Personally I love high seas and the adventure as well as the reward. I am a equal opportunity privateer on the seas if I see merchants I scuttle them and dry loot them. Best haul from a single merch ship was 550 val, 350 ver, 400 ag 700 barbed and a couple hundred blood and heartwood logs. average is 150-200 each ignot 400barbed and the rest and miss. I can't mine ignots even close to what I can privateer them. Also get the occasional heavy cannon, armor buff stuff and white cloth dye tubs. Killing the pirates is a error, get the quest bind the pirate and I atleast tend to get less cannon ballz and more ship parts. Like Garth said if you are taking 45 minutes to kill a DP you need practice or a new career
Longest it has taken me to bring one down was 20 minutes. If you are a tamer put a rune beetle mare combo on them. If you are a tamer with archery use a high ssi, hld, 50 DI bow with hit lightning or fireball on it. GDs while good meat shields and not needing healing.... do take forever to kill the pirates. A mystic mage can wipe them out pretty fast dropping RCs and Flame strikes, add in necro and corpse skin and strangle and they drop even faster. 10-15 minutes. What annoys me is the damn pirate ships keep firing after the crew is dead, best way to stop taking damage is to manuever behind the ship and board from the back. But a few pirate ships when scuttled will still flip to keep their forward cannon on you. Having a GM carpenter on call helps a lot in the cost of repairs. Learning to hit and run and your ship only get slightly damaged helps a lot as well. Soloing just get between two cannons and you can work them both pretty fast from the context swoop in fire both cannons and zip out of range while reloading the cannons and repeat until its scuttled. Having 5-10 ship paintings helps a lot in the gun powder department, so all you are wasting your salt peter on is fuse cords. What sucks is when you are fighting on dread pirate and another pirate ship comes along and blocks your ship against the scuttled ship. Had it happen twice where I got wedged in and could not move my ship because to scuttle pirate ships had me blocked. Only solution there is wait and wait and wait some more until the pirate ships are gone. Not saying high seas is for everyone but I have a lot of fun scouring the seas for treasure, and even more fun when I can get a crew or two to man the cannons.