Pistol Shot is so bad I would trade it for Deadly Combo, then I wouldn’t have to upgrade a secondary weapon at all. Obviously I would take Pass or Frost Cloud (with physical scaling) in a heartbeat over Pistol Shot. Barrier? Sure, I’d finally have a real utility skill on my supposed utility class! Split Arrow? Absolutely far better than Pistol Shot even after it got gutted for no reason (more IMC incompetence that everyone said in advance would ruin the class; oh look, it did). The only classes that don’t have a C3 skill available that is obviously stronger than Pistol Shot are ones that have two full circles of good attack or utility skills to rely on, as opposed to the two (honestly just one, again Dust Devil is basically worse than normal attacks) attack skills Corsair gets before C3. I could invest only 15 of my 45 skill points in Corsair and would barely notice the difference.
Again it wouldn’t matter of Corsair actually had the utility it’s supposed to have, instead of a bunch of skills that literally don’t do anything. But of course IMC sees shitty classes and regardless of what the class’s role was they “solve” every problem now by just throwing more damage at it. Or just ignore it completely, like the complete lack of Alchemist changes in the Wizard rework (another class I thought was a cool concept until IMC ■■■■ all over it the way they do to everything )
Here’s been my collective expectation vs. reality on every class I thought was interesting looking in ToS since beta:
Squire: Wow I bet you can buff up your party’s equipment and be a unique support class that way
Reality: Oh actually you just sit in town with an idle shop open and literally nobody actually uses this class for anything
Rogue: Backstabbing stuff is pretty fun, I hope I get something cool when they release R7
Reality: LMAO they just moved Rogue’s most useless skill to C3 instead of adding anything
Scout: Archer class that focuses on defense and CC? Sounds pretty unique
Reality: What the ■■■■ fear literally doesn’t work and none of these other skills are worth wasting my time on either when I could just be spamming Split Arrow (don’t worry IMC fixed this later by making you not able to spam Split Arrow!)
Alchemist: Craft your own items by uncovering secret recipes and then defeat a unique item dungeon to awaken hidden stats in equipment? Wow that sounds amazing
Reality: Like squire, but even more ways to be AFK and never actually play this character or do any of those things!
Templar: Guild leader class that provides wide area buffs and battle tactics to your team, sounds great for the GVG that I’m sure will be a big part of the game!
Reality: LMAO WHAT A DISASTER
So yeah in the grand scheme of things, watching IMC ■■■■ up Corsair over a long period of time hasn’t really been the worst they’ve ■■■■■■ up a class, probably not even top 10. But it’s still the most impressive, because it seems really difficult to ■■■■ up “Pirate swordsman with a pistol” and they still pulled it off