Zanshin? why?

[Crysten]

How is that anything like the example you just gave?

I don't see what's wrong with getting a Nanatsusaya and fully meriting Ikishoten. You could have a -accuracy set for when you're trying to TP, and switch sets when doing Weaponskills. Alternatively, if you wore your entire AF3 +2 with as much -acc gear you could find, then you'd be procing Zanshin all the time, occasionally hitting for twice the amount you would normal hit (with Set: Augments Zanshin), and getting buttloads of TP (it would be possible to get 100% TP in four hits if Zanshin proc'd ATLEAST once with +store TP gear and merits in Ikishoten).

I dunno how bad that sounds. I've been thinking it over and have been a little weary of putting merits into Ikishoten on my 90SAM becasue of all the people on the internet bashing it. Can someone explain to me just how Ikishoten isn't worth it? I mean, look at your other options: Blade Bash and Shikikoyo.

...you're building a set reliant on missing. I'll let you ponder just how stupid that is. Your Zanshins miss too, btw.

Blade Bash is a far, far, far more useful merit ability, honestly.

[Mirage]

The pros with zanshin is that while non-zanshin jobs cap at 95% accuracy, a zanshin user can get in practice around 97.5% hit rate, making for a more stable TP gain.

Every of those 5% misses you get will have a 50ish percent chance of hitting again, with 95% accuracy. (assuming lv75+ samurai without any zanshin-augmenting gear)

But of course, it is not something to sacrifice haste, DA/TA, acc or attack for, unless you know you're at 95% hit rate, or the gear haste cap, then you can maybe sacrifice those you're at the cap of.

[wintermute]

...you're building a set reliant on missing. I'll let you ponder just how stupid that is. Your Zanshins miss too, btw.

Blade Bash is a far, far, far more useful merit ability, honestly.

"Building a set reliant on missing" sounds bad just by looking at it, and yes... Zanshin can miss too, but Zanshin procs have a +35 Accuracy Bonus. And Blade Bash isn't useful. If you're soloing something you're /DNC and you can use some of your TP that you're getting out the ass on Hobaku's, and if you don't want to waste TP then you can always use Violent Flourish. And in parties or whatever that are fighting enemies that need to be stunned at certain points, well... I've rarely been in party that relies on the Samurai to stun things. That's why we have PLD/DRK/BLU.

[Superchicken]

"Building a set reliant on missing" sounds bad just by looking at it, and yes... Zanshin can miss too, but Zanshin procs have a +35 Accuracy Bonus. And Blade Bash isn't useful. If you're soloing something you're /DNC and you can use some of your TP that you're getting out the ass on Hobaku's, and if you don't want to waste TP then you can always use Violent Flourish. And in parties or whatever that are fighting enemies that need to be stunned at certain points, well... I've rarely been in party that relies on the Samurai to stun things. That's why we have PLD/DRK/BLU.

you are basing blade bash usefulness on parties? On big NM fights that do moves that need to stunned blade bash is very useful, you dont always have plentiful amount of stunners in your pt to cover a good stun rotation and we all know that BLU's headbutt stun doesnt stun all the time and less more than it does on higher end NM's. And the accuracy of violent flourish is not 100% with /dnc and /dnc in in other situation other than being solo on sam is >< imo. And using your TP to stun with Hobaku vs dumping your TP into fudo,gekko,kasha, self scing etc is more useful in many situations. Now i can tell you when using hobaku was nice was during salvage during the 75 cap days to stun the Poroggo nm's frog chorus move. To me meritting zanshin and building your SAM around missing enough to where zanshin would even be a factor and worthwhile ( i dont think its worthwhile at all) hurts your SAM more than it helps if you build your gear and merits to not include zanshin.

i think you'll get better use out of your merits when you put them into meditate recast, store tp, blade bash, shikikoyo (some will say no here cause they dont like to give out the TP but hey in abyssea when the whm's needs some TP for that hexa strike proc, it comes in handy) and overwhelm.

[wintermute]

you are basing blade bash usefulness on parties? On big NM fights that do moves that need to stunned blade bash is very useful, you dont always have plentiful amount of stunners in your pt to cover a good stun rotation and we all know that BLU's headbutt stun doesnt stun all the time and less more than it does on higher end NM's. And the accuracy of violent flourish is not 100% with /dnc and /dnc in in other situation other than being solo on sam is >< imo. And using your TP to stun with Hobaku vs dumping your TP into fudo,gekko,kasha, self scing etc is more useful in many situations. Now i can tell you when using hobaku was nice was during salvage during the 75 cap days to stun the Poroggo nm's frog chorus move. To me meritting zanshin and building your SAM around missing enough to where zanshin would even be a factor and worthwhile ( i dont think its worthwhile at all) hurts your SAM more than it helps if you build your gear and merits to not include zanshin.

i think you'll get better use out of your merits when you put them into meditate recast, store tp, blade bash, shikikoyo (some will say no here cause they dont like to give out the TP but hey in abyssea when the whm's needs some TP for that hexa strike proc, it comes in handy) and overwhelm.

I disagree with the last two merits you mentioned, still. You bash me for basing Blade Bash's usefulness on party situations (but I list solo situations too) and then you go on to tell me why Blade Bash is good based on a party situation vs NMs. Blade Bash is something you could have, I guess, it wouldn't hurt... but if your group knows wtf they're doing then they'll know what to do before going up against a certain NM. If I was in a group and the leader said "hey, Samurai. you're on stun duty with Blade Bash", I would scoff and drop party. But, I've never had anyone put me on stun duty for any reason, and I've never heard of it happening ever, and I doubt it does. If your group knows what it's getting into then they'll have a strategy. Which means: NM spams harmful TP moves? we need a legit stunner, perhaps RDM/DRK. or even RDM/BLM. Should I invite the Samurai for stuns instead of the Red Mage subbing Dark Knight when we already have filled our quota on DD? Hell no. And the only thing I have to say about your claim that it's useful while soloing is... 5 minute recast when fully merited. Lol. no thanks.

I don't understand why everyone hates on Zanshin. It's there for a reason, and obviously most of the playerbase is not understanding this and still striving to put as much acc+ gear as possible on their Samurais when they could be ignoring that ACC gear for anything else and meriting Ikishoten for 34%TP a swing. Instead, they're spending their merits on Blade Bash. >_>

[Superchicken]

i never said blade bash was useful during soloing, if you took it that way you misread. I also said that using /dnc is only really applicable or for me, i'd only use when soloing things like campaign battle so i could keep myself alive with waltz and what not, for me if i was going to go solo something i'd be on a different job as SAM is not my only job. You were using violent flourish as your stun option and for soloing stuff that you could solo on SAM it would probably work in terms of your stun accuracy, but on higher NM's where you in a group your more likely to miss that stun with violent flourish, and yes in a group setting where stun is required you typically have your blms, drks, rdm/blm, rdm/drk there to stun it but things happen like stun timers get tangleed up, or you have two stunners and they both stun at the same time now neither of them will be ready for the next stun, so that blade bash would come in handy for the next stun required, and most likely if you are in a group situation on SAM you wont be there /dnc. And i'm not bashing you for soloing on SAM either i'm simply stating that for me i have better jobs to go solo stuff with than SAM, if you like soloing on sam, or sam is your only option, so be it, i'm saying you are right or wrong just applying my situation like you are applying yours.

Yes fully meritted it has a 5 minute recast but not meritted it all it has an infinite recast and those few times you needed it to save the day could have been worth the merit or two in blade bash vs zanshin.

Yes i talked about a situation that i was in alot with salvage was using hobaku as my stun on Poroggo frog nms. But i knew this was my role as the two sams for that zone knew they were always stunners for the frog nms and even used soborros for this reason when we got to those NM's as well. Hell, everyone that a had a stun WS was on stun duty even the mnk tank would use shoulder tackle if neither of the sams had tp ready for the next hobaku.

Now this is game where you are free to play and do what you want in it. That's whats good about it. This is a forum, people will state their opinions, doesn't mean you have to agree with it or go by what anyone says. People give their opinions and people take it for what they see it's worth. You may see zanshin as a good thing, others including myself will see it as useless merits for how we play the job. I find blade bash useful for those "OH #%$@#$% STUN" moments, you don't, ok, that's fine.

It is what it is, take if for what you want, by i was not trying to bash you (no pun intended) just throwing some ideas out there.

But i will give you some more stuff from MY experiences as sam and i'll go back to the 75 cap days before abyssea and the reign of the RAzed Ruin atma. SAM is was a major job in my jobs i played the most. So with this i had capped GK merits and Justice Torque for it, and the Byakko's pants, and the usukane gears, etc. Accuracy was never really an issue for me so i even ate meat foods over acc foods MAJORITY of the time. So yes i missed occassional attacks but not enough to see zanshin as worthwhile merit option for me because really you miss an attack round if yo udidnt have certain stuff zanshin activation rate was never 100% so you only had a a chance to have zanshin attack, so again that chance of zanshin occurring wasn't feasable enough to me. Now correct me if i'm wrong but the only thing that had 100% zanshin effect on activation was / is the nana GK from PW. Now i don't know about your server but my server never had any LS kill PW and the only Nana GK that my server ever saw was the one someone brought over to sell on a mule from the Apathy LS who was pretty much the only group around that was killing PW. So even further sacrificing gear spots that were used for haste to cap haste in order to fill with zanshin gear did not appeal to me either. I would much rather be hittign haste cap or as close to as it could then using gear for a zanshin build. Your overall DoT is gonna work out better when you are hittingthat haste cap or close to it than it would if you were rocking a zanshin build. This is can be shown in the thread where a person shows you the effect of haste and explains what it does over time vs not using haste gears. So again take my opinion as you will, but i was never bashing you for you stance on the matter being discussed, just simply applying my opinion to it and giving you reason for it.

And believe me i don't like having shikikoyo with even the one merit it has in it but i did it to help out the whm in abyssea for when the blue proc was hexa strike and the whm needed tp and wasnt feasable for the whm to go tp up on a mob.

/cheers

[wintermute]

i never said blade bash was useful during soloing, if you took it that way you misread. I also said that using /dnc is only really applicable or for me, i'd only use when soloing things like campaign battle so i could keep myself alive with waltz and what not, for me if i was going to go solo something i'd be on a different job as SAM is not my only job. You were using violent flourish as your stun option and for soloing stuff that you could solo on SAM it would probably work in terms of your stun accuracy, but on higher NM's where you in a group your more likely to miss that stun with violent flourish, and yes in a group setting where stun is required you typically have your blms, drks, rdm/blm, rdm/drk there to stun it but things happen like stun timers get tangleed up, or you have two stunners and they both stun at the same time now neither of them will be ready for the next stun, so that blade bash would come in handy for the next stun required, and most likely if you are in a group situation on SAM you wont be there /dnc. And i'm not bashing you for soloing on SAM either i'm simply stating that for me i have better jobs to go solo stuff with than SAM, if you like soloing on sam, or sam is your only option, so be it, i'm saying you are right or wrong just applying my situation like you are applying yours.

Yes fully meritted it has a 5 minute recast but not meritted it all it has an infinite recast and those few times you needed it to save the day could have been worth the merit or two in blade bash vs zanshin.

Yes i talked about a situation that i was in alot with salvage was using hobaku as my stun on Poroggo frog nms. But i knew this was my role as the two sams for that zone knew they were always stunners for the frog nms and even used soborros for this reason when we got to those NM's as well. Hell, everyone that a had a stun WS was on stun duty even the mnk tank would use shoulder tackle if neither of the sams had tp ready for the next hobaku.

Now this is game where you are free to play and do what you want in it. That's whats good about it. This is a forum, people will state their opinions, doesn't mean you have to agree with it or go by what anyone says. People give their opinions and people take it for what they see it's worth. You may see zanshin as a good thing, others including myself will see it as useless merits for how we play the job. I find blade bash useful for those "OH #%$@#$% STUN" moments, you don't, ok, that's fine.

It is what it is, take if for what you want, by i was not trying to bash you (no pun intended) just throwing some ideas out there.

But i will give you some more stuff from MY experiences as sam and i'll go back to the 75 cap days before abyssea and the reign of the RAzed Ruin atma. SAM is was a major job in my jobs i played the most. So with this i had capped GK merits and Justice Torque for it, and the Byakko's pants, and the usukane gears, etc. Accuracy was never really an issue for me so i even ate meat foods over acc foods MAJORITY of the time. So yes i missed occassional attacks but not enough to see zanshin as worthwhile merit option for me because really you miss an attack round if yo udidnt have certain stuff zanshin activation rate was never 100% so you only had a a chance to have zanshin attack, so again that chance of zanshin occurring wasn't feasable enough to me. Now correct me if i'm wrong but the only thing that had 100% zanshin effect on activation was / is the nana GK from PW. Now i don't know about your server but my server never had any LS kill PW and the only Nana GK that my server ever saw was the one someone brought over to sell on a mule from the Apathy LS who was pretty much the only group around that was killing PW. So even further sacrificing gear spots that were used for haste to cap haste in order to fill with zanshin gear did not appeal to me either. I would much rather be hittign haste cap or as close to as it could then using gear for a zanshin build. Your overall DoT is gonna work out better when you are hittingthat haste cap or close to it than it would if you were rocking a zanshin build. This is can be shown in the thread where a person shows you the effect of haste and explains what it does over time vs not using haste gears. So again take my opinion as you will, but i was never bashing you for you stance on the matter being discussed, just simply applying my opinion to it and giving you reason for it.

And believe me i don't like having shikikoyo with even the one merit it has in it but i did it to help out the whm in abyssea for when the blue proc was hexa strike and the whm needed tp and wasnt feasable for the whm to go tp up on a mob.

/cheers

I know what haste does and you don't have to lecture me on how internet forums work. I've been around enough forums, believe me. xD

You say you don't solo things on Samurai because you have jobs that can solo things better than Samurai. Ok, I'm going to apply your same logic here and go ahead and ask: then why did you merit Blade Bash if there are other jobs that can stun better than Samurai? So you can get your one stun off every 5 minutes on an NM that has a huge regain status effect and that your party is feeding TP to? If anything, you just delayed it's deadly TP move by a few seconds, because the NM will use it again, and most of the really dangerous NMs are the ones that spam a deadly TP move. When, you could have skipped Blade Bash entirely and not wasted 5 merit points, and put your full 10 points for that category into Overwhelm and Ikishoten. Maybe you've forgotten, but you're a DD.

[Superchicken]

um because the job i was doing abyssea as was SAM not as BLM, or RDM/blm, or RDM/DRK, or DNC. the abyssea group i ran with was run on as few members as needed. We didnt go running through abyssea with full alliances like most did when abyssea first came about, we always ran with small numbers typically 7-8. So mostly our one BLM was enough stun most of the time, but guess what, there's times when he's stun was done and he needed me cover the next stun of say Bukhis doom move or w/e move that we wanted to stun. And even all i'm doing is delaying his tp move its enough delay that the blm has his stun timer ready to stun the next time. And who says in my group that all the dd's are always in there feeding tp to an NM? Your assuming things here. Sometimes its just the tank (mnk) in there dding and the dd's are building tp on other mobs and running in to dump TP only. And i dont have 5 merits in bash anyway and definitely not 5 in Ikishoten but seems like you are bashing me here now for not having Ikishoten merits. If you want to know my group 2 merits i'll tell you, Overwhelm 5, bash 4, shikikoyo 1. You dont like those i'm sure, so go ahead tell me their worthless, wont bother me, but again like a stated this is a game where people can do what they want that suits their play style and their needs of what they need or want to do with a certain job. I never told you how to merit your sam simply stated why i would never base my SAM around zanshin and then offered MY OPINION on why i wouldnt and what i did / others could if they wanted to.

If zanshin is what you want and ikishoten go for it, your playing your SAM not me. This whole matter is just like RDM for example. Theres RDM's who will say max your bio III and dia III others will say Para II and Slow II others will say dont matter bio III or dia III at all unless you are gonna max them cause they aint worth it otherwise.

You are getting all hostile saying i said you should merit your SAM like i did, when i never said that, i gave my opinion on zanshin and why i wouldnt merit it, you don't like it ok, you don't have to. You think my merits are stupid, thats fine, your opinion. I at least told you why I (me, myself,) didn't merit zanshin, why i dont think its useful, what i think is more useful and why, etc. Theres other SAMs who will say they dont think zanshin is worth it either, and theres those who will say why it is worth it why blade bash is pointless and why shikikoyo is pointless and why this sucks and that is better and blah blah. I tailor my SAM to what i need it to do for what i use my SAM for, you tailor your SAM for your needs, etc. and thats pretty much it. I at least said why i did my SAM like i did and why i don't think zanshin is worth it and why I would never base my merits around it either.


EDIT:

I'll even add this, at one point and for a long time i had Ikishoten merits 4 to be exact and after a long period of time with them never saw them to be that worthwhile, so i dumped them and put them in blade bash instead which was more useful to ME and my group i play with for what WE did in OUR events and events where i was on SAM vs another one of my jobs

[wintermute]

um because the job i was doing abyssea as was SAM not as BLM, or RDM/blm, or RDM/DRK, or DNC. the abyssea group i ran with was run on as few members as needed. We didnt go running through abyssea with full alliances like most did when abyssea first came about, we always ran with small numbers typically 7-8. So mostly our one BLM was enough stun most of the time, but guess what, there's times when he's stun was done and he needed me cover the next stun of say Bukhis doom move or w/e move that we wanted to stun. And even all i'm doing is delaying his tp move its enough delay that the blm has his stun timer ready to stun the next time. And who says in my group that all the dd's are always in there feeding tp to an NM? Your assuming things here. Sometimes its just the tank (mnk) in there dding and the dd's are building tp on other mobs and running in to dump TP only. And i dont have 5 merits in bash anyway and definitely not 5 in Ikishoten but seems like you are bashing me here now for not having Ikishoten merits. If you want to know my group 2 merits i'll tell you, Overwhelm 5, bash 4, shikikoyo 1. You dont like those i'm sure, so go ahead tell me their worthless, wont bother me, but again like a stated this is a game where people can do what they want that suits their play style and their needs of what they need or want to do with a certain job. I never told you how to merit your sam simply stated why i would never base my SAM around zanshin and then offered MY OPINION on why i wouldnt and what i did / others could if they wanted to.

If zanshin is what you want and ikishoten go for it, your playing your SAM not me. This whole matter is just like RDM for example. Theres RDM's who will say max your bio III and dia III others will say Para II and Slow II others will say dont matter bio III or dia III at all unless you are gonna max them cause they aint worth it otherwise.

You are getting all hostile saying i said you should merit your SAM like i did, when i never said that, i gave my opinion on zanshin and why i wouldnt merit it, you don't like it ok, you don't have to. You think my merits are stupid, thats fine, your opinion. I at least told you why I (me, myself,) didn't merit zanshin, why i dont think its useful, what i think is more useful and why, etc. Theres other SAMs who will say they dont think zanshin is worth it either, and theres those who will say why it is worth it why blade bash is pointless and why shikikoyo is pointless and why this sucks and that is better and blah blah. I tailor my SAM to what i need it to do for what i use my SAM for, you tailor your SAM for your needs, etc. and thats pretty much it. I at least said why i did my SAM like i did and why i don't think zanshin is worth it and why I would never base my merits around it either.

Who said merit Zanshin? I certainly didn't.

If you're going to take the position that it's a game that you can play whatever way you want then nothing else can be said about anything in the game. No discussions on what's better or worse or anything like that. I don't care what you put your merits into. I'm just claiming that Meditate and Store TP in the first category and Overwhelm and Ikishoten in the second is better than Meditate/Store TP and Overwhelm/Skikikoyo/Blade Bash.

[Superchicken]

you talked about you didnt see whats wrong with getting a nana gk and meritting ikishoten, well the purpose of the nana sword is for the zanshin activation rate, and ikishoten is based off zanshin attacks, so you are talking about zanshin. So with that GK and Ikishoten merits you are setting up your SAM to play off the zanshin trait merits in zanshin or not. There would be no other reason as a lvl 90 SAM to be useing a nana sword and a lvl 90 sam using a nana sword would definitely get more out of higher based GK (could prove this in terms of DoT, cause like you said SAM is a DD, but i dont think its necessary to provide the math of a base dmg 77 GK over the current 114+ GKs as it seems pretty much common sense). But let me throw this out there if you are gonna merit Ikishoten you don't think it makes sense to merit zanshin in group 1 along with it? to me seems they would go hand in hand, but to each his own.

I'm just claiming that Meditate and Store TP in the first category and Overwhelm and Ikishoten in the second is better than Meditate/Store TP and Overwhelm/Skikikoyo/Blade Bash.

your claiming since its better for you then it should be better for me is what your doing cause your using my merits in your claim. Hence telling me that your merits will suit my needs for where, when, how i use my SAM when i'm on it. I told you i had ikishoten merits and they werent worth it for me as my accuracy was not an issue to where i was even getting enough zanshin attacks to even get anything wortwhile from Ikishoten, so i changed them to something that was more useful and worthwhile for me.