "GIMP!!!" BS because of those pretty reasonable merits is almost as obnoxious as the Asura idiots wanting YAGRUSH R15 WHM ONLY for mildly challenging content lol.

I typed up a response that was almost this 100% and then I deleted it. But I agree with capuchin 100%. Your choice of merits on cor are not going to make or break anything. Only optimize toward minor differences in outcome.

I’d like to add that I get a a lot of either Rostam or nothing vibes. Lanun path C gives 10+ minute rolls and for all intents and purposes is completely valid and is completely affordable for someone that can’t justify 60-80M for a rostam.

Didn't see this answered, maybe I'm being dumb:


Someone above said War doesn't share cooldowns so I guess I misread that part in the description of Loaded Deck so still questioning. I read it as if two abilities have the same timer cooldown, then it counts them as one.

A +1 was not enough to state how much i agree with this

But bust evasion doesn't reset Phantom roll recast no? At least bg wiki doesn't said so and I don't recall PR reset when it proc either. Isn't it the same as simply using fold which is still time/DPS loss?

No, it doesn't, but it's a 20% chance to re-roll if your double-up would have resulted in a bust.

Oh, nevermind, I'm conflating the bust evasion effect with the wildcard reroll effect. Nothing to see here, move along.

TLDR: You're right, bust evasion just is a 20% chance to avoid the Bust status effect.

"Share cooldowns" in this context is referring to abilities with charges like Quick Draw or Stratagems, not just abilities with the same cooldown value.


I didn't say ZOMFGBBQ you're the shittest COR in the game, I simply said you're gimping your rolls, which you are (by not having +8 PR) and you're gimping your merits (by not having snake eye). You're actively making your character worse, sure maybe it's not by a mile or anything, but it's still a decision to make your character objectively worse.

Now if you don't take the job seriously or don't want to invest, sure it's a fine backup plan and I think it's a great compromise for someone who wants to match CC with their roll duration. But I wanted to distinguish that it is not an adequate replacement for Rostam and is actually a compromise and not an equivalent. If you want to compromise your effectiveness on COR to save gil, sure go ahead, but don't pretend like it's the same thing because you can CC a roll regularly.

I was hoping someone could break down the difference between Rostam STP path and Lanun STP path.

I know STP kicks in at number needed to x-hit depending on weapon (tp phase + ws return).

How does that look for example DP, Fomalhaut, Armageddon between the two?

I assume it's possible that Rostam can allow a x-hit that Lanun cannot with just its 5 more stp, but I'd like to know if currently that's a thing or if that 5 stp currently doesn't matter.

I also know that, a secondary part of the choice is the straight up better damage/acc etc of the Rostam which might win out, but its not really what I'm asking unless you guys think it trumps all.

the difference is 5 store tp.

We don't really care about x-hit anymore. If you're meleeing/shooting with lunun/rostam it's because you're using ranged weaponskills and all (except Wildfire) like as much extra TP as you can get.

So, I'm extrapolating that the amount of stp doesn't substantially or exactly affect x-hit on guns.

you don't care about x-hit at all. Or at least you don't care about x-hit to 1000 tp at all.

Hi all, Just getting into endgame corsair here. I'm trying to decide what to spend my ambu points this month on. My question is: How much does magic damage increase Leaden Salute's damage?

I'm trying to figure out if it's worth getting kaja knife for that at this time. If that Mdmg adds a lot then I'll grab it, but if its mostly just MaB+13 then I think I'll wait until next month.

mdmg adds a dcent bit to magic WS' specially since weapon slots give a large amount vs armors usual 10~20. Should grab kaja anyway since thatll eventually be a tauret which currently is your standard best leaden weapon if you don't need the macc from rostam

This is not accurate actually, MDMG is probably the worst stat to focus on for magic weaponskills because MDMG is only affected by matk and is not part of the base damage calculation so is not affected by fTP

It is about the same value as the dStat for the weaponskill. Adding AGI for Leaden Salute is at minimum 5x more effective per point than +1 Magic Damage. That is why Malevolence Daggers (not on cor) are still better than daggers like Tauret for magic damage weaponskills. The extra 20 matk on that dagger is more potent than an extra 100 magic damage on Tauret

Actually mdmg on high fTP WSs doesn't do much. On Leaden it's like +1400 damage per 100 mdmg.

Points taken, still so far as i know it's your best leaden weapon since as stated, no malev to work with on cor, same applies for kaja afaik

That isn't wrong, there really isn't a better option for cor.

Edit: Unless you have Crepuscular Knife I guess, +15 AGI + 3% CHR mod might win. I'm not sure. There is 0 magic damage on that knife though, so not sure.

I would personally aim for Naegling before Tauret. the differences for Leaden are marginal, and Savage Blade has been a beating for quite some time now.

To be clear, are you saying if I use Kaja Knife (mdmg +217) in my offhand that is currently Demersal Degen then I could be adding as much as 3k+ damage to each of my Leaden Salutes?