Gunslinger Build (Lv. 10-200)

A lot of them actually do use Ciders, at higher levels at least. 20 Ciders is good for an hour, or 12 if you're a Night Lord. They're well worth the 20 attack boost.

The damage cap does get smaller, but that gap is still over 120,000%.

Well, by the same reasoning, if you don't max Amp, you can max Torpedo earlier and thus you can max Maple Warrior and Support Octopus earlier. The only advantage that Amp offers over Cannon is the extra timer on Ice Spitter. However, that extra second becomes less and less important as you level up. That level 154 Corsair was already 2hko-ing Skeles with Cannon and managed to kill off entire mobs with just 1 freeze and Torpedo.

But good point about the skill books, Pap skill books seem to be a lot rarer these days. -_-

If that attack boost changes things that is. Like you said later on in the post, attack becomes less and less relevant as time goes on. 8 attack isn't going to make a difference if you ohko, which you WILL do well before 15x if cannon is maxed. 20 ciders? O_O How do people have that much room without increases? >_> I doubt it'll work for corsairs, because they need the room for bullets, pots, capsules, and other things they might have. Not to mention NLs can deal with having much less stars than corsairs will bullets and archers don't need the room at all.

Which is irrelevant because DPM is never needed. It was just for lulz. :3

"The only advantage that Amp offers over Cannon is the extra timer on Ice Spitter." You do mean torpedo right? O_o Why do corsairs get it if the timer is insignificant? The reason is because of security. If you're mobbing monsters in front of you and something comes up behind you, you're going to freeze it. If you don't get amp, that freeze is going to wear off much faster taking away from your mobbing time. If your torpedo sucks ass, you're going to get hit a lot more because the freeze will wear off and the monster will attack you. This becomes more important torpedoing because your reaction time and vulnerability is much higher in the ship. If you were using burner and cooling, it's extremely easy to keep the monsters at bay without risking damage to the ship. This whole scenario is taking place early on though. I wouldn't really use the captain in this video as an example because for some reason she sacrificed air strike and maxed rapid fire for torpedo, which is a pretty bad move in my opinion.

Edit: Another thing, amp is useful right away since it mobs 6 monsters immediately. Torpedo doesn't mob 6 monsters until level 21 and doesn't mob 5 until level 11. Even if it's low leveled, cannon will outdamage it.

It's not the damage that's most important here, it's the other advantages that come with the style.

What i would do is make two builds, both with maxed burner in 3rd, that suggest maxing amp in place of torpedo depending on what skill is more available to you.