Let’s talk about Corsair

Its interesting that you suggested qol skill changes that will benefit outlaws. Not sure if these skills will provide any utility after job advancement.

Battleship is only good after lvl 17x (or even 18x), cause only after these levels, battleship won't break that easily and that will also mean CDs buffs won't be necessary.

Imo lvl 13x-17x are good training levels to learn animations and master the mechanics of sairs.

 

outlaw on 3rd is kinda e.e, good suggestions

 

Just curious, but have you ever seen or spoken to sairs that regularly run HT? It's pretty much the canonical example of this type of active sair gameplay.

I think you might have a different experience once you get closer to endgame! Personally, I don't recall a boss that I wouldn't at least octo on, even in low-level freefire content.

 

I think the weakest part of Outlaw is its poor mobbing ability compared to other ranged classes (Arrow Rain, Avenger...), see: https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/buff-flamethrower-ice-splitter.50191/

As for Corsair... it may be the sweatiest class. You have to pay a lot of attention. The summoner idea is interesting, and I'm curious to know where you saw Neckson intended so?

If we were to think a bit more into the summoner gameplay, I think it would be cool if having Gaviota or Octopus while Battleship is on, could decrease the amount of damaged received (by giving a temporary WDEF/MDEF buff?)-- this would parallel BM's birds + dummy setup

That sort of client edit may be too difficult though. Just throwing ideas out there.

 

Inb4 why play sair when you can play 2 NLs

 

I think it's worth examining your cons list because a lot of them are either irrelevant or actually pros

"Requires SE, SI. Wants Smoke screen, HB."
I'd hardly call sairs as requiring any buffs. That's one of the draws for playing sair, the buffs from SE/SI have a smaller impact than SE on NLs or SI on warriors, so we don't need any specific party composition to perform well

"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."
I mean this is just a mechanic of the class, the overall DPM takes into account some rapidfire downtime.

"Boat heavily penalizes movement while only providing a minor defense increase."
Honestly both a pro and a con. Boat doesn't get knocked back as far, doesn't get moved as far when being sedded, and the low jump means it's much more efficient to jump attack

"Only ranged DPS without innate crit ability."
Another one of those things that aren't really relevant. The DPM is what it is, whether it's coming from seeing red numbers or not

"Only ranged DPS without ammo use mitigation."
Also kind of a pro, at least compared to NLs. I'm not familiar enough with NLs to know for sure, but I believe we use a similar number of inventory slots to hold bullets as they need to hold stars. The advantage is that we don't need to rebuff our ammo mitigation every time we get dispelled, we just naturally use fewer bullets because of a slower attack and less ammo used per shot than TT without shadow stars

"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.
To be fair sair summons do operate very differently than pretty much any other summon does. I almost don't consider them to be summons, but more like an additional attack that you're weaving in between other attacks similar to snipe. Octo is certainly relevant damage though

"Aerial Strike only hits 6 targets, has a 5 second CD, also has a drop rate nerf."
Yes but it's also much faster to cast than mage ults, and on a significantly more mobile character compared to DKs. This combination makes them arguably the best character for farming things like monster book cards on maps that are slightly more awkward to get around, and don't have enough mob density that mages can take advantage of (which is most of them).

 

i think it would have improved your suggestion post if you had up to date and correct information !

innate crit would be a direct nerf since you’d have to rebalance them for the much larger se damage multiplier - ironically, this would just exacerbate the buff dependence concern?

“other classes have it so we should too” is also never a strong enough argument by itself. bullet usage is better in terms of costs + slots than stars or arrows, so what’s the problem?

 

I did always like the idea of sair being a summoner-esque class between their octo, gaviota, and the oft forgotten (and rightfully so) hypnotize which basically converts other mobs into more summons like a short-lived game of pokemon (assuming it doesn't just crash you). #hypnotizebugfix #hypnotizebuff

Always been a huge fan of gaviota as I'm just a monkey that likes to mash buttons, but its marginal damage output and proneness to delaying cannon once in a while if not timed right (which is liable to happen over a long period of time) usually means the damage boost is mostly a wash. I've wanted to suggest buffing its damage as a two-birds-with-one-stone change for increasing skill expression and slightly raising damage ceiling while simultaneously improving third job grinding, but gaviota is in a bit of an odd spot as it can't actually be maxed without SP washing or giving up points in icesplitter/flamethrower.

I've other thoughts on sair as a whole but I'd like to mull on those a bit longer.

 

I know almost nothing about sair so willing to learn from this post

 

I would add to "Cons" that on bosses that spams 1/1 (like PB and Zak) washed Corsairs on top of the dismounting also need to zerk kinda like the DK to have a decent boat uptime.
The direction of the "Summoner Gameplay" idea is really nice, personally I can't help of using summons every time because I just think it's nice, even though it might not be ideal dpm sometimes, so it would be nice to see some changes on that!
Unfortunately I don't think this topic will have much impact on the attention given to Corsair because its a very unpopular class so there aren't a lot of us to discuss ideas and have a voice to be heard but we'll see

 

Though I'm definitely not as active anymore or do consistent end content boss runs lately on my sair, there are things I do/don't agree with but can see why you feel that way about certain aspects of sair:

Spoiler

• Always feels super nice to have the SI+SE combo to really propel sairs dmg to the max but not really always a requirement. maybe moreso in early lvls of 4th job?
  
• HB/Low HP pool/Durability - Yes. I fell into the misguided idea that I didn't need to wash as hard when I first started. But now that HP challenges/new(er) rings have been added, and HP washing from the beginning is pretty standard now, there's not much I can reasonably complain about besides just not doing enough research in the beginning, but a little boost to the class hp gain would surely feel better. Building on durability though, if weapon/magic defense actually did a lot to mitigate damage in the future lel, I suggest that they fix the fact that if you mount/dismount boat while on apple/gm basket or anything that gives you additional defense it just gets rid of the items def. boost? even if the def. boost is the same as boat at +100. I can't recall off the top of my head if this applies to like, sunblock too (+200 magic def). Not sure if that's even worth a look since idk how def/magic def plays into account of dmg taken though
  
• Battleship cooldown - No complaints from me on the 90 sec cd. Way better than when gms had it at like what, 5 minutes max level?! and in the meantime you can take advantage of octopi etc, airstrike annoying mobs for party, splitter macro etc.
• Ammo use mitigation - don't think it's that big of an issue as others commented. We don't shoot/attack as quick as NLs who get debuffed anyways
• Sair summons - I would love a change of sorts to Gaviota! and getting an octo symbol back on the buff bar personally. I've never cared to use/min-max Gaviota due to the CD and one time attack. I'd much rather just focus on 4 octo setup instead. Having it similar to Archer birds would be interesting. Though while playing I would say that if you use octo enough you get used to the CD timings in between each octo stack to accurately predict when it's back up if you don't have it on a shortcut key but I miss the buff bar of it. They're easy WC/MC timers in HT back when I ran constantly.
• Hypnotize/3rd job stun skills is always interesting but the error with it, is practically a 50/50 use case vs dc haha
• Boost to fire/ice splitter with the bullets would be nice! (The suffering that is/was 7f without freeze anymore.... im still not over it )
  
• utility - meh, NLs have haste but there are plenty of times where they don't even buff that to others unless asked several times . I think the job of a glass cannon doesn't need much party utility besides dmg and eventually mw. But I know this may be an issue during the early levels of each job advancement where your dmg isn't up to par yet and people might just rather rely on the SE+NL dmg/buff. And also if they don't quite know how sairs work or what buffs benefit the most
  
• airstrike drop rate nerf does kind of suck as a card hunter/enjoyer. Even with the attacking range of it, positioning and direction is still something you need to learn to accurately/efficiently use imo
• Yeah.... 3rd job sux... was self leech city for me

All in all, there are indeed small changes that would be good QOL like summons, a little bit more hp or defense rework(?), splitter boosts...but I also think some of the cons keep others in balance. Slow boat (useful in HT to move slower if you think you're going to die to rock, right clickable to avoid attacks during sed? can jump attack), avoid (always feels bad but theres avoid gear build + amorian baskets etc), stuck with animation lag during boat attack/dismount, airstrike (just part of sair class gameplay, learning timings). Innate crit ability I don't think is necessary. Our damage is pretty consistent within it's range and stable, but this is simply my view on it when simply observing NL's crit what would be a normal bullseye + cannon line for sairs?

 

Although my sair is only level 140 at the moment, I have really enjoyed it so far. If anything, it has felt exactly like I have been playing my bishop

 

No we do not need SE nor SI! It's a minimal increase. I'd rather have Smoke over SE.

This chart can be a bit misleading for the late game class population. Corsairs are the least played class in late~endgame. See below.

Here's some meta-relevant Corsair issues:

• If you're good enough to perfect a Corsair: you're more than good enough to play 2 Night Lords and have a much higher overall DPM, better survivability, and more QoL.

• "Too active" of a gameplay can make you less aware/capable of external contributions to boss fights (track timers, party management, active muling).

• Content that benefit from having a Corsair sees no strongly distinguishable benefit over hiring anyone else. For example: hiring NL/Shadowers to Pink Bean, BMs to any pinnable boss, or Buccaneer for most bosses provide notable impact for the duration of the fight and its outcome. Corsairs provide no perceivable benefit to the team, outside of a faster clear time in some non time-sensitive bosses. But if clear time is a focal point, why play 1 Corsair when 2 NLs do trick?

• Least played endgame class. Lack of voice to bring up issues, and nothing happens.

• Similarly: no active staff plays Corsair, which means no staff can provide current-meta perspective nor has strong personal incentive to bring up the class' issues to the table.

• Social credit requirements: just about no host looks to recruit Corsairs for bossing past mid-game bossing. People may need to know you for you to get into content, compared to many other classes that can be publicly recruited.

• Low population == low amounts of Corsair gear on the market. I've seen people genuinely get confused on why anyone would scroll a Red Belly Duke with DEX.

• Heavily unemployable if you're HP-challenged. You're already in a challenge to be hired, but you also need HB? Hard sell, or outright impossible.

And the accessibility issues:

• If you have high latency, you're playing a nerfed Corsair. The Battleship is ping dependent both when mounting and unmounting. This means a smaller window to dodge attacks as you're stuck in that slow boat for longer before you can move faster with Recoil Shot, and lower DPM as you cannot use any skills while you finish mounting your boat again. The Octo->Ship->Ship macro or Airstrike->Ship->Ship gets to a point where it's not even worth using because it's faster to just use a singular Octopus or Airstrike.

• You need a setup that allows for jumpcasting. This is either a keyboard layout that allows for jumpcasting (hardware and keybind specific), or Sticky Keys on Windows. Don't like how Sticky Keys work or difficult to set up with a non-Windows device? Have fun being crippled on your immobile boat and with lower DPM since you'll be repositioning without attacking all day (You also have copium avoid and no stance - go figure).

At the core of it all:

For the comparably high amounts of focus, skill and lack of QoL a Corsair has to overcome to perform at its best, the benefits are laughable and challenged by other classes whose optimal DPM cycle is to hold down a damn button.

 

you really don’t want the original Neckson design. just check the skill changes thread