Luck Of The Draw: A Corsair's Guide *NEW*

COR spends a lot of time meleeing where possible, so that is why things default to sTP. gearswap allows you to weaponskill via a macro, keybind, or typing it out on the keyboard while not engaged; if you are just shooting and using gearswap, you do not need to engage period.

Yes, the proper procedure would be to stand in idle -DT and fire without engaging.

If you really must engage, then you can set your combat mode to hybrid and load up your hybrid set with as much -DT as you want. Snapping into hard -PDT/-MDT modes (F10/F11) isn't recommended.

What fights are you doing that are 15-20 minutes plus? Is this like, ranged strategy t4's? Most fights, as in 99% of fights, are much shorter. The only fights I've done recently that have lasted more than a 6-7min roll is Ou (where you typically halt damage for rebuffs and focus the final push) and the last Ambuscade v1, where you have all the DD run out to safety on occasion if doing melee strat anyway. And If I cared that much, I'd change merits to max winning streak for those fights and then go back to snake eye. I seem to be at odds with many other COR in that I think 5/5 Snake Eye is best as 11's are life.

quoted for love

It's situational. The guide specifically covers 5/5 Snake Eye if doing content where duration isn't an issue.

So 99% of content? Why wouldn't it say 5/5 Snake Eye and consider 5/5 Winning Streak for the specific fights that require it?

I 100% agree.

Where is this 15-20 minute content you guys spoke of because it surely isn't helms.

If you do Schah with melee or rangers, then it'll likely fall into that 15-20 range- but that also means you'll need a reroll regardless of your merits and you may actually end up wasting less time rolling if you have the 5/5 Snake Eye.

The entire pro winning streak argument is permanent CC bonus to begin with. Also the fact that we double up on 6 less often than we think since we can snake eye to a lucky number and often just stop there. Unless you are aggressive to the point to skip lucky -1 number and gamble for No.11 all the way.

On the schah argument: Escha actually strongly favors winning streak 5/5 over snake eye 5/5 since you can start with No.11 by super revit spam at gob, walk to camp with a No.11 up and start first cycle with a No.11. It's actually better to have longer duration or else people takes forever to gather and it may wear.

Additionally, since super revit exist you could just pop snake eye, random deal, snake eye, super revit, snake eye, random deal snake eye all the way to 11 with 0 chance of failing. So lower snake eye merit is less hindering.

Another event that favors permanent CC bonus that I can think of is dynamis, it's 1.5hr long. So it's nice to have one of the roll always getting CC bonus.

Finally, if your LS do any sort of roll rotation, then it'll favor longer rolls too. I know not everyone do roll rotations or defensive rolls for tanks/manawall BLMs so they may not feel the importance of longer rolls, but some groups do use more than 2 rolls. (mine does)

That being said, the guide specifically mentioned there's nothing wrong with 5/5 snake eye for those who prefers different play style. There are multiple ways to play the job, and everyone has different experience/strategy. Just because one person favors snake eye 5/5 for "99%" of content doesn't mean another person can take equal advantage of it.

Pfft, I don't trust anyone on COR that doesn't do this.

That's(skip lucky -1) greedy :<

5 Years ago. Can't be bothered to be that interested anymore. Take your 7 and *** love it.

Take your 7 and go away! D:

CC No.4 chaos roll has higher potency than none CC No.11 chaos roll I think.

It does

Yes ^

Most importantly, the guide is meant for everybody, not just 99%ers who have the resources to destroy content in an ideal setup, in an ideal time frame, all of the time.

And yet the greatest argument for 5/5 Winning Streak here was so that in Escha you could CC non-stop using super revit spam, truly the strategy for the peasants and not just obsessed people like Afania.

Don't know why you suddenly turn this into pissing contest and name calling just because people have different opinion on ideal play style. Reminded me of BG DRG guide drama.

Everyone has their preferred playstyle/SJ/gear choices in FFXI, that's usually not the matter of right or wrong, just preferences. SE 5/5 has its pros and cons as much as WS 5/5.

That being said, those who read a guide usually look for more straight forward recommendations. Thus we'd have to pick one configuration as recommendations instead of recommend nothing.

On the other hand, we did not completely write off snake eye 5/5, and made a note of it being viable alternative if you can't get the advantage from longer duration.

I believe this covers both preferences on the same time provides certain level of direction to the readers, which is what a guide should be doing: Provide directions to the readers.

If you are into SE 5/5, just go ahead and do it. The guide didn't bash it as a wrong choice in anyway. But popping on the forum and repeatly target at the authors just because they have different opinions, that's kinda rude isn't it? Especially after making a bold statement like "my experience=99% of content", in a game with very diversed playstyle and player demographic.

And no, the guide isn't written for "obsessed people like Afania". Arislan run with more casual LS/groups, he also has a much better perspective from more casual playerbase than me. Pretty much all of the decision making in the guide were discussed between both of us until an agreement are reached. We already left out a lot of the hardcore/niche stuff that was originally planned as part of it, that you can't seriously argue that the guide was written for obsessed people only.

2 cents on snake eye vs winning streak;

I want my lolpickupafkcors(the kind of people that rely on these guides) to have longer rolls. Less opportunity for them to leave rolls off.

Yeah this. If people are blindly following a guide I'd generally want them to have longer rolls over a higher Snake Eye percentage that they probably won't use well anyway. If you understand the rationale for why you would want 5/5 Snake Eye, go right ahead and do it - perfectly reasonable choice, and nobody here has argued otherwise.

A few other points in favor of Winning Streak as a default recommendation:

* If we're talking about groups that aren't uber-elite, we're also talking about fights generally taking longer anyway - to the point where something that takes your awesome group 4 minutes to kill may very well be a 10+ min fight for the "regular people".

* For all levels of players, when you're giving different buffs to different people, either in the same party or jumping between parties, Winning Streak duration can become extremely useful for less time spent re-buffing. Obviously this is going to totally depend on your group composition and buffing needs, and isn't going to be a huge consideration if all you are doing is maintaining the same two buffs on the whole party.

* Any time you can pre-roll an XI (i.e. any Escha popped NMs, stuff like Omen where you can be setting up on 4F, etc.), extra Snake Eye merits lose a lot of their potential benefit.

Are you calling it a pissing contest because I mentioned you? Pretty sure Arislan dismissing my argument saying that I am effectively too elite did that first.


The guide doesn't outright dismiss 5/5 Snake Eye but it VERY heavily favors Winning Streak. If you wanted to say it's "just preference" you'd do it like how I'd write THF merits on a guide and say "You can go 5 in Sneak Attack, 5 in Trick attack, or 5 split between the two, it's personal preference as long as those 5 points are in one of those categories, but I prefer Trick Attack as it's easier to be able to line that up". Instead the COR guide offers reasons to favor Winning Streak and including the absolute bogus line of "most content takes 15-20 minutes". If that line wasn't involved I probably wouldn't have gone wtf.

And no, the guide isn't written for "obsessed people like Afania". Arislan run with more casual LS/groups, he also has a much better perspective from more casual playerbase than me. Pretty much all of the decision making in the guide were discussed between both of us until an agreement are reached. We already left out a lot of the hardcore/niche stuff that was originally planned as part of it, that you can't seriously argue that the guide was written for obsessed people only.[/quote]

Let's go over content and SE vs WS then. Common endgame events:

Ambuscade - Normals are often sub-5min zerg fests, and getting 11's up quicker is best. Intense varies greatly each month so hard to pin that down as single roll or double roll, but very infrequently does the fight end within that minute between 3/5 WS and 5/5 WS.

Omen - 20-45min content where you'll be rerolling many times. Being able to more easily maintain an 11 via SE is going to win out in most situations.

Dynamis - 90min content of non-stop fights, being able to have an 11 up at all times is going to be desirable. Mega Boss may be a longer fight (don't know, not elite to have done it yet) but the majority of the content is straight killing.

Escha - Until you get to t4's, you're generally killing it in less time, and if not, you'll likely want to get that 11 back up asap. If you're struggling with kills you probably don't have super revit unlocked to utilize CC in the fashion you mentioned, either.

Am I missing any other content on the large scale? So Winning Streak is a likely exception in some of that content, but as a general rule, Snake Eye is better.

I also like Snake Eye better as it feels more COR-ish. It's all a gamble, but it also increases rates to be more reliable. Going 3/5 to 5/5 gives you an extra 20% chance at insta-11, and 12% chance to reset Snake Eye with relic piece. It makes everything feel much more smooth.

And if the next best argument for 5/5 Winning Streak is bad AFK roll COR's...I mean, really, people? Is that really the bar we're going to set for a guide on merits?

Or even better: Set your GS to change your engaged set to DT- whenever the target is out of melee range and never worry about it again. (this is also useful for melee DD when they have to run out of range)

You are trying way to hard on this loh

The only logical answer here is to start up the old complaint of uncap merit categories.

No one realistically goes for straight 11 all the time anymore. Those days are gone. You get a roll thats passable and you snake if you hit unlucky and then go back to shootie stabbie.

Time spent rerolling and busting is time not dpsing. And time spent waiting for the cor to hit 11s is time better spent on just killing the damn thing instead of standing around waiting on rolls.

If you go for straight 11s and rock that SE you're in the very small minority, guide is for the majority.

Quite frankly, yes. I've seen enough questionable rolling decisions from random pickup CORs to make me confident that there are a lot of people who might follow a guide recommendation but who wouldn't really know how to properly make use out of extra Snake Eye XI chance. Honestly, a lot of them are likely to only Snake Eye on a X in the first place - where additional merits make zero difference. I'd rather encourage those people to just take the longer rolls. Though to be fair, sometimes this can backfire with lower quality CORs if they leave a lousy roll up longer... but if I were to notice that, it's a bit easier to just yell at them to re-roll ;)

Personally, I find Winning Streak's benefit in requiring less frequent rolling if you're doing multiple different rolls on different members/parties within an alliance is pretty compelling as a general purpose rationale for 5/5 Winning Streak. I'd put that ahead of the "randoms gonna be dumb when rolling" reason for the recommendation.

Anyway, it's plainly obvious that you have a sophisticated enough understanding of mechanics to have an intelligent opinion on why you prefer 5/5 Snake Eye - as does pretty much anyone serious enough to be debating it on the 4th page of a guide thread. The simplifications presented in the default merit recommendations of the guide aren't really FOR people like us. If you know why you prefer Snake Eye, just do it.

Although I prefer Winning Streak myself, there IS one "devil's advocate" position in favor of Snake Eye that I didn't see mentioned (or maybe I overlooked it): Winning Streak loses some usefulness if people die or rolls get dispelled. Then you're gonna have to re-buff sooner anyway to get rolls back up on people, taking away much of the advantage of longer rolls. Especially a big deal if the person who loses rolls is the COR themselves - Snake Eye would be more helpful there to get buffs re-sorted.


If you really want to get into debating the usefulness on a current event by event basis... hey, I've got time :)

Ambuscade - Fair enough, I'd give the edge to Snake Eye for the short fights and I think this is the event that's the most persuasive in favor of going 5/5 Snake Eye for that extra chance of getting fast XIs. If you do the majority of your COR-ing in Ambuscade, maybe that's a consideration. However... when you have content that's a sub-5min zerg fest, honestly it's usually less important to get perfect rolls anyway. Gonna be fine sitting on that non-XI Samurai or Chaos roll and still smash the fight, and most of your total event time is still going to be all of the zoning, getting new KI, and re-entering the fight.

Omen - Re-rolling many times throughout the event favors longer duration rolls in my mind. Winning Streak tends to save you buff cycles throughout the run. Plus, on the non-NM floors, you're generally not in a major hurry to get perfect rolls up anyway, since maximum DPS isn't really imperative when people are shooting for objectives on 1F/2F/4F. If you are concerned about setting up perfect rolls for the boss floors, you've got plenty of time on 2F/4F to get things going to where you at least have an XI in hand - not really that challenging regardless of how many SE merits you have.

Dynamis - Again, longer content = longer rolls and less re-rolling is generally better in my book. Once you get the initial XI, Winning Streak is all bonus and less need for re-rolls. If you want optimal performance, Dyna is also a situation where it's more likely for people to want to shuffle CORs around and give more than 2 different buffs on different players/parties. A clear case where Winning Streak would tend to be preferable.

Escha - Needing XIs quickly isn't that big of a concern, since you can pre-roll XIs before you pop. Yes, you might cause some minimal delay in waiting longer to pop while setting up rolls, but on the overall balance you may be better off once you get the XIs going since the buffs will last longer (and across multiple popped NMs).

Escha also has the unique aspect among current events where it can be helpful to use outside buffs from a COR before a fight to keep HP scaling down. Conceivably, the fight (or multiple fights on one set of rolls) could be long enough that you take advantage of the extra buff duration from Winning Streak 5/5. This actually does come into play for me - it's not too uncommon that I'll bring my COR for pre-pop buffs but play on my alt for the actual fight, or occasionally just buff LS mates so they can zerg a kill where I don't particularly need to be in party.

This.

OK, I think I can sum up this thread as SE needs to change MNK roll to give Boost to entire party.

Or the correct and easier way:
current average hits per round + (floor(mp / 20) / 100) = new average hits per round

I don't know a lot about excel in general, and I don't pay much attention to the spreadsheets myself. But it seems like the easiest solution would be to take an already existing average hits per round, and then take your floor(mp / 20) / 100 in a seperate cell and add that to your total average hits per round instead of the way you went.

as for the STP, assuming the sheets account for the relic bonus, I'd just group it with that somehow.

I'm far from a COR expert, but shouldn't the below set have Impulse Belt in it to achieve 70% Snapshot?

Am I missing 3% somewhere else in it?
Or is that missing 3% a concession for better stats?

ItemSet 356857

Alternatively, I may be completely misunderstanding Snapshot... Maybe because of the 10 from Gifts, a COR only needs 60 to cap? In which case, this set overcaps, but likely due to inclusion of other great stats?
Sorry for my confusion.

Swapping Lanun Gants +3 for Carmine Finger Gauntlets +1 and Impulse Belt would:
Increase Rapid Shot by 6 and...
Allow for capped Snapshot with only an augment of 5 on the Taeon Chapeau... Right?

Or, derp, keep Yemaya, swap to Carmine Finger Gauntlets +1 and Rapid Shot is increased by a full 11 and that Taeon Chapeau can still be below max to keep capped Snapshot. I think?

I'd say the opposite. Re-rolling many times means it's already budgeted in for time, and there's plenty of time while waiting on tank to pull to do this as well. Less duration on rolls but more control over 11's lets you keep static buffs up at all times.



That depends on how you do Dynamis I suppose. My group doesn't rotate COR's as a general rule, but we also don't do Mega Boss clears, so maybe that's why. And even that is up in the air. Will those 52s be the difference between rolls wearing off or not? And how much extra time is needed to hit those 11's for this scenario?


And winning streak does absolutely nothing if the fight doesn't end within that 52s extended duration. There's ample time to reroll if doing easier NM's and for the longer ones...


If you're using COR for pre-buffs absolutely I would put Winning Streak as better. Maybe I haven't represented my position best, I do think it's more of a playstyle preference, and I am on the Snake Eye side. I can see the two being offered up as a difference in preference, but that's NOT what the guide says. There's a clear preference in the guide towards Winning Streak, and the worst part is that it's backed up with "Most fights are 15-20 minutes and so Winning Streak is the difference between 2 rolls or 3!". I guess maybe that's the best way they could represent their mindset, but it's not done very well.

I've seen plenty of other job guides that will say something like "3/5 or 5/5" and offer the pros of each of the options. Which is what I think would be best in this circumstance. Something like:



This would represent both schools of thought and be rather impartial. If you still want to support Winning Streak with that text, you can go "Personally I use 5/5 Winning Streak." as I've seen that exact text in guides on this forum before.

Don't know if it's been stated already or an old change, but today I noticed my gearswap wasn't putting relic legs on for snake eye, they changed the name from Lanun Culottes to Lanun Trews.