Corsair Merits: Group 1,2, and otherwise

[Auspice]

Just when I thought I had finally decided what I want from my COR specific merits I got a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was originally planning on the following:

5 Phantom Roll recast
5 Bust Duration

3 Snake Eye
3 Fold

Now I've been reading in a few places that a single point in Loaded Deck helps out random deal a lot. I don't normally Random Deal very often; probably because my parties very rarely get anything reset from it. I think I'd be willing to sacrifice a point on Fold to toss one in Loaded Deck if it's really a good Trait but I just haven't seen enough about it.

[Bakthi]

I've been going for some Quick Draw Accuracy myself, just because the resists I get on stuff like Ultima/Ouryu, and my sleep possibly missing ever on anything, fills me with anger. Phantom Roll Recast just seemed too small to me, although maxing both the recast and duration on it could be interesting (in terms of freeing up the COR to do more of whatever).

The "problem" with tier 2, I think, is that they could all be good. Snake Eye and Fold are nice, and it'd be great to have them more often. Throwing at least one merit into Loaded Deck doesn't sound like a bad idea, because it seems like with 1 merit it will always reset something if you have 2+ JAs waiting for recast. Additionally, a whole extra minute per Phantom Roll could be pretty hot. I think it's a tough call. So far, I've gone 1 Snake Eye and 1 Fold, and not merited much since then.

[Auspice]

I would merit QD accuracy but with being RDM main I very very very seldom get to do endgame activities with my corsair.

My idea behind phantom roll recast and bust duration is that I can get rolls up faster and more effectively and by having snake eye and fold I very rarely get stuck with bad rolls anymore. I can usually afford to take the bust on something that doesn't turn out good or erase it or fix it with the new group 2s. :D

[Asherah]

Bust Duration is just "meh" to me, especially when compared with the other Category 1 options... You can already clear Busts by zoning or logging out, and with Fold available, double-busting shouldn't be a problem.

Could be a difference in play style, but I very rarely find myself double-busting before Fold recast is up with only 1 merit in it. So I left Fold at 1 merit. Snake Eye is very nice, probably the best of the Category 2 merits, so I capped that. I put 1 into Loaded Deck also... I like it because it makes Random Deal somewhat more useful. If I get behind in my buffing cycle, Random Deal frequently resets my roll timer. It's also great for jobs that would have multiple useful abilities waiting on recast, like SAM (Meditate/Shikikoyo) or RDM/BLM (Elemental Seal/Convert). I put the last merit into Winning Streak to complement my Phantom Roll recast merits. On a 4-buff rotation, I have 2 minutes to spare before buffs wear instead of 1 minute and 40 seconds, yay.

My Category 1 merits are 5 Phantom Roll recast and 5 Quick Draw recast. I maxed both of these before the Quick Draw update that changed Light/Dark Shot to sleep/dispel, so at the time I didn't see as much of a reason to merit QD accuracy. I might change my PR merits to QD accuracy later, but not until I finish meriting for my other jobs, lol. ><

[Priran]

I'm no COR, but Quick Draw Accuracy sounds more useful than Recast.

[JMunin]

Quick Draw accuracy can be effected by agility and magic accuracy (I believe). I had some merits in it at one point, didn't see much difference, and took them out. It's 5/5 phantom roll and 5/5 quick draw recast for me, because I use them a lot. Though I'm tempted to merit down random deal down because loaded deck is really sexy.

One point in loaded deck will always refresh one ability if two abilities are waiting on recast. If you unlock Snake Eye and Fold and then wait to use random deal when both of them (and nothing else) are waiting on recast, one of them will be refreshed, so you can always get one or the other back every 20 minutes. If you use random deal every time it's up to refresh those two abilities, that's 3 more times you can use one or the other in an hour. Careful though, because Random Deal will go after your stuff on shorter recasts. If you have phantom roll and snake eye waiting on recast, it'll go after the phantom roll the majority of the time.

My current tier 2 merits are 2/3 Snake Eye, 2/3 Fold, 1/3 Winning Streak and 1/3 in Loaded Deck. I like that balance, though I may take one out of fold and bring it into Snake Eye.

Edit: here's numbers from some tests I did last Friday:

Before loaded deck:

Random Deals: 51
Phantom Rolls Refreshed: 28
Folds Refreshed: 4
Snake Eyes Refreshed: 0
Fails (nothing refreshed): 19

One merit for 1/3 Loaded Deck:

Random Deals: 50
Phantom Rolls Refreshed: 43
Folds Refreshed: 4
Snake Eyes Refreshed: 1
Fails: 2

w/ 1/3 Loaded Deck, no Phantom Roll Active. Snake Eye had a slightly shorter timer by a 5-10 seconds. Only did 10, will do more if people wish me to.

Random Deals: 10
Folds Refreshed: 6
Snake Eyes Refreshed: 4
Fails: 0

[Tomino]

Phantom Roll recast 5/5
it's useful, and if you play COR a lot you sure understand why. a common merit choice.

Quick Draw Accuracy 5/5
I'm not up to miss *that* Light Shot and die; Recast merits were nice when QD was on a 3min timer but now they are next to useless. Oh and btw QD is not affected my MAcc, just plain AGI; MAtk on the other side affects its damages.
Found myself that QD spam on huge HNM leads to constant damages so my goal is to reduce miss% the more, the better.

Snake Eye 3/3
Useful, nice, cool. Not much reasons not to merit it.

Loaded Deck 1/3
A single merit spent here is a huge boost to the Random Deal ability (thx Munin for the tests!), more if you took both Fold and SnakeEye that go on a 15min timer.

Fold 2/3
I went for this because it gives me extra risks, thus better buffs. It wont work often but since the whole corsair job is based on %, something that gives you better odds suits me. The Bust! clear tactic involving logging out or zoning is very impratical imho so I wont consider that a substitue for Fold.
Other players tho could prefer Winning Streak but dont ask me why.

[Auspice]

I'm glad to hear that one point in Loaded Deck helps a ton.

Now I feel kinda retarded for jumping the gun and tossing a point in bust duration. After a nearly all day merit spree yesterday I don't think I had 2x bust up at all, maybe I was just lucky though. :/

[Bakthi]

Just...don't double bust, ever. If you bust, then don't double-up on 6+ until you've managed to clear it somehow, either by zoning/logging, Folding, or waiting for it to go away. Weaker buffs are better than not being able to do jack shit. It's rare that I'm doing something on COR where I'm not disinclined to zone or log, either.

[Nekio]

Oh and btw QD is not affected my MAcc, just plain AGI

Source?

[LinktheDeme]

Right now I have

1 Snake Eye
1 Fold
1Loaded Deck
3 Winning streak.
5/5 random deal recast
3/5 Bust duration
2/5 Quick Draw Accuracy

The accuracy isn't a big help since sleep timer is very long to even see too much of a use. Reason I went 1 Snake eye and 1 fold instead of trying to max both out for few reasons. One that Loaded Deck is pretty pwn, and with winning streak capped thats an extra 60 seconds for roll so you pretty much have 60 seconds every roll where fold and snake eye aren't needed so it's pretty much taking a minute off both of them each roll(Then multiply that by the amount of rolls you can do in 15 minutes which is about 3 minutes of not having to do rolls, fold or snake eye). Winning Streak also allows more leniance time inbetween to cast rolls on melee and mages if have to. Also if both fold and snake eye are used up (way i play it is risky while fold is up if not then safe, and with snake eye use for lucky,10 or 11 assuming 9 is bad luck roll because it is for most.) Then i pop random deal (For 100% chance to restore either snake eye or fold) so I can get one of the JAs incase I need them again and with the shorter recast on random deal I pretty much always have fold or snake eye to use when needed.

[JMunin]

I've heard a lot of things about quick draw. I assume it can be effected by magic acc because it can be effected by magic att. SE doesn't explicitly state that QD is effected by magic att, we figured that out ourselves. I think it's a safe bet that it can be effected by magic acc, though I have no hard data to support that.

I've also heard int effects light shot sleep, but I've never quite believed that.

[Valacirca]

Magic Accuracy effects would be fairly hard to test I think, but for the most part it wouldn't matter since Cor doesn't have a ton of magic accuracy gear. There's Denali Kecks, but I'd use those anyway since they have Agi and MAB +3 as well. Denali Gamashes have some magic acc. too, but even if magic acc. did help I'd probably still use Wood M Ledelsens over those. Every other piece of equipment is some random situational piece, like Diabolos Earring.

It might be worth to see if Warlock's Roll had any noticeable effect, but it would take a while to test.

I highly doubt INT does anything for Light Shot success.

[Tomino]

with winning streak capped thats an extra 60 seconds for roll so you pretty much have 60 seconds every roll where fold and snake eye aren't needed so it's pretty much taking a minute off both of them each roll

i disagree on that.
Winning Streak only works when you get a good result from PR; anytime i roll a stupid number ( 6, 7 , unlucky) and i cant risk it (no fold, Bust! already up) my only choice is to return to the same buff as soon as possible which is about 2 min later.

So saying that Winning Streak extends *all* of your rolls by 1 min is like saying you have one more minute of junk everytime you roll bad. I do agree that having 60 more secs of an XI would be nice tho, just not worth 3 merits that can be spent elsewhere.



As for Quick Draw, since there is no actual evidence of MAcc benefit but there is a SE note on AGI affecting accuracy, I'd go for the latter. MAtck had always worked even before the QD patch.
I guess it could be easily tested with a RDM and some Warlock's roll spammage tho.

[Kerberoz]

Winning Streak is really null for the reason stated above. I only have 1 Fold 1 Snake Eye right now but I'll probably do 3 Snake Eye and either 3 Fold or 2 Fold 1 Loaded Deck. Have 5 QD acc and 5 QD recast because the others seemed kinda useless.

[Auspice]

I went ahead and tossed a point in Loaded Deck and it's really hot knowing for sure at least one ability is going to be recharged. I just wait until Fold and Snake Eye are down and one of them always comes back. :D

[Kylen]

For Tier 1 merits, definitely go 5/5 Quick Draw recast - Light Shot is one of our most useful abilities and being able to use it 10 seconds sooner can be a lifesaver if you're pulling in meripo or are in a situation where you're dealing with a lot of links and are short on sleepers. After that, go either 5/5 QD Accuracy or Phantom Roll recast, depending on what your playstyle is. You really only need Quick Draw accuracy if you're going to be fighting lots of high-resist HNM's on COR, since Quick Draw is almost never resisted on normal mobs provided you have a decent amount of AGI. Phantom Roll recast's main perk is being able to get your buffs up on everyone a few seconds faster when you're just starting a new event, however once they're up the recast doesn't matter that much since you already have 1-2 minutes leeway in between roll rotations.

For Tier II, pretty much the entire COR community agrees that Snake Eye is our most useful ability from that category and are going 3/3 on it.
Definitely unlock Fold, but I'm not sure if you'll really need to put more than 1 merit into it. I'm 1/3 Fold now myself, and I have yet to encounter a situation where I needed to use it before its recast timer was up, since double-busts just don't tend to happen that often. That leaves 2 merits left - many COR's are putting 1 into Loaded Deck since it does indeed seem to make a large difference on the potency of Random Deal (although it's still debatable whether turning a useless 20-minute ability into a half-decent 20-minute ability is worth it), and some are putting their extras into Winning Streak.

Don't merit Bust Duration. Especially if you are putting merits in Fold, Bust Duration will really be next to useless.

[Fng]

As for Quick Draw, since there is no actual evidence of MAcc benefit but there is a SE note on AGI affecting accuracy, I'd go for the latter. MAtck had always worked even before the QD patch.
I guess it could be easily tested with a RDM and some Warlock's roll spammage tho.

Couldnt this be tested with Elemental Seal.

[loqiel]

5x Phantom Roll
5x Quick Draw Recast (why not just swap in AGI for better acc?)

3x Snake Eye (obvious)
1x Fold (since you can zone or log a bust at times, having this is a luxury)
1x Loaded Deck (and yes I railed against this hard)
1x Winning Streak

In other words, besides Snake Eye, there's nothing else really worth meriting fully, so you might as well put 1 into the rest of them. As long as you have nothing but Snake Eye and Fold up when you use RD, you'll get one of them back with Loaded Deck. Better than nothing I guess.

[Bakthi]

5x Quick Draw Recast (why not just swap in AGI for better acc?)

Because AGI gear is finite, and so is my inventory. I've definitely had times where I wanted more accuracy out of Quick Draw, even with swapping in all the AGI I could get aside from Scouter's Rope (and the +4 rings instead of +5), and far less often have found myself thinking "I wish I could QD a few seconds sooner".

Annoyingly, the places where RNGs get large chunks of AGI (kote, osode) are unavailable to CORs. This has been greatly improved by the introduction of the Skadi set, but even with a LS that does Salvage regularly, that doesn't exactly fall out of the sky. I guess the same thing could be said of Goliard, but I get enough enjoyment out of organizing assault times for 3-4 people.