Good CORs Bust!
Ding COR32!
Part of why I am leveling Corsair is to prove to everyone how to play the job. I had a pretty good idea beforehand, but now that I’m actually playing it and having to make the hard decisions, I’m getting a lot more insight.
This is my first COR-based mathy entry, about how busting on rolls is actually a good thing.
All of this entry is based off of Chaos Roll, which has results as shown in this graph lovingly generated in excel. You can see more information about the individual percentages on the wiki page.
There are two circumstances where you may bust on any phantom roll; doubling up on the low six or getting the roll off the unlucky number.
Doubling-up On Six
Rolling a six is always a gut-wrenching feeling. Anything below that is fine since you can’t possibly bust, but six is the first number where the roll is in danger. There’s always that ever-present lurking possibility of getting another six and busting in a hurry.
It’s not that 6 is a bad roll per se. It’s just that the majority of everything above it way better. Doubling-up on a six has a 4/6 chance of a better roll, including the elusive 11, which is far far better than anything below it. It has a 1/6 chance of getting the unlucky number, which is better than a straight bust (but not by much, as I‘ll explain). It only has a 1/6 chance of busting outright, but even that’s not so bad for reasons I will go into in a bit.
For the rolls where 6 actually is the unlucky number, the odds are even more in your favor of getting better results.
Mathematically speaking, doubling up on sixes WILL get you busts on occasion. But it is also, over time, get you a lot better rolls. Corsair is a gambling job, but good gamblers know the odds. It’s far better to take chances for gains higher than a 6 than sit where it’s safe with subpar results.
You could take the same argument here and justify doubling up on 7, but the odds rapidly decline in that case and you’ll get a lot more busts. Busts aren’t the end of the world but they do cause some complications I’ll get into later. Generally it’s not worth it, unless the seven is also the unlucky number.
Getting off the Unlucky Number
First, I need to explain that you NEED to do this. Look at those dips in the chart on 8. With a drk in the party, an 8 is a measly 13%; without it and you get a pathetic 3%. In both cases, and in fact in the case of every single phantom roll, the unlucky number is the worst roll you can get. Even worse than a 1. It’s a totally negligible bonus.
People that don’t double-up on unlucky numbers justify it in a couple possible ways. 1) at least the roll gives some benefit, whereas the bust would give nothing or 2) they think their party members will think they are a bad COR if they bust. Looking at the first, it’s pretty obviously not even true. Unlucky on chaos roll gives a 3% boost. That’s nothing. For the second, well, read on a bit further.
It’s far better to take a chance on getting rid of the unlucky rolls than to stay on them. You have a 3/6 chance of getting a 9, 10, or 11; all very good rolls. You have a 3/6 chance of busting, which isn‘t exactly desirable, but lets you start over with a new chaos roll in a minute. Even a 1 result on that roll would be better than staying where you are. Either way, bust or higher result, you win.
How Bad Is a Bust?
Busting does the following:
* totally removes the roll from all players in range.
* gives the COR a penalty effect that is essentially a negative version of the roll.
* prevents the COR from having the effect of two rolls upon herself.
* makes an extremely embarrassing sound.
Busts last for 5 minutes, same as rolls.
However, busting does NOT do these:
* give the party the negative effect. Only the corsair herself gets that.
* limit the rolls that can be on other party members. All other members can still have two rolls.
* prevent the corsair from doing the exact same roll again.
An important key here is that it removes the roll from everyone, which means you can try the exact same roll again when the phantom roll timer is up. You don’t WANT to bust, of course, but the upside is that it removes the crappy unlucky rolls so they can be overwritten with something better. Since 6 and the unlucky numbers are the two worst results to stop on, the new roll you attempt can hardly be worse and has a lot to gain.
Now, busting comes with its own problems. In addition to limiting the amount of rolls on the corsair herself (which may become a bother if you’re actually doing good damage) a second bust means you can’t do any rolls at all. Two busts is far, far worse than one, so I strongly go on the side of caution while I have one bust up, breaking both the two rules above and stopping on sixes and unlucky numbers. The risk of not being able to do any rolls at all is simply too high for the gains of getting better single rolls.
So What?
The summary is this: good corsairs bust. If you’re in a party with a corsair that never busts, that means she’s playing it 100% safe, which means staying on sixes and unluckies, and your rolls are probably crap and you’d have done far better to have gotten pretty much any other DD or buffing job. The good corsairs understand the math of the job, and the math involves risks that will eventually mean busts. So take those lost rolls as a small blessing; it means that your party member is actually trying to get the best results for everyone.
In other news, I did some MMM farming yesterday with AXI people and got myself a rune 101, which shaves off four minutes of maximum time to get 7 more marbles per run. If I could trust a whole group to spend marbles upgrading their maze’s outputs it would be worth it to put more in. As it stands, I have a whole lot of uncommitted volunteers and not a static, so I’m probably better off saving up for the runes I need for the Koggelmander maze instead of getting more farming runes. Might as well bite the bullet now and go after Lost and Found. 500 marbles ahoy!
Part of why I am leveling Corsair is to prove to everyone how to play the job. I had a pretty good idea beforehand, but now that I’m actually playing it and having to make the hard decisions, I’m getting a lot more insight.
This is my first COR-based mathy entry, about how busting on rolls is actually a good thing.
All of this entry is based off of Chaos Roll, which has results as shown in this graph lovingly generated in excel. You can see more information about the individual percentages on the wiki page.
There are two circumstances where you may bust on any phantom roll; doubling up on the low six or getting the roll off the unlucky number.
Doubling-up On Six
Rolling a six is always a gut-wrenching feeling. Anything below that is fine since you can’t possibly bust, but six is the first number where the roll is in danger. There’s always that ever-present lurking possibility of getting another six and busting in a hurry.
It’s not that 6 is a bad roll per se. It’s just that the majority of everything above it way better. Doubling-up on a six has a 4/6 chance of a better roll, including the elusive 11, which is far far better than anything below it. It has a 1/6 chance of getting the unlucky number, which is better than a straight bust (but not by much, as I‘ll explain). It only has a 1/6 chance of busting outright, but even that’s not so bad for reasons I will go into in a bit.
For the rolls where 6 actually is the unlucky number, the odds are even more in your favor of getting better results.
Mathematically speaking, doubling up on sixes WILL get you busts on occasion. But it is also, over time, get you a lot better rolls. Corsair is a gambling job, but good gamblers know the odds. It’s far better to take chances for gains higher than a 6 than sit where it’s safe with subpar results.
You could take the same argument here and justify doubling up on 7, but the odds rapidly decline in that case and you’ll get a lot more busts. Busts aren’t the end of the world but they do cause some complications I’ll get into later. Generally it’s not worth it, unless the seven is also the unlucky number.
Getting off the Unlucky Number
First, I need to explain that you NEED to do this. Look at those dips in the chart on 8. With a drk in the party, an 8 is a measly 13%; without it and you get a pathetic 3%. In both cases, and in fact in the case of every single phantom roll, the unlucky number is the worst roll you can get. Even worse than a 1. It’s a totally negligible bonus.
People that don’t double-up on unlucky numbers justify it in a couple possible ways. 1) at least the roll gives some benefit, whereas the bust would give nothing or 2) they think their party members will think they are a bad COR if they bust. Looking at the first, it’s pretty obviously not even true. Unlucky on chaos roll gives a 3% boost. That’s nothing. For the second, well, read on a bit further.
It’s far better to take a chance on getting rid of the unlucky rolls than to stay on them. You have a 3/6 chance of getting a 9, 10, or 11; all very good rolls. You have a 3/6 chance of busting, which isn‘t exactly desirable, but lets you start over with a new chaos roll in a minute. Even a 1 result on that roll would be better than staying where you are. Either way, bust or higher result, you win.
How Bad Is a Bust?
Busting does the following:
* totally removes the roll from all players in range.
* gives the COR a penalty effect that is essentially a negative version of the roll.
* prevents the COR from having the effect of two rolls upon herself.
* makes an extremely embarrassing sound.
Busts last for 5 minutes, same as rolls.
However, busting does NOT do these:
* give the party the negative effect. Only the corsair herself gets that.
* limit the rolls that can be on other party members. All other members can still have two rolls.
* prevent the corsair from doing the exact same roll again.
An important key here is that it removes the roll from everyone, which means you can try the exact same roll again when the phantom roll timer is up. You don’t WANT to bust, of course, but the upside is that it removes the crappy unlucky rolls so they can be overwritten with something better. Since 6 and the unlucky numbers are the two worst results to stop on, the new roll you attempt can hardly be worse and has a lot to gain.
Now, busting comes with its own problems. In addition to limiting the amount of rolls on the corsair herself (which may become a bother if you’re actually doing good damage) a second bust means you can’t do any rolls at all. Two busts is far, far worse than one, so I strongly go on the side of caution while I have one bust up, breaking both the two rules above and stopping on sixes and unlucky numbers. The risk of not being able to do any rolls at all is simply too high for the gains of getting better single rolls.
So What?
The summary is this: good corsairs bust. If you’re in a party with a corsair that never busts, that means she’s playing it 100% safe, which means staying on sixes and unluckies, and your rolls are probably crap and you’d have done far better to have gotten pretty much any other DD or buffing job. The good corsairs understand the math of the job, and the math involves risks that will eventually mean busts. So take those lost rolls as a small blessing; it means that your party member is actually trying to get the best results for everyone.
In other news, I did some MMM farming yesterday with AXI people and got myself a rune 101, which shaves off four minutes of maximum time to get 7 more marbles per run. If I could trust a whole group to spend marbles upgrading their maze’s outputs it would be worth it to put more in. As it stands, I have a whole lot of uncommitted volunteers and not a static, so I’m probably better off saving up for the runes I need for the Koggelmander maze instead of getting more farming runes. Might as well bite the bullet now and go after Lost and Found. 500 marbles ahoy!