Let’s talk about Corsair

- TTKirnk on the State of Dark Knights moving forward


With the balance team in active discussion about the state of DK I think now is a good time to evaluate one of the least popular classes on the server. Corsair is plagued with issues, most of which come down to QoL, from the start of third job all the way through the end of fourth with no tools to alleviate them. I will be analyzing Sair through the lens of neckson’s original intent. I will not be posting any damage calcs, formulae, etc. regarding my observations as I am only a baby Sair at 14X. Despite this I’ve done enough research, mained a(n unwashed) sair before any other class and seen enough complaints over the years to make an informed post.

What is a Corsair?

A swashbuckling pirate who slings guns and sails the seven seas with their trusty companions jumping out of the way of danger and floating to safety. A Corsair can do high damage, can focus down the important targets with the help of their parrot while their octopi and seagulls fend off weaker monsters. They can lay down debilitating status conditions to lock down monsters while their ship buries them under a siege of deadly torpedoes. Their trusty seagulls can even carry out coordinated airstrikes to clear large areas out (6 monsters at a time). A Corsair is primarily a single target attacker who has access to strong positioning tools. They have a little bit of everything else too(as long as you don’t want party buffs): cleaving, elemental damage, crowd control, an ultimate ability. But they don’t do all of these things all well as other classes do.

Spoiler: Pros:

• Highest Freefire DPS of all classes in the game (assuming equal gear).
• No minimum range on primary attacking skill. Doesn’t whack while using cannon
• Stable damage without relying on other characters for buffs.
• Can always hit intended target with bullseye. Disregards boss summons/adds.
• Access to strong single target, decent cleave, and a decent Ultimate ability.
• Early access to mobility tools.

Spoiler: Cons:

• For top performance ~~requires~~ wants SE, SI, Smoke screen, HB.
• Provides no utility to a party, apart from MW.
• One of the highest mechanical floors in the game. If boat isn’t dismounted when an attack connects it will take damage and eventually break. Because of this Sair cannot AFK/Netflix boss the way other classes can.
• DPS drops dramatically while using rapidfire compared to battleship cannon.
• Battleship is on a 90 second cooldown. Unlike Buccs, Sairs provide nothing worth while to a party while their cool 4th job skill is on CD.
• Lowest durability of any class. Least amount of avoid compared to other ranged DPS. One of the lowest health pools in the game. No iframes to mitigate incoming attacks.
• Several skills leave the character helpless if used at the wrong time. Airstrike, summon octo, boat on occasion.
• Boat heavily penalizes movement while only providing a minor defense increase.
• Sair summons have short durations for minimum dps increases. Gavoita attacks once with a 5 second CD. Octo lasts 35-40 seconds with a 10 second cooldown between summons while also having a cast delay.
• Sair summons have same drop rate penalties that other, better summons have.
• Fire/Ice Splitter have short horizontal attack range with minimal vertical range, require special ammo to get full damage.
• Outlaw often cited as the worst class to grind through third job with.
• Aerial Strike only hits 6 targets, has a 5 second CD, also has a drop rate nerf.

It is also worth noting:

• Only ranged DPS without innate crit ability.
• Only ranged DPS without ammo use mitigation.

These factors don’t make or break corsairs gameplay, but it does give us another angle to look at their status in the Ranged DPS hierarchy.

Despite all of these issues Sair is still one of the strongest classes in the game. It doesn’t need a full rework but some nice QoL changes would be appreciated. Some examples I’ve thought up include:

Spoiler: Example suggestions:

• Remove damage penalty for Fire/Ice Splitter if not using capsules, provide boost if using them.
• Remove CD on Gavoita, increase summon time to 3 minutes similar to archer third job summons.
• Change helpless state on certain skills to iframes, keep the ability to animation cancel to maintain DPS promoting player skill expression.
• Allow the use of blank shot while mounted on battleship.
• Remove/Reduce the cooldown of battleship, Provide a way to reduce the cooldown with active gameplay, or increase player durability while battleship is active.

Outright removing the cooldown might be too strong. Reducing it would be an improvement. Some flat avoid or more defenses on the boat wouldn’t hurt either. But an unexplored option that could be interesting is to incorporate the summoner gameplay that was part of the original design intent of the class. Maybe every attack that connects from a summon reduces the cooldown time of ship by some number of seconds. Or maybe every attack that a summon lands decreases the amount of damage the ship has sustained? Ultimately Corsair needs a way that it can provide the only utility it offers without maximum focus 100% of the time.

Edit: Pulled direct comparison to other ranged dps out of cons as it’s more of a side grade. Reworded buff dependencies to more accurately reflect high end gameplay. Having these points in there the way they were initially written up was detracting from the conversation.

Spoiler: TL;DR Suggestions from thread:

• Rework Corsair avoid formula to match bucc or archer
• Shift boat hp scaling down to lower levels
• Increase out of boat dps while decreasing in boat dps
• Add stance effect while in boat
• Increase durability while in boat (damage mitigation for boat, or for character)
• Make cannon/torp able to be cast while in air. Remove sticky key requirement for jump attack.
• Add SI and/or TL into 4th job kit for additional utility.
• Remove rope/ladder grab delay from recoil shot.
• Change boat dis/mount to be client sided rather than server sided. Makes high ping gameplay less punishing.
• Fix hypnotize crash bug lol.

Disclaimer: This is a compilation of suggestions from the thread not an endorsement of every item on this list.