Frugal Pirate

A Guide By Azryel ^^

Corsair (COR) owns: It's fun, it's in demand, you get a cool hat; it's basically like playing Bard (BRD) that doesn't make you want to kill yourself. I have personally attempted to level Bard on several occasions solely to be a merit job, but it just sucks so bad, and is so boring, that I have officially quit again at level 53.

Then I leveled COR...

Corsair is such a wonderful job, and being as such you can expect to be invited to parties very quickly compared to most other jobs: I 75'd COR in a couple of months, and now it's my main merit job.

A lot of players are initially put off by Corsair because of the vastly popular rumor that it's such an expensive job; that's all I've ever heard about COR even from the days of my "noobness" in the Dunes... This is NOT true! Granted, Corsair CAN be a very expensive job, but if you play smart, and use your head instead of your Gil pouch, you can 75 this job on the cheap.

Rule 1: NO SHOOTING WHATSOEVER unless you are fishing mobs, skilling up, or using Weapon Skills... And all of which, save the Weapon Skills, should be done with level 1 Bronze Bullets- which are inexpensive, and run about 3-4k a bag on my server: Caitsith. If your skill is capped, you should be storing TP using melee.

By using this strategy I managed to 75 COR for around 220-250k in total ammunition: that’s starting from 0 Marskmanship skill with my first gun (Musketoon) at level 6, all the way to capped Marksmanship skill at 250, as well as unlocking Detonator… NOT BAD! So essentially one Royale Ramble run can completely fund your ammunition ~75 and then some! Yeah, baby!

The nice thing about Ranged Attack Weapon Skills is that changing Ammunition has no affect whatsoever on your TP, giving you the option to use cheap Ammo for pulling, skilling up, etc., while allowing you to macro in decent/good Ammo for when you Weapon Skill.

Example Macro:

/equip Ammo “Bullet”

/wait 2

/ws “Slug Shot” 

/wait 2

/equip Ammo “Bronze Bullet”

I’ve never had a party complain about my performance on Corsair doing this. As long as you’re attentive with the rolls, no one is going to care- they’ll just be happy that they have a COR and are getting buffs.

Rule 2: After level 40 don’t waste Gil on guns. You’re not going to do anything even resembling decent damage until level 56 when you get Slug Shot, so don’t even bother keeping up with guns until you hit level 40 and can get your AF gun (Trump Gun), which is a nice piece of equipment, and best of all free… Personally, I used my AF gun from 40-72, then I switched to Coffinmaker, which yes, is also free!

Don’t worry about being underpowered using your AF gun and low-level bullets: using the above mentioned Ammo-change macro I was doing 500-700 (depending on luck of roll) damage Slug Shots on Lesser Colibris in Wajaom Woodlands’ parties, which is impressive damage using level 22 Bullets.

Rule 3: Dice are expensive, so just buy the ones you need. You can basically 75 Corsair using 3 rolls if you really wanted to: Hunter’s Roll, Chaos Roll, and Evoker’s roll, but I won’t be so extreme as to completely dismiss all the others of course. There are instances where Fighter’s Roll, and Samurai Roll, etc., will be a better fit depending on your party’s setup.

Use your own discretion here on what rolls you’ll actually “need,” and make your purchases accordingly… That being said, I can pretty much all but assure you you’ll never be in an EXP party where people are going to complain that they’re not getting Choral Roll, Monk’s Roll, Puppet Roll, etc. Some of these Rolls are just a waste, like Gallant’s Roll for example at 90,750 Gil which I would categorize as situational at best.

Rule 4: Fight the urge to spam Quick Draw. I have only ever purchased Cards to use for Light Shot (sleep), and Dark Shot (dispel), and have done just fine in any given situation. The other cards just seem to be a superfluous expenditure, but being that a stack of cards is fairly inexpensive from NPCs, you can feel free to experiment if you wish without doing too much harm to your wallet.

If you follow these suggestions you can 75 Corsair very inexpensively!

Support Jobs:

You can experiment with any number of Support Jobs, but due to laziness on my part, and just overall practicality, I'll only discuss the main choices:

/RNG: Most CORs feel /RNG is the best choice of support jobs for a number of reasons: increased ranged accuracy, Sharpshot (which is nice), and Barrage, just to name a few. I only used this sub when I was skilling up mainly for the innate increase of ranged accuracy as well as the addition of the Sharpshot Job Ability. This sub definitely has its advantages, but it’s a risky choice due to a complete lack of defense- if you go all-out DD with this support job you’re just going to get yourself killed unless you’re an expert manager of hate control, which I clearly am not!

/NIN: The best choice of sub in my personal opinion is /NIN. You get the survivability of Utsusemi (VERY helpful when you start spamming Slug Shot), and the Job Trait of Dual Wield to help you build TP faster. Granted, /RNG is better for ranged accuracy and overall damage output, but if you utilize Dual Wield you can help even the gap on ranged accuracy by equipping a pair of Archer’s Knives, or Trailer’s Kukris at later levels. I used a pair of Archer’s Knives from 28-70, then I swapped out an Archer’s Knife for a Joyeuse to build TP faster.

/WHM: A /WHM is really only useful if your roll in the party is that of pure support. Backup heals, Silena for Imp camps, etc. The only reasons you’d want to /WHM is if your party doesn’t have a real healer, like using a SMN/WHM as a main heal, or to provide some emergency healing in a DRG Healing Breath merit party, or if you’re the buffs for a BLM party in an Alliance, etc... Helpful, but usually not the best choice.