Pirate Unlimited Corsair Works - A Comprehensive Corsair Guide

Forward From The Author

Spoiler

I am the bone of my gun
Battleship is my body, cannon is my blood
I have crafted over a thousand revolvers
Unknown to last,
Nor known to break
Have withstood pain to 30% many weapons,
Yet these hands will never hold a perfect one
So, as I play,
UNLIMITED CORSAIR WORKS

Intro

Spoiler

Corsair is a ranged dps class (though can also function as melee in specific situations). They have the highest (on paper) damage per minute in maplelegends. Furthermore they have great mobility, mobbing, and even have a summon and ultimate skill (Bird GENESIS).

The main reason that you would want to play a corsair is that it is a class that does everything quite decently, it is a class that is a “jack of all trades” per say - though at the same time it is a master of none (except damage in specific circumstances).

In my time playing maple, I have played many classes and of these classes I have had the most fun playing corsair. It’s diverse toolkit and battleship mechanic makes it the most technical and challenging class in maplestory.

Do note that the Corsair life is not all peaches and roses. Corsairs have serious challenges that make them suboptimal when compared to Nightlords (but lets be real, everything is suboptimal compared to nightlords) in specific situations.

On certain bosses, the effectiveness of a Corsair is highly dependant on your control. If you just want to hold down a button and achieve optimal play in almost every situation, this class is not for you.

Corsairs have the LOWEST avoidability in the game of all ranged classes. This makes dealing with repositioning a nightmare and almost necessitates HP washing or hyperbody such that you don’t go bankrupt buying potions.

SP Build

Spoiler

First Job

There are quite a few different ways to build a corsair. Here I will provide the build that I think is best on maplelegends

1. Max Double Shot
   
2. Max Dash
   
3. Max Bullet Time
   
4. Put leftover points into Sommersault Kick

Second Job

1. 1 point in Invisible Shot
   
2. 5 points in Gun Mastery
   
3. 6 points in Gun Booster
   
4. Max Gun Mastery
   
5. Max Invisible Shot
   
6. Max Recoil Shot
   
7. Max Wings
   
8. Max Blank Shot
   
9. Max Gun Booster
10. Put Leftover points in Grenade Or Sommersault Kick

Third Job
In third job, you can focus on going for single target first, or mobbing first. I think they both suck equally so it does not matter what order you go. However, make sure that by the end of this you have maxed octopus, burst fire, homing beacon, and have at least 15 points in gaviota.

Single target focused build

1. Save 11 SP
2. After having 11 SP, get level 11 Burstfire, then Max Burstfire
3. Max octopus
   
4. Max homing beacon
   
5. 15 points into gaviota
   
6. Max ice splitter
   
7. Leftover points into flamethrower

The reason that you save 11 SP is that burstfire has a very slow cast time compared to double shot. As a result, burstfire doesn't actually do more DPS than double-shot until it is level 11. Furthermore, the moment you put a single point into burstfire, you will lose the ability to use double-shot forever. So, you should save 11 SP so that you don't end up having to use a skill thats weaker than double-shot.

Mobbing focused build

1. 1 point into burst fire
   
2. Alternate between ice splitter and flamethrower, but make sure to leave ice splitter at 26/30 and max flamethrower at 30/30
   
3. Max burstfire
   
4. Max Octopus
   
5. Max Homing Beacon
   
6. 15 points into gaviota

Fourth Job
Fourth job is where corsairs finally become decent, after dealing with a painful 1-120.

The build below is for bossing - which is what most corsairs will do for levels. After your bossing core is complete, you start adding your mobbing skills so that you can grind shaolin more efficiently.

1. 1 point into rapid fire, battleship, and battleship cannon
   
2. Max battleship cannon
   
3. Max bullseye
   
4. Max battleship
   
5. Max Rapid fire
6. Max Maple warrior
   
7. Max wrath of the octopi
   
8. Max Battleship Torpedo
   
9. Elemental boost to level 16 (adds +4 seconds of freeze so it helps with grinding shoalin)
   
10. Max Aerial Strike (you can put 1 point into this at any time if you want to farm cards easier)
    
11. Either max elemental boost or put some points into hypnotize.

However, there is an alternative path - the farming path. I recommend this path if you are washing very heavily (very high base INT) and want to invest in farming over bossing so that you can make use of events to get more AP resets.

1. 1 points into aerial strike (bird genesis), 1 into rapid fire, 1 into battle ship
2. Max Bird Genesis
3. Max Rapid Fire
4. Proceed with the build shown above.

This build has 1 main advantage, you can max out aerial strike quickly, which lets you efficiently farm low level monsters. This build is probably the best bet if you don't have a mage or if you are heavily hp washing.

Aerial strike is basically a full map attack like genesis, blizzard, or meteor. The downside is that it only hits 6 targets and has a 5 second cooldown. However, you can still abuse it to effectively farm anything that you 1hit.

This makes aerial strike ideal for card hunting - as you can 1hit ALOT of weak monsters. You can efficiently farm out the tier 10 ring while gaining a lot of mesos on the side.

By the time you get a decent level on aerial strike, and your minimum damage is ~7100, you can go ahead and farm nightghosts. This map is very solid mesowise as there are tons of good drops that you can sell. Sku was able to get ~6.6m per hr here farming on his third job chief bandit. As a corsair with high mobility and a full map attack, I assure you that you will earn far more than this per hour.

AP Build

Spoiler

You should aim to be strless until level 100. This means you should ONLY add AP to dex (or int / mp if you are washing).

Once you are level 100, (or a few levels before), add strength until you can wear a level 100-115 gun. I recommend capping at no higher than 40 base str. 30 base is ideal.

Leveling

Spoiler

If I am going to be honest, training a corsair before fourth job is absolute ass. Training with base int and without good gear is even worse. This is a bit controversial, but I highly recommend buying leech post level 65.

Before buying leech make sure you do some due diligence on the seller. For example do they have a long history of selling leech? Do they have buyers that can vouch, etc. Is their leech quality high? Do this first so that you don’t get scammed.

Anyways, below is what you should do in early game and when you run out of mesos to buy leech.

Level 1-10: Maple Island Questline
Level 10-21: Henesy PQ
Level 21-31: Kerning PQ
Level 31-35: Ariant Questline
Level 35-45: Ludibrium PQ
Level 45-55: Elin Forest PQ
Level 55-65: Voodoo/Hoodoo or Pirate Party Quest
Level 65-85: Windraider / mannequin
Level 85-120: Headless Horseman / ulu2
Level 100-120: Himes with a priest / ulu2
Level 120-135: Skele / Shoalin 1-2 / Shoalin 3-4 Duo
135+: Zakum / Bigfoot / Duo grind with a mage
155+ Cwkpq / Zakum / Bigfoot / Duo grind with a mage / Shoalin F7
180+ Horntail / Shoalin F7

One important thing to note is that since the auto aggression removal for mannequin, that spot is not not necessarily too strong anymore. However, it can still be very good training at lower levels due to corsairs having high mobility early on.

Equipment Progression

Spoiler

There are 4 main phases for gear progression in maplelegends. Early, Mid, Late, and End Game. Here I will list out what equipment you want to aim for at each stage.

In general when you want to go for an upgrade, your priority should be as follows:

Weapon -> Glove ->Cape -> Shoes (ideally with attack) -> Everything else. Basically, if you can upgrade weapon attack, go for it. It will typically be much more impactful than upgrading an equipment that adds stat points.

Regarding bullets, simply use the highest level bullets you can use. In END game upgrade to armor - piercing bullets.

Early Game
Helm: N/A
Earring: N/A
Eye: N/A
Face: N/A
Pendant: N/A
Overall: 10+ Dex Bathrobe (Scrolled with 10 100% overall armor for dex scrolls)
Cape: N/A
Gloves: N/A
Weapon: 20+ attack Pistol (Scrolled with 7 100% gun ATT or gun ATT 60%)
Shoes: N/A

Mid Game
Helm: Clean Zakum Helmet
Earring: 6+ Dex Earrings
Eye: N/A
Face: N/A
Pendant: Silver Deputy Star
Overall: 10+ Dex Bathrobe (Scrolled with 10 100% overall armor for dex scrolls)
Cape: 2 attack 6+ Dex Pink Adventurer/Gaia Cape
Gloves: 10+ attack work gloves
Weapon: 44-70+ attack Maple Weapon (lv 35/43/64) (Scrolled with gun ATT 60%)
Shoes: N/A

Late Game
Helm: 27+ DEX scrolled Zakum / Scarlion Helmet
Earring: 10+ Dex Earrings
Eye: 2+ Dex Spectrum Goggles
Face: 7+ Dex Rat Mouth/Mask
Pendant: 5 att Mark Of Naricain / 23dex 23str Horntail Pendant
Overall: 20+ STR Pirate Overall
Cape: 6+ attack Pink Adventurer/Gaia Cape
Gloves: 14 attack work gloves
Weapon: 100+ attack Gun
Shoes: 2+ Attack OR 10+ Dex shoes

END Game
Helm: 37+ DEX scrolled Zakum / Scarlion Helmet
Earring: 12+ Dex Earrings
Eye: 7+ Dex Spectrum Goggles
Face: 9+ Dex Rat Mouth/Mask
Pendant: 27+str 27+dex Timeless pendant
Overall: 30+ STR/DEX Pirate Overall
Cape: 15+ attack Pink Adventurer/Gaia Cape
Gloves: 21+ attack gloves
Weapon: 114+ attack Gun
Shoes: 7+ attack facestomper

HP Washing

Spoiler

HP washing for corsair is somewhat optional. It is optional in that if you choose to not hp wash, you can still survive all bosses except vergamot, toad, and pink bean.

However, not washing does have significant disadvantages in end game, so I would recommend that any serious corsair hp wash.

Spoiler: Disadvantages of not hp washing

The main problem corsair has in actual boss runs (at least the ones that are not punching bags) is that you get hit. Now, this sounds obvious, but let me explain what exactly is wrong with getting hit.

Corsairs have low avoid, which means that whenever the boss attacks, it will likely NOT MISS and actually hit you for damage (unlike our archer and thief friends). Whenever you get HIT for damage, your character gets knocked back, potentially out of range of attacking a boss.

This means that whenever you get hit, you will need to control your character to reposition. Now, this is all fine and all, but the icing on the cake is that auto pot in maplelegends is absolute trash. By absolute trash I mean that you can only expect it to work 80-90% of the time. Many times it will fail, which means that you need to manually pot or else you will die.

Basically, having to focus on your hp and controlling your corsair (dismount, repositioning, etc) is very difficult. HP washing allows you to rely on your auto pot more, (by making it so that you can AFFORD to let it fail without dying) and focus more on your corsair control.

Most people are bad players. Myself included (though only when I am multiclienting, if i am single clienting i am a god corsair). Bad players will miss their auto pot failing many times. The difference between a bad player that is not hp washed and one that is hp washed is one that lives and one that dies. Again, if you are actually a good player (which is a very small % of people that play this game), this doesn't apply as much.

The second problem is that this is a low drop rate server. This means that everything is very expensive, even potions. Having to use 1 potion every time you get hit basically makes fighting a boss not viable, as you will lose more mesos on potions than you will gain from boss drops.

So, even if you can technically clear a boss, it's not going to be something you end up wanting to do to progress because you just end up losing more than you gain from fighting it. Again, this is not an issue for people who just want to boss for fun, but moreso for people who want to boss as a solid way to get exp and mesos or progress through maplelegends.

That being said, not every boss is cancer to fight. Things like cwkpq and 2/4 neo tokyo bosses (two solid pieces of end game content) can be done without washing for the most part because you will barely get hit. The same can be said for zakum if you decide to i-frame abuse. The issues I described above are only truly relevant in horntail, and the other 2/4 neo tokyo bosses, and toad. You can boss with an unwashed corsair. However, you won't be able to clear all end game bosses efficiently to the point where it is worth your time to kill them.

Some goals people go for are 16.75k, 13k, 8k, or 7.2k clean HP (this means the hp that your character has without any equips or hyperbody) by level 160.

Spoiler: How to wash to each HP goal

7.2k HP
If you go for 7.2k clean HP you will be able to fight all bosses (except pink bean) provided that you farm all the best in slot HP equips and have hyperbody. Washing to 7.2k will take 4 - 5 months of voting depending on your INT gears.

Spoiler: How to efficiently wash to 7.2k clean HP

The optimal way to get this much extra mp by level 160 is to do as follows:

1. Keep adding INT until you reach 160 total int. Total int meaning base int + int gear
   
2. Reset all base INT at level 160
   
3. HP wash 145 times

Getting to 7.2k clean HP is quite easy, as we don’t need to worry about mp washing.

You just need to make sure that your total base int + int gear reaches ~160 by level 34.

The easiest way to do this is to go for about 100 base int and try to get about 55 int from gear.

This combined with maple warrior 10 will get you to 160 total int.

If you cannot afford int equips, just buy whatever int gear that you can get, and add base int to make up the difference.

Anyways, in the worst case scenario, this will cost you 156 AP resets to reset your base int.

145 AP resets to HP wash to 7.2k HP, for a grand total of 301 AP resets, or 933100 NX.

That equates to ~153 days of voting. Do note that this is the worst case. If you start off with decent funding / int gears, you can SIGNIFICANTLY decrease the amount of time required to spend voting.

8k HP
If you for 8k clean HP, you will be able to fight all the bosses with hyperbody (except pink bean) and you will be able to fight horntail without hyperbody, provided that you farm all the best in slot hp equips. Washing to 8k will take roughly 6 - 7 months of voting depending on your INT gears.

Spoiler: How to wash to 8k clean hp efficiently

1. Increase base int to 180 by level 38
   
2. Mp wash 30 times
   
3. Reset base int at level 160
   
4. HP wash 205 times

176 resets to get rid of your base int

30 resets to mp wash 30 times

205 resets to hp wash 30 times

In total this will cost you 411 AP resets, or 1,274,100 NX.

This will take you roughly 205 days worth of voting

13k HP
If you go for 13k HP clean, you will only require hyper body to fight pink bean after you have farmed best in slot HP equips. In addition, you will be able to fight the other bosses comfortably and efficiently use potions. Washing to 13k will take ~1.2 years worth of voting.

Spoiler: How to wash to 13k clean hp efficiently

1. Increase base int to 250 starting at level 5 (after you have 20 dex for first job advancement)
   
2. Perform 179 MP washes any time after level 52 (as you will have reached 250 base int by this point). This will cost you 179 AP resets.
   
3. Reset all base int at level 160. This will cost you 246 AP resets
4. HP wash 465 times

The total cost of washing to 13k clean by level 160 is:

18 (initial wash from excess MP gained from normally leveling) +

179 (AP resets required to mp wash) +

246 (AP resets to reset base INT) +

465 (AP resets required to wash to 13k HP)

908 AP Resets

In total thats 2,814,800 NX cash, which translates to a bit over 1 year of voting.
(~1.2 years)

You may take less time if you also use INT gear, but don’t expect INT gear to shave off a significant amount of time.

16.75k HP
If you go for 16.75k HP clean, you will not require hb to fight any boss in maplelegends. Furthermore, after farming the best in slot hp equips you can reach 30k hp with hyperbody. Washing to 16.75k clean HP will take ~1.6 years of voting.

Spoiler: How to wash to 16.75k clean hp efficiently

1. Increment base int until you have 330 base int
   
2. MP wash ~214 times
   
3. Reset all base int at level 160 (326 resets required)
4. HP Wash 691 times

MP Washing + resetting base int will cost 1.68 million nx, or roughly 8.5 months of voting. At this point you corsair is fully playable.

Next, you need to convert your extra MP into HP. This will cost you 691 AP resets, or 2.142 million nx.

In total, washing to 16.75k clean will cost 1235 AP resets, or 3.85 million nx. This will take about 1.6 years worth of voting to finish.

I would personally recommend that you wash to at least 7.2k clean HP. If you are certain that you will be playing maplelegends longer than 1 year, I would highly recommend that you consider washing to 13k or higher.

Character Control

Spoiler: Secret Corsair Techniques

Here I will describe some of the techniques you as use as corsair to improve your gameplay efficiency. These will be heavily referred to in the BOSSING section.

1. Ship cancel
Ship cancelling is the act of reducing your delay on certain skills by mounting battleship twice after using the skill. In maplelegends, corsairs mount and dismount battleship very fast, so we can abuse this to shrink the delay of our skills.

The best application of ship cancel is ship cancelling air strike and wrath of the octopi. To perform this with ease, simply create a macro where you you place air strike, then battleship, then battleship.

Likewise you can do the same for wrath of the octopi, where you first place wrath of the octopi, then battleship then battleship.

Whenever you want to use any of these skills, simply press the macro, your character will cast air strike / wrath of the octopi, then enter and exit the ship state (very quickly). After your ship state is exited, your character will be free to move once again. This is MUCH faster than simply using the skills by themself.

2. Rapidfire Recoil Buffering
Rapidfire recoil buffering is the act of first using rapidfire, and then while holding down the rapidfire key, holding down your recoil shot key.

What this does is that when you get HIT, your character will instantly perform a recoil shot. This is extremely useful for dealing with knockback in certain scenarios like zakum top right arm and the top right head of horntail.

3. Sticky key jump attacking.
This is the MOST IMPORTANT technique for corsair. In order to do this you must use windows.

You must turn on sticky keys (and in addition make sure you disable anything that auto turns it off). Then, you must place your jump key on a sticky key (shift, alt or control). Then, you place any attack key on a normal key (i use Z for rapidfire and space for cannon).

Then, you can just mount ship, press and hold down the jump key, then press and hold down the attack key. The result will be that your character will continuously jump attack. This is ESSENTIAL for maintaining some level of mobility on your slow bulky battleship.

4. Sticky key jump forward attacking.
After you are using technique number 3, you can apply it to move forward while jump attacking.

First, you press and hold the directional key in the direction you want to move (Left or right arrow key). Then, you press and hold the jump key. Then, you spam your attack key with a certain rythm depending on your attack speed. If you have a fast attack, you spam it fast, if you have a slow attack, you spam it slower.

The result will be that you will perfectly jump forward and attack at the same time. The difference between a corsair who uses this strategy and one who does not is NIGHT and DAY. It allows you to continuously attack WHILE repositioning yourself on boat.

5. Rapidfire jump rope grab buffer
You press and hold your rapid fire key, then you press and hold the jump key, then you press and hold the UP arrow key. When you get hit, your character will jump. If your character passes through a rope, you will grab the rope and start to climb it.

This is very useful in horntail as it allows you to reliably get back to the top platform after falling down.

6. Perfect dismounting
When you play corsair, you might notice that sometimes when you dismount your character will be stuck in a sitting position, and that you are unable to move.

This happens because you dismounted TOO early after using an attack. If you dismount RIGHT after your attack has fired (not during), you will not end up in this sitting position.

It takes a lot of practice to do consistently, but once you master it there will be a rhythm that you feel to let you know when to dismount to avoid getting placed in the laggy sitting position.

7. Perfect dismount rapidfire recoilshot buffer
This is an application of technique 6.

After performing a perfect dismount, you immediately press and hold down the rapid fire key along with the recoilshot key. This makes it so that you immediately dismount, begin to start using rapid fire and then when you are hit you use recoil shot so that you can control the direct that you are knocked back.

Once again, this is very useful in horntail as it lets you spend more time attacking and less time repositioning.

8. Recoil shot / wings macro

This is a simple macro you can use to move around the map by pressing 1 button. Simply make a macro using recoil shot and wings and then press it to move around the map. I recommend getting 123% base jump for maximum movement with this option.

You can also gain significant a significant speed if you cast this off of a ledge, but this is map dependent.

9. Recoil shot into jump forward attacking cannon / rapid fire
This is a technique very useful for grinding on larger maps.

You first jump and then use recoil shot to gain movement, like a nightlord uses flash jump. However, as you land, you mount battleship and then press an attack key + jump key. This allows you to quickly traverse the map while fluidly killing monsters. You can also execute number 4 off of this to maintain optimal killing efficiency.

This also works with rapidfire.

10. Wings rebuff
While using wings (the corsair float skill), you can cast buffs such as maple warrior and booster. So, to minimize wasted time casting buffs while training on a large map, you can use the recoil shot, wings macro, and then while floating, you can use maplewarrior / booster.

11. AFK Rapidfire
While using rapid fire, simply click outside of your client (or alt tab if you are using full screen). What this will do is allow you to switch to a different maplelegends client or tab while your corsair KEEPS shooting rapidfire.

This will last until your corsair gets hit or you run out of MP after auto mp pot triggers 1 time. This technique is very useful for keeping dps on certain bosses while controlling buff mules. I don't reccomend using it for main damage since rapid fire is very weak, but it is very useful to get a bit more performance out of corsair by keeping the DPS on while you buff SI/SE or HS.

12. Zerking
This is a move where you PURPOSELY keep your HP low (like a dark knight in order to maintain their berserk skill) so that when you get hit by enemy 1/1 attacks, you take less damage on your boat. This is somewhat useful in zakum, and extremely useful against THE BOSS in showa.

13. Iframe abuse
This is when you forcefully take aggression of summon monsters that a boss spawns and have them continuously attack you. Because the summon monsters continously hit you with their weak attack, the main boss's attack will "miss" you because you will have iframes when the summon monster hits you.

For example, in zakum, you can lure the summons to swarm you while you simply spam battleship cannon at zakum. This also works in scarlion. This effectively lets you abuse bullseye to focus down the boss while using the summons as a shield from the boss's attacks.

You can also do this using a boss's touch damage. For example if a boss would stun, you can run into the boss to take touch damage and not get hit by the debuff / magic attack.

14. Rapidfire Momentum Cancel
Same concept as with hurricane momentum cancel explained here, except with rapid fire. Basically, it reduces your knockback which allows you to shoot targets from certain platforms without falling off. Furthermore, it also decreases the amount of time you need to spend repositioning. Not as useful for corsair as is it is for bowmasters, since we have other options in such scenarios. Nonetheless, it has some niche uses and certainly comes in handy when your boat breaks.

15. Recoil Shot Distance Control
Depending on the timing of your jump and the length of time you hold the left or right arrow keys, you can shorten or lengthen the distance that you travel with recoil shot. This means that if you master this, you can choose exactly where you end up positionally speaking after you use recoil shot. This is very useful in horntail where you need to position your corsair in specific areas in order to consistently hit certain body parts.

16. Ship Cancel Wrath Of The Octopi Walk
If you are on battleship, and then use the macro skill: wrath of octopi, ship, ship, you can press the macro and then start walking. What will happen is that the macro will execute while you are walking.

This lets you regain your position while casting wrath of octopi, effectively "moving" while using wrath of octopi. In some bossing situations this will reduce the amount of time you spend repositioning.

Bossing

Spoiler

Spoiler: HORNTAIL

Below are some recommendations on character stats before fighting horntail:

1. Level 180 or higher
Because corsair is so inherently weak at horntail, you need to be a lot higher level than your peers to contribute to the run. Around level 180 is when I felt that my corsair wasn't complete garbage in horntail. In addition, corsair ship HP scales with level. Around level 180 is when I would say that your boat is thick enough to have a decent uptime in horntail.

2. ~250 base avoidability (without buffs)
Avoidability is so HUGE on corsair when you are fighting horntail. Every time the boss misses you that is less damage you take on your ship and less time you need to spend repositioning. Once you go over 250 avoid is when horntail starts to miss you more often. To reach this avoid, I would reccomend that you use a horntail pendant over MoN and aim to find a good face accessory (like 7 dex and at least 9 avoid). Furthermore you can focus on getting a helmet with good avoid and scrolling all your gear for a lot of dex. You can also opt for avoid scrolled shoes and a LUK scrolled overall.

3. Heartstoppers / Amoria basket
Heartstoppers provide a buff of +60 avoid. If you have 250 base avoid and use stoppers, horntail will miss you about 20% of the time. This is basically the same as having 20% stance, and having 20% more ship HP. The difference between playing corsair while on stoppers in Horntail cannot be overstated.

If heartstoppers are too expensive, you can also use amoria basket. They are a lot cheaper, but only add 40 avoid.

4. A shit ton of HP
It honestly triggers me when people say you should not wash corsairs because you will take more damage to 1/1. They obviously have never played corsairs to high efficiency in horntail. Anyways, you want to be HELLA washed as a corsair, if a 1/1 attack comes you can just dismount to avoid the damage (all 1/1 attacks are fairly slow in HT).

If you are running with a DK (that means you will have hyperbody), I suggest that you have AT LEAST 9.375k BASE HP. This will put you at 15k HP post hyperbody and allow you to comfortably pot every 2 hits after legs/ tail are dead.

This will make it so that instead of burning 1.2k+ pots per horntail run you burn about 600.

If you are running without a DK, I would suggest that you have 15k clean HP, but you can make due with ~13.5k if you react to wings (and still only use a potion every 1-2 hits).

It is possible to run without a DK if you have 10k HP, but you will need to pot every hit and will end up burning 1.2k + pots per run. It is also possible to run with only ~6.3k clean hp if you have a DK, but again, you will end up burning 1.2k + pots per run. This is very problematic when 20+ of your use slots are already take by bullets.

Now, lets talk about character control:

Prehead 1:
This prehead has 4 total animations.

Weapon defense / magic cancel:

Makes it so weapon or magic attacks do 1 damage against horntail. Lasts for 40 seconds.

Seduce/Summon Wyverns:

Uses seduce on the first person to enter the map. The person seduced will either jump, move right, or move left. While seduced they cannot use a potion to heal themself.

Horntail also uses this same animation to summon wyverns. There is a delay of a few seconds before the wyverns are summoned. Depending on horntails HP, the color of the wyverns will be different. When horntail is low hp, he will summon the black wyverns - these things can dispel you which is mildy annoying.

Breath attack:

This attack deals ~5.5k damage and will push your character <<<. This is really bad for corsair because while being pushed << you stop attacking. Then you have to waste time re-positioning to get in range of attacking the head again.

Icicle attack:

This attack is a 1/1, which means that it lowers your HP and MP to 1. Either move out of the icicle path or dismount your ship. This attack is easy to deal with.

Strategy:
When you see horntail using the icicle attack, simply do a perfect dismount and start using rapid fire. Once you are hit, mount your battleship and jump forward while attacking to regain your position.

When you see horntail use his breath attack you just pray that it misses you. DO NOT dismount this attack. If you dismount, you will be sent really far back and will need to take a lot of time to reposition. Instead, stay on the ship, get knocked back a little, and then use sticky key jump forward attacking to get back into position while maintaining your dps. Ideally, you want to stand close to horntail's head so that when you get pushed back by the breath attack, you are still in range to hit horntail as you jump forward while attacking you still land your shots.

A little avoidability also goes a long way here, as a miss on a breath attack saves you quite a bit on DPS.

You also want to make sure you keep octopi up constantly. It will increase your DPS.

Prehead 2:
This prehead has 4 total animations.

Weapon defense / magic cancel:

Makes it so weapon or magic attacks do 1 damage against horntail. Lasts for 40 seconds.

Seduce/Summon Wyverns:

Uses seduce on the first person to enter the map. The person seduced will either jump, move right, or move left. While seduced they cannot use a potion to heal themself.

Horntail also uses this same animation to summon wyverns. There is a delay of a few seconds before the wyverns are summoned. Depending on horntails HP, the color of the wyverns will be different. When horntail is low hp, he will summon the black wyverns - these things can dispel you which is mildy annoying.

Breath attack:

This attack deals ~5.5k damage and will push your character >>>. This is really bad for corsair because while being pushed >> you stop attacking. Then you have to waste time re-positioning to get in range of attacking the head again.

Lightning attack:

This attack is either a 1/1 or an attack that does ~5.5k damage. If it is a 1/1, it has a big delay, if it is the 5.5k attack, it doesn't have much delay.

Strategy:
The strategy is similar to horntail prehead 1, except you are going to use rapidfire recoil shot buffer to keep your positioning.

When you see horntail using the lightning attack, do perfect dismount rapidfire recoil shot buffer. Once you are hit, you will be knocked <<, however you will use recoil shot which will push you >>, hence saving you time on re positioning.

If you are playing on HD client, you will be able to see if its going to be the 5.5k attack, or the 1/1. The 1/1 will have pillars start to grow on the floor, if you are standing above those pillars, dismount. If not, you can just keep attacking.

With the breath attack, follow the same strategy as prehead 1.

Main body:
This is the most challenging part of horntail for corsairs. Here, I will divide up the guide via body part (and present them in the order that most people kill).

Stage 1: Legs / Tail
In this stage, every single body part of horntail is active. In addition, every single part of horntail is attacking you! This will make dismounting fairly pointless as you are constantly taking damage. You will start on << side attacking the legs first.

The special thing about legs and tail is that they both attack in the same manner. Horntail stomps with his legs / tail to attack. The tail pushes you away like the preheads breath attack, and the legs stun you.

You can avoid both of these by jump attacking. Hence, I recommend that you just sticky jump attack the entire time while these body parts are active. Alternatively (and this is slightly more optimal) you can react to the legs / tail slamming and jump at the appropriate timings to dodge their attacks.

One important thing to note is that there will be 1/1 attacks. You will see them coming because a small pillar will be appearing on the ground. If you think you will be hit by the 1/1 attack, you should dismount -> rapidfire, or try to jump forward attack out of the way.

When your ship breaks (and trust me it will break), you basically want to do the same thing except with rapid fire. You should jump attack with rapidfire when the leg or tail is about to slam to avoid knockback / stun.

Once the legs are dead and you begin to target the tail, note that if you jump you can take touch damage from arms / wings (this isn't an issue when you are on boat because your jump % is too low). You can fix this by simply having low jump % or just take the damage. If you take the damage, you will be knocked >>, which is dangerous because now you are too close to the tail.

So, if you jump attack to avoid the knock back while using rapidfire, use recoil shot after you get pushed towards tail to go back to your original position. If you are fast enough you won't take any damage from the tail because of iframe abuse.

Stage 2: Head C/Head B/Head A/wings/right arm
In this stage, all 3 heads of horntail, wings, and both arms are alive. You will be focusing down horntail head C, which is the head on your right hand side.

Head C is basically a copy of the second prehead, except it doesn't use the breath attack.

Head A is a copy of the first prehead, and does not use breath attack.

Head B has two full map attacks, both of which do ~5k damage unbuffed and ~7k buffed.

The wings buff every other part of horntail and makes them do more damage. Also, the wings can flap into your face and deal some pretty high touch damage. It can also summon mobs.

The Right arm basically just casts status ailments (seal, weakness, etc), seduce, and MP Drain.

Your main priority should be to place your damage on head C.

If head C uses weapon cancel, jump and use bullseye to target the middle head. Then, all of your attacks should hit the middle head so you can avoid hitting head C when it has weapon cancel.

*If head B uses weapon cancel while head C is active, you can drop down to the middle platform (while having head C targeted with bullseye) and attack head C from there. While doing so, you won't have shots wasted on a cancelled head B. This is somewhat advanced, so the positioning requirements are a bit tight.

If head C and B are cancelled, attack the wings.

The main issue you will have during this time is being knocked << every time you take a hit. To remedy this, when you get knocked too far << dismount battleship and use recoil shot to get back into position.

Typically dismounting isn't a concern at this point going forward, since there are so many attacks going on. However, if you have high HP, I would consider watching out for Head C using its 1/1 lightning attack, and try to dismount that.

Typically while you are killing head C, the cleaver is hitting head C, wings, and the right arm at the same time. Once head C is down you can move over to head A.

If at any time the arms are in mass seduce range, you should stop attacking the heads and help your party focus down the arms.

If you want to see a horntail run in action, here is a recording of me doing 2 horntail runs with a full level 200 squad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H_lOMEnE7U&feature=youtu.be

Spoiler: VERGAMOT

Vergamot has 3 bodies kind of like zakum.
Body 1: Shoots lazors (dispel) and missiles (8k and 11k damage)
Body 2: Shoots lazors (dispel) and missiles (~8k damage)
Body 3: Shoots some kind of beam (stun, weakness, slow), and missiles (seduce, 13.5k damage)

To survive vergamot you need ~13.5k hp, or somewhere around 8.4k with hyperbody.

All attacks are dodgeable by ducking, but for corsairs this is fairly difficult since we cannot duck without first dismounting battleship. The best thing to do here is learn how to perfect dismount (to avoid sit lag) and use rapid fire in the few miliseconds of dead time.

You want to dodge every single dispel in bodies 1 and 2. In body 3 you want to dodge every single attack.

It also really helps if you have a shadower on your team, smoke screen is quite good on this boss.

Anyways, I think vergamot is a boss that is probably better explained via video than text, so you can check the below video for more details.

**In this video I had boat glitch, which means my battleship was invincible** So, I would have expected a glitchless solo to take 1-2mins longer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCYQ1dDaj3U&feature=youtu.be

Spoiler: DUNAS

Dunas has 1 body with 230 million HP. Unfortunately its actually quite a bit more because it spams damage reflect (basically weapon cancel except if you attack him you will lose 10000 life).

To fight him, I recommend having over 10k HP (so that if you attack during damage reflect you don't instantly die).

Dunas has a bunch of different attacks, all of which can be dodged by simply moving out of the way. The way dunas works is that he uses an attack, and that attack sort of "locks on" to the area where you are standing. If you move out of the way before the attack "lands", you will effectively dodge it.

Dunas also casts debuffs, so be sure to have some all cure potions.

You need 50k lines to knock him back, but its possible to fight him without being able to knock back. You can always use aggro tricks to lure him into the right positions.

Below is a video of me soloing dunas with onxy apples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s36B9snJIY&feature=youtu.be

Spoiler: SCARLION

Scarlion has 3 bodies, with 60m , 90m, and 150m hp. So in total its 300m HP.

It does spam weapon cancel quite a bit, so effectively its more than 300m hp.

The highest range magic attack is under 3k damage, so if you keep your distance you will be fine.

However, it does have a short range magic attack that hits for nearly 8k, and its touch damage is around 8k as well. As a result, if you are washed to above this threshhold, scarlion becomes trivial as you have no fear of dying at any point.

In terms of technique, you want to attack scarlion with homing beacon so that all your attacks are focused on him. You don't want to clear the summons because you can use them to iframe abuse and effectively dodge all of scarlion's attacks.

You can either pin scarlion against the wall if you knock back him, or set it up such that scarlion pins you to the wall (this is so you can keep attacking without having to move much). Eitherway, as long as you have mobs around to dodge with your ship should last pretty much the entire fight.


Video link of me soloing scarlion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYMIRFZgSSM&feature=youtu.be

Spoiler: Krexel

Krexel has 2 eyes with 250 million HP. One eye casts magic / weapon cancel, while the other is essentially a freefire snoozefest.

For the first eye as a corsair, you want to stand on the metal ledge near the left side of the map, as close to the eye as possible. When you get knocked back, you need to reposition via a jump forward cannon ASAP to not fall off the platform. On cancels you can use double octopi for further damage.

When your boat breaks, go ahead to the middle of the map and use rapid fire. It helps to have above 8k HP here so that you can tank a hit from the eye, but this is not necessary.

The second eye has a small nook where you can sit in. In this nook, when you are knocked back, you will immediately slide back into position. So, go ahead and just press down your attack button, occasionally repositioning incase you hit the 100 attack limit.

below is a video of me soloing krexel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvvRFxUMW0Y

DPS Comparison

Spoiler

There will be two sections to dps comparison, freefire and horntail.

Freefire means the damage that you do against a dummy with zero defense, whereas the horntail dpm is average expected damage in horntail.

So, lets start with corsair. For this comparison, I will be assuming perfect gear using a 20 attack potion. This is because attack potions in maplelegends are quite expensive, and it is often most economical to use the cash shop bear. Furthermore, high level casual players can reach this same level of dpm by simply using an onxy apple, so the numbers stated here are reasonably achievable by the average person (assuming they are high level and use an onxy apple).

Furthermore I am going to use horntail pendant over mon, because horntail pendant, although weaker in terms of raw damage, provides significant advantages in defense and avoid that make it the more worthwhile choice overall.

Corsair
Attack gear: 118(7dex) att gun, 21 att gloves, 15 attack cape, 22 attack bullets, 20 attack potion
Total attack: 196

Stat gear(str/dex), 19/37 helm, 0/9 face, 2/2 eye, 0/12 earrings, 8/30 overall, 3/13 shoes, 10/10 monster book ring, 1/1 elin forest ring, 23/23 htp
Total Stats at lv 200 with maplewarrior:
str: 110
dex: 1218

Battleship Cannon:
DPM solo: 12463647.65
DPM SI: 13119629.11
DPM SE: 13117989.15
DPM SI/SE: 13808409.64

Rapid Fire:
DPM solo: 7379791.373
DPM SE: 8855749.647

Nightlord
Attack gear: 90 (15 luk) att purple sleeve, 21 att gloves, 15 att cape, 31 attack stars, 20 attack potion
Total Attack: 177
Stat gear(dex/luk), 39/17 helm, 9/0 face, 4/0 eye, 4/8 earrings, 2/22 top, 18/4 bottom, 3/13 shoes, 10/10 ring, 1/1 elinforest, 23/23 htp
Total Stats at lv200 with maplewarrior
luk: 1199
dex: 150

dpm Solo: 7,166,707.875
dpm se: 10,965,063.05

Bowmaster
Attack gear: 140 (7dex) shinier bow, 21 att gloves, 15 att cape, 10 att bow expert,
24 attack potion (Cider + concentrate)*

Total Attack: 210
Stat gear (str/dex), 19/37 helm, 0/9 face, 0/4 eye, 0/12 earrings, 7/31 overall, 0/16 shoes, 10/10 monster ring, 1/1 elin ring, 23/23 htp
Total stats at level 200 with maplewarrior
str: 115
dex: 1213

dpm solo: 10,341,813.89

So general ranking in solo play(Freefire):
Corsair > Bowmaster > Nightlord

If we assume bowmaster as 100%, we can also show the dpm as follows:
Corsair(SE/SI): 133.5%
Corsair(SE): 126.8%
Corsair: 120.5%
Nightlord(SE): 106%
Bowmaster: 100%
NL: 69.26%

General ranking in party play (freefire):
Corsair > Nightlord > Bowmaster

However, in horntail this isn't really the case. You don't do your freefire dpm in horntail because you waste time trying to reposition and your damage is reduced from defense.

A top tier bowmaster does ~60-65% of their freefire dpm in horntail,
A top tier NL does ~70-75% of their freefire dpm
A top tier corsair does ~60-65% of their freefire dpm

So, in horntail,
NL > Corsair > Bowmaster

If we use pessimistic estimates for dpm and consider freefire bowmaster as 100% then, in horntail we have the following ranking:

Nightlord(SE): 74.2%
Corsair(SE/SI): 73.425%
Corsair(SE): 69.74%
Corsair: 66.275%
Bowmaster: 6%
Nightlord: 48.482%

So as you can see, corsairs severely outperform every other class on freefire bosses (nibergen, nameless magic monster, cwkpq mage boss, etc), but do fall behind nightlords at horntail.

Also, although it seems corsair does more dps than bowmasters at horntail, bowmasters are still more wanted overall due to the sharpeyes party buff.

Misc. Tips

Spoiler

Spoiler: The Avoidability Meta

For fights against bosses that attack very often (like horntail, zakum, etc), it is can be viable to scroll some gear for avoidability over dex.

The reason for this is that corsairs scale very well with avoidability. For example, if you have 10% to dodge an attack, that is effectively the same as having 10% more ship HP (as you can tank 10% more attacks, since 10% will miss).

You also spend 10% less time repositioning (which increases your dps by a fair amount).

You also spend 10% less on potions, which will save you an incredible amount of mesos in the long run.

The critical point of avoidability against horntail / zakum is 250. Every point of avoidability you have over 250 will start to increase your dodge rate against the boss.

The formula for dodge rate (magic attacks) is given as follows:
[10/9 - Monster Accuracy/(0.9*Avoid)]

Where monster accuracy for HT / zakum is 250 (for most parts) and Avoid is your avoidability stat.

I recommend that you scroll a pair of avoid shoes (using 30% shoe for avoid) and a LUK overall (using 30% overall for luk) to use against these bosses.

Here are some key benchmarks for avoidability.
10% dodge rate for zak / ht = 275 avoid
20% dodge rate for zak / ht = 305 avoid
30% dodge rate for zak / ht = 343 avoid
40% dodge rate for zak / ht = 391 avoid
50% dodge rate for zak / ht = 455 avoid

It's pretty hard to get above 30% dodge rate, but it is doable with a combination of high level, avoid gear, and heartstoppers (potion that adds +60 attack and +60 avoid).

Note that actual stat gear should triumph over avoid gear once you end game, but its always nice to have the avoid gear handy for some extra quality of life if you feel like being lazy.

Spoiler: Time Leap Mule

One of corsairs biggest weakness is that when your battleship breaks, you are forced to use rapid fire, which is a very, very weak skill in comparison.

In boss runs, I find that it does somewhere between half and 2/3 the DPS that battleship cannon would output. One work around to this problem to increase your ship uptime is to have a dex bucc (buccaneer mule with a lot of AP put into DEX) to use as a speed infusion / time leap mule.

This way, when your boat breaks, you can use time leap and get straight back on your boat and keep using battleship cannon.

 

reserving post in case needed.

 

Reserving a second post as a spare for my first reserved post.

 

I basically made an excel spread sheet and used some calculus to find the minimum ap resets required to gain a specific amount of MP. Basically, when you are going for high HP, you need to MP wash. Whenever you MP wash, you lose an AP reset.

At the same time, adding base INT gives you more MP per mp wash (and more per level up), however each base int you add costs you 1 ap resets.

Essentially I did a comparison between the two to find out the combination (base int and # mp washes) that results in the fewest amount of ap resets used. Also 11.5k by 160 is 100% doable with 200 base int, but I would recommend the higher base int if you can add it. If not, no worries, just do a few more mp washes. Sure it costs you a bit more ap resets than if you have used the optimal method but its not really a big deal.

 

2. I would put them into dex. + MP with fresh ap then ap reset minus MP into Dex. However, you can also put them into hp.

3. I would put them all into DEX.

This might be confusing to you because we are not really focused on gaining HP at this point, only the MP required to do the washes.

Once we have the MP, you can take a SINGLE AP and put it into HP. From there you can use as many ap resets as you can and simply go minus mp + hp.

This lets you have only 1 AP in your HP / MP pool and lets you perform all the HP washes you need.

Effectively, this means that your corsair can be at full power about half way into your wash (albeit with almost no HP but an insane mp pool).

 

Yes, the calcs were done with ZERO int gears. The boost from the +100 in INT gear isn't going to be as impactful as you expect, but yes it will shave off in terms of number of MP washes you need to do.

 

Small update:

Added a new 4th job SP build - a farming build aimed for those looking to use their corsair to farm mesos / tier 10 ring.

It's fairly good for farming mesos and very strong at farming event ETC to quicken up some hp washes.

 

The other corsair guides were written with a different meta / era of maplelegends in mind. The hp numbers I provided above are what you will need to reach if you want to attempt all bosses in maplelegends.

That being said, given your current situation I think you should either stop washing, or try to reach one of the benchmarks that I listed in this guide. There's really little benefit in washing at all if you are not going for at least 7.2k base HP, as it does not really change what bosses you can and cannot fight.