October 24, 2021 October 28, 2021
Sinbad Weapons- PvP Spotlight
It’s been quite some time since the arrival of the new Pirate101 update. Not that big of an update when it comes to size, but it had fun content, bug fixes, and even better, more items to loot. Get your sharpened Swords, Rifles and even Wands ready, as your Pirate skills will again be put to good use after more than a year of hiatus. Some of these new items are the now infamous Sinbad Weapons. We had a lot of fun with the new quest, but it’s time to get to serious talk regarding these weapons.
This set of weapons as seen below, comes with slightly higher stats than past max level weapons. However, the true oddity is the power they have: one that we never expected to become a part of equipment pieces at all.
Exactly. The power that only Privateer pirates and the notorious El Toro could use is now accessible through these weapons. But is it actually worth it?
You can check out the rest of these weapons’ stats in our Sinbad quest and drop guide, here. In general, these weapons have damage slightly above what we expect for similarly-leveled and similarly-typed weapons and include Espirit de Corps
From a Melee Advocate’s Perspective
For someone that actually is madly in love with Melee combat in Pirate101, the weapons aren’t at a stage where they’re “broken” or a “downgrade”. However, it’s safe to say they’re at the middle of the pyramid: they’re okay, decent, and maybe even a legitimately good choice. Let’s discuss.
If we take Buccaneers for example, they actually get to benefit from Espirit De Corps a lot. Because as you know, they use El Toro (if you’re an FTP player) as well as Wu Tang (if you’re a crowns player).
Using Toro’s Espirit for early game to give them a bit of accuracy and dodge boost is nice, but what’s actually nicer, is using their own weapon’s Espirit De Corps late game. Let’s spice things up a bit and claim that they’re below 50% health and thus Turn the Tide 3 as well as Elusive 3 are active. Now add that Espirit buff. On paper, it sounds like quite the terrifying thing to face, right?
Swashbucklers are in a similar spot, we see some these days with Tide 2 Elusive 3 Relentless Pets in PvP. Even better, they’re the masters of dodging, as they say. And trust me, you don’t want to face a Swashbuckler with nearly 300 dodge and a surprisingly good ability to land hits.
Same applies to Privateers. If you want to see how incredibly annoying it can be sometimes to hit a Privateer with a late game accuracy and dodge buff, you’ll experience if they use their 2nd or 3rd (!!!) espirit from one of these weapons. (Thanks to Elusive 4 and 5, Privateers run Pets that grants Elusive 4, giving them dodge that rivals the other two melee classes when they drop below half health)
All sounds good at this point. You can get a power that massively buffs your stats offensive and defensively, alongside new weapons that have impressive base damage. Now let’s get to ranged.
Ranged Perspective
The experience from a Ranged Pirate is indeed the opposite.. Taking a bit of examination for Musketeer‘s Version of the weapon for example, the weapon first of all, kills what Musketeer is designed for. It provides absolutely no range. And that’s a major problem. As the more range you have as a Musketeer, the better it is. This weapon is aimed however for a different type of combatant that prefer Hybrid Melee Musketeer gameplay.
But do even melee Musketeers need such a power with their 170-200+ Accuracy after accounting for gear? Do they need to buff their nonexistent dodge when they prefer using traps, debuffs, and bombs to keep the enemy away in the first place? Definitely questionable.
Witchdoctor as usual, gains the least from these new tools. Espirit De Corps doesn’t solve any of their problems and if anything, using it makes the class worse for the same reason as musket. Their weapon is built for a Melee hybrid, something far less feasible than a melee musket build.
So if you’re the type that loves Melee hybrid on a Witchdoctor, with barely any range, running gear pieces that increase your stats and give you a potential to chain (not something I recommend), then it is for you. But keep in mind that Espirit isn’t the best choice to put on your weapon, as both accuracy and dodge for Witchdoctor by nature, are a mess. So it likely wouldn’t make much of a difference. There’s certainly a better choice if you dare try melee witchdoctor.
So far, the weapons only even sound good to use on Melee classes. But now let us us proceed to what is more critical..
Everything’s good on Paper, BUT..
Not everything that’s viable or sounds good on paper will work if we try it out. As we get back to reality right now, if you try out a build like this where you use espirit to buff your late-game stats, it’s not guaranteed to help you all the time. You’ll be noticing yourself hanging on for dear life, where you pray for some luck to help you out, instead of employing a weapon that grants an Assassin’s Strike, Super Charge, or Surge of Technomancy. This strategy is not a healthy way of gameplay when it comes to PvP.
The Stat system in Pirate101 overall is discouraging without having to go into further details. All thanks to the fact that no matter how high your stats are, there’s always a chance that you’re going to miss your chain hit, or a chance you won’t dodge your opponent’s hit. Or, even worse, the dreaded Critical. You can be almost dead, dodging a half dozen chain hits, then an Epic or a Mega could end up making you lose the whole match. Not to mention that powers can’t be dodged at all!
Espirit is a stats boosting power for both accuracy and dodge. It is just as fickle, just like the rest the stat boosting powers. It will fail you sometimes and will help sometimes, it’s not guaranteed. And personally, I don’t encourage relying on getting or avoiding lucky chain hits to win a match. Furthermore, running this weapon to avoid having to run El Toro or Wu Tang may not be a viable choice either. You have no guarantee of pulling the power when you need it, and there is a cost to using the weapon instead of a companion to get your acc/dodge buff. Your pirate must take a round (that could be better used some other way) to use the buff, and you sacrifice an extra attack (or heal) by choosing this weapon, as mentioned earlier. The powers on weapons are very strong nowadays. You have to ask yourself: is espirit good enough?
Final Thoughts?
The Sinbad weapons and the addition of Espirit De Corps on Equipment was pretty unexpected and out of the blue. It’ll help a lot by increasing weapon and gearset variety, particularly when it comes to Free to Play players that got tired of using Haywire Weapon Sets. However, it’s definitely not the best to use, and it’s not something I recommend running, as Haywire is still the best right now for a Free to Play player. The powers they give tend to be more directly offensive, rather than providing a fickle buff that may not help you all that much if the game is in the mood to tell you “Time for you to lose”.
They’re decent, they’re okay for a starting weapon or a surprise strategy change, but don’t rely on the Sinbad set as your main weapon set when the skyway is filled with many other, better, choices for you to use.
