Feedback Upcoming Corsair updates and plans

Spoiler: Edits

[10/2/2025]
Tweaked max Battleship HP, HP losses, and HP regains to account for considerations regarding 1) the ease of attaining theoretical "max" regains, and 2) unlikelihood of experiencing "true" worst-case losses for prolonged periods of time

Link to sheet - I recommend starting here.

So I've been wanting to reply to this thread for awhile, though between having stack of other things to do and the idea of coming up with a rework just being... daunting... I managed to put it off for quite some time. Once I finally got around to working on this in earnest, it turned out that cooking up a set of ideas that were cohesive actually takes quite a lot of time and effort to do (even having as much experience with the class as I do, I should have expected this *looks at DK*).

I also thought about writing this whole ass preface talking about the philosophy of the class as one which emphasized high player action/skill/attention, and how such a design was compatible with the approach that Balance Team is taking, but honestly, I'm not going to bother writing much more here beyond saying that I and many others deeply desire for this class to remain high skill cap, but do believe that some tweaks can be made to accommodate a global game (i.e., players with bad ping), as well as make the class more approachable to newcomers (i.e., not hinge on having extensive knowledge about boss damage numbers). Everyone on staff should know where I stand on these topics - particularly with respect Corsair - I really don't think I need to beat this horse further (though I will throw verbal hands if I see too much chatter from people who want to make this class yet another AFK Lord, oppose change on the basis on of disliking change, etc.).

I do want to give a quick shoutout to Miney, Gurk, and akashsky, as these guys helped greatly both with respect to refining some of the ideas, as well as with motivating me to get this post done as soon as possible. I should also mention GrimSanity, Karn, LeonardoJF, and Lin, who provided some additional feedback themselves.

Anyway, here's the post. I've done my best to keep it concise but honestly it's still long as fuck: you have been warned. I recommend anyone interested in reading this comprehensive set of suggestions start by looking at the sheet I worked in while designing and redesigning this proposed rework, as it should be a lot easier to read. Do mind that more in-depth explanations are presented for most suggestions within this post's body than one will be able to find in the "Changes Summary" tab of the sheet: that tab is literally just a summary. If some particular thing doesn't seem to make sense to you, please take a look at the post body's relevant section to see if there is more info there about why it was made.

Do let me know if there are any mistakes or inconsistencies; think I've found most of them but wouldn't be surprised if I missed something as I've revised this numerous times already.

(Although I initially grouped all of the suggested changes by job level - and they still are organized in this order within the linked sheet - I am going to go ahead and post the suggested changes to Battleship first/separately from the 4th Job skill section located a bit lower. Ultimately, this is the single most important set of suggestions, and a large majority of other suggestions made in this post assume this particular implementation of Battleship, so it just made more sense to me to give it its own section at the beginning.)

Spoiler: Battleship

Battleship

• Significant revamp; see embedded images below or the Battleship tab within the sheet for more info
• 1,000 HP at max skill level (no longer partially scales HP as a function of player level) [note 1]
• Battleship HP depletes by a flat amount any time the player is hit while mounted [note 2]
• Battleship HP depletes per cast of Cannon/Torpedo
• Battleship HP can be regained through Octopus/Gaviota hits, or via Aerial Strike hits
• Battleship can be healed while dismounted, but only if it isn't already broken (if broken, it instead heals as a function of time, and will be available again after 90s)
• Reduce knockback distance from magic attacks (like how Power Guard reduces knockback from touch damage, but only for magic attacks)
• Reduces all incoming damage by 10% while mounted (note that this has no effect on Battleship durability; it simply is a minor potion cost buff)
• Standardize the animation time of the skill regardless of the player's current weapon speed rank (to match Faster 2 speed)
• Reflect the player's speed reduction while mounted in the stats menu (should be around 60-80% speed)

Spoiler: Notes

[Note 1]
Although players who I've discussed these ideas with (and myself to some degree) seem to like the idea of Battleship durability continuing to "scale well" as the player levels, ultimately I came to determine that the skill was a lot easier to balance if it scaled simply as a function of the skill level. With this in mind, it still would experience some "player level scaling" aspects in this proposed system as a function of things like player stats increasing with level (hence more avoid), as well as the leveling of other skills (such as Wrath of the Octopi, which leads to more hits per Octopus per minute, or in other words, more recovered Battleship HP).

[Note 2]
Insofar as anything suggested here is "controversial", this is probably one of those places. I think people who don't play the class but think they understand it may be quick to say things like "but dismounting is an integral aspect of the class and ensures high APM!". While I used to agree with this to some extent, I've become more disillusioned with maintaining this aspect, particularly after working on the initial DK rework suggestions. The truth is, the class is still incredibly high APM without maintaining this aspect via aspects such as:

1) the need to recast summons often and with good placement
2) the need to reposition often (particularly through jump casting to maintain DPM)
3) the need to monitor HP much more closely than other classes due to our lack of damage reduction and lack of avoidability
4) the existing need to dismount/remount to gain access to our primary mobility skill/damage skill respectively

Although I used to think that the nature of HP washing having a sort of inverse relationship with Battleship durability (via how hard 1/1s hit) was "self-balancing", I've abandoned this notion as I've come to accept that HP washing is just... completely fucking busted across the board and completely shits on nearly every attempt to "balance" the game. Thus, there's simply no good justification to punish Corsairs in a way that no other classes is in order to "balance" against washing - it must be done in some other way. As alluded to earlier, I believe that changing the nature of how hits affect Battleship's HP will generally just make the class more approachable (which is a good thing), while being workable from the perspective of balancing the class to keep it's skill cap high.

Spoiler: Images

I do also want to include a quick note on the behavior of Octopus, as the implementation of this skill absolutely must be adjusted in order for this system to work as intended in all scenarios. As such, this section is mainly for Pasta, as this primarily (presumably) concerns client code (which for those who don't know, is notoriously difficult to figure out and work with). Everyone else can skip this particular section. Some of these points are more obvious while others are a bit more obscure, but hopefully these observations/notes will help identify the relevant portion of client code and offer a solution to fix it with the least amount of headache as possible.

Spoiler: Octopus Behavior (Don't Read This)

• Although the Octopus is a summon, it is NOT indicated by a buff icon, and cannot be "canceled" once placed unless the player leaves the map, enters Cash Shop, or changes channels
• When a player places an Octopus, it will "land" a short distance in front of them (it also cannot be placed if the player is too close to the edge of their given platform, so there is some sort of check in this respect)
• Whether it is a 2-stack or a 1-stack depends on whether or not the player has at least one or more SP in Wrath of the Octopi [id=5220002] (this also affects its attack period - a 2-stack will attack every 1530ms if it can, whereas a 1-stack attacks half as often, presumably every 3060ms)
• The cooldown of Octopus is 10 seconds at all levels of Octopus and Wrath of the Octopi
• How long the Octopus summon lasts is a function of the skill level of either Octopus (if the player has no points in Wrath) or of Wrath of the Octopi (if they do)
• The Octopus experiences a short period after it is summoned where its duration meter is (seemingly) depleting, but it cannot attack, as it must "animate" itself into existence (this causes it to "lose" an attack that one would otherwise mathematically expect it to experience given its duration and attack period)
• There are a series of requirements that exist that a given Octopus must fulfill in order to determine whether it will attack, and what it will hit, and every Octopus summon active at a given moment has its own set of requirements (i.e., they check their own requirements independently of each another)
• Step #1: the Octopus's attack period (1530ms) must have passed (i.e., the Octopus must be "ready" to attack)
• Step #2: if the Octopus is "ready" to attack, another check is made that asks whether the player (i.e., not the Octopus) is in range of ANY monster on the map (note that it does NOT matter for the purposes of this particular check whether the Octopus is able to hit said thing being checked)
• Step #3: if the first two steps are fulfilled, the Octopus will then attempt to check whether it can hit whatever monster is closest to the player, which it seems to do by first comparing the player's position relative to the edge of the hitbox of whatever monster they are closest to, then checking whether the Octopus itself is in range of this hitbox edge (do note that I think it is evaluating this based on hitbox edge (similar to how Warrior Crashes seem to work) rather than monster origin (which is how Priest Dispel seems to work), but it could involve checks in both respects)
• Step #4: if the Octopus CANNOT hit whatever is closest to the player, it instead will hit whatever is closest to itself

Assuming the suggestion to apply the target-locking behavior of Homing Beacon to Octopus attacks is given the green light (refer to that section for a bit more info), I believe the simplest way to do this is to add an additional check before Step #3, where the Octopus should check to see if 1) there is a Beaconed target on the map, and if so 2) whether it is in range of this thing (and if so, it should prefer to hit this thing). The additional checks regarding attempting to hit whatever is closest to the player and defaulting to hit whatever is closest to it if it cannot I believe can be maintained without issue, though I do think it seems reasonable to increase the "valid range" which an Octopus uses to determine whether it is able to hit something in the first place should be enlarged (by about 10-15%), as discussed in the Octopus section later on.

Thanks for reading this Davi o7

Spoiler: General

While Battleship is active:

• Avoidability = DEX x 0.1 + LUK x 0.4 [note 1]

While Battleship is not active:

• Avoidability = DEX x 0.25 + LUK x 0.4 [note 2]

- Change the name of Sommersault Kick to Somersault Kick, as the current name is misspelled

- Fix buffed pet movement speed (i.e., after Kenta's quest) so that "fast" pets no longer become slower than their vanilla speed when the player is mounted on the Battleship


Blaze Capsule & Glaze Capsule:

• Remove the 50% reduction on calculated damage that is applied if the player casts Flamethrower/Ice Splitter without the respective Capsule [note 3]
• Increase the (invisible) bullet attack value of Capsules from +16 (speculated value) to +40 (see Flamethrower/Ice Splitter sections for additional important info)
• If the player does not have a Blaze/Glaze Capsule, Flamethrower/Ice Splitter should not consume bullets, only MP (but bullet attack value should be calculated as 0)

Spoiler: Notes

[Note 1]
The first thing to mention here is the suggestion to (further) nerf the player's avoidability formula while mounted from a ratio of 8 DEX : 1 avoid to a ratio of 10 DEX : 1 avoid. While at a glance this might seem outrageous to some Corsair players considering how unfavorable the class's avoidability formula already is, it should be noted that the reason why (some) players seem to want more avoidability for Corsair as the class currently exists is to 1) improve their 'ship's durability (i.e., by allowing them to take less damage while mounted), and 2) to make the class less annoying to reposition. However, it should be said that both of these aspects are greatly accounted for via the suggestion to change all hits to a flat amount of Battleship damage, as well as via the suggestion to reduce the knockback distance from magic attacks while mounted. Lastly, the suggestion to reduce incoming damage by 10% while mounted should serve to counteract some of the potion cost concerns that might be brought up due to the class's nature as one which is not naturally dodgy/has no damage reduction otherwise.

In my opinion, I think that a slight nerf to the avoidability formula while mounted when considered in tandem with the changes to Battleship overall make playing the class a lot more consistent, as repositioning will have to be done at a more reliable and predictable rate.

[Note 2]
Although I was initially opposed to the idea to increase Corsair's avoidability while in an unmounted state due to fears that more pressing issues regarding the class's balance would be disregarded/considered "addressed" as a result, I've come around on this aspect. It's my understanding that akashsky was the first one to bring this up, and I think his summary summed it up well and concisely, which was roughly "It's really just a minor survivability buff to bring them in line with other ranged classes". I agree with it in this way, particularly in cases of seduction, as it requires the player to react to situations as they occur (whether by dismounting prior or by right-clicking after the icon afterward).

[Note 3]
Although the common explanation for Blaze Capsules and Glaze Capsules is that they "increase your Flamethrower and Ice Splitter damage", as far as I can tell, this isn't reaaaally the case. What actually seems to be happening when you cast one of these skills without the proper capsule is that the damage is calculated as normal (I believe using either the bullet attack of what you have equipped or defaulting to either 16 or 0), and then the damage is simply halved. In my opinion (and from my observation as someone who played their Corsair completely from 1 to 200), this implementation is needlessly harsh on dumb noobs (again, such as myself), so this damage reduction should be removed entirely (if it does indeed exist as I speculate).

A new implementation for how to calculate these damage values is suggested across the Capsule section and the Flamethrower/Ice Splitter sections, and involves 1) providing a significant boost to the Capsule's "invisible" attack value (suggested to be bumped from the speculated value of 16 to 40), and allowing the skills to be castable without the capsules, but calculating the projectile attack value as 0 (and not consuming a regular bullet in the process).

It is extremely important to note at this point that while it appears that the player can cast/does output damage with these skills without bullets already, this is merely a client-side quirk. Although damage lines appear and monsters get knocked back under these circumstances, the monsters are NOT actually damaged. This is clearly a bug and should thus be fixed regardless of whether the other suggestions are implemented.

Spoiler: 1st Job

Dash

• Allow to be castable while on a rope (either by pressing the mapped skill or by double tapping either the left or right directional key, the same ways as normal) [note]

Spoiler: Note

Currently, the increased speed/jump effect of Dash can be active while on a rope, but 1) the skill must be casted prior to latching on, and 2) the player must continue to hold the directional key (left or right) they were facing when they latched onto the rope. This change serves to give this skill more utility to all Pirates, but particularly to lower level players in places like LPQ that are already rope/ladder-heavy.

Spoiler: 2nd Job

Grenade

• Reduce charge time by 50% (presumably from 1000ms to 500ms) (alternatively, simply remove the charge behavior of this skill, and make it somewhat like DKT Axe Throw with the attack interval and damage modifiers appropriately balanced)
• Utilize the player's Gun Mastery level in its calculation
• Utilize bullet attack value in its calculation
• Consume a bullet on cast (see above)
• Change to 6 targets at all skill levels

Spoiler: Notes

As it is currently implemented, Grenade is an awful skill. There are quite a few reasons for this, but one major contributing factor to this is the charge time. When your alternative (Double Shot) has excellent range and cast speed, the charge time of Grenade makes the Grenade option look incredibly unattractive. Reducing the charge time by some degree will help with this, though this isn't the only thing that should be done.

Although the skill requires an equipped gun in order to cast, as far as I can tell, the skill doesn't actually consider your Gun Mastery in its calculation. If this is indeed the case, utilizing the player's Gun Mastery % in the damage calculation will help this dogshit skill be a bit less trash.

Beyond this - and similarly, as far as I can tell - the skill does not consider the player's bullet attack value in its damage calculation, which is yet another factor of why this skill is just terrible (it might also not consider the player's gun attack value either, though I honestly haven't looked that closely). This technically makes sense, as the skill does not actually use a bullet whenever it is casted. So in this way, I guess we can praise Neckson for correctly implementing this aspect of this awful ability. Good job Neckson. But yeah, needless to say this skill would be aided a bit by bumping the player's attack value when casting it.

The suggestion to up the number of targets the skill can hit at all levels to 6 will also make leveling the skill feel a bit less ass - simply boosting the damage multiplier per SP seems like perfectly reasonable leveling scaling.

Blank Shot

• Utilize Gun Mastery in its calculation (as it requires an equipped gun in order to cast)

Spoiler: Notes

Basically the same ideas as mentioned in the Grenade section. While it makes sense to not consider the player's bullet attack value in the case of Blank Shot as the skill literally describes that you are shooting a blank instead of a bullet, it seems completely reasonable that the skill should consider the player's Gun Mastery, as it similarly requires an equipped gun in order to cast.

Wings

• Allow to be castable while mounted on the Battleship (currently is possible to be mounted while Wings effect is active, but Wings must be casted while unmounted)
• Allow to be castable while mounted on a Taming Mob (currently is possible to be mounted while Wings effect is active, but Wings must be casted while unmounted)

Spoiler: Notes

In both of these cases, it is possible to have the Wings effect active while mounted, however, Wings must be casted prior to mounting in order for the effect to apply in this state.

It should be noted to those who are unfamiliar with the skill that Wings effectively acts like a regular jump with modified behavior: the player ascends as they normally do when they jump, but when they reach the apex of their jump and begin to fall, the Wings effect will kick in and slow the player's descent (though the effect will wear off after a few moments unless the player continues to press/hold the Wings button). In this way, it seems reasonable that the skill should be castable while mounted upon either the Battleship or a Taming Mob, as the player is already allowed to jump while mounted on either of these entities.

While this change might not appear to have a huge amount immediately obvious effects, it does allow for some interesting repositioning (a central aspect of the class's short-term gameplay loop) strategies that now can actually be integrated into the player's gameplay (that is, the way it is currently implemented does not really allow for it to be utilized as a repositioning mechanic).

Recoil Shot

• Reduce post-animation cooldown from 1000ms to 700ms (effectively reducing the cooldown between casts from 1300ms to 1000ms) [note 1]
• Grant the user 0.3s of immunity (iframes) immediately following cast (this matches the length of its duration) [note 2]

Spoiler: Notes

[Note 1]
What is important to note first and foremost is that although it is stated in a few places that the "cooldown" of this skill already is 1000ms, this cooldown only actually applies after the animation of Recoil Shot has completed (and this animation duration is 300ms). That is, the skill has an effective cooldown between uses of 1300ms. Reducing the post-animation cooldown from 1000ms to 700ms will make using this skill in tandem with Wings feel a LOT better, particularly in situations when the player is trying to move through maps with many mobs and constantly is having their momentum killed because we don't avoid shit (every Corsair player will attest to how frustrating this is, particularly considering the class's reputation as one with "good" mobility).

[Note 2]
The other suggestion made here is to grant the player 300ms of iframes following a cast of Recoil Shot (again, this matches the length of the duration of Recoil Shot's animation time, which in this case is the period following the initial usage where the player is unable to do anything else, including latch onto ropes/ladders). This is something which I've brought up to a number of Corsair players, and one which has been quite positively received. Not only will this help with the aforementioned issues of constantly having one's momentum completely killed while trying to move longer distances, it also gives the class an "on-demand" iframe (in other words, a form of parry), and this latter reason in particular is something which has made people who I've discussed this concept with quite excited. The ability to "dodge" something like a Pink Bean stun by timing an extremely narrow window over it synthesizes incredibly well with the class's reputation as one which allows for a great degree of player skill expression.

Although iframes are extremely powerful and should be treated with a great degree of scrutiny from a balance perspective, I believe that this suggestion is balanced due to the extremely short duration/relative lack of ability to "spam" the skill, as well as due to the fact that the player must first unmount their Battleship in order to cast Recoil Shot (i.e., it requires an additional action any time the player wishes to use it while in an "attacking" state). In any case, this ability to have an "on-demand" iframe should pale in comparison to say, a Buccaneer's ability to gain on-demand iframes, which 1) are granted on their primary damage-dealing skills (Barrage and Demolition), 2) have a longer duration than the suggestion here would, and 3) (presumably) are much more "spammable" than this suggested revision of Recoil Shot would be.

I sincerely hope that BT will open to implementing this aspect of the suggestion in particular.

Spoiler: 3rd Job

Burst Fire

• Implement this ability as a standalone active skill

Spoiler: Notes

It should be noted to those who are unaware that Burst Fire is technically a passive skill. However, upon adding a single SP to the Burst Fire, the default behavior of Double Shot is effectively "overwritten", and it adopts the "Burst Fire behavior" (i.e., an extra shot, but a much longer cast time/attack period). Although Burst Fire was tweaked in Legends to account for the fact that - in the original implementation - the skill actually had worse DPM at levels 1-8 compared to maxed Double Shot, these tweaks still did not account for the fact that Double Shot was simply a faster-hitting skill.

While this might seem like a trivial or dumb suggestion to someone who does not play the class, it actually is quite common to hear Corsair players to lament the loss of Double Shot, as sometimes there are simply cases where one would wish to hit things faster, particularly in cases where they are already 1-shotting. As far as I know, no other attacking skill overwrites another skill in the way Burst Fire does, and thus, I humbly ask for us to retain our original 1st job skill in addition to gaining the ability to use Burst Fire, if only for the sake of consistency.

Octopus

• Increase duration from 40 seconds to 50 seconds at max level [note 1]
• Consume 1 bullet per Octopus attack [note 2]
• Heal 2.5 Battleship HP (0.25%) every time an Octopus hits a monster (refer to Battleship changes for relevance)
• Reduce the animation/cast time of octopus from ~800ms to ~400ms (or however short it needs to be to eliminate the need to animation cancel) [note 3]
• Increase range by ~10-15%
• See Octopus/Wrath tab for more info

Spoiler: Notes

[Note 1]
This importantly allows the player to output 160 Octopus "hits" per minute at an absolute maximum if they position their summons properly. Do note that if the 50 second Octopus is deemed inappropriate for whatever reason, the maximum amount of hits for a 40 second Octopus is NOT 26 (40000ms / 1530ms), but 25, as the summon has a short "animation period" (roughly 1000ms) that it has to undergo before it can start attacking. If 5 active Octopi is deemed inappropriate, I might instead suggest a 60 second duration with a 15 second cooldown and an attack period of 1450ms to ensure that the 160 hits / minute figure is still reached.

[Note 2]
Although this might seem a bit out of line with respect to other suggestions made and their accompanying logic, this suggestion is made simply because a player performing well would likely experience less Battleship downtime during a fight. This impacts bullet usage as Rapid Fire uses a relatively large amount of bullets given its low usage overall, and given the player would be using less Rapid Fire, it seems reasonable to suggest that Octopus hits should consume bullets to not greatly diminish a Corsair's need for bullets in this particular rework structure (full Octopus uptime over the course of an hour equates to 9600 hits per hour, which would equate to about 2.25 stacks of bullets used if this behavior is adopted.

[Note 3]
The question of whether it is "worth" it to cast Octopus comes down to a basic opportunity cost analysis (i.e., how many Cannon casts do you lose by casting an Octopus?). Players minimize the "cost" of casting Octopus by macroing the skill followed by two Battleship casts, which - both in a mounted and unmounted state - "cancels" a majority of the delay one normally experiences when casting the skill. Truth be told, even having spoken with xiaoyaoz about animation canceling before, the nature of its implementation is still a bit obscure to me apart from the fact that it requires a transformation to be done.

In any case, I think it simply makes a lot more sense and is in the spirit of part of the intent of this suggested redesign to eliminate the need to animation cancel as not only it disproportionately affects players with poor ping, while rewarding players with good ping, but summon usage are basically a hard requirement in this redesign should players wish to use gameplay avenues to maintain their Battleship indefinitely in long fights.

Gaviota

• Increase maximum hits per cast from 1 to 3 (i.e., make it attack indefinitely with an attack period of ~5000ms)
• Decrease duration at max level from 30 seconds to 15 seconds at all levels
• Increase the cooldown from 5 seconds to 15 seconds at all levels [note 1 & 2]
• Consume 1 bullet per Gaviota attack
• Heals 37.5 Battleship HP on hit (refer to Battleship changes for relevance)
• Allow to be castable while airborne
• Increase range by ~10-15%

Spoiler: Notes

[Note 1]
The main aspect to discuss here is the suggestion to effectively lower the amount of casts a player must do for Gaviota threefold. Initially I wasn't a fan of this idea due to it lowering the APM for the player in this respect, though I honestly think it is fine to make this change as APM is already high enough. It will also help players who struggle to "not lose" an attack (even though it is 0-cast time) while attempting to cast it

[Note 2]
One thing I should mention particularly is that I am adamantly opposed to making this skill have the same duration/ability to re-attack monsters as Magician/Bowman summons. It is integral to this class's design/underlying ethos that both summons have relatively short cooldowns, and increasing the re-cast period from 5 seconds to 15 seconds (with the same number of attacks per time unit) is the absolute furthest I support "buffing" the duration of this skill.

Flamethrower

• Revert the base multiplier from 220% to 160% at max level [note 1]
• Increase DoT tick at all levels of the skill from 5% (of the original damage line) to 10%
• Allow Flamethrower's unique DoT effect to apply to boss-tagged monsters [note 2]
• Increase DoT duration from 5 seconds at max level to 15 seconds (note the "tick" period is 1000ms) [note 3]
• Reduce the delay before the intial DoT tick from 1000ms to 500ms (note that the "tick" period should remain 1000ms)

Spoiler: Notes

[Note 1]
Do note that this change must be considered in tandem with the suggestions made to Capsules: the damage per cast of the skills with a buffed Capsule and reverted multiplier will be basically the same as it is currently (with the "buffed" multipliers), but with the added boon of not horrendously punishing dumb noobs who don't know about capsules.

[Note 2]
I think the suggestion to add DoT on boss monsters is something that will make anyone on BT shit their pants, but the truth is, the only reason it a nightmare to balance is due to the implementation of DoT for ALL other DoT skills (Poison, Demons, Shadow Web, and maybe whatever that other buggy Thief skill is).

However, the DoT calculation on Flamethrower is completely different: instead of scaling as a function of the monster's max HP/level of the skill, Flamethrower DoT scales as a function of the amount of damage the player initially does with the cast of Flamethrower (currently 5% for maxed Flamethrower, or 10% if the player has maxed Elemental Boost. As a result, and in combination with all of the other relevant suggestions made here, allowing DoT from Flamethrower to apply to boss monsters would allow for players to integrate another skill into their diverse rotation of skills should they choose, allowing for a marginal - but positive - net gain on DPM.

Finally, it should be noted that the the implementation along with the particular leveling scaling suggested accounts for this skill's usage as a potential leech-selling method: it should not be exploitable, and as far as I have attempted to try to do so, it is not.

If DrChuchu, xiaoyaoz, and Pasta are willing to entertain such an idea, I'm happy to share my sheet which contains numbers analyzing how much of an effect this would have on DPM, but I didn't want it to get in the way of the more important things included in the linked one.

[Note 3]
As noted later on, the DoT duration gets increased to 45 seconds total if the player has both maxed Flamethrower and maxed Elemental Boost.

Ice Splitter

• Revert the base multiplier from 180% to 130% at max level
• Increase Ice Splitter's minimum freeze duration from 1 second to 3 seconds, and maximum freeze duration from 3 seconds to 4 seconds

Spoiler: Notes

Refer to the Flamethrower section for notes on the relevance of the multiplier reduction.

The slight bump in minimum freeze duration is due to the following:

1) 1 second of freeze at the lowest levels is absolute dogass garbage utility when the player already has access to a 2nd job skill that stuns for a maximum of 4 seconds, and hits more targets (do mind that that Ice Splitter only hits 2(!) monsters at its lowest levels)
2) It seems reasonable to give this skill a matching "hold" duration as Blank Shot (even though it hits more targets) considering it requires 10 levels worth of SP to max, and does not work on monsters which are Ice resistant/immune.

Just let players fucking cook a little bit, please.

Homing Beacon

• Allow target-locking effects to apply to summon attacks (so long as they are in range)
• Implement granular bonus damage normally only granted from Bullseye to Homing Beacon (i.e., the bonus damage should be spread out across both skills) [note 1]
• See Beacon/Bullseye tab for more info

Spoiler: Notes

[Note 1]
The main thing to glean here is that the Homing Beacon -> Bullseye tree can effectively be viewed as a single skill which requires 50 SP to max (guh). The problem is, the distribution of benefits is horrifically designed. Currently, the player gains the entire "benefit" of Homing Beacon after assigning a single point of SP to the skill (i.e., the target-locking aspect). After this, the only "benefit" of leveling the skill at third job is slight increases to the damage multiplier that is used when the player tags a monster with a Homing Beacon. As this is not a meaningful damage-dealing skill itself, there is absolutely NO benefit of leveling this skill at third job beyond 1 SP, and doing so is actually just straight up griefing oneself, as the skill can be fully maxed (which it must be before one is able to put any points into Bullseye) via SP washing in the early stages of 4th job, long before the player is even considering adding points to Bullseye.

We shouldn't be punishing player because their skills were balanced terribly - this skill is literally begging to be tweaked, and in the linked sheet, I've included complete tables showing how I suggest going about doing so.

Spoiler: 4th Job

Elemental Boost

• Increase Flamethrower's DoT effect by 1% per level of Elemental Boost (40% max) [note 1]
• Increase Flamethrower's DoT duration by 1 second per level of Elemental Boost (45s max) [note 1]
• Increase Ice Splitter's Freeze duration by 3 seconds at max level (still +1 second at level 1) [note 2]
• See Elemental Boost tab for level scaling info

Spoiler: Notes

[Note 1]
Refer to the Flamethrower notes section for a bit more insight on the DoT aspects. In short, this implementation should not be exploitable in any manner, and I can share my sheet analyzing the angles if you (BT/staff) so wish.

[Note 2]
This effectively raises the max freeze duration of Ice Splitter from 5 seconds (in the current implementation) to 6 seconds (in the suggested implementation). I think this is completely reasonable given that the attack is directional and short range, and requires both 3rd and 4th job SP to reach such a threshold.

Wrath of the Octopi

• Increase duration from 40s to 50s at max level [note 1]
• See Octopus tab for level scaling info

Spoiler: Notes

[Note 1]
It should be said that this allows for the player to have 5 Octopi summons active at any given moment, however, it more importantly allows for the player to output 160 Octopus hits per minute, which is an integral assumption of the Battleship rework suggestions.

Bullseye

• Bonus damage from weapon attacks reduced from 20% to 15% at max skill level [note 1]
• Bonus damage from summon attacks increased from 20% to 60% at max skill level
• See Beacon/Bullseye tab for level scaling info

Spoiler: Notes

[Note 1]
While I actually think that "nerfing" the weapon attack bonus on Beaconed targets is completely unnecessary from the perspective of not making Corsair "too OP" (let's be completely real here, it's still gonna be less DPM and APM than two NLs, so this discussion is completely nonsensical in the first place), it should be noted that the slight reduction in weapon attack damage actually basically completely accounts for the (seemingly) significant buff to summon damage on Beaconed targets, as the proportion of total damage output from a player heavily favors Cannon rather than summons.

Instead, this change is meant to further reinforce the idea that the player must be using their summons, and is made partly as a show of good faith on my behalf as the author of this post: I think the class will be plenty "buffed" by the suggested changes to its gameplay loop; keeping the dummy DPM more or less the same seems like a good place to start.

Aerial Strike

• Heals 50 Battleship HP (5%) on valid hit (max. 1 per cast)
• See Battleship tab for more info

Spoiler: Notes

Beyond mentioning (to those unfamiliar) that this skill is NOT castable while mounted (though it can and should be animation-canceled), the main thing to note here is that a single cast of Aerial Strike should heal no more than 20 Battleship HP per cast in this proposed system. So long as the skill hits at least 1 target, the boat should be healed for this amount, and should not scale as a function of the number of things hit (otherwise it becomes too weak, or too powerful - there is no between).

Rapid Fire

• Increase range (castable distance) by ~10-15%
• Allow this skill to be castable while airborne (and allow the player to jump while the skill is already channeled) [note 1]
• Allow menuing (e.g., opening inventory interface) while channeling Rapid Fire [note 2]
• Allow Gaviota to be castable while channeling Rapid Fire [note 3]

Spoiler: Notes

[Note 1]
This idea is very basic, and is justified by the nature of the class as one which can do all of its skills (save for summons) prior to 4th job while airborne. While I also fully support this suggestion be applied to it's sister skill Hurricane as well, I will only mention that briefly as it is not the subject of this post.

[Note 2]
This idea is mainly an extension of the ability to consume potions while channeling this skill, which was implemented for both Hurricane and Rapid Fire somewhat recently. While the player can consume potions that are mapped to keyboard buttons, they technically cannot consume potions (such as attack pots) by clicking on them while channeling the skill (let alone even open the inventory interface in the first place.

[Note 3]
Although Gaviota is a "0-cast time" skill, it cannot currently be casted while channeling Rapid Fire. Due to it being a relatively weak attack in the first place, it actually isn't even worth it to cease casting Rapid Fire to cast a Gaviota (unless one is already doing something else), unlike casting it while mounted, which is "worth" it due to its nature as a 0-cast time skill in such a case). By allowing it to be casted while channeling, we reinforce the class's nature as one which has/should utilize its diverse skillset.

Battleship Cannon

• Allow to be castable while airborne [note 1]
• Consumes 4 Battleship HP (0.4% @ max Battleship level) when cast
• See Battleship tab for more info

Spoiler: Notes

[Note 1]
It seems like this has been brought up in earlier comments, though needless to say I support this change insofar as it 1) is in line with the class's attack ethos established during 1st, 2nd, and 3rd job, and because it makes the class much more approachable to players by eliminating the need to use sticky keys to jump-cast this skill and Torpedo. The "benefits" of this change are quite significant in this respect, and ultimately, the player requirement to reposition is still an integral aspect of the class, but now is much more palatable in general.

Battleship Torpedo

• Allow to be castable while airborne
• Consumes 4 Battleship HP (0.4% @ max Battleship level) when cast
• See Battleship tab for more info

Spoiler: Notes

See Battleship Cannon section notes.

Hypnotize

• Reworked; Hypnotize debuff no longer turns enemies into friendlies, instead the debuff allows summons to do 40% bonus damage to Hypnotized target at max skill level
• Remove failure chance at all levels; level scaling instead affects debuff duration and % bonus damage
• See Hypnotize tab for level scaling info

Spoiler: Notes

I will admit that I actually was initially opposed to the idea of Hypnotize being reworked in such a way so as to give Corsairs a sort of "party buff", as the class currently offers no party/expedition utility aside from fantastic single-target DPM... but I've actually come around to this idea quite a lot (shoutout to Miney for pushing me on this topic and insisting that it was a good idea (I do change my mind btw :kekw: ).

When balancing this suggested reworked skill, I worked with the assumption that bonus damage would be calculated at the end of the damage calculation, with the damage being multiplied by:

>> 1 + skillLevelBonus

e.g., at max Hypnotize level, summon Damage = Damage x (1 + 0.4)

I also worked with the assumption that this bonus - for Corsairs ONLY - would be additive with the multiplier gained from Bullseye.

e.g., in the case when a player has maxed Bullseye and the monster they are attacking is applied with a max-level Hypnotize debuff, Damage = Damage x (1 + 0.4 + 0.6)

Lastly, it should be mentioned that a monster may only have one Hypnotize debuff applied to it at a time, although a player can cast Hypnotize on as many monsters as they please (just like Hamstring/Blind). However, the skill needs to be applied directly via using Hypnotize (like Slow/Seal), unlike Hamstring/Blind, which apply passively as the player hits a monster so long as the buff is active.

Anyway, that's it. I probably missed/forgot to include something, can clarify in a reply if anything is amiss. Thanks for reading.

Spoiler: c'mon, say it

Corsair PB

 

+1 to everything said in this.
As a lvl 155 upcoming sair these possible changes sound amazing.
especially like the idea of shifting cannon spam to a more higher apm class through the use of summons which would make this class different from other classes that just spam their main attack skill.
Brotha cooked up a class that actually looks and functions like an irl battleship through the usage of support and multiple ordinances love that it makes it different from a reskinned NL with less avoid and cannon balls instead of throwing stars.
p.s. LEMME THROW GRENADES LIKE THEY DO AXES IN DEMON TOWER
-ps part 2 (highly recommend giving the sheet a look its a lot easier to visualize the suggestions)

 

I don't know how unpopular my opinion is since I'm relatively new to this job and I set out to do a challenge very different from what you see in the game. I liked the idea of making the game more dynamic, but I believe that for that to happen it would be necessary to implement a similar mechanic in more jobs, otherwise it would only scare new players more and more.So it would be something that needs to be discussed

Regarding the towers in the 3rd job, I believe that increasing the time would require engagement with the elemental skill in the 4th job, for example. more points in this skill gives more freezing and burning time,I saw the buff in the attack of these skills being one of the things that made the 3rd job less bad,and unfortunately in this version's maple that's it, exchanging damage for utility is not a good trade at this level,so having an engagement with the 4th job skill benefits new players and end games.

overall I liked it, boa padrinho

 

it should be clarified and heavily noted that i am not a corsair player in the slightest, and that my knowledge of corsair comes from playing bits and pieces of it far later into the game's life cycle (after many reworks later), as well as talking to people such as mr hampy here and others who he also mentioned in this post. as such, i dont think my opinion has, or should, hold much weight other than the value of coming from someone who is "new" to the class. it is also because of this lack of experience that i wont go over specifics because i aint gonna be that guy who talks outta his ass and act like i know what im saying.

that being said, i just want to comment and say that this proposed system overall looks far more appealing to me vs the current system. i do like the general idea of encouraging summon play for both direct and indirect damage purposes, with the direct being the summon damage itself and the indirect being to keep up the boat hp to keep using your other battleship skills. theres also some very nice quality of life changes in here, such as the changes for dash, homing beacon, and all of the 2nd job skills, that are nice on their own.

i also want to quickly comment since it was brought up, that while i do understand the argument that people have for boat dismounting, at the same time ive always felt like it gets shafted when you go to certain boss fights that just spam the ever living shit outta you with attacks, such as horntail, 3rd main body of zakum, and pink bean. while it may be fine to do in other fights such as krexel and toad, it feels too all over the place as a consistent strategy, on top of the fact that its effectiveness is ping related. i would prefer the apm of the class be focused on/shown through other parts of the class, rather than on boat dismounting, which i am glad these proposed changes shift away from.

while i wont comment on specific numbers and what not as i aint got a clue on those, i would say that there is a lot of potential with this system at its core, and i think it should definitely be considered and viewed at the very least, even if there are heavy changes made from this original proposal, or only some aspects of it are used

good work on the post and changes overall mr hampta! hopefully now you will stay out of the kitchen for your own sanity

 

Seems like it includes many of the ideas presented in this thread and previous threads with some potential numbers. Things such as a more normalized boat damage, methods to keep the boat alive via active participation, more emphasis on summons/attack rotations, and less punishment for not frequently dismounting in hard-hitting content.

Im not sure how it would all feel without a test, but there are a few initial noteworthy observations to keep discussion flowing. "Traditional" sair activities like face-tanking zak/scar spawns get hit hard by consistent boat damage. Depending on which boat damage/restoration numbers actually get chosen, it could be near impossible for the sair to maintain perfect uptime that they are used to while taking trash mob hits. On the other hand, that survival rate becomes normalized to ANY similar scenario, and means that same uptime and attack patterns can be applied anywhere, including things like auf cleave and cwk cleave. The HP is more of a reservoir than before, as the goal is to simply to not let the boat hit 0 (the real boat zerk), and ration boat time accordingly. Though placing more power in the summons means that the sheer power of the boat itself is reduced, so its less punishing if it does break.

Different short questions that ive been curious about:
*how does burn damage work if there's multiple outlaws? Does it stack properly? *When is the bonus coming Beacon damage applied? Do they get shafted like hero?
*I dont think the charge timing of grenade can be easily changed as multiple skills seem to use the same one. If the charge was removed would it turn into like a mobbing 2nd job gaviota? Seems hard to position properly though. Grenade is a cool skill, cooler if it were useful.

Also, sommersault kick did nothing wrong. No need to nerf brawler with proper spelling too

 

I personally have always been a fan of leaning into the summoner/ship captain side of Corsair.

Do you feel that dismounting to avoid boat damage will still be a required part of the Corsair experience or will that apm be completely shifted towards keeping summons active. Looking at your numbers, it seems the player could stay on boat, taking less damage while also having reduced avoid, as long as they managed to keep maximum octo/gaviota up time. I agree that it will be require plenty of APM and I don't think it will be much of a loss of class identity/gameplay if thats the case. It would remove any semblance of actual afk gameplay that corsairs rarely get to enjoy though.

Would gaviota regenerate hp based on completing a hit: (1 ~ 3 monsters hit, 3.75% durability recovered) or based on each hit it lands on monsters: (3 monsters hit, 11.25% durability recovered)? And would each attack that hits use 1 bullet (1 ~ 3 monsters hit, 1 bullet) or would each monster hit use a bullet (1~3 monsters hit, 1~3 bullets)? I know you specifically stated that aerial strike should not scale upwards as it would be too easy to regenerate massive amounts of ship hp under specific situations.

Speaking of Gaviota, is it currently considered a summon for the sake of the proposed damage enhancements? While I know the features and information tab isn't fully up to date these are what is listed under "summon skills":
I know that I (and most other players I've talked to) have always assumed that Gav was a summon. Is this list a qualification (these are all of the skills classified as summons in the game's code) or a distinction (these are all of the skills that will be considered summons for the purposes of drop rate)? While Octo is a big part of a corsair's tool kit I would hate to see some of their damage shifted away from cannon and into a Gaviota if it wouldn't actually benefit from the theoretical buffs because of spaghetti code behind the scenes.

I'm also curious as to how increasing Flamethrowers damage would affect dpm by sneaking it into a bossing damage rotation. I understand why it was left out of the initial suggestion though.
Overall I think your suggestion is really good! You and everyone you coordinated with did a great job!

 

As far as the currently proposed numbers are concerned, the worst case losses as seen in the Battleship tab would be -70% HP / min (realistically less when factoring in some minimal avoid chance) and the maximum gains from summon usage would be +85% HP / min. So it would be very much possible to still maintain perfect boat uptime while making use of a mob meatshield assuming summon jank can actually be changed. You're right to point out that this same uptime potential would be applied to the likes of cleave scenarios too, for better or worse, when sair can already output rather high cleave dpm while on boat (although being forced to use octopi in cleave would in theory put some distance from the high dummy numbers).

Gaviota should only recover a static amount of HP on each attack completion and only use a single bullet.

For what it's worth, Gaviota used to be featured in that features tab until my suggestion for removing the drop rate nerf from it was accepted. So presumably it should still be considered a summon and that list only showcases what is nerfed in terms of drop rate.

 

I think about the new players too,
There would have to be a way for the summons to not interfere with the aggro of normal mobs.(I went tot, and it was very difficult to enter the mobs' range)

I particularly like the idea of the boat growing along with the char too

 

Yeah thats the part Im not sure can be properly gauged without testing. How difficult is it actually to keep such a near-perfect summon effectiveness while not needing to dismount nearly as often? The lower avoid may make it harder to reposition, but if facetanking with high hp and damage reduction is on the table... idk. Likewise, any form of downtime like wc or even some seds with well positioned summons can generate additional boat value. Is a net positive boat hp/time (thus infinite boat) even in the "worst case damage" a proper reward for keeping the summons flowing, or is it too much? Given some of the power would be transferred to summons instead of canon its hard to tell if net positive gain is a better design than a low net negative and having to find a few seconds to charge a bit back up on a downtime or lower priority target. I just think it would have to be evaluated further either in a Playtest or with in-game values to the best of our ability, as the numbers can drastically change how it plays.

 

If the question is whether or not the task of maintaining consistent summon usage would be considered enough effort as to justify the reward of infinite boat, I think that's a fair concern. This is perhaps especially so when taking into consideration the fact that one likely won't ever be getting hit as often as the worst case scenario outside of meatshields and facetanking cheese, rendering boat maintenance particularly trivial at some bosses.

Personally, I was more partial to the vanilla implementation of Gaviota (attacking only once and needing to be cast every 5 sec) and having infinite or near infinite boat lean into heavy usage of this (in addition to octo), which I would deem sufficient effort. That being said, I also agree that having net positive boat in a spammy fight might feel a bit much and would additionally trivialize and render moot the boat down time / rapid fire side of things. If we accept that boat should ideally still require some down time at the highest level of play in a fight like PB or HT however, then we've also effectively gone nowhere (even backwards perhaps given that afk content would be rendered non-afk under this proposal) in terms of providing an enticing enough reward to justify playing the class given that, with the notable exceptions of PB statues and Auf, boat already seldom breaks in the hands of a skilled pilot. More damage would have to be added somewhere.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to what kind of balance one wishes to strike between accessibility and providing a serviceable enough effort to reward ratio. Ping issues and jump attacking aside, I don't actually care too much for lowering the skill floor of the class but that may be going against the grain a bit.

 

Converting the ships HP into a smaller numerical value makes sense, especially if using the ships weapons reduce its durability and summons refresh/upkeep the ship. How did you guys decide on a flat 2 boat damage per hit instead of damage that scales with the magnitude of the hit taken? That seems like it would be inline with how ship hp is treated now. After all, thematically it doesn’t make much sense that a snail and horntail cause the same amount of damage to the hull.

 

Wow this is extremely detailed and well thought out, i will have to sit down and read it later

 

Yeah, admittedly that can come off as a bit strange thematically but it's also alas somewhat of a necessary evil to make the core gameplay loop consistent, necessary and not be a balancing nightmare. If boat uptime was balanced around lower damage hits and a snail would do 1 boat damage then the situation would still be equally miserable at harder hitting late game bosses that might do, say, 5 boat damage (not to mention it would still feel strange that a dragon would only cause 5x more hull damage than a snail anyways ).

On the other hand, if the boat uptime was balanced around high damage hits, then boat maintenance would become rather trivial at low to mid damage bosses (and especially so in any context that involves meatshields or facetanking bosses with relatively low touch damage) and players wouldn't feel as compelled to engage as fully with the summon system, which is a disservice if the aim is to provide a reward that is commensurate with the amount of effort. Basically, it's a bit of a "You can't have your cake and eat it too" type of situation.

 

Isn't it to be assumed mob meatshield strats would be a thing of the past in Hampy's system? Why would you want to face tank at all if all damage to boat is normalized? Currently, the purpose of facetanking is to take lower physical touch damage from the mobs than the harder hitting 1/1s or magic attacks. If damage is normalized, wouldn't facetanking/meatshield be counterproductive?

Seems to play well into the gameplay loop of dismounting to use summons. Gaviota/bird gen to clear mobs to regain boat HP. Can focus on proper summons cooldown rotation if your boat HP dips a bit too low, but you also won't get cucked into losing chunks of your boat HP at a time if you get stunned + 1/1'd or something.

 

face tanking would still be worth in situations where mob attacks have secondary effects, such as a status condition or dispel.

 

Wouldn't that give even more incentive to clear mobs?

 

I was addressing the reason for why all damage to boat was made to incur a static cost.

That being said, meatshield strats could still in theory be utilized to lessen repositioning needs in some circumstances, save on pot costs and as Akash mentioned, to avoid secondary effects from boss attacks. It would just require very consistent summon usage with the tentatively proposed numbers.

 

Right, i mistyped, i meant a situation like zak where zakum does stun / steal, and the mobs don't do much.

 

(Gonna preface this by saying that after some discussions, the proposed Battleship numbers are going to be tweaked slightly to better account for the fact that although it's pretty easy to hit "max" regains under this system, it's actually not super realistic to experience prolonged periods of "true worst case" losses, even with a nerfed avoidability formula. However, the main ideas will still apply, so I'm just going to reference the initial proposal for the sake of simplicity.)

These strategies definitely would still be possible, but with the caveat that they wouldn't be as AFK as they currently are (though to be fair, they aren't really all that AFK currently when comparing to other classes; they are mostly just AFK relative to a Corsair playing in a more "standard" run where ads would not be preserved). In fact, these such scenarios were actually considered specifically as being examples of cases where one could experience "worst case losses" under such a system. I think you might have just missed some important details of the proposal and/or maybe don't quite understand how a Corsair does/would play in the fights where "ad abusing" exists, so I'll clarify in both respects. There are really only two places where one can take advantage of this currently: Scarlion and/or Targa, and Zakum. Beyond this, it would actually open up the possibility to ad-frame during Bergamot, but at the cost of having to deal with their spammy zombification and accuracy debuffs (though for most Corsairs this currently isn't a strategy that's employed since they hit hard enough and have sufficient accuracy to knock out your Battleship fairly quickly).

Spoiler: Zakum

Beginning with the latter, in the absolute worst case you'd expect to be tanking a hit every 1.5s (the length of an iframe). Under the initially proposed system, this would be a loss of 20% Battleship HP per minute if one was mounted the entire time. If one was also attacking with BSC the whole time, you'd expect to lose an additional 50% Battleship HP per minute. For the sake of analyzing this quickly, let's just disregard the existence of cancels (which otherwise provide you good opportunities to regain a hefty chunk of Battleship HP).

In Zakum under this design, one could freely use both Octopus and Gaviota, the former would net you 40% HP regained per minute, and the latter an additional 45% HP per minute, so you would net out at +15% regained per minute, meaning one would not experience any attrition. Do note that under this design it is suggested that the ability to use Octopus is due to the suggestion that it ought to obey the target-locking behavior of Homing Beacon, so you actually would gain a bit of damage as well compared to what you would do now (where you don't use summons at all since they don't hit the boss). While Gaviota would hit whatever it pleases, it simply lacks the power to clear mobs en masse, and even on the occasions it does kill, Zakum will simply spawn more mobs until he reaches his cap (I do believe it is a cap for Zakum, which is not the case for every boss), so usage of this summon is not prohibitive toward what you are trying to do (and is healing your boat considerably).

Although the extra damage from Octopus might appear as a buff, it should be noted that this proposed system is considerably less AFK than it currently is, as not only would you be basically required to use summons to maintain your Battleship, but also, mounted avoidability is suggested to be given a slight nerf, meaning you expect to reposition more often. Lastly, the knockback distance reduction proposed notably would not apply here either, as that is being suggested to apply only to magic attacks and not physical ones.

Spoiler: Scarga

Scarlion and Targa are a bit different to analyze. The first thing to note is that you actually would not use Gaviota here, as this would pretty quickly whittle down your crowd of boss summons that you otherwise wish to keep. This might appear as a considerable factor to maintain one's Battleship, as you have lost 45% of your potential 85% HP regains per minute. However, there are a couple of other very important factors to consider.

The most obvious is the nature of cancels in this fight. Assuming we are just fighting one at a time, you expect to be experiencing some type of cancel about 45 seconds per 60 seconds (based on my observations having solo'd them many times and having checked my film to confirm cancel length/downtime, though feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Although it may have been bugged in the past, I've also found that the rate of weapon cancel does indeed seem to be 50%, thus, you expect to not be able to do (meaningful) damage to the boss 37.5% of the time. We can apply this to our expected rates of decay directly, and conclude that our average, worst-case HP losses per minute come out to be -26.25%. This is quite easily countered by maximum Octopus summon uptime (+40% minute), meaning from a button pressing expectation perspective, it's actually quite easy to maintain your Battleship in Scarlion/Targa.

The other aspect to consider for these bosses is the accuracy of Scaredy Scarlion and Ratatula (for reference, the former has 130 and the latter has 100). Given that accuracies are actually quite low, you end up experiencing a fair amount of MISSes when sitting on top of them even as a class with dog tier avoid. And from here it should go without saying that every MISS is considerable when considering Battleship attrition/uptime. I was gonna pull out the formulas for accuracy to illustrate dodge rate, but I think the point is already pretty clear from the last paragraph that maintaining Battleship in both fights is fairly trivial so long as one knows what they are doing (just like how it is now).

Though nominally players should be doing a good bit more damage now than before, both fights would be less AFK for a variety of reasons, and thus, I think maintaining them as practices is not only fair, but also palatable to someone who might otherwise not want to lose some gameplay avenue. Though even if one dislikes the prospect of giving a bit more DPM in exchange for more required action, it should be worth mentioning that both of these "strategies" are not really meta/gamebreaking: many other strategies for farming these bosses that are vastly more powerful and easy.

Kind of a trivial point, but just to be clear, Gaviota (and Octopus) can be casted while mounted - of the relevant HP regaining skills, only Aerial Strike requires you to be unmounted (though this one notably heals the most per use and per time unit). But yeah, the point about it kind of embodying the existing dismount gameplay loop - at least with respect to Aerial Strike regains - still stands. Feel free to check the Action Reference tab in the sheet for a full breakdown of Corsair skills and what states they can be used in if you have more questions in that respect.

 

Corsair Pink Bean