Greetings fellow pirates and pirate enthusiasts. If you’re like me, a swashbuckling rogue who feels more at home on the high seas than on land, and feels a shiver run up your spine whenever you plunder some rare material or even the occasional bonus boss cube from your jolly roger, you’re probably a little disappointed by the recent reveal of rank 8 Swordsman classes.
A mounted class and a shield class basically means neither one is a very good option for Corsairs, who are stuck on foot in order to use any of their skills (presumably because learning how to ride a mount isn’t a very useful skill on a ship), and also require an offhand weapon for most of them as well. Plus, the entire reason we’re Corsair3s is to use a pistol, no way we’d be caught dead walking around with a shield.
So R6-R7 classes are, essentially, the options available to us, and all have some very weighty negatives to consider. I won’t discuss the possibility of taking anything lower rank because generally speaking your build will just get weaker and weaker the further down in rank you go to take a C1 class. I’m primarily writing this from the perspective of Hop2->Corsair3 because Corsair2->Dragoon is going to be fine, and any Corsair3 that didn’t go Hop2 is probably worse off now than ever.
So, starting from the top, let’s talk Dragoon, the least awkward in terms of rank.
Pros:
-No weapon conflicts with previous ranks, can use Finestra and dual-wield just fine.
-Okay skill damage/multihit scaling.
-Only 1 rank behind (while being a rank behind is inherently a con, it’s the best we can hope for in this situation).
-Seems to get significantly better in C2, but then we’ll be having this entire discussion over again when R9 rolls around.
Cons:
-Provides only damage skills with very minor utility (Attribute to inflict Shock, minor buffs/debuffs from Gae Bulg).
-No buffs or extremely high scaling moves in C1 means potentially wasted rank if you don’t choose to advance to C2.
-Specialized in 2H spears - while all skills are usable with a 1H spear, has a 2H-exclusive attribute and, based on previous patterns with Doppel and Fencer, may end up getting 2H exclusive skills in the future.
-Simply put, all-around average as a class. Just lacks the gravitas of flashier moves that a true pirate relishes in.
Overall Dragoon is likely the best option only if you plan on taking further circles of Dragoon; but that is pending any of their future skills (particularly C3) still allowing the use of 1H Spears. Also means that if some really enticing dual-wield class is released in the future, Dragoon might end up being a wasted filler rank.
Next up, Fencer, the kindred spirits of swashbuckling duelists.
Pros:
-Rapiers. Generally strong weapons, and in the case of Venier in particular, the high elemental damage combined with a Karacha dagger means that Double Weapon Assault + Sacrament can rack up a lot of damage inbetween skill rotations.
-Pierce damage synergy. The added bonus of ignoring defense with pierce damage means Hexen Dropper, most of your Fencer skills, and Stabbing will all receive a pretty considerable damage boost, and this is generally a future-proof bonus since it isn’t a flat amount of additional damage. Higher level mobs will have more defense, which means this continues to grow more effective.
-Express dual-wield synergy, gives a small damage boost when not using a shield.
-Running around with a rapier and a pistol is just generally cool as ■■■■. CorsairFencer gets more style points than most other class combinations in the game.
Cons:
-Rapiers. Ironically, a double-edged sword, even though rapiers aren’t known for their edge. Not only causes skill conflicts, disabling the use of Finestra and requiring weapon swapping to apply Spear Lunge, but means future advancements may be incompatible with Fencer skills as well. At R9 we may end up going back to Spears, or there may even finally be a Swordsman class that actually uses 1H swords, leading to another rough advancement choice. Also the low durability on rapiers is famously annoying if you don’t have a rank of squire.
-Only a moderate amount of futureproof scaling in the form of Attaque Coquille’s debuff, the more substantial scaling skills come at C3.
-Doesn’t demand advancement as much as Dragoon, but still makes the most sense to take to C3; and C2 isn’t very good, which could make R9 a struggle if you go that route.
-Two ranks behind. Your build just won’t be as strong as others, period; R7 skills are strong and R8 promises to be stronger still.
Overall I find the idea of a Corsair3Fencer3 very appealing even though you have to give up on Finestra and the use of spears in general - Spear Lunge is still easily applied, you don’t need to invest in high level spears to use it since you don’t use it for the damage anyway, but Finestar’s crit rate and, perhaps even more importantly, AoE attack ratio bonus will be sorely missed. It can also make a decent enough filler rank if something better comes up for R9. But in general, it probably offers the least amount of raw power, even though its style points are through the roof.
And now, Doppel, the self-described blender of the swordsman world.
Pros:
-Great scaling, even at Rank 8. For C1 skils, Deeds of Valor is a beast of a buff and Cyclone is a beast of a nuke.
-No weapon requirements, period. While Fencer locks you into Rapiers and disables Finestra/forces weapon-swapping, and Dragoon means you’re even more locked into spears than before, Doppel means that if the next advancement requires a totally different weapon you won’t be held back by this advancement.
-BarbSair Bonus: with Cleave’s debuff coming to iToS, BarbSairs will almost certainly want to advance to Doppel for the buffed-up Cyclone. So it’s not ALL bad news for BarbSairs, though they’ll probably still wish they’d gone for a different build.
-Minor Bonus: More plundering. The combination of Jolly Roger and Double Pay will make you the most economical Swordsman around.
Cons:
-No express synergy. No new pierce damage skills except the very awkward Punish, and no buffs to pierce damage skills, so your Hexen won’t be as awesome and you won’t be taking advantage of Spear Lunge’s amazing debuff as much.
-No Doppel advancement. All future circles are locked behind 2H Swords, so this is strictly a filler class - which also means that if rank 9 also contains no viable advancement options for Corsair, you’re super boned and probably bought yourself a one-way ticket to reroll central.
-Two ranks behind. Same as Fencers.
Doppel is the classic powerhouse of the Swordsman tree that you can really shove into any build and make it work, because their strengths are so immediately available in C1 and they have no weapon requirements; 2h sword/spear, 1h with dagger, pistol, shield, Doppel C1 don’t give a ■■■■, which is way more rare in the Swordsman tree than it should be. If you’re just looking to fill space until R9 rolls around and don’t really care about style, Doppel seems like a solid choice, despite being 2 ranks behind.
And did you really think I forgot Shinobi?
Pros:
-Hella pierce damage. Throwing a bunch of Kunai at a spear-lunged target with your clones out will burst it down even harder than your mighty Hexen Dropper.
-Only one rank behind, with the additional bonus of being a single-rank hidden class. This is even more ideal than Dragoon; Shinobi could sortof be considered rank 7.5.
-No weapon requirements, just as flexible as Doppel.
-Style points. Not as stylish as Fencer, but blowing yourself up is strangely piratey.
Cons:
-Is a ninja. Normally I would never advise any pirate to embrace the way of the ninja, as pirates and ninjas are of course eternally at war with one another, but these are desperate times for Corsairs so all possible options must be considered. Still, the pirate’s code dictates that just being a ninja is a mark against this advancement.
-Few “cloneable” skills. With the recent update to Shinobi, more skills can now be used by clones, but the standard Corsair3 build contains very few of them.
-Suicidal. That’s a pretty accurate one-word description for Shinobi. Once those clones come out you’re in for a beating if you’re not extremely careful.
-You have to do the terrible Shinobi advancement quest. What an annoying waste of time. Seriously you could probably just reroll and waste less of your time.
Overall, the problems with a Corsair3 -> Shinobi build are moreso the problems of Shinobi builds in general. They’re a very strange class, and it seems they’re still a work in progress as well. If more skills are added to the list of cloneable skills in the future, this build may end up being much more interesting - but it seems unlikely we’ll ever see cloneable Hexen Dropper or Pistol Shot, for example. Cloneable Dust Devil, though? Not the most outlandish idea. I don’t know if I would really consider them over the other options, but they still have the potential to hit extremely hard even with the standard Corsair build just with Kunai and Spear Lunge alone. You’ll still die to a light breeze if you’re not careful, and I think that + the advancement quest are enough to keep me away from Shinobi indefinitely.
And Templar I guess?
Templar exists solely to create guilds. If you wanted a guild, I imagine you’d have a Templar by now. However, if you decided the class advancement situation for Corsair is too bleak and you’re just going to give up on your Corsair, you could always consider grabbing Templar at C8 and making a guild so the character slot isn’t a complete waste. Something to consider if you feel the situation is totally unsalvageable.
So, overall, what is the best route for a Corsair C3 in Rank8 and beyond? I don’t have an answer to that, unfortunately. I think it really depends on the player, and I haven’t totally made up my mind yet either, though I think I’m leaning towards Fencer simply because I’m not very interested in Dragoon and already plan on including Doppel in my Murmillo build. You could even just say ■■■■ it and take a Rank 8 class and deal with all of the weapon swapping or mounting/dismounting and general lack of synergy if you wanted to.
I only hope my brief analysis of the available options has helped my fellow salty dogs in coming to some kind of conclusion, even if that conclusion is “I can’t take this ■■■■ anymore, time to reroll a doppel3”, which I’m sure will be a popular response. And if anyone else has some insight or advice I may have missed, please, help your buccaneer brothers out.
[quote=“SlyGoat, post:1, topic:314722”]
[quote=“SlyGoat, post:1, topic:314722”]