New SAM Merits?

So, with this new update, I'm wondering what would work best?

I've been sitting on the norm of 5/5 STP 5/5 Meditate 5/5 Overwhelm for ages now(Shikikoyo 5/5 just cause).

Was thinking to change Meditate to Zanshin 5/5 and maybe putting Ikishoten 5/5 and just getting rid of Shikikoyo. And to be honest, I don't even know if Zanshin/Ikishoten effect the Zanshin that comes from Hasso. So was wondering if I could get some help with this.^^ ty

I'm not going to explain the "maffs" behind it, but I would keep Group 1 as the old combo of 5/5 Meditate and Store TP and change Group 2 to 1/5 Blade Bash 5/5 Overwhelm and 4/5 Ikishoten. And yes, it effects Has-zanshin and that's why there would be a change in merits set. (With those merits you get a 3hit build upon zanshin hit if you had previously had a 5-hit) (repost ftl)

What would be the point of Blade bash? lol id just go 5/5 Ikishoten if I was gunna do it.

Blade Bash saves lives... that and the 5th merit wouldn't change your hit build at all.

- Edit: Posted on the wrong character again I'm on a fail-streak
- Zibo

having blade bash is nice for oshit times ^^

the new update has made zanshin more popular. id go case to case with what you usually do on sam. for example i find myself tanking a lot duo with my fiancee, so i 5/5'ed thirdeye recast. seems silly but it does come in handy. group two ive always had 5/5 overwhelm and ikishoten. way back when there were bird camps i would 5 hit my polearm and on occasion i would get a 4 hit because of the extra tp fom a zanshin&ikishoten proc. everyone told me to merit shikikoyo and blade bash but i though it was more fun with my original setup.

i dont think meditate merits are worth it imo. the new sam ja makes it so you can just rotate your ja's to get skillchains. i never really find myself needing or waiting for a meditate timer.

so i would recommend doing either 5/5 zanshin or third eye based off of your situation when it comes to tanking. and for group 2 i would def 5/5 ikishoten, its always been worth it to me. now even more so its awesome.

5/5 shikikoyo has been and always was a waste; at best, you should've been rolling 1/5 shikikoyo and 4/5 blade bash

now, with the standard five-hit build and a 437 delay, 4/5 ikishoten's enough to provide a 41.6~% return from the zanshin hit, and paired with the initial strike landing (if hasso is up) grants 62.4~% in one attack round

before the update, if you were capping accuracy (or damn near it) like how you should've been, ikishoten merits weren't worth it at all over blade bash, but, now with bigger hp bars, more readily available -physical/-magic sets, and last but not least this hasso adjustment, ikishoten merits are rather mandatory (at least four, anyways)

the last merit, you can honestly do anything with: blade bash or shikikoyo, or perhaps even a fifth ikishoten merit just to insure you that you hold your five-hit build, in case you swap to your physical/magic reduction accordingly at one point or another during the tp phase

outgoing note: 5/5 meditate and store tp are certainly still the way to go as far as group one goes



tarutaru syndrome :(

Alright well thanks for the input, I've never been a fan of Blade Bash though, oshit moments aren't worth merits imo, especially in abyssea. But I guess I'll def put Ikishoten merits in.^^

Well I did some fooling around with numbers

Assuming:
-Using a 437 delay weapon
-Attacking full time with no interruptions for the sake of testing
-50% haste (hasso + 25% gear + spell)
-Full Zanshin Merits
-Full Ikishoten Merits
-Zanshin DA rate on hasso is 25% of zanshin proc rate


Your melee hits rate per second would be 0.269 hits per second.
Meriting zanshin gives you 1.25% more chance to DA on hasso.
Your TP gain on a zanshin'd hasso hit is 49.7

Therefore the difference in TP gain per second is roughly 0.1 TP gain higher than without those merits

*Compared to meditate merits*

Meditate gives you between 140 and 160 TP, so we'll call it 150 TP per med average

With merits, you get 150 every 150 seconds (2:30 min)
-That's 1TP/sec
Without merits, you get 150 every 180 seconds
-That's 0.83TP/sec

You gain roughly 0.17 TP with full merits compared to without merits

So meditate beats zanshin merits by about 2 times

Please let me know if my maffs is wrong.

this was before abyssea, where gates/fulmination basically led to your face (or other party/alliance members' faces) getting destroyed, as well as many other things such as discoid, frog charm, -aga III's, so on

now though, as i said, practically any average derp these days can put together -40% or so -physical reduction gear without even breaking a sweat basically, meanwhile before, -34% was the absolute best sans defending ring

I'm 1/5 on Blade Bash; that thing is hella useful in many situations.

I messed up, fixed my post, it's not as big a diff as I thought

I think the STP is calculated oddly on zanshin'd hits, I read over it briefly the other day, but I think it was decided that a 4/5 Iki Zanshin proc should net ~70 tp. Don't quote me on that though xD

5/5 ikishoten hasso zanshin, yes, 70~% or so return (hence why the fifth ikishoten merit isn't mandatory, since the additional ten tp does nothing as far as being able to weapon skill faster); the addition from ikishoten is calculated before store tp, but after weapon delay, or last i recall from many years ago

i'd put all the moon runes together for you, but i'm like james bond in the pierce brosnan era: i don't make the gadgets, i just use them

Yeah with a 437 delay weapon base tp is 11.1.

Add 15 TP for zanshin, comes to 26.1.

Calculate with 90 total STP comes to 49.7ish per hit.

Not sure where 70 comes from, maybe I'm lookin at it wrong.

oh does that include the hit before the zanshin hit? I guess that would make sense.

i think there is more to take into account with this. For one, the dmg you lose out on extra haso-zan hits. Also something i will note is that ever since i started relying on that dam kabuto+2 for my 5hit i notice medi tics dont line up due to swinging once without the hat on during the medi animation(doesn't always happen but omg i hate that so much) which pretty much ruins a tic. Also has there been any clear testing done on seigan zanshin? that should also be something to keep in mind.

Yeah there's a lot of variables, I was trying out a perfect world situation where we only care about tp gain per second and don't have to go into heavy maths. But on the same token, nobody's gonna meditate every 2:30 on the dot and nobody's gonna be permanently meleeing monsters; I'd say we'd spend more time meditating than meleeing so in that respect zanshin merits are even less useful.

i alrdy put 5/5 zanshin attack rate and ikishoten in prep for the update

well you should take out the zanshin rate merits and put back in meditate ok? ok

I was just in Campaign and noticed that Ikishoten is affected by Store TP and came to the realisation that what Zebo has said here is made of win.

I used to have Ikishoten at 3/5 plus Shikikoyo 1/5, but I had to sacrifice Shikikoyo for for the good of Ikishoten.

To put it simply; Ikishoten is affected by Store TP.
With 4/5 merits you get a bonus of 12TP which is slightly more than an normal swing (of a Masamune). So as Store TP is applied to Ikishoten too, this bonus effectively counts as another full hit on top of first swing and zanshin attack.

An example Hassanshin attack round in my 5-hit set with Masamune (sTP+90 total):

	Base TP:	with Store TP:
First Attack:	11.1	21.0
Zanshin Attack:	11.1	21.0
Ikishoten Bonus:	12.0	22.8
Total:		64.8

Include the TP from my last WS (~16 + 64.8 = 80.8TP) and now I'm one hit away from another WS.

(I probably should have noticed this before the update,... why didn't you guys tell me?)