Gear Discussion/Help SAM

sub THF alky ftw

anything else alky/af+1 w/e floats your boat

doesn't matter anyways its a 1 hit WS its gonna hit/miss anyways at some point

For WS I use Askar simply because I don't have an Osode and in that case I think it's fine because the DA will make a sizable damage difference on the slim chance it goes off (an average of 19 DAs out of every 100 WSs, to put into perspective) along with the accuracy loss being negligible. For TP'ing, it just comes across as SAMs fapping over the easy way out with all the stats people love to *** out mindlessly. lol MORE HASTE AND DA?? Yes, you get to wear haste hands and feet with Askar and you can get a whopping 2% DA while completely ignoring the accuracy loss. Even with full merits and white-box everywhere, capped acc just in merits is a tall order and throwing away a huge source of it just seems silly. There's a debate to be made on the benefits of extra haste against the accuracy as far as end-result total damage, but it just seems to encourage bad practices.

For Ikishoten, I think you'd probably be hard pressed to find anyone to spend the merits on those versus the other options and even then I think the figures are that you'd need between 50 and 60% acc to take full advantage of Ikishoten, or as I've understood it to actually gain the benefits from it in comparison to losing the accuracy. "Gearing to miss is gearing to fail" is probably the most annoying "SAM chant" ever, but in this case it seems to hold water. :c

Why do you need to be so low accuracy to take advantage of ikishoten? Obviously if you're capped on acc it won't help you very much, but it still acts as a buffer for when you miss. Looked at the math a little, assuming the 1 acc = .5% hit rate assumption, I lose about 4.5% total accuracy switching from hauby to askar assuming hauby perfectly caps my accuracy, not counting the extra acc ring slot I have because I don't use rajas (the whole reason I have to use askar body in the first place).

So while there is some acc loss, I dunno, just doesn't seem as bad as people make it out to be, and when you fight stuff where your acc isn't capped, you get fun gigantic tp gain, lol.

Edit:
And I dunno, the other cat 2 merits just seem kinda eh to me. Shiki, ok I guess but don't feel the need very often. Blade bash, if I wanted to stun I'd have a blm for that, I don't solo a super lot on sam either so that's probably part of it. I still have one merit I could put into either of those but dunno which I'd prefer.

Well, I'm admittedly not completely sure of where that very low acc% number comes from, but if you look at the numbers and consider a 90% accuracy rate, you're missing 10 out of every 100 swings and with an assumed 10% Zanshin rate (without merits/gear), you're in effect looking at making up 10% of 10, or 1 made-up miss every 100 swings if my math/logic is right. D: The number grows as the amount of misses grow, so I guess that's where the reduced hit rate comes from. For my merits I chose meditate/STP and Overwhelm/Blade Bash. Iz fun! lol

Zanshin's actually supposed to be 40% activation rate at 75 and my experience seems to back it up. If you ever run into a nin yag in campaign you'll notice it proc a lot on the shadows, lol.

Where does 40% come from? Wiki (I know, I know, lolwiki) estimates 10% and if it were greater unless there were parse results to show the massive gap in activation rate I wouldn't be able to honestly believe that. Just far too large of a gap to justify through eye-balling in the very few misses made @75 in general. D: Shadows just offer up permanent misses giving nothing but opportunities to Zanshin so I can see why that might skew the perception.

40% comes from the Japanese wiki. I think the 10% came before they buffed Zanshin and it was just never updated/retested. Testing is normally best done with something you're whiffing the crap out of like a dagger or something you have no skill in at all like that woodworking all jobs GA, lol.

And actually, permanent missing is the best way to test Zanshin, if you only miss once in a great while you'll never notice how much you actually Zanshin. If you sit there whiffing all day it's like, wow there's a Zanshin, and another, and another.

The only time AF+1 Hands come out ahead is when being used in Penta Thrust. Other then that stick to Alkys.

And for the ones mentioning to TP in Askar body when the person does not have an Amanomurakumo, then please, do not level Samurai any further.

Too late, already have 75 sam, and try and actually address stuff about Zanshin before just reiterating the same stuff.

Yes Zanshin is a god-send but you really shouldn't be missing that much in the first place for Zanshin to be a large factor of your total damage output. My merits are 5/5 Overwhelm, 3 Ikishoten, 1 Blade Bash, and 1 Shikikyo mainly because I did alot of HNMs where I would be meleeing a large amount of the time and my ACC wasn't always capped. In most fights your ACC should be capped to a point where Zanshin becomes null. Forgot to add, yes Zanshin has a high proc rate enough without adding merits to it, but you really shouldn't be meriting it in the first for those thinking that they should. And it was said before but I'll stand by it until SE change SAM drastically; Building to miss is building to fail.

I never said to put merits in Zanshin, that's such a huge waste, 40%->45% is totally not worth it. And your 3 ikishoten merits are essentially useless since you need the 4th before it actually cuts a hit off unless you have extra STP gear for it.

It's not about gearing to miss, it's about realizing that you can have an acceptable miss rate without greatly afffecting your dmg output. As I said above, going from hauby to askar is only affecting your hit rate by about 4.5%, that actually gets slightly lower if you're not capped to begin with.

But why would you use Askar to begin with? That might not seem like much but when theres a better alternative thats cheap and not difficult at all to obtain why not use it?

Well, as per SAM, more TP = More DMG, so it in fact increases your DMG

Askar lets me get 6 hit without sacrificing haste and without using rajas (I tend to get a lot more use out of my blm so I'm semi permanent tamas)


That extra 12%ish TP isn't gonna do much compared to if it'd shaved a hit off of getting to 100% TP.

Oh i know, but im just saying more tp over 100 = more dmg

Whats your current 6-hit build look like?

I guess it's some extra dmg but it's a bit of a waste compared to what having that one extra merit would do.

Yea, but at least having Shikikoyo helps, and also blade bash, so unless u omit one, id rather have some extra TP over 100 then less timers on those 2

Hagun/Pole
Black Tathlum
Walahra
Peacock charm
Brutal
Fowling
Askar body
Dusk Gloves
2xACC rings
Amemet +1
Swift
Haidate
Usu

I don't merit much (read: not at all) so I'd rather put the merits I do get in to something more useful if it's not gonna be very helpful but I guess that's just me, lol.

I could probably live without one of the two, it's what will happen since I already have 5/4, haven't decided which I would care more about though.

i have merit 3 in Ikoshoten...have been very useful in game like HNM
since my main job and my fav is sam...i have test it a lot of things especially SC and gears

my DoT have 9% Double Attack + haste + acc in gear....since i use askar body...i lose a little acc...even though i rarely miss...if i do...high chance that zanshin proc activates.... and having like a gimp /war DA job trait without DA gear is awesome...i have done solo light with just meditate 100% with Hagun & /dnc(soloing) or /thf(75% of the time SJ end game event stuff to help the tank and keeping the hate to minimum with WS SC spam) or /nin(assault or dynamis or limbus depending of the run lol) having Ikoshiten + DA gear with mix of store TP gear and haste

on Kirin i prefer Hauby > Askar body + sushi...i very few misses(this when Ikoshiten shine) on DoT lol....but since SJ /THF never miss SAWS and do 650 - 1.3k + SC if not resist(80 - 85% of the time is somewhat resist)...is great, of course prepare for run half of the fight....but thats when meditate full merit get more sweeter...you can run from kirin then do another SAWS without doing a single and run until some take hate :D if you can SATA a tank then even better lol


i rarely play sam/war for one reason "you will end spamming back to back nonstop with 19% DA combine + store TP...no way to get rid of the hate unless a thf in your pt stealing your enmity or dying or killing the monster itself....since is Gods takes a few mins to kill not a good idea if you don't want to die every of those fight lol"

my 6-hit build but still need to test usu feet with other gear...but i don't have it...so:

Askar Head(TP only)
Askar Body(TP + Evasion only)
Hachiman Kote(for TP changed to Dusk Glove when casting Ni)
Byakko Haidate(TP only)
Fuma-Sune Ate(for some reason i end with 81 - 82%TP i change fast to hachiman sune-ate for that round or solo light with meditate & sekkanoki)
Swift Belt(TP only)
Smildon Mantle(i don't have more macro line to change between amemet :< )
Rajas Ring
Flame ring(i don't use acc ring...never needed it..if i did i changed my body to hauby)
Bushinomimi
Brutal Earring
Pole Grip
(only missing an ammo slot unless i am using Ranged)

merits:
8/8GK
5/5 Overwhelm
5/5 Store TP
5/5 Meditate
1/5 Blade Bash
1/5 Shikikoyo
3/5 Ikoshiten

(too bad there isn't merit to increase SC dmg...will be too hax ;/ lol since i love to SC with anything XD )


^Agreed..... ; ;

P.S. sorry for the walltext of my experience with sam...and still testing ; ;

P.S.S. just test gear and use the gear you like best for TP WS and etc...my opinion & exp in end game(not saying the solo part lol..already typed too much) is just to help not to follow it ...^_^

Man, another person with 3 ikishoten merits, if you think 3 is good, the 4th one is like magic, lol.

If I could take my merit out of Shikikyo I would, but other DD's love it.

Greedy other DD's, screw em!

I still gotta pick which of the two I wanna get, what circumstances do you tend to use blade bash in the most?

i only use Blade Bash in a situation that makes you "/panics!!!!" or stunning mob casting if silence weared off while not having 100tp to gekko it or stunning astral flow Avatar on limbus(the one who have to choose between 2 box..idk the name of the zone ; ;)....i keep 100 - 200tp to WS with Tachi: Hobaku if the an Avatar pop and not the Item Box while the other DDs do the dmg or Meltdown or Explosion or Third eye goes off on the first hit when i have half of the HP when soloing >.>

Hmm, I think I might go with the 1 Blade Bash in the long run, most of the time I use sam I'm not really in a position to give anyone TP anyways, lol.

Salvage/Nyzul. Frogs. Once lost a run because of frog chorus spam. I just use bash and Hobaku on them now.

Ugh, I had to do the same. ***gets old fast. lol Was so glad the one-time there was enough people that I got to come BLU. Double march meant head butt wasn't allowing those *** frogs to make a move the whole time. lol

If you have the necessary Ikishoten merits, you're doing something wrong. Quit wasting your merits to use a bad body piece, get a hauby, and spend them on something useful.

Hmm, so I can get Shiki and give other people my TP (fun but mostly useless), or I can put a bunch of merits in Blade Bash so I can stun something once every 5 minutes... I think I'll stick to my actual useful Ikishoten merits. Gotta love people like you who just spout crap with nothing to back it up.

So I got bored yesterday and decided to do some math on this subject. The assumptions I'm working with is that you're using askar body so you don't have to sacrifice a haste piece. Going to also assume most people using rajas unlike me since well, most sams do. Haste with hauby will be turban/haidate/swift/fuma for 17, with askar will be turban/haidate/swift/dusk/fuma for 20. Assuming both sets actualy have full Ikishoten merits even though people who like hauby so much seem to never bother with them. The two things I'm comparing are pure dot and how fast you tp. Not including WS since that should be equal due to gear swaps. Also, these numbers don't really have any units, they're just ratios, so 100% is what you'd have with 0 haste and 100% accuracy.

Sample numbers in the equation:
Haste: 17
Acc: 95%
Additional Acc from Iki: 1.9% (100-Acc)*Min(0.95,Acc*1.25)*.4
Time per swing: .83 (1 would be 0 haste)

No support:
Dot w/ Hauby = (95+1.9)/.83 = 116.75%
Dot w/ Askar = (88+4.56)/.8 = 115.7%
TP w/ Hauby = (95+(1.9*2*5/6)+(1.9*1/6))/.83 = 118.65%
TP w/ Askar = (88+(4.56*2*5/6)+(4.56*1/6))/.8 = 120.45%

Haste spell:
Dot w/ Hauby = (95+1.9)/.68 = 142.5%
Dot w/ Askar = (88+4.56)/.65 = 142.4%
TP w/ Hauby = (95+(1.9*2*5/6)+(1.9*1/6))/.68 = 144.82%
TP w/ Askar = (88+(4.56*2*5/6)+(4.56*1/6))/.65 = 148.25%

Haste spell + 1 March:
Dot w/ Hauby = (95+1.9)/.57 = 170%
Dot w/ Askar = (88+4.56)/.54 = 171.4%
TP w/ Hauby = (95+(1.9*2*5/6)+(1.9*1/6))/.68 = 172.78%
TP w/ Askar = (88+(4.56*2*5/6)+(4.56*1/6))/.65 = 178.44%

Would actually like someone who does this kind of stuff a lot to check my math on this, but if it's solid, even with no support, Askar will out TP Hauby though it will lose slightly on Dot. Adding haste only favors Askar and with Haste/March, Askar will start doing more Dot and TP faster than Hauby.

And going out for now so I won't be able to respond to the wall of flames I'm sure to recieve for this, but be back in a couple hours, lol.