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I'm playing through EO3 at the moment, since I never bothered to play it the first time around (probably distracted by something shiny). I'm at the end of the second stratum, about to fight the boss, and I think I need a little party advice... specifically, my Buccaneer (who I creatively named Guybrush) is beginning to feel suspiciously like dead weight.

My party is H/B/G in front and M/A in back. My Hoplite spams Line Guard and Provoke, my Monk heals, my Gladiator is my damage dealer and sort of a secondary tank, and my Arbalist is definitely my biggest damage dealer. But... my Buccaneer isn't really doing anything. Running him in the front I've given him a rapier, but I haven't found any new rapiers in a while, meaning his outdated gear is making him rather crap at damaging anything. And he's absolutely my squishiest party member, a problem further compounded by the fact that enemies will ALWAYS target him first, even over my Provoking Hoplite. Seriously, I'm pretty sure he's wearing a raw steak around his neck or something.

I've found him mildly useful for Lights Out, which is a good way of disabling physical attackers for a few turns, but it seems to have a terrible success rate on the enemies I actually want to use it on (FOEs and bosses). His Eagle Eye is also a bit handy, if a bit redundant due to my Gladiator's Wolf Howl. But on the whole I kind of feel like he's collecting dust.

I understand after this boss I get subclassing, so maybe there's a really good complimentary class? Just something to make him less bleh.

Pincushion is the bread and butter of a pirate. Its the second most powerful attack skill (Most powerful being Warrior Might of course) in the game due to the sheer number of hits it can do and the fact it's damage also scales with your AGI.

Eagle Eye is an amazing skill and stacks with Wolf Howl. Its much more powerful than Wolf Howl as well (Unless the enemy is suffering from an ailment).

As for subclassing, Gladiator is the obvious choice for Berserker's Vow and Charge, which help make Pincushion even stronger. Ninja is amusingly another good choice for Bunshin.

There are also Chase attacks that you can use to do some damage on your enemies also helping your more damage dealing allies. Seeing you're using rapiers, it is best to improve the Chase skills with them.

Also, Swashbuckling and Pincushion is amazing. (Trust me, I have two Buccaneers.)

Ideally you'd be better off main gladiator and subbing him buccaneer, but that's assuming you want to farm agi books to bring glad's agi up.

I can't really add more to what others have said. Eagle eye buffs everybody's damage by 30%, which is a huge boon to the party. Pincushion is the best damage you can get without support from your team (WM doesn't really compare unless you've got the whole party tailored to it.)

Swashbuckling is rubbish as far as damage output goes (I can't remember the number, but it averages out to like... what... 200something% damage?), but combined with second sword as a shogun's sub, it becomes godmode for generating warrior might attacks in a WM party. Lets you generate up to 9 swings, which each get chased by the fully-buffed gladiator/shogun for MASSIVE DAMAGE.

Another good use of buccaneers is their passive boost for limit generation. You can spam out limits much faster with the bucc.

I'm not really a fan of their status abilities, mostly because I hate unreliable or luck-based attacks. FOEs and bosses become immune really fast, and their damage isn't as good as pincushion anyway. Still, things like Hanging and Lights Out do alright for helping with rare drops I guess, if you don't want to wait 'til you get lucky hammer...

If you're looking to main the buccaneer, you should grab gladiator as a sub for charge. That way, you go charge -> pincushion and save a bunch of tp while dealing the heavy damage.

From a pure optimization perspective, they make good SUBCLASSES for both pincushion Gladiators (if you're not going to use blade rave/9 smash) and second sword/swashbuckling autoattack Shoguns (because everybody likes the WM party)

So, Pincushion then? I'll start building up Gun Mastery in that case.

I also just killed that telepathic whale whatever (ending up being way harder than it should have been since I totally forgot to bring any Therica B...), so I guess Ill be getting access to subclassing soon.

Is there any particularly good way to grind? I'm thinking I might want to rest and respec my Buccaneer due to some wasted points on Hanging and other skills that I just never ever use, but, at this stage in the game at least, 5 levels is a fair chunk of grinding to get him back up to snuff.

Pirates have great normal attacks.

They do, but why bother with normal attacks if you have a zodiac? Dark ether lets you spam out the big ones for cheap.

Also, the difference between guns and rapiers isn't too great, but I think rapiers are typically a little better. Not a huge deal, though. Just use whatever deals more damage at the time if you're on the front row, or stick with guns in the back.

As for easy ways to get those levels back, you can probably fight Narmer and the FOE's again. Much easier with subclassing, new weapons and the extra 10-ish levels.

Stratums 4 and 5 give you access to the king penguin and scylla respectively, which you can exploit really easily for massive chunks of xp. But you won't have that for another 4 floors, so it's out of the question.

Overall, the 5 level reduction from resting probably won't be as huge a deal as you'd think. You can probably just do normal exploration on the 3rd stratum. You can get maxed pincusion at level 23 (With a subclass for the extra 5 skills -- recommend gladiator), so if you're 28 before retiring you'll be all set with a dark ether spammer in the back fueling your front row skill-spam damage.

And coincidentally I just hit 28! So I guess I'll spec him to use Pincushion and maybe start building up a Zodiac to stick somewhere in my party. Unless it might be possible to Subclass one of my party members into a Zodiac, and use Dark Ether that way?

^ Though if you have the mentality for it, you can waste time on refilling TP by standing in the front-row, dodging attacks.

The other nice thing about Buccs is that you can net TP with them if you only put a rank in Quick Draw or Lights Out and max out their class skill.

I used a Buccaneer for my entire playthrough of EO3, and even though she did sometimes feel like dead weight (why do you die so much more often than everybody else?!), she was super useful! Pincushion (does a bunch of damage; boosted by AGI) is fantastic, and Swashbuckling is a passive skill that sometimes makes your normal attacks hit 2-4 times.

Oh, and Hanging! Some enemies only ever use magic attacks, so if you bind their heads, they're pretty much rendered helpless for a few turns. Lights Out, Limit Boost, and Eagle Eye are also really nice. c:

And... I haven't played EO3 in a while, but I'm pretty sure Buccaneers have a passive skill that recovers their TP when they use normal attacks.

For me Buccaneers were more of a good subclass option than main class. N/Bs and S/Bs are amongst my favorites to use. I did use B/N once upon a time. They have about the same effectiveness as N/B, but they lack Keburi no Sue, which allows effective rapier usage in the back and cuts the costs of all skills and not just the attacking ones, and you get slightly less damage out of Pincushion (Though minimal as it is.)